Douglas Murray Lies About Tommy Robinson

[Update at end of post]

The reality of what happened last Friday to Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, after he rocked up at Leeds Crown Court and was subsequently nicked after being told by the cops not to film in the area, has been all but drowned out since then by Lennon’s supporters pretending that what happened to him either didn’t really happen, or that this is part of some great establishment conspiracy against him. Or both.

Now into the seething pit of Fake News has come the not at all unbiased figure of Doug Murray The K, an Islamophobe of many years’ standing whose proclamation that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board” was too much even for the Tory Party. Certainly, had Murray used the word “Jews” instead of “Muslims”, he would not still be sounding off in allegedly respectable outlets like the Spectator.

But hey ho, double racist standards and all that. Now Murray has decided to tell those Stateside of his alternate reality, and to this end has penned a piece for the National Review titled “Tommy Robinson Drew Attention to ‘Grooming Gangs.’ Britain Has Persecuted Him”. This is dishonest and inflammatory bullshit.

Just how much bull Doug is shipping here can be deduced from a scan of the opening two paragraphs. Here’s his schtick: “Tommy Robinson is a British political activist [no he isn’t, he’s a self-promotion artist] and ‘citizen journalist’ [who wouldn’t know Journalism from a hole in the ground] who came to prominence in Britain almost a decade ago when he founded the English Defence League. The EDL was a street-protest movement in Britain whose aims could probably best be summarized as ‘anti-Islamization’”. Baloney.

The EDL was just another bunch of far-right thugs going after people who were not white. But do go on. “From their earliest protests the EDL’s members sought to highlight issues including sharia law [by not knowing what it was], Islam’s attitudes toward minorities [ditto], and the phenomenon that would become euphemistically known as ‘grooming gangs’ [ditto] … The authorities did everything they could to stop the EDL [no, the authorities allowed the EDL, and anyone else, to do their thing, but had to keep order], and the media did everything possible to demonize them [the media didn’t need to do anything. The EDL did most of their own demonising, thanks]”.

Murray just spews out one lie after another, which is nothing more or less than would be expected. But it is when he gets on to Lennon’s brushes with the law that his lying becomes dangerous. First comes the paranoid assumption: “he must have known [and] it is by now abundantly clear that every arm of the British state has been out to get Tommy Robinson”. And why might the state be doing this?

“Any challenge Robinson presents is all a secondary issue. The primary issue is that for years the British state allowed gangs of men to rape thousands of young girls across Britain. For years the police, politicians, Crown Prosecution Service, and every other arm of the state ostensibly dedicated to protecting these girls failed them”. That would be why more than 20 men were on trial in Leeds - the reason Lennon turned up there.

But do go on. “By contrast, Tommy Robinson thought it was worth the aggravation, even if that meant having his whole life turned upside down”. Murray once again mistakes Lennon’s appetite for self-promotion for some kind of campaigning zeal.

Then it gets worse, as Murray suggests deliberate persecution: “Some years ago, after crawling over all of his personal affairs and the affairs of all his immediate family, the police found an irregularity on a mortgage application, prosecuted Robinson, convicted him, and sent him to prison on that charge”. He was jailed for fraud. End of story.

But having now got his audience suitably conditioned, Murray now pulls out the whoppers. “What can be said with absolute certainty is that Tommy Robinson has been treated with greater suspicion and a greater presumption of guilt by the United Kingdom than any Islamic extremist or mass rapist ever has been”. Pack of lies. No evidence.

There is more. “That should be - yet is not - a national scandal. If even one mullah or sheikh had been treated with the presumption of guilt that Robinson has received, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the rest of them would be all over the U.K. authorities. But different standards apply to Robinson”. No they don’t. Man breaks law persistently, man goes to jail. Nothing exceptional there.

But Doug is on a roll. So on he drones: “Tommy Robinson will be in prison for another year. And all those people happy with the status quo will breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Thank goodness that troublemaker has gone away.’ Yet their real problem has not gone away. There is no chance of their real problem going away. Because they have no plan for making it go away”. Remember that trial? That shows Doug is wrong. Again.

All that Murray can offer is continually talking of “thousands of raped girls”, although anyone who knows his backstory knows that he only affects to care about such things because it is by this route that he can continue his peddling of Islamophobic bigotry.

That is what Murray’s article is really about. What makes it dangerous is his willingness to make a martyr out of Stephen Lennon in order to legitimise that bigotry. But Lennon is not a martyr. He’s a wide boy, a thug, a rabble-rouser, a shameless self-promotion artist, and yes, a serial common criminal. Pretending otherwise is totally out of order.

But it does confirm how desperate Doug Murray The K has become.

[UPDATE 1430 hours: The Secret Barrister has bad news for Douglas Murray.

They have responded to his Tweet advertising the article discussed above with "This article in in breach of the reporting restrictions. DM me if you want more info".

Perhaps those at outlets like the Spectator, which gives Murray a place to spout his prejudice, would like to take note of that. On the other hand, they probably won't]