Tomorrow, Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, returns to the Old Bailey to face retrial on allegations that he committed contempt of court when filming outside Leeds Crown Court earlier this year. His faithful supporters will no doubt be out in force. Many will have taken the day off work and committed significant amounts of their hard-earned cash to travel to London. Some will have donated to his various appeals.
All this feeds the Stephen Lennon business model: the relentless self-publicity, the attacks on established media outlets and especially broadcasters, the framing of his cause as championing the forgotten British working class, the demonisation of Islam and wilful exaggeration of its tenets, the claim that the establishment is out to get him,and of course the laughably dishonest suggestion that he is a mere “journalist”.
The downsides of Lennon’s crusade, and there are many, are routinely ignored by his faithful fans. Multiple instances of harassment, his previous criminal record, his dishonesty - pretty persistent, especially for someone so ready to call “liar” on others - and the clearly false claim that he is all about “free speech”. Tell that to anyone whose free speech contains opinions that diverge from those he espouses.
What is also becoming clear is that the whole Lennon circus has just one beneficiary, and that is Himself Personally Now. Not victims of sexual abuse. Not those whose families have been turned upside down by grooming gangs. And certainly not those who get themselves a criminal record by following the path set out by the great Tommy.
We know this as the Murdoch Sunday Times has begun to do a little digging around the business empire of Stephen Yaxley Lennon. This tells “A former assistant to Robinson, who had access to his Stripe online payment processing account, claimed it contained £2m after his jailing and appeal, thanks to a flood of donations, mainly small amounts”.
There was more. “Another former assistant, Lucy Brown, told the Sunday Times in August that Robinson operated a ‘business’ in which ‘your outrage, valid as it is, will be monetised as such’”. Is there an example of how this outrage is “monetised”?
Well, yes there is: “Robinson recently moved into a £950,000 house in an upmarket village in Bedfordshire. The detached, gated property has four bedrooms, a two-bedroom annexe and a double garage”. As Trevor Warner added, “Paid for by donations from the mindless idiots who support him”. Lennon’s business model works for him. And only him.
And tomorrow’s court appearance, when Lennon expects to be jailed once again - he’s sacked his lawyers and is determined to provoke the Judge into giving him a custodial sentence by refusing to apologise for almost derailing three trials which have already seen 20 men sentenced to a total of well over 200 years in prison - he is expecting his collected mugs to shell out even more in donations to keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed. What will be the cause this time? Who knows? But one thing is clear.
The beneficiaries of this payday will not be those who missed a day’s pay and shelled out for a return trip to London. They won’t be the victims of sexual abuse. It is all for the benefit of Stephen Yaxley Lennon. How does it feel to be taken for a mug, Tommy fans?
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7 comments:
Have you not seen that Rebel Media is asking for $17,000 to fund their "reporters"
Once upon a time, investigative journalists were advised to always look for the money and the women.
But in corporate media we don't have such journalists anymore, except when it suits their paymasters to collar someone like "Robinson". In their eyes, "Robinson's" only offence, like Trump's, is to inadvertently expose the real nature of right wing hate-politics and its inbuilt racism. "Robinson" is a mug too, albeit a cracked one.
We now see the cumulative effect of almost four decades of this sheer poison. "Robinson" is but a symptom of it. You can bet your bottom Euro there'll be no investigative journalism of its real perpetrators.
Of course Robinson is being targeted by the establishment, they need to try to pretend there is Far-right threat equal to that from islamists! Why was he arrested, for saying what was already in the public domain, he couldn't say anything else because unlike most trials we weren't allowed to follow proceedings. Result, one days news instead of many, then lay into Tommy Robinson, days of news about his trail. He abused and raped no-one!
Perhaps you would care to explain what you mean when you claim of his "demonisation of Islam and wilful exaggeration of its tenets", from my reading of the Koran it does the job well enough itself, you can't exaggerate. Who is actually terrorising this country and killing people? It ain't Tommy or his fans! Think on ol'luv!
Care to do the same job on convicted criminal Anjem Choudary and his means? No thought not!
Once again, the clue is in the phrase "convicted criminal". The trials and detention of rape gangs and hate preachers is evidence that such crimes are being investigated by police, and people are going to jail.
What Lennon wants is street fights and lynchings. Evidence optional.
Plain and simple; S Y L has been arrested and convicted of criminal offences.
S Y L is the gift that keeps on giving for all those advocating pro-austerity measures that hit the poor, the sick and the disabled.
S Y L and his criminal followers are images in the back of people's minds whenever the mainstream media pontificate about benefit scrougers.
Hey how does he back up his claim he's just a journalist? I was trying to explain to someone that he raises awareness, wants to change society etc which makes him an activist and they were having none of it, even though they agreed with the definition of an activist and that TR does activisty things. I was stumped to be honest. I tried to find content from the far right that explained how he's just a journalist and not an activist but got nowhere.
Tommy 'Shekels' Robinson.
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