The far-right never presents a united front for long, and to prove it, there has been a bitter falling-out between TR News, the site run in the name of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, and Shazia Hobbs, an alleged free speech campaigner but in reality someone who has just veered across the anti-Semitism line in no style at all.
Shazia Hobbs
Ms Hobbs had featured on TR News, but yesterday came the howls of protest: “So Shazia Hobbs has been silenced by those running TR News. All her articles have been removed! Not once has Shaz begged for a penny for anything she does, she does it because she genuinely cares … Free speech is only free speech when it suits a personal agenda”.
But that comment was relatively mild compared to what came next: “So, all Shazia Hobbs articles have been removed from the TR News website. It would appear that TR News has been overrun with rats, pushing their own agenda. How they scurried fast once Tommy was out of the way. The bastion of free speech has become a laughing stock, slipped into the same stinking cesspit as all other MSM”. And there was more.
“I certainly won’t be supporting these manipulating bunch of charlatans. You know who you are. Disgraceful”. Fash fallout! But one look at Ms Hobbs’ latest outpourings shows exactly why her content has been binned, and this can be seen on Alt News Media, the wacko conspiracy site run by the deeply unsavoury David Vance.
Here, her own apologia begins “There are those who cry at being called Islamophobe yet think nothing of calling others anti-Semitic. These people sometimes threaten to sue for libel if called ‘racist’, while accusing others of being anti-Semitic often merely because they choose not to stand with Israel on every issue”. Then she drops it.
“Most of the people on the right applaud and cheer when I speak the truth about Islam and the many harmful practices that occur in the Muslim communities. Yet many of these same people are shocked and disgusted if I mention the Jews or Judaism in anything other than positive terms”. Note she did not say “Jews”, but “the Jews”. And it gets worse.
After a series of both Islamophobic and anti-Semitic assertions, Ms Hobbs tells her readers “Muslims and Jews are always portrayed as victims, even when we see that it is Christians who are being persecuted and massacred all over the world”. She forgot about the Holocaust, and more recently, the Rohingya, Srebrenica, and the Uyghur in China.
What the removal of Shazia Hobbs from TR News shows is that their definition of Free Speech extends to being allowed to be bigoted against Muslims, but not Jews. The reality is that it is bang out of order to be bigoted against either, or indeed against any other minority group. Vance’s site has no problem with being bigoted against both.
And what this ruckus also shows is that, for the far-right, Free Speech is just another excuse for selective racism. No racism is acceptable. Shazia Hobbs displays appalling ignorance and prejudice, but in doing so, she exposes the far-right as a sham.
The Fash are falling out. Because the Fash don’t like being reminded of their hypocrisy.
Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at
5 comments:
Quite soon we'll have a far right ranter in Downing Street (whoever "wins" the tory muppet audition).
That should keep the whole gang of mad neofascists happy.
Meanwhile, the country will drop from the gutter and into the sewer.
What a sick, greedy, racist tragedy we have become. Three centuries of colonial thievery and lunacy are finally catching up with us.
Leave while we are still in the EU !
Divide and rule
This country is already in the gutter..
Vance shouts about how Muslims and Labour are responsible for antisemitism whilst giving far right twerps like Hobbs a platform to shout anti-Semitic bile on his blog and whilst he shouts about Sorors on Twitter.
The man is a twat.
Post a Comment