Tory MPs And A Putin Sympathiser

As voting gets under way in the Birmingham Erdington by-election, caused by the death of Jack Dromey, with Labour’s candidate Paulette Hamilton coming under attack from opportunist Tory MPs for the heinous crime of discussing democracy and revolution, not much is being said by The Blue Team, or their cheerleaders in our free and fearless press, about Tory support for the Trumpian, and indeed, pro-Putin, far right.

John Mappin

Fortunately, though, one of those enabling the meeting of minds has let the world know which of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s happy back bench band is involved: step forward John Mappin, so off the scale wacko that even “bad boy of Brexit” Arron Banks described him as “a total fruit loop”.

Mappin has recently been, shall we say, sympathetic to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his gangsterist régime in Moscow, musing “Is there any slightest chance, however small, that Russia may have a just cause? And if there is. Should we try to understand it?” before going full wacko with “Do you think our government would stage a Nuclear False Flag just to cover up vax side effects?” Even his former pals were standing back.

As Richard Bartholomew has noted, Turning Point UK, offshoot of the far-right US original, and whose launch event featured Mappin prominently, has tried to distance itself from him, telling Jessica Simor QC that “John Mappin is not ‘of Turning Point UK’, he does not and has not held any position in the organisation”. But this message does not appear to have got through to TPUK’s supporters, some of whom were snapped with him only this week.

“This week there was a gathering of some of the greatest free minds and thinkers in western civilisation” told Mappin, going on to explain “We met to celebrate the expansion of [GETTR] and welcomed its CEO [Jason Miller] to London”. GETTR is a Twitter-like social media platform aimed at right-wingers, and Miller is a former Trump aide. He’s a contributor to Newsmax, which has put out baseless vote fraud claims.

Newsmax also pushes climate change denial. So who was there? The predictable ones were Maajid Nawaz, Mark Dolan of Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), Laurence Fox, Nigel “Thirsty” Farage … and two TPUK stalwarts, Dominique Samuels and Emily Hewertson. Strange that TPUK distances itself from Mappin at the same time its alumni rock up to be snapped alongside him.

Farage - another excusing Putin

Worse, it is not just the wacko and desperate who were more than willing to be photographed alongside Mappin: Tory MPs were, too. Like Andrew Rosindell, who has spoken in support of Augusto Pinochet, been caught with his Facebook account being a member of a group backing Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, and has signed his name to a letter using an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

As a member of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs (ho ho ho), he co-signed a letter accusing the National Trust of being “coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the 'woke agenda’”. Cultural Marxism is a Nazi-era anti-Semitic trope. And he doesn’t know what Woke means. Also snapped with Mappin was Mark François (note cedilla under the c). Once again, Tories bashing Labour turns out to be mere deflection.

Tory MPs snapped alongside a Putin apologist. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

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