“The hearing on Monday was the culmination of events that date back to October 2018. That month, a video went viral showing how Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian in West Yorkshire, had been attacked by another teenager at school. Yaxley-Lennon then posted his own response to one million Facebook followers alleging that his investigation had established that Mr Hijazi was a violent thug, a claim that was untrue”. And there was more.
“The Yaxley-Lennon video spread widely and the Syrian teenager and his family received death threats. Three years later, Mr Hijazi won £100,000 in damages when the High Court ruled Yaxley-Lennon’s claims against him had amounted to defamation. The court imposed an injunction on Yaxley-Lennon, banning him from making the false claims again”. So what did he do?
“In February 2023, Yaxley-Lennon, who founded the long-defunct English Defence League (EDL), began repeating the claims and went on to post online a film claiming he had been ‘silenced’ by the state. That film may have been viewed at least 47 million times”. Very brave of him. Or maybe not.
Because, as the report also tells, “Eventually, this July, the anti-Islam activist showed the film to thousands of his supporters in London's Trafalgar Square, saying he would not be silenced. The following day he left the country”. Only now had he returned. The Judge was especially severe on Lennon.
There were attacks on the court artist, because Lennon and his fans did not consider the likeness to their taste. There were appeals for more money, despite Lennon having pleaded guilty, which fact was also ignored by his faithful followers, who have decided he is a “political prisoner”.
Talk of “two tier” policing, justice, and of course Keir Starmer, followed. And the deeply sinister calls for the Judge’s hard drive to be examined, because, well, you know, nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat. Worse, the attacks on the Judge have featured his photo, as well as demands to know where he lives. Which, one hopes, is being gathered up by Hope not Hate.
One might be disappointed to see that group being distracted from Lennon and the rest of the populist far right by whining at those showing empathy for innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon being blown to pieces, incinerated, targeted randomly by snipers for shits and giggles, bulldozed, and all the rest of the bad behaviour indulged in by the IDF.
Stephen Lennon is not a political prisoner. He is not a fearless independent journalist exposing the truth. He has not exposed grooming gangs. He has not exposed corruption. He broke the law, and the law won. So he has been transferred to Belmarsh Prison, where, who knows, perhaps he will write a book about his struggle. While the rest of the world forgets about him.
The time of Stephen Lennon was for a time, but not for all time. Now he has been banged up and can harass no-one. Just rejoice at that news.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
22 comments:
This seems to be a frequent comment BTL on MailOnline - querying a judge's impartiality when some fash gets his collar felt.
After "Tommy" comes the commies.
The End of Days is nigh again.
No, seriously. Or something.
Get a load of this before the Pentagon's longed-for Great White Flash In The Sky turns you into capitalist cosmic dust:
https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/the-post-election-enemy-without?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2j9682
'One might be disappointed to see that group being distracted from Lennon and the rest of the populist far right by whining at those showing empathy for innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon being blown to pieces, incinerated etc.....'
Not clear what you're saying here ( or what you know) about Hope Not Hate, Tim. Can you clarify, please?
The Mail online comments are enough to seriously dent your faith in humanity. The Facebook Daily Mail page is sufficiently bad as to end it.
That's fairly obvious anonymous, Hope not Hate have done some good work, but they have also harassed Palestinian liberty activists for the crime of campaigning against a hard right Israeli government.
As of late, it has been the latter more than the former.
Tim has encouraged HNH to continue data-gathering regarding Stephen's mob due to threats toward the judge, he is also suggesting that perhaps there is bias and hypocrisy unfortunately by HNH's members towards Palastinians and their supporters with AS allegations. I am no longer on social media but I recall that HNH key members did play the 'Corbin is an AS and the Labour Party is ridden with AS' narrative. It's sad given their great work investigating real threats.
Thanks, James and Ed. I wasn't aware of that.
Hope Not Hate developed, I think, out of Searchlight whose specific focus was the particular racism of the late 20th century, anti-Semitism.
Unsurprisingly Searchlight was populated and supported largely by Jewish people. It would be a pity if this has affected their 'loyalties' and behaviour in the way you say it has.
It would be ironic if "Lennon" ended up in the same cell previously occupied by Julian Assange.
The difference of course is that Julian Assange was an innocent non-racist political prisoner tortured by a far right neofascist racist state. Whereas "Lennon" is just a racist shithouse.
Now now. Neither of us said "loyalties". That hints at a particular trope and this is strictly an Israeli government question.
We will say simply that their work of great importance provided cover for some awful things.
Tommeh's meeting with Sweet Pants should be interesting.
Though it would be immeasurably better if he was accompanied by Quislings, Micawbers and self-styled "centrists".
Sorry, I thought it was a Searchlight/Hope Not Hate question.
Objectors to my use of 'loyalties' would have to convince me that there is no spiritual link between a historically oppressed people and the land many of them regard as a 'special' place, a necessary sanctuary, if not a spiritual homeland; possibly God-given.
Well they may have to convince you of that anonymous, but I think it's a different question.
The question that comes back to you is, "do you think pro Palestinian protesters have a point?", and if your answer is no then you'll have far more sympathy for HNH than I do.
Oh dear, sounds like Tommeh's incarceration is causing issues for Reform: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/nov/01/splits-in-reform-uk-as-senior-figures-defend-tommy-robinson-supporters
Sorry to sound harsh, but since no one gives a flying toss about the native Americans slightly more recent loss of a deeply spiritual connection to what IS their land, or the loss of the Aborigines and Maori of their land, why are we supposed to go dewy eyed over the claims of Zionists? Even by their own account, Israel was conquered land, not originally settled, was lost historically speaking, very quickly due to internal disputes, then the remaining land lost to the Roman's- thousands of years ago.
If a tribe of Celts turned up and said, 'hi Brits, time to fuck off, this is our spiritual home, well at least it was two thousand years ago', they'd get short shrift.
There is a big difference between, as a friend of mine does, seeing ancient Israel's site as a spiritual symbol, and forcing the inhabitants out at gunpoint, then oppressing them for 70 years. Contrary to what a Jewish gentleman said to me in defence of Israel's endless 'just defending themselves' no, two wrongs do not make a right.
Or does that mean native Americans and other native peoples have the right to butcher their white, immigrant neighbours? Jewish people have indeed been oppressed, horribly so, but if hope not hate think that makes it okay to kill, in horrific fashion, tens of thousands of people, then they've lost the plot.
I was leaning over backwards, too obliquely judging by these responses, to try to make it clear that I was *not* sympathetic to the trope Ed referred to, which I assumed to be the historical antisemitic one about the 'rootless cosmopolitan' having a compromised loyalty to their adopted country because of their supposed greater loyalty to their religion or their 'race'.
The matter of 'loyalties' is a complex one but it is unrealistic to imagine that a large number of Jews outside Israel don't visit, fund or otherwise express solidarity with that country.
The fact that they do, no matter how often the distinctions are reasserted between Jewish people in the diaspora, Israeli citizens and the Israeli government, seems to me to carry with it a measure of responsibility, a responsibility to condemn , if not historical wrongs in Palestine, at least the current barbarism enacted in Gaza and Lebanon.
If Hope Not Hate are equivocating in this matter then they are tarnishing their own record and, by historical association, that of Searchlight.
I hope this is clearer.
It is. There will always be sympathy between members of the same faith, ethnic group or whatever. It is, as ever, where you draw the line.
It's interesting to note that Muslims living in the Western World 'are' expected to condemn, en masse, the behaviour of Muslim extremists, yet no such demand is ever made of Jewish people.
Perhaps it's the weight of hypocricy? Because in the past the Western media, and further back, certainly did make that demand. Or is it simply, as Michael Rosen said yesterday, that the West is not just complicit in Israel's disgusting behaviour, it's actually driving it.
It's something I've been arguing for a long time. No-one is putting out a restraining hand, because the West 'wants' greater Israel. The USA, the Worlds real rogue nation, sees Israeli expansion as key to its Middle East policy. A huge, white colony, slowly but surely displacing 'brown people', until it's so powerful the USA's dominance in the region is assured.
As such, support for Israel from without is encouraged, not rebuked. By anyone.
That is crystal clear, thank you for clarifying.
18:49.
Unfortunately it took hundreds of words of bullshit double-speak to "clarify". Often referred to as "nuance", but actually just pompous drivel.
Let’s do a deal.
We’ll stick to the pompous drivel of our wordy ‘nuance’.
And you stick to your grunts.
Agreed?
13:44.
No deal, me old Micawber.
You stick to your pompous drivel while disappearing up your own arse.
The rest of us will get to the point quickly.
Top grunt, Anon!
23:07.
Spike Milligan made the best grunt of all. After Neville Chamberlain declared "...I have to tell you we are now at a state of war...", Spike commented "I like that 'we' bit".
It's the "we", see.
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