The dangerous martyrdom of Tommy Robinson Progressive activists should be careful what they wish for

Tommy Robinson is a paradox: he is a brave and enormously successful activist-journalist with a mean right hook. At the same time, he’s prone to sentimentality, sensitive to criticism and sees himself as a victim, tethering his own private troubles — mortgage fraud, travelling to the US on a false passport and an upcoming contempt of court case to name just a few — to the political grievances of the white working class he claims to represent. His greatest contradiction, though, is that while he’s a trenchant critic of identity politics, mercilessly mocking the whiny victimhood of Black Lives Matter, the transgender movement and shady Islamists, he’s also an unmistakable product of that politics, weaponising the language of tribal resentment and self-pity for his own personal and political purposes.

Every multicultural society, it turns out, has the Tommy Robinsons it deserves. Which is to say that if you fetishise identity and create a hierarchy of identities, whereby some are protected and defended while others are stigmatised and attacked, you’ll end up with a less than harmonious society. It also turns out that if you reward “marginalised” non-white identities, many whites will bristle against this and start reasserting their own white identity — or search out those who will do it for them.

It is from this toxic context — the “Lebanonisation” of the UK, as Sam Bidwell strikingly describes it — that Robinson has emerged, becoming the first white “community leader” here. But unlike his counterparts in the “Muslim community”, no British politician or senior police officer would be seen dead breaking fried bread with Robinson. If Robinson has a victim-complex, it is in part because he is one and because he seems to go out of his way to be one. Indeed, it’s almost as if he enjoys being a victim and the sense of righteousness and authenticity this gives him.

Robinson’s arrest on Friday at Folkestone police station, where he was charged under the schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act for refusing to hand over the pin to his mobile phone, and his return to custody immediately after, will further solidify his victim narrative. This will surely be compounded by his appearance today and tomorrow at Woolwich crown court on separate charges relating to repeating libellous statements he made about a Syrian refugee back in 2018.

Though he wasn’t there for it, Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally still went ahead, with podcaster Liam Tuffs hosting in his place. I watched a livestream showing the main speakers and I sat through the whole of Robinson’s new documentary, which was shown in its 124-minute entirety. It is titled “Lawfare: Lust, Fear and Loathing — and the UK riots”, which is a bit of a mouthful, lacking the punch and clarity of, say, “The Rape of Britain”, Robinson’s 2022 documentary about Asian grooming gangs. Robinson must have intuited this, because he spends the first 15 minutes performing the yeoman’s work of explaining its subtitle. In short: lust refers to the greed of the elites and their desire for power, fear is about the elites’ capitulation to Islam, and loathing denotes their contempt for ordinary people and Britain.

The documentary begins with an encomium to Peter Lynch, who last week committed suicide in prison. Lynch, 61, was serving two years and eight months after he pleaded guilty to being part of a violent mob outside a migrant hotel in Rotherham during the peak of this summer’s anti-immigration riots; he had shouted “scum” and “child killers” at police. The judge who sentenced Lynch called him a “disgraceful example of a grandfather”, but for Robinson he is a martyr-like figure whose sacrifice exposes the cruel face of a two-tier system of criminal system in the UK.

Robinson’s main complaint is that the anti-immigration rioters were unfairly demonised as far-Right thugs animated by racism and Islamophobia. It is a powerful argument and Robinson makes a good case for it, giving a direct voice to those who were on the receiving end of the demonisation, who make it clear that they had genuine concerns about uncontrolled immigration, particularly around crime and safety. The documentary is worth watching solely for this testimony, which is given to the excellent and empathetic Sammy Woodhouse.

If you’re Keir Starmer and live a life of privilege far from a migrant hotel, it is perhaps easy to dismiss these concerns as atavistic spasms of racism, but then Starmer’s wife doesn’t live in Rotherham and hasn’t been sexually harassed and followed back home by one of those hotel occupants, as several interviewees relayed that their young daughters had been.

Robinson also makes a compelling case that the rioters were treated with a severity that was not only disproportionate and unjust but transparently inconsistent with how the British state manages other violent protesters who march under the banner of BLM or Palestine. This theme resonates so strongly with Robinson because of his own sense of personal victimisation at the hands of the British state and media.

He is especially aggrieved by the accusation that he circulated misinformation that stoked the riots and had egged on the rioters; he points out that while it was kicking off in Southport he was kicking back on a sun lounger in Cyprus and calling for calm. This accusation, he suggests, would have more purchase if his accusers themselves didn’t trade in spreading misinformation and stirring up racial tension. It would also have more purchase, he argues, if immigrants themselves didn’t brutally rape and murder people across British towns and cities.

Where Robinson goes wrong, however, is his tendency to paint all migrants with the same toxic brush, his tendency to go off-topic (he includes a clip from Ross Kemp’s “Extreme World” in which Kemp speaks to gang members in South Africa about how rape is a hobby) and to see uncontrolled immigration as part of some conspiracy on the part of self-hating elites to destroy Western culture. No doubt the elites are full of self-hating guilty liberals, but the idea that they’re deliberately trying to orchestrate the downfall of the West credits them with an agency they might not possess.

Robinson’s most fervent critics seem to take a special pleasure in monitoring his myriad legal entanglements and will no doubt be thrilled to see him go to prison. They are the sort of progressive activists who, while advocating for maximum penal severity when it comes to people like Robinson, would plead clemency for “minoritised” violent offenders. They are not credible and shouldn’t be listened to.

Because Robinson, whatever else he is, is credible. He also deserves a proper hearing, not because he’s a teller of unpleasant truths, although he can be, but because if we’re to live in the multicultural utopia of balkanised Britain, then the grievances he voices demand to be heard and taken seriously. Of course progressives will recoil at this, but they created the sectarian shitshow of communal sensitivities and credible messengers so they had best prick up their ears.

Robinson’s chief problem is his tendency to elide his own personal grievances with the political woes of the people he claims to speak for. The draconian severity with which the authorities put down this summer’s riots is synonymous in his mind with what he sees as his own tyrannical persecution by the British state. The political risk for Robinson, then, is that he’s so preoccupied with the latter that it engulfs the former. But if he can rein in his narcissism and temper some of his rhetoric, who knows what heights this community leader might reach. And if he is jailed this week, he will be able to bathe in the musky smell of martyrdom and hope to return from prison with even greater renown and credibility.