After doing some research on who "Tommy Robinson" is, I have unpublished today's blog post on the Psychedelic Future Party.
I support allowing a wide variety of political views on this blog -- I cannot recall censoring a blog comment for political reasons and I've allowed comments from right wingers, left wingers, libertarians and so on -- but I'm really not comfortable with racism or ethnic hatred. I did not detect it in the party manifesto I posted this morning, but I'm just not comfortable with Tommy Robinson's views, or at least some of them, now that I've had a chance to understand who he is. (He's not a household name over here, i.e. in the U.S.)
And just to be clear, I don't like racism whether it comes from the right or the left or anyone else. So whatever one thinks of opinions I express here or anywhere else, I am attempting to be consistent. I apologize if I gave offense.
3 comments:
Yeah, that was definitely the right call. I wasn’t terribly familiar with the name, either, so I looked it up… and he’s the sort of white supremacist who, when he was welcomed into UKIP, no less than Nigel Farage came forward and lamented how they didn’t need Robinson’s kind of virulent racism in the party.
What research did you do? I spent years writing a book about Tommy Robinson, arguing that the British Establishment have done to him what they did to Jimmy Savile i.e. a total inversion of reality. But if you've come across actual evidence of "racism and ethnic hatred," please do send it to me. Send it to the police too as these are criminal offences, and weirdly enough Tommy Robinson has never been charged with any crime involving race hate. "We would rather stand with one proud black patriot than a hundred scumbag racists, that's where we stand." - Tommy Robinson
Iain Spence:
I shouldn't think any of your regular readers here would take offence at the error. It's an easy enough mistake to make for Americans.
On a lighter note, I've often wondered what Americans would make of The Monster Raving Loony Party. I'd imagine this would have appealed to RAW, if he was in the UK. The famous astronomer Patrick Moore did their finance for a while claiming that at least their candidates knew they were crazy, unlike the mainstream politicians.
I find they always bring a fun element to election night, helping the mainstream not to take themselves too seriously. Children always ask who they are, and why they dress so colourfully. Perhaps the nearest Americans get to the same is Emperor Norton, but there are differences.
But I imagine the MRLP won't be turning up at the by-election of David Amess' seat. It wouldn't be appropriate considering the background of his death.
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