So Tommy Robinson went and got himself arrested, again. That means it’s the end of civilisation as we know it, apparently.
It’s times like these when the wise words of Andrew Klavan often resonate the most. Klavan, among others, has often observed that conservatives generally, and the farther right in particular, have the often annoying and always counter-productive habit of declaring every development they dislike to be a reliable harbinger of impending societal collapse.
Gay marriage? It’s the end of civilisation. Female clergy? It’s the end of civilisation. The arrest of Tommy Robinson? It’s the end of civilisation. And so on, and so on, and so forth.
Certain nationalist and identitarian elements on the internet are bristling with righteous indignation and condemnation of the UK police state’s outrageous infringement of civil liberties, while typing furious petitions demanding Robinson’s immediate release from prison. Like that’s going to have any effect, other than helping GCHQ to hoover up a ton of data regarding the completely legal yet politically incorrect opinions of numerous British citizens.
Whether you believe that Robinson and his followers are “far right” or not, it says a great deal about the current state of our news media when we’re forced to turn to the Daily Mail and the ever reliable Guido Fawkes website for something approaching a balanced and dispassionate assessment of the situation.
Guido was one of the first online news sources to point out that only last year, Mr Robinson was handed a suspended sentence and expressly warned by a judge against live reporting from ongoing trials of predominantly Asian grooming gangs. Whilst the grooming gang phenomenon is a clear and present risk to young girls, women and our wider society, so too is tweeting the details of “Muslim paedophile” trials in blatant defiance of media restrictions before a jury has had an opportunity to reach a verdict. Thanks to Robinson’s reckless and self-aggrandising behaviour, he’s in jail while potentially vulnerable witnesses could be left dangerously exposed if a mistrial were declared. It’s difficult to see how any of those outcomes will help more victims escape from an ever lengthening list of organised offenders.
Whether you’re enraged or delighted by the arrest and imprisonment of Tommy Robinson, there’s no escaping the fact that despite being personally warned by a sitting judge, he went ahead and broke the law anyway. And he did it on purpose while he was under a suspended prison sentence.
Like most modern-day ideologues, it seems like the majority of Mr Robinson’s most ardent supporters want to have their cake and eat it too. They’re only too pleased to see a growing number of mostly Muslim defendants in the dock and claim, with some justification, that it’s long overdue. Yet they fly into a fit of self-righteous rage when one of their own is taken to task by the very same legal system which is finally catching up with their sworn cultural enemies.
Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. You can’t have it both ways.
Images courtesy of Jason Morrison & Doru Lupeanu at FreeImages.com
