Arresting Tommy . . . Again

By Bruce Bawer

This time, it’s Trudeau’s turn.

In the last few years, my friend Douglas Murray has become internationally famous – as much so, anyway, as a serious writer of non-fiction can be. His splendid books The Strange Death of Europe (2017), The Madness of Crowds (2019), and The War on the West (2021) were deserved bestsellers. And since October 7, Murray – born in 1979, a graduate of Eton and of Magdalen College, Oxford – has been rightly hailed around the world for his heroic reportage from Israel during the current war on Hamas. When he hasn’t been in Israel, he’s been traveling all over much of the Western world, giving endless talks and interviews and participating in debates, in which he inevitably triumphs. His writings, his speeches, and his comments have been focused largely on Islam, a topic on which, unlike many other commentators, he admirably refuses to euphemize. Because he recognizes that the brutal Hamas attack on Israel, and the immigrant crisis currently facing Europe, are based in the founding tenets of Islam – period – he refuses to use such phony terms as “Islamism” or “radical Islam” or “Muslim extremism.” It has been heartening to see him applauded by huge audiences – and winning important awards – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile the careers of two other Englishmen have been advancing as well. Nigel Farage is also a British hero. For twenty years, the sixty-year-old former businessman led the ultimately successful movement to separate the United Kingdom from the European Union. His principal argument for separation was that the U.K. needed to take back its right to control immigration into its territory. Yet he consistently avoided the reason why it was important to restrict the massive influx of foreigners into Britain. The problem wasn’t with the Hindus or Buddhists or black Caribbeans or sub-Saharan Africans who’d moved to the U.K. These groups did a terrific job of integrating into British society and tended to earn more money than most native Englishmen. No, the problem was Islam. Douglas Murray has no trouble saying so. Nigel Farage, while projecting an image of utter fearlessness, always dodged the issue. In recent times he seems to have begun to tiptoe into these dangerous waters, but he’s still a long way from spelling things out as clearly as Douglas Murray does.

He’s hardly alone. Pretty much the entire British political establishment refuses to breathe a critical word about Islam. And even though the main reason for Brexit was that Brits wanted to retake control of their borders, both main parties, Labour and the Tories, have done little to prevent the large-scale influx of immigrants, mostly illegal, mostly adult men, and mostly Muslim. The Westminster establishment’s attitude toward this issue is perfectly in line with the views of privileged North London – Britain’s equivalent of Northwest Washington, the Upper West Side of New York, and the tonier parts of San Francisco and L.A. – but it’s totally at odds with the wishes of the British (or at least the English) public at large. On July 4, Britain will hold a general election in which the now-reigning Tories, who rode to victory on big promises of tighter border security, are expected to go down to ignominious – and well-deserved – defeat. Labour is expected to do well, although it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory either. Then there’s the third major party, the Liberal Democrats. But the wild card is Farage’s party, Reform UK, founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party, whose strident calls for immigration reform and tax cuts have gained it a significant following. How significant? We’ll see on July 4.

Douglas Murray. Nigel Farage. And then there’s a third name. Tommy Robinson. For years he’s been saying essentially the same things about Islam that Murray has. But he’s gotten no respect for it. The sole reason: the British class system. Tommy, age 41, is a working-class lad from working-class Luton, and he learned about Islam the hard way – by living in its midst. As a young man he read the Koran and recognized just how horrible a book it is. When he whipped out a copy of the Holy Book on Good Morning, Britain seven years ago and warned of the dangerous language contained within it, Piers Morgan ordered him to “have some respect” and “put it down.” When Tommy quoted Winston Churchill’s criticism of Islam, Morgan called him a “lunatic,” “inflammatory” and “poisonous.” The same Piers Morgan has in recent weeks rolled out the red carpet for Douglas Murray and listened respectfully while he said more or less the same things about Islam that Tommy said on that morning show all those years ago.

Again, that’s the British class system for you. The class system is why Tommy Robinson has been arrested and imprisoned several times for saying and doing things for which the authorities would never dare to touch Douglas Murray, a graduate of Eton and Oxford with the poshest imaginable accent and with professional and personal connections at the very highest levels. Now comes the news that Tommy has been arrested yet again – this time in Canada. Reportedly, he was taken into custody right after giving a speech at a conference center in Calgary under the auspices of Ezra Levant’s news and opinion website Rebel News. His passport was confiscated; the reason given for his arrest was an “outstanding immigration warrant”; Tommy, for his part, called the arrest “insane.” He was let go some time later, but said that he had been told not to leave Calgary, which in itself sounds like cruel and unusual punishment, and which will effectively prevent him from continuing his lecture tour of Canada, which was to have included stops in Edmonton and Toronto. Meanwhile he’s also in legal hot water back home, thanks to the destructive efforts of the group Hope Not Hate – a British equivalent, roughly speaking, of the malevolent Southern Poverty Law Center. Just think of it: if only he sounded a bit less like Stanley Holloway and a bit more like Rex Harrison (sorry, I just finished watching My Fair Lady again), Tommy Robinson would be getting a lot less trouble from the cops and a lot more praise from the blue bloods.

First published in Front Page magazine