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What if…. Tommy Robinson is a political genius?

He's not.

That was my assumption until yesterday

But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison


I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries

Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses

The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.

If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.

I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.

As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.

I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well

He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen

Farage is gifted in a different way

Oh God, another strong man crush.
As ever, your doppelgänger SeanT beat you to it and was wanking over Tommeh on here as a ‘patriot’ years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/14/nigel-farage-tommy-robinson-london-rally-government-voters-civil-war

A really excellent piece by John Harris.

“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”

Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.

I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.

Is Harris suggesting it was all wine and roses back then? He literally says there was precious little recognition of life’s more difficult aspects: social strife, inequality, disagreement. Implicit is that blithe lack of recognition may have some responsibility for where we are now.

His main point (as I see it) is that the whole discourse is now driven by all the social media platforms, and the more adept users (and in one case, an owner) want catastrophes, but if they can’t actually cause one they at least want the unhappy and disaffected to perpetually feel that we’re on the edge of the abyss. We can even see on here that the radicalised go mental at every whiff of unattributed bullshit.

What if…. Tommy Robinson is a political genius?

He's not.

That was my assumption until yesterday

But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison


I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries

Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses

The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.

If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.

I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.

As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.

I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well

He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen

Farage is gifted in a different way

Oswald Mosley...

Whom I am sure @leon will tell us wasn't a Nazi. Oh no.

What if…. Tommy Robinson is a political genius?

He's not.

That was my assumption until yesterday

But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison


I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries

Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses

The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.

If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.

I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.

As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.

I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well

He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen

Farage is gifted in a different way

Oswald Mosley...

Not really

Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue

Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter

Mosley was definitely a capable demagogue, and organised large marches, and street fights, and had a criminal record.

Although unless I've missed something, he was a lot more successful with women than Yaxley-Lennon.

What if…. Tommy Robinson is a political genius?

You mean like Hitler?

Yes, pretty much. Similar to Hitler. Working the streets, proper demagoguery for the internet age

I don’t believe tommeh is a Nazi. But Hitler is an apt comparison in terms of what he does and how it succeeds

You don't believe Tommy is a Nazi? Would you like to identify some differences? And I don't mean he has no plans to invade Poland.

Oh don’t be daft

I'm not being daft. Go on show how he is not a Nazi. The overlap of his views and fascism seem pretty obvious to most. I don't even think he would disagree. Just look at the groups he has been a member of.

It’s a level of discourse which is so obviously infantile it bores me shitless. You do you, however

Hopeless.

You even said yourself 'I don't believe tommeh is a Nazi', so you are not even sure yourself. Then when someone challenges you on why you are 'not sure' you just give up and throw insults.

I mean talk about illogical nonsense. You have gone, in a matter of a couple of posts, from not being sure to being absolutely so sure that any discussion is infantile and not worth considering.

You have brains made of spaghetti.

Oops

@Gabriel_Pogrund

NEW🚨Keir Starmer received official two-page document detailing Peter Mandelson's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein before making him US ambassador

Cab Office propriety & ethics team report said contact postdated conviction

PM did not change stance

https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1966912404601938100

Starting to get serious for Starmer.

Is it though? How easy it it for him to be removed? A Tory PM you could see falling over this, but Labour? A year after a crushing (if fluky) election win?

I wouldn’t be backing a 2025 exit.

Few people are. It's 10/1 against.

Best price on oddschecker is 7/1

And 2026 best price is 2/1

2026 is most likely timing. Also for Kemi. After the May local elections.

I think if he navigates this Mandelson stuff he is probably safe for a fair bit. I can't see them moving against him purely on the basis of bad election results in midterm. Two years from now if he's still very unpopular and there's been no signs of improvement, I think the calls will be made that he can't possibly oversee the next GE, and at that point a retirement is plausible.

Kemi however will be turfed out I think, after May.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/14/nigel-farage-tommy-robinson-london-rally-government-voters-civil-war

A really excellent piece by John Harris.

“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”

Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.

I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.

I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.

And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.

Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow