While he issues threats to take a significant part of the media to court over reporting what he laughably terms “lies” about him, Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, has been invited to the USA. He has, characteristically, said something totally untrue about the invitation, but remember folks, The Great Tommy™ never lies.
“Tommy Robinson invited to America” told the website of the Middle East Forum yesterday, going on to claim “The Middle East Forum has, in conjunction with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, invited activist and journalist Tommy Robinson to the United States … In addition, Rep. Paul Gosar (Republican of Arizona) and six other members of Congress have invited Mr. Robinson to speak to the Conservative Opportunity Society in a closed-door event”. The David Horowitz Freedom Centre and its Jihad Watch blog have been described as Islamophobic. Then there is Paul Gosar.
The representative for Arizona’s 4th Congressional District said “he would not attend Pope Francis' planned address to a joint meeting of Congress, unless the Pope spoke about issues such as ‘violent Islam’ or Planned Parenthood, instead of climate change”. He suggested the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally was a false flag funded by George Soros. He has been accused of race baiting against Native Americans.
But back to Lennon and his invitation, which in a Livestream today he inflated to “addressing Congress”. Not true. Still, the MEF has told “Assuming all the legal issues are sorted out, he will address the public in Washington, D.C. on November 14. Americans will then have a chance to hear Mr. Robinson, a long-time target of UK authorities attempting to silence criticism of Islamism, about his first-hand experience confronting radical Islam and his cautionary tale about political correctness run amok”.
No-one in the UK is “trying to silence criticism of Islam”. If they were, then the Telegraph, Times, Mail and Sun would not be full of anti-Islam scare stories on a more or less daily basis. Lennon wouldn’t be able to tell “radical Islam” from a hole in the ground, and as there has been no “political correctness”, it hasn’t been running anywhere.
But we do get an admission at the end of the article: “The Middle East Forum will continue to support Mr. Robinson personally”. Ker-Ching! So what chance is there that Lennon will be off to the USA next month? Well, sadly, very little chance at all.
This may not be unconnected to the following episode, which the BBC reported on in 2013: “The leader of the English Defence League has been jailed for 10 months for using someone else's passport to travel to the USA … Stephen Lennon, 30, from Luton, admitted possession of a false identity document with improper intention”.
There was more. “Lennon had previously been refused entry to the US and used a friend's passport to travel to the country in September … He used a self check-in kiosk to board the flight at Heathrow and was allowed through when the document was checked in the bag-drop area … But when Lennon arrived at New York's JFK Airport, customs officials took his fingerprints and realised he was not travelling on his own passport”. And more.
“Lennon was asked to attend a second interview but managed to leave the airport, entering the US illegally … He stayed one night and travelled back to the UK the following day using his own legitimate passport, which bears the name of Paul Harris”.
Judge Alistair McCreath told him “You knew perfectly well that you were not welcome in the United States … You knew that because you tried before and you had not got in, and you knew the reason for that - because, rightly or wrongly, the US authorities do not welcome people in their country who have convictions of the kind that you have”.
What convictions might those be? “Lennon was jailed for assault in 2005 and also has convictions for drugs offences and public order offences, the court heard”. Yes, well.
So, unless the authorities Stateside have a significant change of heart, not to mention a change of policy, Stephen Lennon, or Paul Harris, or The Great Tommy™, won’t be jetting off to the USA at all, and certainly not in time for November 14.
Still, he’s free to claim “I’m addressing [the] American Congress” as much as he likes. I mean, free speech and all that. The minor problem is that it isn’t true.
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