Normally, for reasons of sub judice, I would try to refrain from comment about ongoing trials for fear of both breaching the law and to avoid prejudicing a trial. This is especially the case when the trial is high profile or controversial as is the case of the Welsh man Darren Osborne who is accused of driving a van into a group of Muslims outside the extremism linked Finsbury Park Mosque in London last year. One man died in the incident and Mr Osborne denies murder and attempted murder. However, this line between accurate reporting of court cases and inserting the publication’s own spin, seems to have already been crossed by some of the reporting by the Independent news site. The reporting in question deserves comment as it is pretty shamefully biased and is basically being used to smear people who are nothing to do with the trial of Mr Osborne.
The Independent noted that before Darren Osborne obtained a van and drove it from Wales to London in order to carry out the offences that he has been charged with and which Mr Osborne denies, he received ‘direct messages’ from among others Tommy Robinson. Now the way that the Independent is reporting these words from the prosecution QC makes it look as if Mr Robinson in some way incited this offence, something that is very far from the truth.
The reality of the situation is, as is pointed out by the writer Ash Sharp published in the Republic Standard, is that these messages were innocuous invites to demonstrations and appeals for funds. There appear to be little that could be seen to be ‘incitement’ in these messages whatsoever and if there was, then I doubt that Mr Robinson would have lasted long on Twitter bearing in mind the hold that social justice warriors and Leftists hold over this company. But, anybody reading the Independent for information about this case would not have known that these messages are in all likelihood innocuous. Please note that as is the usual policy of this blog Mr Sharp’s words are in italics whereas this blog’s comments are in plain text.
Mr Sharp said:
For reasons best known to themselves, The Independent has through-out the trial insinuated that Osborne was somehow radicalized by Tommy Robinson into committing terrorism. Although the two had never met, never spoken or otherwise communicated, the prosecution, in this case, has claimed that Robinson sent two messages to Osborne.
Mr Sharp added that these messages to Mr Osborne from Mr Robinson were reported by the Independent journalist Lizzie Dearden with ‘all the enthusiasm of a schoolyard snitch’.
Mr Sharp then went on to detail the courtroom revelation that Mr Osborne had been seen by his partner ‘reading Tommy Robinson’s Tweets’. Is this relevant I ask myself? More than likely not. Mr Sharp then spoke of Mr Robinson’s Twitter presence and said:
We have no report as to what these tweets were, but we can be sure that if Mr. Robinson said much more than boo to a goose on Twitter, he would be kicked off the site faster than you can say ‘Milo Yiannopolous’ haircut is getting out of control.’
I agree with Mr Sharp on this. I agree that Mr Robinson is so closely watched by the authorities, Twitter staff and the legions of leftist self-styled digital vigilantes, that he could not, even if he wanted to, which I believe he doesn’t, get away with the sort of language that could be reasonably construed as ‘incitement’. I also agree that this case is being bigged up by the mainstream media and the Left into making the ‘far right’ into being as big a problem to Britain as the 23,000+ radical Muslims that live here and who daily plot and dream of our deaths. Sadly for those who wish to believe that Britain is beset with a ‘far right’ problem, the reality is that this is not the case. The real ‘far right’, not just those who Leftist and Islamic groups smear as ‘far right’, is tiny. However, the number of Muslims who harbour desires to kill and enslave non Muslims is huge, especially when you take into account the size of Britain’s Muslim minority. It’s dishonest in the extreme to paint the tiny number of neo-Nazis and ‘jackboot lickers’ as being comparable to the many thousands of hate filled and violent Muslims produced by Britain’s Islamic communities and inspired by the violence of Islamic theology.
A comment made by Mr Robinson about Britons having to ‘stand up’ as the politicians have abandoned Britons was quoted by the prosecutor, but has been quoted it seems completely out of context. If the prosecution was trying to make it seem that this comment was ‘incitement’ then it is stretching the definition of incitement by a considerable amount. This was a ‘nothingburger’ of a comment by the prosecutor and was described by Mr Ash as ‘non evidence’.
Mr Sharp added:
That certainly seems incriminating evidence. I’m sure that Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC, prosecuting, would not deliberately mislead the court. He is a well respected Queen’s Counsel with a stellar reputation. I don’t know Robinson personally but I don’t see him as the mastermind of a far-right terrorist network despite the best efforts of the Mainstream Media to paint him as one.
Mr Sharp is correct there. Mr Robinson does not fit the profile of the sort of far rightists in the Moseleyite mode that have been a staple of the post war far right in the United Kingdom. Mr Sharp brought up the inclusion of this strange piece of evidence regarding the communications between Mr Robinson and Mr Osborne.
I do have to query the relevance of bringing this non-evidence to light when it transpires the alleged messages that Osborne received from Robinson were automated emails sent through Robinsons RebelTV mailing list.
Yes, the lion’s share of coverage of a major terrorism prosecution has been devoted to a mailing list. Congratulations, British media. Once again you look like incompetent fools.
Well said there Mr Sharp. It does indeed seem as if the Independent has decided that expressing their paper’s hatred of Mr Robinson was far more important than making an accurate and honest court report. It is indeed beyond belief that the prosecution are bringing up what are mostly automated messages which are not communications that could be considered reasonably as conversations. As someone who has received automated communications from Mr Robinson, I can attest that these communications do not in any way incite violence against Muslims or anyone else.
Mr Sharp concluded that the Indy had put their ‘vendetta’ against Mr Robinson ahead of reporting the truth. Mr Robinson had nothing whatsoever to do with the Finsbury Park crime and Mr Sharp said that the UK Press were: “using a crime in which an innocent man was murdered to smear another citizen whose only crime is disobedience to the dominant narrative.” Mr Sharp is correct in his assessment here. My view is that the temptation to stick the boot into Tommy Robinson became too great for a solidly left leaning newspaper like the Independent to resist.
When a once respected newspaper such as the Independent gives up the pretense of being a home for honest journalists and instead rushes to defend the multicultural political narrative, especially in a case like this, then they are no longer journalists but mere propagandist hacks. Like so many organs such as the Independent that lean to the political Left, they seem to care not how they treat a story just as long as they can smear opponents of radical Islam such as Tommy Robinson.
