The situation regarding the Huddersfield school incident appears to be getting curiouser and curiouser. The ‘refugee’ family have walked away from this incident well over £100k richer and the very old looking alleged 15 year old boy at the centre of the incident has been made into a mainstream media superstar.
There is still intense speculation about the lead up to the incident where a Syrian boy was allegedly attacked by an English pupil. There are claims that the school has an Islamic gang problem which have not been properly answered by either the school or the local authority. However there are also claims being made that Tommy Robinson, one of the prime conduits for the counter-narrative that Jamal, the Syrian at the centre of the storm was a thug, may have been spoofed by someone posing as the mother of the English boy who allegedly hit Jemal.
According to a report in The Metro newspaper a person contacted Mr Robinson claiming to be a mother with a child at the school and produced pictures of injuries that she said had been sustained at the hands of Jemal. This person has now been shown not to be whom she claimed. There are still live allegations that have not been disproved that there are Muslim gangs operating in Almondbury school and although the ‘mother’ has been proven to be fake, there may be truth in some of the other complaints.
Metro said:
The English Defence League founder filmed a seven-minute rant today claiming five Muslim pupils had attacked a 13-year-old white boy. He said the boy’s mother had sent him photos of his ‘injuries’ and he claimed there was a media blackout on Muslim gangs beating up white children in schools.
But it appears someone had been pulling his chain all along. He admitted to his 970,000 followers on Facebook: ‘I have been completely had, how embarrassing man. ‘I had a woman, and I’ll show you our screenshots, messaging me all morning about what had happened to her son.
‘It turns out some leftie is sitting somewhere absolutely mugging me completely off and laughing about it. ‘So yeah, fake news central. ‘It turns out the “13-year-old boy” who had been jumped by five Muslims wasn’t her son.’
Mr Robinson is still standing by his claims that he has information pertaining to alleged attacks by Jemal on other pupils most notably the claim that Jemal was with a group of girls when they attacked another female pupil at the school. Mr Robinson is standing by this claim despite being threatened with legal action by the by now very wealthy Syrian family over this claim.
Mr Robinson’s admission that he has been caught out by a spoofer, possibly a politically motivated spoofer, is extremely embarrassing for him, but not I would imagine fatally so, his body of support is too great for one cock up to bring him down. However, both Mr Robinson and other Citizen Journalists should take what has happened to Mr Robinson as somewhat of a cautionary tale. We should, as a For Britain member advised on Gab earlier, exercise ‘ bit more care & scepticism’ when people approach members of the counterjihad /patriot community with various claims. We should not just rely on what people give us online, if necessary we should meet or have trusted representatives meet with those making such claims to ascertain whether or not they are true or whether or not they are bollocks. Even if we cannot immediately meet those who are giving us stories, we should at the very least try to exercise some due diligence in fact checking.
This case brings to mind a long form piece I wrote back in August of this year for this blog in which I counselled Citizen Journalists to fact check and work only with stuff that can be proved, not merely rumours of the rantings of deranged tin foil hatters. Although in this particular piece I was concentrating mostly on the reputational damage that can be done to high profile patriots by associating with Satanic Ritual Abuse hoaxers and damaged people making outrageous and umprovable claims, my counsel of caution applies in other areas as well. We can see from this case how someone, in this case Mr Robinson, can have his reputation damaged by failing to check whether what they are being told is real or whether it is plainly fake. In the August piece that I earlier mentioned and entitled: ‘Citizen Journalists, beware of whom you believe – Beware of hoaxers, entryists, exploiters and conspiracy theorists’ I said this:
“If citizen journalists are to be respected and taken seriously because they are raising the sword of truth, then these citizen journalists need to make sure that the sword of truth is at all times suitably sharp. I have a great fear that patriots consorting with those whose credibility is questionable will one day come back to haunt the entire patriot and civic nationalist movement and maybe even destroy it. I don’t want to see this happen and one way that we can prevent this is by being much more professional in how we behave and much more selective in what we believe and in what we promote.
We are already seeing some people, individuals whose politics puts them in opposition to the populist and patriot political current, starting to draw false comparisons between the public anger and concern over the Islamic Rape Gangs and the Satanic Ritual Abuse myth and panic. When this comparison is examined we can see that this is incorrect as there has never been any corroboration for SRA but there has been plenty, including from the courts, of corroboration of the existence of Islamic Rape Gangs.
We must not allow this sort of narrative to gain traction as not only is it false, it puts the very real problem of Islamic sex crime on a par with the stories cooked up by fantasists and those who believe, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that SRA exists. By treating patently false or difficult to prove allegations with some scepticism, we can keep the truth we tell pure and avoid tainting it with speculative or provably untrue guff.”
We are all human, we all make errors, we are all imperfect. It’s fair to admit that Mr Robinson has made an error here and it is an error that is being exploited and will continue to be exploited by the Left. I must admit that it extremely easy to promote something by retweeting or regabbing it without giving it too much thought, we’ve all made similar errors in fact checking as Mr Robinson has in this situation, but they are errors that we should make a great endeavour not to commit in the future, because they can have negative consequences for our own side. There is too much at stake here to let carelessness hand the Left and the followers of Islam a weapon that they can use against British patriots.
If we are approached by people saying ‘my child was beaten up in school by Muslims’ then we have to check that claim to see if it is true. Of course, it is impossible to expect Mr Robinson to dash off to Huddersfield and knock on the door of the person who is making a particular claim, he’s just one man after all.
However what this case does show is that the alternative news media requires trusted people who can knock on the doors, can confirm the identity of those making claims and carry out enough of an investigation into the claims to avoid the sort of embarrassment Mr Robinson has been put through. In other words what the alternative news media needs is reporters. It needs people who are prepared to volunteer to do fact-checking, recording and verifying the stories of those making allegations, keeping cuttings files of local newspaper articles, covering relevant court cases and all the rest of the old fashioned and unglamourous ‘grunt’ work that gives a solid bottom to stories. Without being able to present stories with a solid ‘bottom’ of facts to them Citizen Journalists, especially those attached to the patriot movement, run the risk of being caught out as Mr Robinson has been so caught out.
Facts and objective truth, of the sort of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard that could convince even the most hardened of sceptics, are the keen-edged weapons with which the Left, their Islamic allies and a remote Establishment can be countered. The Left have managed to make this spoof work on this occasion, we would be extremely remiss if we assumed that they will not try this stunt again. We must be on our guard and be much more professional in our approach to handling information that we are given and this applies even more so to those in high profile positions who are, by their reputation, trusted by others.
The Huddersfield case is a curious one, especially with the latest developments but it is also a cautionary tale and one I hope that Britain’s Citizen Journalists will take note of.
