Tommy Robinson lost the UK’s May 23rd European Parliament election with just 3% in Northwest England despite Brexit’s 2016 victory, facing deplatforming by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—allegedly pressured by Labour’s Tom Watson—and Stripe blocking campaign payments, mirroring tactics used against Alex Jones and Trump. He claims masked protesters (including "Muslim Defense League thugs") disrupted events while police stood idle, and unions blocked his election materials, calling it a systemic attack on free speech. Accusing mainstream media—BBC, Channel 4—of false narratives, he warns democracies like the U.S. and Canada could next silence figures like Maxime Bernier or Andrew Scheer for opposing "Islamification" or establishment lies, ahead of his July 4th trial over a 2018 courtroom conviction. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Tommy Robinson loses his election in the United Kingdom, beaten by Facebook and Twitter.
It's May 27th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
You've got 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I'm recording this late Sunday night in Manchester, the United Kingdom, the night where the election results for the European Parliament were revealed.
The election was actually last week on May 23rd, but in some strange rule, the ballots were held for several days.
I don't know, to mature like a fine wine or something.
I don't know.
It strikes me as odd from a ballot integrity point of view.
And we're finally released today.
We're curious about this whole process because, of course, the vote for the European Parliament should never have happened in the United Kingdom.
As you know, in 2016, 17.4 million Brits voted to Brexit, to leave the European Union and go, I don't know, like the UK has been for centuries, an independent country.
Yet the Conservative Party has managed to stall and stall all the way through the day they were supposed to separate, March 29th.
So this election last week was never supposed to happen.
And in a reaction to that, well, Nigel Farage came back from semi-retirement, created a new Brexit party called the Brexit Party, and he stormed into the lead, dominating the election, taking votes from both the Labour Party on the left and the Conservative Party on the right.
The old UKIP party that Nigel Farage used to lead lost a lot of its votes too.
But the vote we were very curious about was Tommy Robinson.
He was running to become the first independent MEP ever elected in the United Kingdom, running in the northwest of England, which includes the large city of Manchester.
We had for two weeks had our student reporter, Jessica, embedded in the campaign, reporting from the ground there.
And it's a very interesting campaign.
I hope you had a chance to watch some of her videos.
If not, you can see them all at TommyReports.com.
It showed an interesting conflict.
Grassroots working-class Brits seemed to love Tommy, but there were professional-style antifub protesters who hated him.
And of course, there was a Muslim contingent, including the Muslim Defense League thugs, masked, throwing bottles and bricks that attacked Tommy's campaign events.
The police, interestingly, at best kept the peace, but quite often stood back, allowing attackers to attack.
It was a kind of deplatforming that followed on deplatforming of Tommy by social media companies.
Here's what I mean by that.
Until a few months ago, Tommy Robinson had the third largest political page in all the United Kingdom on Facebook.
More than a million followers.
He was huge on Twitter as well.
When he would say something, immediately tens or hundreds of thousands of people would see it, and within a day, millions would get the message.
But over the last year or so, Tommy has been steadily de-platformed, being unpersoned, being disappeared to the point where he was running for this campaign, but couldn't get his voice out.
The mainstream media would not report on him, and citizen media, democratic media, was banned.
If that wasn't enough, I told you already how the police stood by on occasion, allowing rioters to physically attack Tommy's campaign events.
And even when Tommy sent brochures through the mail, well, postal workers in the UK simply refused to deliver it.
Is it possible to win a campaign in the year 2019 with no Facebook, Twitter, severely restricted YouTube, no postmen, and frankly, no police?
Well, the results became known today, and the answer was no.
Historically, only about 8 or 9% was needed to win the election for an MEP in Northwest England because eight different people would be chosen from the region.
Alas, Tommy did not come close enough to the 8 or 9% needed.
He came in with under 3% of the vote.
A disappointment to him, to be sure, and we'll have an interview with him in a moment.
That's not to say that grassroots populist nationalism is dead.
Far from it.
As I mentioned, Nigel Farage's Brexit Party dominated the United Kingdom.
On the continent, Matteo Salvini's party, he's the equivalent, I suppose, of Nigel Farage, but with a stronger anti-migration bent, he received the most votes of any party in Italy.
Maureen Le Pen, the national populist in France, absolutely trounced Emmanuel Macron's leftists.
So if anything, the same in Hungary and the same in Poland.
National populism is very much alive, but in the United Kingdom, a combination of Tommy Robinson's deplatforming and the fact that you still had two good alternatives on the ballot, the UKIP party and the Brexit Party, in my view, that conspired to keep Tommy out of office.
But here's what's so interesting about this election.
Not the fact that Tommy was deplatformed.
We've seen that.
Not the fact that you've seen antifa attack violently.
That happens in Canada and the United States too.
Not even the fact that the British labor unions had their unionized postal workers not deliver brochures.
That's a little bit new, but again, we've seen a little bit of that in Canada also.
What's new is that this deplatforming was committed not against some citizen journalist or some private outspoken citizen, but against a registered candidate for political office.
In fact, halfway through the campaign, an online payment processor, the equivalent of a mastercard or a visa, it's called Stripe, simply announced it would refuse to continue processing credit cards for Tommy Robinson's campaign.
Again, not for him personally, but for his officially registered sanctioned campaign to run for parliament.
What is that other than foreign corporate interference with an election?
That's what's new, that it was meddling in an election.
But what was even more depressing was the complete silence or even nods of agreement from the entire establishment, from other political parties, from the media who despise Tommy, from the civil liberties groups who normally would squawk about such things, from people who claim to have been concerned about Vladimir Putin's influence in the UK.
None of them had any problem when it was San Francisco tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Stripe, and the rest doing it.
I find that troubling and I find that as a premonition of what to expect in Canada and the United States.
In fact, you could say that Twitter, Facebook, and those other companies were using Tommy Robinson as a sort of a test case, a guinea pig.
What would happen if they deplatformed Tommy?
Could they get away with it?
They're testing limits.
And so far, the answer in the UK is, you bet they could get away with it.
Well, having a success there, do you doubt that they will come and use those same tactics back in Canada or the United States?
There's some good news and some bad news here.
I think the good news is that the national populist spirit is alive and well in the United Kingdom and other countries.
The bad news is the bandwidth of opinion, the Overton window is being shrunk, not by voters, but by a handful of opaque bureaucrats and corporate, well, we don't even know who, in Silicon Valley.
First it was Alex Jones that they went after and infowars, but no one stood up for them because they were too much.
Now it's Tommy Robinson.
How much longer till they come for us at the Rebel?
Stay with us.
More ahead with Tommy himself.
Well, I'm here with the man of the hour himself, Tommy Robinson.
Tommy, not the result that you were hoping for that I thought you would get.
I think it comes down to you have been unpersoned.
It's complete.
I said, censorship won, democracy nil.
How can you fight?
There's reasons why the election campaign, there's all these rules and laws to make it equal.
You can only spend the same as each other, all these rules and regulations.
But in this campaign, my opposition could use social media.
They could do paid advertisement, which I couldn't.
I had organizations doing paid advertisement against me, slandering, lying about me, demonized me, and I couldn't even counter it.
40,000 votes is quite a lot.
It's a record for an independent candidate for the European Union elections.
And it was just in the one geographic region of Northwest England.
But it wasn't quite enough to punch through.
I have a theory that I heard someone on your campaign, your campaign team say, is that because Nigel Farage was running with a very strong Brexit message, and because the UKIP was still on the ballot, and Gerard Batten has been strong on some of the other issues like the Islamification, that maybe some of the Tommy vote dissipated to both of those parties.
I'd say multiple things like that.
Multiple things like many people wouldn't even know I was running.
Many people wouldn't have voted.
Many people aren't registered to vote.
By the time we found out and got our leaflets printed, by the time we went out, people only had two days to vote.
By the time we started campaigning and then to campaign, we couldn't reach people.
We had no social media.
When we tried to use Royal Mail to do leaflets, they prevented and they blocked them and they didn't hand them out.
So we've been up against everything.
So all in all, look, we fought we lost.
If we lost a fair fight, I'd stand in and swallow it.
But it wasn't a fair fight.
And this would be a message to democracies across the world.
Once social media giants and big tech are working with your government, it was the government who asked big tech to remove me.
And then when I fight in a campaign against them, I don't have the ability to reach people.
We had a three-hour live stream tonight, and I thought it was very interesting.
We took a lot of comments from around the world, thousands of comments.
A lot of people from the United States follow you.
And I think they're interested in you because you're an interesting person and because they care about the United Kingdom as an ally.
But I think you're the canary in the coal mine.
I've referred to the UK as a dystopian time machine where we can see our unhappy future if we don't stop the path we're on.
What lessons, what warning would you have for people in America?
That they will completely, they haven't just deplatformed me.
They've removed me from Facebook.
I had the biggest, most interactive Facebook page in the country, 1.2 million followers.
They didn't just remove me, but anyone who mentions my name, any person that mentions my name, then gets removed.
So you can't even talk about me.
Now, they could do that with anyone in America.
They could do it with Donald Trump.
If no media were allowed to talk about him, which they're not in mind, unless it's negative, his ability in his last campaign was that he had his own platform.
He could talk himself on Twitter, on Facebook.
He could use those social media platforms to get his message to the people.
If they were removed completely and mentioning his name was banned, how would he fight another election campaign?
How could he?
He couldn't.
He certainly wouldn't win.
So that should be a warning that they've done it to Alex Jones.
They've done it to me.
They've done it to Paul Joseph Watson.
I've broke no laws.
I've committed no crimes that have resulted in this.
It should be a warning to every American, every American watching, that they will do it to you.
It's coming.
This is big tech taking back control after watching the Donald Trump election, after watching the Brexit election.
This is them taking back control completely, limiting what we can say, limiting who can hear from us.
I had an election campaign where I had no ability to talk to the people.
I had no ability to reach them.
Every avenue I tried, they blocked.
Well, you've been away from home on the campaign trail full tilt for so long, so I'm going to let you go.
But I should say two things.
You seem, other than the fact that you didn't win, you seem in good spirits.
You seem in good shape.
I remember when you got out of prison last year, they had roughed you up.
You look fit.
You look focused.
I won't even say you look sad.
I mean, you look defiant.
And I mean, you're obviously not happy, but you seem, of all the setbacks in your life, this doesn't seem to have pushed you back because you've achieved certain things.
So let me ask the obvious question that I know so many reviewers will say.
What next?
Prison on the 4th of July.
So this ain't the depressing bit.
I think that they've tried everything.
They've attacked every way.
For those who don't know, I'm in court on the 4th of July for the same conviction that I've already spent three months nearly on solitary confinement for speaking and giving public information outside the courtroom.
Public Wants Fair Campaign00:07:55
The level of censorship in this country is unreal.
I don't think the establishment would be happy till I'm dead and gone completely, so I can't make any noise.
Next is the next battle.
It's the next fight.
I've got three beautiful kids.
You've just seen me FaceTiming them.
So I'll pick myself up and I'll keep going.
All right, me.
Well, thanks for joining us tonight.
Congratulations on a good run.
And we look forward to, we'll be back in London, both Jessica of our staff and I'll be here in London covering your trial on the 4th of July and 5th of July.
To your followers, to the people online, to me, everywhere I go, I feel like I've got an army behind me because of the support I get.
So a massive thank you.
It's been an experience.
Last four weeks has been an experience and a learning curve.
And everything that happens in my life, I take and try and learn from it.
I'll learn from this.
Thanks, Tommy.
Well, that's my report from here in the United Kingdom.
I want to show you one more thing.
It's a scrum that Tommy Robinson had when he walked into the official vote counting room.
You heard him make some of these points in his interview with me a moment ago, but watch as he encounters the BBC and then Channel 4, another news network in the UK.
We covered this live on our election night show here from Manchester.
I can assure you that those networks, the BBC and Channel 4, did not cover them live.
I would be very interested to see what, if any, of this, made it to air.
I get the feeling that none of it did.
Here, take a look.
BBC News, Tommy, are you feeling confident?
I feel confident if it was a fair campaign.
Okay, what?
The fact that other people have been able to advertise on social media again to tell lies and smears.
Every single town and city I've gone into, the local MP has lied in the local newspaper.
I have no platform to even counter it.
So the reason why people are allowed to spend an equal amount on a campaign is for a fair campaign.
Everyone against me has been able to advertise on social media.
2.4 million people, they reached advertising against me.
I'm de-platformed from all social media because what?
Because the establishment made them de-platform.
The Labour Party contacted YouTube and made them remove me.
So I haven't had an ability to talk to people.
Even when I've tried to talk to people through leaflets, the Royal Mail and their staff and their unions have refused to deliver them.
And that's a fact as well.
So we're putting complaints about that.
If it was a fair campaign, I'd be super competitive.
It's not a fair campaign.
This has proved that you can't have a fair campaign when the establishment and the government interfere and remove any ability you have to talk to the public.
And not just do that, they then slander you and spread lies across the whole of the North West about me.
And my ability to talk about it, anyone who's watched my campaign, you'd have seen us getting attacked, violently attacked, no one arrested.
You'd have seen hundreds of mass Muslims march to our demonstration to violently attack us.
And then what do the media do?
The media spread the story across the whole country that Tommy Robinson clashes at his event, police cars smashed.
They don't tell the story that hundreds of masked balaclava wearing young Muslims were targeted.
But where were there hundreds of mass balaclava?
Come on, so where do you live?
You see, it's short.
I was at your Burnley rally.
Okay, so if everyone, see, if I had my social media, the whole country would have seen what happened.
At the Burnley rally.
At the Oldham Rally, hundreds of young Muslims chanting our Akbar were marched for two miles, wearing balacladas, telling the police who are walking them there what they're going to do when they get there.
They then targeted my families with bricks and rocks.
And this is all orchestrated and organised.
So then the media, all of you, lot, you play the propaganda machine by you run stories telling the whole country that my supporters have rioted, which is not what happened.
And it's a complete lie.
So trying to combat your lies, all of your lies, along with a corrupt political class and establishment, is difficult.
I'm just happy if I've got non-voters to vote.
I'm happy that if I've politicised people from working class communities.
I think this whole election is about the Brexit.
So Nigel Five is going to absolutely smash it.
But I would be excited about that if the Brexit Party would talk about the issues that I feel affect most of us in working class communities.
They're just another politically correct party, unfortunately.
But they're great on European Union.
What do you think your chances are winning this time right now?
I don't think.
I've been talking positively through the campaign.
When I saw, when I went up to people and I'm handing out a leaflet and then they tell me, aren't you a Nazi?
And I say, aren't you a Nazi?
And I hear that they've heard that from campaigns against me.
Campaigns I can't counter.
People can say what they want about me.
I'm not allowed social media.
I'm not allowed to interact with the public.
I'm not allowed to.
My name, if you go on social media and write Tommy Robinson, you get deleted from Facebook.
Even mentioning my name.
Now, we have laws in this country.
I've been tried under them.
I haven't been tried under any of them.
I've broke no laws on hate speech.
I've never been arrested under hate speech.
But yet you're not even allowed to mention my name.
Did you watch on Question Time the other day where a lady asked them on Question Time?
Social media platforms argue that you've broken their rules on inciting hatred and that the language that you spread consider.
What rules?
You're in the middle of this campaign, Stripe.
Stripe is the processing payment for credit cards.
Remove my ability to fundraise for this campaign.
That's a foreign company interfering in the electoral process in this country.
We either have a fair election campaign or we don't.
Everyone can't use social media or no one can.
Because it's not fair.
The whole way people use Trump won his campaign on social media.
Brexit was won on social media.
I'm banned from all social media.
So my ability to fight a fair campaign is gone.
Orchestrated and organised by the government.
So do I think I stand a chance?
I think it's near on impossible to fight that.
How can you fight a whole establishment that are funding?
The union funded 100 billboards of lies against me.
I can't even counteract them.
But more than anything, every community I've gone to, every working class estate I've gone to, I felt so loved.
I felt more loved in this campaign than I've ever felt in my life.
So it's been fulfilling for myself.
I hope it's been fulfilling for my supporters.
I think that what this shows, this should send a message to Donald Trump, this should send a message to the rest of the world that get social media in hand.
They can't, it cannot be used in the electoral process when you only let, I feel like I've been fighting a fight with my hand tied behind my back.
Because government agencies, governments, politicians, all of them are lying on social media about me.
I'm not even allowed to counter it.
I'm not even allowed to talk about it.
And my supporters aren't even allowed to mention my name when they get deleted.
It's dark.
Do you recognise it because some of the language used on your platforms were offensive and construed as a public?
No, I don't.
The reason why is because in this country we have laws against inciting hate.
If any of my speech was inciting hate, I'd have been arrested for it.
It's basically a different opinion.
What the government don't want is a different opinion that wakes up people.
I was reaching the public.
I think on my Facebook, 59 million people watch my videos in four weeks.
They don't want that.
And I had the ability.
And if I still had that ability now, I'd have walked this election.
But what they've done is removed my ability.
Completely.
And this government-led Tom Watson from the Labour Party was the last person who got me removed from YouTube.
YouTube actually came out and said he hasn't broke any of our rules.
But then after government pressure, they removed my ability completely to reach the public and talk to them.
So I can make videos.
I made a video about Oldham, the one that you haven't seen.
If I had social media, you'd have seen it.
You'd see hundreds of men, say this out loud.
Hundreds of men wearing balaclavas were marched for two miles by the police to a family event where they had rocks and bricks and scissors.
You can see the video.
And they attacked it.
And then the media, rather than say hundreds of Muslims were marched there by the police, the media has run a headline, clashes at Tommy Robinson event as police cars are smashed.
They lead the public to believe something's happened that hasn't happened.
They don't tell the truth.
And that goes for all of your cameras here.
You're all completely dishonest.
Completely dishonest.
And we don't really have, I don't think we even have journalism.
Because you don't report the facts or the truth.
You come with complete attacks.
And yeah, so I think that for people who watch this and learn from it, is that you can't have a fair campaign currently now when the government are interfering with social media companies.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
You're famous.
You're completely resulting.
You're completely famous.
Complete Attacks00:01:13
I'd really be grateful if you'd answer the question.
To Channel 4.
You're the worst.
You are absolutely the worst.
How are you?
You lied just now, Mr. Robinson.
Two people who are here to support you.
That's Tommy fighting with the media.
I think he lost this round, though.
Let's be candid.
See, if Tommy would have had his Facebook page and Twitter page, he could have put that clip up and millions of people would have seen it.
Far more than would have watched that BBC or Channel 4 broadcast.
But like a watchdog that's had a layer injected me, a dog that's been debarked, Tommy can call out things and all of us can call out problems in the world.
But if they silence us, nobody hears.
I'll be back in Canada tomorrow and I'll give you more reports from our own country.
But as I always say, coming to the United Kingdom, it's like a little trip in my own personal dystopian time machine.
What happens in the United Kingdom today will happen to us in Canada in five years.
Who will it be who is silenced and censored?
Will it be Maxime Bernier?
Who knows?
Maybe it'll even be Andrew Scheer himself.
We'll see.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us at The Rebel, both in Canada and abroad, good night.