Underlined why claiming Tommy Robinson is a major national political figure, as Newsnight recently did, isn’t very credible.
Few follow up thoughts to clarify my point here. Arg for giving Robinson a major platform generally relies heavily of the idea that he has the capacity/potential to mobilise some major new far right movement (same arg that is used with Bannon) 1/?
2/? But that arg is hard to square with his track record to date. He built one briefly successful street protest movement (EDL) years ago, then split from it. Since then all of his attempts at political organising have been short lived & ineffective.
3/? Which means there isn’t any evidence he is a talented political organiser. Quite the opposite. So then the only arg for having him on is that he has a big social media presence. But that’s highly problematic - so did Alex Jones, now banned.
4/? So if the BBC’s arg is he’s important to discuss because he has actual or potential campaigning/organisational influence, it’s hard to sustain. And if he’s getting headline interviews how about interviews with other organisers with more impressive track records?
OTOH, if their arg is that he should be given attention because he had a big social media presence,then (a) how is this different from Alex Jones & infowars? Aren’t some views wrong for public service broadcaster to engage? (b) Many others have high social media profile. Why him?
