mikey ref, Tommy Robinson; "I remember seeing him up against Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight a few years ago. Yes, he fell into bear-traps, quite a few of which he’d dug himself, and yes, he said more than a few things that any mainstream politician would have been crucified for, and rightly. But at core, there was something there with which Paxman simply couldn’t cope at all. This was an eloquent, white working-class voice, airing white working-class concerns. We are not good, we media and Westminster villagers, at engaging with this stuff, and Paxman certainly wasn’t. We focus merrily on the unpolished hate and prejudice, of which he espoused really quite a lot, but anything that truly unsettles us, we just ignore.
It would be another couple of years before the media — led by my colleague Andrew Norfolk at the Times — started taking at all seriously the idea that gangs of young men, invariably Muslim and predominantly of Pakistani origin, were engaged in the endemic grooming of vulnerable white girls in Oxford, Rotherham, Rochdale and God knows where else. Given that the likes of Tommy, had been banging on about this for ever, that should make us all feel rather queasy."
Hugo Rifkind, The Spectator, 12th October 2013.
Do you think that perhaps if more of us had separated the wheat from the chaff in what he was saying, the Rotherham and other outrages could have been curtailed sooner?