From Hsiao-Hung Pai at Open Democracy:
Tommy Robinson has just returned from a Pegida demo in the city of Dresden, eastern Germany.
…”German Pegida activists are very mainstream, because the ideas against Islam and Islamic immigration are mainstream,” says Tommy Robinson. “The majority of people in Europe are concerned with that immigration.”
“Tim Scott, who’ll be leading Pegida UK, wanted to see for himself what the German group is about, Robinson continues. “He went with me to Dresden to meet the leaders …He wants to hold demos with no alcohol, no violence, just discipline…Not a day out drinking but proper demos. I’ve been talking to him about organising in the UK… I know how it went wrong with street protests of the EDL. I gave him my support. His Pegida UK will be working with the German Pegida, with their support. It is going to take over the street protest movement in Britain…It’s going to a different kind of street movement.”
That would appear to be the extent of Robinson’s reformation following his much-publicised resignation from the EDL in 2013, which was promoted as a great success for the Quilliam Foundation.
The above was published yesterday, on the same day that Robinson and Scott gave interviews to Alex Thomson at Channel 4 News: according to Thomson’s account:
But Tommy is the manager. The would-be star tells me his name is just “Tim”.
An odd start for a wannabe political leader not to have a second name.
On camera he suddenly admits to be Tom Scott. A former British soldier who fought in Afghanistan, he then tooled up as a fighter against IS alongside Kurdish militia.
…But our interview turns into something of a car-crash. Plainly unaccustomed to any scrutiny as to what the threat of radical Islam might be, Scott says:
“Girls getting groomed. Er… Youth getting radicalised. So many things you know?”
“Well that’s two.” I point out, “what else?”
“Well all stuff. You know? Look at Iraq? Do we wait till it gets that bad here? No, it’s best to act now and prevent that happening,”
Details about Scott are scarce, although Google Cache shows that until recently he maintained a presence on Facebook as “Tim Walter E Kurtz” (as in Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now), and that he appears to be the controller of a Facebook page called “FTR Freedom Truth Respect“, which in turn promotes a “Free Patriotic Movement”. Materials on the page include a letter from the “Movement” to the Labour Party from September, denouncing Jeremy Corbyn and all his works:
…He is a man who is both corrupt and devious, with links and convictions to terrorist organisations. His proposed increase of immigration freeloaders will only create a heavier workload on an already overstretched NHS, even poorer social housing and even less for the working class to look forward to… His childish approach to gaining the Tory no confidence vote by threatening national strikes and walk outs and holding the country to ransom. His choice of cabinet… with their various stances from condoning the utterly barbaric religiously justified acts of the Q’ran [sic], failure of child welfare within local authority care and links to organisations and foreign governments who no longer recognise Britain for the nation it once was…
However, while this sounds like standard EDL-type rhetoric, the Freedom Truth Respect page is more eclectic: the site’s profile image is an “Anonymous” Guy Fawkes mask coloured with a Union Flag, and posts include a video claiming that the “US Government Created ISIS”.
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