Michael Coren On Tommy Robinson and the EDL

AND THEN THERE'S THIS, FROM PAJAMAS MEDIA: 

Robinson didn’t quit the EDL in the way most politicians leave parties or organizations, citing personal reasons, overwork, or the desire to pursue other worthy initiatives. He could easily have done so. As someone who has become the public face of the EDL — unable to walk down the street without verbal harassment, arrested on numerous occasions on thin grounds, constantly defamed by Britain’s politically correct media, and the victim of death threats and threats against his family — he could legitimately have cited exhaustion and the need to rebuild his life.

Instead, though, he has made a devastating attack on the EDL, claiming that it has become “increasingly influenced by extreme elements that did not represent what he stood for.” His words confirm the charges of white-power fanaticism that critics have leveled at the EDL for years, and which Robinson always claimed to be vigorously combatting. His departure effectively cripples the organization, leaving thousands of non-fascist Britons who worked at his side without a viable base of anti-jihad activism, and with nothing more substantial for the future than the vague nostrum that securing Britain from extremists will require working with Muslims and that “from day one we’ve wanted to embrace everyone; all colours and creeds.”

Even more disturbing, perhaps, than Robinson’s denunciation of his former organization is his new alliance with the much-lauded Quilliam Foundation, a think tank that aims to “challenge extremism,” according to its sleek website, by targeting those social factors that lead to “radicalization.” In other words, this is an anti-extremist group that locates the source of extremism mainly in British society rather than in Islamic ideology. Quilliam, whose political affiliation is suggested by itsfriendly relations with the far-left anti-British Hope Not Hate group, is precisely the kind of organization — with its concern for “grievances felt every day by young Muslims” and its accommodationist stance on issues such as terrorist profiling that may “alienate and stigmatize” — about which the former Robinson would have been rightly suspicious. It is worth noting that Quilliam was named for William Abdullah Quilliam, a nineteenth-century British convert to Islam who dreamed, according to research by Andrew Bostom, of a pan-Islamic caliphate.

Oh, That Moral EquivalenceChair and Co-founder Maajid Nawaz’s statement of support for Robinson was notably unctuous and self-satisfied:  “Tommy wants a chance to prove he is not happy with the neo-Nazi association. I would not be a good human being if I did not allow him to demonstrate that.” Yes, this former jihadist has a good deal of self-love. Nawaz’s comments about the “symbiotic relationship between far-right extremism and Islamism” and Robinson’s mea-culpa, “I thought the EDL was part of the solution but now it is part of the problem,” seemed perfectly scripted to drive home the “equivalence” mantra dear to the hearts of the liberal intelligentsia: far-right extremism (of which the EDL is supposedly a symptom) and Muslim extremism are equally dangerous elements in contemporary British life;  far-right extremism is in fact the cause of Muslim extremism. 

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.