KASSAM: The Week In Which Britain Locked Up Journalists for Being Right Wing

I never thought I’d say it, but I’m not entirely sure how long Breitbart London and I will be welcome in the United Kingdom.

This week, right wing journalists Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone, as well as identitarian activist Martin Sellner, were banned from Britain.

The usual arguments about “conductivity to the public good” were deployed, but transparently nonsensical for at least two reasons:

1. The government’s words also included the specific demonization and targeting of “right wing” groups or ideas;

2. These same principles seem not to apply to jihadists returning to the UK from Iraq and Syria, and everyone knows it.

Bonus number three in that list is that these three bloggers, vloggers, and activists couldn’t pose a public threat if they tried, quite frankly. No offence to them intended, but they’re hardly Augosto Pinochets preparing the choppers.

This is also the week during which a group I have no fondness for — Britain First — was disappeared down the memory hole by Facebook, and its leaders locked up by the British government.

Finally, once again, Tommy Robinson has been attacked by the government and the media — firstly because he’s perceived as “right wing” and latterly because he exercised the right to self defense against an aggressive migrant in Italy. Why didn’t he just take the beating, or killing, and die? Silly man. How dare he seek to preserve his life.

How dare any of us seek to preserve any of our lives, or our livelihoods, or our lifestyles, or identities?

Like I said in Paris this week, the establishment no longer wants us to lose elections, or be fringe figures in public life. They want the old adage, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,” to now end “then you die”, instead of, “then you win”.

No doubt this is why I was threatened with “eradication on foreign soil” by a Tory-voting Remainer on the Eurostar this week.

It’s why Britain’s media have scarcely mentioned the expulsions of Pettibone, Southern, and Sellner — choosing instead to focus on Britain’s bumbling response to another alleged Russian-state poisoning story.

There will be many — the Hugo Rifkinds of the world — who read this article and nod in agreement at the state’s actions in contravention of basic free speech principles. They think, “Oh! Britain First? Lauren Southern? Generation Identity? Tommy Robinson? And on Breitbart? The government must be doing something right!”

That’s because they are themselves either petty fascists, or dimwits who fail to understand several things:

1. Much of the British public won’t take this shit lying down;

2. These same principles can (and probably will) be used against them some day;

3. Once the roles are reversed (and they will be reversed one day) — why would the right seek to afford them the liberties they failed to afford us?

I tweeted earlier this week how a small scale civil war may come to Britain if these actions are upheld and continue on. Some people laughed, others said I was personally threatening the war myself.

No.

The point is the first shots have already been fired, and it wasn’t our side that fired them. In truth they are probably trying to provoke right wingers into violence, in order to crack down further, as if we were really, ordinarily that way inclined, or stupid enough to take the bait in this way.

What happens next is up to this increasingly tyrannical government and its intellectually paralyzed ministers and advisors, seeking to compensate for their blunted minds with their clenched fists.

Raheem Kassam is the editor in chief of Breitbart London