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Tommy Robinson got a mention in the Epstein emails

Tommy Robinson has tried to paint himself as the great defender of British women in recent years despite his history of standing by alleged abusers. For those who doubt Robinson’s intentions – the Canary included – it may be unsurprising to discover that Jeffrey Epstein was seemingly a fan of his:

Who would have guessed, huh?

Oh, we already answered that — we would have guessed.

Tommy Robinson

As recently reported, the right-wing commentator Lauren Southern alleged that Andrew Tate raped her in 2018. She’d travelled to Romania to meet Tate with Robinson, and has since accused the latter of lying to protect the former:


In her own words:

I went once to Romania with you – one entry, one exit – in 2018, when you took me to a business meeting to meet your pimp friend.

She also said:

you are being lied to. You are being lied to by people who are stealing your money, defending sex traffickers and covering up their crimes, and who have very different missions privately than what they are telling you their missions are publicly.

Specifically, she alleges that Tommy Robinson is lying to people.

Hope Not Hate have also questioned Robinson’s attitude towards women (note: they use Robinson’s legal name, which is ‘Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’):

Lennon has consistently ignored or even defended occurrences of these crimes in his own ranks, proving that he is more concerned with attacking Muslims than actually combatting CSE or challenging sexual violence.

Notoriously, in June 2010 Lennon’s close friend and ally Richard Price was convicted of making four indecent images of children, and possessing cocaine and crack cocaine. The vile images were found on his computer by police after he was arrested for disturbances at an EDL demonstration.

Far from condemning Price’s crimes, the EDL launched a campaign for his release. Lennon himself wholeheartedly supported Price, claiming he had been “stitched up” and that “Price has no idea how they were on his computer.”[ii] When Lennon’s claims became untenable, he switched positions and finally condemned him.

The Bannon–Epstein connection

Steve Bannon was a key part of Trump’s first presidential campaign, and he worked as the senior counselor to the president until he got the boot. Bannon famously lost out in a White House power struggle between himself and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and was later referred to as ‘Sloppy Steve‘ by the president. If you’re struggling to remember him, he’s the guy who looks like the warning picture on a cigarette packet:

Over the past few years, we’ve learned more and more about Bannon’s relationship with Epstein. Bannon claims he was working on a documentary about Epstein, but it remains unreleased. We also know that the friendship goes deeper than that, as the latest tranche of released emails have shown.

As reported by the Guardian:

Hundreds of texts over almost a year show Maga influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.

The texts, released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia.

Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a “sophisticated op”, and over time he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system and his victims.

All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s rightwing populist agenda, and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.

In 2018, Bannon was looking at Robinson as a key leader in the pan-European far-right movement that he was trying to establish. While things didn’t pan out how Sloppy Steve intended, it’s certainly the case that European far-right groups have grown and forged links in the proceeding years:

Tommy Robinson—Not a good look

It should have been impossible for Robinson to sell himself as a defender of women, and that’s even more true now we know he had the backing of modern history’s most notorious paedophile.

We imagine Robinson will carry on as if nothing has happened, but people won’t forget.

Featured image via YouTube

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.