An Unlikely Activist: Tommy Robinson On The Unrest In The UK

The following is a transcript excerpt from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s interview, alongside his wife Tammy, with British activist Tommy Robinson. In this segment, Robinson explains his unlikely beginning as an activist and shares his firsthand, eyewitness account of atrocities committed against innocent civilians that the media refused to cover. For more from Dr. Peterson, see his extensive catalog available on DailyWire+.

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Tommy Robinson: In all honesty, I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to be the person. I wanted to take a stand, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be successful in business. I wanted to make money. My passion was making money. I was good at it. We were doing well as a family. But I wanted someone to speak about it.

Jordan B. Peterson: Do you know the parable of the rich man?

Robinson: No. What’s that?

Peterson: Well, it is a Gospel story. I’m going to tell it because I see the problem that you are in. There is a scene in the Gospels where Christ is traveling in a cart, and a rich prince jumps in to accompany him, and he tells Christ that he’s done everything he should do in his life to be a moral person. He has followed the commandments, he honors his parents, and so on. But he is still dissatisfied deep in his soul, and Christ asks him about his situation. He tells Christ he’s rich, that he has all these concerns going, and Jesus says to him, I’m afraid you’re going to have to sell everything you own and follow me. And the disciples are shorted right out by this, and they say, if that is the cost of salvation, who is going to pay that?

I was thinking about that and the story of Jonah at the same time when you were talking because Jonah is called upon by God to speak the truth, and he just heads in the other direction. He thinks exactly like you thought: I don’t think so. Who would do that? Who wants to do that?

But that still does not quite answer the question; you said that you are caught, right? You are pulled because, on the one hand, you want to have your life and you want to be successful; on the other hand, you want to tell the truth. So the name was a compromise between that.

Robinson: I wore a mask for a year. Almost no one knew who I was for a year.

Peterson: So looking back on that now, do you think that was a mistake that you made to protect your life and your enterprise? I am not saying that was not justifiable because there is a price, obviously, for anonymity. There is a price for not being public. It breeds suspicion, for example. What do you think about that?

WATCH: Jordan B. Peterson’s full interview with Tommy Robinson on DailyWire+

Robinson: So I think the best thing that ever happened was when I got unmasked — the best. It was. Not for me. I was terrified. So there was a Times newspaper reporter called Stephen Bird, and I’d been hiding for a year. I’m talking about all these issues secretly on radios, and I’m giving the name Tommy Robinson, and I’m turning up to demonstrations with a mask on my face. No one saw my face, so no one knew who I was. So there was lots of confusion. Who is this guy? No one knew. 

And then a Times newspaper journalist turned up at my mum’s house and said, “Where’s Stephen?” And my mum rang me and said, “There’s a journalist here looking for you.” And I knew then, ok, this is it. And I went to meet the journalist and he said, “You’re on the front page of the Times newspaper tomorrow, Stephen. Your life changes tomorrow.” And I was terrified, if I’m honest. Absolutely terrified. Because then I was nationally known at this point. 

So, we set up United People of Luton, and then after our second protest where we got to the War Memorial, we put the video online. And this Islamic group of jihadists, they held an Islamic roadshow in Birmingham. And they had a big banner that said, “Jesus was a Muslim,” and there’s hundreds of them. They stop a young 11-year-old white Christian boy called Sean in the shopping center who’s with his friend, and they get him up on stage and they convert him to Islam. As they convert him to Islam, they’re all cheering “Allahu Akbar.” And I watched it then from Luton and said, “No, they can’t do this. That cannot be allowed to happen in a city center for a child.” So I said, “All right lads,” to the lads from Luton, “we’re going to Birmingham. We’re going to move this from Luton. This isn’t a Luton issue. This is a national issue.”

We went to Birmingham, and we formed the English Defence League. And that’s where the name English Defence League come from. Now, when we went to Birmingham, we went as a group of 50 — 50 men from Luton. We got violently battered. This is where my first awakening to the media come. So, there’s a picture up. (This boy wasn’t with us.) There’s a young English boy at a bus stop with a green top on and gangs of Muslims just come from everywhere. They battered everyone. And there’s a picture in the national newspaper, and they’re jumping on this boy’s head. And underneath the picture, it says, “A fascist is attacked by anti-fascists.” 

I’m looking at it, and I remember I had an awakening to everything because I went from working on a building site to six months later leading the biggest protest movement in Europe’s scene. And when we went to Birmingham as a group of 50, we had English Defence League tops on, and it said, “Luton Division,” the name of our town. And these images went everywhere, of English men getting chased and beaten. So this was Birmingham, and our first banner said, “Victims of Jihad in Nigeria. We stand with you,” because obviously, I was down the rabbit hole.

I was seeing on Christmas Day, five [Nigerian] Christian churches were blown to pieces. Didn’t make the BBC news. I was following all these stories around the world of Christians facing persecution at the hands of jihad. No one cared. So we went to Birmingham before, [saying,] “Let’s highlight a lot of issues here. Let’s make this a point.” And we had banners. We had placards, but we got violently —  The police had to lock us in a building for two hours because they couldn’t control the streets. Then they got buses and put us on the buses to get us out of there, and all the windows were coming in. There was riots going on. 

So from this, we then went back to Luton, and then we saw a Christian church in Manchester that had been taken over by Muslims, which there’s been another video go viral just weeks ago. Similar situation. It was in the area of Longsight, and they were bulldozing over a Christian graveyard, graves and headstones. So, I was watching it going, they can’t do this. How come no one’s talking about this in the town? Where’s the local political voice? Where’s the politicians?

Now, we went from a group of 50 men in Birmingham being violently beaten, to going on all the messaging boards of English football clubs, then turned up in Manchester, and when we got there, there was thousands of young Englishmen had come from everywhere. And from the start, because of the violence in Birmingham, the men had come with an attitude of, “No, we’re not backing down.” So that was sort of the start and the birth of the English Defence League, which every city you went to, there was a justified reason for going there, but no one ever spoke about that. 

Peter Nicholls/Getty Images

And then I realized very quickly that everything I’d seen in Luton, everything I talked about in Luton, was happening in every town and city. So then I started meeting families; their daughters were missing for weeks, and then I started hearing all these stories. And it’s one thing to read about grooming, and that’s why I made a five-part series — the one you talked about that you watched — because you don’t get to feel the pain. I’m sitting with a mother, a father, and a brother who’s 13-year-old daughter has been missing for five days, and the police are doing nothing. 

I remember going on big chat shows in 2009. Jeremy Paxman was the most feared BBC presenter, and he had a show called Newsnight. And when I went on, everyone was all our opposition at the time, and I was terrified again. And it was the first time my mum— So my family had been crying since the time I started my activism because my mum was threatened of her job. There was violence, police raids, terrorist plots. So my family were begging me and begging me to stop. And I went on this Jeremy Paxman show. And I said to him, “I don’t expect you to understand, but I expect you to listen. Our daughters are being taken. They’re being groomed; they’re being raped. They’re being prostituted in every town and city.” And he said, “You expect us to believe…” And it hasn’t aged well for him at all. Because in the early days, we were condemned as fabricating stories and making this up. So you understand the level where I’m at.

With the father from Blackpool, the gang took his daughter. The father and the son would ring the phone, and he’d have to listen while they were raping his daughter. So, we go across the country — and I’ve done a presentation called “The Rape of Britain,” as well as documentaries — and I go back to us marching through Telford. And now, the arrest rates for these crimes, if you do a graph, there’s none. The English Defence League forms in 2009. By 2010 and 2011, the arrests are going through the roof. We didn’t expect any credit for it or any recognition for it, but the government were then faced with something they knew was going on.

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The views expressed in this interview are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of The Daily Wire.