For the last few weeks, Tommy Robinson‘s fans have portrayed themselves as bastions of children’s rights. But the news that Donald Trump’s immigration policy is tearing children away from their parents has decidedly changed their tune.
It’s almost like it was never really about children’s rights after all.
Spot the difference
Judge Geoffrey Marson jailed Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – for potentially prejudicing an active court case. Robinson’s acts could have stopped justice being served for the hideous crimes the defendants were being accused of.
Katie Hopkins – the aspiring queen of the ‘alt-right’ – took to Fox News to try and defend Robinson.
She also sent a warning to anyone who had the temerity to suggest that racism played a role in her actions:
https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1000051885343170560
But when responding to the news that children in Trump’s detention centres were wailing for their parents, Hopkins changed her tune. Apparently, children’s rights were not quite as important when those children were from Latin America.
https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1009019257995382785
Infowars host Alex Jones, meanwhile, followed the same trajectory:
Free Tommy Robinson! Defend The Children! https://t.co/znPyPUdEmf
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) May 26, 2018
Live video footage from the White House of President Trump debunking the claim that the US has concentration camp-like centers for Central / South American migrants’ children – https://t.co/0iTR2firS2
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 19, 2018
Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson also appeared to have little sympathy:
There's an audio tape of a kid crying. This means we must erase all borders.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) June 19, 2018
And Peter Sweden seemed to go from caring deeply about Robinson’s child being separated from his parent…
https://twitter.com/PeterSweden7/status/1008755131909885952
… to not giving a crap about the many hundreds of children separated from their parents by Trump:
https://twitter.com/PeterSweden7/status/1008778540043722754
Hypocrites
Thankfully, this hypocrisy was not lost on people:
https://twitter.com/hourlyterrier/status/1009062984788926466
Does that mean we can close tommy robinson too! His kid was crying too wasn’t he?
— Rick Haden 💙 (@rickhaden) June 19, 2018
Don’t come!
Unsurprisingly, the far right has a very simple solution to the detention of children in the US:
https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1009049978113855489
‘Don’t come to America!’ Why didn’t anyone else think of that? The children are saved!
But if people like Hopkins bothered to do an ounce of research, they’d see the answer isn’t actually that simple. Families don’t just try and get into the US because they feel like it. Many are fleeing poverty and violence. And America has played a strong role in creating the insecure conditions which lead to migration from Central America. HuffPost, for example, has described how:
Since the 1950s, the U.S. has sown violence and instability in Central America. Decades of Cold War gamesmanship, together with the relentless global war on drugs, have left a legacy of chaos and brutality in these countries.
And this is not just true in the Americas. A study by Left Voice found that:
the largest sources of immigration to Europe are precisely the countries that suffered imperialist oppression in recent decades.
On their own
Meanwhile, even right-wing news sites feel Trump has gone a step too far in detaining innocent children:
This little boy was taken from his parents and has been assigned a number #47 which was placed on his chest and arm.
It reminds us of the #Holocaust. #ChildrensConcentrationCamps#separatingfamilies #ChildAbuse #FamiliesBelongTogether #ChildrenInCages https://t.co/2K1KGKwcFB
— US News Agency (@USANewsAgency) June 19, 2018
The alt-right brigade are really on their own this time. And the flexible principles they have displayed over the past few weeks show that they will do anything to further their agenda of racism and fear. But then, what else did we expect from them?
Get Involved!
– Join the protests when Trump visits the UK.
– Join The Canary so we can keep holding the powerful to account.
Featured image via tlcuk/YouTube & CBSNews/YouTube
