Why did GB News interview a far-right extremist?
Robin Tilbrook, head of the English Democrats, was invited onto the channel
When Andrew Neil quit GB News, he was worried it was turning into a “Ukip tribute band”. The channel now appears to be straying into much darker territory.
Appearing on GB News this week was Robin Tilbrook, head of the far-right English Democrats party. He was invited onto the programme of the Tory MPs Esther McVey and Philip Davies. There, he was given a soft-soap interview about his policy to remove England from the United Kingdom.
It was a PR coup for Tilbrook. His TV hit gave him the chance to whitewash his reputation as the head of a party that welcomed former BNP members into its ranks. At one point in his party’s history, Tilbrook estimated that one in ten members of the English Democrats once belonged to the BNP.
McVey and Davies did not mention — let alone challenge — Tilbrook on his views.
They didn’t ask why Tilbrook denounced the Jewish financier George Soros for his “evil record and baneful influence”.
They didn’t ask why, according to his manifesto, he wants to re-educate Muslim community leaders, as well as preachers from “other religions causing concern”.
They didn’t ask why Tilbrook frequently shares the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that shadowy elites are organising the migration of Asians and Africans into Europe to threaten the existence of white people.
They certainly didn’t ask him why he’s promoting a book written by Nick Griffin, former head of the BNP, which rails against “the baneful influence of Talmudic racism and Zionism on the body politic of the West”.
Tilbrook has been selling to his followers a book called Deus Vult: Reconquista of the West, which claims that Jews control the media.
An extract of the book reads:
“We are forbidden to learn — still less to speak — of the intense hatred of Christians and other goyim, and the occult motivation behind the torture-murders favoured, for example, by the Talmud-inspired cult of Bolshevism.”
Last year, Tilbrook appeared on the livestream of Patriotic Alternative, a white nationalist organisation. On that show, he spoke to Mark Collett, a self-described “Nazi sympathiser”. Tilbrook offered advice to young men on how to avoid scrutiny from Prevent, the government’s counter-terrorism programme.
“Robin has given me many tips over the years and he has kept me on the right side of the law for probably around half a decade now,” Collett said.
Getting onto GB News marks a fantastic upgrade from the obscure internet audiences of Patriotic Alternative. Tilbrook has already trumpeted his appearance on the channel in a mass email to party members.
So how on earth did one of Britain’s most prominent far-right activists get invited on air? We have contacted GB News and will update if we hear back.
People like Tilbrook (and indeed Hitchens Minor) always remind me of those Serb nationalists who regarded the peoples of the other Yugoslav republics as little better than untermenschen, but cheered on their departure so they could narrow what could be acceptable in Serbia, once the centre of the most cosmopolitan and pluralist of Communist states. These people are exactly the same apropos the Scots. They know that Englishness, as a concept, is harder to square with Black pop or science than Britishness is, and they want to provoke the breakup of the UK so they can prevent the broadening and opening of people's lives in England, exactly as the Serb nationalists did with Yugoslavia. They are the reason why Rangers fans may well be little better than fascists in the context of their own society, but in the context of *their* own society the English Left has to regard them as allies of convenience, as it understandably did with the objectively fascist Argentinian junta 40 years ago.