"Right or Left, I want No Part in Extremism" - Milli Hill

[WhereDidSummerGoAgain]

A thoughtful article by Milli Hill today.

https://millihill.substack.com/p/right-or-left-i-want-no-part-of-extremism

I can't help but find myself agreeing with her.

I know there's been a lot of debate on here about Kelly-Jay and whether she supports the far right.

Milli's article links to a Twitter post by Tommy Robinson showing an event and his inner circle. Kelly-Jay is there, dressed in a Union Jack.

This is pretty conclusive now, isn't it? You don't go and hang out with racists like Tommy Robinson and pals in times like these if you don't support them, surely?!

Milli's stood up for Kelly-Jay before, but this is a step too far for her, and for me too.

Just wondering what others think? This really doesn't look like a mistake this time.

If you are right about how you are seen (and I am not 100% sure you are), I genuinely believe it doesn't matter.

If you embrace what Britain does / should stand for you will be welcome here, and the longer you and your family are here the more your claim to be British will go unchallenged

I think people are saying just that, though. Plenty of posters have queried what right wing even means (not accusing you). And I havent seen anyone alleging that every single marcher was an extreme right winger (I certainly said otherwise). So we need to stop tilting at windmills and start engaging what is actually being said.

Look, at every demo I have ever attended, going back over 40 years, there have been loads of people carrying Socialist Workers Party placards, because the SWP used to turn up and distribute them. Most of the people carrying the placards didnt know or care that they were marketing the SWP, they just liked the message, but the end result was a very misleading impression of SWP support, and a golden opportunity for the SWP to shape the image and message of the march.

Equally, last weekend's March was undoubtedly a far right project, but that doesn't mean all the marchers on it were far right or racist. Or even a majority. TR has skillfully crafted a message that resonates with a lot of people during a time of economic instability and social division. The risk is that most of those people don't have an extensive knowledge of how the far right operates, or of the coded language that gets used. So sure, to them it seems ridiculous that an 88 bus is a dogwhistle.

Meanwhile, the Overton window gets ever shifted to the right.

You cant say all 150,000 there weren't fascists and I haven't said they were all fascists.
Your point to me was that there was a black person there, ergo it wasn't fascist or far right, which is bunkum.

My point is that I can't reconcile your perception with citizen journalism and youtuber footage I've seen. Not least because your perception of Robinson seems to be a mainstream one which I've seen little evidence of having spent a fair bit of time trying to find, and the fact you won't even watch a short video to tell me why my perception is wrong.

Not everyone on the march was far right
Some of them, maybe many of them are very nice people. I know people with a wide range of political views and get on with most. However, SYL is far right. I believe him to be fair right based on his words and actions over the past decades. It is fair and reasonable to judge somoen by their words and actions. I am always happy to see/watch alternative viewpoints. But somebody telling me on a YouTube video that it isn't raining will always have less weight to me than looking out of my own window..even if that person is a black British man or the pope or whoever.

First of all it isn't far right to care about children. Most people care about children - on the right and left and are disgusted by crimes against children. It's a human thing. Likewise, most people on the right and left have empathy and compassion. Contrary to what Elon Musk would argue, they are human qualities and vitally important. (There is a difference between empathy and sentimentality but that's a different discussion). I do think on the far right and far left, concern for children tends to become much more limited to "in group". But that's a tendancy not a rule. I can give examples but I am sure you can think of them yourself.

I think he benefits a lot from the fact that his previous activities aren't so well documented online, because in those days everything wasn't documented online

(sidebar, I find that quite interesting because I would've thought they'd be more stuff online from those days)

It really struck me today that he benefited from this. Because on his latest deportation video, that is to say him being deported, there's lots of people saying "why don't you go to America?" And it's not a piss take. I think he's genuinely got a lot of followers who don't know that he's banned from the US and don't know that he tried to enter under a fake passport.

Again, I say this not being quite sure what my own perception is about him but it did give me a giggle after a bad day. Only for Tommy Robinson could it be a normal day to get deported from two countries - and buy food for the others in the deportation lounge.

as for people discussing his politics, I have no idea what he thinks about any issues apart from the obvious ones that he bangs on about. No idea what he thinks about the economy or anything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics for starters

To give the other side a "far left" position might be one that calls for open borders or rejects the ideas of nations altogether in favour of an international proletariat. This is very rare and kind of stupid for lots of reasons. We don't have open borders and the majority of "left wing" people even fairly far left don't actually advocate for them. So let's get that straw man out of the way
A more mainstream "left wing" position might be one that advocates for more compassionate treatment of refugees or for the country to proactively take more refugees/asylum seekers for example. Especially compared to a right wing position might be one that's more concerned about limiting immigration levels. Or that believes that immigrants can assimilate but has a much more restricted view on how much immigration is healthy and probably expects more "assimilation" than someone to the left. But that last bit is kind of smooshy since most people think assimilation is good. And even right wingers like some aspects of multiculturalism. I think that probably describes some of the people on the march though I wasnt there.
Even someone who is pro-refugee and believes we should do more to help people flee persecution is rarely pro completely open borders. Even the people that sticker "no person is illegal". That's because if you want to help people escape danger you need a way to stop the danger following them.

[Was meant to quote a post that read Facts are not racist.
We all know all communities have massive issues with misogyny and sexual violence. That doesn't mean muslim men (incl settled communities and illegal immigrant from specific countries) aren't a specific and big issue.
No-one is stopping you tackling white or hindu or japanese specific sexual violence]

It IS racist to state that “Muslim men are a specific and big issue”.

You have just singled a group of people out as uniquely threatening and collectively suspect, based on their religion and ethnicity.

That is racial bias. It is racial discrimination.

You are clearly ok with it, as are most of the other posters on this thread 🤷‍♀️

But why then, the need to insist that there is nothing ‘racist’ about Tommy Robinson’s campaigning and the Unite The Kingdom rally?

If you’re unabashed about scapegoating and demonising an entire group of people based on their religion and ethnicity then why the reluctance to accept that particular label?

But anyway it’s striking that on FWR, the standard position now isn’t to challenge Tommy Robinson’s far-right record, but to minimise or excuse it. And the people who call him what he is - a far-right activist - are treated as the unreasonable ones. That normalisation is the real danger.

Thanks for posting this.

The mistake a lot are making is seeing this as a left/right fight, when its a class issue. Tommy Robinson hasnt a huge following, and people are just as disillusioned with the Tories as they are with Labour. They went on the march because it was organising, not because it was organising by TR. And anyone who organised it would be accused of being far right, anyway.

As McAlpine says, GDP means nothing when wealth isn't fairly distributed. Trickly down economics is a myth, and immigration benefits some in society, but not all.

People are seeing their standards of living fall, or seeing a bleaker future for their children. Services arent working, multiculturalism is changing towns, not always positively.

But politicans and those who benefit from this economic model are refusing to see this and listen, and instead insutling the people at the bottom, whose pay is being suppressed, seeing their communities change rapidly and have the poorest standard of living.

This is a quote from Wikipedia. If you don't like that source then feel free to share your own!

"Key to the far-right worldview is the notion of societal purity, often invoking ideas of a homogeneous "national" or "ethnic" community. This view generally promotes organicism, which perceives society as a unified, natural entity under threat from diversity or modern pluralism. Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments, welfare chauvinism, and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression.[2]"

The KKK would be far right because they focused on the threat to society/their community from African Americans (and also Jews and other groups. But predominantly black). it wasn't a matter of black people just needing to assimilate. They would always be a threat to the purity of society, and the safety of women/girls

The EDL was not set with black people as the predominant enemy (although some members of the EDL also didn't like black people much). It's main enemy was religious. Specifically the idea that Islam was a threat to UK society and UK society and that "British Muslims" were effectively a threat from within. It's not far right to worry about, eg Islamic extremism or terrorism. Islamism is an extremist ideology in the same way that "Christianism" would be (foreshadowing). Where it tips into being far right is the idea that Islam in general is a threat, and that basically all Muslims are potential threats and a danger to UK society and cohesion. Is that fair to Tommy Robinson? In his own words

"By saying that he was sane, it gives a certain credibility to what he had been saying. And that Islam is a threat to Europe and the rest of the world"

So yes, SYL does consider Islam a threat to Europe. Which is far right.
(They "he" referred to in the quote by the way, killed 77 people in Norway. Most of them teenagers. I will say that while SYL approved of his theory, he at least publicly denounced his (violent) methods. So if you wanted to be really reasonable to him you could say SYL is a non-violent far right extremist whilst AB was a violent far right extremist. If you wanted to be less kind, you could quote SYL saying that "it would have been easier to justify if the crime were committed against Muslims". As that implies a quite unpleasant line of thinking. But if Stephen Yaxley Lennon was a non-violent far right extremist, he was surrounded by violent far right extremists... The Norwegian murderer was friends with numerous members of the EDL on Facebook, called the EDL his inspiration, and his killings were praised by other high ranking EDL members. Also other EDL members went on to be arrested for trying to bomb mosques. So the EFL was a far right organisation set up by someone who publicly talked about using democratic methods to achieve their aims (that's not the same as being pro-democracy. But whose members were open to extreme violence to achieve their aims.

It is.not far right to.think Islamic extremism is a threat. It is far right to extrapolate that out to over a billion Muslims. In the same way it isn't far right to be horrified by what the Norwegian serial killer did. But it would be to extrapolate that to all Christians (since he made "Christianism" a central part of his manifesto). There are violent Buddhist nationalists and Buddhist monks who have encouraged the mass murder of non-Buddhists. Most Buddhists are chill. There are lots of devout Muslims in the UK who care about their faith but are also basically nice people who, like most people just want to be left alone to live their lives. Just like Catholics, protestants, atheists, Jews. It's the rejection of that,.that is far right.

Even the kindest interpretation of Stephen Yaxley Lennon is that he is non-violent but still far right. I am trying to be as fair as possible and you can't blame someone for the actions of other people. But if this was, eg, a far left person who was repeatedly in the company of people who went on to do violent things, was on several different occasions cited as the inspiration for those violent acts and immediately after the atrocity "yes-butted" about the killer would you be so generous? The only way you could argue that he wasn't far right is if you refined what far right means.

The one argument against myself I can make is that SYL is good friends.apparently with Andrew Tate. Who is a mixed race convert to Islam. (He has also boasted about moving to Romania because it's easier to get away with rape there, has been accused of sex trafficking in Romania, has been accused of rape in the UK). Innocent until proven guilty and I know his supporters see Tate as unfairly targeted..Maybe SYL does too..but it's crazy to me that SYL apparently has a suspicion of all Muslims except the one famous for having multiple rape cases against him. But people are complicated and we may never understand how the human mind works.

But in conclusion. People describing SYL as far right aren't smearing him or unfairly believing mainstream smears. They might be older than you and remember all this shit.

Islam is a religion not a race. It is a religion with varying sects and cultural differences among differing groups.
It presents a security threat:
'Islamist terrorism has been the primary terrorism threat to the UK for approximately two decades, but the threat has evolved greatly in this time. In October 2024, Director General of MI5, Ken McCallum, gave an update on the current national security threats facing the UK.12 Mar 2025'.

Cultural differences include practices at odds with our laws and values - fgm, forced marriage, honour killings and other related crimes.
I suggest you watch the tv series 'Honour'

Having discovered that a recently murdered woman had been to the police five times to report threats from members of her own family, DCI Goode vows she will not rest until she gets justice for her.

This echoes the willful blindness about the grooming gangs. It also is reflected in your post.
I expect all migrants to be properly vetted, no discrimination. Currently this is not happening.

That's interesting.

It seems odd to me that people don't intuitively understand the differernce between citizenship and ethnicity. Or even where you are born and ethnicity.

If I moved to India and became naturalised as a citizen, and my children had been born there, they would be Indian, but not in the sense of someone whose ancestors had lived there for 1000 years. (And of course most people in India have more specific ethnicity and cultural identity besides just Indian too.)

Of couse 1000 years from now peple will think those whose ancestors came to the British Isles in the 20th century are ethnically British, and no doubt their DNA will also be totally spread through the population along with what came before.

But it's still true that now, some citizens, even lifelong ones, don't have their ethnic roots in British ancestry.

I agree. I think for lots of people it is a class issue. What is interesting is people being interviewed on the march and talking about feeling ignored by "elites" etc. But then in Elon Musk's speech he talks about the left being the enemy. I think the quote was "left wing violence is coming for you". When actually, most people didn't seem that fussed about the danger from the left or the right but are angry at the above. And lots of ordinary people on more left wing causes are also more worried about/angry at the "above" than the right. It's a shared feeling.

SYL and Elon Musk etc are far right though. It is about out groups, and "cultural Marxism" for them. I agree that just talking about the danger of the right is not going to wash with many people who feel their lives getting worse. But it's also a fact that increased hostility towards Muslims/asylum seekers won't make their lives better. But always rising inequality fuels far right movements.

Personally I think either we lose neo-liberalism.or eventually we lose Liberal Democracy (in the original meaning of the word). The other stuff: hyper identity politics, anti Muslim/anti immigration discourse is displacement activity. Dangerous because it makes people go in harmful.directions. And dangerous because it just delays talking about the elephant in the room till it's too late.
But maybe that's just the lefty in me speaking.

It's useful to consider where this idea came from.

In my memory, it came from the American left, who as far back as maybe the early 2000s used to go on about how the right was finished, because there were so many immigrants, and they had more children, and almost always voted Democrat. It was something they talked about within their own discourse but it was also thrown at Republicans with a "na na na" kind of attitude. As in, ha ha, you are going extinct because Hispanics are out-breeding you. (Which has backfired on the Democrats now but at the time they didn't see that possibility.)

It usually didn't get quite as far as they saying, lets push immigration and accepting massive border crossings so we can manipulate the population to win elections, but it came really close sometimes, and they were very strongly associated with being lax on borders and giving amnesty to illegal migrants, so the link was easily made.

There is also the more grounded version of this which simply says, if you bring in enough people with different ideas about important values, you will find the social values overall will shift.

I hesitate to call Tommy Robinson 'far right' because I know very well that there is a world much farther right than he is.

Where do you place the Taliban on this spectrum. How about the Muslims massacring Christians and Alawites in Syria at the moment.
How about the death sentence for blasphemy in Pakistan.
What about the anti semitism being paraded on our streets and attacks on Jewish citizens. TR by the way is a Zionist.

India's not the best example to use because it was a land based empire of various sorts for a long time. Which always leads to multiculturalism. So there are lots of "descended from other places" groups living there. And not just from 1000 years ago. And lots of groups where it's murky because borders changed so much so it's hard to say where some people came from. So you get Parsis (who came from Iran admittedly a while ago) and Arabs (from all different time periods) and Angloindians who are descended from British people. The anglo-Indians are mostly all mixed now but that's a natural outcome of being there. The same way you get mixed race people in the UK. 60 years ago if you had moved to India and had children those children WOULD be Indian. Because that's exactly what happened with Anglo Indians. There's also this weird quirk of history where Oman almost became part of India (it was secretly part of the Indian Raj) but then wasn't.
There has been a shift in tone, particularly under Mohdi to a viewpoint that's more ethno-nationalist or religious-nationalist in nature. Hindu nationalism. Which fits many criteria of far right. Because the idea that only Hindus are "proper Indians" is sort of a far right idea. Like the idea Muslims can't be proper English people. And the pushing of this message has been accompanied by a reduction in freedom of speech, attacks on comedians, hostile environments for journalists, and violence and sexual violence excused by the state when the violence targeted the right groups.https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/ghost-of-the-2002-gujarat-violence-haunts-india-again-as-11-men-convicted-of-rape-and-murders-walk-free
It's not like it was a harmonious paradise before Modi. Specifically there was a huge amount of violence when the British left. But that was again based on the idea that some groups of people were an inherent threat to other groups or had less right to be there. And loads of people died so it probably wasn't a good thing. And probably could have been avoided with better handling of the situation.

I sound like I'm hating on India. I really like it.and Indian people. I just think the characterisation you have of it is not so accurate. And it's a bad example to use precisely because it was a very great empire. It would be more true to say you can't change caste in India even down the generations. Therefore is it reasonable to say families can't change class in the UK? Cos that's the same logic.

Yes you can have Muslim far right extremists.
You can have black far right extremists (Idi Amin)
You can have Buddhist far right extremists
You can have Russian far right extremists
You can have Eastern European far right extremists
You can have Hindu far right extremists.

It's a specific ideology that varies by situation and target.

Of course attacks on Jewish people in the UK is completely wrong. Why would anyone think they were OK?

It's well known SYL is a Zionist. I don't know what that has to do with his opinions on Muslims unless you are trying to draw some connection? In which case please say what it is....
Just for the record, in case this is what you were trying to argue, I don't think Zionism is inherently anti-muslim or far right. (Basically Jewish people as a whole are being blamed for being the cause of immigration to the West AND for being the cause of anti-immigrant sentiment by different groups on the left and the right. It isn't fair and I disagree).

I dont think those who benefit from immigration understand the massive change it made to others in recent years.

My home town has gone from 3% foreign born residents in 2011, to 13% in 2021. Some of these people are highly skilled and well paid, but not all. Its contributed to an increase in HMO, the percentage of people on minimum wage and increasing and pressure on public services. These arent indicators of wealth for individuals and the community. Thats before looking at how well integration is going.

Immigration is both an economic strategy and, in the case of refugees and asylum, a policy that has been imposed onto the British public. We cant claim to be a liberal democracy if we cannot question either or have a say in how they are implemented.

I suspect one of the things that has happened, on FWR specifically, is that there have been so many claims of people being far right, or many other things, that are completely bollocks, that many simply do not accept any such claims without significant explanation/receipts.

And that doesn't count "well he was a member of such and such a group that is far right" for the very same reasons.

Even statements meant to demonstrate an ideological stance like "he said George Floyd was a disgrace" are given a very hard go, the context has to be made clear and also people are inclined to really question the assumptions around that.

I also think people don't much care about what stupid political parties people belonged to when they were young, a lot of later reasonable political figures have done that sort of thing on the right and left.

In this instance specifically, I suspect most are not going to agree that saying a certain religion or culture is problematic, is anything like saying a certain race is problematic. I think most people would disagree with that strongly.

@Namitynamename there's quite a lot of video of Tommy Robinson saying he has no issues with "normal" Muslims for want of a better word. I'm not familiar with all the different types of differences in religious groupings, but he certainly seems to be.

I can't get my head around the Andrew Tate thing because of the things we know he said publicly on television about women. And many other reasons really.

I think both of them are probably deriving some benefit from people who believe in forgiveness.

I really dislike people saying that they were "young and stupid"when they said or did stupid things age 30! But then I look at some of the things Wes Streeting has said and I suppose we're stuck in a place where we have to have politicians like this because apparently no one has standards of statesmanship

Also, some people seem to believe that what they put on social media isn't real in someway. They must know now that people are keeping receipts - but so often you hear a defense that's like "Schrodinger's joke". a whole other topic.

But this thread is about whether SYL/Tommy Robinson/the organisers are far right or not. SYL as I have been repeatedly assured on this thread has no problem with other races or immigrants in general. In fact according to Jamie the march was a celebration containing all different races or nationalities. So the question of immigration in general isn't the main thing SYL was apparently concerned with.

Its possible many of the people on the march had different priorities to SYL and maybe they were worried about increased immigration on their own lives. Which isn't necessarily far right anyway. But the rhetoric of the main speakers definitely was, by all definitions. I don't see what's gained in denying that.

There is actually a differernce between having a problem with immigrants, and immigration.

Tf there is a problem with the way immigration is managed, it's likely some parts of the population won't differerntiate the two. Both in terms of those who think that they should blame individuals who are just doing what the law has invited them to do when the real issue is bad policy, and those who think that because they don't want to blame individuals they can't have a stronger policy.

I think he says different things to different people. It means you can believe what you want to believe. Trump is a master of it - he will contradict himself 5 times in a minute. And then people can just clip parts of what he says to suite their own agenda. Which is weirdly more divisive because you get people confused that people don't understand Trump said X when he did. And other people really furious he's been misrepresented as saying X when he definitely said Y. I am all for people changing their mind. Or misspeaking or nuance. But also some people are two faced. He's definitely lying some of the time basically.
I don't want to make everything about trans, but this thread was talking about Milli Hill and KJK so it fits... It is also similar to people saying that "trans women are women, it's biological, of course it's not biological, they are born in the wrong body, of course they don't really think they are born in the wrong body, of course they don't think they are biological women that's a ridiculous lie, what do you mean you don't think trans women are ideological women you BIGOT." Sometimes all from the same person. The difference is in this case I stead of being labelled a BIGOT you get labelled an out of touch elite. Even if you are only repeating what someone else has insisted is what SYL and the marchers think anyway. No-ones capable of being consistent all the time but it's exhausting.

I agree. I think that having a problem with too high immigration is a standard right wing position but it's not far right and is fairly mainstream..I do think SYL.is far right, and he attacks individuals all the time
Therefore I don't think Milli Hill is at fault for calling SYL.and the other march organisers far right..which is how this whole discussion started. I dont think everyone on the march was necessarily far.right.