Unite the Kingdom - LWS/WRN

[Tooting33]

I am just wondering why Tommy Robinson is so appealing to a number of sex-realist women. Kellie Jay Keen spoke at the event. My local LWS group are fully supportive, as are the leaders of my local WRN groups.
Is anyone else finding it is harder to network with gender critical/sex realist women without them also being Reform/Restore/Tommy Robinson supporters?

I actually feel bad now for my "Women know your limits" post (although I stand by it being great comedy).

I am saying that I can see why some gender critical women are more frequently exposed to right-wing sources, and that repeated exposure can lead some people to adopt or express more right-wing views.

I think you're right. I think it's also why some politically homeless people (typical lefties who feel abandoned by the leadership and direction in the party/ies they typically vote for) are looking at Tommy Robinson's messaging and finding ways that it resonates with them.

I mentioned earlier that his film made some interesting points. I'll expand upon that. As I watched it, I found myself thinking that some of the points he raised make sense. However, when I step back and look at the bigger picture of Tommy Robinson, it's a firm no thank you from me. It's very much in the stopped clock being right twice a day camp for me. However, for some people his messages will continue to resonate and they find themselves aligning with him on more and more things. It's not beyond imagination that this might start to include racism, similar to how Germany was groomed into becoming anti-Jewish over a period of many years. Thankfully, I don't think TR has the final solution as his end goal, but I still find his approach dangerous and concerning. His propaganda works on many reasonable everyday people. I'm sure many of them will retain sharp critical thinking skills and create a hard line between what they do support and what they don't. I'm also reasonably sure that the boiled frog analogy will apply to many... most likely, many more. I would be amazed if that was by happy accident.

Thankfully, I don't think TR has the final solution as his end goal, but I still find his approach dangerous and concerning. His propaganda works on many reasonable everyday people.

Which propaganda? I don't see any TR propaganda so I have no idea what you mean.

So I'm supposed to extrapolate that the phrase 'if you are gender critical' isn't directed specifically at people who are gender critical, but at people in general, even those who aren't gender critical? Is that right? If so, why mention the gender critical bit at all?

You said I was the third person who'd misunderstood what you were trying to say. If a number of people misunderstand you, perhaps you're not expressing yourself as clearly as you think.

The thing is, before all the trans nonsense took over and made so many otherwise rational people appear as though they had lost their minds, many, possibly most of the women posting here would have described themselves as left wing.

As the TWAW nonsense took over, we were all exposed to the cult via our usual media sources - many of us had been reading the Guardian for decades, and the BBC was also shoving it down our throats. I'm sure I'm not the only person who was utterly baffled by this, because it was so nonsensical. Being repeatedly exposed to it didn't make me start agreeing with it. Quite the opposite - I was determined to find out what was going on, and was relieved when I found this corner of Mumsnet where at last there were some people who agreed with me.

So I would say that we're not the pushovers for the right wing that you seem to think we are. We've already batted away the TWAW nonsense which has been hammered into us over the last few years. It's come from political parties we've supported and media sources which we've trusted, but we still managed to hold our ground and reject it. We're not going to suddenly reject all our left wing views and turn into supporters of the far right just because they agree with us that that sex is real.

I think we’re talking past each other at this point. My point was about exposure and drift among some people, not a claim that all GC women become right wing.

I’ve clarified my point several times now and I don’t think there’s any value in continuing.

Think what you like, I know what I meant.

Of course it's the case that if people widen their exposure to ideas, across political lines, they will find ideas that seem compelling.

That's really an argument for everyone to engage widely in good faith.

The only thing liable to push me to the right, is people on the left insinuating that a willingness to engage with other women in discussing the dangers of extreme Islam to women and children is to consort with racists and therefore beyond the pale.

Did we not learn our lesson with #nodebate?

I’ve never met anyone in real life who supports the likes of Tommy Robinson. I know many people (and including us) who are likely to leave the country if reform get in the way- unlike younger people we aren’t tied to the uk and many countries will happily give us visas as we don’t work

Which country will you go to? Where is the 21st Century paradise for women and children of all ethnicities?

This is true. I don't know how it's come to be, but once you've seen the Conservvative spad class you can't miss it.

Exactly. It seems that many people with very fixed views on the world are happy to try and shut down conversations they don’t like by throwing around the words ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ (PP on this thread is a good example) in the same way that every conversation about women’s rights became ‘transphobic’ with the trans issue.

I think their problem is that they fall for patently ridiculous views like the Greens ‘open borders’ and ‘criticism of Islam is Islamophobic’ and due to limited thinking ability just stop there, but then project the same intellectual limitations onto the rest of us.

The funny thing is, I pay no attention to Tommy Robinson, I look at the news and listen to people - and if I’m not sure about something I do some research. I’ve got things wrong but I have formed opinions and discussed them and improved them.

I don’t think TR has said anything yet about the interesting fact I learnt on the BBC today. Apparently the First Lady of Sierra Leone keeps a council flat in London ‘for her kids’. She may or may not be complying with the rules but if she isn’t, the rules clearly need to change. It would be very interesting to understand the true scale of council housing fraud/bending the rules, given the vast length of the waiting lists.

I wouldn't be surprised if Reform encourages its women members to join such groups and post their opinions to see how much traction they get. It's infiltrated propaganda.

I'm afraid not. I'm not a Reform member so I don't get the weekly email, but from those I've seen it's HQ saying "look at all the cool things the party is doing, here's a link to Zia's latest interview, there's a council by-election in Tintagel if you can get there to help". There's nothing about women members being sent to infiltrate WRN groups, and the idea that Reform women are meek tradwives who need men to tell them what to do won't survive any contact with Reform women.

Look, I don't like Tommy Robinson. I have to say that up front because on these threads, saying that you don't support TR will not prevent posters from yelling at you that you support TR. It all gets very tiresome.

As I often say, the UK state has an extremism and counter-extremism industry that's mostly kabuki theatre.

Tommy is almost certainly a state asset of some kind. There have been too many incidents where Tommy mobilises his supporters, things kick off, a bunch of them get arrested, Tommy is nowhere to be seen until he pops up a few days later in Ibiza.

And when Tommy mobilises his audience, there will be a counter-mobilisation - there was one yesterday - heavily organised by the Socialist Workers Party, which itself is riddled with state agents. This might go some of the way to explaining why, even though the SWP is the British left's equivalent of a grooming gang, they still have a franchise on "anti-fascist" activity which allows the unions to fund them, Labour MPs to appear on their platforms, and FWR posters to get very angry when I point out the left's tolerance of them.

It's kabuki theatre. It's controlled opposition. That's why the state really freaked out over the hotel protests, because they were grassroots and organic.

If women in WRN groups are not as attached to the left as they used to be, maybe that's about the left alienating them. It's not some psyop being masterminded by Nigel Farage. The psyops are elsewhere.

I thought you were quite clear.

It's kabuki theatre. It's controlled opposition. That's why the state really freaked out over the hotel protests, because they were grassroots and organic.

I love it when you post this, @SionnachRuadh. It has such a huge ring of truth to it. Like we are all living in the Matrix and occasionally it glitches and we get a hint that something else is going on😁

You'll need to identify your group in a different way - through informal channels and recommendations. It is most likely to be a loose coalition who are united primarly on the issue of sex based rights and protections - with people from all sorts of backgrounds and professions.

I've come to identify what is termed 'right wing' with an interest in the preservation of boundaries ( of various kinds)...so in that sense it is conservative in that it wants to retain established markers and identifiers. That applies to both the protection of the services, categories and sports of female people, but also to national boundaries and the sense of shared commonality and unity that stems from that.

The Left has always tended to see itself as demolishing boundaries in pursuit of 'equality'. It focuses more on the collective and on identity groups - and with the advent of post modernistic queer theory et all is bent on radical re-definition of all categories. The Left tends to be against national boundaries and wants more 'openness'.

When 'right wing' is purely used in a pejorative way it alienates people and fails to recognise that all healthy organisms require boundaries and defences, Too much openness leads to chaos and a lack of civility and respect for others.

I think we all can express or reflect a combination of traits and characteristics, some of which could be termed 'left wing' and others 'right wing'. But when we get too attached to belonging to one category, or other we end up with group think and ideological zealotry, and the omnicause.

Isn't 'drift' though just openness to different ideas and perspectives; and no longer adhering religiously to one particular stable of beliefs?

They must hate MN, then. So grassroots nobody can even agree with themselves. 😂

I have searched for two things that I specifically remember seeing but I have been unable to find links to them. However, I can demonstrate the context for each.

1. he made a short video showing girls in a classroom. In it, there was a solitary white girl looking sad, sitting/standing (I forget which) amongst others who had typical Pakistani/Bangladeshi skin colour and were wearing hijabs. The implied message appeared to be that Muslims are taking over and that the white population needs to be worried. That would fall in line with messages like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/AlLdl0szTgA?si=CchKBNTwQL9F2GC1

2. he amplified a story on X about a white girl being seen in a playground with two black men. He asked where TF the parents were, which (to many people) carried a strong implication that they were predators and the girl was a victim. The link I was searching for was his updated tweet afterwards, but I haven't been able to find it. IIRC, he tried to suggest that he had never claimed that they were a risk to the girl. TBF to him it's ambiguous what he meant with his first tweet, asking where the parents are. But rhetorically, if he didn't want his followers to think the men were a danger to her, why bother posting it in the first place? This is a link to the story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/family-in-fear-after-tommy-robinson-shares-video-of-black-man-with-white-granddaughters

Presumably though, for some people "drift" ends up in a new destination.

As an example, I doubt Harriet Harmen specifically set out to become PIE-aligned. But she seemed to end up there.

Many people would see a destination that didn't meet their own values and recognise where their jumping off point was. Sadly, lots wouldn't. The rise of the Nazi party in German history demonstrates that well.

I think we all can express or reflect a combination of traits and characteristics, some of which could be termed 'left wing' and others 'right wing'. But when we get too attached to belonging to one category, or other we end up with group think and ideological zealotry, and the omnicause.

This ⬆️

I guess that depends on our values, and of course our values can change.
Personally i'd always be wary of fixed destinations ( certainly those aligned to groups) at either end of the spectrum. But having sympathy for certain types of argument is not necessarily a bad thing in itself

Getting caught up in any cult like group think is not a good idea IMO.

So two implications? How do you know those aren't just your assumptions? Or someone else's?

For example people say that people who say they love their country are racist, however it seems to be the people that assume that other races are not included in that, that made that leap.

Seriously if the worst his propaganda is is this, then he is doing a pretty shit job at the far right stuff.

"I am just wondering why Tommy Robinson is so appealing to a number of sex-realist women. Kellie Jay Keen spoke at the event."

So KJK (Posie Parker) - an established right-wing troll with sympathies to fascist ideologies - spoke at an event organised and attended by right-wing trolls with sympathies to fascist ideologies and you're... surprised at this?

Discovering the religious alleigance of the Pope must have absolutely floored you...

All very true.

Going back to the Nazi Germany example, I doubt many people's values started as "it's fair game to kill Jews", but group think presumably manipulated and shifted enough people's values along the way... until this sat within the Overton window.

Getting caught up in any cult like group think is not a good idea IMO.

Being cognisant of this manipulation is presumably key. IMO Tommy Robinson (and Nigel Farage, Zack Polanski, Donald Trump and others) are leaders who seem to bank on enough followers not being. Zack is obviously the only left-winger in that bunch, but as he isn't in charge, he can't adopt a traditional authoritarian approach with the outside world. I wonder if it does work inside the party though, to reconcile the blindingly obvious disconnect between his advocacy of "LGBTQ+++" rights and it being highly unlikely that all of his Muslim colleagues agree with him.