Fox News Host Tells English Extremist: ‘We Got Your Back’
Brian Kilmeade, one of the wise men of Fox News, recently told Tommy Robinson, aka Stephen Lennon, the leader of the immigrant-bashing, Muslim-hating, police-clashing English Defence League (EDL), who recently spent time in jail for using a false passport to illegally enter the United States, that “it’s great what you’re doing.”
“We got your back,” Kilmeade told Robinson when the far-right English activist appeared on the June 10 edition of Kilmeade’s Fox News Radio program, according to Media Matter
Kilmeade promised his support after Robinson finished breathlessly outlining his latest anti-Muslim conspiracy theory: the “silent jihad” that is taking over Great Britain.
Robinson said that violent jihadists, like the two men recently charged with ambushing a British soldier and hacking him to death on a London street in the middle of the afternoon, are “ a real problem.” But that’s just the “the tip of the iceberg.” He said there is a “silent jihad going on,” a “silent takeover” and plan to “implement Sharia” law in England.
Audio: Fox News host Brian Kilmeade tells the leader of a violent nationalist hate group that targets British Muslims, "We got your back" and "it's great what you're doing."
“They’re the ones I’m terrified of,” Robinson said. “They’re actually sitting around tables of government. They’re actually in positions of power.”
It’s the same sort of nonsense that animates anti-Muslim groups in the United States, and, in fact, the EDL has in recent years forged ties with U.S.-based Islamophobes like Pamela Geller.
At the end of Robinson’s there’s-a-jihadist-under-every-bed rant, Kilmeade said, “We’ll definitely look to keep in touch.”
Stay tuned.
Media Matters spoke with several English journalists who have reported on Robinson and his EDL. Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror and a political columnist, described Robinson for Media Matters as “thuggish” and his supporters as “Nazi-saluting followers.”
John Higginson, political editor of Metro, a free London newspaper, told Media Matters that Kilmeade’s words of support were a mistake.
“The BBC wouldn’t say ‘I’ve got your back.’ If he is saying that, he is condoning these extremist views,” Higginson said. “The EDL, some of what they they’re preaching is to get rid of people just on religious grounds, just being a Muslim. To be saying that, it is bad.”
Fair and balanced. You decide.
