A ‘Manifesto’ by British activist Tommy Robinson became a top-seller on UK Amazon and sold out, leading to questions by an activist of the sometimes-Soros funded Hope Not Hate research group.
Up until now any news coverage right-wing street organiser Tommy Robinson has received over the book, Manifesto, if there was any at all, was over the fact the cover of the book has text in the Microsoft sans-serif typeface ‘Comic Sans’, which a lot of people don’t like. But earlier this week the book registered as an Amazon bestseller, prompting at least one complaint from a left-wing political activist.
Britain’s legacy leftist newspaper The Guardian, in an article apparently mainly crafted to act as a vehicle for this complaint, noted Robinson’s book “reached No 1 on the site’s bestseller charts on Tuesday before selling out”, and even that it outperformed Boris Johnson’s newly released political memoir. No small thing, given how widely that book has been promoted in the legacy media, including a series of television interviews by the former Prime Ministers.
While noting a freedom of speech to publish within the bounds of the law, left-wing campaigner Joe Mulhall of the ‘dirty tricks’ group Hope Not Hate (HnH) nevertheless made clear his view Amazon should feel compelled to self-censor. He told The Guardian: “Everyone has the right to write and publish a book as long as the content doesn’t break the law. The question is whether Amazon feel comfortable platforming him, and facilitating the sale of a book that will funnel thousands of pounds into the pockets of Britain’s best known far-right extremist. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.”
The position is entirely congruous with the longstanding position of Hope Not Hate that right-wing books should not be available to purchase from retailers. Indeed, in 2018 they published a book-ban list, inevitably inviting comparisons to the behaviour of the Fascists of history whom Hope Not Hate say they fight against.
Hope Not Hate has strong links to the British government and friends in Parliament, but dispassionate observers from outside British political circles have questioned the organisation. Notably, Sweden’s Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) included the group in a 2018 report on left-wing extremism. As reported at the time:
The FOI report states that the far-left scene often requests information on right-wing opponents, “that they want to hold to account in some way (for example by visiting people’s homes with threats and harassment) and sometimes they want information, names and pictures, to publicly identify those involved in nationalist movements”, and that organisations like Expo and HnH provide this information.
The report specifically lists an operation involving former Expo writer, now HnH researcher, Patrik Hermansson, who infiltrated the alt-right and far-right circles in the UK and the U.S. last year.
The report is not the first time HnH have been linked to radical far-left extremists as head researcher Dr. Joe Mulhall has tweeted out to Antifa accounts on a number of occasions.
