Last year he livestreamed[1] inside an English court and called the defendents - before they'd been convicted - muslim child rapists. He was attempting to intimidate witnesses. He threatened violence to the defendents and to some witnesses. He was told to stop. He did not stop.

That action put the trial at risk of collapsing.

He was caught, and given a suspended prison sentence for contempt of court. That judgement is available here: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications/committal-for-cont...

Here's the judges words:

> The sentence, therefore, that I pass upon you, taking into account all of those matters that have been placed before me and your admissions entered via Mr. Kovalevsky, is one of three months' imprisonment which will be suspended for a period of 18 months. That will be suspended. There will be no conditions that need to be attached to that suspended sentence, but you should be under no illusions that if you commit any further offence of any kind, and that would include, I would have thought a further contempt of court by similar actions, then that sentence of three months would be activated, and that would be on top of anything else that you were given by any other court.

> In short, Mr. Yaxley-Lennon, turn up at another court, refer to people as "Muslim paedophiles, Muslim rapists" and so on and so forth while trials are ongoing and before there has been a finding by a jury that that is what they are, and you will find yourself inside. Do you understand? Thank you very much.

What did he do after beign given this very clear instruction to not interfere with criminal trials? He did exactly the same thing again, and so his suspended sentence was activated, on top of the new sentence.

Note that he only highlights trials of child sexual abuse involving muslims. He kept very quiet when a senior EDL member was similarly prosecuted.

Here's a decent write up: https://thesecretbarrister.com/2018/05/25/what-has-happened-...

Interfering with ongoing trials and making threats of violence is as far from hought crime as you can get.

[1] There's been an element of "this would never happen in the US", so here's a video of someone being tased because they try to take a camera into court. https://youtu.be/A7U5eJN3hLI?t=2m0s

To me it seems the reason people are being so pedantic about the meaning of “thought crime” is that they’re actually glad this sort of thing happens. I don’t even agree with Tommy Robinson but this sort of thing is incredibly dangerous. We cannot be free if the state has the power to arrest people who disagree with them. Period. This must be an absolute right regardless of your fee-fees being hurt, or the next thing you know the West will be bankrolling the Israelis to genocide the Palestinians and it’ll be illegal for you to say anything about it.

Can you tell me which country allows people to threaten witnesses at trial?Which country allows reporters to call a defendent a muslim child rapist before the verdict is reached?

If it had been the other way around and some white guy was being called a “Nazi child rapist”, I’d expect them to get away with it in pretty much any western country. It’s true that his behavior was illegal, but the reason he was prosecuted was ultimately the content of his speech in my opinion. There have been other right wing figures who’s names I don’t recall who were also recently convicted, and they weren’t speaking in a court room at all. Other anecdotes mentioned above were French pro-Palestine activists.

You’re right that Robinson was in the wrong on this one and that he did commit a crime; I wouldn’t have used him as an example had he not been brought up specifically.

Even in the U.S., there are people actively lobbying to use the government, usually state governments, to restrict the BDS movement. In my opinion there’s been a lot of media attention around silencing right wing speech in order to get the left to comply in undermining the underlying legal principles. But at the same time, quieter work is being done to restrict left wing speech as well. This has already been put in place in Europe and there seems to be bipartisan support for it in the U.S.

I'd have a bit more sympathy if he hadn't previously done exactly the same thing, and been given a suspended sentence and a clear unambiguous warning from a judge not to do it again.

He's not being silenced because he's right wing. He's being silenced because he's jeopardising trials and threatening witnesses.