The Telegraph published a hit piece designed to pressure the donation platform Buy Me A Coffee into banning me.
Authors Patrick Sawer and Gordon Rayner accuse me of conspiratorial antisemitism:
Another BMAC fundraiser is Connor Tomlinson, a Restore-linked activist and proponent of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that shadowy elites are using African and Asian immigrants to undermine Western society. He has also previously endorsed a ban on circumcision.
In the original version, Sawer refused to include my response to his request for comment, despite my comments disproving the above description of my views.
In response to The Telegraph, Mr Tomlinson rejected criticisms of his views as “smears”.
He defended his position on the Great Replacement theory, stating: “I don’t think it’s a shadowy conspiracy. Neither does the man who coined the term, Renaud Camus. I was reading from Camus’s original essay, where he used the term to describe the effect on culture, and the threat posed to the Jewish audience he was speaking to and gay men like himself, by importing alien cultures through culture-blind immigration policy.”
This paragraph was included in a subsequent version the following day, after thousands of people had already read the article, and after a spokesperson for Buy Me A Coffee told The Telegraph:
“We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We have forwarded the information you provided to our relevant team for review. They will investigate the matter from our end and take any necessary action in accordance with our policies.”
And after The Telegraph procured a statement from Alex Hearn, the co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism, predictably denouncing me and calling for my deplatforming.
Alex Hearn, co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism, said: “It is concerning that far-Right activists are not only welcome in Restore but also using Buy Me a Coffee to raise funds. The platform must remove them and urgently review its procedures so this doesn’t happen again.”
The article is designed to lie about me, and to destroy my ability to earn a living talking about issues the new owners of the Telegraph disapprove of.
In my DM exchange with Sawer, I said:
Hello Patrick. Curious to know where you got that description of me. Sounds a lot like that originally written by Hope Not Hate, who have attempted to smear me because I’ve reported on the violent and criminal behaviour of their members.
They are quoting the attached tweet: x.com/i/status/1783543608475320674
As you can see, I don’t think it’s a shadowy conspiracy. Neither does the man who coined the term, Renaud Camus. I was reading from Camus’ original essay, where he used the term to describe the effect on culture, and the threat posed to the Jewish audience he was speaking to and gay men like himself, by importing alien cultures through culture-blind immigration policy.
For more on this, I wrote a digestible Substack piece last year: https://connortomlinson.substack.com/p/the-great-replacement-is-not-an-antisemititc
I linked to and posted a screenshot from my previous post, The Great Replacement is Not an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory, in which I explained that author Renaud Camus coined the phrase “The Great Replacement” to describe the substitution of our culture, which occurs when politicians import people from culturally distant and incompatible countries.
Here is a quote from Renaud Camus’ 2010 essay, coining the phrase “the Great Replacement”:
“one hesitates to identify interest as the principal motor of replacist ideology and its lies, for one cannot fail to also take into consideration all of the groups that nobly support, promote, and diffuse these deceitful dogmas against their own interest, often of the most immediate kind (and who are sometimes just beginning to regret it): Jews, women, homosexuals, secularists, champions of free thought and free expression, all cheerfully busy sawing off the branches on which they sit, alongside the heralds of “diversity,” who themselves do not perceive that they are in fact only making more of the same, always more of the same, the undifferentiated universal village or rather the generalized suburb, the place where Ilan Halimi crawls in his final hour, violent, wild, deculturated, and decivilized.”
Ilan Halimi was a Frenchman of Moroccan and Jewish ancestry who was kidnapped on the 21st of January 2006 by a group called the Gang of Barbarians. Led by Ivory Coast national Youssouf Fofana, they encouraged a 17-year-old French-Iranian girl to act as a honeypot to lure Halimi to an ambush. He was gagged, bound, and ransomed for €450,000. Halimi was held for 24 days, was tortured, and had 80 percent of his body burned before being dumped, mostly naked, beside a road onSainte-Geneviève-des-Bois on 13 February 2006. A passer-by called an ambulance, but Halimi died from his traumatic wounds on the way to the hospital.
Does Camus mentioning Halimi’s appalling murder as an atrocity he wants to prevent happening to anyone else sound particularly antisemitic to you?
What about in 2012, when Camus repeated the phrase Great Replacement in a lecture he was invitied to give to the France- Israel Association, and warned them that mass immigration would import Muslim antisemitism and put their lives at risk:
“What I call the Great Replacement is the change of people, the substitution of one or several peoples for the people whose ancestral roots are there, whose history had for hundreds or thousands of years coincided with the territory in question. ...
“I might, speaking as I am before the France- Israel Association, appeal to an example that should finally convey my meaning: the Great Replacement is what would happen to Israel if, God forbid, we were to accede to the Palestinian demand for the so-called right of return. Under such conditions, could Israel remain a Jewish State, as one says?”
So Camus used the example of Israel to explain how immigration could threaten the people, culture, and future of a state.
Does this sound like an antisemitic conspiracy theory to you?
As academic Nathan Pinkoski wrote in an essay for Compact Magazine:
“In a 2012 speech to a Parisian Jewish forum, Camus quoted the question posed by Christopher Caldwell’s 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: “Can you have the same Europe with different people?” His answer, like Caldwell’s, was “No.” Camus dubbed the demographic transformation wrought by mass migration the “Great Replacement”—a phrase that has since been invoked by mass murderers and the French president, influencing not only marginal figures but mainstream politics.”
Camus has cited the 1791 influx of Jewish immigrants to France as an example of successful migration, made possible because of their genuine love of French culture. Hence why French Jews, like academic Alain Finkielkraut (from whom Camus appropriated the term “the communism of the twenty-first century” to describe antiracist ideology) and French Presidential candidate Eric Zémmour, have praised his work.
He has entered into dialogue with France’s Jewish communities to encourage they politically organise against the immigration policies which put their lives at risk.
Had France’s political leaders listened to Camus, they wouldn’t be seeing thousands of French Jews fleeing abroad to escape imported antisemitism — with a marked increase after the Hamas massacre on October 7th 2023.
It is conspicuous that the Telegraph conflated my views with others’, omitted my comment repudiating their mischaracterisation of me, and got a Labour activist to condemn all targets of the article on the grounds of antisemitism. The purpose of the piece is clearly to use false charges of arbitrary prejudice against Jews to prevent me from earning a living and supporting my wife and children.
But more importantly, why does advocating for the deportation of foreign criminals and closing Britain's borders to further third-world welfare dependents make me a "far-right extremist"? What about wanting to prevent murderers such as Vickrum Digwa from entering my country does the Telegraph object to?
And why did the Daily Mail, Spectator, and Guido Fawkes seize upon my friendly constructive criticisms of both Reform UK and Restore Britain to further fracture the British right? I refuse to be a partisan cheerleader, and I retain friendships with senior figures in both political parties. My primary consideration to secure a peaceful country and a prosperous future for my daughters. Any other goal is not my concern. And if that invites the disapproval of those with a different agenda, I welcome that. The least you could do, though, is be honest about my views and your motives.
Thank you to all of those who donated despite the article. I don't know whether Buy Me A Coffee plans to ban me from their platform. Nevertheless, I appreciate your support, and so do my daughters.
