I think it is rather amusing that the United Kingdom is more concerned with preventing speakers the government dislikes from entering the country than with actual illegal immigrants who are an active danger to their country.
But I do not, in principle, have a problem with the idea that a country would want to ban entry to people whom it considers harmful to public order. In fact, I think they should do it more, and apply a stricter standard to those who are trying to stay there. If the UK did that, 75% of the political discord the leaders are worried about would go away, and having speakers arrive to bitch about how racist the country is (Piker, Uygur) or how it is being invaded (Tommy Robinson speakers) wouldn’t be a problem.
I admit I was displeased that the UK banned so many speakers for the Robinson rally, since their views were all well within the Overton Window. If any of them had been Nazi-adjacent, I wouldn’t have been, and I thought it was indicative of the two-tier system of justice and speech policing in the UK.
Leftists loved it, though, since their political opponents were being silenced. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and they aren’t so happy.
the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel. the west is betraying “liberal values” for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel. https://t.co/UqQG1dogOI
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 31, 2026
Cenk Uygur first announced that his visa to travel to the UK was revoked, and soon after his nephew Hasan Piker admitted he had as well. In the most self-unaware post ever, Piker complained that the UK was betraying liberal values, which of course he personally despises. The man who admires Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro chiding the UK for not being liberal enough is peak post-modernism.
Hasan Piker: “The UK is abandoning its western values.”
Hasan Piker’s western values while standing in Communist China: “I don’t have any sort of patriotism in my heart for America.”
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) June 1, 2026
Piker, being Piker, won’t even accept with grace a person defending his right to speak in the UK. Filipovic is no conservative, as a writer for The Guardian, but as a feminist she is repulsed by Piker in particular.
fuck yourself jackass.
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) June 1, 2026
Of course, both Uygur and Piker are blaming Israel for not being able to enter the UK, which seems a stretch, since the UK government isn’t exactly pro-Israel, and the Home Secretary is a vicious critic of the country.
So Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker have been banned from entering the UK and the first thing they did is to… blame Israel (???)
How utterly pathetic. By all means, ignore that half of the people slated to speak at Tommy Robinson’s recent Unite the Kingdom march were ALSO banned… https://t.co/p6afVfse14
— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) May 31, 2026
So Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker have been banned from entering the UK and the first thing they did is to… blame Israel (???)
How utterly pathetic. By all means, ignore that half of the people slated to speak at Tommy Robinson’s recent Unite the Kingdom march were ALSO banned from traveling to the UK.
Reason given was the same: these individuals are not conducive to the public good
Those banned from Tommy’s march:
– Valentina Gomez
– Joey Mannarino
– Eva Vlaardingerbroek
– Ada Lluch
– Filip Dewinter (Belgian politician, Vlaams Belang).
– Dominik Tarczyński (Polish MEP/politician).
– Don Keith
Also don’t forget, the UK also recently banned Kanye West from entering the country.
Personally, I don’t think any of these people should be banned, but every nation must have the sovereign right to decide who it lets in, based on its own interests.
This reflexive knee-jerk reaction to blame Israel is embarrassing – because it’s so obviously not the reason here.
Of all the speakers the UK has banned, the one I personally think they have the strongest grounds against is Piker. None of the Tommy Robinson speakers was calling for a revolution or violence, and neither is Uygur. They are on opposite ends of the Overton Window, but all within it. I am much less inclined to agree with Uygur, but I think the appropriate response to him is argument.
Piker, though, is a different case. The man regularly incites violence and is quite openly calling for a revolution against Western countries. If he is your citizen, as he unfortunately is here, there’s not much you can do about it until he breaks the law (which, thankfully, he appears to have done on his trip to Cuba).
But there is no reason to let him into your country if you can avoid it.
I can’t believe I am saying it, but at least on Piker I think the Home Office did the right thing by keeping him out. Kicking him out is about the same as kicking out foreign students who participate in anti-American protests here in the US. Why borrow the trouble when you don’t have to?
Uygur, for all his noxious views and emotional incontinence, doesn’t seem dangerous to me. Obnoxious, yes. Totally wrong, yes. But compared to the sort of people the UK escorts willingly into its neighborhoods to feed, house, and coddle, he is a sweetheart.
Still, I can’t help but be amused that these guys are being hoist by their own petards. Neither is a fan of liberal values, although they are happy to take advantage of them when it suits, and now they are upset that the UK isn’t being liberal enough to suit them.
It’s not so fun when the shoe is on the other foot.
