Note from the Editors: What follow is the full, unedited transcript of Daniel Miller’s cross examination (from the moment he was sworn in) on day 1 of his & Nina Power’s case against Antifa activist Luke Turner. The entire 6-days trial’s transcripts can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.
Read also: Ego Credo, by Daniel Miller
MR WALKER: I am extremely grateful for the time and I hope it will assist the court ultimately. I call Daniel Miller.
DANIEL MILLER, sworn
Examination-in-chief by MR WALKER
Q. Mr Miller, you can see an array of folders over there, which are the bundle volumes. It is slightly artificial that I am asking the questions but your answers are to be directed to her Ladyship. Can I ask you first of all – it should be the top bundle, number one, tab 29. I am not asking you to read it but that is your witness statement, and at the back, page 42 there is a statement of truth. Do you remember signing that?
A. Yes.
Q. Can I ask you now to go to tab 14, page 290? Do you have it?
A. Yes.
Q. It is item 6 on the left-hand corner. I will just read an aspect to you. “Item 6 is a reply by unknown third-party, DC Groyper”. Can you read that?
A. Yes.
Q. Can I ask you to go to tab 13, so just go back from 290 to 287?
A. Yes.
Q. 287 and you can see that is your signature. Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. That aspect of item 6 which I read to you at 290, is that correct?
A. No, it’s not correct.
Q. Is it true?
A. It’s not true.
Q. Why did you sign something which you knew not to be true?
A. (no reply)
Q. There is no rush, Mr Miller.
A. I was dealing with the material very quickly and I was flustered by it. I also understood that it was not unknown – it was in fact Nina’s account. I didn’t want to drag the issue into it, which I didn’t think was relevant. I regret that decision that I made and I apologise.
Q. You have heard, Mr Miller, my Lady speak about serious harm.
MS EVANS: I am sorry, I do not think we have had an application for the witness to give evidence-in-chief on this issue. The witness statement on serious harm such as it is is his witness statement. We do object if this is an attempt, particularly without a form of new witness statement, to lead new evidence on this.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Well, perhaps we can look at the evidence that he has already given on it.
MR WALKER: I am so sorry, my Lady?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: I said perhaps we can start with the evidence he has already given on this.
MR WALKER: Yes. May I turn my back, please?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Yes.
MR WALKER: (After a pause) I am so sorry. I am trying to find the reference, my Lady and as the court will be aware, there are quite a number of documents that I am trying to deal with, with assistance. I am sorry for the pause. (To the witness) Paragraph 109 of your witness statement, Mr Miller, which is tab 29.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Did you say 109?
MR WALKER: 109, yes. (To the witness) You refer to the publication, Mr Miller, of a webpage, and it is the second sentence: “The tweet included a link to his defamatory webpage, which had been updated in the meantime to include my responses to his 14 February claim.”
MR WALKER: My Lady, I intend to ask questions. If there is an objection to that, then I stand corrected, but if it is of assistance to the court and I can ask the questions, that is my application to do so.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Well, what is the question?
MR WALKER: The question is, “How did the publication of that defamatory website affect you?”
THE WITNESS: For a long time this website was …
MR WALKER: Can I just ask you to pause –
A. I am sorry.
Q. Because out of courtesy to my learned friend –
MS EVANS: I am not going to object but I am assuming it is going to be one question.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Well, let us hear the answer to this question.
MR WALKER: (To the witness) Can you help us? The defamatory page that you refer to, can you explain to us how this affected you?
A. For a long time this webpage was the first hit that would appear when anybody searched for my name. The defendant was concerned to circulate it as widely as possible. The webpage presents me in the worst possible light. It takes statements made by me out of context. It manipulates evidence and would present me in a certain way. It presents a very ugly picture of who I am and what I believe. This fact alone was extremely distressing to me. It was used also by others in order to warn people from sharing my work as proof that I was somehow a person that could not be given any kind of fair reading whatsoever. It was extremely disturbing. It was like having a wanted poster put up with my name on it. The webpage is intended to present me as a racist, as a fascist, as an antisemite. I completely reject all of these positions. To have a webpage which is claiming that I believe things that are directly the opposite of what I actually believe in, in fact have repeatedly and exclusively clarified that I reject was deranging, actually as well. The webpage was circulated amongst so-called antifascist activists who believe that it is appropriate to use physical violence against people they call fascists. I myself was targeted for physical violence including by people who are in contact with the defendant. The webpage has somehow therefore stood as a kind of malediction against me and it has been a horrible experience.
Q. Thank you, Mr Miller. I do not have any other questions to ask of you, but I defer to my learned friend.
Cross-examination by MS EVANS
Q. Mr Miller, could you please take up bundle 1? I think you have probably still got it open. Could you please turn to tab 5, which is your particulars of claim as it currently stands. It is called the “Re-amended Particulars of Claim”. Could you please go to page 75? Now, page 75 shows parts of what was your previous claim in harassment that you withdrew. That is why it is struck through. The paragraph I want to look at is 14.2.1, but we have put the original version in so you can see it better and that is the next tab at page 80M. Do you have that?
A. Page 80?
Q. 80M, paragraph 14.2.1. What I want to ask you about is the first sentence which says this –
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: I am sorry but I do not have that reference.
MS EVANS: I am sorry.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: And the witness may not but we can read through the scored out –
MS EVANS: You can read through it. It has not changed.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: So, it’s 14.2.1?
MS EVANS: 14.2.1.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: But I think I only have the crossed out version. Perhaps the witness has as well.
MS EVANS: We will supply you with the proper one.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: (To the witness) The sentence I want to ask you about is the first one that says: “The Defendant, having posted the First Claimant’s old Twitter post amongst very clear antisemitic posts published by “Parallax Optics”, a Twitter account which is known for espousing and disseminating abhorrent antisemitic views” – do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, if you turn – I think you can do this but my Lady cannot do this, but we will try it. At the back of the new tab, 5A at page 80X –
A. I am sorry. I am not sure what you are referring to.
Q. Do you have tab 5A?
A. I don’t have tab 5A. I have only tab 5.
Q. Okay. Can I pass this clean page up so you can see it? If that can be passed to the witness, and that can be passed to the witness – all I am asking you to look at here is the statement of truth which was signed on that original plea by you. So, if you go to 80S – I hope you have that?
A. Okay.
Q. And that is your signature on that page, is it?
A. Yes.
Q. With a statement of truth?
A. (no reply)
Q. Can we now look at some examples of the abhorrent – the antisemitic messages by Parallax Optics? You will need to go to bundle 3.
A. I am sorry, where?
Q. Bundle 3, tab 51, page 1778.
A. I am sorry, can you repeat that, please?
Q. Tab 51.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Page 1778 in the bottom right. Do you see that?
A. I see 1778.
Q. Yes, the bottom right number.
A. I see 1788. Yes.
Q. And at the top you will see it gives a date for this Twitter thread, 24 July 2018.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. And there is a conversation here which starts with someone called Nathan Cofness.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. It says, “Under certain conditions people will identify with and favor their group, including their ethnic group. That doesn’t mean people tend to act in their ethnic interests, Dutton claims. (There’s a section based of the paper on why I say this.” Then he says: “See the examples of Jewish behaviour that clearly undermine Jewish ethnic interests.” And the apparent ParallaxOptics replies: “And the classification of Jews as “people” is also obviously highly questionable.”
A. Mm.
Q. Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you agree that is antisemitic, what ParallaxOptics said there?
A. Yes.
Q. It suggests Jewish people are not human.
A. Yes.
Q. It’s abhorrent.
A. I agree.
Q. And what about the image below with the crocodile coming out of an egg? Do you recognise that as an antisemitic trait or symbol?
A. It’s a very obnoxious statement. I think that it is obviously an antisemitic statement.
Q. Thank you. Could you go on to page 1815, the same tab? Do you have that, on the left-hand side?
A. Yes.
Q. 29 August 2018.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Another tweet by Parallax Optics. It just says: “Does the Holocaust even real”. Do you see that?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Do you agree that is an antisemitic message?
A. Yes.
Q. What does it mean?
A. It questions whether the Holocaust is real, is how I understand it.
Q. And would you say that that was abhorrent?
A. I totally agree that ParallaxOptics has made many obnoxious and abhorrent statements.
Q. Do you agree that that is an abhorrently antisemitic statement?
A. I find it personally very irritating.
Q. Do you agree it is abhorrently antisemitic?
A. I agree that it is antisemitic, yes.
Q. We have your answer, thank you. Can you go forward to 1970? It is the right-hand facing page. This is 1 December 2018 and you will see that again there is a short conversation by an account called Outsideness —
A. Mm hmm.
Q. – who says that somebody says that Israelis are from Mars and American Jews are from Venus, and then we have ParallaxOptics replying, “# Jews” and then again some sort of reptile coming out of an egg, which you have already agreed is antisemitic.
A. Yes.
Q. Can you go on please in the same tab to 2186?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. It should say 21 April 2019 at the top, and this time the conversation has to be read in reverse, so it begins with someone called Joe Marney tweeting, “And some people call animals “vermin”. There’s only one species on this planet that that word can really apply to”, and ParallaxOptics replies, “Jews?”
A. Mm.
Q. Is that abhorrently semitic on the part of Parallax Optics?
A. It is abhorrently antisemitic, yes.
Q. Antisemitic. Could you go to page 3393? You will probably find that bundle is very full, so it may be that we have to – sorry, it is tab 52, this one, not 51. 3393. This one should be 13 December 2019 at the top.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Another tweet by Parallax Optics. He poses the rhetorical question, perhaps: “There’s only one thing that can explain Labour’s defeat” – this is obviously after the last general election – and he answers it himself, “The Jews.”
A. Mm.
Q. Do you agree that that is abhorrently antisemitic?
A. I think this statement refers to claims being made by some of the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn that there was a kind of Jewish conspiracy against him.
Q. Do you agree it is antisemitic in the way that ParallaxOptics poses the question and answers it?
A. I think the hypothesis that this is the reason for Labour’s defeat is obviously an antisemitic hypothesis. I think ParallaxOptics is referring to that hypothesis. That’s a hypothesis that he didn’t invent, but existed within the context of Labour Party internal politics. I think that he himself is not a supporter of Labour as far as I know.
Q. Thank you.
A. So, I don’t think that he was in fact himself making any real claim about Labour’s defeat actually.
Q. Would you please go to page 2571 of the same tab? This is dated 24 January 2021 at the top. Now, I make clear that this is obviously –
A. I am sorry.
Q. Sorry, do you have it? 2571?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, this is outside the period of time that this case is largely concerned with but it is illustrative of the same point that I have been making and suggest, so you read from the top with this one. It takes a bit of unpacking. Somebody called Ben says: “The Jews have resorted to the crypto tactic of defining Jewish representation in terms of religion but Unz hilariously turns this around to prove the original numbers correct.” They are talking about positive action, by the look of it, and numbers of students in American universities. “The same chap, Cofness, says, “This whole debate is silly. Anyone who has been to an ivy league university knows that many of Hillel’s stats are wrong except Unz himself who has an agenda” and then Torin McCabe says, “And like IQ data in Africa, the solution is better data” and ParallaxOptics says, “The solution is bigger oven.” That is a reference to concentration camp ovens, is it not?
A. I think so, yes.
Q. Is that appallingly or abhorrently antisemitic?
A. Without question.
Q. You can shut that file for now. I want to ask you some questions about your own interactions with this apparent Parallax Optics. By 2017 you were following ParallaxOptics on Twitter, were you not?
A. Yes, although I also muted him, actually for long periods of time.
Q. The account that you used at that point was called – you had the handle dcxtv. Correct?
A. That’s true.
Q. And your identity would not have been known to people just from that handle, dcxtv, if they did not already know who you were. Correct?
A. My identity was widely known by many people. I never attempted to conceal it. I –
Q. If people did not know who you were already, they would not know from that handle, dcxtv, who you were.
A. I regularly posted links to articles I had written. I think that people would have been able very easily tell this is my account. I also used the same handle for my Median[?] account, which did have my name next to it, so it may not have been immediately obvious but it was not concealed.
Q. And ParallaxOptics was following you as well.
A. Yes.
Q. And the identity of the operator of that account was not immediately apparent to someone who did not know?
A. No, he wanted to remain anonymous because he wanted to continue to make these obnoxious statements anonymously.
Q. Now, we have not had any disclosure from you in this action of any communications between you and the operator of Parallax Optics. That is correct, is it not?
A. That is correct.
Q. And all your tweets with him you deleted, did you not?
A. I regularly deleted my tweets in general.
Q. Can we just have a look at a surviving example of one of your interactions with him, which has been disclosed from my side, I think. If you go to bundle 4, tab 118 –
A. Mm hmm.
Q. If you go to page 3214 – it is 3213 and 3214.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. This is a reconstructed thread by my client so you can see the flow of it. I do not think there is any dispute that this is the correct flow, but if there is your counsel can take you through that later. This is the conversation between you and ParallaxOptics and I think 2 November 2017, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Just so that my Lady can see what is happening here, all we have of the tweets from Parallax Optics, because all of yours have been deleted and you can see that from the reference in between as the conversation flows – correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, it starts with an Evening Standard article. That is the top left and if you turn actually to the page before, 3212, this is a chronology of this thread which assists in seeing the sequence but it also helpfully at the top gives you the full URL for that Standard article so you can see its headline. So, the headline of the article that ParallaxOptics have tweeted was, “Jihadi suspected of fighting in Syria could jump the queue for council houses and get help finding jobs”. Do you see that?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Now, if you go back to the next page and look at it with the visuals, as it were, you will see how the conversation goes between the two of you, except of course you cannot because you cannot see your contribution directly, but my Lady can read the page on the left to herself. I want to focus on the page on the right. That starts with – this all seems to flow from the content of the article that you are discussing and there is a reference at the top from ParallaxOptics to “Jobs for the Boys” then he says, “Smashed window economics 101”. You reply, so you say something there. Do you agree?
A. Yes.
Q. He then replies, “Racists?” Do you see that?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. You then reply. That is deleted. Do you have any recollection of what you said? I do not expect you to.
A. I mean I presume that I was arguing with him about things that he was saying. I mean, this is normally what Twitter interactions are.
Q. And after your deleted and therefore unknown response, he says, “Is it possible to distinguish between the two?” Do you see that?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. So, I suggest that that indicates that you must have referred to two types of things.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Possibly groups of people. Correct? This is just a hypothesis because we do not know.
A. I think that ParallaxOptics’ statement, “Racists?” probably refers to, I suppose, anybody objecting to this policy because it is true that the term “Racist” is used in order to shut down critical discussion.
Q. So, after your reply, which leads him to say that, is it possible to distinguish between the two?
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. Before you reply again, he says, “I mean Jews are different, they have horns?”
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. Then you reply again. So it is apparent, isn’t it, from his, “Jews are different, they have horns”, that you have mentioned Jews, possibly as one of the two groups that you mentioned or you said something that led him to infer —
A. I really don’t see —
Q. — something about Jews?
A. I really don’t know why that would have been the case. I understand his statement here actually is a provocation of me, he knew I was Jewish and he’s —
Q. Well, okay, so the next one is another reply —
MR WALKER: I wonder whether he could finish the question, given the courtesy that he has been extended, to give an answer?
A. ParallaxOptics regularly made statements designed to be provocative, so the question is obviously, what do you do or how do you respond to such statements? If one becomes upset about it in a certain way, one loses that particular game.
MS EVANS: Well, if you look at the next exchange, I suggest that you are the one who said something provocative next. Because there is your blank deleted reply and then he says, “Don’t say that, they will take me away.”
A. I don’t know.
Q. Do you know what you might have said that led him to say that?
A. I really don’t know, but I’m not sure what you think we can gain really from this exercise.
Q. Well, I think that’s for me to decide. Thank you. “They will take me away” I suggest to you is Parallax Optics’ way of saying that you have just said something to him which is quite sensitive and which most people would be offended by, correct?
A. I think his statement responds probably to me objecting to his previous statement.
Q. Then the next thing he says is, “Problematic” in inverted commas, problematic in parentheses. Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. You know what the parentheses echo symbol stands for?
A. Yes.
Q. Would you like to tell the Court?
A. It stands for, it was somehow a trope that was used in order to identify Jewish people online.
Q. Just going back to the, “they have horns”, saying that Jews have horns is another way of saying that they are not human, isn’t it?
A. Well, the most famous example I can think of with the horns is Michelangelo’s statue of Moses where he has horns. There is actually a passage in the Bible where it describes Moses, it is maybe a corruption of Hebrew, for some reason Moses has horns, I don’t know why that is. Obviously the notion that Jews have horns is ridiculous, I think it is difficult to take seriously on that basis. It is annoying but …
Q. Thank you. You can put that file away for now. Can we go back to file 1 and again look at your original particulars of claim. So I think you will find that in 5A and my Lady, I am afraid, will have to make do with the struck through in tab 5. It is paragraph 17.3.
A. I’m sorry —
Q. Sorry, I haven’t given you a page number. So you need to go to tab 5A —
A. Uh-huh.
Q. — which is the new one that you were handed and it should be – sorry, I think I am in the wrong document. Just one sec … yes, sorry, I am in the wrong tab. It is actually not in your particulars of claim, it is in your reply which is at tab 9. It is page 241 which is a left-hand page and it is paragraph 17.3. You will remember this is the document you signed a statement of truth on.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. In 17.3 you made your point that you have just made about Michelangelo in the first sentence. Then you said this, “The first claimants did not, in any event, reply to this tweet, like it or retweet it or in any way encourage the continuation of the discussion which had not previously engaged any alleged anti-Semitic tropes.” Now, that is about the thread that we have just been looking at.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. But do you accept now that that is not true what that paragraph says about that thread?
A. I agree that it is true, looking at this thread, that ParallaxOptics does make statements about Jews, I don’t make any statements about Jews. I found his statements annoying, I understood that they were calculated to annoy me. This paragraph refers to anti-Semitic tropes, if you want to say that he is circulating anti-Semitic tropes, I will concede that.
Q. “Jews have horns”?
A. Is that a trope? I don’t know, to be honest.
Q. It doesn’t really matter whether we describe it as a trope, it is, I suggest to you it is indicating that Jews are not human?
A. Em … well, I mean obviously I disagree with that.
Q. Thank you. I suggest that that paragraph, 17.3, was untrue and the reason it has not been re-instigated into the document after those amendments is because you realised that the sequence in that thread did show that you had encouraged the continuation of the discussion after an anti-Semitic reference?
A. I certainly didn’t encourage any anti-Semitic discussion or engaged in any anti-Semitic content.
Q. I suggest that it was you who had apparently introduced Jews into the conversation?
A. You state this based on a tweet which has been deleted which you presume said this, but I really don’t think it would have done.
Q. Can you recall when you deleted those tweets that you have exchanged with Parallax Optics?
A. I think shortly after the conversation took place.
Q. On every single occasion?
A. I, as I said, regularly deleted my tweets. I understood Twitter also as a medium for engaging in occasional interactions with people, I don’t think that they have to be preserved in any way like, that any other conversation needed to be. I also found that exchange personally quite irritating because of Parallax Optics’ responses to me. I find that irritating myself as a Jewish person. I think his statements were intended to irritate me. You want to hold me responsible for his provocations of me, okay. But …
Q. Could we please turn to tab 7 of the same bundle? This is annex 1 to the Defence. I want to ask you now about some of the images in this annex which are relied on by my client, and to be clear I am not suggesting that you are responsible for these images but I want to ask for your view about them. They were sent to the Defendant and his artistic partner, Mr LaBeouf, at various times after the “he will not divide us” artwork went up. But they were not, as far as I know, sent by Parallax Optics. So, if you could turn to page 136. Now, this is an image of concentration camp victims, evidently, and on one of them has been superimposed Mr Turner’s face, do you see that?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. You see that, you agree that that’s a representation of Mr Turner?
A. Yes.
Q. It is abhorrently anti-Semitic, would you say?
A. It is abhorrent and disturbing on every level.
Q. Including anti-Semitic?
A. Yes, absolutely.
Q. It is a threatening message to send someone, isn’t it, if they are Jewish?
A. It is a disgusting message.
Q. The next page, you will see again Mr Turner’s face superimposed on to a lampshade and also two bottles of soap. Now that, I think, is supposed to be a reference to the fate of concentration camp victims, do you understand that? The washing of the soap and being used for a lamp, discarded people, the cleansing of them as they arrive in concentration camp?
A. I’m sorry, what is your question?
Q. Do you understand it in that way?
A. The first time I have seen this image is through the disclosures provided by the Defendant. Again, I think this image is very disturbing. In terms of its precise semantic content I am willing to accept this interpretation. I am, myself, disturbed by this image, I don’t know why the Defendant has preserved this disturbing image, I don’t know what purpose it serves for him.
Q. Well, he has given evidence about that and will do. Could you turn over to the next page, 138? Do you agree that this is again Mr Turner in the first row of photographs?
A. Yes.
Q. It is a distorted depiction of him, isn’t it, with a skull cap and an enlarged nose, agreed?
A. Yes.
Q. That is a Jewish stereotype, is it not?
A. Yes, it is, yes.
Q. It is juxtaposed, isn’t it, in the row below with Nazi symbols? Swastikas, Iron Crosses, Eagles. Do you see that?
A. Yes, but I don’t know whether these images that were produced on the same date or what their original source is.
Q. I’m asking you about the juxtaposition?
A. Well, the juxtaposition seems to have been potentially created by your client, as far as I know, since the juxtaposition appears here, yes, in this way. But, again, I don’t know what the source of this is.
Q. Do you agree that the stereotype of Mr Turner as a Jew is anti-Semitic?
A. Absolutely.
Q. On the next page, 139, you will see here a picture of Mr Turner with horns? “Jews have horns.” Do you see that?
A. Okay, yes.
Q. You see the Star of David on his forehead?
A. Yes, I see that.
Q. Do you agree that that is abhorrently anti-Semitic, given that he is Jewish?
A. Yes, I do. I don’t dispute, by the way, in general that your client has received anti-Semitic abuse from people on the internet. I condemn all of this as a Jewish person myself, I myself would never send in any of this material.
Q. I made clear that I wasn’t suggesting that you sent it.
A. Okay.
Q. The next page is page 140. Again, do you agree this is a distorted facial image of Mr Turner, with a hooked nose and Stars of David for eyes?
A. Yes, I do agree, yes.
Q. There is a picture of Hitler and there is a gun to his head. Do you agree that this is anti-Semitic?
A. Yes, I do agree, yes.
Q. Do you agree it also sends a threatening message?
A. Yes, I do agree.
Q. On the next page, 141, we see what is known as Pepe the Frog in green, which is, I think you will agree, a green anamorphic frog with a humanoid body might be one description of it, which was appropriated by alt-right groups online in the United States. Do you agree with that?
A. Do I agree with what statement specifically?
Q. Do you agree that it was appropriated, Pepe the Frog as an image, by alt-right groups?
A. Pepe the Frog seems to have been used by a wide variety of groups and individuals.
Q. Including, the alt-right, do you agree?
A. I do agree conditionally with that, yes.
Q. Do you notice that this Pepe the Frog is wearing President Trump, “Make America Great Again” cap?
A. Yes, and he is drinking a glass of wine.
Q. On his shoulder the hat says is, is written, “HWNDU” which is the artwork?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. The person that he is sexually assaulting and killing is Mr LaBeouf, who is one of the trio of the artwork. Do you recognise that?
A. Yes.
Q. Would you say, who is also Jewish, I should add. Would you say that this image is horrifically anti-Semitic?
A. Em… I don’t think this image is obviously anti-Semitic to me, it is obviously a horrible image. I don’t see any reference to Jewishness in this image from my first glance at it.
Q. Could you look at page 143?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. This is Pepe the Frog, again with a Swastika on his chest, again assaulting Mr LaBeouf, you will see he has the artwork’s name on his back. Do you agree that that is anti-Semitic?
A. I think the addition of the Nazi Swastika tattoo does then give it an anti-Semitic meaning, yes.
Q. Do you agree it is threatening to have sent, to send that to somebody?
A. Yes, I do. I do agree, yes.
Q. I’m just asking you about two more. The next page, 144. This is from one of these Groyper accounts which we will see are also associated with the alt-right. This is clearly a Nazi salute, is it?
A. Yes. I think so.
Q. On the next page, 145, you will see that Pepe the Frog here has a stereotypical image of a Jewish person, I suggest, in his sights, in other words the sights of his gun?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Do you see that?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Are both these images anti-Semitic?
A. I would say so, yes.
Q. You can shut that file, please. Can you take up file 3 again, please, tab 51.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. I want to now ask you a little bit about some of your engagement with ParallaxOptics in 2017 and 2018, such as has survived. 1737. Again, we are dependent on screenshotted images from the ParallaxOptics account, because yours were all deleted. If I tell you that between 25th of October 2017 and 6th of September 2018 there were 113 interactions between you and Parallax Optics, would you accept that?
A. Ah …
Q. As an approximate figure?
A. I’m sorry, between which dates?
Q. Between the 25th of October 2017 and the 6th of September 2018?
A. No, it depends on how you are defining interaction. I really don’t recall the number of interactions we had online.
Q. Does that number sound wildly off to you, though?
A. It sounds higher than I remembered.
Q. Just some examples, I can take these quickly. 1741. You will see that 1737 and 1738 is all exchanges or interactions between you and Parallax Optics and you can tell that because you see that in each of them it says that, this was a reply to Dcxtv, among others sometimes, or you were tagged in so you would have got them or it was part of an exchange you were having. I am not interested in the content of these ones. But 1742, because these go on for pages?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. You read these from the bottom up because they are the result of searches on the Parallax Optics account. So the most recent is at the top. You will see, I just want to pick out a couple of them. 1742, the third from the bottom, Parallax Optics is engaging with you and other people. He refers to, he says, “All N/acc persuasions welcome?”
A. Uh-huh.
Q. What is N/acc persuasions?
A. This refers to Nick Land’s theory of accelerationism which bifurcated into different variants.
Q. Thank you. In fact you will see on 1744 there is a reference to Nick Land. 1744 by the top hole (inaudible). There is a Parallax Optics’ tweet at 24th of April 2018 talking about accelerative dynamics and refers to Land’s “Nrx analysis of contemporary political economy.” Nrx is neo-reaction, isn’t it?
A. That’s correct.
Q. On the same page, you will see, third from the bottom, again replying to you and one other person, Parallax Optics says, “That is old school/Acc. Nowadays it is all about taking hormones and cutting your dick off?”
A. Uh-huh.
Q. What do you think that is a reference to, since you were in that thread?
A. I think this was a reference to so-called U/acc or unconditional accelerationism which had a very strong transgender component to it in terms of its interests and its emphasis.
Q. If we then go to 1749. Do you have that on the left-hand side, in the middle there is a tweet which we will come on to shortly when we deal, start to go through the tweets which my client complains about as harassing. Do you see that one?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. “Luke Turner is a 50 Stalins!!!”?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. References to Nrx and so forth. But you will see at the bottom there, we see a reference to gorsedd6. ParallaxOpticsreplying to gorsedd6 and some others. Gorsedd6 was Nina Power, correct?
A. That’s true, yes.
Q. In about February 2019, I will just ask you this while we are on Parallax Optics, you changed your handle on Twitter, didn’t you, and you started a new one, which was called Real Dcxtv?
A. I was banned from Twitter, I believe by your client, in October 2018. After that point I wasn’t on Twitter —
Q. We will come on to the sequence —
A. No, but you have said that I have changed my Twitter handle, in fact I actually created a new account in order to respond to the claims that were being made by your client, including —
Q. We will come to that.
A. — including the claim that I had written an article called Totalitarian Disability Politics in which I called for the euthanasia of disabled people. This was an absolutely abhorrent claim and I felt the need to create a new account to respond to it.
Q. Can you take up bundle 2, tab 40. It is page 955. I am still asking you about your interactions with Parallax Optics, you see —
A. Uh-huh.
Q. — so, although this has gone forward to February 2019, I want to ask you about this page. This is a list of the accounts that you were following on 14th of February 2019. You will see at the top, it has your new handle?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. It is true, isn’t it, that when you start a new account on Twitter you have to re-follow or anyway decide who you want to follow?
A. That’s true, yes.
Q. On this list from, third from the bottom is Parallax Optics?
A. Yes.
Q. I just want to ask you now some questions about the person behind Parallax Optics?
A. Uh-huh.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Can I just check that the — MS EVANS: Oh yes, I’m sorry, about the transcriber.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: — that the transcriber is, whether a break would help now? It would. Is that a convenient point for you?
MS EVANS: Yes, that’s a convenient point.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Five minutes then. (12.01) (A short adjournment) (12.10) MS EVANS: Mr Miller, I was just coming on to ask you about your relationship with the operator of ParallaxOptics. His name is Jack – I do not know if you pronounce it Stokoe or Stockoe – Jack Stokoe. How would you pronounce it?
A. I think Stokoe.
Q. That is him, though, is it not?
A. Yes.
Q. I want to ask you first some questions about what your lawyers pleaded about you and Mr Stokoe on your instructions, but before I do that I need to point out that you have elected in this case to give no evidence at all about ParallaxOptics or Mr Stokoe in your witness statement. Do you understand?
A. Yes.
Q. So, that means the court has no case from you in answer to the defendant’s case about your association with ParallaxOptics and Mr Stokoe or the nature of it. Do you understand that?
A. Yes, I understand that.
Q. But, nonetheless, I need to put my clients’ case on this to you and I will do that against what your pleaded case says, although that is not your evidence. Do you understand?
A. I think so.
Q. I will take you to some of your pleaded case. The first question is: you accept, do you not, that you and Mr Stokoe both attended the LD50 Gallery counter-protest in Hackney on, I think it was the 25th of February 2017?
A. That was where I met him.
Q. You attended it together, did you not?
A. No, that’s not true.
Q. Could you turn up bundle 2, tab 40, page 849, the first page, and do you see that photograph?
A. Yes.
Q. That is you with Mr Stokoe …
A. Yes.
Q. … at the LD50 counter-protest, is it not?
A. I think it’s subsequent to the counter- protest.
Q. Is it on the same day, nearby or in the vicinity of it?
A. Mr Stokoe approached me after a counter-protest against the anti-fascist activists and he was the only person there. He wasn’t screaming at me or threatening to assault me. I had just held up a sign that said, “I believe in the right to openly discuss ideas” and so I thought I had some commitment to that principle, and so I was willing to talk to him. That was the first time that I met him.
Q. And is that his girlfriend standing there next to him in that photograph, Natalie Lambert?
A. Yes.
Q. So, just to be clear as to why you were at that counter-protest: there was a protest going on called Stop LD50, was there not?
A. Er …
Q. Just Yes or No for now.
A. Yes, there was a protest organised against the Gallery.
Q. And you went along and Mr Stokoe went along to protest against the protest?
A. I went to protest against the anti-fascist activists. I don’t know why Mr Stokoe went. He wasn’t involved in protesting himself, he merely was observing.
Q. The Gallery, LD50, was controversial, was it not, because it had put on exhibitions and staged events which had Far-Right or Alt-Right extremist themes, correct?
A. No, I don’t think that is correct. I think that the Gallery had produced a number of exhibitions from various perspectives. Most of them were concerned with the internet; it was an internet art gallery. In 2016 it produced a conference and an exhibition which was specifically focused on investigating the so-called, “Alt-Right” – this was a term that we began hearing in 2016. We didn’t know what it was, nobody knew what it was. The first time that I heard it was when Hillary Clinton said that the people voting for Donald Trump were the Alt-Right.
So, I think that LD50 were investigating what that term meant and they organised an exhibition for that purpose and they also organised a conference for that purpose. Subsequent to the election of Trump – it’s a complicated story – but a group of London- based Far-Left activists (associates of your client) organised a demonstration against LD50 because they held that the exhibition and the conference at LD50 had produced, it meant that the Gallery must be shut down immediately – and this was the claim that they made: they claimed that LD50 was in fact not an art gallery but was rather a Neo- Nazi organising space. They circulated these claims. I looked at these claims and I saw that there was no evidence to support those accusations. Those accusations were hyperbolic and wild. It seemed to me that actually what LD50 was doing was investigating sincerely, as an art gallery should, contemporary themes and contemporary questions and important contemporary questions because it’s important to understand what these phenomena are. We must understand them.
And so, on that basis I went to the protest that the activists had organised against the Gallery. The activists were there, many of them were masked, they had, in the days before the protest, been involved in vandalizing the Gallery; they threw rocks through the windows of the Gallery. The gallarus was forced to seek police protection because she was very frightened by the activities of these activists. These activists, to be clear, believe that it is legitimate, and in fact even almost obligatory, to apply physical violence to anyone they identify as a Fascist. LD50 was identified as a Fascist gallery and therefore as a target for violence. I thought that this was unsupportable, so I went to the Gallery to protest against these activists and in support of freedom of artistic expression and also in support of the discussion of ideas. I was not myself sympathetic to any of the ideas being discussed in the Gallery, and this is why I actually understood it as a free speech case. Everybody supports the free speech that they agree with. I also support the free speech that I don’t agree with, and I certainly support the right of art galleries to investigate contemporary themes in a neutral way. The activists themselves conceded that the Gallery had not taken any kind of position on the exhibition or the conference that it had produced. Nonetheless, it still called to immediately shut down the Gallery. No response was possible from the gallarus. It was an extremely violent and disturbing episode and I felt that it was my obligation and duty to protest against it.
Q. Yes, thank you, Mr Miller. Could you take up bundle 4, if it is not already open, and go to tab 91? It is page 3087. Now, this is an edition of the Hackney Citizen newspaper of that day and it has an article about the protest, and you will see that on the right hand page by the first hole punch it says, “Speaking to the Citizen, the counter-protestor, who have his name as D.C. Miller…” – I assume that is you?
A. Yes.
Q. “…explains his stance… He said, ‘LD50 hosted people speaking who hold very Right-Wing ideas…'” – but you did not say that just now, when I first asked you, you said that it was not an Alt-Right or Far-Right space?
A. No, I think that it was a space that was investigating these ideas. I think there is a distinction between an investigation and the promotion of ideas.
Q. Can you go back a few tabs to 89, please? This is an article in The Guardian a few days earlier, actually, the 22nd of February, about the Gallery itself, and the bit that I want to focus on is at the bottom of 3082. It is talking about this Neo-Reaction conference that you mentioned the previous summer which was hosted by LD50, which included somebody called Brett Stevens, “A white Supremacist”, as The Guardian describes him, ” … whose writing was an inspiration to Oslo Far-Right terrorist, Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011.” And if you go on to the top of the next page, it quotes from Stevens and it says, “After Breivik’s attack, Stevens wrote, ‘I am honoured to be so mentioned by someone who is clearly far braver than I. No comment on his methods. But he chose to act where many of us write, think and breathe.'” But Stevens was one of the speakers at the conference, was he not?
A. Brett Stevens sent a video to the conference.
Q. Okay, a video, but he participated in it?
A. He participated in it in the context of sending this – it was really an art work, it was a kind of nihilistic monologue in which he describes the decline of Western civilization as he sees it.
Q. I will take that as a Yes. If you go back to tab 79…
A. I would like to point out, with respect to this description of him, however, Anders Breivik was not mentioned in his contribution to LD50 in any shape or form, and I myself actually asked the gallarus, Miss Lucia Diego, subsequently if she had been aware of Mr Stevens’ comments on Breivik. She said that she hadn’t been when she invited him to the conference. He has a very popular blog, he’s written, I think, something like 10,000 blog posts over the last several years in which he explains his thoughts. I don’t think Mr Stevens is a particularly interesting thinker, but I think that the description of him, or rather the identification of him with the most deranged and abhorrent thing that he has ever said does somewhat prejudice the understanding of why he was appearing at this conference.
Q. Do you have tab 79 open?
A. Yes.
Q. This is a catalogue or an online promotion of one of the exhibitions that LD50 put on, which you have defended as being in the interests of free speech. This exhibition was called, “My Twisted World, the Story of Elliott Rodger” and …
A. The – I’m sorry.
Q. Just wait for the question.
A. I’m sorry.
Q. Elliott Rodger was a serial killer from California, was he not?
A. He was a spree killer, to be specific.
Q. Yes, he only killed six, did he not?
A. No, I’m saying that he, in apparently some act of psychosis, embarked upon a murder spree in which six people were killed, yes.
Q. This exhibition – I should also just ask you, actually …
A. I’m sorry, but to clarify this point, the exhibition was not called, “My Twisted World.” The exhibition was named after a 4chan thread which predicted the election of Trump. I don’t know what this title refers to, actually.
Q. Thank you for that. 4chan, of course, being one of the Alt-Right …
A. 4chan is an anonymous message board which is used by many different users of different political persuasions, as I understand it. I’ve never used it personally.
Q. So, “My Twisted World, the Story of Elliott Rodger” is attached to the installation or whatever it is on page 3001. If you go forward in these pages to 3008, you will see another art work in this exhibition called, “Elliott Rodger Memorial”, which seems to have involved a video of him, and on the next page, 3009, at the top, a photograph or a still of a video with the caption, “Elliott Rodger, Awakening.” You see that, from 2016?
A. Yes.
Q. What I wanted to also just ask you about Elliott Rodger, who killed six and injured 14 in his spree in 2014, was that he had a manifesto, did he not, so-called?
A. He wrote some kind of document, which I have not read, in which he explained, as I understand it, his unhappiness with life and his hatred of women and …
Q. Yes, he called it his, “War on Women” and the manifesto was called, “My Twisted World.” It also contained, you may remember, plenty of racist remarks about the inferiority of black people?
A. Well, I haven’t read his manifesto, so I don’t know.
Q. So, you were at LD50 and Mr Stokoe was at LD50 to defend a gallery that puts on exhibitions like that?
A. Well, I don’t know what you mean, “Like that”. Elliott Rodger has a peculiar status amongst people on the internet. He’s not exactly considered to be an admirable figure, he’s actually considered to be basically a ridiculous figure and a weird person. He was incel – I think probably maybe even before that term was invented. He ended his life with this horrible act of murderous violence. He is somebody that people who similarly feel unhappy and insane in their own lives identify with, but, I mean, almost as an expression of their alienation. So, he is somehow relevant to understanding subcultures. I think it is a phenomenon worth discussing.
Q. After the counter-protest in February 2017, at some point in 2017 you became friends with Mr Stokoe, did you not?
A. Mr Stokoe, as I said, I was – he was the first person that I’d ever met, actually, who was somehow prepared to articulate Right-Wing positions and Neo-Reactionary positions. I wasn’t particularly familiar with these positions and I did want to understand what they were. I think that he is in a sense an authentic representative of a certain kind of internet thought movement. So, we became acquaintances and I agree that our relationships were cordial. He also was the student of my friend, John Cousins, who is an art academic. I met him in Haiti. So, we had a connection on this level. In person, he was much more civilized than his behaviour on Twitter would suggest. You know, I thought that he was a complex figure in some ways, not completely stupid. He was driven to write these transgressive messages on Twitter. I find that very irritating. His actual central preoccupation was basically a kind of misogynistic diatribe against women, which just, was very repetitive, and …
Q. And against Jews?
A. Well, I would say that his predominant theme was really women. He made scattered remarks about Jews which were also annoying, but his Twitter persona was like …
Q. Sorry, you said they were annoying, but you have accepted that they were abhorrently anti-semitic?
A. I agree with both of these statements, but I think that his main mood was irritation, to be honest, you know, and he was making these statements precisely to irritate. I wouldn’t say that, based on my personal conversations with him, that these were views that he was actually really attached to. They were views that he was – they were statements that he was making in order to provoke people, in order to provoke attention, and this was something that for some reason he felt compelled to do. I would say that his statements on Twitter are almost like the statements that people might write on a men’s room wall, this would be the equivalent. You know, one encounters these statements and people do write abhorrent things in that context, but I think there’s a limit to how seriously you can take them as well.
Q. You were friends with him in July 2018, were you not?
A. I mean, we were associates of a kind. I was in conversation with him.
Q. And I think it was in the middle of July 2018 that you rekindled your friendship with Miss Power?
A. Yes, I ran into Nina by chance.
Q. You do not need to give us the details, unless you want to, but …
A. Well, you say “rekindled” …
Q. … I want to establish that it was in mid July?
A. I’m sorry?
Q. I want to establish that it was in mid July that you and Miss Power got reacquainted?
A. Yes, I encountered her by chance and, you know, in fact, we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but I found that we had, you know, we had a lot to discuss, actually, and …
Q. And in – sorry.
A. Well, I mean, our friend, Mark Fisher, who had introduced us, had committed suicide in the meantime, and this was actually the first point of commonality that we had, and I hadn’t seen Nina at that point for, I think, almost 10 years, and, yes, as I said, we had a lot to discuss.
Q. So, by late July you and Miss Power were socializing with Mr Stokoe, were you not, and his girlfriend?
A. I introduced Nina to Mr Stokoe at a certain point, actually, specifically because of his views on women, which I thought would be useful for her because she was writing a book about men and about the Manosphere, and again I think that he is an authentic representative of a certain set of views.
Q. Could you take up bundle 5 please and turn to tab 131?
A. I’m sorry, which tab?
Q. 131, and you want page 3694. Now, these are transcribed WhatsApp messages between you and Miss Power. It is the only form of communication that the pair of you have disclosed in this case. It only covers a very brief period of time of relevance to the case, and I want to ask you about 3694, at the top. 29th of July, at lunchtime, and you are talking about the evening before with Miss Power, and I think, “D” is you and the number below is her. You talk about somebody called John, then you go down just below the first hole punch and Miss Power says, “It was great to be able to talk to Jack, etc. in a clear way that I can actually remember. He’s such an interesting guy.” That is Jack Stokoe, is it not?
A. Yes, I think so.
Q. And you say, “He’s very funny and smart.” And then she says, Miss Power says, “I mean, he says things I can’t really countenance thinking, but that makes it even more interesting to engage with …” and so forth, and there is a reference a few lines down by you to Natalie, his girlfriend, who was, presumably, there as well. Now, we will come back to the significance of this because this is the evening of the 28th, which is when you were together, and you will remember, because it was right at the start of your bombarding the defendant with Tweets. I will come back to that to give you a chance to deal with it, do not worry, but just whilst this page is open, so that my Lady can see the chronological relevance, also at this point, in the summer, and through to the autumn, you and Mr Stokoe were working on a book or a proposal for some sort of a book together, were you not?
A. Well, that’s not quite accurate. Actually, I encouraged Mr Stokoe to compile material referring to Neo-Reaction. We weren’t writing a book. He was drawing material that he was familiar with into the form of a book because it was clear that what Neo-Reaction was was not well understood and I felt that there would be a value in actually clarifying what it really was and meant, and Mr Stokoe did know a lot about it.
Q. Can we just look at page 3872 in the same tab, in these WhatsApp messages? This is 7th of October 2018 and if you look at the very top of the page, it is the left-hand page, you are, I think, just arranging to meet Miss Power, and you say, at 14:32, “It’s a date!” and then you say, “Heathcliff has just arrived.” Heathcliff is Stokoe, is he not?
A. Yes.
Q. And Miss Power says, “Say hi to the Viking.” The Viking, is that a nickname for Mr Stokoe?
A. I mean, it wasn’t a nickname, it was just a sort of name that she came up with, I think, at that moment. Heathcliff was a name that we had for him because he, for whatever reason, initially introduced himself to me, actually also at LD50, under the name Sebastian, so we thought this was quite ridiculous. We also thought he was in some ways, you know, quite a comical figure, actually. I mean, he was this, you know …
Q. If you look at the first hole punch, there is a line which is you doing your WhatsApp message, and it says, “Heathcliff and I are wrangling nrx material into some kind of a book format.”
A. That’s correct.
Q. And we have established that “nrx” is shorthand for Neo-Reaction. That is a philosophy which certain Far-Right or extremist ideologues have developed, such as Nick Land, is it not?
A. No, I don’t agree with that description of Far-Right ideologues. Neo-Reaction is a form of thinking that comes, actually, out of Libertarianism. It was developed initially by a man called Curtis Yarvin, writing on his blog, the blog is called Unqualified Reservations. Mr Yarvin is himself half-Jewish, he attempts to develop a kind of political philosophy and analysis of contemporary political economy. It’s drawn a lot from James Burnham’s work, actually. His ideal polity is really Singapore. I don’t know if you …
Q. Do not worry about that for now because we …
A. Well, you are describing it as a Far-Right ideology, and I think that it’s important to be …
Q. I am not doubting that Curtis Yarvin was one of its originators, if you like, but …
A. He was the originator, I think.
Q. But Nick Land was also important, was he not?
A. Nick Land, at a certain moment, engages with Yarvin’s work and I would say his position is a little bit different to Yarvin’s.
Q. Nick Land was associated with Neo-Reaction, was he not?
A. Well, I think he is associated with it, but I think the nature of his association is complex. I mean, we’re dealing with a kind of political philosophy.
Q. Can we look at – sorry, we have to get another bundle out – bundle 4 and go to tab 70? Do you have that?
A. Yes.
Q. 2979 is the page. Now, Outsideness is the Twitter account of Nick Land, is it not, someone you followed?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. And this says, “Antisemitism is most likely a Jewish conspiracy. Nobody else could make a political theory that Baroque sound plausible to people”.
A. Mm.
Q. That was from 2015, so that is a view expressed by another account that you follow, correct, which is, would you agree, antisemitic?
A. I think it’s quite a complex statement which Nick Land is making here.
Q. Is it antisemitic?
A. I think it’s an ironic statement about – first of all he says that antisemitism is a Baroque theory.
Q. Could you just answer the question? Is it antisemitic?
A. I don’t think it’s a simple question. I think this is a statement which has different levels of meaning to it. It is also relevant, by the way, that Nick Land is himself married to a Jewish woman and has Jewish children. The statement itself is – I mean it almost turns on itself in a certain way because he is saying, (a) antisemitism is Baroque. He is then claiming that that itself is a Jewish conspiracy, which is a very strange notion and I don’t know what you are really left with at the end of the statement to be honest. I don’t think it’s simple to say this is an antisemitic statement. I’ve never heard such a statement before, to be honest. I don’t think this is the typical view of most people who would describe themselves as antisemites.
Q. Would you go forward, please, to tab 74? This is more tweeting by Nick Land. This is in 2016. He says: “Fact. White subnormals are (ideologically) the nigg*rs of the earth. Also fact: they’re white subnormals (Jewy machinations notwithstanding).” Then he says, “Of course they get a bum rap. The only people who will articulate that above the level of inchoate howl will be power-crazed hucksters.” Then he says, “Going out on a limb here. I’m going to guess that it’s the poor dim Jews who get disproportionately shoah’d”. The reference to “shoah’d”, that is a reference to the holocaust, is it not?
A. Yes.
Q. Is this an antisemitic series of statements by Mr Land?
A. I find it difficult again to interpret precisely what Nick Land is saying here. He is a very ironic writer. He is a very ironic writer. He is referring to elements in discourse using complex rhetorical techniques. I don’t think he is saying these things in terms of his actual positions per se. he is referring to something. I don’t really know what he is saying, to be honest.
Q. Would you just please look back two more page in this bundle, tab 76, page 2991? Again, nothing has been disclosed by you in relation to your interactions online with Mr Land, so all we have are tweets by him and on these two pages it actually starts, I think, at the bottom of 2992. Again in the format we have seen before, these are all tweets where he has replied to you. Do you see the dcx Miller and npcdctv. These are 2016, 2017. Now, to be clear, I am not suggesting that these are, per se, antisemitic message. I am referring to it to see if you agree that there were quite a number of exchanges between you during this period.
A. There were a number but I wouldn’t say that it was a large number.
Q. Quite a number. I cannot put a number on it.
A. Okay.
Q. Could we now have a look at one of Mr Land’s writings? This is in bundle 7, which I do not think we have ventured into yet. It is tab 349. Do you have that?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. Now, this is a blog post or it is his blog and it is an article and it is by Nick Land called “Hyper-Racism” from 2014. It may be easier and quickest if you read it very quickly, and my Lady as well to yourself and I just want to ask you two questions about it, particularly focusing on page 5481.
A. Mm hm. Yes, I am prepared to answer questions on this topic.
Q. Now, the first three paragraphs – I am going to summarise how I interpret those and ask you if you agree. They seem to show that he does not like what he calls the antiracist position taken by mainstream liberal democracies, in other words that all races are equal and none are superior. Do you see? He says, “This amounts to a programme for global genetic pooling”, in paragraph 3, and he describes such a race equal society as a hom*ogenous intermixture. Is that a fair summary?
A. I don’t know, to be honest. His first statement suggests that he is – well, it rejects in a way what he describes as ordinary racism. He says he doesn’t find that interesting. He concedes that there is – that races do exist and there are differences between them and he says that the politically incorrect position is more realistic than the politically correct position on this matter. That’s what I understand from the first paragraph.
Q. And –
A. And –
Q. Sorry, go on.
A. In the second paragraph he again reiterates his critique of what he calls ordinary racism. He says that in the future, the genetic diversity of humanity is going to increase, actually, because of technological advances. And then he goes on to explain what he means by that. This is what he calls “hyper racism”. This is a phenomenon that is developing. It develops as a consequence of, for example, gene editing technology. It already exists in terms of assorted mating. Nick Land is a Darwinist. He does believe in the Darwinistic view of biology and he thinks that that extends to human beings as well.
Q. And to race?
A. A race is a population group so, you know, it is true that human beings are biological in some form. Darwin does not have a conception of inferior or superior according to any kind of moral conception.
Q. Well, we are talking about Mr Land here not Mr Darwin.
A. Well, Nick Land’s positions are derived from Darwin and Nick Land would define himself as a Darwinist, I think.
Q. Well, he might do but racial identitarianism, which is the phrase that he likes, envisages what he calls a conservation of comparative genetic isolation.
A. I am sorry, I am not sure where this is.
Q. Paragraph (g). This is an argument for treating races differently, is it not?
A. I am not sure that he is advocating this as a position. I think he is describing a position which exists.
Q. If you turn over to 5482, in the middle paragraph by the first hole punch, he says this: “The genetically self-filtering elite is not merely different – and becoming ever more different – it is explicitly superior according to the established criteria that allocates social status.”
A. Mm hmm.
Q. These are just extreme racist ideas, are they not?
A. Well, he is talking about the existing elite and its patterns of assorted mating. He is not necessarily identifying himself with the elite. It is the case that people in, for example, the upper class, tend to marry and have children with other people in the upper class. Nick Land thinks that that has a biological dimension to it. He says, “superior according to social status. This is his conception of superiority. I think what Nick Land is describing here is a reality that does exist. I don’t think that he is advocating for it as extremist position, I think it is the case that this is something which is happening in our world, right now.
Q. Can we go back to the WhatsApp messages at this point, I don’t know, you probably haven’t got that open. Bundle 5, 131. It is page 3872, the page that we were on before?
A. I’m sorry, what is the tab?
Q. Tab 131.
A. And the page?
Q. Page 3872.
A. Yes.
Q. So, just after the bit we looked at, where you mention the book that you are working on, on Neoreaction and Mr Stokoe. In between the two hole punches, Ms Power says to you, “I think at some point we need to read Mein Kampf properly.”
A. Uh-huh.
Q. She says “Seriously!”. You say, “I keep a copy in my study of course.” Now, I don’t think anyone in this room needs to be told what Mein Kampf is, but just in case, let’s call it for short, Hitler’s manifesto which described the process by which he became anti-Semitic and outlined his future plans for Germany, including the extermination of the Jews ultimately. Do you agree with that?
A. Yes, I do. I haven’t actually read Mein Kampf properly, it is obviously a very important historical document, precisely to understand how this terrible thing happened. This is why I have a copy of it.
Q. Can we just look at your reply in bundle 1?
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. Which is tab 9, sorry to jump about.
A. Tab 9?
Q. Tab 9, page 260.
A. I’m sorry, I’m a little bit confused.
Q. Bundle 1, sorry, not the same bundle.
A. Tab 9, page?
Q. Page 260.
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. At the paragraph at the bottom, 18.9.K, you are responding to the defence which has at this point referred to that reference to Mein Kampf, do you see?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. You say, both of you say that you “… considered reading Mein Kampf important in understanding the ways in which pathology becomes entangled with political ideology.” Then it says, “The First Claimant has written criticisms of Hitler along similar lines?”
A. Yes.
Q. Now, I have got two questions —
A. Uh-huh.
Q. First, you have said you have just now, you haven’t read Mein Kampf?
A. I have read some of it.
Q. You said you hadn’t read it?
A. Well, in this case I misspoke, but I have read some of it but I haven’t read all of it.
Q. The second question, where are copies in your disclosure of your written criticisms of Hitler along similar lines, if at all?
A. I have written criticisms of Hitler, I call him a criminal psychopath.
Q. Where are the copies of the writings?
A. In my writings for IM 1776 I often criticise Fascist and Nazi positions. I can’t tell you precisely where they are in our bundles from the top of my head. The article I wrote Must We Burn Back contains criticisms of Hitler in which I respond to people who I think are taking an irritatingly, somehow blasé, attitude towards, you know, the reality of what the Nazis were. I have other dialogues that I have done with people who do identify with the Right, unlike myself, I have never done so.
Q. You haven’t disclosed any of this in this action?
A. We have disclosed numerous articles that I have written, in which I do deliver these criticisms, my criticisms are available. Again, I don’t know where they are in the bundles, but I refer to the disclosure of the articles that I have written.
Q. I am going to just ask you to look at one more reference before the luncheon adjournment. That is back in bundle 4, please.
MR WALKER: Must we Burn Back is in the bundle at 315, I am told.
A. Uh-huh.
MS EVANS: Bundle 4, tab 106.
A. I’m sorry, can you tell me the tab again, please?
Q. Yes, 106. Page 3161.
A. Yes.
Q. This is another Twitter account that you were following?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Correct?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Depopulator 100%?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. I am just interested in its description of itself there, 100% European DNA, hashtag Neanderthal. There is a theme emerging here, isn’t there, from these accounts that you follow?
A. I followed a number of different accounts, you have obviously selected the ones precisely in order to attempt to create the appearance of a theme. I would say this account is an account which is again representative of a certain kind of online Right position. I was interested in understanding what the online Right was and what it believes in and I think this is again a representative of that, at least to some degree. I think that if you read his description, it is a little bit strange what he could mean by this, Esoteric Thielo-Bannonist Neanderthal, I don’t know what that means. You know, 100% European DNA Neanderthal, what does that mean? I don’t really know, to be honest.
Q. Well, my Lady, I think if that’s a convenient moment because I can move on to something slightly different.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you. We will break now and return at 2.00. I have to remind you that you are, you remain on oath over the adjournment and you must not discuss your evidence with anyone. Talk about something else over your lunch.
A. I understand.
(12.57)
(The short adjournment)
(14.01)
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Yes?
MS EVANS: My Lady, can I just hand up that missing tab, 5A, to you with the original particulars of claim?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: (To the witness) Mr Miller, I want to ask you about one last point arising in relation to ParallaxOptics and Mr Stokoe. If you could take bundle 6 this time, please, it is tab 206 and it is page 4563. Now, this is an article, or a blog post called, “CULTS II” —
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. — which you will be familiar with. It was posted on the ParallaxOptics website, which is Mr Stokoe’s website, is it not, from February 20, 2019. Now, unfortunately this is a black and white copy, but I think you can see from the contrasting darker and paler text – and I am saying for my Lady’s benefit – that this is a dialogue reproduced here. There are red bits and black bits, representing two different people. So, you will see for example, the first paragraph looks a bit paler, that is red; then it is black, then it is red and so forth. Now, luckily, we do not need to get involved in the content. I want to ask about it for a particular reason. So, this document which has been the subject of some inter partes’ correspondence recently, you have admitted through your solicitors, consists of text which comes from you and comes from Ms Power, correct?
A. And also, others.
Q. In the letter, which I think we should look at from your solicitors, which is bundle 1, tab 38, page 759 —
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Now, I very much fear that I do not have this.
MS EVANS: It sounds like your bundle has not been updated. I know you do not want more documentation, but —
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: I want the right amount of documentation.
MS EVANS: We will get a copy and hand it up now.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: What is the last number that you have on that tab?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Well so, I have the material at tab 39, which starts at 765, but before that I have skeleton arguments…
MS EVANS: So, you do not have anything in tab 38?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: No.
MS EVANS: We will get you a full …
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
THE WITNESS: I am sorry, which page am I searching for?
Q. You should be looking in bundle 1, tab 38, page 759.
A. Right.
MS EVANS: We will get that tab sorted for you. We will just wait for Mr Miller to find it.
A. Yes.
Q. It is right towards the end of that tab. So, this is a letter from your solicitors on 10 August 2023, Patron Law and it is a reply to Mr Turner’s solicitors who had asked about this article and had put to your solicitors the theory that this article was an exchange of dialogue between you and Ms Power, okay —
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. — following the red and the black pen. And the response was this, “We have now taken instructions. We are instructed that the document was not prepared by our clients. However, some of the black text belongs to Mr Miller and another, while some of the red text belongs to Ms Power and another. We do not know the identities of these third parties, nor can we identify which specific text was from our clients. The resulting text is therefore a composite authored by the blog author himself and not by our clients”. Now, I have to confess, I do not understand what that letter is saying.
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. And perhaps you can help us, but how could your words have been used in an article on the ParallaxOptics blog without you knowing it?
A. I think this formulation is not quite precise. Also, I agree with you. The dialogue was actually prepared on a programme called Rise Up. It is a software programme on the internet. Different people can collaborate on in order to create a single text. It features myself, also Ms Power, also some others, discussing the phenomenon of cults. When I created a new account to respond to your client’s allegations that I had written a Hitlerian Disability Politics article, I had this text and I sent it to ParallaxOptics and he published it.
Q. This text here that we see?
A. Yes.
Q. And were you aware that on the day that this was published that Ms Power retweeted a link to it?
A. Yes, I think I was aware, yes.
Q. So, you did not mind that your text was being published on the ParallaxOptics site?
A. I think that ParallaxOptics’s blog was a significantly more civilised piece of work than his Twitter account. In general, in terms of my interactions with him, I did want to encourage him in his more reasonable and thoughtful dimension as opposed to his less reasonable and more provocative dimension. There was a period of time where I wasn’t really in contact with him, following the suspension of my Twitter account. I came back on Twitter. I had this text, I thought I might as well send it to him.
Q. Will you just help me with this, going back to the solicitor’s letter, 759. The last sentence says, “The resulting text is therefore a composite authored by the blog author himself”. Who was the blog author?
A. I think this statement is not accurate. I composed the text, actually, myself, so, I do admit that I —
Q. So, you are at least one of the blog authors?
A. Yes.
Q. Was Mr Stokoe involved in editing it?
A. I don’t believe he was, no. And I also don’t recall him participating in the dialogue.
Q. But the reason I am asking you about your involvement in this article and about your various interactions with ParallaxOptics and Mr Stokoe, between 2017 and 2019 in a bit of detail, is because you have gone out of your way in this action to try to distance yourself from the ParallaxOptics Twitter account and your friendship with Mr Stokoe. I suggest, to make it look like you had limited interaction with him and his antisemitic views, correct?
A. Well, I think you have gone out of your way to bring us together I would say I have described our relationship accurately. As I said, I met Mr Stokoe in February 2017. He had definite right-wing positions. I had never encountered them before. I was interested in learning what they were in this context. We began a dialogue. He was also, as I said, the student of my friend, John Cousins, who is an academic who works in arts education. I met him in Haiti, so we got another connection through this. Your inferences appear to be that myself and Mr Stokoe shared similar views and this was never the case. I was interested in understanding what his views were. Around September 2018 it was fairly clear that our dialogue had run its course. I was becoming increasingly just actually bored by our discussions because I think he was committed to these positions and he wasn’t going to proceed beyond them. Also, I was speaking to Nina now and, to be honest, I found that conversation much more interesting. I don’t share the views that Mr Stokoe has. I never shared his views. I agree that he has made extremely annoying and even abhorrent statements from his anonymous Twitter account. I was also profoundly annoyed by them. The fact that he would not stop making them is actually also what led to the end of our acquaintance but I would also note, and this is not irrelevant, I think, that at the time I knew Mr Stokoe both of his parents were dying and subsequently did die within a short period of time at the same time. I did take that into consideration, actually, also in terms of my interactions with him and that was a factor in my thinking.
Q. We have seen one instance of your distancing yourself and that was the deletion of the abhorrent antisemitism admission.
A. I am sorry, I don’t agree that that is an instance of what you claim that it is. As I pointed out, I regularly deleted my tweets. I simply deleted my tweets because I wished to delete my tweets.
Q. No, sorry, we are at cross-purposes. I am not talking about you deleting your tweets. I am talking about you deleting the paragraph in your pleading that had admitted that ParallaxOptics’ account was abhorrently antisemitic.
A. I believe that we deleted this paragraph because we abandoned our claim of harassment.
Q. That is correct but the defendant maintains his allegation about you consorting with an antisemitic attack and you did not reinstate it. All I am putting to you is that that is one instance of you trying to distance yourself from him because of the implication of it for you in this case, which is the natural reason that you were willingly consorting with somebody who was antisemitic.
A. I don’t actually think that it is precise to say that he was antisemitic. He made antisemitic statements upon occasion, I think, in order to be provocative. He did not make those to me personally in the context of the real world. I would ask what I as a Jewish man am supposed to do when I encounter an antisemitic statement. Should I condemn the speaker instantly and sever all contact with them? It seemed to me that it was more reasonable to attempt to encourage the better angels of Mr Stokoe’s nature. I think that I was not ultimately able to do that to a particular profound extent but that was nonetheless my motivation. Your inferences are that I am improperly attempting to distance myself from him and I would say that that is not true. I was always very distant from him in terms of our different beliefs and our different views.
Q. Can we just look at your pleading on this point because to be fair to you, it is only fair to let you see it. It is your amended reply at tab 9 in bundle 1, page 244, paragraph 11.3, which is the long paragraph that starts on page 243. I am sorry, I will wait for you to find it. So you see what this is, it is you see at the start of 11.3 it says, “As to paragraph 14.10.1”. That is a paragraph in the defence which, in fairness to you, you should look at, so go back to tab 6 and it is page 92. Tab 6 of the same bundle, page 92.
A. I do not have a page 92 under tab 6. Oh, I am sorry, one moment.
Q. So, it is a left-hand page.
A. Okay.
Q. So, it’s the long 14.10.1 – do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. In that paragraph, which is a particular of Mr Turner’s defence of truth and honest opinion, it mentions the fact that ParallaxOptics was operated by Mr Stokoe and that he was until that time a friend of yours. It says that you shared similar far right ideological views with him and it says various other things, and if you look, you will see it refers to a part 18 response of yours. That is in response to a request for further information, which I will come on to. So, if you go back to tab 9 – I am sorry, it is a bit of jumping about there – page 244, you will see from the whole sentence it starts to deal with the allegation of him being a friend. It denies it. Says that you interacted with the account occasionally, initially in response to its views about art and later to challenge its reductive political position and racist and misogynistic statements. It then says this: “The First Claimant and the second Claimant were willing to talk to Mr Stokoe but there were many points of disagreement between them and they were not friends.” Now, we have seen, have we not, that you socialised with him, so it is a slight misrepresentation is it not to say there that you were willing to talk to him? Correct?
A. No, I don’t think so.
Q. If you drop down, it says, “The First Claimant’s attempt to work with Mr Stokoe on more intellectual material was a last attempt to steer him away from his reductive views.” What was the more intellectual material?
A. This is the new reactionary material that I was encouraging him to compile into a book.
Q. And then just for completeness, the part 18 response that I mentioned is on at tab 13, page 284, paragraph 683. It talks about you meeting him on approximately four occasions at which you expressed disapprobation from his Twitter accounts and it says that you concluded that his purpose online was transgressing taboos and that therefore further discussion was pointless.
A. Mm hmm.
Q. And it was your case there that after September 2018 you had no more contact with him.
A. I had much more limited contact with him. As I said, both of his parents were dying and so I had no particular desire to create a breach and add to his issues in that regard.
Q. But we have seen, have we not, from the WhatsApp messages that on 7 October you were meeting him to discuss the ongoing book?
A. I say September here. In fact, it was October. My memory was faulty in that regard, but it was around this time. You can see from the WhatsApp exchange that I had with the second claimant that we share similar unsympathetic views about his ideas and we state that exclusively. I say, “I want to somehow get you out of your self-defeating position but it’s very difficult”. I state that. That was my view. This is early October. Okay, an error there; I remembered it as September. This happened five years ago.
Q. And then we also have the Cults II publication which we have just looked at on his website, which was February 2019.
A. Mm.
Q. And then you started to refollow him in February 2019 on Twitter, did you not, when you opened your new account? We looked at that this morning.
A. Well, either he started to follow me or I started to follow him. I don’t know what happened first.
Q. So, not only does it show that that answer in your part 18 was not correct about when you stopped interacting with him but it does beg the question as to why you have not disclosed any of your communications with him over the whole relevant period: tweets, WhatsApps, emails, anything electronic, any drafts of the book. You must have communicated with each other, correct?
A. Well, we communicated mainly on Twitter. I lost all those messages when my account was suspended. The book that we were compiling we were compiling on his computer, so he has those files. Those files consisted of material that has already been published on the internet. LD50 around this time actually published their own book compiling new reactionary material, so in a way that rendered this project moot.
Q. When you arranged to meet with him, how would you arrange it?
A. I think that I would message him on Twitter. I don’t really remember, to be honest.
Q. Not WhatsApp?
A. I never had his WhatsApp.
Q. And not email?
A. No, not really, no.
Q. You see, in your solicitor’s letter about your disclosure this last summer – I do not think we need to turn it up but it is bundle 1, tab 38, page 730 – my solicitors had asked your solicitors why you in this time have not disclosed any documents related to a list of named people, ParallaxOptics, Jack Stokoe was one; Nick Land, Justin Murphy and a variety of people, and the only answer that came back was, literally, “Our client” – about ParallaxOptics and indeed about all of them but, “Our clients have nothing further to disclose” and in answer to my solicitor’s request for an explanation as to how it was that there was nothing to disclose, given that we live in the electronic era, there was no explanation. I suggest that it is inconceivable that you did not communicate electronically with Mr Stokoe and a range of the other people whose names feature in the pleadings in this case, and that you ought to disclose them and you deliberately have not.
A. Well, as I said, I communicated with Mr Stokoe through Twitter whose messages were lost when my account was suspended. I never communicated with Mr Stokoe with respect to your client and I did not have extensive interactions with him in terms of exchanging ideas online except for the lines that are already presented in the Twitter record that you have disclosed. I appreciate your desire to make Mr Stokoe a central feature of this case. From my perspective he is not. He made one reply to your client ever. Your client subsequently reported him to the police as I understand it from the disclosure that you have also provided. Your interest in connecting me to Mr Stokoe is I would say even stronger than my interest in dissociating myself from him. I had interactions with him. We had conversations. We never shared views. I do not know what else I can tell you about this.
Q. Also, completely missing in the case is any documentation apart from the WhatsApp messages at tab 131 between you and Ms Power showing communication between you and Ms Power. Did you never communicate electronically with her other than on WhatsApp between 28 July 2018 and 25 October 2018?
A. Subsequent to the period in which our WhatsApp messages that we have disclosed took place, we did stop communicating electronically to a large degree.
Q. To a large degree?
A. Well, we would still sometimes coordinate in terms of, for example, we practised yoga regularly but we never coordinated with respect to anything to do with your client and we ceased to have long exchanges as well because first of all we saw a lawyer at the end of October 2018 and he advised us with respect to this forthcoming libel action against your client, not to discuss things electronically, precisely because that would create a record that would be disclosed in the event of a trial. I was also tired, actually, of electronic messaging in general at this point. I think that it is a highly deranging phenomenon. I was understanding also the extent to which I myself was deranged to some extent by my participating in this medium, so we tried to restrict ourselves to speaking in person. I think around this time or maybe later, Nina actually attempted to arrange a meeting for people to meet in a new space and have conversations in this hall, because ultimately the electronic medium is a very bad medium for discussing ideas.
Q. I am going to put to you what my client’s case is in relation to ParallaxOptics and Mr Stokoe before I move on to the next topic. You employed a close association with Stokoe between 2017 and 2019. Correct?
A. No, I don’t think that’s correct.
Q. You both shared views and ideas which any honest person would describe as extreme or far right and antisemitic.
A. No, I completely reject that.
Q. You knew that it would be damaging for your libel claim in this action against Mr Turner for the nature of your relationship with Mr Stokoe and your shared interests to be revealed, did you not?
A. No.
Q. You knew this because you knew that it would look like you were also antisemitic at the time you were interacting with Mr Stokoe of ParallaxOptics.
A. I do not understand how it is that you able to so repeatedly characterise a Jewish person as antisemitic when you don’t have one single piece of evidence suggesting that except for the fact that I spoke to at different times people who did have these views, which I have admitted.
Q. Antisemitic is indeed what Mr Turner concluded in 2018 after you started targeting him, which I will be coming on to shortly. Before that, could you please go back to the WhatsApps at bundle 5, tab 131?
A. I am sorry, bundle 5?
Q. Bundle 5, 131. And it is page 3724.
A. Yes.
Q. Now, these are your WhatsApp messages with Ms Power on 5 August 2018 at nearly 11.30 at night. Right at the top you say to her, “Did you ever read Kevin McDonald Culture of Critique? He’s probably got the most sophisticated antisemitic theory”. Now your solicitors have admitted in correspondence on your behalf that Kevin McDonald, who is an American, was or is antisemitic.
A. Well, of course. I say that myself. He has an antisemitic theory.
Q. What did you mean by the most sophisticated antisemitic theory?
A. I never read Kevin McDonald. I’ve read only Cofness’s critique of him so my presentation of his theory is necessarily incomplete. As I understand it, Mr McDonald presents a theory of what he calls “evolutionary group selection” in which he claims that Jews become involved in various intellectual and political movements in order to advance Jewish group interests. He identifies, I believe, psychoanalysis and some form of anthropology and I think probably also Marxism as examples of this. Cofness critiques this theory and refutes it as I go on to say. I think that Kevin McDonald’s theory is probably the most sophisticated antisemitic theory. He does have a theory. Most antisemites do not actually have any kind of theory; they simply are antagonistic towards Jews. This is what I meant by that statement.
Q. Mr McDonald, or Professor McDonald gave evidence though, did he not, in the David Irvine libel trial in support of David Irvine and he was or is a holocaust denier, is he not?
A. I really have very little knowledge of Kevin McDonald. I know that he is popular amongst antisemites precisely because of his sophisticated antisemitic theory, which Cofness refutes, as I say.
Q. You seem to be quite keen on recommending books you have not read.
A. I don’t recommend his book. I merely ask whether Nina has read it.
Q. I suggest that usually, if somebody says that something is sophisticated, it is because it is something you admire.
A. No, I think that’s not the case. Chemical weapon is sophisticated. It is not something you would admire. It’s a description of his theory. It doesn’t make it admirable.
Q. Since people in this court seem to find this quite funny, can we have a look at 18.9(a) of your reply, please, at tab 9?
A. I am sorry, which bundle?
Q. Bundle 1, tab 9, 258. Now, this is your reply to the defence where the defence has referred to this reference by you to Mr McDonald’s sophisticated antisemitic theory, and your explanation in 18.9(a) is, to be charitable, rather difficult to follow. You say that most theories of antisemitism are simplistic and crude. You are contrasting his there. His was more developed and considered than is usual. But how can you say that if you haven’t read it?
A. I have read Cofness’s description of it. Cofness provides in the context of his critique as is normal scholarly procedure, a description of the position that he is critiquing.
Q. But is antisemitism per se not simplistic and crude?
A. Antisemitism is an extremely complex phenomenon. As I say, it does span the whole history of western civilisation. Ultimately, you can trace it back to St Paul and to the evolution of Christianity which separates itself from Judaism at its inception. I, myself, have conducted research on this point when I was working for the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland. I interviewed a number of Jewish academics and we discussed these topics. Antisemitism is incredibly not simply crude. It is something which is in the DNA of western thought and it should be understood, and it should be understood critically. I do believe that.
Q. What exactly do you mean by, “It’s in the DNA of western thought”?
A. Well, as I say, Christianity is created through a separation of the new Christian message from the Jewish site from which it emerges. So, if you went to look at antisemitism you also have to look at the history of Christianity and how antisemitism develops through history is an extremely complex phenomenon because subsequent to the climb of Christianity, antisemitism begins to take on new forms. It becomes, for example, much more biological and this is a phenomenon that happens in the 19th century.
Q. Forgive me, I have understood antisemitism in effect to be a theory that Jews are inferior to non-Jews, specifically Christians. Does that not rob Jewish people of their individuality to even talk about them in that way?
A. Forgive me but I don’t think that this is what antisemitism actually is. Antisemitism is a much more complex phenomenon.
Q. Antisemitism is not a theory that Jewish people are inferior?
A. No, it’s not the theory. It is the theory, for example, of – a Jewish world conspiracy is one of the most prominent antisemitic views. This is not a question of inferiority or superiority. If you look back to how antisemitism features in the mediaeval period, it has nothing to do with superiority or inferiority. It has to do with certain kinds of metaphysical and cultural divisions that are existing within this society in terms of the revelation of Christianity. This is a 200-year-old highly complex history of psychological economic, social, cultural, religious dimensions. It’s a very complex phenomenon.
Q. Could you just look at page 3724 again, which is where Mc Donald is referred to?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. You have mentioned Nathan Cofness. He is in those echo parenthesis again, is he not?
A. Yes, he is Jewish, like myself.
Q. You also say a bit further down – well, only two lines down: “Many things that one could say about this topic ultimately but of course it is not so easy to discuss.” I suggest what you mean by that is that you know that talking about antisemitic ideas is not something that is regarded as acceptable in our society.
A. I am saying what I mean, which is that antisemitism is a very complex phenomenon. If we want to talk about antisemitism, I think we should talk about antisemitism. We should try and talk about it in a sophisticated way. As I said previously, WhatsApp conversations are probably not the medium for doing that. I am not sure whether you are attempting to say that antisemitism is not a complex phenomenon.
Q. I am not debating with you. it is not a symposium on it.
A. Okay.
Q. What I am going to put to you is that you have been caught out here. These WhatsApp messages which were disclosed very late in the action with no explanation again as to why they weren’t disclosed when they should have been, have caught you out because they reveal that you are engaging with and endorsing antisemitic ideas and proponents of them.
A. They reveal no such thing. I endorse in this discussion only Cofness’s critique of Kevin McDonald’s books. I don’t endorse any antisemitic ideas. I oppose antisemitic ideas, but I want to understand what antisemitism is. I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about this topic.
Q. I am sure you have. Can we have a look at page 3725?
A. Well, if I may finish, I did research the topic of antisemitism when I was working for the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, which was an art project which was created by an Israeli artist named Ial Bahtina[?]. As a Jewish person myself, I do wish to understand what antisemitism is and how it manifests itself. I also want to distinguish what antisemitism is from what some people claim that it is and actually if possible I would like people to not be antisemitic and I understand the best way of moving them away from this position is not simply to start saying, “You’re antisemitic” but to understand how it is that these positions are formed. These positions are formed as a consequence of a very complex triangulation of ideas, which are very deep in the society that we live in.
Q. Can we go on to page 3725, which is the next page? Right by the first hole punch – this is 5 August, the same day, about 15 minutes later. You say, “Only Land is really worthy.” That is Nick Land, is it not?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. You see, what is surprising about finding that in there is that in the original reply at 17.2, which you will find in tab 9, page 241 – it is crossed out but you can read it – do you have that?
A. I am sorry, which page?
Q. 241.
A. Hmm.
Q. This is paragraph 17.2. You say: “The first Claimant interacted with ParallaxOptics to challenge its reductive positions on a variety of issues, its endorsem*nt of Nick Land, its misogyny and racism”. But what we have just seen when you say, “Only Land is really worthy” is an expelling[?] of Land. It is not a challenge.
A. I don’t think – or rather, what I meant in this context is that only Land is even worthy of critique. “Critique” is the appropriate mode to discuss a philosopher. Anyone who is simply endorsing the views of any thinker is, in my opinion, not reading him properly. I do believe Land is worthy of critique. I think Land is an extremely influential philosopher. I appreciate that to an audience who is not familiar with his work you are compelled to attempt to present him as a raving audiologue but this is simply not the case. He has been extremely influential across the political spectrum for many years and it is worthy to criticise him and to critique him and to take him seriously as a thinker. I do believe that.
Q. Could we please go forward to 3746 in the WhatsApp messages, if you still have that open at tab 131?
A. Mm hmm.
Q. So, just below the second hole punch, on 16 August at 1434 you say to Ms Power, “Good blog post here, quite comprehensive” and then you include a link. Now, that blog post, which I am going to ask you to look at is in bundle 9, tab 423. This is a blog post –
A. I am sorry, bundle 9?
Q. I am sorry, it is bundle 9, tab 423.
A. Okay.
Q. Do you have that?
A. Yes.
Q. I am sorry, obviously the uploading has completely failed.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: I think I am probably missing the whole of 422 to 428.
MS EVANS: The only ones I need at the moment are 423 and 4, so I will give you those.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: Now, this one at 423 is an article or a blog post by a writer called Nicholas Wade, and it is called “Widening circle of empathy, the final frontier” and I am afraid I have to just take you through a little bit of this to ask you about your recommendation of it as being “good blog post here, quite comprehensive”. So, starting on page 4261, he introduces it by setting it in a town in Hungary, making the point that that town, which is 1000 years old, has just applied for the coveted European Capital of Culture but they were turned down and the bottom paragraph quotes from an apparent explanation as to why they were turned down: “There were too many happy white people and crosses and not enough migrants.” According to the EU experts. So, he takes this theme and develops it, perhaps in a fairly predictable way. If you turn the page to 4262, he then cites another example of the modern European Union or Europe by saying that the French football team are full of black players, at the top, and then he says in the middle: “Steven Pinker has written at length about the widening circle of empathy. We at TWCS believe that it has four phases and that certain Western countries have now entered the fourth and terminal phase, the desire for self-replacement.” He says, “On what do we base this claim and if true where does it come from? How do we know when it’s approaching? Is there anything we can do to stop it?” And then he lists the three stages, the three with the fourth to come. “Our research” – this is the bottom of 4262 – has led us to believe that out-group altruism goes through four phases: the clan”, which is enmity towards all outside one’s clan; the ethny, trust for all in one’s own ethnic group; multiculturalism, which is trust for alien ethnic groups, “[most Western countries are here]” and 4, “Ethno-suicide, a wish for self-replacement by alien ethnic groups.” And then he goes through and develops each of these phases or stages and when you get to 4265 he seems very happy with one, as it were, the existing clan, two he can live with. Three, “Multiculturalism where we trust alien groups. Current example, Anglo-Scandinavians, Germanics.” He says, “The third phase of the widening circle of empathy where much of the West has arrived today, is that of extending trust to alien out-groups, the more alien the better. When did this change come about?” and he goes on to talk about changes in immigration policy and then he sets out his study in relation to different countries. And at 4267 he is at the UK. He says, “In the UK, non-white immigration”, because that is what he is talking about, “was very low until the 1990s” and then he says at the second hole punch, looking at the stats, “Who are all these foreign born? Non-whites lead the charge”.
Then if you turn to 4269 we have the Final Frontier of self-replacement, phase 4. He says at the bottom: “Multiculturalism we have just seen is a welcoming of alien ethnic groups”. Turn the page: “But where is the line between multiculturalism and self-replacement? It seems there is a slow evolution. First we welcome in alien groups. Then we start to offer them perks that we do not offer our own groups. Lastly, in the terminal phase we call on them to replace them.” And then he divides that into some other subheadings below. Below that, at the bottom: “We are encouraged to replace ourselves with immigrants”. That is the first complaint. Page 273: “We are encouraged to out marry.” He says: “One interesting aspect of plain old multiculturalism was the quite forceful propagandising required to make people accept it. Not that we would use the word as a pejorative. Antismoking propaganda in the US in the 70s on for example has been hugely successful in stopping this harmful habit. Nonetheless, the images used and diversity campaigns have greatly evolved. In the past they were often of, say a multi-racial group of friends or a black family interacting with a white family. The new diversity images are altogether different. We now have advertisers, TV shows, etc. spurring on Euro-descended people to marry outside their group.” And so it goes on.
At 4277, the next feature, apparently, is the fourth phase. We are told to feel contempt for our own ethnic group. And then the fourth on page 4280, we are erasing ourselves, apparently, from our own history. And the last reference on 4286, this question, “Where will it end? We have seen some compelling evidence that multiculturalism in the West is metastasising into a kind of ethnic self death wish. Have we seen this before and where did it end” and so forth.
Now, you say that is a good blog post, quite comprehensive but that was an unashamed expression in that blog post of the great replacement theory, white supremacism, whatever you want to call it, was it not?
A. Well, I think we should be precise about what we are going to call it. I would say also your previous comment that the writer complains about the French football team having too many blacks is not actually a statement that I read on this, I read here. He quotes from the Anti Defamation League, actually, celebrating the diversity of the French national team. I said that the blog post was good because comprehensive. I think it’s a comprehensive –
Q. Sorry, because what? I did not hear.
A. Because comprehensive. It’s a comprehensive statement of the HPD position. It’s not clear that –
Q. HPD is human biological diversity, right?
A. That’s correct. Myself and Nina were discussing the ideas of the right in general. This is what we are doing in the context of our chat here and this is an idea which they do believe in, and I think this is an idea which we should discuss and I don’t know exactly what to say about this blog post myself. I think the question is whether the facts that it presents, are they true or not.
Q. So, you read this one, did you?
A. I did read this, yes.
Q. Human biological diversity is a theory promoted by Nick Land, is it not?
A. Yes, he endorses this theory.
Q. It is a euphemism for eugenics, I suggest to you …
A. No, that’s not correct. It doesn’t have a, it doesn’t have any kind of a project attached to it, it is an attempt to describe the diversity, the biological diversity of the human world.
Human beings are diverse, human beings are organised into different population groups, depending on where they come from. People from the Andaman Islands have extremely good lung capacities, for example. This blog post claims that there is particular psychological characteristics associated with Western Europe to do with the alt group, marriage in particular, and it suggests that current immigration policies are an expression of that.
Now, personally I am not particularly interested in biology and I am not well placed to respond to these claims on their merits, but I do think that it is a comprehensive statement of this position. I would also add that it doesn’t seem to me to state it in a violent or extremist manner, it is mainly composed out of quotations, it is named after a concept from Stephen Pinker, who of course is a very well regarded scientist at, I believe, Harvard, it quotes and cites quite a lot of evidence. So if we want to reject this, then we can, but I think we nonetheless have to consider it carefully.
Q. Could you turn to page 3786 of the same tab, please, in the WhatsApp messages. 29th of August 2018, 11:41 in the morning. Now you are recommending something else to Ms Power. You just, you say, “Very long piece on Holocaust historiography here” with a link. I’d like to just look at that document as well. It is in the next tab in bundle 9 at 424. In your — I don’t think you need to turn this up. In your reply what you say about this document is that your defence of your reference to it is that you say you didn’t endorse it, or his views, but you were just expressing your view that he would be cancelled for expressing them. Just so you know what you said about it?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Now, I don’t need to spend as long on this one but what he is doing in this article, Mr Unz, is he is looking back at old articles that posited to varying degrees that the Holocaust did not happen and that Holocaust was a hoax and a fake. I think everybody is familiar with that line of, inverted commas, “thinking”. He spends a lot of the article criticising the overwhelming power, as he sees it, of the narrative that the Holocaust did indeed happen and that six million Jews were killed, okay? I just want to look at his conclusions, bearing in mind you are recommending this.
A. I deny recommending it, but okay.
Q. 6332, the penultimate page. In the middle of that page he says, as he is coming to the end of this article. “My growing realization 15-odd years ago that substantial numbers of knowledgeable people appeared to be secret adherents of Holocaust Denial certainly reshaped my own unquestioning assumptions on that subject. The occasional newspaper account of a Holocaust Denier being discovered and then flayed and destroyed by the media easily explained why the public positions on that subject remained so unanimous.” Then he says, if you drop down to just above that subheading, “For these reasons, I had grown quite suspicious and held a very open mind on Holocaust matters as I eventually began reading books on both sides of the issue.”
Under the heading, “The Future of Holocaust Denial,” the bottom paragraph. He says, “I have invested only a few weeks of reading and research in studying this large and complex …” the term that you used “large and complex subject, and my knowledge is obviously dwarfed by that of the considerable number of individuals who have devoted many years …” to it. Drop down to the next paragraph, “Any conclusions I have drawn are obviously preliminary ones, and the weight others should attach to these must absolutely reflect my strictly amateur status.
However, as an outsider exploring this contentious topic I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so. Despite this situation, the powerful media focus in support of the Holocaust over the last few decades has elevated it to a central position in Western culture.” And so forth. That conclusion that he draws is abhorrently anti-Semitic, is it not?
A. There are many things you could say about his conclusion. From my point of view what somehow interested me about this article is it actually never occurred to me that the Holocaust itself had a history and Unz’s article describes the history of Holocaust denial. I think that the Holocaust obviously did happen, I think the narrative is probably actually basically true, it an historical event, so as with all historical events people argue about them. But it is also true that the Holocaust has this status in our culture where to deny it is illegal in many countries. So, it is unusual from the point of view of historical events in that regard. Now, there are many historical events that you can actually deny, people used to be able to deny the divinity of Christ was a heretical crime and Holocaust denial has a similar status today. Unz is a Holocaust denier, that is without doubt.
Q. In your pleading, I can take you to it if you want, I just told you what it said, it said that the point you were making, the point you are making about him is that your warning he is likely to be cancelled for holding those views; yes?
A. Well, in fact he can’t be cancelled because he runs his own website and it seems like nobody can actually cancel him but the statement that I make is in reference to the awareness that obviously anybody who does deny the Holocaust clearly places themselves beyond the bounds of what is considered acceptable opinion in contemporary society, that’s I think clear.
Q. I am just going to read to you what you do say, in fairness. You say at 18.9, and your reply at page 259, tab 9. You say, “The First Claimant did not endorse the views of Unz but was expressing the belief that Unz would be ‘cancelled’ (that is, subjected to widespread condemnation potentially impacting upon his platforms for expressing his views and his livelihood) for expressing those views.” Now, the implication of that, as I read it, is that you don’t think it would be a good thing if his views were cancelled; correct?
A. I don’t have an opinion on it, to be honest. I think that whether good or not, I don’t know, I don’t agree with his views. I don’t know whether it is healthy for the Holocaust to have this kind of forbidden status in our culture or not. This is a view I share with Noam Chomsky, by the way, and multiple other actually often Jewish academics. In Israel the discussion is a little bit different to how it is outside of Israel. It is an extremely emotive and contentious topic, that is very clear. It is an horrific topic, frankly. I don’t personally understand exactly why people are motivated to deny the Holocaust or why that is an important thing for some people to do, some people become extremely obsessed with this topic, I am not one of them. I don’t like reading about historical atrocities of which the Holocaust is obviously the supreme example.
Q. Could we please go to bundle 3. You can keep bundle 5 open, but go to bundle 3, tab 51.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Forgive me, I was just making some notes. Can you repeat the reference, please?
MS EVANS: I’m sorry. It is bundle 3.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Yes.
MS EVANS: Tab 51.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Yes.
MS EVANS: Page 1815.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: Now, this is a tweet from ParallaxOptics that we looked at this morning, dated 29th of August 2018. You will see that he is enclosing a link there to this same article by Unz, American Pravda; do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. On page 1815. If you go back, please, to bundle 5, tab 131 where we were just looking at your communications with Ms Power.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Page 3786, where you recommend that blog is also the 29th of August, 2018. So, I suggest, and maybe I am wrong about this, but it is a bit of a coincidences that you were recommending the Unz blog by Mr Stokoe, Parallax Optics, on that day, weren’t you?
A. I think this is when Unz published his blog. It may be that I found this link through Parallax Optics’ tweet. I sent it to Nina because I was interested to know what she would say about it. As I said, you know, we are or were discussing the ideas of the online Right, of which ParallaxOptics is an example. You say that I recommended the article, I don’t think I recommended the article, I merely noted its existence. Parallax Optics’ statement, “Does the Holocaust even real?” I think is an accurate summary of the question of the blog post. I think the way in which the statement is sort of formulated, non-grammatically, is not completely irrelevant because there is also a question here about what we mean when we refer to the Holocaust. I think that it is indisputable that Hitler murdered millions of Jewish people. The term “Holocaust” obviously as you may know, it means burnt sacrifice, actually this is its literal etymology, it has a religious meaning. So when people are discussing this term, they are also discussing it in this kind of a register and this is one of the reasons why it is so complex to discuss and I think also one of the reasons why people are motivated to deny the Holocaust, as they once would deny religious realities.
Q. Well, that tweet there from Parallax Optics, the Holocaust one, was one of the ones which I think you admitted this morning was abhorrently anti-Semitic. Can we just turn, please, to the last reference in the WhatsApp messages for now? 3760 is the page, so it is back to bundle 5, tab 131.
A. I’m sorry, can you tell me the page again?
Q. 3760.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Now, below the second hole punch, on 3760, this is 18th of August 2018 at 2143. Ms Power says to you, “I wonder if the social disapproval for ‘racism’ is a psyop to stop people realising that there are alien and fairy races?” You say, “Good take.”
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Then, if you drop down a few lines, Ms Power says, “Also, that black and white were alien races and very different.” Then you say at the top of the next page, “Yes, you should not reveal this to most people. That’s definitely true – they can’t handle it.” If you go to the middle of that page, still carrying on the discussion, you then say at 21:47, “Personally I don’t see any reason why this point of view is less plausible …”, in other words, having alien black and white races, “… then many socially acceptable theories which are, in fact, demonstrably false.” The answer from Ms Power is, “You make a good point! Absolutely true.” Now, what you and she were discussing there is your theory that black and white races are alien to each other, wasn’t it?
A. It wasn’t a theory, it was in my opinion a preposterous statement that I was responding to in a highly tongue in cheek manner by suggesting that it was a very interesting idea. I think that, you know, we both thought that it was a ridiculous idea and this is basically we were exchanging on at this point.
Q. What we see on 3761, which I read out in the middle, is another example of you recognising that there are certain subjects that don’t get spoken about because they are regarded as being over the line, and racism is one of them, that’s what you mean about “I don’t see any reason why this one is less plausible than many socially acceptable theories.” You have just said at the top, “You should not reveal this to most people?”
A. Well, that was a joke because what I was implying there was, in a way, that this actually ridiculous statement was somehow plausible in compelling theory. This is why, this is —
Q. Just look at the bottom line of the page, 3761. You say, “… I think the most important single insight is the recognition that one can’t speak like this with everyone, indeed that such spaces as these must be carved-out of a hostile world and then defended and protected … therefore the history of occultism.” So, again, it is a recognition, isn’t it, that you are both discussing something that is regarded as socially unacceptable, racism, because you are discussing it in a way which indicates a particular view about the difference between black and white races; correct?
A. Our discussion is more complex than this. Racism is actually frequently discussed in our society, it is arguably discussed endlessly in our society. I think in an actually highly problematic way, I think in a way which encourages division between races which is extremely counterproductive. I think it is certainly true that our society, especially today, and to a greater extent than before is structured by taboos, it is structured by lines that one cannot cross, topics that one is not supposed to discuss because of the ease in which people who are motivated to do so can take discussions out of context, can read malicious intentions into them, can claim that one is endorsing something when one is actually simply discussing something. This is a phenomenon of contemporary society, it is a phenomenon that has been massively accelerated by the internet.
Now, this is also a phenomenon actually that goes back, again historically a very long way, Socrates, you may recall, was himself executed for questioning the taboos of Athenian society, they said he was corrupting the youth of Athens because he was challenging people’s opinions and he was trying to have open discussions with them. This is the nature of human communication, it is possible to misunderstand things, it is very difficult to discuss things, it is very difficult to critically discuss things, you do need spaces in which people can critically discuss ideas and can critically discuss ideas also that some people find reprehensible, abhorrent, highly problematic, insane, we should discuss all of those things and we need spaces to do these things.
With Nina, my friend, we have such a space because she understands what I believe and she knows that I don’t believe the things that you are imputing to me and I also trust her mind and we discuss these subjects critically; we don’t endorse them. The notion that human races are actually alien races and fairy races is obviously not a serious statement, we also tell each other jokes and sometimes we laugh, this is how we amuse ourselves.
MS EVANS: My Lady, I don’t know if that’s a convenient moment, if the transcriber would like a break because I am going to move on now to deal with the harassment part of the case.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Let’s take five minutes.
(15.09)
(A short adjournment)
(15.18)
MS EVANS: As I said, my Lady, I am going to move on to the topic of the tweets, largely tweets and media material which my client claims to be harassment of him. Mr Miller, this period starts, as you know, in late July 2018. I am going to begin asking you about that early period and then move through more or less chronologically. The early period being the period when you first start sending tweets to Mr Turner, okay?
A. When I responded to his defeat about LD-50 —
Q. We will come to that. But before I start, I must make clear again that based on the witness statement that you served you have not given any evidence to explain why you sent most of the specific or individual tweets that.the Defendant complains about, for the entire period covered; you understand?
A. Not really, no. I believe I actually have explained why I responded to the Defendant and what my motives were.
Q. You have explained, yes, you have explained in what I would describe as a general way, you haven’t addressed specific tweets other than a handful here or there but that’s something that is a matter for you but it means that I will have to ask you questions off the documents which is a fairly forensic process because these are Twitter threads. So, I am going to have to go through it and I hope keep it as unpainful as possible for everybody concerned, including me. So, where we need to start is in bundle 2, tab 41, page 1025.
A. I don’t know which —
Q. It is bundle 2, tab 41, page 1025. At the top it should say, “26-27 July 2018: Replies to @MatthausAnsatz by Defendant.” Do you have that?
A. Uh-huh, yes.
Q. I just want to use this to explain to you and to my Lady how this began because it is tweets you need to understand in sequence. These pages are ones where you read them from the top down because they are screenshots of the threads. In the middle there is a photograph of some people dancing and that is part of a tweet from Mr Turner, July 27th. He is attaching a link there to an article that he wrote on meta modernism, see? That then resulted in he and one other person in particular, but probably others, class warmonger, engaging in a Twitter discussion. Fine.
If you turn over the page you will see it goes on for a few pages, to 1028, still July 27th, we don’t need to worry about the content. Page 1029, what is missing, which is critical now in this chronology, still 27th of July, is that my client, Mr Turner, at this point, at the start of the top of page 1029 sends his tweet about the LD-50 Gallery and that tweet no longer exists because he deleted it after the pile-on that he experienced. But he describes it in his witness statement at paragraph 97 and I will tell you what it said. He said, “In my tweet I made reference to LD-50 as an example of Fascist tendencies within the art world and referred to the gallery as, ‘an explicitly alt-right (AKA alt-Nazi) gallery.'” So, that is the tweet that he sends which then prompts many responses. You see one here from dark mutualist, essentially the same person he has been talking to before, cyborg_nomade, who says “Lol, seriously? Shut down LD-50 was a moral panic beyond anything I could imagine plausible at the time.” And so forth. You enter the fray at this point, correct?
A. I think so, yes.
Q. I don’t expect you to remember the exact sequencing but what we see below this is a whole series of deleted tweets, those tweets were the tweets that you targeted at the Defendant in response to his LD-50 tweet, correct?
A. No, I don’t believe that’s the correct description.
Q. Those tweets came from you, can we establish that?
A. I don’t believe that — yes, they came, some of them at least did. I don’t know if all of them did. I don’t agree that my responses were me targeting the Defendant, I was responding to his claim, which incidentally he previously denied in his pleadings, that he had said that LD-50 was Nazi space, and it was not a Nazi space and I felt compelled to respond to his claim that it was because that is an extremely hyperbolic claim with —
Q. Sorry —
A. — with extremely damaging consequences for anybody who is, who is labelled in this way.
Q. Well, we will look at hyperbole in a moment. But, just going back to Mr Turner’s witness statement because obviously your tweets were deleted by him so we don’t know what is said exactly but his recollection as recorded in paragraph 98 of his statement. He says, “I immediately began to be the subject of several tweets (referred to online as a ‘pile-on’) from people who appeared to be supporters of LD50. A dozen or so of these tweets (which were subsequently deleted by Mr Miller before I could preserve them) came from (the handle) @dcxtv, an anonymous account.” He explains that he didn’t know who you were or that that was your account at that point.
Now, his recollection, going back to his paragraph 98, is that the gist of those messages from you, as far as he can remember, was broadly consistent with your later attacks, which we do have reference there, and we will come to. He describes them as abusive and offensive insults which claimed that I was a deranged subhuman and a normal fascist, or words to that effect. Do you accept that that was the tenor of the tweets —
A. No, that is a completely false statement. My initial responses to the Defendant were polite. I asked him whether he had ever visited the gallery before, I sent him the article that I had written about the gallery, this contained also the same handle of my Twitter account and my name. I was not impolite to him, I did not insult him, my initial responses to him were in no way abusive. I asked him whether he had ever attended the gallery. He admitted that he hadn’t and I said that I think that therefore he should withdraw his allegation because it is an extremely serious allegation. It was obvious that the Defendant had no basis for making this claim, as he himself admitted. He said he looked at the website and this was enough for him to form his opinion.
Q. Do you —
A. Now, the website of the gallery actually contained no indication that it was a Neo-Nazi gallery. At the time the website contained only a list of its previous exhibitions. So I knew that the Defendant’s statement was extremely, well, in my opinion it was ill-founded and it was hyperbolic and it was, itself, libelous and I thought that it was very disappointing when he conceded that he hadn’t visited the gallery, that he was nonetheless still unwilling to withdraw his accusation that it was a Nazi gallery. The Defendant subsequently denied ever claiming that LD-50 was a Nazi gallery. I think that he didn’t understand that actually I had, for whatever reason, a copy of the tweet in which he did, he attempted to conceal that fact because he wanted to say that my reaction to him was in response to him nearly claiming, this is in the Defendant’s solicitor’s pleadings, nearly claiming that LD-50 was an alt-right space, that’s not what he said, he said it was a Nazi space.
Q. Do you agree that his message about LD-50 didn’t say anything about you?
A. Yes, I do agree.
Q. If you look at the bottom of page 1029, you see Mr Turner’s reaction to all your tweets. It says, “”My god, you finally triggered me.” That is at 2.34 pm. Could you please take up bundle 5 again, tab 131, which is the WhatsApp messages. Page 3691?
A. What is the tab?
Q. 131.
A. Yes, and what is the page?
Q. 3691, the first page.
A. Yes.
Q. Now, at the top you will see it is 27th of July 2018, which is the same date as these tweets and it is 13:50 and Ms Power says to you, “Luke Turner currently discussing LD-50 stupidly on that twitter btw.”
You say, “Thanks for the heads up.” So, is that what made you get involved, that tip off?
A. Yes, well I think I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
Q. Then, by the first hole punch, at 14:41, which is seven minutes after Mr Turner tweeted, “My god, you finally triggered me” Ms Power said to you, “Loving your exchange with LT.” Do you see that?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. So, she was aware at that point, when they have been deleted, but she was aware that you had sent all these tweets to Mr Turner, correct?
A. She was aware that I had sent a series of totally cool tweets to Mr Turner, in which I had said that because he didn’t actually know anything about the topic he should refrain from accusing things or people of being Nazis because that’s a very serious allegation.
Q. Did you know, at this point, anything about Mr Turner?
A. No.
Q. Did you know about his, He Will Not Divide Us artwork?
A. I knew about the He Will Not Divide Us project, I knew about it because of its association with Shia LaBoeuf, I didn’t know anything about Mr Turner.
Q. You didn’t Google him before you started sending messages?
A. No.
Q. Can you please go to, I am afraid it is jumping about a bit. Bundle 1, tab 8, 155, which is in annex 2, I think, to the defence.
A. Yes.
Q. Now this is a tweet, I think we very briefly looked at this morning, from ParallaxOpticswho joins the Twitter argument that has been going on, 27th of July. I don’t think the timings here are necessarily always reliable because of the international settings but this is after the bombardment by you that we have just been looking at?
A. I don’t agree that this is a bombardment by me, this was me responding to claims being made by the Defendant, which were extremely serious, that LD-50 was a Nazi gallery.
Q. You will see that it says on this page, it is a reply to you, replying to dcxtv and tagging in Luke turner himself. Luke_Turner is a, ’50 Stalins!!!’ Variety, ‘radical’ artists … ” And so forth. “Engagement beyond ad hominem – he is probably a hom*osexual – is a misguided waste of time.” Below that, in the likes, there is a like from you; correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Why did you like it?
A. Because I agree that actually engagement with him was probably a waste of time.
Q. Did you think that the language that ParallaxOpticshad used was offensive?
A. I mean I thought it was just, whatever, like he’s probably, I don’t care about this, it’s not interesting to me. I mean, I don’t know — he makes a number of statements here, he draws attention to the fact that Mr Turner is a far-left extremist actually and I think the main point of this tweet was, it is worthless to engage with him.
Q. If you turn to 156, please, the next page?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Now, this is a Twitter report of your, some of your deleted tweets after Mr Turner had reported you to Twitter —
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. — for your hateful conduct, and you have been suspended, you were then suspended for 24 hours?
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. This is the only record that survives of some of the tweets that you sent in those first couple of days, as I understand it. Certainly as far on the — well, it is in fact not the only record, but one of the few. We have three there where you say, “Another deleted tweet by pathologically dishonest careerist retard sh*tbag @Luke_Turner.” You say, “@Luke_Turner, I gave you an exit, and you choose not to take it. Why did you delete your tweets, co*cksucker? Dumb-as-f*ck dishonest propaganda hack co*cksucker @Luke_Turner deleted these tweets – how about an apology and admission you were wrong?” Now, you say in your witness statement that you were annoyed that he had deleted his tweet, correct?
A. I was annoyed because what subsequently happened here was the Defendant deleted his initial tweet, and he also deleted his admission that he had never visited the gallery. He issued a new tweet, in which he said that he had been attacked, for no reason, out of the blue by LD-50 supporting accelerationists and this was a misrepresentation of what had happened, which the Defendant actually persisted with for quite a long period of time. It also stated in his report that he eventually made to the police. Now, the Defendant reported these tweets. I recognise these tweets are intemperate and insulting. I was angry myself. The reason why I was angry is because I was myself triggered actually because ever since I had protested against the anti-fascist activists I had been targeted by them, I had been threatened by them. An Israeli book shop in which I was supposed to speak had been targeted and closed down, an anti-fascist activist named Justin Katko, who threatened to cut out my tongue to prevent me from speaking so I was very familiar with the, let’s say, anti-fascist position on these matters which Mr Turner, it seemed to me, was rehearsing and this was why I became so angry so quickly. I thought that what he was doing was extremely disingenuous and I certainly regret my statements. I think the fact that that he did report them already gives you an indication that my previous tweets were not of this nature, had they been he would have reported those tweets. I think he would have reported them immediately. The Defendant has no compunction about issuing reports. He has been doing that for a long period of time and has continued do it throughout the duration of these proceedings.
Q. If you, please, go to bundle 2 now, tab 40. It is page 862. This is a tweet, 28th of July 9.43 by you replying to Mr Turner, Mr Turner having said to you, “The only person you’re hammering …” this is about your previous tweets “… is yourself. Your abusive hom*ophobic and ableist tweets have been reported.” You say, “He just can’t tell the truth.” What did that mean?
A. I don’t think my tweets to him were hom*ophobic and ableist, to be frank, because as far as I understood the Defendant is not gay. I appreciate that I am using the term co*cksucker, which if I did direct it to a gay person could be construed as anti — I’m sorry, as hom*ophobic. But I wasn’t responding to the Defendant because I thought he was gay and I don’t know that the word, “retard” is actually ableist either. My tweets were insulting but they were not politically motivated in having an ideological component in the way that he said that they did, I thought that was also a dishonest statement.
Q. At this point you changed your profile picture, didn’t you, to the one that you see, it is actually on the previous page, bizarrely, under the, “Violating Our Rules”, sorry, the page we looked at before, 156. So you change it to the picture, an image of a zombie, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the reason for that?
A. Well, because I had been somehow suspended and it was like I was sort of rising from the dead in a way. But I think that this statement, or rather this image, you know, also was somehow a recognition of the, somehow unconscious or coordinated activity that was now proceeding basically also on my behalf because I had been triggered by the Defendant too.
Q. Can we go to the next tab, 41. 1033. Again, just to give some of the chronology here. 1033 is still 28th of July and it is Mr Turner saying, “So, weirdly in the past 24 hours I started getting targeted by a bunch of LD-50 Gallery – supporting far-right accelerationists on here. (Charming).” Did you see that at the time, do you remember?
A. I do remember seeing that and I remember thinking that this was a complete misrepresentation of what had actually happened. He says, weirdly I started getting targeted. He had made a statement about LD-50 and people had responded to it. He claimed LD-50 was a Nazi gallery. This is a statement that people responded to. He is not worriedly getting targeted, people are responding to his statements.
Q. There is no reference to you in his tweet, is there?
A. No, he is referring to everybody who is responding to him.
Q. I don’t think I need to take it up, turn it up. But you will know from this morning that on this date, 27th of July — 28th of July, you and Ms Power had gone out for an evening with Mr Stokoe and his girlfriend, remember?
A. I don’t really remember but …
Q. On the 20 — there is a record of you on the 29th in the morning discussing the fact that you had been on the evening before. When you went out with them on the evening of the 28th of July, Mr Stokoe and his girlfriend, did you discuss the Defendant?
A. No, I don’t think so.
Q. And so what we are going to see after this is a whole sequence of Tweets which show that, despite having been suspended by Twitter for hateful conduct, what you did was double down by accelerating your targeting of Mr Turner, correct?
A. This is not correct. In fact, what happened when I was suspended was another person joined this thread, this is Deanna Havas, and it was the defendant who escalated it and he began to target her. This is what happened next.
Q. Can we go to 1035 of the same tab, please? You will see that this is the 30th of July, you will see at the top there are three Tweets there which are deleted ones from you and then you will see an engagement between Mr Turner and somebody else who had been taking up your position, by the look of it, and then at the bottom Mr Turner says, “DCXTV [which is obviously a reference to your account] is posting this in response to their account getting temporarily suspended due to a series of wholly unprovoked abusive, bigoted attacks on me. You may want to think how retweeting/replying strongly implies enthusiasm for them calling me a ‘fascist’. Not a good look.” Now, that was the defendant’s response at that point to your previous targeting of him, correct?
A. No, I don’t agree I was targeting the defendant. I was responding to the defendant’s claim, which was baseless, that LD50 was a Nazi gallery. Now, the defendant says here I was temporarily suspended due to a series of wholly unprovoked abusive, bigoted attacks on me. My responses to his claim were not unprovoked. It’s a very provocative statement to claim that someone is a Nazi, especially if you’re an anti-fascist activist, because the claim carries with it an implicit threat of violence. The claim is that Nazis can and should be physically attacked. This is the position of the defendant and his associates, so …
Q. Correct me if I am wrong, but out of interest, you are not suing in this action any more, are you, on the allegation that came later of you being a Neo-Nazi?
A. No, we’re not suing on this basis.
Q. Could you go over to 1036? 30th of July, still, this is your reply to Mr Turner’s, I would suggest, moderate explanation, and you say, “Pathological liar and spineless coward. Luke Turner simply does not know when to quit.” That was within 10 minutes of his message. What was it with the aggressive language?
A. Well, first of all, his statement is untrue because he’s claiming that he has been targeted with unprovoked abuse. This is not true. The defendant provoked this exchange. The defendant is claiming LD50 is a Nazi gallery. I defended the Gallery on the basis that it wasn’t a Nazi gallery. As a consequence of defending it, I was really very viciously abused for an extremely long period of time by people who actually subsequently became very close associates of the defendant, specifically an individual named Andrew Osborne. I understood that what the defendant was doing corresponded to the behaviour of those activists. So, as I said, I was triggered by this. I think I was actually, looking back, somewhat traumatized by my experiences at the hands of these activists. It’s very traumatizing to be called a Nazi by a mob of people screaming at you and threatening to beat you up. This is what happened in February 2017, this is what happened to me.
Q. But you are not suing on that allegation.
A. I’m explaining why my statements were intemperate, because I had seen this behaviour before. It was the same kind of provocative issuing of highly inflammatory claims and anybody objecting to it then becomes the subsequent target, and this is the implicit threat that the defendant makes to Eli Schiff. He says, “Not a good look.” It’s not a good look to defend me, basically. And the defendant, actually, has quite consistently then actually himself targeted anybody defending my position, and the second claimant is the best example of that.
Q. But, you see, what I do not understand is, the way that Twitter works is that you could not possibly know all the targeting that he was receiving, so why did you put yourself in a position to judge whether he was lying about it? How did you know?
A. Well, he is lying about people targeting him unprovoked, with respect to this particular exchange. He has stated at the beginning of the exchange that LD50 is a Nazi gallery. This is the provocation I am responding to. He says here, “DCXTV is posting this in response to unprovoked attacks.” My responses to his claim were not unprovoked. That is an untrue statement and that didn’t make me angry.
Q. Again for the chronology, after Mr Turner’s response there at the bottom, he did not engage directly with you or with Deanna Havas until early September, correct?
A. That is not correct.
Q. Well, your counsel will be able to correct that if I am wrong.
A. Subsequently, what happened, I believe on July 29th, is Deanna Havas responded to the defendant and she said something along the lines of, “What happened to HWNDU?”, which was his project, “He Will Not Divide Us”, he said, “It’s still going strong and resisting the kind of bigoted, unprovoked abusive attacks …” that I’m targeting him with. Somebody posted a picture of a cartoon frog. Deanna Havas Liked that image and as a result the defendant began to target Deanna Havas and in fact, actually, destroyed Deanna Havas’ life and her career, because he was so incensed by her Liking this image and by being laughed at, and this is really also what then subsequently …
Q. On to page 1039, and we will see a bit of that. To be fair to you, the defence that you have provided in your witness statement for what you did is almost exclusively about, apparently, defending Miss Havas.
A. That’s correct.
Q. So, let’s see the sorts of things that she was saying.
A. Which page is this?
Q. 1039 of the same tab. She is, I think, an American artist, is she? She may be based in Britain.
A. She’s an American artist, she is half-Jewish, her father was Jewish, she’s the child of two refugees from Communism, she supported Trump, she is a funny girl.
Q. And you followed her on Twitter and she followed you on Twitter.
A. Yes.
Q. This exchange here I would just like to take you through. So, it starts – again, this is a different thread now. It is the one from you saying to Luke Turner, “A pathological liar and spineless cowards.” Now, your friend, Deanna Havas, pops up and says, “Laugh out loud. Whatever happened to HNDU …” and Mr Turner, in what I would suggest is a very measured way, just says, “Hi Deanna. It’s still going strong and resisting the normalization of the kind of bigoted behaviour dcxtv has been targeting me with on here.” What is wrong with that?
A. I have not been targeted with bigoted behaviour. I’m responding to his claim that LD50 is a Nazi gallery. I am responding intemperately. I do reject, rather, I do regret the language that I used, but there was no way in which my language was bigoted. It was merely angry.
Q. And then someone else joins in called BasedBrooklyn – that was another account you followed, was it not?
A. I don’t remember, to be honest, but maybe I subsequently began to follow him.
Q. And BasedBrooklyn deploys this Pepe the Frog depiction of a group running away with a He Will Not Divide us flag – you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Which you keep insisting on calling a cartoon frog, but I think you have already accepted that, at least in some quarters, Pepe the Frog is regarded as an Alt-Right symbol, correct?
A. In some quarters, that’s true, yes.
Q. And then you see the Tweet below is Mr Turner, again, totally temperate language, back to Deanna Havas, “Curious why you liked this”, because she Liked that Pepe the Frog tweet. Mr Turner says, “Curious why you liked this. Perhaps you’re unaware of the reality of the Neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party being responsible for this?” She says, “Because it was funny” and he says, “But this is a depiction of an anti-Semitic campaign and actual crimes committed against us by members of a violent, self-described Neo-Nazi group, the TWP. Is this genuinely funny to you?” And she says, “Chill out, bro. It was just a meme.” Now, did you see this thread?”
A. Yes.
Q. Did you not then go and look up Mr Turner and look into what he was saying?
A. I looked at …
Q. About what had happened?
A. I think I probably did click on his link. It was really quite confusing, to be honest. It consists of an assemblage of images and chat logs that he somehow acquired, I don’t know how, in order to say something about these particular people, but the assertion that the image is the depiction of an anti-Semitic campaign by members of a Neo-Nazi group, again does not seem to be true. The image, as I understand it, refers to this response to his project, specifically this phase of the project that began after the initial phase was ended by the museum, because it was provoking violent reactions, in which internet users managed to track down this flag using a complex series of techniques, including triangulating the jet trails of airplanes and so forth – this featured dozens of people, it was not the work of the Neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party. The Traditionalist Worker Party …
Q. I am sorry, can I stop you? So, you did look it up, then, did you, you did look at what had happened?
A. I did subsequently look at what had happened, and what I understood was that his description of it was not accurate or honest.
Q. And you were to be the judge of that, were you?
A. I have an opinion on this matter and I was looking at mainstream media accounts. The Traditionalist Worker Party are never mentioned in response as far as I know, except by the defendant, in response to his project. His project was in a certain way extremely successful as a public art project, it produced a very significant reaction from the internet. The response to the project, as I understand it, may have involved people who are Nazis or crazy or anti-Semitic in some form, but the response to the project itself was not motivated by these things, it was motivated by some kind of relationship that he established with the internet, and the internet reacted to him.
Now, the defendant has produced a number of statements about what happened in terms of his project, in terms of He Will Not Divide Us, these statements do not seem to be borne out by third party or objective accounts of what had happened, and I think that what happens next in this exchange is really illustrative of the extremely vindictive nature of the defendant with respect to Deanna Havas because it was clear from what she says here that she meant no harm by what she was saying. You know, I think that she was also going on the mainstream media accounts of what happened with respect to this project. She doesn’t want any trouble from the defendant, but what the defendant does next is, he produces this page about Deanna Havas which is designed to smear her, despite the fact that she is herself from a Jewish background, as an anti-Semitic Nazi, specifically in order to destroy her career, and that’s what he does a day later.
Q. We will come to that in a minute because it needs to be put much more accurately than you have done. If you could turn over to 1040, please? This is a continuation of the thread we have just been looking at between Mr Turner and Havas, which you were aware of and no doubt followed, and it is basically Mr Turner carrying on explaining what happened and Miss Havas basically being, I think, even putting it neutrally, quite abusive back, saying, “Don’t tell me what to rethink, but do have a nice day …” He says, “Not good enough.” He says, “You’re complicit in anti-Semitic violence … whether you’re Jewish or not.” She says, “Do spare me the ‘woke’ lingo and do me a favour …” and so forth. She, of course, also refers to it as a cartoon, a phrase that you both seem to think is appropriate. And then at the bottom, Mr Turner says, “It’s a bit harder when you have to have security because you have violent Neo-Nazi groups posing credible threats to your safety on a daily basis across several countries. But, yeah: no, not good enough.”
Now, did you still think that you were the one in a position to know if he was telling the truth about his experience?
A. I think that, based on my experience of what he had said, with respect to LD50, about it being the Nazi gallery, a claim that he had made with very little basis, and furthermore his claims that I had attacked him unprovoked and, furthermore, his claims that my comments to him were bigoted comments, I had a serious basis for doubting the credibility of the defendant by this point. Now, you say that Deanna Havas’ comments were clearly abusive. I think she says, “Don’t tell me what to think. Have a nice day.” I don’t think that’s a clearly abusive statement. I think that’s a statement which says, “Okay, I don’t want to get involved in this, I didn’t mean any harm by it, please leave me alone” and this is in fact what Deanna Havas will then continue to say for the subsequent days. The defendant threatens Deanna Havas. He says her response is not good enough, he says that her liking these cartoon frogs – and, I’m sorry, but they are cartoon frogs, that is in the end what they are – makes her complicit in anti-Semitic violence.
Now, this is an extraordinary statement. She has liked an image, basically, unthinkingly, which, as far as I understand, is referring to a very big response to the He Will Not Divide Us project, which is not reported as being anti-Semitic in any mainstream account, which is not reported as being the work of Neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Group in any mainstream account. She just did that, she just wants to go about her day. This is not enough for the defendant. He begins to threaten her, he says he has to have security because he has credible threats to his safety – and these statements, also we have asked for corroborating evidence and they have not been provided, by the way, in the context of our long preparation for this trial. I don’t know what credible threats to the defendant’s safety he has actually received. He has referred to, and you also referred to in your opening statement, a murder plot in Finland. We haven’t really seen evidence of a murder plot in Finland, so …
Q. Can we just move on because we are going to be here for all week if we …
A. Well, fair enough, but …
Q. … examine every thread at this length.
A. Well, as you say, we should be forensic.
Q. I will show you plenty of examples of Miss Havas being intemperate. Can you go to tab 40 please, page 866?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: If we are about to leave this thread, I would find it quite helpful to have a rather clearer reproduction of this picture on page 1039.
MS EVANS: 1039?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Yes, because it is quite hard to make out.
MS EVANS: Yes, I am sure we can do that. You mean the one with Pepe the Frog?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: That is the one I mean.
MS EVANS: Yes, I think these have been reproduced so many times …
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Hard to see.
MS EVANS: Are there any others at the moment? If you can just let us know if there are any others?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: I will do. Thank you.
MS EVANS: We will do that overnight.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: Moving on, I am afraid, through this riveting bundle of Tags and Tweets, tab 40, page 866. Same day, 30th July. Mr Miller, I do not want to stop you from saying what you want to, but I am going to try and speed up, otherwise we will not meet our timetable, and that requires you to keep your answers shorter, too, if that is all right.
A. I will endeavour to do so.
Q. Here, we start with this BasedBrooklyn account again, and it says, “Luke Turner is a Nazi sh*t.” Do you see that?
A. Um hum.
Q. You then join in below and you say that, “Luke Turner is, specifically, a Normie Fascist. An institutionally-supported propagandist, his limited intelligence and narrow ethical horizon is circ*mscribed by a conformist-narcissistic ideology that prevents him from participating in any truth …” and so forth, and it has been Liked, you see below, by your friend, Miss Havas, and you have tagged Mr Turner, so …
A. No, I simply respond to the thread.
Q. Yes, that means he gets it, does it not?
A. But I’m responding to the thread, I’m not specifically tagging him.
Q. Yes, but, again, this is offensive, completely gratuitous language, is it not?
A. Well, to be honest, I’m also trying to move away from the Nazi statement which I think is in fact also unfair. I don’t want to start calling people Nazis, not even the defendant, so I’m saying this about him instead. Is this language insulting? Yes, it is insulting. I don’t deny I insulted the defendant. He is at this point accusing Deanna Havas of being complicit in anti-Semitic crimes against him because she Liked this image.
Q. In an endeavour to speed this up, let me break this down, so that you understand and so I do not have to keep putting it to you for every Tweet, okay? Your complaint is that you think that Mr Turner was lying. My response to that on behalf of Mr Turner is that you were not in a position to judge that. Your other complaint is that he was expressing an opinion ultimately, at the start of this, about LD50, which was false/bad, whatever ultimately you want to call it, but it was an opinion, something that you, I think, you agree, value as part of the freedom of speech. Correct?
A. Um.
Q. And that includes a description of Neo-Nazi or Alt-Nazi. Now, I am also going to have to keep putting to you at every Tweet that every time you fight back and explain why you have said it, I will be saying to you, “But, what about this …” – so, can we take it as a given that every time you defend one like that – and, incidentally, as I said at the beginning, you have not done this in your witness statement in respect of the Tweets, save for a few – I am putting to you that you are wrong to think that you can justify these Tweets by some all-knowing position at the time about the truth.
A. I’m not claiming to possess such a position.
Q. Fine.
A. I am saying that the defendant’s exchange with me had to me already revealed that he was not credible in the statements he was making because he had mischaracterised our initial exchange. I thought that his statements with respect to Deanna Havas were clearly hyperbolic and unbelievably exaggerated, because he is accusing her of being complicit in activists crimes against him, based on Liking a Tweet that had no activists content. There’s nothing in the image that she Liked that makes any reference to Jewishness or otherwise.
Q. Let’s move on and see some other examples, then. If you can go to tab 41, 1041? Still on the 30th of July. There is Miss Havas at the top, saying, “Some OLDER WHITE CIS HET male from CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS just called me PRIVILEGED.” That was a response to Mr Turner, who was a student at Saint Martins. He then says, “No, I said it was your privilege for evidently never having had your life put in direct danger by anti-Semites …” and so forth. So, he is making the same point, which is that it is his experience and story that he has experienced anti-Semitic abuse, and that is why he is explaining to her that that is why he takes the position he does.
A. You say he’s explaining. I think he is claiming; he is claiming that his life has been put in direct danger. I don’t see any evidence that his life has been …
Q. That is his experience.
A. That’s a claim that he is making. He also claims in this Tweet that she is laughing at depictions of anti-Semitic abuse. I don’t agree that the image that she Liked is …
Q. Could you go to tab 40?
A. I’m sorry, may I finish?
MR WALKER: I am so sorry but this has happened repeatedly, so I rise to my feet reluctantly, but where my learned friend has gone to the trouble of asking a question, I wonder whether we could hear the answer? If they are long, that is fine, but he has been repeatedly cut off today.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Well, I am paying extremely close attention to this witness and I am looking forward to reading the transcript of his evidence also. I might have intervened myself before now but we do have to make progress.
MR WALKER: I understand that but it has got to the point where I feel as though I have to express my concern.
MS EVANS: I think we were on – yes, could we go to tab 40, 868? I will certainly try not to cut you off. It is only fair to give you time to read it. Now, this is Miss Havas at the top. She is responding, is she not, to a message from Oscillating? And it seems clear from this exchange that she believes that this was operated by Mr Turner, correct?
A. It’s a hypothesis that we discuss.
Q. Because of your response below as well?
A. It seemed to be an account which was almost exclusively interested in the defendant’s art projects and, indeed, replicated his language with respect to that in a significant way, and it was accusing her of being an anti-Semite following his claims.
Q. She just says, “Go f*ck yourself”, but not just that, she puts in a Swastika, a Star of David, the Hammer and Sickle and all the rest of it.
A. Yes, it’s a series of symbols.
Q. And that was directed at somebody that it would appear that she, and I think we agree, you, purported to – it is not very pleasant, though, is it?
A. Well, our exchange with respect to this point actually occurs subsequent to her statement, so I don’t know who she thought that was at this time. It’s not very pleasant to be called an anti-Semite. To be frank, I would prefer somebody told me to go f*ck myself than somebody called me an anti-Semite. I think anti-Semite is a much more vicious charge than simply saying, “f*ck you” to somebody, and I think Deanna Havas didn’t appreciate being called an anti-Semite, not least because she is herself at least partially Jewish.
Q. Could we go to the next page please, 867? This is a different thread, it starts with you and the one we have already seen about Mr Turner being a Normie Fascist and so forth, and then we see the account, Depopulator, one which we have looked at, and the Onehundredpercenteuropean joins in as one of your followers and then at the bottom …
A. Well, he was one of Deanna Havas’ followers, actually.
Q. One of her’s as well. If you look at the bottom, at what you then say: “A low pressure area, a sucking emptiness. He will be portentously anonymous, faceless, colourless. He will – probably – be born with smooth disks of skin instead of eyes. He always knows where it is going like a virus knows. He doesn’t need eyes.” What did that – first of all, that was you directing that at Mr Turner, was it not?
A. Well, not precisely, no. This is actually a quote from William Burrows, from his novel Naked Lunch, he describes …
Q. But why was it in this thread?
A. It was a response to this thread, it was describing the figure of the Sender as characterised by William Burrows. The Senders are one of four political parties of Interzone, they are characterised by a kind of endless broadcast, not unlike the defendant, but I’m not specifically accusing him of anything in this context. He’s not named and I’m mentioning William Burrows’ views of this topic that we’re discussing.
MR WALKER: The difficulty with the interjection is that the witness was just in the middle of an answer which quoted a piece of art called Naked Lunch, then he was cut across. I am seeking to assist the court and I assume the answers that he gives the court are going to be of assistance, and I wonder whether he could be asked again, “What do you mean by – what was the reference to Naked Lunch?” before he was cut across?
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: I am interested in the direction of questioning, which is seeking to probe the extent to which this is directed at the defendant. There must be a concise way of answering that question.
MR WALKER: In my submission, part of the problem is, although it was changed in the last question, some of these questions are open and they invite a descriptive answer. There was – my ears perked up because I am familiar with the piece of work. When it was cut across, this is a stressful situation, in my submission, for the witness and he has been cut across and that has happened all day.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Well, let us just pause and collect ourselves and ask the open question again and I will listen attentively to the answer, but may I encourage you to keep it as concise and directed to the question as possible?
MR WALKER: Thank you.
MS EVANS: I will ask the question again that, as my Lady says, matters most, because I think you did answer it but you veered off a bit: was this targeted at Mr Turner? It may be Mr Turner among others, but was it targeted including to Mr Turner?
A. No, I don’t think so. It attempted to describe a kind of type. It doesn’t refer specifically to him.
Q. Could we look at a reference, I am sorry, in a different bundle, bundle 5, tab 124, page 3654? I think it is just a single page. Now, this is from a Tweet, I think, but, anyway, it is on the 8chan platform, which I suggest is popular with Alt-Right groups. It is the 17th of December 2017. The reason I am showing it to you is because of the similarity in the language, I would suggest. So, you will see they targeted this, whoever sent this and I am not saying it is you, at Mr Turner: “You will never ever be white, Luke. Never. Look in the mirror at your dead jude eyes. Notice the parlor of your sunken cheeks and hollow eye sockets. I laugh at your rat heeb face from across the planet.” If we go back in the other bundle, I am afraid, to your message that we were just looking at …
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Sorry, the reference again, please?
MS EVANS: Sorry, it is bundle 2, tab 40 and it is 867.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Thank you.
MS EVANS: The choice of your quote there from the Naked Lunch is, nevertheless, of a theme, is it not, in respect of the reference to, ” … dead jude eyes …” and, “smooth disks of skin …” and so forth, with what I suggest is a form of anti-Semitic description which I have just shown you on the 8chan message?
A. Well, there’s a critical difference between these comments, which is that, whereas the comment on 8chan specifically makes anti-Semitic statements, my comment does not. My comment refers to a mode of being which has no ethnic characteristics at all. It in fact is some sort of non-human phenomena concerning the politics of communication.
Q. Can we go on to – actually, staying in bundle 5, at 141, page 3913? This is within the archive that Mr Turner created of the various Tweets and messages from Miss Havas to him which you mentioned. Do you recognise it?
A. Um hum.
Q. And I just wanted to highlight and ask for your reaction to some of the images in it which Mr Turner has included because he regarded them as being anti-Semitic, Neo-Nazi and so forth. You will see on 3913 there is an image of somebody using a paint brush to create what must be a Hitler moustache. Below that, you see there is the image of, I do not know if it is a magazine cover, but anyway it is a mocked up image of Hitler doing a Hitler salute, which you will notice has been Liked by Miss Havas. And then if you go over the page there is Pepe the Frog again, if you go on to 3916, there is the, “Go f*ck yourself” with a Swastika which has been included, and then a couple below that, a reference to, “You’re a socialist from Goldsmiths. Laugh out loud. Kill yourself.” And then there is a reference to her issuing, “A Fatwa against all socialists from Goldsmiths or Central Saint Martins …” – Central Saint Martins already having been marked by her as where Mr Turner had been. You see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And then on the next page, 3917, he includes a Tweet from her which has included an image of Mr Turner’s face, and at the bottom of that thread the quote, “He has dead beady eyes. So scary.” So, again, I suggest the motif of the dark, sinister eyes, which we suggest is used in an anti-Semitic way on various Alt-Right message boards. Do you remember seeing some of these images when Miss Havas was producing them?
A. No. I need a more specific question to respond to, I think. I mean, some of these statements that you mention …
Q. Well, you were following her, were you not?
A. I’m not sure I was following her at this point in January 2017, for example. But even if you follow someone, you don’t necessarily see all their Tweets. I think that the meaning of these images is also to some extent ambiguous. Many of them are responses to the archive that the defendant had created by this point of Deanna Havas. Obviously, this was very upsetting to her. Okay, so she issues a Fatwa against him. Clearly, Deanna Havas has no authority to issue Fatwas. I think she is trying to respond to actually what is really quite a disturbing thing that has happened, based on the fact that she Liked this image of these cartoon frogs.
Now, there’s a web page with her name on it filled with what the defendant describes in his correspondence, with, I believe, Bewley, as dirt that he was looking for to put on this page in order to destroy her career in the art world. That was the intention of this page and these are her responses to this. With respect to her Swastika, I do believe that it’s useful to point out that this is clearly a Hindu Swastika. I presume that she was aware of that when she selected it. With respect to her Hitler moustache, I don’t know what she means by that, but I think that’s not a clear endorsem*nt of Hitlerism, I think it’s a kind of – again, Deanna Havas is a very ironic person. The defendant himself acknowledges that her Tweets were ironic, again I think in his statements to Bewley. So, these are ironic statements for the most part taken out of context in order to create an impression which is as damaging as possible in order to destroy Deanna Havas. That’s the meaning of this page.
Q. If you look at 3918, and this is from 2019 …
A. I’m sorry, 39?
Q. The next one, 3918, you will see that she begins at the top, after the, “Dead beady eyes, so scary”, she says, “LT has Google alerts for my name and calls up every gallery I exhibit with …” and so forth. And then somebody replies, which is Liked by her, and the person replies, “It’s literally a psychosis and it’s unsustainable. He’s either going to end up killing himself or getting killed and pray I don’t get cancelled for this but we’re better off when that happens” and she Likes it. That is really very unpleasant on her behalf, is it not, to think that that message is acceptable?
A. What the defendant is doing to her is extremely unpleasant. He is trying and in fact succeeding in destroying her life. He is accusing her of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite based on messages that he’s taken out of context, for the reason that she liked a picture of a cartoon frog that the defendant found unacceptable. So, I agree that Deanna Havas’ reaction to this is not pleasant but I think it is understandable. She has been put under considerable pressure by the defendant and, you know, I encourage anyone to ask themselves what – you know, how they would react if the defendant did this to them? They created a Wanted poster on the internet, begins to circulate it, claiming that you’re guilty of holding these reprehensible beliefs – this is what the defendant did to Deanna Havas because she liked a picture of cartoon frogs.
Q. My Lady, I do not know if that is a convenient time? I am about to move into a different section of the chronology, but I can keep going.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: How are we doing for time altogether? We are due to continue with Mr Miller until lunchtime tomorrow.
MS EVANS: I will definitely finish with him by lunchtime and in time for re-examination.
MRS JUSTICE COLLINS RICE: Very good. On that basis we will rise and resume at 10.30 tomorrow. I am afraid it is a difficult thing to be under oath overnight but I do not think we have a choice here. If you are in any doubt, your lawyers will explain to you that you must not discuss your evidence. The reason for that is that it is your evidence I want, not the product of your discussing it with anybody else.
A. I understand.
Q. Thank you very much. I will see you in the morning.
(The witness stood down)
(16.21)
(The hearing adjourned until 10.30 a.m. on the Wednesday, 04 October 2023)
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