(Updated post after more sources became available)
From the New York Post:
New York Post columnist Douglas Murray won a libel claim Tuesday over an article that falsely accused him of “supporting violent racist attacks” during anti-immigration protests in the UK last year.
Murray — a conservative author, journalist and commentator — clinched the victory against the Guardian Media Group over an Aug. 11, 2024 column by Kenan Malik in The Observer which mistakenly attributed Murray’s comments from months prior to the widespread unrest surrounding immigration in the UK last summer, Murray announced on X Tuesday.
In Malik’s piece, he used Murray’s interview with former Deputy Australian Prime Minister John Anderson about Israel and Islam — from six months earlier — claiming that Murray made the comments about migrants during the UK’s protests that erupted after the stabbing of three young girls.
Similar coverage of the outcome has appeared in the Spectator and the Jewish Chronicle. However, none of the reports explain why Malik’s mistake occurred, despite a detail on this point appearing in the joint statement that was read out in court as part of the settlement. According to Murray’s legal representative:
8. On 6 August 2024, in the immediate aftermath of the riots, an edited version of the interview was, for a short period, uploaded on Mr Anderson’s website and YouTube, which gave the misleading impression that Mr Murray was encouraging the riots.
This video has been removed, and Anderson has also deleted a post on Twitter/X that referred to it. However, it can still be accessed via the Internet Archive. Titled ” ‘They’ve Lost Control Of The Streets’ | Douglas Murray on Illegal Immigration’, it begins with Murray in full flow:
But clearly they’ve lost control of the streets. Now, is it time to send in the army? At some point probably yes, but if the Army will not be sent in then the public will have to go in and the public will have to sort this out themselves and it’ll be very very brutal. it’ll be very brutal.
I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here. They came under false pretenses, many of them came illegally and continue to come illegally and we don’t want them here and I’m perfectly willing to say that because it needs to be said…
Although presented as a seamless discourse, these two statements are disparate extracts taken from the full version, which was uploaded as “Israel, Immigration & Islam | Douglas Murray” on 8 November 2023 and which can still be seen here. In the full version, the “But clearly…” statement is at 01:00:19, whereas “I don’t want them to live here” was from earlier, at 00:24:28. Later on in the short video Murray says
…They have defaced and defiled all of our holy places and I think I know that the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing.
In the full video from 2023, this is at 01:00:45.
The editing of the short video meant that the original context was missing. By “lost control of the streets”, Murray was actually referring to the police allowing “Muslim groups, Palestinian groups, pro-Hamas groups” to hold marches; his comment about the “rage” of the “British soul” refers to his prediction that the protestors “will again defile the Cenotaph and the statues of our dead and our war leaders” during a planned protest on Saturday 11 November 2023 (1).
So why did Anderson upload his “edited version” when he did? After a week during which rioters had been attacking mosques and hotels hosting migrants, he apparently thought it would be a good idea to promote Murray referring to “loss of control of the streets” and to the British soul “awakening and stirring with rage”. Did he think it was pertinent to the situation? If Murray is angry with Anderson’s “misleading impression” he’s not saying so publicly, despite crowing about winning what he calls a “major libel claim” over the Guardian Media Group.
Malik’s error was corrected and acknowledged when his article went online, as was noted by Murray on Twitter/X at the time:
Dear @kenanmalik . I see your own newspaper had to correct your column because of your sloppiness. They had to correct that the interview you refer to was from last October, not recent weeks. What you all failed to realize was that I was referring to Hamas leaders in Britain. Sloppy and bigoted of you as usual.
However, despite the importance attached to a context of “Hamas leaders” here, this particular complaint does not not appear in the joint statement. Here’s the context from the full video:
[00:24:17] We have thousands, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have no love at all for the UK but yet live here. I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here… [00:25:33] We stripped citizenship from Isis members… we need to start doing the same thing with Hamas we have Hamas leaders in the UK, Hamas members in the UK.
The “probably hundreds of thousands of people” that he doesn’t want here is plainly a larger set than “Hamas leaders”.
Note
1. In the event, the Cenotaph was not targeted; 11 November for the protest was chosen because it was a Saturday afternoon rather than because of the symbolism of the date.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
