Durban - Hate speech versus free speech was on trial in Durban’s Equality Court on Tuesday in the first day of evidence in an application by the Jewish Board of Deputies for an interdict stopping “an anti-Semitic” man from packaging “extraordinarily offensive” racist, anti-Jewish propaganda and distributing it widely by e-mail.
“People may say we should dismiss what he does as the actions of a crazy person,” Mary Kluk, the board’s national chairwoman, said of Snowy Smith in her evidence before magistrate Aletta Moolman.
“But history has taught us we cannot ignore hatred in this form. It is deeply hurtful and provocative.”
Smith – who runs an organisation called Fair Civil Law which offers legal advice – has been sending out the e-mails since at least 2010. In them Jews are described as “the enemy”, responsible for all wars and the 911 terrorist attacks. Reference is also made to “billionaire Jewish bankers” and their “dirty little fingers”.
Kluk said it was this kind of “racism” which, if left unchecked, could end up in the murder of Jews, as happened during the Holocaust.
“That did not begin in the gas chambers. It began with how people were spoken about and spoken to.
“It doesn’t start with murder. It starts with words.”
She said not everyone “thought critically” and some people, bombarded with such “vulgar propaganda”, might start to believe it was true.
“The diatribe of hatred is endless.
“Not only are we labelled as undesirable. We are labelled as money-grabbers, terrorists and murderers,” she said, reading from a wad of e-mails which are exhibits before the court.
But Smith – who is representing himself – was unrepentant.
He said he was only distributing what was already on the internet and YouTube, most of it posted by “the Jews”.
“Even YouTube is owned by the Jews,” he proclaimed, reciting a list of “experts” – mostly Holocaust denialists – whose work he had “researched” and established to be “the truth”.
He skipped over the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he had once threatened might be a witness.
He argued that he could not be accused of being anti-Semitic because he supported the Palestinians and they too were “Semites”.
He sent e-mails only to “his friends and those on his mailing lists” and he questioned how they had ended up in the hands of “the Jews”.
Kluk accepted that some of the information in the e-mails was available on the internet and Smith was not the author.
But, she said, the board was objecting to Smith “packaging unreliable sources”, distributing the information and adding his own “hate-filled” commentary.
“It is clear, even from what has been said today, that he does not like us.
“We acknowledge free speech, but he has crossed the line,” Kluk said.
“But it (the information) all comes from the Jews,” Smith insisted.
He asked Kluk how many people had died in the Holocaust, saying there was respected authority that “nobody got murdered and the gas chambers are a fraud”.
Kluk’s advocate, Paul Jorgensen, objected, saying the question was irrelevant.
“I think this court can also take judicial notice of the Holocaust and how many people were killed,” he said.
The hearing is continuing.
The Mercury
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