RESULT AGAINST LUKE TURNER IN HARASSMENT CASE

After four years of legal action Luke Turner lost his claim for harassment, and his statements about Nina Power and myself were found to be untrue. The judge determined that we hadn’t prosecuted an antisemitic harassment campaign against him, that I hadn’t threatened to kill him, that I never published an article called Towards a Hitlerian Disability Politics which called for the euthanasia of disabled people, and that Nina cannot be described as an antisemitic artworld figure.

At the same time we failed in our libel claim because we failed to prove that we’d been harmed specifically by the statements Turner made in his own name, as opposed to claims made by his associates, or made anonymously.

Nonetheless we have succeeded in defending the truth. The narrative that Turner attempted to impose between August 2018 and September 2019 has been rejected. On the last day of the trial, Turner agreed to apologise. Against this, he has extracted an acknowledgment that a number of people, including Nina and I, said some mean things to him in response to his false claims. I regret my choice of language, but I stand by my assessment of his character.

Neither myself nor Nina has ever had any interest in Luke Turner. We just wanted him to leave us and leave other innocent people alone. We thought that sending him a cease and desist letter in May 2019 would have this effect, but this turned out to be wrong. We also thought that the fact we had the truth on our side would be enough for us to win in court. This also turned out to be wrong.

We regret that we were forced to bring this case but we are satisfied that we now have cleared our names.

Our motive in pursuing legal action was never personal. In 2019 we believed that something needed to be done to protest against a violently repressive tendency in contemporary culture operating thorough activist smear campaigns and anonymous open letters.

In her judgement Collins Rice rejected the narrative of a monolithic far right and proposed the term “New Right” to acknowledge the reality of a range of different political and critical views. The judgment finds that not everyone interested in the New Right is antisemitic or racist and that the meaning of memes like Pepe the Frog and Groypers is contested and complex. These findings are authoritative and can be cited in the future. We have won them at great cost, but we have learned a lot about resolve and fortitude, and the nature of the law.

Because we failed in our libel claim, we have been ordered to pay a percentage of more than one million pounds that Turner’s father spent on his legal fees. We argued that each party should pay their own costs, but Turner rejected this and the court ruled in his favour. We will now declare bankruptcy. We will also throw a party.

We thank our lawyers for their efforts, and our friends for their support.

The full judgement is here.