SAJBD confronts ‘Smith’ on hate speech

DAVID SAKS

The following day, Magistrate Aletta Moolman granted an interim interdict, prohibiting Smith from sending out any e-mails referring to people of the Jewish faith. The order will remain in place until judgment is handed down, probably in the middle of December.

The case was lodged by the Board in April 2013 following the alleged mass posting by Smith of dozens of anti-Semitic e-mails over the previous three years, including some to Jewish individuals and institutions, journalists and news editors.

In one case, printed matter and DVDs containing similar material were sent to the office of a Jewish former High Court justice. One of the reasons for the delay in bringing the matter to a hearing was that for a long time it had not been possible to physically locate Smith in order to serve the court papers on him.

In her evidence before the court, SAJBD National Chairman Mary Kluk stressed that while the Board fully supported the right to freedom of expression, the kind of material disseminated by Smith crossed the line and could not be ignored.

She disagreed with those who argued that most people would simply dismiss Snowy Smith as an obvious crank, since not everyone “thought critically” and at least some of those bombarded with such “vulgar propaganda” might start to believe it was true. 

“History has taught us we cannot ignore hatred in this form. It is deeply hurtful and provocative,” Kluk said, “Not only are we labelled as undesirable; we are labelled as money-grubbers, terrorists and murderers,” she added.

The complaint refers to e-mails sent from October 2010 to May 2012, although since then, there have been many others. The SAJBD contends that these amount to the “advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, which constitutes incitement to cause harm” and therefore fall within the exceptions of one’s right to freedom of expression.

The material in the e-mails circulated by Smith, which were gleaned from a range of right-wing extremist websites based in the US, included such assertions as “the Zionist Jew NWO (new world order) orchestrated and systematically planned the downfall of every White Owned, White Run Country in Africa, including South Africa using communism” and “There is only one group of terrorists in the world today and they are Zionist Chabad Freemasons, Illuminati Jews and the Billionaire Wall Street Bankers. We know exactly where they are.”

Smith, who is representing himself, told the court that all he was doing was distributing what was already on the Internet and YouTube, most of it posted by “the Jews”. He cited a list of what he described as “experts”, mostly Holocaust denialists, whose work he said he had researched and established to be the truth.

Smith, who has denied that Jews are of Middle Eastern origin and challenged the Board to prove otherwise, also asserted that he could not be accused of being anti-Semitic because he supported the Palestinians, who were “Semites”.