Stephen “Pax” Leonard, whose Twitter bio describes him as “writer, linguist, traveller”, has taken grave exception to an article published by the Daily Mail: “This is hugely inaccurate article fed to DM by Durham. DM not contacted me. These are 'replies' to tweets taken out of context by Far Left mob. One of these replies has been doctored. I hold no ant-semitic or Islamophobic views whatsoever”. But here a problem enters.
Stephen "Pax" Leonard
On this occasion, there is no cause for complaint at being plastered all over the Mail’s website, as Leonard is bang to rights. The article’s title - “Durham University academic who said Sadiq Khan wanted to make London 'a Mecca for Muslims' and blasted Jewish media moguls in string of antisemitic and Islamophobic tweets is stripped of honorary fellowship” - is supported by the most incriminating of evidence.
After all, the Mail got most of its article from The Tab, which had already told “Dr Stephan Pax Leonard has had his Research Fellowship removed after his Islamophobic and Anti-Semetic tweets were reported … In an email sent to students of St Chad's College, Principal Dr Margaret Masson confirmed that Leonard would be stripped of his title, adding while St Chad's encourages free speech, Leonard's comments could not be ignored”.
There was more. “Stephen Pax Leonard had previously tweeted that Sadiq Khan ‘wanted London to become a Mecca for Muslims’ and that ‘millions of Muslims support ISIS’. These and many other Anti-Semitic posts have since been deleted … Leonard's tweets were later published in Cherwell and were covered by The Durham Tab yesterday. At that time, A Durham University spokesperson said: ‘The views that have been reported are wholly inconsistent with the values of St Chad’s College and Durham University’”.
Worse, Leonard’s attempts to wriggle his way out of his predicament are going nowhere: he had accepted an invitation to speak at the Traditional Britain Group’s annual gathering last month, alongside such luminaries as Janice Atkinson, an MEP too toxic even for UKIP, representatives of Germany’s AfD and Austria’s FPÖ, and the star turn, pro-am motormouth and libel action non-specialist Katie Hopkins.
But, perhaps in an effort to take the heat off himself, Leonard chickened out: “Dishonourably, Leonard gave us barely 48 hours notice of his withdrawal from his long-standing booking, which was not enough time to source a like-for-like replacement. This retreat appears to have been in no small part caused by activist students barely out of short trousers and playing at journalism who had enquired about his attendance”.
Viewers may still want to look away now
Volunteering to speak to the racist rump of the Monday Club and its phoney aristocrat head man Gregory “Lauder” Frost is not a good look when protesting that those calling you a racist bigot are being unfair. Nor is asserting when replying to the Mail that you are in favour of repealing hate speech legislation. Nor is claiming that your Tweets were taken out of context when it’s all too obvious that no further context is needed.
Stephen “Pax” Leonard will probably now feature in Spiked, and receive an apologia from the loathsome Toby Young. But it won’t stop him being a bigot.
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