Holocaust denier abuses High Court process

December 1, 2015 by J-Wire Staff:

 

A Supreme Court judge has concluded that Dr Fredrick Toben was using a defamation action in court to espouse his views questioning the Holocaust. His case against “The Australian” was dismissed and was described as an abuse of process.

 

Fredrick Toben, Holocaust denier

 

Fredrick Toben, who gained notoriety when his promotion of claims regarding Jews and the Nazi genocide were judged to be in breach of Australian law, and subsequently served jail time for contempt of court, has failed in yet another legal matter.
 

In this latest case, Toben, represented by Barrister Clive Evatt,  brought defamation proceedings against The Australian newspaper editor Clive Mathieson, Senior Reporter Christian Kerr and former Greens leader Christine Milne, after Milne’s description of Toben as a person who fabricated history and spread antisemitism was published by the paper.
 

Justice Lucy McCallum of the Supreme Court of NSW ruled that Toben had been  attempting to “manipulate the process of the Court to create a forum” in arguing the very propositions which he had claimed it was defamatory to accuse him of holding, those being Holocaust denial and broader antisemitic propositions.

In 2012, Toben failed in a similar case brought against Jeremy Jones AM, the Director of International and Community Affairs of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.
 

In a comprehensive judgment, Justice McCallum outlined the series of legal matters relating to the promotion of racial hatred involving Fredrick Toben, which had commenced when Jones, in his capacity as an elected officer of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, had lodged a complaint to the Human Rights Commission on 31 May 1996.
 

Decisions in the Human Rights Commission and the Federal Court, in a series of judgements between 2000 and 2009, consistently went against Toben and in favour of Jones, culminating in Toben suing Jones in 2012  for allegedly for implying that Toben was an antisemite, had falsely said the influence of the Talmud was pervasive and falsely claimed that received knowledge of the Shoah was “a mass fraud perpetrated on humanity”.
 

The judgment by Justice McCallum detailed the grounds on which allegations had been made against Toben, their validity and Toben’s behaviour in various court proceedings.
 

Justice McCallum was satisfied that Toben was cynically attempting to represent himself as a philosophical enquirer when he was a person with firm views, and that he did not have “the least interest in vindicating his reputation”, but, simply was seeking a platform to promote views which the Federal Court had already found to be in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act...