Osman Faruqi’s defamation claim against Mark Latham is not about anti-white racism, writes Hannah Marshall from Marque Lawyers.
Mark Latham is telling everyone who will listen that he is allowed to call out “anti-white racism”, and that Osman Faruqi’s defamation claim is stifling legitimate free speech.
Here’s the thing. Faruqi isn’t suing Latham for his accusations of ‘anti-white racism’. He’s suing Latham for suggesting that he encourages terrorism.
There’s a pretty obvious difference, not that you would know if you’ve been following Latham’s spin on proceedings.
It all started when Faruqi, political editor at Junkee, exchanged these tweets with Yassmin Abdel-Magied about the dual citizenship blow up in Parliament.
Hahahaha. Look, they wanted people to go back to where they came from… and didn’t realise it included them too? 🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️
— Yassmin Abdel-Magied (@yassmin_a) July 28, 2017
Latham took issue with Faruqi on his TV show Mark Latham’s Outsiders. He accused Faruqi of celebrating anti-white racism in Australia, which he said was totally unacceptable and fomented hatred of white people.
Had Latham stopped there, he probably wouldn’t be facing a defamation case. But he didn’t.
Latham went further and claimed that Faruqi and Abdel-Magied were “effectively encouraging the terrorists in this political environment to do their worst”.
Faruqi has sued, not over Latham’s claim of ‘anti-white racism’, but over the accusation of encouraging terrorists. The defamations alleged against Latham don’t mention ‘anti-white racism’.
The claim attacks (alleged) inferences that he assists terrorist fanatics, condones the murder of innocent people by Islamic terrorists and encourages or facilitates terrorism.
So, to be clear, the court will not consider whether Latham is allowed to accuse Faruqi, or anyone else, of anti-white racism. It will consider whether you can say someone supports terrorists without evidence that they support terrorists.
Full credit to Latham, he’s controlling the media coverage of the case impressively. Everyone’s talking about the ‘anti-white racism’ case. He’s even raising money for a defence fund.
His campaign page www.standwithLatham.com claims he’s being sued over ‘anti-white comments’. He doesn’t elaborate, but spends a large word count seemingly seeking to justify his view that Faruqi is an ‘anti-white racist’. No mention of the terrorism part.
Andrew Bolt is on Latham’s campaign train too. He’s urging the public to support Latham (including financially), calling the matter “a test case on whether those who criticise white people can legitimately be described as racists”.
That’s 100% untrue.
Maybe people should be calling for a closer look at the basis on which Latham and his friends are raising money for his defence. Because if you think this case is about anti-white racism, you’re wrong.
ED’S NOTE: Latham appears to be somewhat upset about all this… here’s a post from his Facebook page a few hours ago for your Friday entertainment.
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