William Bapthorpe is Back!!!

Just when you think “Comment is Free” couldn’t get any worse, it now emerges that below the line commenter, William Bapthorpe, is back with what appears to be the explicit approval of Guardian management.
For readers that are new to CiF Watch, William Bapthorpe made the following comment last month:

While this comment was deleted and Bapthorpe eventually banned, Matt Seaton, editor of “Comment is Free” went to great lengths to try and prevent his banning.
Well it now turns out that William Bapthorpe has been posting since January 20th under a new moniker, LavartisProdeo, and he is unashamedly admitting that he is indeed William Bapthorpe.

Two weeks later, it appears that its common knowledge that LavartisProdeo is Bapthorpe, even among Guardian contributors!

If we dig a little deeper, we discover that William Bapthorpe is pumping out Jew-hatred of the most insidious kind under his new moniker.


“[T]he uncomfortable intellectual kinship between Zionism and anti-Semitism”. What Bapthorpe is referring to is the claim by many in the anti-Zionist movement that the Zionists conspired with the Nazis to murder 6 million Jews. This line of thinking has its ideological roots in Soviet propaganda against the Jewish state and is virulently antisemitic. Of course this is all lost upon the Guardian moderators who are so entrenched in their anti-Zionism that this comment remains undeleted.

Notice also how Bapthorpe feels kinship with anti-Zionist commenter, Matzpen. Yes the same Matzpen who thinks that Shimon Peres should be put up against the wall and shot.
And the manner in which Bapthorpe makes the Zionism-racism connection is further revealed in this undeleted comment:


So where are the mods in all of this? They fail to ban antisemitic comments made by LavartisProdeo. And worse than that, they fail to ban LavartisProdeo who on more than one occasion admits that he and William Bapthorpe are one and the same.
Well in case you’re wondering what the reason for this is, all is revealed with this telling admission from LavartisProdeo/William Bapthorpe:

So there you have it, William Bapthorpe has been allowed back and can even resume the use of his former moniker – yet another example of the seriousness with which Matt Seaton takes antisemtism. As I said previously this sends an unequivocal message to the Jewish community that anti-Jewish bigots like Bapthorpe are acceptable members of the CiF community and at the same time communicates to anti-Jewish bigots like Bapthorpe that they can continue to engage in antisemitic discourse with impunity.
“Comment is Free” not only reeks of antisemitism it stinks to high heaven.

If you feel as outraged about this as I do, I urge you to write to Matt Seaton at matt.seaton@guardian.co.uk and give him a piece of your mind.
UPDATE
As a result of this post, LavartisProdeo has been banned although the two antisemitic comments above remain undeleted.

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