The controversial author and journalist Julie Burchill has dropped the publisher of her new book after it emerged the company’s director was a supporter of an antisemitic far-right group.
Ms Burchill had announced she had signed a deal with Stirling Publishing, an independent outfit based in Scotland, to publish a new book she had written titled Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics.
But it has emerged that Tabatha Stirling, the sole director of the publishing company, is a supporter of Patriotic Alternative, a far-right group founded by Mark Collett, who is a former press officer with the British National Party and an antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
In a series of recordings posted on social media Ms Stirling, who adopts the name Miss Brittania, can be heard outlining her own extreme views - including references to the JQ (Jewish Question) and comments about a “big nose”.
On Wednesday, it emerged that Ms Burchill’s agent had confirmed her client’s book would not be brought out by Stirling Publishing.
“I have always been against racism in all forms, so am terminating my contract with Stirling Publishing with immediate effect,” Ms Burchill also confirmed to the Guardian.
In one video promoted by the Patriotic Alternative group a woman using the name Miss Brittania says: “My name is Tabatha Stirling. I am an author. Nothing else to hide. Always been very conservative, been a nationalist, now ethno-nationalist.”
In one social media clip posted on the Telegram platform, and heard by the JC, Miss Brittania also confirms she was the author of some “tweets about Jews and Israel”.
She says she wrote them “because when you are very anti-Islam and you haven’t thought about the JQ and it hasn’t been in your periphery vision, and I was a Tommy Robinson supporter, it is kind of the way you’re led. “
Miss Brittania also says: “I work in the arts and they are awful there. I am already called their favourite Nazi, even though I hardly ever say anything on my normie Twitter.”
She then addresses the fact that someone called her a “liberal Jew”, saying: “I broke my nose, okay? And it is a bit big. But it is actually the Duke of Wellington nose. If you need me to, and as I said I will do it once only, I can put up my ancestry document with 100 per cent European, if that would make you feel better. Being called a liberal Jew is hilarious – that is very funny.”
Ms Burchill’s latest book had previously been dropped by the publisher Little Brown over her comments about Islam.
The newspaper columnist apologised to the activist and journalist Ash Sarkar, and agreed to pay her “substantial damages”, after a series of social media posts in which she accused Ms Sarkar of being an Islamist, a hypocrite and worshipping a paedophile.
In Twitter and Facebook posts and a statement published on Tuesday morning after the libel and harassment case was settled, Ms Burchill said that her posts had “included racist and misogynist comments” and “played into Islamophobic tropes”.
She wrote: “Although it was not my intention, I accept that my statements were defamatory of Ms Sarkar and caused her very substantial distress.”
Recent undercover investigations into Patriotic Alternative have exposed the group’s openly racist and violent ideology.
The anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate had warned that their leader Mr Collett “is a longstanding antisemite who has spoken sympathetically of Nazi Germany, described the Holocaust as the ‘alleged extermination of six million Jews’, and has regularly collaborated with David Duke, a former leader in the Ku Klux Klan.”
Collett, a proud fan of National Socialism, published a book in 2017 describing the “alleged extermination of six million Jews”, adding: “When it comes to the notion of white guilt, nothing is pushed more strongly.”
