Last Friday, District Judge John Zani convicted Alison Chabloz over her long social media campaign blaming Jews for the world’s every ill. She seemed to particularly enjoy baiting the Jewish community by claiming that Jews deserve persecution, that Auschwitz was a “theme park”, and naming individual Holocaust survivors who she said had fabricated their accounts.
Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) made complaints to the police about Ms Chabloz but we were by no means the first. Dozens of people had gone before us, to no avail. Indeed Ms Chabloz complained to her local force that Jews were harassing her on social media and for a time they treated her as a victim.
When Ms Chabloz posted one of her more repulsive videos, (((Survivors))), on YouTube and Twitter, CAA again complained, only this time we were ready to enforce the law ourselves.
Our pro bono lawyers, led by the renowned Jonathan Goldberg QC, made preparations so that as the six-month deadline for prosecuting the offence closed in with no signs of the authorities taking action, we launched a private prosecution. Eventually, fearing embarrassment, the CPS decided to take it over (to their credit, assigning an outstanding legal team to the case).
