Harry Potter author calls fellow UK writer 'anti-Semite' amid Corbyn controversy
J.K. Rowling, made famous by the Harry Potter series and more recently for her pointed political quips via Twitter, expressed indignation at a fellow UK writer Sunday for his defense of Jeremy Corbyn and demand that a Jewish journalist explain his accusations of anti-semitism.
Simon Maginn, who has written satirical comedies unders the pseudonym Simon Nolan in addition to several thrillers under his name, tweeted on Sunday that Jewish “sense of injury” in response to Labor party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s 2013 remarks stating “Zionists” fail to understand British culture required a public explanation.
Responding to English journalist Simon Myerson’s tweet alleging anti-Semitism in the British opposition party, Maginn wrote:
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Rowling responded to the exchange, asking Maginn, “How dare you tell a Jew that their outrage is ‘patently synthetic’? How dare you demand that they lay bare their pain and fear on demands, for your personal evaluation?”
“What other minority would you speak to this way,” Rowling, who is not Jewish, asked.
Maginn responded to Rowling:
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Following the spat, Maginn reportedly blocked Rowling after accusing her of “libel” for calling him out publicly as an anti-Semite. “I’m not going to mount legal action against you because I haven’t got any money and you’ve got a lot, but false + defamatory = libellous. What a class act you are. What a nasty vicious little bully. Blocked.”
Maginn has since called out Jewish and Israel-based media outlets for “libelous” coverage of his Twitter exchange with the Harry Potter author.
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He called on several papers to take their stories down and asked Rowling to publicly apologize calling her Tweets “a sickening personal accusation against a complete stranger who disagrees with you politically.”
Rowling has yet to respond to his request.
In April, Rowling tweeted that “UK Jews... are currently having to field this kind of crap,” posting a screengrab of an non-Jew insisting Judaism is a religion and not a race.
“Anti-semites think this is a clever argument,” she commented. “So tell us, do: were atheist Jews exempted from wearing the yellow star? #antisemitism.”
She also once voiced her opinion on a statement that Arabs cannot be anti-semitic because they are semites themselves.
“The ‘Arabs are Semitic too’ hot takes have arrived,” she wrote on Twitter.