Fired Eton teacher in anti-Semitism storm

Tutor posted video that linked Jews to growth of pornography

AN ENGLISH teacher sacked by Eton over a controversial lecture on gender was condemned yesterday for sharing a ‘blatantly anti-Semitic’ video.

Will Knowland lost his job at the £44,000-a-year school for refusing to remove a ‘sexist’ talk from his YouTube channel.

The 35-year-old is now under fire for posting another video in which an interviewee claims Jews were behind the rise of pornography.

Dr E Michael Jones, an American writer, refers to the ‘Jewish Gestapo’ in the 52-minute interview.

Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies, said there was no excuse for sharing the video, which contains ‘vicious falsehoods about Jews’. She demanded that YouTube remove the interview from the teacher’s channel, Knowland Knows, which has 9,300 subscribers.

The clip, entitled Porn as Cultural Warfare: Dr E Michael Jones, has been watched more than 4,000 times since it was uploaded two weeks ago. During the exchange, Dr Jones said: ‘So if you’re talking about, concretely, the rise of pornography in the 20th century, you have to talk about Hollywood, and you have to talk about the Jews. The Jews were always behind pornography.’

He cited an article that appeared in the Jewish Quarterly in 2004, published online in 2013, about the role of American Jews in the rise of the porn industry in the country.

Dr Jones refers to ‘Jews in Hollywood’ and says they later ‘crushed’ opposition to pornography.

Mr Knowland, who is taking Eton to an employment tribunal, quizzed him about suggestions porn can be regarded as ‘free speech’, and when the ‘concept of obscenity’ was lost. Dr Jones said: ‘It’s not part of free speech, no one ever said that dirty pictures were part of free speech, but that’s what the Jews did over this period of time.’

He later refers to ‘the Jews, the Anti-Defamation League, which is the SS of the Jewish Gestapo’.

Dr Jones also claimed Jews were behind the rise of critical race theory – an academic movement that originated in the US in the 1970s, which sees racism as systemic. He added: ‘They are behind this racial polarisation.’

Miss van der Zyl said yesterday: ‘There can be no excuse for sharing this kind of blatantly anti-Semitic video. We would call on YouTube to remove it so that these vicious falsehoods about Jews cannot be promulgated with impunity.’

In a 2008 interview with his own magazine, Culture Wars, Dr Jones defended using terms such as ‘the synagogue of Satan’ and ‘the vomit of Judaism’, which he stressed had come from religious sources.

He has denied all accusations of anti-Semitism. Mr Knowland, a married father of five who now works as a private tutor, yesterday defended airing the interview.

He said: ‘Clearly many Jews are aghast at pornography, but suppressing discussion is not healthy.

‘Accordingly, Jewish involvement

‘Take down these vicious falsehoods’

in pornography has been discussed in the Jewish Quarterly.

‘If Dr E Michael Jones is mistaken in his views, giving them a platform is the best way to expose those mistakes.’

Mr Knowland was at the centre of a free speech row at Eton last year after preparing a lecture – called the Patriarchy Paradox – that challenged ‘current radical feminist orthodoxy’.

He yesterday confirmed reports that the Teaching Regulation Agency had cleared him of professional misconduct without the need for a full hearing.