Author Dylan Evans is a British former academic and author who has written books on emotion and the placebo effect as well as the theories of Jacques Lacan.
I know all this from Wikipedia – I had never heard of him until today, which is when some tweets from his Twitter account came to my attention:
I say from his account and not from him, because Mr Evans claims his Twitter account was hacked:
A few days ago, a third party accessed my twitter account and posted some antisemitic remarks. I have never expressed any antisemitic views, but despite the complete absence of any prior history of antisemitism in my part, some people never considered the possibility that the tweets in question might not come from me. Instead, a few people with nothing better to do sent me hate mail and made nasty comments on social media.
The twitter account is no longer active, and I have no intention of reactivating it. The platform seems to have become much more poisonous since it was rebranded as X. I want nothing more to do with that cesspool of hatred and bigotry.
The whole incident has left a very bad taste in my mouth. But it has also led me to reflect on the role that accusations of antisemitism play at times like these. Now that Israel is committing genocide on live TV and there is global outrage at Israeli war crimes, the Zionists are desperately trying to distract public attention by hyping every alleged example of antisemitism they see, even if they appear to come from a retired nobody like me. It’s a fairly unsophisticated kind information warfare, but it works.
To make matters perfectly clear, and to set the record straight, I am not, and have never been, an antisemite. I do not support Hamas. I am, however, opposed to Zionism. This distinction matters: it is perfectly possible to be opposed to Zionism without being an antisemite. Indeed, many Israeli citizens reject Zionism, and I doubt that any of them are antisemitic. I dare anyone to find any evidence of antisemitism in anything I have ever written. They will find some statements that are critical of Israel, and they will also find some statements in support of Israel. It’s complicated. But they should not infer any hint of antisemitism from anti-Zionism. There is a world of difference between the two.
Leaving aside the fact this is not the first time someone claims the antisemitism coming from their social media account was not theirs but that of a hacker (it happens a lot), Mr Evans’ statement is bizarre in that the words tweeted from his account had nothing at all to do with “Zionism”. There are not many things showing one’s antisemitism more clearly than expressing the wish that Hitler had finished the job – except perhaps tweeting “Yes I am antisemitic.”
Mr Evans is also not doing himself any favors by stating he opposes Zionism, which is nothing more than self-determination for the Jewish people in their indigenous homeland. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination does, after all, contravene the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
Nor is he doing himself any favors by going on this rant against Zionism and the so-called weaponization of antisemitism allegations while we are still burying our dead civilians and trying to recover from the horrors we have endured this past week. To quote him, it left a very bad taste in my mouth.
But Mr Evans would like us all to know he is not antisemitic, just an author whose good name has been besmirched by someone else.
Which is rich coming from someone besmirching our name by falsely claiming we are committing genocide.
