{"id":104299,"date":"2026-08-20T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104299"},"modified":"2026-08-19T16:06:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T20:06:45","slug":"its-a-form-of-libel-by-sleight-of-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/its-a-form-of-libel-by-sleight-of-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"“It’s a form of libel by sleight-of-hand”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his Substack, Andrew Doyle discusses the fine art of writing libellous things about someone without quite<\/em> giving enough legally actionable material<\/a> for the victim to have a chance to retaliate successfully:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Simon Edge on GB News.<\/em>
Screencap from Andrew Doyle<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

How does one libel an opponent and get away with it? I’ve lost count of the number of people online who’ve made false accusations against me. Sometimes I’m a fascist, other times a communist. Sometimes I’m a homophobe, other times a degenerate sodomite. Some have branded me a “racist” for supporting Martin Luther King’s ideal of a colour-blind society. White supremacists have denounced me as a traitor for my opposition to racism.<\/p>\n

It’s all noise, of course, and best filtered out. These aren’t serious people, and no serious person would believe their smears. However, last week an author called Simon Edge, well-known in gender-critical circles, published a blog post about me that I can only describe as defamatory. He’s very lucky that I’ve no appetite for litigation, but I think it’s worth discussing the nature of his smearing technique because it’s become so common among activists of the more mendacious ilk.<\/p>\n

It’s a form of libel by sleight-of-hand. Perhaps we should call it prestidefamation<\/em>. Here’s how it works. You take a series of unremarkable facts, out-of-context quotations and tenuous associations, arrange them in a suggestive manner, omit any contrary evidence, invite the reader to draw the worst possible conclusion and then congratulate them for drawing it.<\/p>\n

Edge has done precisely this. I have a long and well-documented record of opposing fascism and the far right. I’ve written books and articles about it, spoken about it endlessly on television, radio and podcasts. My latest book The End of Woke<\/em> makes the case against all forms of authoritarianism, and opens with an epigraph explicitly attacking Nazi ideology. Yet Edge has managed to write an article insinuating that I support Nazis. It would be like writing a piece about Oscar Wilde’s robust and unwavering heterosexuality.<\/p>\n

Here’s how he did it. Recently, it was announced on X that Oldspeak Books, which bills itself as “Britain’s only centre-right bookshop”, has closed its doors. The manager posted a message on social media to explain.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Over time, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a welcoming environment due to the constant hostility I experienced. The uncertainty around which customers were genuine, made it hard for me to greet everyone warmly, and my customer service suffered.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n

    This looked like a clear case of cancel culture to me and, since Oldspeak had been kind enough to stock my books, I reposted her message with a comment to the effect that it was a shame that she had been pressurised into closing her shop. This was, according to Edge, my first foray into the murky world of fascist apologism. Who knew it could be so easy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On his Substack, Andrew Doyle discusses the fine art of writing libellous things about someone without quite giving enough legally actionable material for the victim to have a chance to retaliate successfully: How does one libel an opponent and get away with it? I’ve lost count of the number of people online who’ve made false […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,4,9,10,28,53],"tags":[86,196,270,1020],"class_list":["post-104299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","tag-criticism","tag-lgbt","tag-libel","tag-progressives"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-r8f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104301,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104299\/revisions\/104301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}