‘Despicable’: Will Roberts now sue Hari?

An enjoyable spat has broken out between Independent columnist Johann Hari and right-wing historian Andrew Roberts in the pages of the US political mag, The New Republic.

Hari describes Roberts as a “little known British historian” and “a caricature of a caricature of the old imperial historians” who “sucks up to the English aristocracy” and “lauds the British Empire ‒ and its massacres and suppressions ‒ as ‘glorious’ on every occasion”.

Responding in The New Republic, Roberts describes Hari as “despicable and cowardly”.

And picking up on one point raised by Hari he says: “He knows that, if he called me a white supremacist in a British publication, I would sue him for libel and doubtless take tens of thousands of pounds off him for the entirely undeserved slur.”

Axegrinder read the whole thing online which means, of course that, legally speaking, it has been “published” in the UK.

So will Roberts now sue?

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