Nick Cohen denies all knowledge of Baruch Spinoza

Sorry to go on but finally Nick Cohen has denied that he posted a comment to my blog using the name Baruch Spinoza.

I had been posting the link to my allegation against him on his blog when he suddenly closed down his comments so I wrote to him as follows:

Hi there

Your comments seem not to be working.

Mark Elf

And he replied thus:

Dear Mark,

Well, the problem is that I'm getting all kinds of neo-Nazi types coming in particularly when anything goes up about Jews. There's a side of me that doesn't mind, it just confirms my opinions. But another side is very uncomfortable about giving them a platform. Comments are suspended while I work out what to do.
best wishes,
Nick Cohen

This was quite an enigmatic response because when he posted an article "on" anti-semitism he got over 180 comments including one or two from an overtly anti-Jewish person. There were several from Linda Grant and David Hirsh supporting his insupportable argument that "all anti-semites are anti-zionists". A few of us posted comments disproving that assertion but, as I recall, the only person actually linking to anti-semitic sites was Linda Grant. And he doesn't post many articles about Jews. But please check it out for yourselves. Anyway, here's my response to his response:

Dear Nick

It's true that David Hirsh and Linda Grant support a nasty racist state and ideology but I wouldn't go so far as to call them neo-nazis. [that was my little joke] Of course you could be referring to that horrid Love Supreme character but you left her post in place whereas I now have a person call "Pearl" saying that you deleted a comment from her that she claims wasn't neo-nazi in content or intent. Funny old business.

Anyway since I'm writing to you, any chance of you owning up to that disgusting Baruch Spinoza comment?

Cheers

Mark Elf

And here's his response to my response to his response:

Dear Mark,
I don't really understand who Baruch Spinoza is, but your email has persuaded me to close the comments. If people like you are going to accuse Linda Grant of things like that, I've got legal problems as much as anything else.
Bye,
Nick

Now this is bizarre, it's my email that caused him to close his comments before. I had sent it. And what happened to all those neo-nazis? The bit about "legal problems" looked a little like intimidation to me but still I wrote back:

Calling Israel a racist state doesn't cause any legal problems.[I should have said "for the time being" as the zionists are clearly trying to get anti-zionism made illegal]

And someone came to my site from your password protected tracker and left a comment in the name Baruch Spinoza. It was either you or someone who has your password. If it wasn't you then you should check who has your password and have a word with them as they could cause you extreme embarrassment, not to mention legal problems.

Now I'm getting all manner of Nick Cohen defenders crawling out of the woodwork. First there was someone called "Roger" saying that he had written to the "webmaster", ie Nick Cohen, asking that he close the comments to protect the integrity of the blog lest it degenerate like Melanie Philips's or Johann Hari's, then there was the "what makes you think it was him?" then there was "he was right", in which case why the phoney name and pretence of being Jewish? then there was the "he's winding you up" like Nick and I are great mates or something.

Nope, I'm pretty confident it was him. And the evidence is right here:

http://www.nickcohen.net/stats/awstats.pl?framename=mainright