Ireland bars entry to US pastor branded a Holocaust revisionist

Ireland has barred entry to an American pastor who has been labelled a Holocaust revisionist by Jewish groups in the United States.

Christian fundamentalist Steven Anderson, accused of advocating the “extermination” of LGBT+ people, was due to preach in Dublin next week, but Irish ministers invoked a seldom-used law to ban him from the country.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said a 2015 video titled Marching to Zion shows Anderson arguing that millions of Jews were not gassed and burned but rather died of hunger and disease in Nazi concentration camps.

The ADL added that Anderson’s past videos include ‘The Jews and Their Lies,’ ‘Jews Are Anti-Christs,’ ‘Christ-Rejecting Jews Are Children of the Devil,’ ‘The Jews Are Our Enemies,’ and ‘The Jews Killed Jesus.’

He was due to speak in Ireland following the country’s recent vote to legalise abortion, but Irish Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan invoked the 1999 Immigration Act, rendering Anderson the first person banned from Ireland under the law.

A petition calling for ministers to act had earlier been set up by a Christian LGBT+ group, which cited Anderson’s support for a gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida in 2016.