Antisemitic pastor Steven L. Anderson. Photo: Steven L. Anderson (Faithful Word Baptist Church) via Wikimedia Commons.

An antisemitic American preacher has become the first person banned from entering Ireland.

Pastor Steven L. Anderson runs a small Baptist church in Arizona and has become notorious for his extremist views. This includes Holocaust denial, denigration of the Jewish religion and an intense form of supercessionism.

In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement condemning a film in which Anderson was involved. According to the ADL, the film included claims that the Jewish messiah was the anti-Christ, attacked the “blasphemous teachings of the Talmud and Kabbalah,” and professed “scriptural evidence that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people.”

According to The Irish Times, Anderson was slated to give a speech in Dublin later this month. An online petition against his appearance was signed by 14,000 people.

The Irish Minister of Justice, Charlie Flanagan, officially banned Anderson on Sunday under a 1999 law that allows such a ban if the minister “considers it necessary in the interest of national security or public policy.”

Flanagan said, “I have signed the exclusion order under my executive powers in the interests of public policy.”

Anderson has already been banned from several European countries, including the United Kingdom, as well as South Africa.

Anderson’s extremism extends beyond antisemitism. He was the subject of a brief media firestorm in 2009 after he prayed for the death of former President Barack Obama. He is also virulently anti-gay, calling homosexuality “abominations which God punishes with the death penalty.”