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Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) Exposed: The Wrath of CAHN by John Klein

Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) Exposed: The Wrath of CAHN by John Klein

The Wrath of CAHN

John Klein January 22, 2020 Canada is among the world’s most tolerant and peaceable countries. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network wants you to believe otherwise, however, working tirelessly to convince Canadians their country is a seething hotbed of (mostly white, right-wing) hate groups. John Klein lays bare the hypocrisy, intolerance and damage done to individuals and free speech rights when a small group of political activists model themselves on a much larger American group and appoint themselves as our country’s figurative judge, jury and executioner.

You can’t tell the haters without a program. 

For decades the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has styled itself as the indispensable guide to what constitutes hatred in the United States. Its signature “Hate Map” has long been cited in the media and by commentators as an objective and reliable reference point for measuring the worrisome growth of hate groups across America. And according to the SPLC, hate is always growing. The latest Hate Map puts the number of active hate groups in the U.S. at 1,020, up by 70 percent since 2000. Another thing that’s seemingly always growing at the SPLC: its bank account. Thanks to its self-declared status as arbiter of American hate, and in conjunction with highly sophisticated fundraising techniques, the group holds an astounding half-billion dollars in assets, making it one of America’s richest non-profit advocacy groups.

Despite such obvious trappings of success, the Alabama-based SPLC has lately found itself on the receiving end of the sort of nasty accusations it typically makes of others. Last year the organization was rocked by several internal accusations of sexual impropriety and racism against co-founder and former chief litigator Morris Dees, who was fired that March. Dees − long the public face of the organization, as well as a member of the Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame for his masterful use of direct mail solicitations − was apparently fond of reminding his black female staffers how much he liked “chocolate”, among other lewd remarks, as well as inappropriate touching; it was recently revealed that decades ago he faced an accusation of molesting his stepdaughter with a sex toy.

“Chocolate” lover: SPLC co-founder Dees was at last fired from the organization.

Beyond the damaging hypocrisy of an anti-hate group being accused of sexist and racist behaviour, the SPLC has also been sued by several organizations and individuals claiming they were maliciously and erroneously targeted as “haters” and, in the case of Muslim reformer and counter-extremist Maajid Nawaz (whom it had labelled an anti-Muslim “extremist”), has had to pay out millions of dollars. This is a remarkable fact, considering the legal hurdle for defamation in the U.S. is nearly insurmountable. 

The reputation of the SPLC’s much-cited Hate Map has also been seriously damaged in other ways. A recent insider’s account in the New Yorker alleges the SPLC’s hate data has been deliberately exaggerated in order to coax donations from “gullible Northern liberals”. And the far-left magazine Current Affairs devastatingly declared that the SPLC “is a scam: It finds as much ‘hate’ as possible in order to make as much money as possible.”

The SPLC’s upside-down world: Counter-extremist Muslim reformer Nawaz was labelled an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

While the reek of hypocrisy was highly inconvenient, the allegations of “hate inflation” undermine the group’s very legitimacy. The confluence of internal crises and external criticisms has prompted nearly every top SPLC official abruptly to leave the group, Twitter to drop the SPLC as one of its hate-monitoring “safety partners” and a U.S. Senator to request the IRS investigate its non-profit status. 

In short, the SPLC’s carefully crafted public image as a virtuous hate-fighter has been shredded. It hardly seems a model to emulate. Yet that’s exactly what the fledgling Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) is doing.

Canada’s SPLC

CAHN began operations in early 2018, billing itself as an “independent, nonprofit organization made up of Canada’s leading experts and researchers on hate groups and hate crimes.” Its mandate, according to CAHN’s website, “is to monitor, research, and counter hate groups by providing education and information on hate groups to the public, media, researchers, courts, law enforcement, and community groups.” And it makes no bones about the inspiration for its domestic anti-hate crusade. In a letter to a House of Commons committee introducing itself to Canadian parliamentarians last April, CAHN claimed to be “modelled after, and supported by, the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the United States.” The letter was delivered several weeks after the no-longer-esteemed Dees was fired for allegations of sexual and racial misconduct.

CAHN claimed to be “modelled after, and supported by, the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the United States.” The letter was delivered to Parliament several weeks after the SPLC’s no-longer-esteemed co-founder Dees was fired for allegations of sexual and racial misconduct. Tweet

CAHN is chaired by Bernie Farber, well-known in Canadian media circles for an earlier career as CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). Other key members of the organization include executive director Evan Balgord, a former special assistant to Toronto mayor John Tory, controversial “anti-hate” lawyer Richard Warman and Ontario Institute of Technology professor Barbara Perry.

The first necessary step in following the SPLC’s path is to establish CAHN as a useful source of hate information in Canada. CAHN’s principals make themselves readily available to media outlets eager to tell terrifying stories about the proliferation of hate groups in our midst. The CBC and Global News appear to be the most ardent devotees of this service, although a wide range of publications at home and abroad avail themselves of CAHN’s self-proclaimed expertise. In a particularly successful twist on its formula, CAHN board member Amira Elghawaby recently announced on Twitter that the Toronto Star will have her write a “bimonthly” column focused on “exploring human rights”.

The group also makes savvy use of social media for publicity and fundraising, and as a weapon in its anti-hate activities. Ricochet Media, an online portal that bills itself as a crowd-funded public interest journal (but is at least partly Government-of-Canada funded and seems to publish only left-wing content), is another outlet where CAHN’s messages are quoted approvingly and amplified. This breathless article, for example, alleged “levels of extremist activity not seen in generations” and called upon governments to do more than merely monitor and research right-wing extremists. 

Perry makes the stunning claim that approximately 300 hate groups are extant in Canada. If true, this would give Canada a three times higher per capita incidence of hate groups than even the SPLC claims exists in the U.S. Tweet

Having inserted itself into public discussions on hate, the next requirement in SPLC mimicry is to build a case that Canada is a seething hotbed of hatred. CAHN’s website offers a veritable avalanche of revealed hate: neo-Nazi groups are lurking in central Canadian suburbs, hate groups you’ve never heard of are organizing across Atlantic Canada, gender-identity hatred is simmering on the West Coast, anti-Semitism is surging everywhere.

The recent federal election produced an apparent bumper crop of hate in Canada, with CAHN training its steely eyes on everything from Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada to the Yellow Vest movement to an entirely insignificant collection of political no-hopers scattered across the country. As for the total amount of hate in this country, Perry makes the stunning claim that approximately 300 hate groups are extant in Canada. If true, this would give Canada a three times higher per capita incidence of hate groups than even the SPLC claims exists in the U.S. Despite the shock value of her allegations, Perry has not produced the actual list, or any verifiable evidence that such a claim is accurate. In 2015, Perry claimed there were only 100 hate groups in Canada. 

Haters, haters everywhere, from PPC leader Bernier to the Yellow Vests. If this is the best CAHN can do, is there really that much hate in Canada?
Haters, haters everywhere, from PPC leader Bernier to the Yellow Vests. If this is the best CAHN can do, is there really that much hate in Canada?

Arguing hate is in such great supply in this country is quite a feat given that Canada generally tops global surveys on racial tolerance and acceptance of immigration. And despite CAHN’s breathless claims, open expressions of racism in Canada are actually quite rare. Interestingly, visible minorities and non-visible minorities often report experiencing similar rates of discriminatory acts. 

The most recent Statistics Canada survey of police-reported hate crimes happily reveals a substantial year-over-year decline. Some places in Canada reported precisely zero hate crimes in 2018. Belleville, Ontario and Trois Rivières, Quebec were two such cities. Many other places recorded a mere handful. Examples are St. John’s, Newfoundland with one; Lethbridge, Alberta with three; and Abbotsford, B.C. with six. Out of 2.3 million Criminal Code violations that year, there were just 1,798 hate crimes – substantially less than one-tenth of one percent of the total. And the vast majority of these offences were for mischief or graffiti. Actual violence is very, very hard to find. Fewer than 100 instances of hate-motivated assaults were recorded across the entire country in 2018, of which just two were homicides. 

In truth, Canada appears to be a country remarkable for its lack of hate. But you wouldn’t know this from listening to CAHN. In response to the recent happy news that hate crimes fell sharply in 2018, CAHN complained that these new figures “aren’t showing the whole picture.” It then launched a campaign for “better hate crime statistics.” What CAHN really wants, presumably, is bigger hate crime statistics. As American journalist Wilfred Reilly memorably said of the Jussie Smollett hate-crime hoax in Chicago, “the demand for bigots exceeds the supply.” Reilly is African-American. 

Judge, jury and executioner

In addition to claiming hate is always on the rise, CAHN closely follows several other discreditable SPLC tactics. Among these is the practice of “doxing” its enemies. Doxing involves publishing the details and contact information of organizations, businesses and even private individuals deemed to be purveyors of hate. The objective is to expose those it declares to be haters to public opprobrium, or worse. It can get out of hand. 

CAHN has doxed the founder of a far-right podcast who owns a small business in Thunder Bay. It also threatened to publish the names and addresses of members of the Canadian Nationalist Party in an unsuccessful attempt to derail their application for official party status with Elections Canada. And it published the names of hundreds of donors to the quixotic Toronto mayoral campaign of Faith Goldy. “Naming and shaming is part of our mandate,” the group explains on its Twitter account. 

In many cases, the only evidence of hate to be found amongst CAHN’s targets is that they question Ottawa’s sacred twin ideologies of diversity and multiculturalism. But simply calling for illegal immigrants – who have, after all, broken Canada’s laws – to be deported is not itself evidence of hate. Tweet

In one horrifying example of naming-and-shaming’s potential consequences in the United States, Jessica Prol Smith, an editor at the Washington-based Family Research Council, a pro-marriage group opposed to homosexuality, found her life threatened by a gunman. In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II shot and wounded a security guard at Smith’s building before being subdued; he later admitted his actions were largely motivated by the SPLC’s designation of Smith’s employer as a hate group. Corkins was charged with domestic terrorism and is serving a 25-year prison sentence. Smith recounted these events last summer in the memorably headlined USA Today article “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate-based scam that nearly caused me to be murdered.” 

The SPLC and CAHN thus grandly claim for themselves the overlapping roles of investigator, adjudicator and punisher of actions, opinions and ideas they determine to be wrong. Of course, all of these properly belong to government, and all are wisely separated in democratic states. No single organization should ever have such sweeping powers combined, let alone a private group of activists. CAHN’s arrogance in assuming all three brings to mind the ancient Roman poet Juvenal’s famous aphorism: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? After her employer was labelled by the SPLC, Jessica Prol’s life was threatened by a gunman.

Other CAHN tactics borrowed from the SPLC include filing highly-dubious requests to police for criminal hate speech investigations and restraining orders against utterly inconsequential people, such as long-time polemicists Kevin Goudreau and Paul Fromm. Elsewhere, CAHN has successfully pushed Facebook to de-platform its opponents, such as the Soldiers of Odin, a tiny group of nativist bikers who have done charitable work and who dispute the news media’s characterization of them as racist. And it is currently pushing the same for Canada’s chaotic Yellow Vest movement, which embraces a dizzying array of social and economic concerns (and whose sister group in France is led by a native of Martinique). It also convinced Toronto City Council to audit Goldy’s mayoral campaign finances. 

A field guide to spotting hate in Canada: bring your microscope

Often, those targeted by CAHN or the SPLC are not only insignificant and/or obscure, but too weak or disorganized to fight back. One SPLC staffer noted Dees’s favoured approach was to pick opponents who had a “poor education…limited funds, few if any good lawyers…[it] was like shooting fish in a barrel.” During Farber’s time as head of the CJC, former Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn described him as someone who’d spent most of his career fighting “irrelevant penniless shaven-headed nobodies” as opposed to actual threats to minority rights and society as a whole.

As with the SPLC’s targets, sometimes CAHN’s also push back, however. Canadian Nationalist Party leader Travis Patron some time ago sent a cease-and-desist letter to CAHN’s Balgord, demanding he retract “false” claims that his Canadian Nationalist Party is “Neo-Nazi” and that it is “under investigation for alleged ‘hate speech.’” If Patron’s bank account permits, it will be up to the courts to decide the validity of his case against CAHN. 

Regardless of the legal outcome, Canadian voters don’t appear to be buying what Patron is selling. He received just 166 votes – or 0.4 percent of total ballots – in the Saskatchewan riding of Souris-Moose Mountain in the recent federal election. Patron has demonstrated such little traction with the voting public that it seems pointless to bother getting worked up about anything he says. CAHN’s efforts have likely provided him with far more publicity than his trivial Canadian Nationalist Party could ever have hoped to earn on its own. 

In many cases, the only evidence of hate to be found amongst CAHN’s targets is that they question Ottawa’s sacred twin ideologies of diversity and multiculturalism. But simply calling for illegal immigrants – who have, after all, broken Canada’s laws – to be deported, as Patron has, is not itself evidence of hate. Neither is engaging in a debate over Canada’s annual immigration intake. CAHN’s animosity towards Bernier’s PPC (whose supporters are “terrible people”, according to executive director Balgord) and his pledge to limit immigration to 150,000 people per year is rather hard to fathom. 

Any party committed to admitting 150,000 immigrants per year – about the same as Australia’s annual intake and significantly more than Canada itself welcomed for many years under former prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney − cannot logically be considered anti-immigrant, regardless of who chooses to join the party as a result of such a commitment. Most of the world’s countries, in fact, accept almost no immigration at all. Regarding Bernier’s criticism of “extreme multiculturalism”, in his later years Pierre Trudeau also came to lament how official multiculturalism had metastasized into identity politics. Plus, Bernier’s party was recognized by the federal Leaders’ Debates Commission as a serious and legitimate entity deserving a place in the national televised events.

It is certainly not necessary for a reasonable person to agree with the positions taken by Patron, Goldy, the Soldiers of Odin et al − and in many cases their claims are embarrassingly naïve, delusional, aggressive or simply plain wrong − to recognize that democracy works best when a full-range of views can be aired and dismantled as necessary. Censorship is not the answer to bad ideas. Better ideas are. 

CAHN has targeted Faith Goldy, pictured above with her then-Toronto Mayoral campaign team, and the Soldiers of Odin, seen here at a Fraser Valley community clean-up event.

Instead of engaging or debating, the preferred tactic of the aggressive anti-hate movement is to attack. The CAHN website boasts that, “We convinced an Art gallery to Cancel a People’s Party of Canada Event in Winnipeg.” How? Via smear tactics and other ugly de-platforming techniques. But with a large segment of the Canadian population deeply concerned about current immigration policy, wildly throwing around claims of “hate” and neo-Nazism at opponents who merely seek to debate immigration orthodoxies can only coarsen public discourse.

Naming-and-shaming for thee, but not for me

CAHN makes no evident attempt to acknowledge the massive grey area between hotly debated viewpoints and outright hate. Rather, it actively picks sides and ignores the consequences. The group flatly bills itself as a “monitor” of “right-wing extremist groups” (and then just white supremacist groups, apparently). Warman has explained his purpose is to create “maximum disruption” for alt-right organizations. As such, CAHN habitually ignores equally egregious activity by the far-left. In line with the SPLC, CAHN also generally avoids attacking the speech or association rights of Muslim or Sikh extremists, current allies of white liberals. 

CAHN’s Perry as well complains about law enforcement agencies’ tendency to distinguish between hate groups and terrorist groups. To most people, such a distinction might seem clear and reasonable. In the one category are groups holding strong views that many people might find distasteful or even awful, but that don’t incite or engage in violence; in the other are groups planning and/or carrying out attacks. Perry’s preference, however, is to blur the difference between the two – thus conflating the holding of views she considers objectionable with illegal activity aimed at destroying Western society.

When presented with evidence of apparent hate-related activity that appears to meet or exceed the flimsy standards applied against foes such as Patron, but emanating from the other end of the political or religious spectrum, CAHN seems unable to rouse itself off the couch, let alone commit to a full-on anti-hate or doxing campaign. Consider the group’s surprisingly flaccid response to Islamist activist Jawed Anwar’s plans for an Islamic Party of Ontario. 

While admitting Anwar espouses the sort of hardline religious views about gender and homosexuality that CAHN despises when promoted by white Christian polemicists like Patron or former Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen, it brushes off Anwar as an inconsequential distraction. “There are no indications that [Islamic Party of Ontario] has any support,” reads CAHN’s Facebook page. “To make it out to be a significant threat at present time is fearmongering.” To a principled defender of free speech rights, this statement could seem reasonable on its face. Coming from CAHN, it is remarkable for its hypocrisy. If causing a ruckus about idiosyncratic groups with an insignificant public presence is “fearmongering”, then CAHN is a banner candidate to be Canada’s fearmonger-in-chief. 

CAHN seems equally unconcerned about Canadian branch plant operations of the violent Antifa movement or the overt anti-white prejudice of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Both organizations are examples of alt-left extremism, no different in principle from the alt-right groups CAHN seeks to put out of business, and often far worse in practise. Antifa members are frequently found assaulting their opponents in messy counter-demonstrations, while BLM prefers civil disobedience that often seems to go just slightly too far, at times resulting in serious physical injuries, including to police officers

The Antifa and BLM movements are somehow exempt from investigation and scrutiny by CAHN.

In this area, CAHN’s approach is unlike the SPLC’s, which regularly denounces the violence of these groups (although still keeping them off its extremist list). The CAHN website actively encourages citizens to partner with Antifa in staging counter-demonstrations (which the SPLC specifically advises against). Balgord has also defended its tactics in print despite the movement being accused of domestic terrorism by the Obama Administration. And with no hint of irony, Balgord explicitly defends Antifa thugs’ preference for facemasks as a necessary precaution since it “protects themselves from doxing” − the very tactic favoured by CAHN against its opponents. 

Given such tendentiousness, Farber and his cohorts’ attempt to position CAHN as a reliable and objective arbiter of what constitutes hate strains credulity. When combined with CAHN’s behaviour to date, it is difficult to envision anyone who stumbles into the organization’s crosshairs receiving an impartial evaluation.

Section 13 redux

Beyond simply making life difficult for its carefully-curated enemies, CAHN’s broader ambition appears to be establishing itself in the space vacated by the departed but unlamented Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. This notoriously stringent law once barred online speech that “may expose” identifiable groups not just to hatred, but mere contempt. It allowed no defences with regards to truth, intent or fair comment on matters of public interest. And not only direct targets but any non-targeted third party could file a complaint, while the federal human rights commission only rarely tried to mediate the complaints. This proved to be a big problem for poor defendants, considering free legal representation was not available. 

Section 13 was thrust into the public eye in 2002 with the arrival of Warman’s novel strategy to proactively use the legislation to shut down voices he disapproved of. While the law was intended for the protection of minority groups, Warman – a white male − was responsible for an impressive 16 complaints, the most of any individual. 

Balgord has defended Antifa’s tactics in print despite the movement being accused of domestic terrorism by the Obama Administration. And with no hint of irony, he explicitly defends Antifa thugs’ preference for facemasks since it “protects themselves from doxing” – a tactic favoured by CAHN against its opponents. Tweet

In some instances, Warman obtained his evidence by provoking extremist statements from obscure online message boards. Sometimes he even posed as a neo-Nazi poster himself, which one tribunal adjudicator later said “diminish[ed] his credibility” and “could have precipitated further hate messages.” Partly because his targets were mostly poor and couldn’t afford legal help, Warman was successful in every case but one. He was awarded tens of thousands of dollars in monetary compensation for the damages he purportedly suffered. As one Huffington Post contributor wryly described Warman: “He’s sacked more peewee quarterbacks than any other NFL linebacker.”

When it became apparent that Section 13 was being used as a bludgeon against free speech in Canada – most notably when three human rights tribunal complaints were launched against Maclean’s columnist Steyn – public opinion finally shifted against it. A 2008 report by University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon identified it as a clear threat to legitimate political discourse and recommended it be removed.

Journalist Steyn torpedoes the listing ship that was Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Now it might be making a comeback.

A year later Warman’s final and only failed Section 13 complaint, against Internet provocateur Marc Lemire, was famously dismissed when a human rights tribunal declined to enforce its provisions because it found they were inconsistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ guarantees of freedom of expression. The section was finally repealed in 2013 by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. 

Stolen identities 

As an attorney early in his career, SPLC co-founder Dees once represented the Ku Klux Klan and had his bill paid by the White Citizens’ Council in a case involving the beating of a Montgomery, Alabama Freedom Rider (a group of civil rights activists who fought segregation). In 1958 Dees had campaigned for arch-segregationist George Wallace in the Georgia gubernatorial campaign. According to his former law partner, Millard Fuller, Dees’ “overriding purpose…[was] making a pile of money.” He transformed himself into an anti-racism crusader – with the Klan becoming one of his favourite targets – after discovering it offered an alternative route to riches via the miracle of direct mail solicitation. 

CAHN has yet to prove itself as adept at fundraising as the SPLC, which in 2018 generated US$103 million in donations alone. We do know, however, that CAHN boasts of receiving direct funding and support from its big brother south of the border. And in 2018 Toronto-area businessman Mohamad Fakih made a media splash with a donation of $25,000 to CAHN following a successful defamation lawsuit against his online critics. 

But now CAHN is facing its own troubling allegations of profiteering from hate. In February 2019 Elisa Hategan, an anti-racism activist and former member of an early-90s skinhead group called the Heritage Front, teamed up with professor and human rights lawyer Yavar Hameed to file a $200,000 civil claim against CAHN. Farber is also named. The lawsuit alleges CAHN Advisory Committee member Elizabeth Moore (also a former Heritage Front member) “fraudulently appropriated several significant elements of Ms. Hategan’s personal life story in order to boost her own credentials as a former neo-Nazi and did this to monetize a fraudulent narrative.” These stolen elements include Hategan’s experience as a former spokesperson for the Heritage Front and later as a defector who helped prosecutors bring the group down.

Elisa Hategan, posing here with her book Race Traitor, has filed a lawsuit against CAHN for appropriating her story and allegedly hoping to gain from it.

Moore had simply been an unmemorable Heritage Front fellow traveller, says Hategan. But instead, Hategan claims Moore took credit for a film made about Hategan’s experiences: 1998’s White Lies. Her suit alleges that appropriating her “narrative would be an important method of securing greater publicity, speaking engagements and financial opportunities for Moore, as well as publicity, consulting and speaking engagements for Farber.” On top of this, Hategan alleges that Farber and Moore have disparaged her publicly in order to cut her out from employment and advocacy opportunities, maximizing their own in the process. If true, this wouldn’t exactly be behaviour consistent with an organization “committed to increasing public awareness about the scourge of ‘hate’ across Canada.” The civil trial is set to begin in March. 

Theatrical vs. substantive advocacy

While assuming the mantle of hate-fighter sounds like a heroic exercise in defending minority rights and rescuing the oppressed, the crusade embarked upon by the SPLC – with which CAHN, as we’ve seen, openly associates itself – is criticized even by members of the intellectual left as a fraudulent exercise. The far-left Nation magazine has called “anti-hate” advocacy a form of “theatrical” rather than “substantive advocacy.” If advocates were truly concerned about minority uplift, its columnist wrote, they should be fighting more tangible problems like employment and housing discrimination – practising actual poverty law, in other words − instead of simply “fingering militiamen in a potato field in Idaho.”

That the SPLC lost the plot by preferring activities that boosted its fundraising effectiveness over fighting for tangible improvements in its alleged clientele’s lives is not a new idea. As long ago as 1988, a former SPLC staffer admitted to The Progressive that there were “certainly bigger problems facing blacks and the poor” than continuing to tackle a now-toothless Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, said another former staffer, “was such an easy target − easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on”, and so it dominated the SPLC’s attention. Last year, Current Affairs also argued that the SPLC’s habit of elevating minority rights by targeting inconsequential right-wing groups continues a “politics of spectacle.” 

Even some liberal voices in Canada have expressed concerns about “anti-hate” advocacy and hate speech generally. Former Liberal Party MP Keith Martin, a doctor of mixed-race background, fought hard against hate speech restrictions during his nearly 20 years in Parliament, saying they represented what Canada fought against in the Second World War. Martin noted that while Canadians have a right to be free from slander, they “do not have the right to not be offended.” Laws like Section 13 created a “slippery slope” in that they could be easily politicized and used to simply shut down debate. 

Notable Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is against such laws for the same reason. The criticism seems particularly apt when applied to organized and powerful groups like the SPLC and CAHN. Refusing to debate or engage with groups or people they don’t like, and choosing instead to malign them in the most alarmist terms possible, is to engage in the politics of spectacle. The same goes for the active use or tacit approval of such ignominious tactics as de-platforming, doxing, Antifa mobbing and piling on spurious legal complaints.

Antifa protester (l) grabs a Canadian flag from a Bernier supporter (r) at a campaign event at Mohawk College’s McIntyre Theatre.

Because hate speech charges are so nebulous and problematic, free speech advocate and author Stefan Braun refers to them as a “packaged idea.” When unpacked, Braun writes, hate speech allegations are often revealed to be based on “many different reasons besides the public good, including fear, political expedience, moral comfort, public approval, or even the ‘bottom line.’” And because it is so far from a clear concept, the Supreme Court has ruled that “hate speech” requires intense and highly fact-dependent inquiry. For this reason, hate-incitement is unique in the Criminal Code in requiring a province’s attorney-general to personally sign off on any charges. 

Policing hate, in other words, is properly regarded as the most complex and delicate aspect of the entire criminal justice system, balancing as it does the Charter’s guarantees of “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression” with the Criminal Code’s protection from incitement of “hatred against any identifiable group.” Given its intricate nature, why would anyone willingly hand over responsibility for policing hate to a private group of activists that shows so little interest in the legal, democratic and social ramifications of the task and openly styles itself after a badly-tarnished American outfit? And why would so many media outlets give such an outfit the credibility it craves by treating it as a reliable and unbiased source of information?

A better and more civil way

Anyone looking to reconcile concerns over hate speech in Canadian discourse with the demands of free expression is advised to reread Moon’s 2008 report on Section 13. Therein, he suggested dealing with problematic public opinions and statements through engagement rather than prohibition and punishment. “We must develop ways other than censorship to respond to expression that stereotypes and defames the members of an identifiable group,” Moon wrote. 

At the very least, before attacking someone in public, branding them “neo-Nazis” or doxing them to reveal their intimate personal details in hopes someone else will make their life miserable, CAHN should first define what it means by the labels it employs. And these labels – hate-mongering, for example – should be applied equally to everyone who expresses such animus, regardless of race, religion or politics. 

Policing hate is properly regarded as the most complex and delicate aspect of the entire criminal justice system. So why would anyone willingly hand such responsibility to a private group of activists that shows so little interest in the legal, democratic and social ramifications of the task and openly styles itself after a badly-tarnished American outfit? Tweet

When a group is identified that meets these equally applied criteria, it should first be asked to clarify or disavow its impugned statements. If a disavowal is forthcoming, this could be put on record to, first, credit the target for its goodwill and, if needed, embarrass the target should it later recant. If not, those opinions could be met by way of a debate (in public, online, etc.) and refuted with more and better-quality speech. As 18th-Century French essayist Joseph Joubert put it, “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” In addition to lubricating mutual communication and clearing up potential misunderstandings, both sides might even learn something from one another. 

Were “anti-hate” groups such as CAHN to take such an approach, the public might be better assured the group was properly concerned with the best interests of civil society and free speech. Improved transparency with respect to donors, salaries, and its watch-list of hate groups wouldn’t hurt, either.

John Klein is a business owner in the United States and an advocate for freedom of thought, belief and opinion.

ELISE HATEGAN’S AFFIDAVIT EXPOSES SMEAR ARTIST BEHIND ANTI-RACIST CANADA BLOGSPOT

ELISE HATEGAN’S AFFIDAVIT EXPOSES SMEAR ARTIST BEHIND ANTI-RACIST CANADA BLOGSPOT

Elise Hategan was a one-time, short-time member of the White Nationalist Heritage front. She flipped sides, ratted out some of her former associates and became an anti-racist writer, lesbian and now a Jew, in no particular order. She has launched a lawsuit against fellow Heritage Front recruit turned anti-racist Elizabeth Moore, her one-time friend, and Bernie Farber. Hategan and Moore have shopped around their Heritage Front experiences and conversions for a quarter of a century to receptive media and Jewish audiences. Hategan now believes Moore, with the assistance of former Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber, has wrongfully appropriated some of her experiences for Moore’s benefit.
Along the way, there are some important secrets revealed.
Most important is the identity of “Nosferatu 200” the persona behind the online smear sheet Anti-Racist Canada Blogspot. It turns out the smear meister, who has “outed” many people and damaged many people’s lives and reputations in an Alberta grade school teacher, Kurt Phillips.
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KURT PHILLIPS.jpg


An affidavit is a sworn statement. It has not been tested in court.
Here’s a quick guide to the Hategan affidavit.
1. Who is Nosferatu 200 who runs Anti-Racist Canada Blogspot? — Kurt Phillips. At Paragraph 320, Hategan explains: “. In my 4 years of friendship with Kurt Phillips and as part of the ARC Collective, I supplied information (such as names and photos of Heritage Front members), took photos and wrote several blog pieces that were posted on the ARC blog. I supported the website and Kurt’s sleuthing activities by providing opinions and verbal/written support whenever necessary. We advised and confided in each other on numerous occasions, both via email, telephone and in person, and had conversations that reached far beyond the topic of racism and white supremacy. Kurt also sent me gifts and care packages on multiple occasions, I sent him one package in return, and he contributed financially to my book fundraising efforts.”2. Close ties between Bernie Farber and CSIS agent provocateur Grant Bristow , at para 300-305
3. Warren Kinsella’s machination & Elise Hategan, Bernie Farber and Elizabeth Moore, at para. 306-318.
4. ARC’s Kurt Phillips joins Canadian Anti-Hate Network. CAHN helps fund ARC. Richard Warman of CAHN pressures Elise Hategan to remove Twitter references to Phillips’ identity. at para. 326-332.
Journalist Keane Bexte who works for Rebel Media identified Phillips as a social studies at St. Anthony Middle School in Drumheller, Alberta.

file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/440516074-Affidavit-of-Elisa-Hategan-Aug21-2019%20(1).pdf
Now, that we finally have this sleazy coward’s identity, his dozens of victims — people who, over the years, he’s smeared, mocked, doxed and exposed, people whose lives he’s damaged — should carefully consider their legal options. Phillips likes to say he opposes violence, but the Antifa who gain much of their information from ARC actively practise violence. And, until very recently, both were masked, that is, their identity was disguised and, for very good reason, because, as mother used to say, “they were up to no good.”Oddly enough, I am not demanding that Phillips be fired from his job as a school teacher. I’ve been down that route. In the early 1990s, I was the target of a persistent campaign to have me fired from my position as an English instructor with the Peel Board of Education. There was never any question that I was a competent and effective teacher. Indeed, my Director of Education at the start of the six year ordeal called me “an exemplary teacher.” I did not bring my political views into the classroom. Even an NDP Minister of Education refused to lift my teaching certificate because he KNEW I kept my political and teaching lives separate. In the end, the lobbying pressure became too strong and, in February 1997, I was fired for the non-violent expression on my own time of my support for free speech and my opposition to this country’s catastrophic immigration policies. I was fired because, in the words of my district union leader, “the day after you are fired, the phone calls will stop.” This put a man with a wife and young family in a very difficult financial position.
My firing followed closely on the firing of a fellow teacher, a devout Christian gentleman and writer, Malcolm Ross of New Brunswick. After a similar campaign of media demonization and intense lobbying by Jewish groups, he was dismissed for writings critical of Zionism. Needless to say, to, too, never brought his views into the classroom. He’d been hailed as an effective and compassionate teacher of difficult students and Native kids.
Thus, I believe a teacher is entitled to a private life and to the expression on his own time of his political views, however reprehensible. Phillips activities on ARC are evil and a disgrace. He was part of the mob that eventually took down (at least temporarily) a satirical and vibrant Christian newspaper YOUR WARD NEWS.So, does he deserve to keep his job. Reluctantly, I say “yes”, if, and this is a big IF, after a through investigation the Catholic school board determines:1. He did not bring his views into the classroom and indoctrinate his young charges;2. He did not use school equipment or his work hours for his work on the ARC website;3. His presence did not create a “poisoned environment” for children from families with less leftist views than his. Drumheller is an intensely conservative area — a stronghold of the old Social Credit Party, years ago, and more recently of the Reform Party and the socially conservative wing of the Conservative Party. Did the children of such parents feel safe and welcome in his classroom. Only a thorough investigation will tell.

BLOW IT OUT YOUR EAR, BERNIE!

THE CANADIAN RED ENSIGN

The Canadian Red Ensign

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

Blow It Out Your Ear, Bernie!

It would almost seem as if Bernie Farber is trying to set a world record. That would be the world record for the number of unrelated news stories in which someone who is neither a celebrity nor a world leader appears within a short period of time. In the last half of August he appeared in connection with three stories of which I am aware. Perhaps there are others that I have not seen. He appeared on television and was quoted in the newspapers in connection with the story about a member of the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves who was accused of recruiting for a supposed neo-Nazi organization. He was also quoted in reference to the sentencing of Dr. James Sears who had been found guilty of the promotion of hatred in his satirical Your Ward News. I am sure that few of you will be surprised to learn that rather than lamenting and decrying this latest blow to freedom of thought and expression, as any decent Canadian would, Farber expressed an attitude that struck me as being smug, self-satisfied, cocky, hubristic, and downright arrogant.

The third story is the one that really takes the cake. Grant Hunter is a member of Alberta’s provincial Legislative Assembly and a minister in the province’s government. He holds the portfolio for red tape reduction. I have not checked, but I suspect that Alberta is the only province in the Dominion with such a ministry. Since red tape is generated by bureaucracy, expanding the bureaucracy for the purpose of reducing it seems slightly counterproductive to me, but apparently Mr. Hunter is of another opinion. He has come under criticism for a tweet that said the following:

Wernher von Braun said, “To conquer the universe you’d have to solve two problems: gravity and red tape.” We’ve made it clear that we are committed to reducing red tape in Alberta. Lots more to come.

It is not the part of the tweet in which he toots his own ministry’s horn for which he has been criticized, but for the opening quotation. He removed the tweet after a bunch of triggered snowflakes jumped down his throat. A more appropriate response would have been to tell them to stuff it.

The objection to the quotation is based not upon what it says but upon who said it. Wernher von Braun was a German aerospace engineer – in layman’s terms that means rocket scientist. He turned twenty-one shortly after Adolf Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor in 1933 and in 1937, like any other German in those days who valued his professional career – the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the industrialist Oskar Schindler are other famous examples that come to mind – he joined the Nazi Party. He served the Third Reich in his professional capacity as one of the leading scientists in their rocket development program, and yes, the rockets were designed for military purposes rather than space exploration. Then, following the Reich’s defeat in 1945, he and several others who had worked under him were drafted by the United States government to serve their military in basically the same capacity. It was undoubtedly von Braun who was foremost in legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s mind when he made fun of the American government’s recruitment of scientists, engineers, and other technical experts from Nazi Germany in his hilarious 1964 dark comedy Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. However, von Braun served the United States much longer than he served the Third Reich and was essentially the architect of the American space program.

Unlike Bernie Farber, Wernher von Braun was a brilliant scientist who achieved great things, and until very recently the idea that he was tainted with the crimes of the government he worked for at the beginning of his career and that quoting him is some sort of grave moral offense would not have been taken seriously and anyone silly enough to propose it would have found himself laughed to scorn. Sadly, those days are behind us and so we find CBC News reporting on Hunter’s tweet, the silly backlash, and its removal, and sure enough, there is Bernie waiting and ready to toss his two cents in:

“It was an unnecessary quote,” said Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
“He’s at best a controversial figure. He is for sure a Nazi and … it was silly to quote a man like him. Politicians have to know better,” Farber said. “I just think it shows his [Hunter’s] thoughtlessness.”

Farber, whose organization monitors hate groups, said he doesn’t think people’s concerns about the quote’s use are being overblown. It would have been easy to quote a Canadian economist or another figure on the topic of red tape, he said.
“I just think [Hunter] should acknowledge he should have made a better choice in terms of who to quote and apologize,” Farber said. “That’s always the way forward out of things like this to acknowledge your mistake and move forward.”

Not a single one of these statements is accurate. Von Braun, at his best, was a genius, a pioneer in the field of rocket science, whose work laid the foundation of space exploration and gave subsequent generations a new heroic role model to add to policeman, soldier, and fireman – the astronaut. As for his being a Nazi, it would seem that English verb tenses are not Farber’s strong suit. The present tense is hardly appropriate for someone who has been dead for forty-two years and whose membership in the Nazi Party ended thirty-two years prior to his death. Perhaps Farber holds to a rather twisted version of Calvinism and believes “once a Nazi, always a Nazi.” It was not silly to quote von Braun, what is silly is Farber’s attitude about all of this. There is no indication here of any “thoughtlessness” on Hunter’s part, and there is absolutely no need for him to apologize. Indeed, there is a need for him, Hunter that is, not to apologize, because he is the victim of a form of bullying, and the true way forward in this situation is to refuse to apologize to people who do not deserve an apology and to tell them to take their manufactured offense and blow it out their ears.

If anyone should be apologizing over a quotation it ought to be the news media apologizing to the Canadian public for inflicting so many Bernie Farber quotes on us. By uncritically accepting him as the expert on hate and hate groups that he has appointed himself to be, much as the American media used to do with Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center [sic] before that organization’s reputation finally collapsed under allegations of hypocrisyshady fundraisingserial defamation, and the like, they have lent him a credibility that in my opinion he does not deserve. Incidentally – or perhaps not, I’ll let readers judge for themselves – when Farber and Evan Balgord founded the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, of which Farber is chairman, last year it was with a start-up grant from the SPLC, and the organization, in a letter to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that was signed by Farber and Balgord, along with two of its board members, said of itself “The organization is modeled after, and supported by, the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the United States.”

I first remember hearing the name Bernie Farber around the turn of the millennium. At the time the Liberal Party, headed by Jean Chretien, had been governing the Dominion since 1993 and their Immigration ministers had been trying to strip several elderly men of their citizenship and deport them. These were men of German and Ukrainian ethnicity, who had fled to Canada as refugees following the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War. They had been teenagers during the war and had been forced by the Nazis to serve the German forces in various auxiliary capacities, usually as interpreters but in some cases also as guards. On February 2, 1997, CBS aired an episode of 60 Minutes in which the main segment was entitled “Canada’s Dark Secret.” In this segment Mike Wallace interviewed a private investigator named Steven Rambam who claimed that Canada was a haven for Nazi war criminals. The Liberal government, in response, was trying to project an image of clamping down on Nazi war criminals and since there were no Adolf Eichmanns or Klaus Barbies at hand to prosecute they decided to pick on these men instead. Cheering them on at every turn was the Canadian Jewish Congress, which had hired Rambam and for which Bernie Farber worked as Executive Director for the Ontario Region and National Director of Community Relations. Later Farber was promoted to Chief Executive of the entire organization before it was taken over by the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy which soon after renamed itself the Centre for Jewish and Israel Affairs and dissolved the CJC. Farber had also been interviewed by Mike Wallace in the aforementioned 60 Minutes segment and in the controversy surrounding the attempted deportations was frequently quoted as supporting the government’s actions.

Peter Worthington, the late, great, founding editor of the Toronto Sun, went to bat for the elderly Ukrainians who were being so unjustly railroaded. He was particularly incensed over the cases of Wasyl Odynsky and Helmut Oberlander. Odynsky had been forced by the SS, during the German occupation of the Ukraine, to serve as a concentration camp guard. The Nazis told him they would kill him if he refused and would kill his family if he ran away. Oberlander, a Ukrainian of German ancestry, was forced by the Nazis to serve as a translator and supply guard for the Einsatzgruppe. Neither man served the Nazis voluntarily, nor was either of them an active participant in the war crimes of the Schutzstaffel. As Worthington put it in his column for April 29, 2001:

Men like Odynsky and Oberlander were victims, too – first of Sovietism which seized their country, then of the Nazis and now of a misguided quest for justice without discretion. 

That column, entitled “Ukrainian Teens Were Nazi Victims” was written as a rebuttal of one by Bernie Farber that had appeared the previous day, itself in response to an earlier column by Worthington on the subject. Farber took the position that these men deserved to be deported, because even though they may not have tortured and murdered anyone themselves, their labour as translators and guards – forced labour, remember – enabled those who did commit these crimes. This is a particularly disgusting form of the fallacy of guilt by association and Worthington, quoting from Farber’s column, rightly, in my opinion, said “In my view, that statement by Farber is so wrong, mistaken and out of line, that it inadvertently demeans the Holocaust.”

This would not be the last time Worthington and Farber would lock horns on this subject and while Worthington always got the better of Farber the latter never retreated one iota from his position. In 2012, when Stephen Harper’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stripped Oberlander of his citizenship – one of many reasons why I have nothing but contempt for the present premier of Alberta – Farber told the Globe and Mail “It matters not if he was a translator or a cook – they were all part of the pirate ship and they helped oil the wheels of genocide.” Earlier this year, when the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the 95 year old Oberlander’s motion to have the fourth (!) revocation of his citizenship overturned, Farber was again all over the news gloating and saying that he hoped the Liberal government would quickly deport him.

My point, if it is not obvious, is that someone who cannot tell the difference between the Nazi thugs who tortured and murdered civilians and kids who were forced by these same thugs to do their bidding, should not be taken seriously when he poses as an expert on Nazis and Nazism. Someone who for over twenty years acts as the head of the cheerleading squad while governments, Liberal and Conservative alike, try repeatedly to denaturalize and deport an elderly man, who has been a law-abiding subject of Her Majesty for his entire adult life, because the unit that he had been forced to serve by the invaders of his country of birth when he was still a teenager were responsible for war crimes, caring neither about the aforementioned difference nor the trauma being inflicted upon this man’s family, has absolutely no business whatsoever lecturing the rest of us about “hate.” When he throws a silly conniption about a government minister quoting the leading American aerospace engineer we should pay him no heed.

Good luck with the Nobel Prize, Bernie, but you can take your silly posturing and blow it out your ear!

The Courage of Leroy St. Germaine & the Arrogance of the Censors

The Courage of Leroy St. Germaine & the Arrogance of the Censors

 

Catch the arrogant free speech enemy Bernie Farber say: “You can’t come here and promote hate.” Leroy St. Germaine is Metis. His family has been here for hundreds of years. In contrast,Farber’s father was among the horde of refugees this compassionate country let in after WW II.

https://globalnews.ca/video/5833456/toronto-publisher-sentenced-for-promoting-hate

CAFE Calls on Elections Canada to Investigate Bullying & Intimidation Tactics of Canadian Anti-Hate Network Aimed at Registration of a New Populist Party

Canadian Association for Free Expression

Box 332,

Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3

Ph: 905-289-674-4455; FAX: 289-674-4820;

Website http://cafe.nfshost.com

Paul Fromm, B.Ed, M.A. Director

 

For Immediate Release

CAFE Calls on Elections Canada to Investigate Bullying & Intimidation Tactics of Canadian Anti-Hate Network Aimed at Registration of a New Populist Party

REXDALE, July 15, 2019. Today the Canadian Association for Free Expression is filing a formal complaint with Elections Canada demanding an investigation into bullying and intimidation of voters by a group of anti-racist extremists calling themselves the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. In July 10 Twitter postings, this group has threatened to publicize the names and addresses of persons who sign up as member of the newly formed populist Canadian Nationalist Party, in order to qualify the party for official recognition as a party in the upcoming October federal election.

In their July 10 statement this group of anti-democratic fanatics stated:  “The Canadian Anti-Hate Network will publish the names of 250 members of the neo-Nazi Canadian Nationalist Party if they are successful in becoming a registered political party. We plan to publish these names and their cities of residence as soon as they become public, and will encourage local media to run stories naming neo-Nazi supporters in their communities. … This kind of naming and shaming is part of our mandate of exposing hate groups to make sure communities are well-informed, and to ensure that there are significant, nonviolent social consequences for supporting hate groups.”

 

“This ugly bullying threat is libellous,” says CAFE Director Paul Fromm. “The Canadian Nationalist Party are traditional Canadians and populists, not National Socialist wannabees. CAHN, who boasts longtime anti-free speech campaigners like Bernie Farber and Richard Warman as board members, seeks  to intimidate citizens from their right to vote as they choose.”

 

CAFE Calls on Elections Canada to Investigate Bullying & Intimidation Tactics of Canadian Anti-Hate Network Aimed at Registration of a New Populist Party

 “The list of signators  ti register a political party is public ONLY for the purposes of establishing the bona fides of party supporters,” he adds.

In a further tweet, the hitmen of political correctness gleefully anticipate the loss of jobs for people participating in this democratic process. In a July 10 tweet, Canadian Anti-Hate Network Board member Evan Balgord, a former assistant to Toronto’s anti-free speech Mayor John Tory, enthused: “Employer concerns are a natural consequence of supporting a neo-Nazi party. Practically, however, we won’t have the time to research 250 individuals. Local media might. I’d note they can avoid that consequence by emailing Elections Canada and withdrawing their support. – Evan”

Then, as a further to interfere with the secret ballot and the right of citizens to freely choose the party they prefer, the CAHN offers a carrot:  “If any of members of the Canadian Nationalist Party want to avoid being named and facing the social consequences of supporting a neo-Nazi party, they can email Elections Canada at info@elections.ca to withdraw their support.”

The threatening tactics of the CAHN are no different than posting goons armed with clubs outside polling stations reminding voters not to vote the “wrong” way, says Mr. Fromm an activist with 48 years experience battling the forces of censorship and speech constraint in Canada.

Faith Goldy Rejects White Guilt & Explains That Toronto Wasn’t Stolen from the Indians

Faith Goldy Rejects White Guilt & Explains That Toronto Wasn’t Stolen from the Indians

 

Faith Goldy sets the record straight. At 24:08, she says: “We are on the tract of land are on the traditional land of the settlers of Upper Canada, formerly known as York, legally purchased from the Mississaugas.” This is a great refutation of the lying guilt mongering intro to this and other public meetings that suggests we stole the land from the Indians.

youtube.com
https://youtu.be/xgEsopOjQiM
————————————————- FREE BIRD MEDIA 🦅 ————————————————-…

Taube: Why the ruling against Your Ward News hurts free speech in Canada

Taube: Why the ruling against Your Ward News hurts free speech in Canada

Your Ward News winter 2017
The cover of Your Ward News’ winter 2017 edition.

Freedom of speech has always been on shaky ground in Canada. While many people claim to support this important right, they often smother it with stringent conditions and restrictions that makes speech anything but free.

In fact, a recent Ontario court ruling produced one of the most damaging blows to free speech ever seen in this country.

On Jan. 24, Judge Richard Blouin ruled that James Sears and Leroy St. Germaine – the editor-in-chief and publisher, respectively, of the controversial free newspaper Your Ward News (YWN) – were guilty of promoting hatred against Jews and women. Although the two men claimed their publication was nothing more than a satirical endeavour, the judge disagreed. “YWN repeatedly and consistently dehumanized Jews and women,” Bouin argued, and the paper’s proprietors “were fully aware of the unrelenting promotion of hate.”

The people who had been pushing for Sears and St. Germaine to be prosecuted, which included Liberal strategists Warren and Lisa Kinsella and Canada Anti-Hate Network chair Bernie Farber, were understandably elated. Farber, in fact, said this was the “kind of verdict that Canadians are going to rejoice in.”

No, they won’t – and they shouldn’t.

To be clear, I agree that Your Ward News is an awful publication. I’ve read it twice and I found the things written about the Kinsellas and others offensive at best.

My main concern, however, is the serious blow to free speech in Canada caused by using the Criminal Code to prosecute real or perceived hate speech.

 

As I’ve written before, free speech is the defence of ideas that are either objective or objectionable. We must be willing to support views that appear right to us, and tolerate views that seem wrong. This doesn’t mean we’re required to agree with different points of view, but we must always defend a person’s right to make their views heard in a non-violent manner.

Hate speech has always followed the same principle, long before the removal of Sec. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act – which, in my view, was something to cheer about if you truly support free speech.

People living in a liberal democracy are free to hate, whether we like it or not. The laws of our land cannot, should not and must not forbid any individual or group from feeling differently than, or even loathing, another individual or group.

This doesn’t mean we have to agree with other people’s views. We have every right to object to them, but we have to accept that they have the right to speak their minds.

Hence, people are allowed to hold the most vile and repulsive beliefs about any religious, racial or gender group in Canada and beyond. And yes, this includes Jews and women.

The one notable exception is when hate speech evolves from offensive words and personal beliefs, to the act of physical violence. It’s one thing to hate a person or group, but quite another to wish them bodily harm.

This fine line played a role in the first case against Sears and St. Germaine in December. It was based on a passage in the Summer 2017 issue of YWN, which read, in part, “there was the chance that some hothead who cares deeply about me and my family would lose it and do something illegal, like bludgeon the Kinsella’s to death.”

Judge Dan Moore ruled against the Kinsellas because the “plain and ordinary meaning of the words” didn’t constitute a death threat. With respect to the theory of reasonable doubt, Moore correctly said that, “Having considered all of the evidence I am unable to find that the threat to kill interpretation … is even the most likely interpretation, let alone the only reasonable interpretation.”

Hence, the recent court case against Sears and St. Germaine proved a salient point: critiques of hate speech are just as wrong-headed as critiques of free speech. This doesn’t a constitute victory, ladies and gentlemen. Rather, it’s an enormous loss to our personal rights and freedoms.

Free Speech Booted in the Groin at Toronto Library Board

Free Speech Booted in the Groin at Toronto Library Board

   TORONTO, December 11, 2017. Free speech took a hefty jackboot in the groin tonight, as the Toronto Library Board unanimously approved a new pace Rental Policy that will allow staff to deny meeting space to events “likely to promote, discrimination, contempt or hatred of any group, hatred for any person on the basis of race, ethnic origin, place of origin, citizenship, colour, ancestry, language, creed (religion), age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, disability, political affiliation, membership in a union or staff association, receipt of public assistance, level of literacy or any other similar factor.”

 

   The Board had met in private session before the 6:00 p.m. public meeting. It was clear the fix was in and the decision had already been made. In the short discussion that followed four public delegations, the word “unanimous” was heard several times. Indeed, when Chairman Ron Carinci called the question, not a single member of the 12-person Board stood for free speech.

 

   The new policy will allow staff, especially if one of the anti-free speech groups complains, to decide what will be said at a meeting that hasn’t occurred yet and determine whether hate, contempt or discrimination against any of the long list of privileged people “might” occur and, on the basis, deny the booking. Three opponents of free speech spoke as delegations, including Bernie Farber, formerly CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Madi Murariu of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

 

    I had driven for an hour and 20 minutes on treacherous roads in the Winter’s first snow storm to arrive late but still on time for my presentation — the outline of which is attached.

    The Toronto Star (December 11, 2107) reported: ” Paul Fromm was visibly upset when the board voted in favour of the restrictions.

‘I’m very disappointed the board has signed up for censorship and shut down views,’ said Fromm, who is director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression.

Police were alerted ahead of what turned out to be a peaceful meeting as a ‘precaution, as we always do when there’s a potentially controversial situation,’ said Ana-Maria Critchley, a library spokesperson.”


​Paul Fromm addressing Toronto Library Board

   In the short non-debate, board members did much virtue signalling and several breathlessly proclaimed: “Free speech does not translate into hate speech.” as if they’d dreamed up this non sequitur on their own.

 

   John, a long-time free speech and CAFE supporter noted sadly that libraries used to be in the forefront of the fight against censorship and that the word “hate” has been hijacked and is meaningless. It is used to smear any idea the user does not like.

 

   Bernie Farber, a persistent opponent of free speech for decades, told his “I was a poor little Jewish boy being bullied in Ottawa and found safety in the library” story. He now says he’d feel unsafe in a library that allows people whose views he opposes to meet.

     So, apparently to comfort the snowflake, any meetings that “might” promote “hate” or even “contempt” must be silenced. I tried to point out to the Board that “contempt” really is just negative criticism.

 

   It was clear from the short discussion that the rental policies had been reviewed after intense lobbying from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which also, incredibly, was consulted in the drafting of the new gag rules. Needless to say, the Canadian Association for Free Expression was not contacted. But then, this was never about freedom; it was really about limiting speech in buildings we all pay for.

 

   One Board member exulted: “The Toronto Public Library will be an oasis from hate and discrimination” and, it might be added, from the free expression of ideas.

   Tonight free speech in Toronto took a hit. Snowflakes and censors, 1; free thinkers, 0! — Paul Fromm

PRESENTATION TO TORONTO LIBRARY BOARD AGAINST PLANS TO IMPOSE POLITICALLY CORRECT RULES TO PREVENT MEETINGS
 
The enemies of free speech, the usual suspects — the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith, Bernie Farber, Warren Kinsella and the street thugs of the Antifa raised a huge ruckus in July to try to shutdown CAFE’s memorial for free speech lawyer Barbara Kulazska. The Library hung tough. the meeting proceeded without a hitch. However, the Library was clearly spooked and promised to “review” its policies. The review goes to the Library Board tonight.  It is a vile document of cloying political correctness which would let staff deny a booking on the mere suspicion that remarks might expose a group or person to “contempt”; that is, criticism. Here is the presentation I shall giver.
 
Paul Fromm
Director
CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION
 

Canadian Association for Free Expression

Box 332,

Rexdale, Ontario, M9W

PH: 416-428-5308 ; FAX: 905-566-4820

Frederick Paul Fromm, B.Ed, M.A. Director

Presentation to the Toronto Library Board by Frederick Paul Fromm – December 11, 2017

1.  The Toronto Library Board is considering revisions to its  Community and Event Space Rental Policy What concerns us are changes to the Denial of Use Section of the Policy.

“The Purpose section has been revised to add language about the Library’s objectives of providing equitable access to services and maintaining a welcoming supportive environment free from discrimination and harassment. 

 

· The Denial of Use sections 4.4 (a) and 5.4(a) both state much more strongly that room bookings will be denied or cancelled when the Library reasonably believes the purpose of the booking is likely to promote, or would have the effect of promoting, discrimination, contempt or hatred of any group, hatred for any person on the basis of race, ethnic origin, place of origin, citizenship, colour, ancestry, language, creed (religion), age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, disability, political affiliation, membership in a union or staff association, receipt of public assistance, level of literacy or any other similar factor. 

 

· Under the same Denial of Use sections 4.4(b) and 5.4(b), violations of the Criminal Code of Canada (including hate propaganda laws) and the Ontario Human Rights Code are specifically referenced as unacceptable.”

 

2. First, the Toronto Public Library is not a private club. It belongs to all citizens and should be open to use, including rental of rooms for meetings, to all citizens, without discrimination, if for no other reason than all taxpayers pay for it.

 

3. It is fair to ask persons renting facilities to be aware that they must obey the law, including the Criminal Code and various bylaws. Thus, for instance, a smokers’ rights group should be able to rent a room for a meeting, but, if they announced, they would stage a smoke-in to dramatize their views, it would make sense to deny the booking.

 

4. People renting Library facilities must be responsible to their own words and actions. Staff should not have to try to guess what their words or actions might be.

 

5. In renting meeting space, the Library is not condoning or supporting any point of view, any more than having a book on the shelves means the library endorses the book’s conclusions. Clearly, the library contains many books with wildly different views on a given subject.

 

6. The revised policy is saddling staff with an impossible task — to decide, in advance, of an event, what will be said at that event and whether words that haven’t yet been uttered  are “likely to promote, or would have the effect of promoting, discrimination, contempt or hatred of any group, hatred for any person on the basis of race, ethnic origin, place of origin, citizenship, colour, ancestry, language, creed (religion), age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, disability, political affiliation, membership in a union or staff association, receipt of public assistance, level of literacy or any other similar factor.”

 

* “Promotion of hatred” is a bogeyman. No person or group who has rented Toronto Public Library facilities has, to our knowledge, ever been charged or convicted of “hate”; that is, Section 319 of the Criminal Code. This is a restrictive policy seeking to solve a problem that does not exist.

 

* But, it’s not just “hatred” but contempt that is being prohibited. “Contempt” is a very broad term, meaning dislike of a negative opinion of. It is hard to see how any criticism based on “race, religion, gender orientation or political affiliation or any of the other mentioned grounds” could pass muster. Suppose someone wrote a book entitled Mike Harris 20 Years Later. If the book repeated some of the common criticisms of the time — that Mike Harris balanced the budget on the backs of the poor and squeezed the education system —  and if the author were to speak about his book at a meeting, might is not be likely that the meeting would promote contempt of Mr. Harris because of his political affiliation and, therefore, should be cancelled?

 

* “Contempt” was included in the Sec. 13 (Internet censorship) of the Canadian Human Rights Act but was repealed by Parliament in 2013. It is overly broad and basically chills any criticism on a whole range of topics.

 

* One wonders what “any other similar factor” might be.

 

7. This policy could lead to the banning of all sorts of meetings dealing with contentious topics. It is an affront to free speech, especially as it involves subjective “prior restraint” which is a violation of Canadians’ basic right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

 

7. This policy is a reaction to an organized campaign by censorship minded groups and individuals who protested a memorial to a lawyer who represented controversial clients. these groups took the view that, because they disagreed with Barbara Kulazska’s clients, her friends and admirers should not be allowed to meet to remember her. The Library did the right thing in permitting that memorial to proceed.

 

8. In October, C-FAR Books sought to book a meeting for a talk by Victor Fletcher, editor and publisher of Toronto Street News. We were turned down on October 3 and informed: “  Given the history of the individual and group involved in the booking and the publication being discussed, Library staff believe that the booking could lead to a violation of hate speech legislation.” This decision was unreasonable and outrageous. Neither the individual or group involved in the booking or Mr. Fletcher or Toronto Street News has ever been charged, let alone convicted under Sec. 319. We fear that this censorship is a harbinger of what will happen should the Board adopt this new policy.

 

9. We fear the hecklers’ veto. If an organized lobby makes enough noise in trying to shut down a meeting of people they don’t like, the new policy is so broad that it gives staff the power to shut down any gathering more controversial than the Rosedale Orchid Society.

 

10. The policy contains no independent appeals process against the denial of a room booking. This is especially important as staff decisions may be made only on the basis of accusations or allegations made by groups or individuals seeking to get a meeting cancelled.

 

10. May we suggest a truly inclusive, open door policy. Any person or group, who is a taxpayer,  should be able to rent a meeting room, if available. They are made aware that they are responsible for their own conduct and for obeying all relevant laws. The community should be informed that the library follows a free speech policy. Meetings will not be cancelled because the speakers or topics are controversial.

 

11. The proposed policy will not buy peace but will embolden those who have no tolerance for views critical of their own group or ideology to try to shut down groups or speakers to whom they object.

Tenured Suspended Prof. Tony Hall, The Latest Victim of Zionist Thought Police in Canada

Tenured Suspended Prof. Tony Hall, The Latest Victim of Zionist Thought Police in Canada

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Tenured Suspended Prof. Tony Hall, The Latest Victim of Zionist Thought Police in Canada
Professor Anthony J. Hall

Muslim Press has conducted an interview with Professor Anthony J. Hall. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada.

In what follows, the full transcription of the interview has been given.

Muslim Press: How have you encountered B’nai Brith Canada? What’s your take of this organization?

I first became more intently aware of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith in 2014 when I left the New Horizon Conference in Tehran (ADL). The chair of this event hosted in Iran was filmmaker and broadcaster, Nader Talebzadeh. As I moved from Tehran towards my home in Alberta Canada I picked up various media reports replicating the words spoken by ADL spokesman Abe Foxman at a New York press conference. Mr. Foxman condemned the New Horizon conference in Tehran as a “hate fest” bringing together individuals said to be known for their supposed “anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories and holocaust denial.” He saved particular venom for those he described as “9/11 conspiracy theorists.”

It was something of a revelation to see these weaponized words all grouped together as a set. To be accused of any one of the four terms, it seemed, implied that all the weaponized phrases were equally applicable. No definitions were given by Mr. Foxman and no real evidence was put forward, only inflammatory sound bites meant to harm and discredit generically all those who attended the New Horizon conference in the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For me the conference resonated ironically with the energy of ideas that I had previously associated with the vitality of the European Enlightenment. I embraced the recognition all us delegates were being receiving as  in “independent thinkers.” Apparently the administration of the University of Lethbridge right now is not too open to independent thinking. Among my fellow delegates whose reputations I knew of but had never before met were Wayne Madsen, Pepe Escobar, Thierry Meyssan and Sheik Imran Hussein. Together about 60 of us were able to verbalize calmly and rationally subjects that would have been very difficult to address in the West in venues like academic conferences. I participated in the panel discussions on several subjects, including analysis of the lies and crimes of 9/11.

We get so much propaganda in the West about the Islamic Republic of Iran and here I had been able to see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears how the media spin did not conform with the reality. Our hotel was on the edge of a large urban park so I was able to see something of the everyday civic life of those using the park for sports and recreation and courting and family picnics and all the normal activities of day-to-life. This park provided me with a window into a society that seem safe and secure and stable for the majority of the citizens, some of them non-Muslims of various faith backgrounds.

B’nai Brith Canada is the local branch of the same international operation led until recently by Abe Foxman. His annual pay was about $1 million per annum, or at least the part we know about. The Canadian B’nai Brith is, like the other branches of this international Israeli-based network, extremely well funded and formally dedicated to “advocate for the security of Israel.” The ADL of B’nai B’rith, Canadian version, is therefore essentially an extension of the Israeli government. It operates in Canada within many of our core federal institutions and especially within, as I now know from personal experience, the apparatus of Canadian policing, national security and so-called law enforcement. Police and federal incorporation of the B’nai B’rith apparatus of a foreign power, an Israel First organization, I think runs dramatically counter to the requirements of the Canadian national interest and Canadian sovereignty.

I would say I started feeling the presence of the B’nai Brith in and around my academic work in August of 2015. It started during a book promotion tour involving the text edited by Dr. Kevin Barrett, We Are Not Charlie Hebdo. I have an article in that book. Dr. Barrett, his wife, his two mature sons, his big dog and I toured the province of Alberta doing presentations in Lethbridge, Calgary, Jasper and Edmonton. In the prelude to the Edmonton presentation B’nai Brith’s Amanda Hohmann contacted the manager of the venue asking that the event be cancelled. That manager, a Muslim man himself, subsequently played me back Ms. Hohmann’s taped telephone message wherein she alleged Dr. Barrett is a “holocaust denier” and a 9/11 denier.” Of course she offered no evidence.

When the venue manager refused to adhere to Ms. Hohmann’s request that the event should be cancelled, the B’nai Brith apparently contacted the Edmonton police. The B’nai Brith also called the Calgary and Edmonton police when the Joshua Goldberg image was made to appear on and then disappear from my FB page in late August of 2016 without my being made aware of what was going on.  I will return to that subject below.

A member of the “hate speech” squad did attend our book presentation in Edmonton in 2015. This was the first time I have ever witnessed such a spectacle in Canada. I recall asking myself, is this what we can expect for the future of University education in Canada? Is it our future as educators to be monitored for so-called so-called “hate speech,” ultimately under the authority of the B’nai Brith? The B’nai Brith already seems to wield various forms of state authority in Canada as evidenced most recently by the influence that B’nai Brith Canada has been able to exercise over the administration of the University of Lethbridge. The organization almost seems to be invested with police powers at all levels.

Jump ahead to recent days and my suspension without pay, all done without any due process of evidence-based arbitration whatsoever. In the words of Andrea Amelinckx. President of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association, “We protest the illegal action on the part of President Mahon and the Board… The President’s action violates provincial law and contravenes the University contract with its Faculty.” (Oct. 7 statement) It seems the B’nai Brith in Canada is capable to asserting major pressure even over high-ranking officials like university presidents forcing them to violate Canadian law. Such violations, however, can apparently be covered over because of the B’nai Brith’s influence over the content of our media and over the activities of so-called law enforcement agencies.

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Allow me to address more fully how the B’nai Brith initiated this targeting of me beginning in late August. The key to the whole operation was the planting on, and then removal of, a very offensive image on my FB page, an item I did not invite, sanction or even see until after much of the preconceived damage was already done. Through my own research leading me to correspondence with Ben Garrison, the cartoonist whose face was photoshopped into the offending image, it appears the individual at the originating point of the creation of the offending image and text is Joshua Ryne Goldberg. See my original literary effort to see in more detail what had happened before Ben Garrison sent me the Goldberg revelation.

American Herald Tribune Full Version, Original Version

Supposedly a troubled Jewish youth with psychological disorders, Goldberg was arrested last year by the FBI when he was allegedly trying to smuggle information on to help alleged “jihadists” make bombs As described in Wikipedia, one of Goldberg’s terrorist personaes on the Internet was described by Rita Katz of Site Intelligence as holding a “prestigious position in online jihadi circles.”

Ben Garrison’s face appears in the photoshopped image with the horrific text supposedly authored by Goldberg. The words in the offending text were smeared all over me. Bernie Farber in a Now Magazine article in Toronto went so far as the actually put the offending words in my mouth. He would have me say Goldberg’s words. Farber presents as if they are my words,”I will not rest until every single filthy, parasitic kike is rounded up and slaughtered. The greedy hook-nosed kikes know that their days are numbered” It ends with a call to “KILL ALL JEWS NOW! EVERY LAST ONE.”

That attribution of these words as if they originate with me rather than Joshua Goldberg is actionable and slanderous. Farber’s disgraceful smear job article is illustrative of the length’s the B’nai Brith/Canadian Jewish Congress complex of agencies will go to thehe dark political agenda of both creating and then seeming to fight the imagery of genocidal anti-Semitism.

https://nowtoronto.com/news/facebook-removes-anti-semitic-post-after-online-blowback/

In spite of my renouncing the text, B’nai Brith agents fronted by Ryan Bellerose persisted receiving obvious help and support from media collaborators like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s David Gray. Gray and Bellerose are prominent among those that persisted in using the Goldberg item with its disgusting text to be set the framework of a sensational media witch hunt in Alberta. This witch hunt developed very quickly to the point that I was illegally suspended without pay at the University of Lethbridge within less than a week of the original Bellerose/Gray smear job on Sept. 30 on the airwaves of Canada’s public broadcaster. I am raising the alert that in my view the CBC has essentially been taken over by a local agency of the same foreign power that has taken over the administration of the University of Lethbridge.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2695653641

https://memoryholeblog.com/2016/10/04/cbc-hit-piece-on-prof-anthony-hall-uncensored-video/

There has been no due process by a third-party adjudicator to assess the flood of accusations flowing into the Office of the U of L President based on the disinformation that I had somehow sanctioned the “Kill All Jews” message the B’nai Brith and its collaborators put on me. How interesting that the text is said to be written by Joshua Goldberg. My skeptical mind wonders if he Goldberg personae is not some sort of deceptive behind which there are lawyers producing text that could be used to advance hate speech allegations that would meet sections 318 and 319 of Canada’s criminal code. I have every right and need to be extremely skeptical of any official story of what is going on here, even from Ben Garrison who wrote me once but then did not reply to my reply.

The allegations against me appeared formally on Oct. 3 in the very same document that also included the main punishment imposed on me instantaneously by presidential dictate. In the Oct. 3 letter I was summoned to a meeting to take place only hours later. I was commanded to appear before the U of L President’s academic equivalent of a military tribunal “to explain why a suspension without pay of your duties and privileges as an academic staff at the University of Lethbridge is not in order while the University assesses the purported contravention of Section 3 of the Alberta Human Rights Act.” The surprise command to attend the imminent meeting put me in a conflict. The assigned time was the exact same moment that I had scheduled to see a lawyer, to see if he or she would be suitable to retain. Things have been moving very quickly, way too quickly, probably by design.

Taking time to write this narrative is important. I need it to counter the strategy of moving both me and the media-consuming public along so fast that there is no time to assess the nature of the original crime against me by planting this poisonous text and image, then the B’nai Brith’s very fast, prolific and insidious response and then the illegal actions of my employer. Certainly the B’nai Brith home constituency, encouraged unrelentingly to submit letters and petitions to the U of L President’s office calling for my head, were given ample opportunity to understand their assigned role.

I on the other hand was kept in the dark only happening by a chance google search on what had been happening. It took a while to figure it out, let alone react appropriately, to what was transpiring first on my facebook page while initially while I was visiting my friend and colleague in Lawrence Kansas. As far as going to the Internet my preoccupation in the available time between meetings at the public library was to prepare for, and do on August 27 an item on the immigrant crisis in Australia.

http://newsvideo.su/video/5011300

The comments section is worthy of consideration.

What I am now facing from my employer is a classic example of the principle of guilty until proven innocent. This abandonment of the rule of law is very reflective of the post 9/11 world of unbridled militarism facilitated by the abomination of the supposed jurisprudence of “pre-emptive war.” It seems that the campus extension of the pre-emptive principle being introduced by the B’nai Brith’s new friend and ally, Dr. Mike Mahon, is the “precautionary” principle. In Dr. Mahon’s Oct. 4 Orwellian notice to me that I am suspended without pay he writes, “The suspension is being implemented as a precautionary, not disciplinary, measure, and will remain in effect until the University has concluded its review of this matter [Suspension pursuant to the Post-Secondary Learning Act (Alberta) Section 22(3), October 4, 2016]

One implication of this punishment is to bring the academic institution of tenure, a key protection of academic freedom, to an end in Alberta. What does tenure mean if senior administration can sideline a working tenured professor at a whim with no due process or prior arbitration by a third-party whatsoever?

One of the three accusations against me according to President Mahon is that I have violated the Alberta Human Rights Act by “inferring that Israelis, and hence Jewish individuals, were responsible for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre [sic] on September 11, 2001.” Another allegation is that my Facebook page has been the site of “virulent anti-Semitic comments.” It seems not to matter to President Mahon that I am the victim, not the perpetrator, of the insertion and then Facebook’s removal without notice to me of Joshua Goldberg’s horrendously offensive aggressively genocidal image and text.

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In his Oct 4 letter U of L President, Dr. Mike Mahon has gone so far as to declare that I must not even step foot on the campus where I have taught for 26 years. I was not even allowed to finish teaching the students currently enrolled in my class. He writes,


You are hereby immediately suspended without pay from all duties and privileges as a member of the academic staff at the University of Lethbridge, including any and all duties and privileges associated with teaching, research, and community service. During this suspension you are also prohibited from using your affiliation with the University of Lethbridge, and are further prohibited from attending at any University of Lethbridge campus.


Where is President Mahon’s equivalent to a restraining order from a Judge? It seems that Pres. Mahon assumes he himself is judge and jury and that he speaks on behalf of the Alberta Human Rights Commission as well as the University of Lethbridge.

I interpret these sweeping dictates as a reflection of the bending of Dr. Mahon and the U of L’s Board Chair, Kurt Schlachter, to make themselves instruments in the investigation of me called for in the petition campaign of the B’nai Brith. Is the University curriculum of tomorrow to be decided by petitions, popularity contests and arbitrary assertions of police powers? I suspect that the power brokers in an around the B’nai Brith are somehow pressuring the U of L administration through the carrot and stick of university funding, either through Zionist influence on the Alberta government or through channels of corporate funding or both.

Whatever is going on, I have suddenly been ensnared in a phenomenon that I studied and wrote about in August of this year.

Beginning with my analysis of the debacle at Oberlin Liberal Arts College concerning Facebook posts and the suspension with pay of Dr. Joy Karega, I surveyed a phenomenon that I describe as the campus havoc being wrought by the attacks of Zionist thought police. I did this work, in part motivated by my anticipation of the B’nai Brith attack which in fact did wash over my academic post as the new term started in September.

An early indicator the a tsunami of slander coming my way showed up on  June 20 in a front page story in my home town newspaper, the Lethbridge Herald. The article began by pointing to my co-hosting of False Flag Weekly News with Dr. Kevin Barrett. The article is entitled simply, “Conspiracy Theories.” Dr. Barrett and I responded to the LH story with a special FFWN special

http://lethbridgeherald.com/news/local-news/2016/06/19/conspiracy-theories/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCZs7GLo34c

The author of “Conspiracy Theories” and two subsequent LH stories is engineering his coverage in a fashion that is consistent with the main attributes of the B’nai Brith’s media spin in other venues. The main journalistic operative here in Lethbridge is horror-story writer who goes by the name J.W. Schnarr. Perhaps Mr. Schnarr has played a role in authoring the Canary Mission dossier on me, although that for the moment that is speculation on my part. Whatever the case, Mr. Schnarr seems to be operating out of the same set of assumptions, strategies and externally-generated talking points informing the media spin of Ryan Bellerose and David Gray at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC is our our Crown-owned public broadcaster similar to the BBC in UK and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia,

The Lethbridge Herald is part of a chain overseen by media mogul David Radler, Conrad Black’s former partner in Hollinger International. Richard Perle, a pivotal figure in the Israel First post-9/11 war cabinet of US President George W. Bush, worked closely with Conrad Black in the era when Hollinger International was one of the main print media empires in the English-speaking world, including through ownership of the influential Jerusalem Post. As their media empire went into decline both Radler and Black went to jail, Radler for a shorter sentence than Black after the former turned state’s evidence to convict Conrad Black of various offences in the United States.

My experience of the last few days illustrates the larger ADL/B’nai Brith policy of trying to ruin the careers of faculty members that include perspectives critical of the Israeli government in their academic enterprises of teaching, research, publication and community service. I count myself among that menaced group of scholars. One indication of the elaborate machinery of Zionist thought control over what is taught on campus and who can do the teaching is the content of a web site, Canary Mission.

In my estimation the other side of the pro-Zionist position on full display at Canary mission is the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Persian biases that plague this dossier assembly service. It has emerged as very much a part of what some have dubbed the “Islamophobia Industry.” Things have advanced far since the days when the Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was a primary vehicle of the psychological warfare interwoven into the strategic fabric of the so-called Global War on Terror GWOT). This GWOT was initiated through the implementation of the lies and crimes of 9/11.

The Canary mission dossier on me seems especially hostile to my interviews commenting on an array of news stories being reported at the invitation of Press TV. In my view, my regular commentaries for Press TV lie well within the mandate of the kind of community service and public education that is, or at least should be, part of the work of a senior professor.

Surely I do not speak the same way in the classroom as I do on Press TV. The Iranian state broadcaster, Press TV, has a different kind of audience than the ones I might find in a Canadian university classroom.

In 26 years of teaching evaluations I have never even once to my memory encountered a single comment that I am “anti-Semitic” or even “anti-Israel.” No doubt however, such “complaints” are being busily engineered right now in the joint effort by the B’nai Brith in partnership with the administration of my University. The aim quite clearly is to drive me from campus and away from my teaching responsibilities, to silence and discredit my voice as that of a credible public intellectual.

Nevertheless I remain in spite of the various dictatorial impositions put on me by Dr. Mahon a suspended and tenured full professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. To me, my foremost professional responsibility at this juncture, where I find myself to be concurrently a suspended and tenured professor, is to defend the institution of tenure, a necessary pillar of academic freedom. In this task I hope to be able to work especially with those faculty members and students and regular citizens who are well aware of the high stakes nature of what is transpiring.

 

MP: Do you describe yourself as a holocaust denier?

I do not describe myself in that way. I think, however, it is problematic to start a vital discussion by putting at the forefront the idea of a denial of a denial. I do not believe that the myth should be allowed to stand that there is a simple yes or no answer to the question you propose. Certainly I do not believe that those who question the official story of anything should immediately be subject to punishment and recrimination as seems now to be the case now in Canada and other many countries but especially in Germany. We need to stop the process that assigns a verdict of criminality to any individual assigned however carelessly, arbitrarily or deviously the weaponized term, “holocaust denier.”

We need to be clear that everything is open for discussion, for debate, for reconsideration with careful reference to existing evidence or new evidence as it becomes available. It is especially important that we in the academy maintain and defend the position that no subject of study should be declared out of bounds, outside the real of eligibility for robust evidence-based debate. We in the academy have an important responsibility to see that we defend the values of science even when it comes to evaluating sensitive and fraught issues where historical interpretation and current public policy are inextricably linked.

In this context I would rather see more emphasis on the concept of Shoah, a phrase well understand by Hebrew speakers and by Palestinians who see their Shoah as a continuation of the Nabka right up to the present day.

The term holocaust, which is rooted in a Greek term for burnt offering, should in my opinion be understood as a plural rather than a singular concept. My understanding is that the word holocaust can, like the related term “genocide,” be applied in a number of contexts to describe lethal tragedies of history and lethal tragedies that are occurring right now. We live in a time when death by high-tech military fire is being inflicted on millions especially throughout Eurasia and the Middle East, the part of the world inhabited by many majority Muslim populations. The term holocaust can be correctly applied especially to the contemporary plight of the minority of the Palestinian population that continue to reside in the historic land of Palestine, the Aboriginal home of the stateless Palestinian people. These people are subjected to a concerted Israeli campaign of so-called ethnic cleansing, another term for genocide.

I recall as a teenager in the 1960s frequently hearing and seeing the term “holocaust” applied to the prospect of nuclear war. The possibility of a full-fledged nuclear holocaust is perhaps more imminent at this moment than at any time in history including at the height of the Cold War. Since the atomic holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, all humanity has been united by the awful prospect that all life on this planet could all be snuffed out in an instant. The expansionary policies of Likudnik Israel are integral to the destabilizing forces threatening to subject all living beings on earth to a nuclear holocaust.

I think it would be correct to describe the genocidal experience of Indigenous peoples in the Americas as a holocaust. Indeed there is an important book devoted to the subject entitled American Holocaust. The treatment of Aborigines in Australia could similarly be described as an Australian Holocaust.

Terrible atrocities were committed against Jewish people in Europe in the course of World War II. There is plenty of historical evidence of that. There are also aspects of various Jewish holocaust narratives that do give rise to the need for some resort to issues of evidence and nuances of interpretation. Those atrocities committed against European Jewry figure importantly in the history of the 60,000,000 casualties of WWII that surely qualifies as a holocaust in its own right.

I want to draw in my response to this important question on my reflections on the recent experiences of my friends, Alfred and Monika Schaefer. Alfred Schaefer resides in Germany where he is being swept up in a travesty of criminalization of revisionists that is incompatible with any sense of free speech and freedom of dissent in a free and democratic society. Alfred was behind the camera and Monika was in front of it in the production of the You Tube video, Sorry Mom, I Was Wrong About the Holocaust. As I am writing this commentary, the 6 minute simple video has received about 100,000 views with likes dominating over thumbs down by a ratio of about three to one.

I think it is perfectly fair for individuals to agree or disagree about the content of the video. I myself do not accept the blunt assertiveness of some of Ms. Schaefer’s contentions. Why can’t we accept, however, that even when it comes to all topics but especially sensitive topics we must accept some disagreement as a necessary condition of living together peacefully in complex societies. Shouldn’t we embrace the possibilities for compromise, growth and possible resolution that disagreements sometime present?

In the case of the disagreements arising from the Sorry Mom video, they must inevitably lead back to some reckoning with evidence underlying the various contentions. Such reckoning surely should be understood as a normal feature of our ongoing dialogue in the unfolding present with the evidence and understanding of what happened in the past. Surely such a reckoning is a necessary and normal attribute of healthy societal evolution.

What seems to me, however, to be very wrong is for those in positions of power to heap recriminations on those with whom they disagree by appointing themselves as thought police to decide unilaterally what are or should be community norms. To move from the abstract to the concrete, I have made no secret of the fact that I disagree with the propriety of violinist Monika Schaefer being denied a busking permits or a right of entry to a major musical performing venue, the Royal Canadian Legion, in Jasper National Park. What other type of issue would cause officials to act arbitrarily to punish a citizen because he or she does not like the content of a video in which he or she was involved?

More recently Monika Schaefer has been ejected from the Board and from the position of an instructor at the violin teaching camp of the Alberta Society of Fiddlers (ASF). By doing so the ASF has ceased to priorize the promotion of the arts by in Alberta by giving its highest priority to some self-appointed task of thought policing the ideas and interpretations of a prominent member of Alberta’s artistic community. What next? What kind of precedent is being set? This development bodes poorly for the future of Canada and Alberta under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Rachel Notley respectively.

To me the treatment of Monika Schaefer in Jasper National Park and in the provincial sphere of the ASF should be seen as a marker for the world that Canada is not the free and open and democratic society it is sometimes portrayed as being. The unfair and probably actionable treatment imposed on me at the hands of the administration of the University of Lethbridge and by Canada’s public broadcaster at the urging of B’nai Brith Canada points in a similar direction.

Canada is becoming a place of oppressive arbitrary actions extending now to an assault on the academic institution of tenure, an assault I intend to resist in the interests primordially of the students and faculty at the University of Lethbridge. The reckless deployment of the weaponized term, holocaust denier, should be exposed for what it is, namely a dangerous device deployed to harm, silence and undermine critics of Israeli expansionism, both territorially and in terms of international influence. This expansionism is extending to a holocaust of mass murder, maiming and uprooting of peoples on the frontiers of the expanding frontiers of what is known as Eretz Israel, Greater Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OAlBWA2Jvc

 

MP: How do you compare criticism of Zionism and being charged with anti-Semitism?

Zionism has a fairly precise meaning as the movement from which the establishment of the Israeli entity emerged in steps, but particularly with the Declaration of Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild in 1917 and with the UN Resolution 181 in 1947-48. Within Zionism there are many factions and camps. On the right-wing extreme is Revisionist Zionist, the roots of the extremist ideology that PM Benjamin Netanyahu currently draws upon in his role as leader of the Likud Party and Prime Minister of Israel. At another pole is Labor Zionism, kibbutz-style Zionism. Labor Zionism has mostly gone into retreat since the breakdown of the Oslo accords process in the mid-1990s.

When I was at York Mills Collegiate in Toronto in the late 1960s I heard much about Israel as a place of socialist kibbutzim. Many of my friends visited these kibbutzim during summer holidays and came back to tell very positive stories about what they saw, heard and learned in these places. These days I don’t hear much about kibbutzim. I hear more about very right-wing settler populations who are in the political ascendance in Israel. This expansionary trend, which violates international law in a number of ways, has led to the rise of a transnational movement of resistance. This pushback on Israel’s expansion into land set aside by the UN for an Arab state goes by the name of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The success of many BDS campaigns, which have become especially vibrant on some university campuses, is a factor that has prompted Zionist intervention at my school and at many other schools and universities throughout the so-called “West.” The aim of this Zionist intervention is not to advance free speech and open exchange but to limit speech, control the curriculum and make it impossible for scholars like me to continue our academic work.

The term “anti-Semitism” has far less specific meanings than the term Zionism. I have come to see the term, “anti-Semitism” as being weaponized, often to carry out Zionist-directed ritual defamation such as that currently being applied to both Monika Schaefer and I. The term has both racial and linguistic resonances that can be applied to Arabs generically or to particular groups of Arabs such as the Palestinian people.

Much confusion arises because the dominant group of Jews these days are of Eastern European ancestry. As I understand it, those emerging from this Eastern European stream of Jewish history call themselves Ashkenazi.

The charge by the Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish State that its critics are “anti-Semitic” really breaks down especially when those critics are Palestinian or those that see, regardless of their background, the international efforts to aimed at achieving Palestinian self-determination through state formation as noble and legitimate. Especially problematic is Ashkenazi name calling as “anti-Semites” of those Palestinians who persist against great odds in living on their Aboriginal territory or even in the Diaspora. Similar problems apply when predominantly secular and Ashkenazi groups such as the B’nai Brith try to denigrate and demean those that stand up for Palestinian rights as “anti-Semites” when Palestinians have the greater claim of actually being Semites.

By and large my analysis is more focused on the Zionist threads of Jewish history, although obviously the phenomenon of Zionism is set in broader contexts that require the application of various contested nomenclatures in a very fraught realm of scholarship.

Here it should be noted that not all Jews are not Zionists and that all Zionists are not Jews. Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for instance, is definitely a committed Zionist although he is Christian not Jewish. Similarly many Jewish rabbis are very hostile to making Judaism the basis for statecraft rather than treating Judaism as the basis of religious devotion rather than a means of building up a state apparatus.

I noticed that J.W. Scharr is his LH hit piece in the Lethbridge Herald of September 29 referred to me in a headline as “allegedly spreading Anti-Zionist propaganda.” From my perspective, it is Mr. Scharr, Mr. Bellerose, Mr. Gray and perhaps Dr. Mahon who have given themselves over to the business of spreading propaganda. I have the credentials of an academic. I don’t use my credentials as a platform but rather I continue the process of lifelong learning which for me is also my professional calling. My aim is to continue to move towards the truth as best I can, even when facing the propaganda blitz to which I am currently being subjected here in Canada.

 

MP: What do you think about B’nai Brith’s actions to repress criticism of Zionism in universities?

I think what is currently going on at the University of Lethbridge, where the institution of tenure is being actively attacked by my suspension without any due process whatsoever, illustrates well that B’nai Brith’s role in University governance should be minimalized, not maximized.

 

MP: Do you think Canada is facing a free speech problem?

Yes. Definitely. The constant harassment of Arthur Topham and his RadicalPress.com, where some of my essays on Aboriginal rights were published in the late 1990s. illustrates a far broader, more pervasive and more corrosive assault on our basic rights and freedoms in Canada.

 

MP: How were you personally affected by the “thought police”?

It is so soon that I have hardly been able to assess the impact of the B’nai Brith’s thought police on my family and I. Both my sons have been traumatized. Emphasizing the reaction of my youngest son, an Officer in the Royal Navy, his mother mom whose is Ojibway texted me to indicate,

I do not want to mention that …. Was taken aback and somewhat embarrassed about a cartoon of you on Reddit Lethbridge. I told him not to look at anything else on line. I am getting more and more angry that this group is spreading hate that upsets my sons with over-the-top accusations about their holocaust.  They are on my and my sons’ indigenous lands, which they continuously benefit from the resources gained at the expense of the genocide and thievery from my children’s ancestors.

Here is the cartoon my son the military man serving his country found on the Internet.

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Yes its affecting not only me but a lot of people personally.

The affected parties include many who have been provoked by the B’Nai Brith-planted image engineered by Joshua Goldberg or whoever exploits his web personae to produce a calculated responses of revulsion. I am not blaming those who responded as the B’nai Brith calculated its core constituents would. They too are, in a way, innocent victims of this very telling illustration of the nature of the deceptions currently allowed to rule our world with the help and complicity of very corrupt organizations like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I blame first and foremost the engineers of this psychological operation that very well might include the directors of of Facebook. It has been widely reported that the logistical core of Facebook’s massive social media network is to be further devoted to propaganda purposes. Facebook’s headquarters and main “security” platforms are being transferred to Israel.

 

Dr. Hall is editor in chief of American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.


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