Arthur Topham RIP –
pril 28, 2024
Arthur Topham – 25 February 1947 – 23 March 2024
The thought police tried to silence this courageous Canadian. They failed.
March 2017–No jail time for Canadian man convicted of online anti-Semitism
Arthur Topham barred from internet for 6 months, says he has a duty to alert the public to ‘imminent threat of Jewish lobby’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-jail-time-for-canadian-man-convicted-of-online-anti-semitism/
by Monika Schaefer
Sadly, we have lost a great thinker, writer, teacher, courageous truth-teller, and brave warrior who always fought for what is right. Arthur Topham passed on after an illness with cancer on the 23rd of March, 2024 in Quesnel, BC. He was 77 years old.
Many people will remember Arthur through his brilliant writing and creation of memes and articles on his site Radical Press. This began in 1998 as a print publication called The Radical with a subtitle “Digging to the root of the issues”, and a few years later he switched from print to solely online production. The subtitle was a direct reference to the etymology of the word “radical” – the root. Digging to the root of the issues was what Arthur Topham did brilliantly. He had long been an activist who wrote frequent letters to political figures and to editors of newspapers, and over the years, as he dug down deep to learn about true history, his writings became ever more dangerous to the “establishment”. There were complaints from Jews about the contents of his Radical Press website, and a dozen or more years of legal harassment, persecution and conviction followed.
I was first introduced to Arthur Topham in about 2013, and I became an avid reader of his Radical Press on-line publication. In subsequent years Arthur published several articles in which he featured content from me. Later when I was thrown in jail, Arthur worked tirelessly to publicize my case. He created memes and posters, he informed the public about whom they could write letters to on my behalf, and he wrote excellent letters pushing for my release. He was so effective in fighting for me,in fact, that at some point he was accused of breaching his own sentencing conditions which resulted in more years of legal harassment for him.
I am forever grateful to Arthur Topham for all that he did, for all of us.
(Holocaust skeptic Monika Schaffer)
This was how Arthur finished one of his emails to me a number of years back, before my incarceration. I include it here as a message of inspiration to us all.
“Be strong my friend and keep on loving, living, making music and speaking the truth! And may God protect you always. (My theme has always been Psalm 23 since I began this quest and I find great comfort in it. The table is just about prepared!)
Mehr Licht!”
[More Light!]
Although he at various times occupied various parts of the political spectrum, Arthur Topham was a consistent free speech warrior. He paid dearly for his outspoken courage. CAFE supported him at his 2015-2016 “hate trial” in Quesel. An eclectic group of free speech supporters attended the trial and rallied around him, people from as far away as Japan, England (expert witness Gilad Atsman), the U.S., Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and, of course, British Columbia.
In cross-examination, we learned many interesting things, especially from Len Ruidner, the Canadian Jewish Congress’s “expert” witness. Some of the problematic and horrific, yes, hateful, verses from the Talmud, for instance, justifying sex with little children, he didn’t disavow, except to suggest that these passages were merely rabbis “speculating.” The jury, in a typically Canadian half-and-half decision, convicted Arthur of one count of promoting “hate” and acquitted him of the other. Juries in Canada don’t give reasons. So, we never learned which writing they deemed “hate” and which was merely opinion. — Paul Fromm, Director, Canadian Association for Free Expression.
Arthur attended Simon Fraser University back around 1969. He became a school teacher and taught in Quesnel for a while.
For a long time, he published a hard copy tabloid called The Radical. It was a lot of fun — an old fashioned hippy paper advocating decriminalizing marijuana and all sorts of alternative ideas.
He/the Radical was put through the meatgrinder of Court because he printed the scandal about Indian Chief Ed John being accused as having committed sexual assault. At that point in time, Ed John had been appointed to the Cabinet of British Columbia, even though he was not an elected MLA!
Arthur wound up in the Supreme Court of BC at Vancouver, along with Kevin Annett. The judge, James Taylor, issued an Order that Arthur was prohibited from publishing anything about the scandal. I was there. Arthur stood up in Court. Mr Annett was there, lurking around, but lacked the courage? to go into the Courtroom. The thing was just begging to break wide open as an important test of Freedom of the Press but Arthur did not have the means to pursue it. Years later, his own people called-out Ed John.
The turmoil Arthur went through after being charged with “hate speech” demonstrated how the meatgrinder process of the criminal justice system is a punishment unto itself.
The cops / the Prosecutors did things that were blatantly ILlegal. For instance, they walked in with a very suspect Warrant to Search, seized everything in sight, especially his computer, which was crucial to him being able to prepare his Defence. Then they kept his computer for years.
Lawyer Doug Christie relished the case, because it gave him the opportunity to test his question about “if something happens in cyber-space, alleged to be a crime, where does it actually take place?”
Sadly, Doug died in 2013 prior to Arthur’s trial.
At Arthur’s trial, the judge took Judicial Notice that the material at issue, Arthur repurposing the book Germany Must Perish”, into a perfect parallel entitled Israel Must Perish” was satire.
I thought that what he had done was very witty.I am pretty sure that Arthur had composed his piece of Art ( satire) at his home in Quesnel British Columbia. Then sent it via the internet to a website with a server in the United States of America.
At that point, anyone who accessed that website, in order to view it on a computer screen, was “operating’ in the territory of the U.S. of A.The point being no-one ever did an act in the real world anywhere in the Dominion of Canada, which contravened section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code.
In the US, that material is not a criminal offence. In the US the concept of Free Speech, includes the reciprocal … the right to listenI was in communication with Arthur all that time. I got Dr Henry Makow to agree that he would take the witness stand for the Defendant. But Arthur’s lawyer never called him.
As well, I was adamant that Arthur take the witness stand in his own defence. But his lawyer Barkley Johnson prevented him doing so. A jury wants to see the Defendant. They make up their mind whether or not they like him. Then they decide if he’s guilty or not.
The black humor at the end of the trial was there were two charges identical except for the dates of the allegations. The jury convicted him of one, but acquitted him of the other! The sentence was UN-believable: he was ordered not to talk about anything to do with the Jews for yearsHe was pretty de-moralized for years after. — Gordon Watson, Justice Critic, Party of Citizens Who Have Decided To Think for Ourselves & Be Our Own Politicians,
