{"id":1046,"date":"2015-12-04T01:19:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T06:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1046"},"modified":"2015-12-08T11:30:53","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T16:30:53","slug":"arthur-tophams-political-beliefs-may-just-be-illegal-by-eve-mykytyn-november-29-2015-by-admin-leave-a-comment-screen-shot-2015-11-07-at-4-51-44-pm-arthur-tophams-political-beliefs-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1046","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Topham\u2019s Political Beliefs May Just Be Illegal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arthur Topham\u2019s Political Beliefs May Just Be Illegal by Eve Mykytyn<\/span><\/h1>\n
November 29, 2015<\/span>\u00a0by\u00a0admin<\/a>\u00a0Leave a Comment<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Arthur Topham\u2019s Political Beliefs May Just Be Illegal<\/strong>
\nThe Extraordinary Trial of Arthur Topham: Part 3<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Eve Mykytyn \/ November 29th, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

On November 12, 2015 Arthur Topham was convicted of inciting hatred against a racial group, the Jewish people. Mr. Topham maintains a website,\u00a0RadicalPress.com<\/a>, in which he publishes and comments upon various documents. These documents include\u00a0The Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/em><\/a>, various anti-Zionist texts, and a tract entitled\u00a0Germany Must Perish!<\/a><\/em>, first published in 1941 and then satirized by Mr. Topham as\u00a0Israel Must Perish!<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Topham\u2019s defense rested primarily on the theory that his writing was not directed at Jews as a race or religion, but rather at the politics espoused by a number of Jewish people. The best discussion of this topic is by Gilad Atzmon, contained in his book,\u00a0The Wandering Who?<\/em><\/a>. The basic take away for considering the implications of Mr. Topham\u2019s criminal conviction is that some people conflate Judaism as a religion, an ethnic heritage AND with a political view, not always consistent, that generally favors Israel\u2019s perceived benefit.<\/p>\n

Canada has a lobby entitled Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) that lobbies the Canadian government on behalf of Israel. Mr. Rudner, who had lodged various complaints about Mr. Topham in the past and was the Crown\u2019s expert in Mr. Topham\u2019s case, has worked for CIJA or its predecessor for 15 years. So the Crown relied upon the testimony of a man who lobbies for Israel (clearly a political entity) for proof of anti Semitic content and potential harm to Jewish people. His appearance in tiny Quesnel is testimony to the political importance that his organization places on silencing Mr. Topham. (The original witness scheduled to testify, Mr. Farber was a former colleague of Rudner\u2019s, and apparently the two are close enough that Mr. Rudner\u2019s written testimony was an exact duplicate of Mr. Farber\u2019s original.)<\/p>\n

Since Mr. Topham was accused of anti-Semitism, let\u2019s look at the term. The quote below is from the Holocaust Encyclopedia, published and maintained by the United States Holocaust Museum so it is probably safe to assume that this is a standard definition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, is history\u2019s most extreme example of antisemitism. In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr originated the term antisemitism, denoting the hatred of Jews, and also hatred of various liberal, cosmopolitan, and international political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often associated with Jews. The trends under attack included equal civil rights, constitutional democracy, free trade, socialism, finance capitalism, and pacifism.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Interesting that, in the first paragraph of its section on anti-Semitism, the encyclopedia blends together the concepts of \u2018hatred of the Jews\u2019 with opposition to various political and social movements generally associated with Jews. This is puzzling. Is it anti-Semitism to oppose socialism or is it anti-Semitic to oppose finance capitalism? While one could oppose both, it would be impossible to espouse either view without rejecting the other. I assume the author did not intend to imply that opposition to socialism, for instance, was it anti-Semitic even if such opposition was from a fellow Jew.<\/p>\n

I bring this up because this is precisely what I believe happened in Mr. Topham\u2019s case. Mr. Topham was charged with two counts of inciting hatred over different periods of time. The jury found him guilty on the first count and not guilty on the second. Of course there are many possible explanations for a split verdict (none of which the jury is allowed to discuss even after trial without committing what the judge termed a \u2018criminal\u2019 offense). The observers, including myself, tended to believe that the discrepancy in the verdicts was a result of the text Germany\u00a0Must Perish!<\/em>\u00a0and its satirization by Mr. Topham in\u00a0Israel Must Perish!<\/em>, a text that appeared on his website during the period for which Mr. Topham was found guilty.<\/p>\n

The original text of\u00a0Germany Must Perish!<\/em>\u00a0was written in 1941 by Theodore Kaufman, an American Jewish man. The text was originally self-published, but was apparently advertised and reviewed by the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>, and\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0magazine. In any case, the publication was well known enough to have been read in Germany and was cited by Hitler and Goebbels as evidence of the bad intention of the Jews. The book is horrendous. Its semi-literate ravings are a ridiculous indictment of the German people and their warlike nature. Kaufman advocates sterilization of the Germans as the only possible remedy. At best, the author is confusing all Germans with Nazis, but that is not what the book says. Mr. Topham\u2019s satire in which he substitutes the words \u2018Israel\u2019 for Germany and \u2018Zionists\u2019 for Germans helps to make the original text comprehensible. The satire hopefully provides some insight into how these words might have been viewed by Germans in 1941. The proof that the works were effective but the satire was not understood, is that Mr. Topham faced criminal charges for aping Kaufman\u2019s words.<\/p>\n

In its case, the Crown made the point that\u00a0Israel Must Perish!<\/em>\u00a0was a horrible text. The Crown argued that the fact that the words were originally written by a Jewish man to indict the Germans did not kosher the text. \u201cJews,\u201d the Crown said, \u201ccould write anti-Semitic things too.\u201d Presumably her next case will be against a Jew for inciting hatred against the Jewish people. Mr. Topham was making a political point. I believe he was trying to convey the idea that Israel and Zionists could seem very much like Germans and Nazism in 1941. It is not necessary to agree with Mr. Topham\u2019s point to understand it.<\/p>\n

If I am right and it was this text that caused Mr. Topham\u2019s conviction, then that is an important indictment against Canada\u2019s admirable attempts to limit \u2018hate\u2019 speech while allowing freedom of political speech. Mr. Topham\u2019s criminal conviction may well have been the result of a misunderstanding that Mr. Topham was criticizing Israel and Zionism and not Jews as a race. Germany and Israel are political constructs, Germans may not be, but Zionists, or those who support establishment of the state of Israel are, by definition, espousing a political cause. So, Mr. Topham criticized the political cause of the Zionists. Is there a way in which Canada\u2019s laws would allow Mr. Topham\u2019s political views to find an outlet? Perhaps Canada ought to make criticism of Israel legally off limits so that Canadians may adjust their behavior accordingly.<\/p>\n

Read\u00a0Part 1<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a02<\/a>.<\/strong>
\nEve Mykytyn graduated from Boston University School of Law and was admitted to bar of the state of New York. Read\u00a0other articles<\/a>\u00a0by Eve.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arthur Topham\u2019s Political Beliefs May Just Be Illegal by Eve Mykytyn November 29, 2015\u00a0by\u00a0admin\u00a0Leave a Comment Arthur Topham\u2019s Political Beliefs May Just Be Illegal The Extraordinary Trial of Arthur Topham: Part 3 by Eve Mykytyn \/ November 29th, 2015 On … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39,456,455,435,433],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}