How far have we come? (Ezra Levant on the Human Rights commissions)

Ezra Levant ^ | 2009-10-28 | Ezra Levant

[Clive]

How far have we come in our quest for freedom of speech, over the past two years?

Quite far. Look at this story in the Canadian Jewish News, the newspaper of record for the Official Jews, entitled "Hate laws backfire on Jews, author says". That headline itself is an achievement. Here are some excerpts; I've put some parts in bold:

The federal anti-hate law that “official Jews” lobbied for and got passed has, 32 years later, backfired, sowing the seeds for political correctness, media chill and censorship that have undermined the values that define the Jewish People, says Alberta lawyer, author and activist Ezra Levant.

Levant, who is Jewish, made the assertion in an Oct. 21 talk to a small audience at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation about his 900-day saga of being prosecuted by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in his now defunct magazine, the Western Standard, in February 2006.

“It is what I call the ‘soft jihad,’” said Levant, describing the actions of Muslims who file complaints with human rights commissions against those they perceive to have aggrieved them. “I was a Jewish publisher of a Zionist newspaper charged for publishing the news.”

Levant has spent the last 3-1/2 years railing against human rights commissions, which he says have fostered a climate of censorship, media chill and political correctness that’s now being exploited by those he calls enemies of the West, Israel and the Jewish People.

“The Jews should have known better,” Levant said. “We know about the ‘hard jihad,’ but the ‘soft jihad’ is far more effective and clever – it says to find the weakness in the law.”

It’s ironic, Levant suggested, that organizations such as Canadian Jewish Congress helped create a law that has come back to haunt them.

Levant, a free-speech libertarian and former activist in the Reform party, said that the anti-hate law – which since it passed in 1977, has had a “100 per cent” conviction rate and was upheld in 1990 in a narrow decision by Canada’s Supreme Court – is very dangerous.

That’s because its “malleable and vague” wording allows authorities to charge anyone for actions, words or pictures that are “likely to expose a person to hatred and contempt.”...

In Levant’s case, the printing of the cartoons in his magazine led Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada to bring a complaint before the Alberta commission.

Initially, Soharwardy approached the police. He went to the commission only after the police told him that “they don’t arbitrate political or religious disputes.”

At the commission, however, Soharwardy found a far more sympathetic ear – in Levant’s view because he is Muslim.

Because of the pervasive climate of political correctness that infuses human rights commissions, Levant asserts, little heed is paid to Jewish or Christian complainants...

His case also coincided with a similarly high-profile complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as well as with the commissions in British Columbia and Ontario, against journalist Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine over book excerpts that were alleged to be anti-Muslim...

In his view, proud anti-Semites, such as John Ross Taylor and others who have been convicted under the 1977, law got way more attention than they otherwise would have if they had merely been allowed to vent their spleens to the marginal few who cared or bothered.

“They were all kooks and nutbars,” Levant said. “The government took kooky nobodies and turned them into glamorous victims, national celebrities,” he said.

Regarding Muslim groups that file complaints with human rights tribunals, “the Canadian Islamic Congress did far more to destroy western freedom than 9/11 did,” Levant said. “Nine/11 did not change how we live, but [the Canadian Islamic Congress] got editors to censor ourselves.”

It seems wrong to quibble with such a tremendous news report, but I don't think I said Jews haven't been successful complainants -- in fact Jews dominated the prosecutions for the first twenty years the law was in effect, until it became the personal property of Richard Warman. And I think I said the cartoon threats in general -- not just the Canadian Islamic Congress in particular -- did more damage to the West than 9/11. But these are microscopic complaints. The news report is amazing.

I didn't know that the CJN had a reporter at the meeting. It was a smallish gathering, though very engaged -- I stayed to talk afterwards with a dozen eager Montrealers for almost half hour. Perhaps the reporter, David Lazarus, was truly convinced; perhaps his editors in Toronto are no longer willing to go along with the Canadian Jewish Congress's embarrassing censorship fetish; perhaps it was the strong endorsement for freedom of speech expressed by my host that night, the well-loved Rabbi Reuben Poupko. I don't know; but here we have, in the bosom of the "official" Jewish newspaper in Canada, a sympathetic and detailed report of a Jewish objection to censorship.

I just don't think that would have happened two years ago.

I think we've come a long way.

I think we're more than half way there, actually.

I think we're going to repeal this damnable law, this un-Canadian law, this illiberal law, this anti-western civilization law, this un-Jewish law.

When an article like this runs in the Canadian Jewish News, there aren't a lot of milestones left to pass.

[Clive]

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[fanfan]

Thanks for the ping, Clive.