Motives behind Gypsy anti-Sun News demonstration

Somewhere between "minuscule" and "small" would describe the size of the demonstration held outside Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission offices in Toronto last Tuesday by the Roma community protesting against the Sun News Network. There were about two dozen people in total, including speakers which included "social activist" Bernie Farber and former Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

There is no defending the content of Ezra Levant's tirade against the Gypsy community last year. Sun News issued an apology almost immediately after its broadcast and Levant himself apologized in great length and detail last month. 

Hopefully, that would have put the unfortunate episode in the past, but the issue has become less a cause about offense to the Gypsy community than as a spear opponents of Sun News would use to strike at the fledgling conservative news network.

That motive was so transparent that aspects of the protest took on an element of self-parody. Among the complaints by Roma Community Centre Director Gina Csányi-Robah was that Sun News continues to use the "offensive" term Gypsy to describe the Roma people. Making that claim ridiculous, following her speech, the event's Master of Ceremonies announced a performance by two musicians from the group "The Gypsy Lions."

A definitive monograph on the Gypsies by University of British Colombia Sociology Professor Werner Cohn refutes much of what Ms Csányi-Robah, who was born in Canada, alleges. Cohn is extremely sympathetic to the Gypsies, whose culture he studied in great detail and he dispels dangerous slanders against them such as the allegation of Gypsies "stealing children."

But he also points out that the Gypsies are in fact a number of peoples, most of whom self-identify as Gypsies and of whom the Roma (or Rom or Romani) are just one group.

Bernie Farber's interest in the Roma community is curious. He undoubtedly is sincere in advocating for people he considers oppressed. But it is remarkably convenient for him that in agitating against Sun News, he can attack people with whom he has an apparent ax to grind. As Farber pointed out in an interview on CBC Radio's As It Happens, there is a long history and no love lost between him and Ezra Levant.

That interview is fascinating in a number of ways. The biases and abuses of the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have been a frequent Sun TV target that could possibly even be described as an obsession, and Levant's Gypsy faux pas is being seized upon as an opportunity for payback.

In the interview, Farber and As it Happens host Carol Off compete with each other to malign Sun News and Levant, working themselves into a crescendo of bile. Off is famous for her lack of emotional allocution. For those unfamiliar with her vocal style, imagine a lobotomized, female Ben Stein on Ritalin and that will give you an idea of her bland droning.  But on this occasion her disdain for Sun News was so evident that she actually conveyed feeling in her voice.

But that feeling was rife with hypocrisy. As blogger Blogwrath has noted, the CBC has broadcast anti-Gypsy programming that invokes the most hateful stereotypes they face.

At the protest, former Liberal MP Wrzesnewskyj betrayed himself as an intellectual featherweight by comparing Ezra Levant to the unapologetic neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. 

Wrzesnewskyj was one of the most anti-Israel MPs in the House of Commons while he sat there. He co-authored a heavily biased anti-Israel report along with pathologically anti-Israel NDP MP Libby Davies.  On his trip to make that report, he was accompanied by Sea Hitler organizer Ehab Lotayef  and a group of fanatics who routinely support and participate in the "Israeli Apartheid Week" hate-fest that has been condemned by the last two federal Liberal Party leaders, Ignatieff and Rae. Wrzesnewskyj was compelled to resign as Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic in 2006 after he advocated that Canada engage with the terror group Hezbollah.

Ms Csányi-Robah has her own odd history of engaging, on behalf of her community, with nefarious groups. She has aligned the Roma cause with radical fanatics who want an end to Israel as a Jewish state. That association has shamed a number of Canadian Roma who wanted to distance themselves from such hate. That may partially account for why she was unable to garner much support from her own community for her Tuesday protest. 

It might strike some as remarkable that former Canadian Jewish Congress boss Farber would be part of such an event.  But Farber has been remaking himself recently since losing his role as one of  Canada's top "Official Jews." He has been using his twitter account to promote links from anti-Israel hysterics such as blogger Dr. Dawg, and the vehemently anti-Israel website rabble.ca. 

As blogger Sassywire points out, many in the Jewish community have been urging Farber for some time to come to protests against anti-Semites and Islamist hate-mongers seeking Israel's elimination, but he has not notably done so. Ironically the protest he makes a point of attending, he does so alongside people associated with anti-Israel causes to condemn the most pro-Israel media outlet in Canada.

In the end, it doesn't take much examination to get the impression that, like most people opposed to free speech, the protesters against Sun News appear less interested in suppressing hatred than they do in suppressing points of view that differ from theirs. 

Creepy Marxists, cretinous cultists, Jew-haters and other assorted fanatics harangue Immigration Minister Kenney

What would normally be a quiet Sunday evening in a central downtown section of Toronto a five minute walk from Lake Ontario was unsettled by a mob of dingy, hostile would-be revolutionaries. A smattering of about two hundred and fifty professional protesters comprising local anti-capitalist, Trotskyite, anti-Israel  and New Democratic Party-linked Marxist groups converged on Toronto's downtown Royal York Hotel to protest against Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

This was distributed at the protest

The occasion was an irresistible opportunity of expressing hostility towards two of their most hated objects, the Conservative government and the Jewish state, as Kenney was being honored by Israel's Haifa University.

According to a leaflet they distributed, the loud, unhappy throng was there "in outrage." There was nothing illuminating in that disclosure, since outrage, anger and resentment are the only emotions such miserable, envious malcontents ever seem to channel.

The mainstream media, either through laziness, their own disdain for Harper's Tories, or sheer ignorance of the issues they are covering (which is common for Canadian journalists) whitewashed the event as a group of citizen protesters.

Agents of state oppression ensuring protesters are
protected from oncoming traffic

In fact, many if not most of the protesters were non-citizens, like Marxists Syed Hassan and Sakura Saunders, attached to the lunatic extremist organization No One is Illegal, which wants to do away with all immigration regulations, while providing full tax-funded benefits for anyone who steps foot on Canadian soil. They and the other groups and individuals at the protest were anything but a cross-section of typical Canadians. They represented extremists including members of the Black Bloc, anarchists, radical Trotskyites, pro-regime Iranians, Mohawk Warriors, pro-terrorist Palestinian advocacy groups, Omar Khadr supporters, the violent anti-capitalist group Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and an array of others.

Down with Capitalism! Hooray for terrorists and terror states!

Blogger Laura Rosen Cohen has catalogued the vast cornucopia of organizations involved in the disturbance, which would be impressive were it not for the fact that the radical fanatics involved  keep creating three or four new groups for every new cause they approach, with almost all of them having cross memberships. Indeed there were almost as many protest groups "endorsing" the gathering as there were actual protesters.

Some of the chants at the protest the consensus media did not report included  "one, two, three, four, this is class war!" " the only solution is revolution,"  and "F**k the police!" The latter was all the more ironic and preposterous as the police were ensuring the safety of the bedraggled grousers from traffic while protecting their right to democratic dissent as the protesters were insulting the  "agents of state oppression."

The cacophony from the usual suspect groups with their hodgepodge of idiotic grievances had its expected effect; no clear message was conveyed other than their hatred for Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney.

The one unfamiliar addition to the assembly was a group of Romas, who were shunted to the rear of the protest by the organizers.  They were there to express anger at Kenney's refusal to view Hungary as an oppressive country from which Roma need refuge. I spoke with one who was carrying a bizarre sign that said "Our ashes are mingled" and showed Nazi concentration camp ovens used to cremate murdered inmates. The point, the fellow told me, was that Jews and Gypsies suffered together from racism in Europe and they should be standing together in solidarity here in Canada.

I inquired about the Roma groups attendance at the rally, since I had heard they had dissociated themselves from it, as it was filed with anti-Semitic groups. His response suggested the Roma group had been duped by the organizers of the protest. He had said they were planing to stay away because they were pro-Israel and did not want to be interpreted as anything else, until the Roma were convinced by the organizers that Jewish groups were attending. It was inconceivable to the Roma man I spoke with that Jews could be anti-Israel. While I understand his perspective, it could also be inconceivable that some Jews would have collaborated with the Nazis.   Yet some did, just as groups like the so-called Independent Jewish Voices and the Monty Pythonesque-sounding United Jewish People`s Order collaborate now with groups that support the murderers of Jews.

No One is Illegal organizer Syed Hassan

I met up with Greg Renouf, who operates the blog GenuineWitty at the demonstration. He has expended innumerable hours investigating and exposing the radicals involved in the socialist far-left in Canada. He has found links between the radical fanatics in the Black Bloc and No One is Illegal that ties not only to unions like Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), but to the highest echelons of the federal New Democratic Party.

Renouf feels that their behaviour resembles that of cult members, who lacking in intelligence and analytical skills are left only with the ability to mindlessly chant slogans.

He observed that the fools we were watching were incapable of accomplishing anything of substance. He is right, but it appeared to me such events aren't actually meant to accomplish anything other than to give the leaders of such gatherings an excuse to exercise their leadership and maintain the personality cults they have established for themselves.

More worrisome was the involvement of pro-regime Iranians, who evidently are attempting to make inroads with the native community and prepare terrorist action in the event of a war with Iran.

While the misfits and cretins that comprised the protesters outside the Royal York are unlikely to ever affect change through discourse, events in the recent past have proven that it only takes a handful of such miscreants to make a devastating impact through terrorism and for that, Canadian need to remain vigilant.

The other side of the leaflet distributed at the protest:

The Black Bloc hoists the Palestinian flag

A handful of protesters infiltrated the Royal York by disguising themselves as normal human beings.



More soft-soaping by the MSM: