Ezra Levant, the Left and Hate Speech Hypocrisy

As is now well-known, Ezra Levant apologized for his anti-Gypsy rant last Monday, both on-air during his Sun TV show The Source, and in print in Sun News publications.

Though they failed in their efforts to abort it before it debuted, and detesting it as they do, Canada's political left still keeps a keen eye on the Sun News Network and in particular, it's most flamboyant personality, Ezra Levant.

Levant's ability to combine rhetorical dexterity with showmanship has, on practically a weekly basis, forced attention to a variety of issues that have embarrassed Canada's left-leaning political cliques. Those include included the waste and corruption and deception by many of the leaders of the Idle No More movement, which Labor leaders and NDP and Liberal politicians had hoped to exploit as means of embarrassing Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.

Levant also ridiculed, belittled and exposed the hypocrisy of left-wing sacred cows David Suzuki and the Occupy Movement among many others.

So it was with virtual glee that the Toronto Star's editorial board and the likes of far-left media outlets such as rabble.ca and The Vancouver Observer seized on a monologue by Sun TV's Ezra Levant in which he injudiciously and unfairly characterized Gypsies as a people with a primarily criminal culture. Delighted in their outrage, immediately came calls from the left for his prosecution for Hate Crimes.

Levant's motives for apologizing, six months after-the-fact were questioned by both his detractors on the left and supporters on the right. Sun News' application for a CRTC Common Carry license and the possibility that Hate Speech charges would be pursed by Ontario's Attorney General were among the speculative reasons.

But regardless of why, Levant's words were well-crafted, sounded sincere, and explicitly retracted his earlier statements about Gypsies.

Yet desperate to silence Canadian TV's Grand Inquisitor of left-wing hypocrisy and deceit, calls for his criminal prosecution have not abated despite Levant's apology last Monday.

Which in a way, proves many of the points Levant makes when he preaches his gospel of absolute free speech and thunders about the hypocrisy and double standards of a Canadian left who would have others live by rules that they hold themselves above.

In November 2010 the National Post and later other media outlets did extensive coverage on an anti-Semitic thesis produced at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).  The Department of Sociology and Equity Studies produced a number of theses with anti-Semitic themes, the most well-publicized of which was by a Jenny Peto wherein she accused the Jewish community of conducting Holocaust education to further the aims of "Israeli apartheid." She also, in contradiction to any credible empirical evidence, defamed the Jewish community by claiming it was dominated by "racist" ideologies.

The thesis was condemned for its anti-Semitism in the Ontario Legislature by members of both the Progressive Conservative and governing Liberal parties, including then Citizenship Minister Eric Hoskins.

Unlike Levant, who apologized for slurring an entire people, Peto doubled down, making the claim that it was she who was owed an apology after her anti-Semitic, academically inept polemic was brought to light.

Peto was roundly and vociferously condemned by conservative and pro-Israel commentators, and there were calls for an investigation into the teaching practices and deficient standards at the radical, biased, politicized Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. University of British Columbia Professor Emeritus of Sociology Werner Cohn noted that Peto's and another anti-Semitic thesis which shared OISE instructor Sheryl Nestel as a thesis adviser "consist of hate propaganda, possibly in violation of the Criminal Code of Canada," but no one among those so called "right-wing" voices actually called for criminal prosecution or Human Rights Commission proceedings against them.

And what about the left side of the political spectrum? One would expect those people who are so enthusiastic about the use of state apparatuses to penalize Hate Speech would have wanted them used in such a blatant case of Jew-hate.

But this was not so in the case of Peto and OISE. Hate Speech in the service of "progressive" causes, like the destruction of Israel and defaming Canada's Christian conservatives, is not only tolerated but vigorously, if somewhat preposterously defended by the far left.

The same people who are now calling for Ezra Levant's criminal prosecution for a distorted description of Gypsy culture ridiculously decried mere condemnation of Peto's thesis and OISE as "silencing free speech."

For the hypocritical would be-censors on the left, Hate Speech is only Hate Speech when it is uttered by conservatives and those they disdain.

The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui produced a diatribe about Stephen Harper's alleged "inconsistencies on hate laws." There are a number of valid reasons why those laws should not be employed against Levant. But if Siddiqui and his fellow travelers are genuinely concerned about inconsistencies in the application of unjust laws that seek to censor opinion, they would best look to their own hypocrisy first.

The welcome death of Section 13 and the arrogance of Canada's censors

Depending on who you talk to, a government lawyer named Richard Warman is either admired or reviled for his unrelenting effort to punish hate speech  in Canada. Joining neo-Nazi online forums, Warman has identified a number of public hatemongers and successfully pursued judgments against them through Human Rights Commission rulings.

His goal of working towards a Canada without racism and illegal discrimination  is an admirable one. From all credible accounts, Warman's efforts are the result of the noblest of motives; the desire to contribute to society and continue, in a different form, the fight against Nazism and fanatical racism that his relatives had done in battle during the Second World War.

But there is a dangerous flip side to the Human Rights Commissions that Warman and others have utilized to serve their aim. Conceived for the purpose of fighting illegal discrimination in employment, housing, education and so on, they have morphed  into tools used by special interests to try to prevent any form of speech that they consider offensive.

They have been used to intimidate people who have not promoted discrimination or racism but have merely expressed ideas. Some of the most notorious abuses were the cases of Ezra Levant being prosecuted for publishing cartoons of Islam's founder Mohammad and Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine for an article about the affect of Islam on western society. Though both cases were ultimately dismissed, there are obvious  problems with a quasi-judicial system presided over by individuals of questionable qualifications and dubious judgement, that forces defendants to appear at their own expense, while plaintiffs can launch frivolous publicly funded cases.

The notion that an ideology that is antithetical to the freedoms that western civilization has achieved is above criticism, because of an idolatrous deification of the secular concept of multiculturalism, should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in liberty and democracy. But that is precisely how Human Rights Commissions have been used, with the assistance of its petty-minded functionaries who believe that free speech is only "an American concept" without value in Canada.

Yet that is how Canada's Human Rights Commissions have been employed by defenders of Islamism. While in Canada, the majority of Muslims have rejected violent jihad, but that rejection is not universal, and Islamic nations like Iran are ruled by leaders who embrace the murderous methods of terrorism.

There is a regrettable, though somewhat amusingly illogical arrogance to the Human Rights censors who appear to think they possess a secret knowledge of the human capacity for hate. I was going to ask Richard Warman a question about that a few months ago at a public forum put on by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. At that event, Warman debated Canadian Civil Liberties Association General Counsel Nathalie Des Rosiers about the soon to be undone Section 13 of Canada's Human Rights Act that deals with hate speech. That debate took place, somewhat ironically, at the same place that almost exactly a year earlier was the site of an anti-Israel forum featuring the author of an anti-Semitic thesis sanctioned by the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Warman had described a short film called "Fitna"  about Islamic radicalism produced by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, as "criminal hate speech."

Fitna is not the ravings of xenophobic "right wingers" against Muslims and Islam. It is a compilation of images of Islamic leaders and demonstrators expressing approval of terrorism,murder, and repressive dictates against Muslim and non-Muslim alike. To be sure, those portrayed in Fitna are not representative of all Muslims. But Wilders did not invent those images and they are a significantly sizable minority within the Islamic world to be of serious concern to those in the West who believe in democratic ideals.

Wilders himself was described by Warman as a "far right" politician. Fitna is a warning against a religious and political ideology that suppresses women and denies them abortion rights, persecutes and kills Gays for their sexuality, persecutes religious minorities, and has no respect for free speech. In what kind of bizzaro world is someone who seeks to defend abortion rights, women's rights, gay rights and free speech against those who suppress them considered  a "right-winger"?

The question I intended to ask Warman was that as he had seen Fitna and had not been transformed into a raving Islamophobe, how is it that he sees fit to try to deprive others of that right on the basis that it would affect other people differently than it did him? Does Warman believe he is so intellectually and morally superior, like some inner party member of Orwell's 1984, that he is of a special class of person capable of correctly processing information the rest of us can not?

As it happened, I didn't get the chance to ask Warman that question, because just as it was my turn at the microphone, I was cut ahead of by Bernie Farber, the anticipated next head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Farber, another proponent of civil hate speech regulation, used his time with Warman to engage in the verbal equivalent of mutual masturbation in which the two men lavished praise on each other, and so consumed all the remaining question and answer period.

Fortunately, questions related to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act will soon be moot. As a result of a Private Members' Bill put forward by Alberta MP Brian Storseth, the law that let unqualified censors determine the free speech rights of Canadians will soon be repealed. Hate Speech will still be a crime in Canada, but it will have to meet the test of standards necessary for criminal prosecution in genuine courts presided over by real judges. Given the plentiful opportunities for abuse and mischief afforded by Section 13, its death is not only welcome, but long overdue.

Canada's arrogant censor class need to understand that free speech is not a privilege over which they have final say, but a basic human right that should be infringed on only under the most serious of circumstances.

Human Rights Commissions push for "deeper equality" translates to the eradication of Canadian culture

"Women should be able to wear whatever they want and men should shut up about it" was  the line that got the most applause at the public consultation on Human Rights and the Law held by the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the University of Toronto on Wednesday evening. But the irony was that despite the feminist overtones of the statement, Winnifred Sullivan, the  Director of the Law, Religion, and Culture at the State University of New York seemed to be alluding to women's right to wear hijabs, niqabs and face veils during citizenship oaths -garments used to subjugate and de-sexualize women.

And this outspoken advocacy for cultural diversity rights by feminists seemed confined to the interests of immigrants in the west, since there is no commensurate movement by them to fight for the rights of women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan to wear mini skirts or appear in public without a hijab. This is essence is the direction that Human Rights Commissions in Canada are pushing towards, a cultural relativism they describe as "deeper equality" which would eradicate the last vestiges of the traditions that built the institutions and laws that gave birth to western tolerance and freedoms.

One of the night's speakers, David Seljak, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo reminded the audience that Canada is a secular society with elements of the Christian traditions that the country was founded upon, such as a seven day work week and Christian public holidays like Christmas and Good Friday. The implied goal of a deeply equal society would be to eliminate such traditions so that newcomers who are altering Canadian demographics have a greater stake in society.

What was not discussed during the evening, moderated by Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall, were the failings of multiculturalism.The opposite was true. Professor Seljak barely concealed his disdain for the Canadian government's efforts to retain elements of the national culture by restricting alien garb in certain situations, such as niqabs in voting booths and criminal trials.

When westerners go to eastern countries with the expectation that the natives would allow and adapt to our cultural practices, it was usually proceeded by a military conquest and came in the form of imperialism and colonialism that the "progressives" in our society despise. Yet they are enthusiastic supporters of a reverse form of cultural imperialism that lets foreigners come to Canada and expect the majority culture to change to accommodate the minority.

There is a big difference between tolerance and restructuring. It doesn't harm Canadians or diminish Canadian traditions to allow a Muslim woman to wear a hijab or a Sikh to wear a Turban, or to let someone take a vacation day on their religious holiday. But advocates for the idea that no culture is superior to another are following through with its corollary; that our culture therefore is not special nor is it particularly worth preserving.

Millions of Canadians who remain oblivious to what Human Rights Commissions want to accomplish in this area would be deeply disturbed by the cultural suicide they want us to commit in the name of Deeper Equality. Another irony is that the people who are so willing to abandon to cultures that bear little resemblance to Canada's have been so anxious to protect it from infusions of American culture, from which ours is almost indistinguishable.

America was on the minds of a few people at Wednesday's consultation. Ali Mallah, a former Canadian Arab Federation, NDP and CUPE vice president and a fixture at anti-Israel protests who is a vocal supporter of terrorist groups like Hezbollah, was there, his unkempt appearance making him  look like a caricature of a union goon.  Speaking in a heavily accented, lisping voice, he got up to make a speech in which he pompously pontificated about  Canadians "occupying native land." Mallah was obviously more interested in the appearence of, rather than genuine, empathy for "occupied" Natives. Since unlike those of us who were born in Canada, Mallah traveled here as an adult from half way around the world to become a Canadian occupying native land, and to the best of my knowledge, hasn't given any back to them. He railed against the Islamophobia of "right-wing Christians" in the United States whom he compared to being "equal in hate to bin Laden." Mallah failed to note any right-wing Christians beheading apostates in America or strapping explosives to themselves to murder scores of heathen children, but those are mere details.

Rather than reaffirm Mallah's paranoia and hyperbole about Islamophobia, panelist Sullivan indeed corrected him. She pointed out that it wasn't just the right wing, but all segments of American society that are Islamophobic. Take that Ali, that'll teach you to bad mouth the "right wingers."

There was one question in the Q & A at the end of the night that stymied the panelists. In fact, it seemed to send their brains into a tizzy the way that a logical contradiction on the old Star Trek TV show caused a computer to overload. They refused to answer when I asked how Human Rights Commissions dealing with religious tolerance can deal with intolerant religious practices that promote the subjugation of women and the persecution of Gays. They were rendered speechless at having to contend with the idea of an oppressed group trampling on the legitimate rights of other people.

Unless Canadians are willing to participate in their democracy and speak out against the destruction of Canadian vales and traditions, having their rights trampled on is something we may see more and more of in the near future.