Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost writes:
Until three years ago, Canada’s human rights commissions had the power to prosecute and convict individuals for “hate speech.” This power was taken away after two high-profile cases: one against the magazine Maclean’s for printing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone; and the other against the journalist Ezra Levant for publishing Denmark’s satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Both cases were eventually dismissed, largely because the accused were well known and popular. As Mark Steyn observed:
[…] they didn’t like the heat they were getting under this case. Life was chugging along just fine, chastising non-entities nobody had ever heard about, piling up a lot of cockamamie jurisprudence that inverts the principles of common law, and nobody paid any attention to it. Once they got the glare of publicity from the Maclean’s case, the kangaroos decided to jump for the exit. I’ve grown tired of the number of Canadian members of Parliament who’ve said to me over the last best part of a year now, “Oh, well of course I fully support you, I’m fully behind you, but I’d just be grateful if you didn’t mention my name in public.” (Brean, 2008)
Despite the dismissals, both cases had a chilling effect on Canadian journalism. Maclean’s made this point in a news release:
Though gratified by the decision, Maclean’s continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. (Maclean’s, 2008)
This situation had come about gradually in Canada. At first, human rights commissions fought discrimination only in employment and housing, and there was strong resistance to prosecution of people simply for their ideas. This situation changed from the 1970s onward. Human rights took the place in society that formerly belonged to religion, and human rights advocates acquired the immunity from criticism that formerly belonged to the clergy. Discrimination was no longer wrong in certain cases and under certain circumstances. It became evil, and people who condoned it in any form and for any reason were likewise evil.
This view of reality progressively transformed human rights commissions. On the one hand, they were given an ever longer list of groups to protect. On the other, their scope of action grew larger, expanding to include not only the job and housing markets but also the marketplace of ideas. Their power increased until they became a parallel justice system, the key difference being that they denied the accused certain rights that had long existed in traditional courts of law, particularly the presumption of innocence and the right to know one’s accuser. All of this was made possible by section 13 of the Human Rights Act (1977):
Section 13 ostensibly banned hate speech on the Internet and left it up to the quasi-judicial human rights commission to determine what qualified as “hate speech.” But, unlike a court, there was no presumption of innocence of those accused of hate speech by the commission. Instead, those accused had to prove their innocence.(Akin, 2013)
In 2012, the House of Commons repealed section 13. The ensuing three years brought a return to normal and a dissipation of the chill that had descended on Canadian journalists and writers.
Today, our Indian summer is coming to an end. In Alberta, the human rights commission is pushing to see how far it can go, and Ezra Levant is again being prosecuted:
This October I will be prosecuted for one charge of being “publicly discourteous or disrespectful to a Commissioner or Tribunal Chair of the Alberta Human Rights Commission” and two charges that my “public comments regarding the Alberta Human Rights Commission were inappropriate and unbecoming and that such conduct is deserving of sanction.”
Because last year I wrote a newspaper editorial calling Alberta’s human rights commission “crazy”. (Levant, 2015)
Last month in Quebec, the government passed a bill that greatly expands the powers of its human rights commission to prosecute “hate.”
Bill 59, introduced by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government, would make it illegal to promote hate speech in Quebec, without defining what hate speech is. Despite this, it would expand the definition of hate speech to include “political convictions” for any speech deemed by Quebec’s human rights bureaucracy to promote “fear of the other”, an absurdly vague term which could easily lead to prosecutorial abuses.
Bill 59 would empower Quebec’s human rights commission to investigate anonymous complaints, or to launch investigations on its own, without any complaint, culminating in charges before Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal. The tribunal would be able to impose fines of up to $10,000 for first offenders, $20,000 for repeat offenders. Those found to have violated the legislation would be named and shamed on a publicly accessible list of offenders, maintained by the government. (Editorial, 2015)
The new law also casts a wider net by defining two forms of complicity in hate speech, direct and indirect:
Engaging in or disseminating the types of speech described in section 1 is prohibited.
Acting in such a manner as to cause such types of speech to be engaged in or disseminated is also prohibited. (Gouvernement du Québec, 2015)
“Hate speech” is supposedly defined in section 1 of Bill 59, but this section merely repeats the same term:
The Act applies to hate speech and speech inciting violence that are engaged in or disseminated publicly and that target a group of people sharing a characteristic identified as prohibited grounds for discrimination under section 10 of the Charter of human rights and freedoms (chapter C-12).(Gouvernement du Québec, 2015)
In short, “hate speech” will be defined by the Quebec Human Rights Commission, the only limitation being that the speech must target a protected group.
How did this piece of legislation come to be? It had been sold to the public as a means to fight Islamist terrorism and, as such, gained the support of many people, including right-wing politicians who thought its “ant-hate” language was just window dressing to make it more palatable. In its final form, however, there are no references at all to Islamism or terrorism. As columnist Joanne Marcotte points out:
Nowhere in the bill is this goal mentioned. It doesn’t seem that this is the intention of the Liberal Party, which is perhaps more concerned about a supposedly Islamophobic current of opinion than about the pressure that radical religious fundamentalists are exerting on our values of individual freedom.
Indeed, no mention of the following words appear in the bill: fundamentalism, fundamentalist, radicalism, radicalization, terrorism, religious (as in “religious fundamentalism”).
So it isn’t surprising that only two groups to date have supported the bill: The Canadian Muslim Forum and the Muslim Council of Montreal. (Marcotte, 2015)
As Joanne Marcotte notes ironically, this bill was pushed through by a center-right government that claims to believe in individual freedom. Even more ironically, the strongest support for the new law comes from the far left. A demonstration in Montreal against Bill 59 was broken up by a hundred antifas. The police were there but not one antifa was arrested (Kamel, 2015).
This is a growing trend in Western countries: a strange alliance between center-right regimes and far-left antifas. For all intents and purposes, the latter are becoming an extrajudicial police, just as human rights commissions are becoming a parallel justice system.
Conclusion
After a brief lull, a new offensive has begun against “hate speech” in Canada. Quebec is leading the way with legislation that is not only punitive but also broadly-worded. Hate speech is whatever the human rights commission considers to be hate speech.
COMMENTS:
* There are very few Jewish people in the Quebec Human Rights bureaucracy. In fact, its latest target was the Orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor, which it accused of “child abuse.” The sect had to flee Quebec, when the Human Rights Commission threatened to seize their children and place them in foster homes.
Canada has a long tradition of reverence for “moral authority.” In the past, moral authority was held by the Church and the Monarchy. With the decline of both institutions, it has been usurped by a new class of moralists. The average Canadian is unhappy with what is happening, but at the gut level he or she cannot fight back. The new moralists know this is our Achilles heel.
Are Australians speaking out against “The Great Replacement”? Very few.
* If you check out the genesis of “anti-hate” legislation in most Western countries you’ll find Jewish agency vastly over-represented. They’re riding in on the coat-tails of other ‘at risk’ groups.
* Pierre-André Taguieff isn’t Jewish but he is very very pro Israel, and that is a common way into opposing anti racism. (see philosopher Alain Finkielkraut). The intellectuals speaking up about replacement are Israel-supporters, not European nationalists. There is nary a gentile intellectual establishment left in Europe and hardly an individual commentator that dares criticise anti-racism . When Jewish French intellectuals like Éric Zemmour, bemoan the ellipse of ethno-French the NYT reports the remarks without mentioning that they those making them are Jewish; it quoted him as someone who’ “laments the fate of the “white proletariat,” helpless before the ostentatious virility of their black and Arab competitors seducing numerous young white women.”’ merely describing him as having ideas similar to Le Pen. The chattering classes cling to a picture of the world in which indigenous European gentiles (low class) dominate the anti immigration discourse in their countries, but such is not the case. The majority are demoralised and/ or think it is immoral to argue against the critique of Western societies’ ethnic majorities that go forth as “human rights”.
The US is not just OK with its own demographic replacement it is actively promoting the relacement of indigenous ethnic majorities abroad, see U.S. State Department Actively Promoting Islam in Europe, also Canada. Irish, I suppose it is like the film The Thomas Crown Affair where the brilliant investigator Faye Dunaway builds a case against robber Steve McQueen by getting inside his head, and eventually decides she likes him, but by that time she has done too good a job and can’t get him a deal.* There is a lamentable tendency among the neo Right to view Witches er Jews, as the magical answer for everything wrong. Yes, its all the Jews fault for plotting to create a Europe, Canada, and America filled with Muslims and Africans and Hispanics, well known particularly Muslims for liking Jews and well known for creating societies that Jews flock to in droves.
The stupidity of Hitler-lovers knows no bounds. You can see stupidity by how it worships failure.
I believe Steve Sailer is onto something with his comments on common adventuring among WASPs. From Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, to Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Carter of Mars, to DC Comics Adam Strange to Dances with Wolves and Avatar, the theme of a WASP adventurer who comes to a strange land, marries the hot babe princess (much hotter than he could get back home) and saves the tribe from bad tribesman enemies (up through Adam Strange) or his own people (Dances with Wolves and Avatar) is a constant, recurring theme.
It sells, and not only WASP men do it — Stanley Anne Dunham and of course, the Eat Pray Love (Cuck) women do as well. Barack Obama exists because of a female WASP adventurer.
WASP tendency to outmarriage and lack of high kinship enforcing mechanisms explain a lot.
I find tediously stupid the idea that somehow Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern and Nicholas Stix of VDARE are conspiring to beam mind control rays into otherwise innocent WASPs and corrupting them into Diversity Worship. WASPs have in their own DNA the requirements for Diversity worship. Indeed as someone who has extensive experience in technical sales, you cannot sell someone something they don’t already want.
Diversity oriented Human Rights commissions that exist to punish White men for their dispossession in their own lands is nothing more than one WASP faction killing another, see the Thirty Years War or English Civil War for examples. In this case its Adventuring WASPs vs. those with insufficient outmarrying desires.
