Time Immortal

…find an anti-Semite.

It really is amazing how frequently the blood libel makes appearences in the advertising and rhetoric of the Left.

Blazing Cat Fur writes in a brief note regarding this post and Warren Kinsella’s response to the article I quote therein.

I see Kinsella tried to debunk the citizen article

I think the operative word, O Reader, is “tried” — you can read Kinsella’s piece for yourself, but here are the meaty and relevant parts, I think.

Gardner’s column is worth reading, but - in my world - quantitative data will always trump a census statistic and a few anecdotes. If it wasn’t out of print, then, I would recommend that you all pick up a copy of Hate on Trial: the Zundel Affair, the Media, and Public Opinion in Canada, published in 1986 by my friend Professor Conrad Winn. Conrad, who is a polling expert at Carleton University, sampled public opinion during the 1985 trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. He found the trial not only alerted people to the fact of the Holocaust, it turned them against Zundel in droves.

In a poll of 1,054 respondents taken right after Zundel’s trial, Canadians proved the media libertarians wrong, as they often do. Half (47 per cent) said their feelings toward Jews were unchanged by the trial, while one quarter (24 per cent) said they became more sympathetic toward Jews, and only 2 per cent reported less sympathy.

Kinsella would seem to be attempting to state, based on the above, that it was because Ernst Zundel was tried that public opinion shifted still further against his anti-Semitic rantings. This is a dangerous conclusion to draw, because it can lead one to think, erroneously, that it is through acts of censorship perpetrated by government agencies and courts that “the people” can be made to think “correctly.” And indeed, that would seem to be the conclusion that Kinsella, a self-confessed censor and an advocate for the existence of the HRCs, draws.

That would mean, O Reader, that Canadians either did not change their opinion of Jews or became more sympathetic toward Jews out of fear of government reprisal.

This would seem, then, to fly in the face of Dan Gardener’s observations about how allowing Fred Phelps to speak his hate openly has, in the end, only served to inspire Kansans (not exactly known for being of a progressive bent) to side not with Phelps, but with those Phelps denigrates.

But in fact, Kinsella’s story does not quite mean what he thinks it means, nor does it actually fly in the face of what Dan Gardener says — in fact, it affirms it. Zundel was a nobody with a small audience to begin with — few Canadians had even heard of him, and hardly anyone gave him the time of day. When he was put on trial, more and more people were able to become aware of his views. And in an analog to the case of Phelps and Westboro in Kansas, it was in hearing discussion about Zundel’s opinions that inspired nearly 25% of Canadians to become even more sympathetic to persons of Jewish descent than they already were. The fact that it took a trial for Zundel to gain a wide enough audience is an interesting little factoid of history, but also irrelevant.

The Zundel trial and its ouctomes, at least as regards public opinion toward Jews, proves the freespeecher arguments valid — given the chance, Canadians will tend to make the right decisions when they hear someone uttering hateful speech. So why not give people the opportunity to be as open in their hatred as they can possibly be? As was the case with Zundel, many of the haters won’t even find a wide enough audience to have any impact on public opinion (and thus will not be a threat). And the ones that do will, for the most part, either make people shrug their shoulders in dismissal or inspire people to move their own opinions away from those of the haters.

That’s the beauty of the “marketplace of ideas.”

I wonder how Kinsella missed that? And I wonder if it was his intent to argue in favour of government coercion of citizen opinion?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The irony is too good to miss:

The Canadian Arab Federation has come out strongly against the Canadian government’s decision, supported by the NDP, to not participate in any way with the upcoming UN-sponsored Durban II conference on Racism. The position of the Conservative government, supported by the NDP, is that Durban II is shaping up to be an exercise in the most vile and repellent Anti-Semitism, as was experienced by the Canadian delegation that attended the Durban I conference in 2001.

The CAF has every right to take a different position. But to call Jason Kenney an Islamophobe who is contemptuous of Arabs and of Islam?

But then CAF president Khaled Mouammar, who has all sorts of links with the , declares anyone who sympathizes with Israel to be guilty complicit in war crimes.

…

Mouammar was embroiled in the Liberal Party  leadership campaign, when in an attempt to derail Bob Rae’s campaign, Mouammar was linked to the infamous “Jew flyer”:

…

In addition to targeting Bob Rae, Khaled Mouammar went after Gerard Kennedy for being too friendly to Jews:

…

Kennedy criticizes Hizbollah and Hamas, and so earns the enmity of Khaled Mouammar.

Only leadership candidates Michael Ignatieff (who declared Israeli actions during the 2006 war in Lebanon to be war crimes) and Stephane Dion were spared being called stooges for Israel by Mouammar.

The bottom line is that anyone who expresses support for Israel is a criminal, according to Khaled Mouammar, as he explained in a letter to the Globe and Mail in December 2006.

As noted previously, I couldn’t be happier that Canada is skipping out on the next Durban conference. Although in theory, Durban is supposed to be about combatting racism on a global scale, in practice it became (back in 2001) an exercise in the very thing it supposedly existed to condemn, and there’s little doubt that it will once again turn into just that sort of shameful UN farce.

And if Canada’s refusal to participate in Durban annoys and/or angers the likes of Khaled Mouammar, then that’s just icing on an already delicious cake.

Update: Welcome, BlazingCatFur readers!

Why is it that human rights’ groups (and Islamic lobby groups) criticize the wall that Israel built between itself and Gaza as “inhumane”, “invasive”, and “genocidal”…and yet fail to mention that Egypt had built a similar wall? Of course, Hamas blew that wall up last night, and thousands of Palestinian refugees have since swarmed over the border, leaving Gaza for Egypt.

But still. Did the Reader know that the Egyptians had built an analog to the Israeli wall? Your blogger here did not.

The left-wing Canadian Jewish Congress, the special-interest lobby group most responsible for criminalizing speech in Canada, is obviously feeling some political heat because of what they have wrought. Their figurehead co-presidents, Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Sylvain Abitbol, wrote a muddled column called “Some human rights complaints are frivolous”. That’s actually less mealy-mouthed than it sounds, given that the commissions have a 100% conviction rate for thought crime hearings. But what is the standard for acquittal that the CJC proposes?

“Human rights commissions must constantly recalibrate where the balance lies between free expression and its abridgement, but the determination of where to place the fulcrum must always be based on the statutory standard that such expression is �likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

and

“the appropriate application of statutory criteria is our best defence against those who would eliminate the law to protect their interests, and against those who would use the law to promote a narrow political agenda.”

In other words, the concept of a “pre-crime” is still fine by them. No-one has to be exposed to hatred or contempt for someone to be found guilty. It just has to be “likely” that could happen. And hatred or contempt — emotional feelings — are enough. The CJC doesn’t even think that a discriminatory act is necessary for a conviction. They support the notion of thought crimes.

If the human rights commissions apply the standards in this fuzzy-headed op-ed, Mark Steyn and I will still be convicted.

What an embarrassment the CJC has become. Essentially they are pleading for Steyn and I as special cases. Is it because I’m a Jew and Steyn sounds like he might be, too? Is it because we’re being sued by Muslim fanatics? Or is it because the CJC is taking some political heat for their support of these illiberal, anti-intellectual commissions, and the CJC’s alliance with Richard Warman, the serial human rights complainant and foul-mouthed, anti-Black, misogynist bigot?

The CJC’s op-ed will be seen as nothing but more proof for anti-Semites and neo-Nazis who claim — with historical and statistical validity — that the hate speech provisions are a tool used mainly by secular, leftist Jews to punish their anti-Semitic critics. But now that those same precedents are being used against Jews and philo-Semites by Islamic fascists, the CJC wants to change the rules.

As disgusting a thing as Holocaust denial is, we began the slide down this slippery slope of censorship, and the attendant denial of the legitimate right to that every human being is theoretically entitled to, when we made it illegal to say that the Holocaust was just a hoax. And anyone who says that Levant is innocent, but then turns around and says that the likes of Ernst Zundel are guilty, is just a hypocrite.

Freedom of expressions means that even those opinions we personally consider distasteful have a right to be said aloud, or it means nothing at all.

(That’s German, by the way…it’s pronounced “Vas?”)

Kathy Shaidle remarked thusly:

Ezra Levant (who happens to be Jewish) is hauled before the Alberta HRC, accused by a radical Muslim of “Islamophobia” for printing the “[Muhammad]” cartoons. (Don’t miss Levant’s stirring opening statement to the kangaroo court…)

Mark Steyn (who half the world thinks is Jewish, but isn’t) also faces HRC charges for “Islamophobia”, brought by Muslims.

(Steyn, Michael Coren and — judging by my inbox, me — are regularly mistaken for Jews by people who don’t like us. I’m still convinced the three of us and those similarly honored should start wearing little yellow question marks on our lapels, maybe with the German word for “Huh?” written on them in black Teutonic lettering…)

Okay, Kathy…here you go!

The rest of my readers are likewise welcome to grab the two GIF-formatted images below for use on their blogs (especially if any comment trolls or angry email correspondents have attempted to give rebuttal to your statements by accusing you of being Jewish). As usual, there are two sizes of image, one obviously more suited to blog sidebars than the other. The backgrounds of the GIFs are formatted to be transparent.

And yes, these can be downloaded from the Media page.

Update: Now with lapel-friendly versions available! (Stickers too!)

Update II - Electric Boogaloo: Welcome, fans of the Furious one.

Are Canada’s “Human Rights” Commissions just slo-mo Kristallnachts?

Ezra Levant (who happens to be Jewish) is hauled before the Alberta HRC, accused by a radical Muslim of “Islamophobia” for printing the “Mohammed” cartoons. (Don’t miss Levant’s stirring opening statement to the kangaroo court…)

Mark Steyn (who half the world thinks is Jewish, but isn’t) also faces HRC charges for “Islamophobia”, brought by Muslims.

(Steyn, Michael Coren and — judging by my inbox, me — are regularly mistaken for Jews by people who don’t like us. I’m still convinced the three of us and those similarly honored should start wearing little yellow question marks on our lapels, maybe with the German word for “Huh?” written on them in black Teutonic lettering…)

Now, usually I’m content to leave the dubious dot-connecting and hyperbolic historical/Holocaust similes to the Left, but hey: what’s good for the doofus, huh?

Of course, if you follow my thought-experiment “Kristallnacht” metaphor to its logical conclusion, that makes these beligerent Muslim accusers and their HRC enablers, not the victim/heroes they play in their fever-brained scenarios of glory –

but the Brown Shirts.

Oddly enough!

The lady might only be five feet tall, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a giant.