…you know, for the hopefully small number of people left in Canada who can’t understand what a grave threat to our freedoms and rights the human rights commissions are.
Isn’t it obvious that in the case of Adolf Hitler, “hateful words” led to “unspeakable crimes”? This argument is offered routinely: if only there’d been “reasonable limits on the expression of hatred” 70 years ago, the Holocaust might have been prevented.
There’s just one teensy-weensy problem with it: pre-Nazi Germany had such “reasonable limits.” Indeed, the Weimar Republic was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, put it:
“Remarkably, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti-hate law. Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech. And, in the opinion of the leading Jewish organization of that era, no more than 10 per cent of the cases were mishandled by the authorities. As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.”
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The problem the Jews found themselves up against in Germany and elsewhere was not the lack of hate-speech laws but the lack of protection of the common or garden laws — against vandalism and property appropriation and suchlike. One notes, by the way, that property rights are absent from Canada’s modish Charter of Rights. The reductio ad Hitlerum is the laziest form of argument, so it’s no surprise to find the defenders of the ever-more-intrusive “human rights” enforcers taking refuge in it. But it stands history on its head. Most of us have a vague understanding that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 as a pretext to “seize” dictatorial powers. But, in fact, he didn’t “seize” anything because he didn’t need to. He merely invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Republic’s constitution, allowing the state, in the interests of the greater good, to set ? what’s the phrase? — “reasonable limits” on freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from unlawful search and seizure and surveillance of postal and electronic communications. The Nazis didn’t invent a dictatorship out of whole cloth. They merely took advantage of the illiberal provisions of a supposedly liberal constitution.
Oh, and by the way, almost all those powers the Nazis “seized” the morning after the Reichstag fire, the “human rights” commissions already have. In the name of cracking down on “hate,” Canada’s “human rights” apparatchiks can enter your premises without a warrant and remove any relevant “document or thing” (as the relevant Ontario legislation puts it) for as long as they want it. And without anybody burning the House of Commons or even the Senate.
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Happily, beginning on July 1, under Ontario’s “human rights” reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions against all and sundry. Under the new proposals, ” ‘hate incident’ means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members.” “Act or omission”? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from “Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy” as published on the OHRC website:
“The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered ‘other.’ “
Got that? Your denial of racism merely confirms your racism — because simply by being a “White hegemon” (like Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch) you wield racist power. The author, Frances Henry, cites the thinking of “modern neo-Marxist theorists” as if these are serious views that persons of influence in Canada’s “human rights” establishment ought to be taking into account, rather than just the latest variant of an ideology that’s led to the deaths of millions in Russia, China and everywhere else it’s been put into practice. Yet, underneath the blather about “omissions” and “denial” of racism is the bleak acknowledgement that, alas, Canadians just aren’t hateful enough to justify the cozy sinecure of taxpayer-funded hate police. “I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that’s a very low level,” Commissar Hall said. C’mon, you Ontario deadbeats, can’t you hate a little more?
Some feel that free speech in Canada is dead already, and perhaps it is. Perhaps, in due time, this and every other blog that articulates a dissenting opinion against the received wisdom of our progressive “betters” will be shut down for the greater good of society. Perhaps, in due time, people like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant will not be allowed to publish articles within, if not from within, the Great White North that articulate the same sort of dissenting opinions.
Then, too, perhaps in due time Sharia will become the law of the land. Once one’s freedoms have died, does it really matter whom one’s restrictions and privileges are bestowed by? Is there that much difference between a human rights commissar who can fine you into homelessness and bankruptcy for saying something anti-Islamic, and a pseudo-caliph or imam who can exhort “the faithful” to burn your house to the ground for doing same?
Myself, I remain somewhat hopeful that freedom will prevail, and I am not alone in thinking so. But at the same time, I think pretty much everyone on the “freespeecher” side of the debate can recognize that there’s still a tough slog ahead.
Update: Welcome, Steynians!
