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Let’s begin with the bizarre conference call convened by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to respond to the worst four months’ publicity in its entire history:
By way of introduction in an interview this week, Ian Fine, senior general counsel and director-general of dispute resolution at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, wanted to read out loud some of the nastiest material his staff have dealt with, to prove the seriousness of their mission.
"Savage commie Jews hate European beauty and nobility," he said, quoting a prominent violator of Canada's most controversial hate speech law, and disabled people are "parasites," "incognizant primates," "genetic throwbacks" and "lesser beasts that must be culled from the herd."
He quoted another to the effect that "a nigger will try to kill you just for a slice of pizza or a piece of chicken ... By Aryan standards, negroes are dangerous animals" and should be presumed guilty of crimes.
Well. Are those e-mails "hateful"? Certainly – although not as hateful as many of the e-mails I and other fellows in the opinion trade wake up to each morning. My friend Michelle Malkin might have expected that her columns would generate a certain amount of “hate mail” but not that so much of it would portray her as a slitty-eyed Filipina hooker adept at various manoeuvres involving ping-pong balls. There’s a lot of rough stuff out there. So the question is: What should the state do about it?
You could criminalize it and get the CHRC to investigate it and prosecute it. But to do so is bound to result in arbitrary justice. The word “nigger”, for example, can be found on hundreds of CDs in any Canadian record store. A feminist abortion provider who suggested that disabled people are “genetic throwbacks” would be doing no more than indulging in a particularly brutal reformulation of the rationale behind much pregnancy testing. The price of criminalizing certain speech and certain attitudes is that we cede to the state the sole legitimate power to mediate public (and much private) discourse. And that, to many of us, would lead to a far uglier society than letting a few losers in basements mouth off on the Internet. Marni Soupcoff addresses that question in The National Post.
But you know, Ezra Levant makes a good point. Even to discuss the question is to accord Ian Fine and his CHRC colleagues more respect than they deserve. Who’s to say either of these Internet posts (or e-mails or whatever they’re supposed to be) actually exist? And, if they do, who’s to say they weren’t written by Dean Steacy or Richard Warman posting as “jadewarr”? What is now known is that the level of “hate” on the hate sites targeted by Steacy, Warman, Fine & Co was felt to be insufficient, so that the CHRC staff themselves took out memberships on Stormfront et al and began posting under their various secret identities. Perhaps we might generously regard this as a cry for help, a sign of the immense psychological strain of being a “hate” investigator in a peaceable kingdom with insufficient hate to go round the vast number of bureaucrats living high off the hate hog.
But Ezra’s correct that, by this stage, when Ian Fine produces an Internet post with the n-word, we should say, “Golly, that’s shocking! Presumably, though, it's just another one of Richard Warman’s critical covert operations – like the one where he calls Senator Anne Cools an n-word c-word?” Incidentally, n-word-wise, Mr Warman’s post on Senator Cools is far more vehemently “hateful” than the one Ian Fine chose to quote. But at this point the onus is on the CHRC’s “director of dispute resolution” to prove that these posts are, unlike the “jadewarr” fantasies of Messrs Steacy & Co, genuine “hate messages”.
Which brings us to the next question, posed by Kate McMillan:
With each new revelation about the personalities and practices of Warman, Steacy and Co., I've started asking myself "What are the odds that the abuse and incompetence are unique to the section 13 thought police branch?"
My best guess was "zero".
Quite. The systemic “abuse and incompetence” are not some weird aberration but entirely foreseeable. The genius of the English legal system is the balance it strikes between judge, jury and prosecutor. The “human rights” racket muddies the distinctions between not just those roles but also those of “victim” and “witness” – to the point where former employee Richard Warman has turned the CHRC into his own personal score-settling police force, filled with bizarre personages no longer employable by real police forces. And he’s doing all this in the name of the Crown.
Which leads to the most obvious question, again from Ezra Levant:
Where the hell is the Justice Minister?
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