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In another front of Canada's war on freedom, Connie and Mark Fournier, proprietors of Free Dominion, are appealing the order of this remarkably heavy-handed judge, Stanley Kershman of the Ontario Superior Court, to hand over the personal information of eight of their anonymous posters at the behest of - drumroll, please! - Richard Warman.
Oh, sorry. The drummer got bored and left seven Warman "human rights" cases ago.
There are many things to dislike about the Superior Court's logic, but let's stick with the most obvious:
Last week, Justice Stanley Kershman ruled that the case dealt with an "anti-hate speech advocate" and a website deemed "controversial."
In fact, if Justice Kershman were concerned with legal precision, Stormfront member Richard Warman would be accurately described not as an "anti-hate speech advocate" but as Canada's most famous neo-Nazi website poster. After all, we only have Warmfront's word for it that he's "anti" hate speech, whereas the paper trail confirms that he writes quite a lot of it. Perhaps a judge should judge him by his actions rather than his justification for them - especially when the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal has ruled that Warmfront's explanation is "very weak" and his reasons for his voluminous hate speech postings not "acceptable".
In that sense, isn't it Richard Warman, the hate-site poster who claims to be anti-hate, who's been deemed "controversial"? After all, unlike Free Dominion, his Stormfront and Vanguard postings have been the subject of judicial rebuke.
And isn't there something preposterous about a man who makes his living (ie, repeated, significant five-figure tax-free sums) from anonymous website-commenting of explicit hatefulness complaining about anonymous website comments in the first place?
For a Superior Court judge, Stanley Kershman doesn't seem quite up to speed.
As for the broader philosophical question, in the long run I'm in favor of less anonymity. One reason why I admire Ezra, Kathy and Kate is their willingness to take the heat under their own names. Throughout the last year, I encountered far too many Canadian politicians who said, "Oh, of course, I'm behind you 100 per cent, but please don't mention my name." I've also encountered, discreetly, a bunch of Hollywood bigshots who say, "I loved America Alone. Er, but please don't mention it to anyone." So I can understand why a guy in Sarnia or Laval would be reluctant to put his full legal name to a controversial position like, oh, suggesting a Khaled Mouammar ought not to have a say in selecting immigrants to Canada.
But at some point Canadians - and Britons, Americans, Australians, Europeans - are going to have to stand up under their own names, or they will lose their freedoms to an administrative tyranny that, in a technological age, has both the means and the urge - as Justice Kershman has demonstrated - to hunt down even the most piffling anonymities.
Live free or die!
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