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If you want to know what's gone wrong with the Canadian state's conception of human rights, it's perfectly distilled by the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission's former longtime investigator and current serial plaintiff speaking to Britain's Independent On Sunday:
He has taken all the conspiracy theories that have ever existed and melded them together to create an even greater conspiracy theory of his own. His writings may be the work of a madman, or of a genuine racist. Either way, they are very dangerous. There is an unpleasant anti-Semitic undercurrent in his work that must be brought to people's attention. If he's unstable, then so are his followers, who hang on to his every word. What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?
Those are the words of Richard Warman, interviewed by Jason Cowley for The Independent On Sunday on October 1st 2000. (It's not available online, but you can fish it out of Lexis-Nexis or do it the old-fashioned way and rummage through the microfilm at your municipal library.) Mr Warman was speaking of David Icke, former Coventry City goalie and BBC sports anchor turned ...well, "turned" pretty much covers it. David believes in a secret world government run by child-abusing Satanist Illuminati controlled by the Queen and the Bush family who are, in fact, reptilian humanoids descended from the blood-drinking space lizards of the star system Alpha Draconis. As I recall, a friend of the late Princess of Wales has confirmed to him Her Royal Highness' belief that the Royal Family are shape-shifting space reptiles. I apologize to David if I've lost a bit in translation. It has been many years since he and I shared a BBC talkshow sofa together, and our paths have diverged somewhat. Yet here we are yoked together in Canadian Human Rights litigation. (You can read more on Icke's views of Warman here.)
Look, if David Icke was a racist, he wouldn't find it prudent to give seven-hour speeches in Brixton. Icke isn't a racist, he's a kook who believes the world is run by shape-shifting space lizards. Why should it be illegal to advance that theory? Has the Queen or any other shape-shifter filed a Human Rights Commission complaint alleging that Icke has exposed her to "hatred or contempt"? No. I should imagine Her Majesty is laughing the socks off her sinister reptilian feet over it. Which is the healthy reaction. But not as far as Richard Warman's concerned. This is the standard this longtime Canadian government speech investigator sets:
What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?
Who died and made Lucy Warman Speech God? Er, well, the Canadian government did. And it's freedom of expression, in any meaningful sense, that's died. A longtime Canadian "human rights" officer thinks that it's the state's role to "allow" citizens to speak if they can demonstrate some "benefit" in doing so. With human rights like that, who needs lack of human rights?
In his way, Richard Warman is nuttier than David Icke. Icke has flown the coop. He's out there in Alpha Draconis having a ball. But Warman is still more or less in the real world, and the assumptions underpinning that rhetorical question to The Independent have metastasized dramatically, from neo-Nazi losers in basements to conspiracy-theorist gurus and now to Canada's leading news weekly. In such a world, how many of us will discover the state can find no "benefit" in "allowing" us to speak?
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