Recently (June 16th, 2008) that magnificent enfant terrible Ezra Levant gave a talk in Toronto to an audience largely made up of Jewish civil rights lawyers on some of the things he has been learning in his battle with Alberta’s Human Rights commissars. Levant, as he so often does, cheerfully ladled out a lot of food for thought — not all of it appetizing to his audience.
There were people in the audience who had backed the evolution of human rights commissions, and one or two who played supporting roles in this process. Levant ruffled some of their feathers. In contrast, many others in the audience were not lawyers but members of the blogger-sphere, for whom Ezra is a champion and an inspiration.
Levant brandished two strong examples in Jewish history where their authorities attempted to muzzle freedom of speech.
Levant recalled that a long time ago, a particular high priest named Caiaphas attempted to muzzle a disruptive preacher from Nazareth by charging him with blasphemy and sedition. Only the Romans had the power of execution in Judea at that time, and wouldn’t care about blasphemy, but sedition could merit crucifixion. The outcome of this particular incident wasn’t especially positive for the Jewish people.
The same was true when Jewish politicians in the German Weimar Republic helped create laws limiting hateful speech by the rabble rousers out on the streets. It didn’t work, although Hitler later made full use of the same laws to limit his critics and the rest is a ghastly history, particularly for Europe’s Jews.
In addition to pointing out that attempted censorship has not done any historical good for the Jewish people, Levant also pointed out that trying to muzzle Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists in the 1980s and 1990s has likewise done Canada’s Jewish communities an enormous disservice. His points:
- By refusing to allow the expression of ‘alternative’ views about the mass murder of Europe’s Jews under the Nazis, the opportunity to take on those who express such views in full and open debate has been lost. Given that knowledge about these events is fading, we must conclude that the lack of a debate has inevitably contributed to the lack of education about this history.
- By subjecting Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers like Ernst Zundel to legal persecution, these gadflies were able to attract a far larger audience and more influence than they otherwise would have received. As another case in point about this argument, Ezra’s profile has never been as high as it has been since the Alberta Human Rights commissars went after him. Leaving the Neo-Nazis alone with their grubby leaflets in their squalid cellars would have been the best approach.
- As we can judge from the current actions of our Human Rights commissars, proponents of the Islamist movement are now – just as Hitler did – picking up the tools that somebody else forged and using them for their own ends.
Why is it that we always forget about the law of unintended consequences?
Thinking of Levant’s second point prompted a recollection about one of the first court appearances by Ernst Zundel (who eked a slender living out of denying the reality of the Holocaust) back in the early 1980s. An evening television news clip showed a white van pulling up in front of the courthouse and Zundel emerging with a handful of his ‘security’ goons. They were all tastefully equipped with construction helmets that had the suspension band pulled down to act as improvised chinstraps; and probably didn’t realize how incredibly silly they looked.
One of the ‘squad’ was a blubber-lipped teenager who already looked to be tipping the scales at 400lbs. Mustering a ferocious expression in a pathetic attempt to convey an impression that he was a hard tough brawler, Slobber-Chops lumbered straight towards a television camera lens. However, Zundel suddenly realized that Slobber-Chops was going to get full exposure on the evening news, and then neatly hip-checked him out of the frame so that the camera would capture Zundel’s mug instead. There has never been any reason to change this impression of a publicity-driven egoist that Zundel generated in this television clip so many years ago.
By not engaging Zundel in debate on several occasions over the years, the people who used the Human Rights commissars to harass him instead lost the opportunity to limit Zundel by engaging him in debate. Admittedly, nobody would ever be able to convince Herr Zundel that he was wrong – just as nobody can convince a conspiracy myth addict to see reason. But the real object of public debate is not to convince your opponent (particularly if he is a few biscuits short of a picnic), but to educate the general public and win them over.
As Levant pointed out, the ‘establishment’ within the Jewish community has spent a quarter century helping to create and use the Human Rights industry. True this was not without cause when it came to access to public services since many clubs and businesses excluded Jews and other minorities well into the 1960s. Attacking free speech is another matter. Within a free society, the best defence against hate is always free speech and in dealing with bigots, one should always remember Voltaire’s prayer: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” In these instances, this is one prayer that is readily granted.
Levant observed that it is past time for a rethink on human rights commissions by Canada’s major Jewish community organizations. In Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein, the doctor who created the monster was working for the betterment of humanity, and indeed was a kindly and loving man with good intentions. Not that it mattered once the monster got loose. With today’s Human Rights commissars, it is all too clear that the monster is loose. Truth is no defence, the presumption of innocence does not operate, search warrants are unnecessary; and the commissars seem to be about as well-educated and fair-minded as members of the Committee for Public Safety in Jacobin Paris, or Moscow judges during Stalin’s Great Terror.
The great strength of the Western World has long been the ability of its peoples to argue and debate, to say what needs to be said and periodically re-examine it. Everything — our prosperity, our technology, our freedoms –flows from this tradition of rational inquiry and free speech. The intellectual traditions of the Jewish people have let them play an outsized role in our history and in creating all of the benefits that have flowed from freedom of speech.
Nowhere else have the benefits of free speech been so apparent as in that handful of English speaking democracies that are the finest fruits of rationalism and the Enlightenment: The UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nowhere else have the Jewish people found such a safe refuge and home (except, arguably, Israel — and where would it be without American support?) It is in these same countries that freedom of inquiry and debate is under assault, and in Canada the key element in this assault are human rights commissions.
Perhaps Levant’s challenge to the Jewish civil rights lawyers wasn’t quite blunt enough. The illusion of safety that Canada’s human rights commissions offer against a handful of Neo-Nazi pin-heads isn’t worth the price; and these commissions ultimately now represent a severe threat to those traditions and institutions that have been the best safety that Canada’s Jewish citizens – along with everyone else who lives here — have ever enjoyed. The decision that needs to be made is a simple one… the commissions urgently need to be curbed and returned to their original purposes.
