Ezra Levant Is Not Being Persecuted By The State
by Transmontanus, 14 January 2008
I’m not going to bother linking to any of the innumerable cases of derangement and hyperventilation set off by the overnight elevation of Ezra Levant from D-List conservative libertarian to free-speech martyr. Watch his own videos of the event if you like, and join the roughly 200,000 people who have tuned in since last week.
I did, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t see a Star Chamber interrogation of a persecuted journalist. I saw a junior civil servant trying to do her job, being harangued and bullied and browbeaten by a lawyer in a nice suit.
I’ve made it plain that I’m generally against human rights tribunals being used to police reasonable limits on free speech and I hope and expect Levant will win in his fight with the human rights commission, but I confess that I can’t talk myself into becoming a free-speech absolutist. I harbour too much uncertainty about the frontier between the territory where individuals must have a right to say whatever they like, and where the people, by enacting laws, are entitled to tell individuals to shut the hell up. I confess.
Still, I like to think I know the trampling of free speech when I see it, and Ezra’s case, prompted by a ludicrous complaint arising from his decision to publish the Motoons in his Western Standard magazine (now a blog), isn’t it.
This is a case of a libertarian conservative earning Paypal donations and cult-hero status by successfully going viral in an assault on one of those dreaded tentacles of the state conservative libertarians are always going on about. If it wasn’t the Alberta Human Rights Commission it would be the Alberta Labour Relations Board or the Workers Compensation Board. Conservative libertarians are not just against the folly of human rights tribunals trespassing upon free speech questions they have neither the competence nor the jurisdiction to adjudicate. They’re against human rights tribunals.
This is the same Ezra Levant, let’s not forget, who expressed rather less than absolute support for the free speech rights of nutcase Vancouver imam Younus Kathrada not long ago. Not charging Kathadra, who’d been giving out of himself about Jews being related to monkeys and pigs and so on, would be a misguided act of political correctness, Levant wrote. “He should be made an example of, not have excuses made for him. Justice calls for it.”
This same Ezra Levant is himself not above bullying when it comes to the free speech rights of people who think he’s a jerk. As Warren Kinsella puts it: “The fraud, in this case, is my friend Ezra Levant. He is full of crap, actually.”
No matter how the Human Rights Commission rules, Ezra will have full recourse to the courts, and undoubtedly the full support of Canada’s national media. If he loses in any way at the commission level, you can bet that the ruling Conservative parties in the province and the country where he is so fortunate to live will come to his aid and his comfort and his cause.
So for all the free speech champions on the right and the left now working themselves into paroxysms about the iron heel of the state in Canada, a question or two.
Where were you when Rafika Tagi and Samira Sadagatogli were sent to jail for publishing the Mohammed cartoons? Did any of you set up a Paypal account for any of the 13 newspapers and magazines shut down for publishing the cartoons in Morocco, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Indonesia and Malaysia? Have you ever even heard the names Mohammed al-Asadi, Abdulkarim Sabra, or Yehiya al-Abed?
Monday 14 January 2008 at 20:11
You seem to be arguing that because Ezra is perhaps loathsome, that he does not deserve consideration of his right to free expression because of it. Who he is, is irrelevant to what his right of speech and due process should be.
Whether we have spoken up before on behalf of others is similarly not a disqualifier for an interest in this case.
Shall we have a list of those topics we can feel free to discuss, and a separate list of those individuals who are worthy of our support to secure their natural rights? If so, who gets to make the list and even more importantly, who gets to interpret and give it the force of law?
Monday 14 January 2008 at 20:24
Canadians don’t have an unfettered “right to free expression”.
Monday 14 January 2008 at 20:32
Education guy: You appear to have skimmed the post or deliberately misread it for your own rhetorical convenience.
In either case, you’re ignoring the part where I wrote that I think the complaint against Levant is ludicrous, and the part where I wrote that I’m generally against human rights tribunals policing speech in the first place, and the part where I wrote that I hope Levant will win - a hope I clearly harbour regardless of whether he is “loathsome” or not.
Am I not allowed to write about motive and context? Shall we have a list of directly relevant matters that we are not allowed to raise in discussion about this case?
Monday 14 January 2008 at 22:26
Terry - this free-speech absolutist also hopes that Ezra Levant wins, and I agree with you that he’s a dick.
Your comments provide a refreshing counterbalance to the “derangement and hyperventilation” to which you refer. I almost felt sympathy for the browbeaten civil servant in the YouTube’d tribunal hearing.
Monday 14 January 2008 at 22:30
You wrote:
‘This is the same Ezra Levant, let’s not forget, who expressed rather less than absolute support for the free speech rights of nutcase Vancouver imam Younus Kathrada not long ago. Not charging Kathadra, who’d been giving out of himself about Jews being related to monkeys and pigs and so on, would be a misguided act of political correctness, Levant wrote. “He should be made an example of, not have excuses made for him. Justice calls for it.”’
You left out that Kathadra “repeatedly called for the killing of Jews”, according to the same editorial by Ezra Levant. Ezra Levant, in the same article, cited another case of anti-semitic hate speech which did not incite violence, writing that libertarians “were rightly upset” with that verdict. You also leave out that Ezra Levant explicitly addresses this distinction in the very videos to which you provide a link. How misleading.
Monday 14 January 2008 at 23:42
Thanks, Jura.
Krupp: What you and I both left out is that Kathadra was outed by his fellow Muslims and investigated by the RCMP for violating the hate-speech sections of the Criminal Code, and no charges were laid.
What you rather conveniently left out is that the allegation Levant levelled against Kathadra was that he “repeatedly called for the killing of Jews” - utterances that should, by Levant’s own standard, be allowable speech.
What you (and in the first instance, Levant) left out was that Kathadra was citing the Koran, and in Canada, the jackboot, politically-correct nanny state that it is, you can’t be charged with hate-speech if your statements derive from a religious text.
“How misleading” indeed.
Monday 14 January 2008 at 23:49
Canada: Freedom of Speech succumbing to Kangaroo Courts of the Human Rights Commission
Proceedings against Ezra Levant are nothing short of ridiculous, but let’s consider the implications for moderate Muslims. This “investigation” will further divide Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada. It will give credence to radicals’ claims that the West is at war with Islam. It will antagonize non-Muslims and moderate Muslims will be pushed towards radicalization. Regardless of the outcome, once again Islamists skillfully manipulated Dhimmi justice system and came out as clear winners. Thank you, Human Right Commission!
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/01/canada-freedom-of-speech-succumbing-to.html
Sign Free Dominion Against the HRCs Petition
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/a-free-dominion-against-the-hrcs.html
[Comment released from SPAM box]
Monday 14 January 2008 at 23:50
You said:
‘What you rather conveniently left out is that the allegation Levant levelled against Kathadra was that he “repeatedly called for the killing of Jews” - utterances that should, by Levant’s own standard, be allowable speech.’
Not at all. You apparently didn’t read the very same editorial or view the very same videos to which you linked
Monday 14 January 2008 at 23:56
I appear to have read the Levant op-ed rather more closely than you did. What do you find in the video that is so illuminating to the point you’re raising? Cite, please, i.e. quote.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 0:13
“What you rather conveniently left out is that the allegation Levant levelled against Kathadra was that he “repeatedly called for the killing of Jews” - utterances that should, by Levant’s own standard, be allowable speech.”
Levant writes:
“Officer McGovern asked if I thought there should be any limits to free speech under our constitution. Of course there should be, and I listed a half-dozen examples. But I drew a distinction between criminal or tortious speech and political speech. I also pointed out that free political speech isn’t just protected in a liberal democracy — it protects a liberal democracy. That’s because it acts as a “safety valve” for people who want to change society. They don’t have to resort to arms.”
“At exactly one minute into this clip, I describe the Canadian legal test that governments must meet before they’re allowed to override freedom of speech — it’s called the Oakes Test. Officer McGovern nods her head in agreement.”
http://ezralevant.com/2008/01/the-limits-of-free-speech-and.html
Of course the question is whether “repeatedly call[ing] for the killing of Jews” is tortious speech or political speech. And is it comparable to publishing cartoons that mock one’s religious icon?
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 0:19
You said:
‘…utterances that should, by Levant’s own standard, be allowable speech.’
Yet Levant clearly draws a distinction between hate speech that incites violence and hate speech does not, both in the editorial (the contrast between Kathrada’s hate speech and Keegstra’s hate speech), and in the youtube video entitled “Attributes of free speech”,
starting at 00:00:
Civil servant:
OK, what do you think about charter limits? Um… restrictions of freedom of speech?
Ezra Levant:
I believe that there are appropriate limits of freedom of speech. I believe that fraud, for example, impersonation, slander of goods, defamation, copyright is a limit of free expression, confidentiality agreements, the official secrets acts… Of course we believe there are limits. We don’t believe that you can instruct someone, and cause them to cause a criminal act or a murder. We don’t believe that you can work in conspiracy to commit a crime. That’s not what we’re talking about here. None of those things happened. We’re talking about political debate. Political debate ought not to have any limits. And, any limits that are attempted must have to overleap a very stingent test. The test is called the Oakes test. It was devised to protect someone who was charged with trafficking heroin. If heroin dealers can beat the rap by appealing to the Constitution, so to can publishers. I do not believe that there should be any limits whatsoever on political or religious speech that does not fall into those categories, of, uh, incitement to riot, for example, conspiracy to commit a murder. So for, so, I don’t believe that those should be acceptable.
Again, by leaving out these most relevant details, and thus skewing your analysis, your blog post was misleading.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 0:50
He could just have well been a left wing publisher in exactly the same position, in fact I wish it was. However, I find it hard to justify any difference in my response if that had been the case, on the specific issue of the right to publish.
The government may not be persecuting Levant, but it would appear they are enabling him to be persecuted by a third party. That is wrong on principle, regardless of whether he wins or loses.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 0:58
I believe that is really the gist of his beef, that the “process is the punishment”.
Imagine members of this blog being ordered to explain to a governmental authority, either in person or in writing, why they posted a picture of Muhammad Teddy bear which some Muslims found offensive and deliberately hateful, or something.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 2:47
How often do the “Alberta Labour Relations Board or the Workers Compensation Board” undertake to set limits on religious cartooning?
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 3:01
“Of course the question is whether “repeatedly call[ing] for the killing of Jews” is tortious speech or political speech.”
The question is actually simpler than that. It’s whether Levant was right at all in characterizing Kathadra’s statements that way, and I’ve never seen any evidence that supports that characterization (it would appear the cops investigating the case were similarly at a loss), but Levant wanted Kathadra prosecuted anyway.
“Yet Levant clearly draws a distinction between hate speech that incites violence and hate speech does not.” No. The distinction that he draws is not so clear in the Kathandra’s case, which was the instance I cited, and besides, in any other context I wouldn’t hold Levant to any particularly stiff standard about such distinction-making. I didn’t even see much to disagree with when his op-ed on Kathandra first appeared.
My main complaint in writing the post wasn’t so much about Levant, except to make the case that his motives are apparently less about about free-speech restraints than they are about opposing government “interference in the free market,” as it has become so fashionable to describe what governments generally do.
To answer Scoop, it isn’t so much Levant’s politics, either. Where I come from there is a “left wing” editor whose blog followed a similar trajectory to the Western Standard’s (it began as a magazine, failed, and ended up a blog). It’s called the Radical Press. It, too, is being hauled before a human rights tribunal. Its editor’s concerns and postings are absolutely central to those of the contemporary “left,” and the human rights complaint against the Radical Press concerns its antisemitic content - publishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for one. To give you a flavour of the site, the editor has filed 68 posts under Jewish Banking Cartel, 35 under Jewish Porn Industry, 30 under Jews Behind Bolshevik Revolution and so on.
Odd, but I don’t see legions of conservative pundits rushing to defend the Radical Press. I’m not the one with the hobgoblin of consistency to worry about here, Scoop.
In my post, I wrote “I confess,” and I confess here, too, that I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep if the Canadian Human Rights Commission shut down the Radical Press. Is that wrong? Am I being callous, irresponsible, “politically correct,” naive? Maybe.
I honestly and sincerely wish I had the certainty of Jura, a self-described free-speech absolutist (and one of many such absolutists I know and respect). It just so happens that I am not so certain in these matters.
What I am certain about - and what motivated me more than anything else in writing the post - was my revulsion with the outrageous hyperbole and hysteria in this case. to this i confess as well. In the scheme of things, Ezra Levant’s trouble is a silly little case that I hope and expect will sort itself out in due time (yes please, mark my words). I just hope we don’t end up losing human rights tribunals completely as a consequence.
Meanwhile, the names Rafika Tagi, Samira Sadagatogli, Mohammed al-Asadi, Abdulkarim Sabra, and Yehiya al-Abed - brave men who went to prison for publishing those same stupid cartoons - are largely unknown to us.
There are at least 129 journalists in jail around the world. Ezra Levant isn’t one of them, and he is not going to be. He is enjoying his newfound celebrity. The Paypal contributions keep rolling in, his favorite cooks prepare his meals, and all his work goes well.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 3:21
Here is the meat in the pudding:
“Imagine members of this blog being ordered to explain to a governmental authority”
I cannot accept that i have to submit my thoughts and or writings to a government authority at anytime.
If someone feels suitably aggrieved we have a reasonably competent court system to hear tortious complaints.
If the government has no place in the nations bedrooms it certainly has no place in our newspapers.
The whole concept is Orwellian with distinct shadings of the old USSR.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 3:30
Terry,
Go and ask Mr Levant to highlight these names when he is next able. Right now he has got the soap box and is still accepting comments on his site.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 4:01
You said:
‘“Yet Levant clearly draws a distinction between hate speech that incites violence and hate speech does not.” No. The distinction that he draws is not so clear in the Kathandra’s case, which was the instance I cited,…’
Yes, it actually was, as is clear from the editorial. To dispute Levant’s claims about whether or not Kathrada exhorted others to commit violence is different than to, as you blatantly did, leave out the issue entirely in your original blog post and then claim that incitement should “by Levant’s own standard, be allowable speech.” And you still don’t acknowledge your obvious, fundamental mistake. Ridiculous.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 4:31
“The question is actually simpler than that. It’s whether Levant was right at all in characterizing Kathadra’s statements that way,”
“DIANA SWAIN (HOST) :
Police in Vancouver say they have been aware for some time of hateful comments attributed to this Muslim cleric. A voice believed to be that of Sheik Younus Kathrada is heard on tape pledging support for the killing of Jews. As Chris Brown reports, while police say an investigation is ongoing, some Jewish groups are demanding immediate action.
CHRIS BROWN (REPORTER) :
He is accused of preaching a message of hate. Younus Kathrada, a cleric originally from South Africa, he is the leader at Vancouver’s Dar al-Madinah Islamic Society and now the subject of a hate crime investigation by the RCMP.
RCMP OFFICER :
I can tell you that we were aware of some of the comments that were made. And that they were disturbing to us.
CHRIS BROWN (REPORTER) :
The comments attributed to Younus Kathrada were references to Jews and the conflict in the Middle East. They were contained on an audio file posted on the mosque’s website.
SHEIK YOUNUS KATHRADA (LEADER OF DAR AL-MADINAH ISLAMIC SOCIETY) :
(Tape recording) “We are dealing with the people, the brothers of the monkeys and swines, people whose treachery is well known.”
CHRIS BROWN (REPORTER) :
Later in the lecture, the speaker quotes passages from the Koran that he claims urges Muslims to fight and kill Jews.
SHEIK YOUNUS KATHRADA (LEADER OF DAR AL-MADINAH ISLAMIC SOCIETY) :
(Tape recording) All Muslims, slaves of Allah, (…) behind me is a Jew, then come and kill him. It is not meant to be understood metaphorically, but rather literally.”
http://www.cjc.ca/template.php?Story=987&action=itn
Looks like Kathadra benefited from the Oakes Principle: the onus was upon the police to prove that when he was reciting verses from the Quran that extoll the murder of Jews, he was aiming at the same Jews he earlier called “apes and pigs”. And they could not meet the onus, apparently. They asked him what his intentions were, and he said he only meant Israeli Jews. Well, that’s quite another matter, isn’t it? In that case, he is not in breach of the hate laws.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 4:32
It was Levant that made the “mistake” of urging prosecution of some dimwit imam who was giving out of himself from the koran. I characterized this as offering “less than absolute support” for free speech.
Note as well in my response to you I allowed that “I didn’t even see much to disagree with when his op-ed on Kathandra first appeared,” so fee free to bash me around for that, too.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 4:51
Hi Noga.
“They asked him what his intentions were, and he said he only meant Israeli Jews.”
For all I know, that is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the intention of the words in the Koran. My problem, though, is I don’t think I could have brought myself to object if Kathandra had been charged under B.C.’s Human Rights Act for that, even though he couldn’t have been convicted under the Criminal Code on the same charge (clerical exemption etc.)
This is what I mean by not being able to convince myself to take “absolutist” positions on free speech (and I’ve yet to encounter anything to convince me to do so). And I know, it leaves me open to the charge of holding a double standard.
I prefer that, though, to asserting an absolutist position I can’t honestly adopt.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 8:51
[idiot banned]
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 9:00
[idiot banned]
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 9:02
[idiot banned]
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 10:22
I honestly and sincerely wish I had the certainty of Jura, a self-described free-speech absolutist
Certainty is something I do not possess. I describe myself as a free-speech absolutist as I see no justification for the proscribing of any political speech. Shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre, or calling for the annihilation of Jews, are not the same, and are covered by other statutes.
This is the distinction between tortious and political speech to which Levant refers.
Again, I hope Levant wins this battle with the forces of state darkness. But he is such a drama queen, and I’m unimpressed with the way in which he overplays the situation. Even the act of turning up in person with a video camera, rather than setting out his stall in a letter to the commission, displays a prima donna aspect to his character that I find slightly comical. (Not that Levant or anyone else should be compelled to answer such ridiculous charges even by letter!)
When the Motoons affair first blew up, we had posturing commentators in the west insisting that we had a responsibility to republish the cartoons at each and every opportunity. Given the chance, they would have pinned the scribblings to the Ka’bah in Meccah.
I published two of the drawings on my blog: the only ones I felt had any merit, and which focused on the motives of the Danish newspaper that commissioned them. Reactionary provocateurs.
Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 10:30
[idiot banned]
Tuesday 29 January 2008 at 20:12
“For all I know, that is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the intention of the words in the Koran.”
When was the Koran written?
When did Israel become a nation?
I do not find this a “reasonable interpretation”. Assuming the quotes shown above are correct, I see someone who is urging others to commit murder. That’s against the law, period. It’s no different than those who use quotes from the bible to exhort others to kill homosexuals. Exactly the sort of thing our hate crime laws were created to prevent.
You have the right to offend me. You do not have the right to urge others to do me harm.
Tuesday 29 January 2008 at 20:55
Les: One does not contradict the other. It may be a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the intention of the words in the Koran, and at the same time be incitement to murder. Funny about religious books. They can be like that.
You don’t think it’s a reasonable interpretation. Good for you. I have no opinion on the subject, as the quote you cite makes clear. You say it’s urging others to commit murder. The police who investigated the matter appear to disagree (no charges were laid) but in any case, there is a sort of pulpit exemption in the Criminal Code hate speech provisions. Ezra is not unaware of this.
I don’t think we’re necessarily holding different opinions. But it seems obvious we have a different understanding of the facts, and perhaps also of Canadian law.
And that’s the problem with this whole debate. People are squaring off against one another as though there are clear lines separating “political speech” and everything else, or “incitement to murder” and everything else, when the lines are rarely so clear.
In Ezra’s case, the commonplace argument, which Ezra himself is mounting feverishly, is that the “right” is for free speech and the “left” is against.
My point was that Ezra is being elevated to the role of free-speech martyr while hundreds of journalists and activists around the world, people who really are being persecuted, are largely ignored. My contentious observation was that Ezra’s own conduct suggests he’s in favour of certain limits that rather contradict his “absolutist” pose, and indeed his own stated position raises even murkier distinctions between what should be allowed and what shouldn’t be.
And I don’t just mean such of his concessions as the point that slandering people shouldn’t be allowed. He believes that slandering property, or “slander of goods,” as he puts it, should be against the law. So much for the letting the “marketplace of ideas” sort things out.
Like the distinction between political speech and everything else, the distinction between slander and fair comment must be determined by law, guided by precedent, and undertaken on a case by case basis, according to facts. When I try to sort these things out, the facts matter more than theory, and more than ideology, and more than the advancement of some political agenda.
And if you don’t think that’s what Ezra’s up to here, with respect, you haven’t been paying sufficiently close attention.
Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 16:11
I’m not a lawyer. I’m no fan of Ezra Levant. And I’ll never argue that a religious text can’t support killing innocents.
My point is simply that urging others to kill is against the law. No matter the source, no “reasonable interpretation” excuses inciting violence against others. Levant’s publicity stunt aside, this is an important issue. I’m from Alberta, and Jim Keegstra was a horrific embarassment. Ontario is Canada’s centre of racism, not Alberta, and I want it to stay that way.
Preach Lev 20:13 if you like, but urge your congregation to kill homosexuals and you will be charged. The same must be applied to the Koran regarding the Jewish people.