Borin' Warren

The past three weeks have taught me about the power of the blogosphere to fill in the gaps left by the mainstream media. (Mickey Kaus calls these sorts of stories, the ones that the big media ignore but that talk radio and the Internet explore, the "undernews".) While I have yet to be interviewed by any of the three main Canadian TV networks since my interrogation, more than 5,000 bloggers have weighed in on the subject. Canadian news reporters have been AWOL, but Canadian talk radio interest has been strong, and many op-ed columnists have weighed in, too. My favourite has to be Rex Murphy's column, so beautiful it should be called a poem.)

I haven't read all of the blogs, but I'm pleased that most are supportive of free speech and oppose the human rights commissions. And most of those that are critical of me are merely critical for personal or partisan reasons. Even Warren Kinsella acknowledged today that he doesn't actually support the human rights commission's prosecution of me or Mark Steyn; his criticisms are merely personal.

I've already given too much ink -- and web traffic -- to him, but he is a symbol, I think, of the human rights commission's "constituency": partisan political activists who have a personal stake in the commissions, usually a financial one. Kinsella's first book, Web of Hate, is a kind of diary of these human rights commissions and their battles against powerless kooks and eccentrics who don't actually pose a threat to anyone. So of course Kinsella must weigh in to magnify the threat the commissions tackle, to defend the commissions' importance, and to defend their chief customer, his friend Richard Warman. In a way, that's all Kinsella is doing here: running a one-man political war-room for his buddy Warman, who has had the tar kicked out of his reputation in the blogosphere these past weeks.

It's usually good counsel to ignore folks like Kinsella, but sometimes they say things that ought to be corrected, at least for the record. I've generally ignored his weird biographies of me; I acknowledge that I'm a defamation lawyer, and that I have represented both plaintiffs and defendants, and have been a litigant myself. To compare defamation law with government-prosecuted political censorship in kangaroo courts, as Kinsella does, is simply a tactic of distration, not a real argument. (I'm also against counterfeit currency, forgery and fraud, but Kinsella is sensible enough not to call my support of those abridgements of free speech "hypocrisy".) But it's just plain weird to read things like his accusation that I've sued "Calgary Conservative riding associations".

I haven't, actually, and it's odd that the National Post, which is usually pretty good at fact-checking things (they are at least when I write for them) lets Kinsella's more partisan nose-stretchers onto their web pages.

In fact, before I helped found the Western Standard, I was a lawyer at Chipeur Advocates, which was then counsel of record for the Conservative Party (known as the Canadian Alliance back then). I didn't sue the party or its riding associations; I protected them from suits, including in several interesting defamation cases. After the 2000 election, I had the privilege of representing both Stockwell Day and Rod Love against a frivolous suit brought by a Liberal candidate who was tossed out of the Liberal Party because of his connections to the Taliban and his anti-Semitic TV broadcasts on a Calgary cable channel. (The suit was abandoned after the plaintiff had a, uh, difficult examination for discovery.) I even billed a small amount of time for Stephen Harper after he became leader and before I left the firm to start the magazine. This isn't just name-dropping (though it is a bit of that!); it's my way of saying (to my readers, and to the protectors of the Post's reputation for accuracy) that Kinsella's political fog ought not to be taken at face value. 

On his personal blog, Kinsella reminds me of a column I wrote for the Sun in 2004, and calls it hypocrisy.

I was writing about a Vancouver imam who didn't just lace his weekly sermons with "hate speech"; he went further, calling for violent action -- the killing of infidels. At least one of his congregants seems to have taken his message to heart:

Like Keegstra, Kathrada called Jews names -- "we are dealing with a people ... the brothers of the monkeys and the swine ... whose treachery is well known." Calling Jews brothers of monkeys and swine sounds like a schoolyard taunt more than high argument, but his point was clear. And just in case it wasn't, Kathrada made it clearer still: His sermons repeatedly called for the killing of Jews.

Poor old Keegstra. All he ever did was call the Jews power-hungry money-grubbers, and he was convicted of a crime. Kathrada whips up his congregants into a Jew-baiting frenzy -- and tells them to go and actually kill someone -- and he remains free.

There's some evidence that his Muslim acolytes actually followed his instructions, too. Rudwan Khalil Abubaker, who attended Kathrada's mosque, was in a fire-fight with Russian troops in Chechnya earlier this year. At least he took his violence outside of Vancouver.

The question remains: Why was Keegstra's offensive but non-violent anti-Semitism taken to the Supreme Court, but Kathrada's is tolerated with impunity?

That's not hypocrisy; that's my whole point. Hate speech laws, both in the criminal code and the human rights commissions, are applied arbitrarily and don't deal with real threats to real rights. We know about their arbitrariness; otherwise, Richard Warman, Kinsella's friend, would be charged by now for calling Sen. Anne Cools a c*nt and a n*gger. A consistent application of "human rights law" would probably have Kinsella charged with both illegal sexism and religious bigotry. It's not just interesting to ask why Keegstra was charged with a hate crime and Kathrada wasn't, it's legally important: a law that is applied irregularly loses both its moral and legal force. It's really the difference between rule of law and rule of men. Another way of saying it would be "equal justice under law".

My column was not a call for the laying of "hate speech" charges, though it expressed my curiousity (and offered my own explanation) for why the government didn't lay those charges. It was a public question about why someone who called for murder -- and seems to have got it from one congregant -- wasn't even charged with real crimes. That crucial distinction was conveniently redacted by this these partisans, too.

I re-read that column, and I like it. I'll reprint it here in its entirety. I think I made a fairly clear distinction between "inciting hate" and actually "inciting violence". And after it, I'll reprint my column on another case, that of David Ahenakew. 

I write this to correct the record; I've been a pretty consistent advocate of free speech since I was young -- I even arranged a debate at my law school between Doug Christie, a free speech lawyer for the likes of Keegstra and Zundel, versus Tom Kuttner, a human rights/hate speech advocate from New Brunswick. Every professor but one boycotted the debate -- but not the students. On a Friday afternoon, the biggest hall in the law school was packed for what I think was the best debate I've ever seen in my life. Of course the professors boycotted it; far easier than engaging in debate.

(A Jewish law student asked Christie why we couldn't simply outlaw hate; Christie patiently pointed out that "hate" is a feeling, and it usually stems from some grievance, either legitimate or not. Outlawing "hate" is as impossible as outlawing any other feeling, he argued, and, if anything, such a law would likely only deepen the feeling of grievance. That's pretty clear thinking and tight logic; I haven't yet heard a refutation of it, and I doubt our school's professors could have done so even if they had deigned to attend the biggest extra-curricular event of the year.) 

In closing, here is the full text of my Sun columns on Younus Kathrada, and David Ahenakew.  

Years ago, Jim Keegstra was charged with and convicted of the crime of spreading hatred. It was a seemingly endless case, working its way up to the Supreme Court.

It cost millions of tax dollars, and more than that, was an energetic expression of the government's opposition to racial and religious discord. Libertarians were rightly upset that speech -- no matter how vile -- could be criminalized. But a precedent was set, along with a message.

Fast forward to the present: News out of Vancouver is the imam of the major mosque there, one Younus Kathrada, has been whipping up his congregants each week with anti-Semitic hatred that would make Keegstra sound positively like a Zionist.

Like Keegstra, Kathrada called Jews names -- "we are dealing with a people ... the brothers of the monkeys and the swine ... whose treachery is well known." Calling Jews brothers of monkeys and swine sounds like a schoolyard taunt more than high argument, but his point was clear. And just in case it wasn't, Kathrada made it clearer still: His sermons repeatedly called for the killing of Jews.

Poor old Keegstra. All he ever did was call the Jews power-hungry money-grubbers, and he was convicted of a crime. Kathrada whips up his congregants into a Jew-baiting frenzy -- and tells them to go and actually kill someone -- and he remains free.

There's some evidence that his Muslim acolytes actually followed his instructions, too. Rudwan Khalil Abubaker, who attended Kathrada's mosque, was in a fire-fight with Russian troops in Chechnya earlier this year. At least he took his violence outside of Vancouver.

The question remains: Why was Keegstra's offensive but non-violent anti-Semitism taken to the Supreme Court, but Kathrada's is tolerated with impunity?

Kathrada doesn't just call for the death of Jews. He slams Muslims who dare to believe in peaceful co-existence -- you know, Ottawa's dream of multiculturalism. Kathrada claims such Muslims aren't real Muslims, and no truce with Jews can ever be had.

Kathrada also uses his tax-exempt mosque to trumpet the cause of Hamas, a notorious terrorist group responsible for countless suicide bombings.

Why hasn't Kathrada been charged with a hate crime? Why haven't he and his mosque been charged under Canada's new anti-terrorism laws for promoting and aiding terrorist groups like Hamas? (To date, not a single charge has been laid under this law.)

The answer is obvious. It's easy to pick on a politically incorrect country bumpkin like Jim Keegstra. Some dumb white guy making dumb remarks about Jews -- go get 'em. There's not a well-funded, politically correct Dumb Guy Defence Committee ready to roll for his defence.

But ever since 9/11, liberals throughout the West have decided an anti-Arab backlash would be worse than Arab terrorism itself. So true risks like Kathrada are ignored, in the name of not making a fuss. The liberal thinking is that charging someone like Kathrada would only give a bad name to all Muslims.

Of course, it would do the opposite -- it would point out that not all Muslims are in league with such terror tactics, and that the few who are will be rooted out.

Not charging the handful of Muslims who are haters is like not charging the handful of Italians who are part of the Mafia -- it is a misguided act of political correctness. The majority of Muslims -- we hope -- do not support Kathrada. He should be made an example of, not have excuses made for him. Justice calls for it.

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