Profaning the Holocaust

Warren Kinsella claims to be appalled that Kate McMillan profaned the Holocaust in her prank against him. Fair enough. But would Kinsella's high dudgeon sound a little more credible if he had not, just last month, used Holocaust analogies and imagery himself in a cheap shot at a fellow Liberal?

That's what makes Kinsella's emotional reaction seem so incredible, as if it were just a... war-room tactic. Hardly a week goes by when Kinsella doesn't accuse some conservative blogger of being a Nazi. If, say, Jay Currie is no better than a Nazi, then the Nazis are no worse than Jay Currie.

Who is really profaning the Holocaust here -- for fame and profit?

I don't know if Rush Limbaugh coined the phrase, but he certaintly popularized it: "a bigot is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal". With folks like Kinsella, it seems, "a Nazi is anyone who disagrees with him." That certainly profanes the Holocaust.

It's also dangerous legal ground for Kinsella. I'm not going to give him legal advice, but I will draw readers' attention to the interesting case of Pressler v. Lethbridge out of B.C. a few years back, upheld on appeal.

The Presslers were racists, no doubt about it. But David Lethbridge and his local rag-tag group of "anti-racists" (I was surprised Richard Warman's name didn't come up) started hounding the couple. (See paragraph 143 for an example of their "political action".) Lethbridge and company whipped things up enough until the Presslers were called Nazis on TV. Then they sued. And they won close to $100,000, an amount increased on appeal.

The Presslers were openly racist and anti-Semitic. But they weren't Nazis, members of the Nazi Party, supporters of the Nazis or of certain core ideas closely associated with Naziism, such as violence. That was an important enough distinction for the judge to find for the Presslers, and hand them a pretty substantial award.

The Union of Bloggers that I'm proposing is a purely defensive organization -- it will only defend against lawsuits, not commence them. But if I was a blogger or anyone else called a Nazi by Kinsella or Warman simply because I had conservative or even rude (or even racist) opinions, I'd be tempted to put those accusers to the test to prove it in defamation court.

Not just for the moral victory of a win in court, and the financial compensation that comes with it. But to make the point Kinsella pretends to make: if we really don't want to profane the memory of the Holocaust, we ought not to call just anyone we argue with a "Nazi".