The moral hazard of being in the anti-hate industry

See update, below.

Here is that Maclean's article from 1966, about how the Canadian Jewish Congress sent an "agent" to pitch in to organize the Canadian Nazi Party. Just like Grant Bristow twenty years later, and Richard Warman forty years later, it was a case of the "cure" becoming worse than the disease. The scans are about 30 MB; I've put a 12 MB version here:

John Garrity, the CJC agent who helped out the rag-tag band of wannabes, didn't do as much as Grant Bristow did, in terms of organizing neo-Nazis, and he didn't do as much as Warman did, in terms of spreading anti-Semitic and racist hate. But the fact remains, the Canadian Jewish Congress pitched in, helping to prop up the haters they were publicly fighting against. And -- surprise! -- in a self-serving article, Garrity wrote that his work was extremely important, and that the rag-tag nobodies he helped out were a real menace. The only thing missing was the pitch for readers to donate money to the CJC and the rest of the anti-hate industry.

Let's get serious. Barely 20 years after Nazi Germany was crushed into powder by the Allies, with Canada taking an oversized role in the battle, when the streets of Canada were teeming with war veterans who hated Nazism with every cell of their body, when Nazism had been utterly discredited in the public mind, when there was no possible chance of that ideology finding intellectual purchase in Canada, let alone actual power, the CJC was trumping up the menace -- led by a vain, 24-year-old nobody.

Why?

Because that's the moral hazard of the being in the anti-hate business. If there's not enough hate, you have to change your line of work. Or: as the CJC did in 1966, and as they're doing today through the human rights commissions, they drum up a fake danger, manufacture a menace, help them out even, and then expose the whole thing and posit themselves as the remedy.

I just don't know what's wrong with the Jews sometimes. We have enough real enemies out there -- even in 1966, before the West turned against Israel after the Six Day War ended the Jews' status as the world's underdogs, and with it ended the pity honeymoon that had existed since the Holocaust. Even then, the Jews had enough real enemies, and there were real enough Jewish issues. Today it's far worse, with radical Islamists planning the next Holocaust.

I just don't get it. But Bernie "Burny" Farber and the rest of his industry know a good gig when they see one. They're just running the Garrity-Bristow-Warman game one more time. It makes them heroes in their own mind, and it gets them lots of press. But it's dishonest. And today, with militant Islam on the rise, there are enough real fights to fight without making up fake ones.

UPDATE: A commenter writes to say that he was there in Toronto when Beattie, the 24-year-old leader of the rag-tag Canadian Nazi Party had its rally in Toronto -- with 20 people in tow. The commenter's point was to suggest that I have overstated the CJC's role in assisting the Nazi Party. Maybe -- though any support is bizarre. But what I actually glean from the commenter's report was the opposite message: that Beattie and his "party" could only muster 20 followers in a city of millions. This was a national threat? Of course not. But with a little finessing, it could be built up into a menace that would terrify Jews and Gentiles alike.

Brought to you by the CJC.