Why I decided to fight back

Here is the transcript of an interview I recently did with Kathy Shaidle. It was really a Q&A about my new book, Shakedown -- so it was as much about my decision to write the book as it was about the substance of the book itself. I'll just highlight the one question that made me think about the exact moment I decided to launch my campaign of denormalization:

EXAMINER:

People ask me where you get your energy from and how you keep your sense of humor. What is your secret?

EZRA LEVANT:
"Right around the time of my interrogation by the HRC, I spoke with Mark Steyn and we talked about how the chief weapon used by HRCs is psychological. Usually, their formal punishments aren't enormous -- typically in the tens of thousands of dollars (though they are occasionally more extreme, including lifetime bans on publicly or privately saying certain words, and even orders to people to publicly issue false apologies: see the Lund v. Boissoin case).

"The real punishment is the process -- biased, slow, uncertain, capricious, lawless, costly, unfair. The process is designed to so demoralize political dissidents as to make them abandon hope, leave the jurisdiction, or spiral down in a rage. Many people who are caught in HRCs actually become, over time, the caricature that they are accused of being -- they're turned into obsessive cranks, which is a wholly predictable outcome when a Canadian expecting Canadian justice is subjected to Soviet-style 'justice.'

"So I simply decided I wasn't going to become like that. If I were to 'obsess' over the unfair charges against me, it would take the form of a relentless campaign for reform, using my time and whatever talents I have to spread the word about the corruption and abuse of the system. I knew I was luckier than pretty much any other HRC target in the past: I had friends in politics and journalism, and it would be pretty tough to tag me, a Zionist Jew who had actually started a multi-racial club in law school called Minorities Against Discrimination, as a 'neo-Nazi' or 'white supremacist.' So, unlike the HRCs' previous targets, I would actually have a chance to be heard when I pointed out the rot in the system.

"I decided I would try to live up to the title of Mark Steyn's column in the National Review: the 'happy warrior', and to use mockery and ridicule where appropriate.

"I spent time researching HRCs, and found that they were actually everything they claimed to be against -- everything they accused me of being.

"CHRC staff joined neo-Nazi organizations -- and are still members to this day. A CHRC 'hate speech' investigator was a former cop kicked off her police force for corruption. An Alberta HRC lawyer was a Muslim supremacist. A CHRC manager actually said that free speech was an 'American' idea, so he didn't care about trampling on it. And HRCs everywhere are the political dumping grounds for extremist politicians who couldn't cut it in real elections (Giacomo Vigna of the CHRC is a three-time election loser, Richard Warman of the CHRC is a four-time election loser, Barbara Hall of the OHRC was fired as mayor of Toronto, etc.).

"In sum, I wasn't the extremist radical; they were. I wasn't the one abridging 'human rights', they were. I wasn't the fringe element who needed political 're-education' about our country's values; they were. I wasn't a humourless crank; they were -- as they proved en masse when they hit me with more than 20 vengeance lawsuits, human rights complaints and complaints to the law society to have me disbarred. (The first six of those complaints and suits have been heard and dismissed, and I expect the rest will be too. What a perfect snapshot of the nuisance, vengeance and censorship genes in the HRC industry.)

"They richly deserved to be mocked. I tried to do that, and of course Steyn is the master at that.

"I should note that, from time to time, I did indeed worry, but only about the money needed to fend off the lawfare. But through the Internet, people from across Canada and the U.S. (and even around the world) each chipped in a little to help me cover the cost of fighting all these nuisance suits. That financial help -- and the moral support it implied -- greatly boosted my spirits, and still does. I knew I wasn't alone even if I felt alone."