Three great editorial comments on censorship in Canada

..."their fears must not be allowed to distort or shrink Canada's traditional freedoms."

I'm proud that the Toronto Star of today has also written strong editorials condemning government censorship that did indeed come in, at the behest of the CJC.

Of course, even back in 1965, the CJC didn't speak for most Jews. (As Frank Bialystok wrote in his book on the subject, part of the reason the CJC sent money and manpower to Beattie's group was to avoid being outflanked by other, rival Jewish groups, such as the militant "N3".)

Even before the CJC's role in propping up Beattie was revealed (in a spectacular tell-all by CJC agent John Garrity, which you can see here), many Toronto Jews were appalled that the CJC, claiming to speak for them, was proposing censorship. Here's a letter from Sheldon Greenberg on the subject:

Greenberg got it spot on: Beattie was harmless to everyone except himself. Canada was at no risk of becoming the Fourth Reich. The only reason that the story was in the news was... because it was in the news. Beattie was the Paris Hilton of his day: famous for being famous. He had no following, no bank account, no membership list, no job, no car. If it weren't for the CJC paying John Garrity to drive Beattie around, he wouldn't even have shown up for his own rallies.

Like the Star, Greenberg was sensitive to the rudeness and bigotry of Beattie's rants. He saw Beattie as a media hound, and simply asked the press to ignore him.

Little did Greenberg know that the CJC was pumping up Beattie's profile on purpose -- they needed a spectacular Nazi threat if they were going to convince the government to bring in un-Canadian censorship laws, throwing out 750 years of British tradition. Greenberg and other Jews upset with Beattie's antics would have to put up with it for a little longer -- the CJC wasn't done yet with their ruse.

Most of the people involved in the whole affair are dead. But not Beattie. He was just 23 in 1965, so he's just 67 today. He lives in Ontario and works as a paralegal. I've read hundreds of pages about his antics, both from the Toronto Star's archives and other sources, including Bialystok's book on the subject. That gave me the media's side of the story and the CJC's side of the story. But it didn't fill in all the blanks.

So I phoned up Beattie the other day and, to my surprise, he spoke with me. I'll write a more substantial piece about that conversation later, probably in a newspaper. But for now, let me just mention the one fact that stuck in my mind the most: what Beattie said he did all day long.

Like I said, he was unemployed back then. He was 23, and as Garrity wrote (and Beattie admitted to me) he was not unacquainted with the temptations of alcohol. Once in a while his life was very exciting -- typically at a public speech where thousands of Jews came to counter-protest, or when he was being chased on the streets by vigilantes. But most of the time he just sat around in an apartment that belonged to "the old Dutchman". I asked if that was Henryk Van Der Windt named on this page in Bialystok's book as one of the Jewish "spies". Beattie said it was.

I asked Beattie what he did in that apartment with Van Der Windt. He said they'd sit around dreaming up ways for Beattie to get into the Toronto Star the next day. They'd hatch an idea -- Beattie was going to blitz City Hall! -- and call up the Star, which would breathlessly report this scandalous, if vague, "news" the next day. As the Star's letter-writer Greenberg could detect, it was all about getting press. What Greenberg didn't know was that Beattie's PR man, Van Der Windt, was a CJC spy.

Beattie wasn't an organizer. He wasn't a recruiter. He wasn't a fundraiser. He wasn't an orator of any skill. He wasn't a researcher. He wasn't a publisher or writer. His "Nazi Party" wasn't a party, didn't have a membership list or bank account, didn't have a constitution, didn't have a newsletter and didn't have a plan. It was a game for an immature 23-year-old, and the game was how to get himself in the newspapers. The fact that that game just happened to suit the Canadian Jewish Congress is the reason why we have "hate speech" laws in Canada today.

I'll write some more about my interview with Beattie in the next week or so.