Freiman's testimony continued

Freiman claims that section 13 targets only "dangerous speech" and not merely offensive speech. But that is simply not true; a glance at the dozen or so examples that the CHRC prosecuted in the Warman v. Lemire case shows that all but one were found by the Tribunal to be merely "political".

Freiman's arguments are so tired, I feel like I'm watching some 1970s re-run, and I'm not just making fun of his mega-comb-over. He trots out the shouting fire in a burning theatre line; and claims that hate speech -- mere speech! -- was the reason that genocides happened from Rwanda to Cambodia.

It's not true. Mere words cannot kill people. Only violence (and incitement to violence) can. But that requires that other, real human rights -- like the right to be free of violence; the right to self-defence; the right to private property, etc. -- be torn down, first. Hate speech is harmless unless the machinery of violence is there, too. Adolf Hitler could not have prosecuted the Holocaust when he was elected in 1933; it wasn't until he destroyed Jews' real human rights in the Nuremberg Laws and later that Jews were physically vulnerable. But enough about this obsolete philosophical debate.