Mark Steyn - Lights Out

Oh, and by the way, almost all those powers the Nazis “seized” the morning after the Reichstag fire the “human rights” commissions already have. In the name of cracking down on “hate”, Canada’s “human rights” apparatchiks can enter your premises without a warrant and remove any relevant “document or thing” (as the relevant Ontario legislation puts it) for as long as they want it. And without anybody burning the House of Commons or even the Senate.

As for “freedom of the press”, in her now celebrated decision to dismiss the Canadian Islamic Congress complaint against Maclean’s, Barbara Hall of the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission acknowledged that she did not have jurisdiction over magazines. So she ruled that, while she didn’t have the power to toss us in the clink, she’d certainly like to and we certainly deserve it. Commissar Hall suggested that if my words had appeared on a sign rather than in a magazine article, she would be free to haul my hatemongerin’ ass into the dock. Makes sense to me. So I’ve now put the offending excerpt from my book on a placard and I’ll be in Toronto in the first week of May to drop it off at her office. I look forward to the prosecution. Given that we’ve already been found guilty, I don’t think I’ve got much to fear from the trial.

Happily, beginning on July 1st, under Ontario’s “human rights” reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions against all and sundry. Under the new proposals, “‘hate incident’ means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members.” “Act or omission ”? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy as published on the OHRC website:

The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered ‘other’.

Got that? Your denial of racism merely confirms your racism – because simply by being a “White hegemon” (like Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch) you wield racist power. The author, Frances Henry, cites the thinking of “modern neo-Marxist theorists” as if these are serious views that persons of influence in Canada’s “human rights” establishment ought to be taking into account, rather than just the latest variant of an ideology that’s led to the death of millions in Russia, China and everywhere else it’s been put into practice. Yet, underneath the blather about “omissions” and “denials” of racism is the bleak acknowledgment that, alas, Canadians just aren’t hateful enough to justify the cosy sinecure of taxpayer-funded hate police. “I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that’s a very low level,” Commissar Hall said. C’mon, you Ontario deadbeats, can’t you hate a little more? Or complain a little more? To modify Brecht, we need to elect a new people, if only to file more “human rights” complaints.

Oh, and again, isn’t that kind of a Nazi thing to do? Exaggerate the threat in order to justify government powers to deal with it?

Well, look, the defenders of the “human rights” racket started this whole free-speech-leads-to-the-Holocaust line. I’m not saying that Canada’s thought-crime enforcers are planning to murder millions of people, only that (as Jennifer Lynch might put it) history has shown us that extraordinary government powers in the name of “reasonable limits” often lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. Whether or not I’m the new Fuhrer and Maclean’s is Mein Kampf , Commissars Lynch and Hall are either intentionally inverting the historical record or, to be charitable, simply ignorant. But, if it’s the latter, why should they have extraordinary powers to regulate public discourse?

I don’t have as low an opinion of Canadians as Barbara Hall and Jennifer Lynch do. I don’t believe your liberty is the conditional discretionary gift of hack bureaucrats advised by Marxist theorists. You defeat bad ideas – whether Nazism, Marxism, jihadism, Steynism or Trudeaupian pseudo-“human rights” mumbo-jumbo – in the bracing air and light of day, in vigorous open debate, not in the fetid corridors of power policed by ahistorical nitwits.

It’s not a left/right thing. It’s not a gay/straight thing. It’s not a Jew/Muslim thing. It’s not a hateful Steyn/nice fluffy caring compassionate Canadian thing.

It’s a free/unfree thing.

I N MAY 2008 the paperback edition of America Alone was launched in Canada, and my publicist booked me for a week of interviews in Toronto. As a routine courtesy to SteynOnline readers, we always link to the shows’ websites and, in the course of so doing the day before an appearance on TVOntario, discovered that the broadcast in question had, unbeknown to us, scheduled an interview with the Sock Puppets for immediately after my own appearance. The lads at “The Agenda” had alerted the Socks to my visit, but had neglected to inform me of theirs.

For five months the Socks – Khurrum Awan, Naseem Mithoowani and Muneeza Sheikh – had been pretending to be the plaintiffs in these “human rights” suits, fronting for Dr Mohamed Elmasry, the real complainant, but, alas, a figure too controversial to have any credibility as the poster boy for a hate-free Canada. So instead he sent out the Socks to pose as plaintiffs – rather as if I had responded to media requests for interviews with Canada’s Number One hatemonger by sending in some spindly but telegenic Dickensian urchin boy as my body double. The media were, naturally, happy to string along with the fraud, and gave space to the Socks week after week to drone that all they wanted to do with me and Maclean’s was “start a debate”.

So, upon belatedly discovering that Elmo’s Socks were going to be on the show, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to have that debate they were so anxious to start. Here’s how things unfolded:

AS YOU CAN see from the “forthcoming attractions” précis at their website, the current plan for tomorrow night’s broadcast of “The Agenda” is to interview me and then have the Sock Puppet Three come on to do their usual schlocko summer-stock routine of pretending to be “the complainants”. It’s like “Little Human Rights Commission On The Prairie”: terrible acting, lavishly subsidized, and running forever.

Anyway, it seemed a bit of a bore to me, so we’ve put in a request to let me go mano a mano with the Sock Puppets. Don’t care how many there are: One, two, or all three… I’d much rather go mano a mano with the real complainant, Mohamed Elmasry, but his mano is stuck up the Sock Puppets so I guess it’s unavailable.

We’ll let you know whether Steve Paikin’s gonna go for it.

AFTER BLEATING for five months about how all they want to do is “start a debate”, the Sock Puppet Three finally got the chance to have one – on TVO’s “Agenda” with Steve Paikin, tonight at 8pm. Unfortunately, the Sock nellies are refusing, which is an interesting insight into the sincerity of their we-only-want-to-start-a-debate mantra. Here’s the latest email from TVO’s producer to my publicist: