'Weaponization' of free speech prompts talk of a new hate law
The far right has 'co-opted' the issue of free speech, says Omar Mouallem, a board member of press freedom group PEN Canada
The climate for hate speech regulation in Canada appears to be shifting.
Traditional free speech advocates are reconsidering the status quo they helped create, in which hate speech is only a Criminal Code charge that requires political approval, and so is rarely prosecuted. There is even talk of resurrecting the defunct and much maligned ban on internet hate speech, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
The latest example was a lecture this week by Omar Mouallem, an Edmonton journalist and board member of free expression group PEN Canada, in which he argued online racists have “weaponized” free speech against Muslims, and Canada should consider a new anti-hate law to stop them.
Mouallem told a University of Alberta audience that public discourse is “fatally flawed,” and overrun with hate propagandists who traffic in lies and provocations in order to pose as censorship victims.
The far right has “co-opted” the issue of free speech, and their activism is not a principled defence of a Charter value, but “a sly political strategy to divide opponents on the left, humiliate them and cast them as hypocrites and unconstitutional, to clear a way for unconstitutional ideas,” Mouallem said in an advance email interview.
The traditional liberal response of public censure and rebuttal is no longer effective because it just “devolves into a pissing match that goes nowhere and only makes people double down on their opinions,” he said.
“Given that Facebook groups and social media are the meeting point for hate groups to organize, and that online hate speech has a great ability to spread wider and faster, I think special regulation is worth considering.”
It is striking to hear that from a board member of PEN Canada, which is devoted to fighting censorship and defending freedom of expression, and was instrumental in the legislative repeal of Section 13, a law in the Canadian Human Rights Act that banned repeated messages, by phone or internet, that were “likely to expose” protected groups to hatred or contempt.
Why would these groups have to be "protected" if they weren't already noticeably contemptible?
The lecture follows news that the federal Liberal government is openly mulling bringing back Section 13, which was repealed by Parliament in 2014, but later found by courts to be constitutionally valid. It allowed for legal orders banning offenders from engaging in further hate speech, on pain of criminal contempt charges, and provided for fines of $10,000.
It also follows the backtracking of another press freedom group, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, which launched a petition for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to “disinvite” U.S. President Donald Trump from a G7 Summit on the grounds that his administration’s attacks on press freedom have harmed (American) democracy.
That petition was deleted soon after it was announced, amid criticism that it hypocritically also violated the principles of free expression.
Even libraries have illustrated the shift. A memorial held in a Toronto library last year for Barbara Kulaszka, a prominent lawyer for Canadian hate propagandists, led the Toronto Public Library to change its room-booking policy, allowing officials to refuse bookings that are “likely to promote, or would have the effect of promoting, discrimination, contempt or hatred of any group.”
And just which groups always think hating criminals is wrong, and pitying them as "fellow victims" is good? Only criminals!
Tasleem Thawar, executive director of PEN Canada, said she encourages diverse perspectives on the board. There has been no change to the group’s official position “that an educated, thoughtful, and vibrantly expressive citizenry is the best defence against the spread of hateful ideologies,” she said.
“If the federal government were to propose a new law (against hate speech), we would certainly comment on the specifics and its possible effects,” she said. “However, PEN is also committed to dispelling hatreds, as stated in the PEN International Charter, including on the basis of identity markers like class, race, gender, and nationality. And it is true that hateful, marginalizing and even demonizing speech can chill the freedom of expression of the groups who are being subjected to such public bigotry.”
Hatred is only the perpetual form of natural anger - by attempting to ban all anger, whether justified or not, is to ban an emotion in an attempt to also ban the very thoughts which caused that emotion!
And who gets to decide which thought to ban allegedly because it resulted in anger? The criminals!
All this might be evidence that the culture war over Canada’s uniquely balanced approach to hate speech is set to flare up again.
There is nothing "unique" or even remotely "balanced" about government thought-control attempts.
Old arguments are being repurposed to fit modern media. Laws that were written in the age of telephone hotlines and printed newspapers are being reconsidered in the context of Twitter, Facebook and Google.
NO, that's simply using irrelevant symptoms to attempt to void the principle of free speech entirely!
As ever, religion — especially Islam — is at the core of the debate, according to Richard Moon, the University of Windsor law professor who authored an influential 2008 report for the Canadian Human Rights Commission that urged it to stop regulating online hate via Section 13.
In his forthcoming book Putting Faith in Hate: When Religion is the Source or Target of Hate Speech, Moon describes the traditional distinction between speech that attacks a belief, which is typically protected by law, and speech that attacks a group, which can rise to the level of banned hate speech.
Islam's Qur'an orders all muslims to hate infidels. The Qur'an itself quite literally "weaponizes hate!"
He argues that our understanding of religion complicates this distinction, because religion is both a personal commitment and a cultural identity. Hate speech, then, often works by falsely attributing an objectionable belief to every member of a cultural group.
“Most contemporary anti-Muslim speech takes this form, presenting Islam as a regressive and violent belief system that is incompatible with liberal democratic values. The implication is that those who identify as Muslims – those who hold such beliefs – are dangerous and should be treated accordingly. Beliefs that may be held by a fringe element in the tradition are falsely attributed to all Muslims,” Moon writes.
But only by apologists like you, Moonie! The "fringe" in islam is the one that pretends it's peaceful!
Mouallem, who does not identify as Muslim, is a former rapper, freelance writer, and co-author of a book on the Fort McMurray wildfire. He said he does not advocate the return of Section 13 exactly as it was. It often worked, he said, but it is “too tainted.”
Defending criminal muslims makes you a criminal muslim too, Omar Mu-Allah-m! Nice Taqiyya!
Section 13 was a “messy, if not farcical process,” he said, made more so by the “manipulation” of Richard Warman, the lawyer and former Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer who effectively monopolized the law, filing nearly every case and eventually winning them all, sometimes after posing online as a neo-Nazi to gather evidence. It was also “misused,” he said, by Canadian Muslim leaders on the “wishy-washy” case of alleged anti-Islam hate speech in Maclean’s magazine.
Yes, totalitarian fascist gangsters of all stripes seem united in banning opposition to their extortions!
So then of course such extortionists also love to say things like this:
But Canada should have some kind of “online clause” that addresses both the “uniqueness of online content” and this current historical moment in which there is “widespread vilification” of Muslims and “rapid mobilization of extremist groups.”
The only rapidly mobilizing extremist group is islam and its holy-mobster "muslim" gang members!
Now there are “flagrant” examples that would be caught by such a law, he said, such as Ezra Levant’s use of the term “rapefugees.”
Muslims - including muslim "refugees" - are told to emulate their prophit, who was a dedicated rapist.
“Allowing hate speech to remain in the public sphere actually signals that it’s socially acceptable, which gives licence to perpetuate it, and eventually can make it mainstream,” Mouallem said.
The expression that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” meaning hate speech is best countered by more and better speech is “ineffective when you’re dealing with majority tyranny and certain discrimination is widely accepted.
This is the unique moment of hate speech in Canada and much of the ‘West’ right now,” he said. “Society has made an exception for Islam.”
Email: jbrean@nationalpost.com | Twitter: josephbrean
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OK fascists, I've said it before, and of course I'll have to say it again here and now:
ALL liberal “hate-speech laws” ARE crimes!!!
"The whole concept of "hate speech" (laws against hurt feelings) is political correctness run amok, a leftist anti-free-speech tool that provides an unlimited excuse to shut down and punish anyone who openly disagrees with establishment dicta. Every totalitarian state has similar laws designed to protect the rulers. Such laws have no place in a free society."
- Patrick1984 -
But Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), National Socialist Party v. Skokie (1977), R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), Virginia v. Black (2003), Snyder v. Phelps (2011) These SCOTUS cases show that unpopular speech is still protected speech.
SO: What is "hate-speech" and why should it be considered a crime if it's NOT already: a) a threat; and b) slander (fraud)?
If it's not either PHYSICALLY threatening speech - or emotionally threatening BECAUSE it could physically impact one's life, like how fraudulent slander causes other people to react to one as if one were a criminal in need of hating and beating - then it's THE TRUTH: and so it SHOULD cause one the emotional distress of 'hurt feelings!' So it isn't objectively "offensive," but is, in fact, socially beneficial in that it helps defend society from criminals, whether or not said predictably victim-blaming criminal is subjectively "offended" by their victims being notified about THEIR offenses!
Having no facts to justify their aggressive hypocrisy, all criminals will resort to using emotive 'arguments' to justify their crimes by playing the victims. So they (liberals, muslims) can be relied on to try to criminalize hurt feelings and to make offending people, (i.e: the criminals, by accusing them of their crimes) illegal, too!
Let me repeat: ALL "Hate-Speech Laws" ARE CRIMES!
“Progressive” criminals - who like all criminals desire an equality of outcome over a true equality of opportunity, and to get it will always try to socially engineer ever-more rights and ever-less responsibilities for them selves, by offloading their responsibilities onto their victims by stealing their victims' rights - pretend to hold submissive masochism as the highest virtue (for their victims to hold, not them) and the ultimate crime to be causing offense and hurting other people’s (criminal’s) feelings, (i.e: by accusing them of their crimes).
So they want to make it illegal to accuse criminals of their crimes, since that might hurt their feelings and in offending them with the often-painful truth, "make" them commit even more crimes!
Is there anything which really ought to qualify as hate speech and be banned?
NO - not because it's "hateful" (because that sort of nonsense is only making subjective assessments based on emotions;) and "HATE" is really only the perfectly natural human response of perpetual anger towards ongoing crimes (like islam); without 'hate' we would never bother to accuse criminals of their crimes in order to stop those crimes.
Unreasonable false displays of hatred and anger on the other hand, are what the Left is good at - but that's already illegal, not because of the anger displayed - that's just the outrageous holier-than-thou virtue-signalling packaging used to disguise their preposterous extortion attempts - but because it's fraudulent slander.
Such criminal leftists who try to make "hate" into a crime, only ever make it 'illegal' to hate crime itself!
Speech which is already disallowed is incitement of immediate violence and death-threats ... and even those aren't illegal, if say they call for the police to use violence to counter ongoing mob violence and looting, or call for the death-penalty for murderers!
Further, ALL politicians who craft "hate-speech laws" and ALL cops who arrest people for "hate-speech crimes" and ALL lawyers and judges who prosecute people for them, should themselves be fired and JAILED for putting "hurt feelings" before FACTS!
Especially in the case of islam!
Pretending that the global crime-gang called islam is a “race” of poor swarthy animal-people, oppressed by the mentally superior whites, in order to slander everyone who notices it’s a crime-gang as a hatefully bigoted “racist” – is to deliberately enable that crime-gang’s crimes by hiding and destroying the evidence of same, and thus to be a willing accessory to those crimes. Since islam is a murder-gang, and the penalty for committing and enabling the commission of murder is DEATH, anyone and everyone who calls an opponent of muslims, islam, and their global jihad, a “racist!” should be lawfully put to death.
Everyone who defends islam and muslims endorses crime.
Endorsing crime IS a crime, so those doing it are criminals.
Right in the Qur'an is: the permission to murder Jews and Christians (Surah 9:29), to terrorize all non-Muslims (8:12), to rape young girls (65:4), to enslave people for sex (4:3), to lie about one's true goals (3:54), and the command to make war on all the infidels (9:123) and subjugate the entire world to Allah (9:33).
Are death-threats legal? NO.
Is extortion legal? NO.
Is slavery legal? NO.
Is murder legal? NO.
Is rape legal? NO.
THEN ISLAM IS ILLEGAL!
Rape, slavery, robbery, extortion and murder are never OK!
Everything muslims pretend to see as "holy" is already a crime!
So nobody has a legal right to practice islam anywhere on earth!
IN TRYING TO MAKE CRITICISM OF THE GLOBAL CRIME GANG CALLED “ISLAM” INTO A CRIME, TO PROTECT THAT CRIME GANG BY HIDING THE EVIDENCE OF ITS CRIMES, SUCH PEOPLE ARE CRIMINALS AND TRAITORS TO RATIONALITY, CIVILIZATION, AND HUMANITY ITSELF.
And, hadn't you heard?!
Being angry at ("hateful" towards) criminals is now the most vile sin, while pitying ("tolerating") them all as "fellow victims," is to be deemed the highest moral virtue, these days!
It's a global attempt to control our thinking through an emotional, sub-conscious "narrative" - so much so, that the only advice we hear from "our" hypocrite governments, their pet media, and the corporazi globalist banksters who own them all, seems to invariably be:
"Anyone who doesn't automatically pity all criminals as fellow victims should be hated!"
Which is why hurting the feelings of criminals by accusing them of their crimes, is now a "hateful" crime itself!
When one doesn't have facts on one's side (no criminal can rationally or logically justify their "crime is good - for me, because you all do it, too!" stance) one only has emotions left, and defending hurt feelings and "dignity" doesn't rely on cause and effect sequencing (where crime is defined as attacking thereby innocent other first).
But feelings or emotions aren't thoughts, much less morals - because unlike facts, they can be wrong: one may love an enemy who is still out to get one, and hate someone who is only trying to help - no, instead, our emotions are mere reflections of the three basic states of space-time (the static past, the fluid present, and the nebulous future, respectively): static fear, fluid greed, nebulous hope. Not exactly worth defending with one's life!
We hate criminals because they use their free will to choose to attack thereby innocent other people first. Only if there is no free will choices would they deserve to be pitied as "fellow victims." So invoking an idol of mysterious yet somehow also inevitable force to excuse crimes defines idolatry.
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