FREE SPEECH FOR JEW-HATERS

THOSE WHO DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT FREE SPEECH SUDDENLY BECOME CIVIL LIBERTARIANS WHEN IT COMES TO ATTACKING JEWS.

Pick your acronym.

By Canadian standards, you won’t find many free speechers more unequivocal than me. Unlike our cousins to the south, Canadians have often erred on the side of polite Canadian geniality — “If you don’t have anything nice to say …” — than on the side of unfettered rights to free expression. We have hate speech laws that many Americans would consider major infringements on constitutional rights.

I’m a bit of an outlier from the Canadian perspective. I’m pretty much one of those “Anything but yelling fire in a crowded theatre” free speechers. But enough about me.

In practical terms, legal differences between Canadian and American approaches on this topic are largely moot. Canadian police and prosecutors rarely enforce the laws that exist and so, except in the most outrageous instances, people can say whatever they want and get away with it.

My approach to all this is that the answer to bad speech, including hate speech, is more speech, not less.

Banning words and ideas pushes them underground where they propagate, mutate and then burst through the soil of public discourse in the worst ways, including potentially in violence. Better to shine a light on it and root it out before it spreads like kudzu.

It is also a major pet peeve of mine that so many good people let hate speech pass on the misunderstood assumption of “free expression” means “live and let live.” Yes, people have the right (depending on the jurisdiction) to utter hateful language, lies, even incitement to violence.

But free speech works both ways. Good people have the same rights as bad people to free expression. When individuals or groups express odious ideas, we are not obligated to remain silent. On the contrary, we have the right — even the obligation — to contest those ideas. Horrible ideas have the right to be expressed but so do ideas that counter those nasty ideas. Don’t just let the words of hate pass with the dismissal that it’s a free country. Speak the hell up.

On the other hand … if there is one thing that picks me more than infringement of free speech, it’s hypocrisy.

When I see groups that demonstrate limited concern for free speech suddenly become World Champion Civil Liberties Defenders™ when it comes to criticism of Jews, I know something is rotten.

Such is the state of affairs in Canada’s “progressive” political party, the New Democratic Party.

Last week, the government of Canada released a handbook around the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism. This definition has been adopted by more than 40 countries, including Canada, but has raised some criticism in places where it has been considered for adoption. The argument is that it could suppress legitimate dialogue about Israel by classifying that as antisemitism and that could “silence” activists. (Have you seen these hurricane-force activists? Good luck silencing them, even if we wanted to.)

The handbook is an interesting exploration of some of the issues around it. But up pops the NDP to decry the handbook (and the definition itself) as a Jewish plot to silence people who care about Palestinians (I summarize).

This “silencing” narrative plays into a core M.O. of the anti-Israel movement, in which the howling perpetrators of hate recast themselves as the enfeebled victims of the Powerful Jews Who Control What We Can Say and Think™. It’s textbook antisemitic power and control motifs.

Coming from a group with a history of defending free expression, such arguments might be taken seriously. Coming from Canada’s New Democratic Party, its’ laughable.

If you were a New Democrat who expressed the slightest divergence from party orthodoxy on a vast range of topics, you can expect to be cancelled. The slightest hint that you have any reservations around medical approaches to adolescent transgenderism will get you shunned. It is effectively forbidden to have alternative views on reproductive choice and carry an NDP membership card. To prove your lefty bona fides, you are practically obligated to have a Pride flag on your bumper and queer-approved frames on your social media profile pic.

That’s fine. If you want to belong, go along to get along.

But why don’t any of these people notice the wildly different approach when it comes to Jews?

Antisemitism is at unprecedented levels in Canada, as measured by police statistics, self-reporting mechanisms, news reports and every methodology of measurement.

Does Canada’s progressive political party care? Nope. The party that enforces gender pronouns and regimented groupthink on almost every topic on which it engages suddenly finds its free speech feet when it comes to explosive, incendiary hate speech against Jews.

If you are subject to mild criticism for calling October 7 a brilliant act of resistance, it seems, your core constitutional rights are under existential attack. If you are not encouraged to express jubilation at Jews being raped, beheaded, immolated, kidnapped and mass murdered, then what is happening to our cherished freedoms in this country?!

In a statement issued Saturday dripping with self-righteous principle, the New Democratic Party made the least possible noises about the right of Jews to live in peace then launched a broadside against actually confronting antisemitic hate — antisemitic hate many of their grassroots members and even some of their elected representatives have engaged in with few or no consequences.

“[W]e must ensure that in our fight against racism and hate, we do not inadvertently undermine the values of freedom of expression and efforts to counter other forms of hate, including anti-Palestinian racism,” says the statement. “By adopting a more balanced approach that safeguards democratic freedoms, we can build a Canada that is free of antisemitism and protect the rights of all its citizens.”

Ah yes. Can’t talk about antisemitism without tucking in something about how Palestinians face racism too! Peak whataboutery.

Plus, the values of free expression so precious to the NDP on this solitary topic are pretty much absent on other subjects. Dare to so much as cast a sideways glance at a member of a group New Democrats actually give a damn about and rest assured your precious free speech rights will be the least of their concerns.

The release has the audacity to conclude: “Antisemitism is an evil that must be confronted head-on.”

Uh-huh. Sure it is. Until we get to the point where actual legislation or anything tangible that might confront it bangs up against an imagined threat to unbridled hatred.

The entire cottage industry that has developed in opposition to the IHRA definition is an abrogation of everything we progressives claim to believe.

Addressing every other form of racism, affecting any other group of people, progressives leave it to the affected people to define their experiences for themselves.

When it comes to Jews, those progressive values get flushed down the shitter. The progressive approach on this one topic, with this one group of people, is effectively: “We’ll tell you what antisemitism is and when you’ve had enough of it.”

There are a lot of criticisms of the IHRA definition. It’s not perfect. No such definition could be.

At the core, though, the problem is simply this …

If you don’t like finding yourself defined as an antisemite, don’t change your behavior. Change the definition.

That’s what’s happening here.