I was late reading this due to my sojourn to New York last week, but the other day I caught up Susan G. Cole's article in Toronto's lefty free weekly, Now Magazine. In the piece, Cole ripped into former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant, who's parlayed a trial in front of the Alberta Human Rights Commission - brought about by his publishing of the infamous "Danish cartoons" that depicted the Muslim Prophet Muhammad - into a bestselling book. I referenced Levant's adventures in a post a couple of months back, and Levant himself kindly responded.
Cole wonders why mainstream media outlets like the CBC have given Levant a platform to promote his book, and why he's being considered such a free speech hero. In her mind, Levant deserved every ounce of the blowback, claiming that he published the cartoons solely to offend and inflame, not to pursue truth. She wonders why he didn't try to "build bridges" instead.
To which I have to respond by calling bullshit. Levant's intent in publishing the cartoons was irrelevant. There was no legal basis to keep him from doing so, and regardless of how odious he is, he's under no obligation to check with any group to make sure they approve of the content he puts out. There are specific guidelines in place that identify hate crimes, and when they occur, they should be prosecuted to the fullest. But the presence of an extra-legal organization whose purpose is to shame and financially bleed individuals who commit the "crime" of offending someone does nothing to promote equality in Canada. In fact, the grain of truth in Cole's article is that the whole process has served to elevate Levant to a pedestal he doesn't deserve.
And boy, does he ever not deserve it. Cole reports that, in a CBC interview, Levant said that racism "isn't a big problem" in Canada. Easy for Levant to say, but impossible to defend when one takes a look at the results of a study, reported in the Toronto Star, that indicates that not only is skin colour the single biggest barrier to acceptance among immigrants in this country, but also that second, third and fourth-generation descendants of immigrants may face even worse discrimination than their forebears who first came to Canada. Levant might scoff that the study is based on self-reporting from minorities, but with a sample size of more than 41,000, these results are impossible to ignore.
Any doubters might also want to look at the fallout from the Tamil protests that have grabbed so much attention in Toronto in recent weeks. Articles about these events have elicited dozens of comments from Torontonians, the majority of them angry at being inconvenienced and decidedly lacking in compassion for the victims of the Sri Lankan slaughter and their families. Witness some of the choice words readers had in response to a Rosie DiManno article that argued that maybe, just maybe, the Tamils have some semblance of a point.
I initially had some ambivalence myself - Tamils may very well be an oppressed minority in Sri Lanka, but protesting under the banner of the Tamil Tigers, a group that has committed scores of terrorist atrocities in that country's decades-long civil war doesn't exactly generate a lot of sympathy. Nor does blocking traffic repeatedly on major streets in a major city's downtown core. But I've moderated my viewpoint a little bit, having realized that, if it was my family being slaughtered in my old country, I'd certainly consider a little civil disobedience to get my new country to pay attention. And for all the people who've said the diaspora Tamils are actually hurting their cause by disrupting the city, it's worth noting that at least one politician has promised to raise the Sri Lanka issue in response to the protests.
Sadly, history shows that without violence, or at least a bit of annoyance, it's difficult for minorities to make their concerns heard. That research study, as well as the response to the Tamil protests, proves that those concerns haven't magically gone away, no matter what Ezra Levant thinks.
But he's free to think it. Really, if the likes of Susan Cole want to stifle someone like Levant, they should let him hang himself on his own self-evidently stupid words.
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