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.
STARTING THE DEBATE
Islamophobe meets Sock Puppets
IN 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:
After our agreement last evening for Mark to join the debate after the 1x1, we have informed the three panellists about our change of plans. We have just received a negative response from them.
Their main reason is that this is not what they have initially agreed to and that they would not have the time to prepare for such a debate. The other reason they offered is that their complaint is with Maclean’s magazine and not Mark Steyn personally.
Given this picture, I think we need to go back to our original plan of keeping the combatants apart.
To which Kathleen replied:
Hi Wodek-
If these students refuse to debate despite the fact that they have been publically trashing Mark for four months now (including at their press conference two weeks ago when Ms Sheikh called him ‘Islamophobic’,) then it is only fair that these interviews be done in the same order as a Canadian court of law. The students can make their accusations first and Mark, the accused, gets to defend himself only after those accusations.
If they say they are not accusing Mark of anything then why have you juxtaposed them on the same show?
Paikin’s crowd never told us about the Sock Puppets and weren’t planning to, but evidently they told the Socks about me, which is in itself interesting. If I were of a suspicious bent, I might be asking, as Mark Bourrie does, “Is Steyn being set up?” Instead, when I heard about it, I immediately said, great, let’s have a debate. No point me being in the same studio as the Sock Puppets and being kept in a hermetically sealed compartment.
Yet even with a three-to-one advantage the Socks pussied out.