The most thrilling footage you'll watch this year
Is it There Will Be Blood? The last season of The Wire? Wild Hogs 2? No, the most thrilling footage you will watch this year is the stirring defense of freedom of speech by one Ezra Levant. The setting is an almost barbituratically bland conference room; the opponent a timeserving pencilpusher of a Nurse Ratched-- and Levant is like Olivier in Henry V, delivering the modern equivalent of the St. Swithin's Day speech in defense of his right to offend and the government's right to take its political correctness and shove it.
Here's the story:
Two years ago, Levant, editor of the now-defunct Canadian conservative magazine The Western Standard, had the cojones nowhere to be found in our mealy-mouthed dying dailies, and published the Danish Mohammed cartoons which had "sparked" ginned-up protests in the more irrational corners of the Islamic world.
Soon after, the self-appointed "supreme imam" of Muslims in Canada, which as Levant tartly points out is a part-time job, filed a complaint that publishing the cartoons was a violation of his human rights. Thus Levant finds himself hauled in front of a bureaucratic Kangaroo court with few of the standard protections of Anglospheric jurisprudence, defending himself against what is, simply, a thought crime.
Doubt it could happen here, this kind of "liberal fascism"? Let's go to the video, which of course is all over the blogosphere but nowhere to be found in our useless-on-the-big-things mainstream media:
How interesting that someone should stop by just to downrate this, without a comment. What do they have against free speech, I wonder? Or do they not mind state power over it being used against conservatives, believing (surely falsely) that they will be spared? Come, silent and timid downrater, tell us your reasons.
January 14, 2008 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
How do you know Chuck didn't not-recommend this, AND post a nice comment?
Just to fuck with you...
heh heh.
Not-recommending a diary, in any case, isn't really a blow to free speech. A bit over-dramatic, no?
Still, I agree with you that people should post comments, instead of just hitting the "no" button.
January 14, 2008 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
The "no" vote appeared just minutes after I posted, Chuck's comment came quite a bit later, so I assume it wasn't him (or you). And I didn't mean I was being oppressed by that sort of thing, just that disapproving of this post in particular seemed to suggest that the downrater didn't mind the state shutting a political opinion up. Which I am happy to see him disagree with unreservedly.
January 14, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
disapproving of this post in particular seemed to suggest that the downrater didn't mind the state shutting a political opinion up.
Now there's a nonsequitur for you.
January 15, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ezra's statements and testimony are impressive. It takes guts to speak to "power" as he does in these clips.
Thanks for sharing these. Although you and I may disagree at times, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are two of the most important issues of our time. Our media has failed us miserably by not being more vigilant of the fascists in our current administration.
Let the cry go out from this day forward:
"Vive le cartoon!"
January 14, 2008 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know nothing about Canadian institutional documents, but in America the First Amendment was put in place precisely to protect rude, intemperate, and even hateful speech. Particularly in a print medium, there should be very little that cannot be printed so long as it is not libelous. That principle needs to apply, at least in this country, particularly to such vermin as white-supremacist skinheads, Nazis, and Ezra Levant.
As Mr. Levant says somewhere, publishing such rude and/or hateful material has its inconveniences, but he seems to have evaded such negative consequences in this case. It would appear that he has achieved his goals more or less precisely, unless one is naive enough to imagine that he did not anticipate and desire the kind of law-suit that he has attracted.
So long as there are dishonest, hate-filled reactionaries like Mr. Levant living in countries where free speech is cherished -- that is to say, until he and his ilk have not succeeded in actually abolishing the kind of free speech he so hypocritically claims for himself -- they must be tolerated. And despised.
January 14, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
What makes Ezra Levant vermin to you, Tankard? You must have an extensive history with and knowledge of his career and positions to say such things, I can't imagine that you would spit such invective out at someone just for being a mainstream conservative. I mean, the Nazis compared their enemies to vermin, you wouldn't do that, you're a liberal.
January 14, 2008 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I shudder at the concept that Levant is a main-stream conservative, although I fear there is more truth in that statement than you intended.
What makes Ezra Levant vermin to you, Tankard?
I'm glad you asked, but a bit surprised you had to.
A cursory examination of Mr. Levant's website reveals his eagerness to combine racial smears with incendiary style ("Islamic facists" "radical immigrants" "union of the domestic left with foreign fascists" "the CIC's fatwa") but that is more than a reasonable person requires to judge his character. The very fact that he considers publishing the cartoons "the proudest moment of my public life" is sufficient evidence of his malignity. What did he accomplish aside from energizing both poles -- the angriest sub-cultures in Canada? Levant is a Jewish mirror-image of an anti-semite. He is a Jewish version of Rick Santorum.
...the Nazis compared their enemies to vermin, you wouldn't do that, you're a liberal.
The Nazis in Germany did a lot of things that you and I (we liberals) do. They went to work. They drank beer. They breathed air. And they denigrated people who wanted to destroy their political system. The fact that you and I do these same things does not make either of us a Nazi, nor do they make Nazis liberal.
January 15, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not that Islam is a race, but if you deny that there are such things as Islamic fascists, that there are radical Islamic immigrants in Canada (such as the Khadrs, whom he was undoubtedly thinking of), or that the left is often too comfy with such folks under the guise of a shared anti-Americanism, or creates structures they find easy to exploit (such as "Human Rights" Commissions), then you are the one who belongs to the small extreme-- thankfully, given your disturbing choices of terminology toward your political opponents.
January 16, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please don't think I'm not flattered that you were willing to highjack your own thread in attempting, twice in succession, to change the topic from a notorious bigot to my personal political philosophy. Still, I think I'll just stick to the original subject. If you really must focus on me, may I suggest that you mount your attack in a new thread? I do apologize for having disturbed you, but you apparently have no reasonable explanation for that rather curious reaction, particularly when my original comment agreed with your thesis.
Back on point:
The phrase "Islamic fascists" is content-free. For some reason, no one thought to call Tim McVeigh a Christo-fascist, nor any of the Idaho skinhead groups Libertarian fascists. The expressions of hatred of which Mr. Levant is so fond are nothing more than religious and racial slurs --standards around which fellow bigots may rally before dispersing to break windows and beat all those people with the funny accents, weird clothing, and blasphemous worship rituals.
Mr. Levant seeks to inflame negative passions with the same kind of polarizing, rabble-rousing practices that he exhibited in publishing the cartoons. I ask again: What did he accomplish with that publication? What does he accomplish with his incendiary blog? What result does he seek? The common answer to these questions is clear, and it is not pretty.
Mr. Levant is a bad person whose stock-in-trade is intolerance and hatred. His use of freedom of expression as a defense is valid, but it mitigates his guilt no more than similar pleas did for the American Nazis in Skokie.
Anyone who feels the need to be disturbed may look to Mr. Levant rather than me as a far more appropriate inspiration.
January 17, 2008 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink