{"id":58226,"date":"2015-05-18T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=58226"},"modified":"2015-05-15T17:50:46","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T16:50:46","slug":"canadian-government-says-free-speech-is-for-offending-muslims-not-opposing-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/05\/canadian-government-says-free-speech-is-for-offending-muslims-not-opposing-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Government Says Free Speech is for Offending Muslims \u2014 Not Opposing Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Ben Stansall \u2013 WPA Pool \/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, January 8, 2015, on Charlie Hebdo shootings<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a trio of hooded men struck at some of our most cherished democratic principles, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, they assaulted democracy everywhere . . .\u00a0They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they would think and act . . . .\u00a0they have declared war on any country, like ourselves, that values freedom, openness and tolerance.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

CBC, today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cOttawa threatening hate charges against those who boycott Israel\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Harper government is signaling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.<\/p>\n

Such a move could target a range of civil society organizations, from the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Quakers to campus protest groups and labour unions.<\/p>\n

If carried out, it would be a remarkably aggressive tactic, and another measure of the Conservative government\u2019s lockstep support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. . . .<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a \u201czero tolerance\u201d approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS)<\/strong>, which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n

Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada\u2019s updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws \u201canywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has a #JeSuisBDS hashtag started trending yet on Twitter? Under the new Charlie Hebdo standard \u2014 it\u2019s not enough to defend free speech; one must praise and even express the speech targeted with suppression \u2014 have\u00a0all of the newfound free speech crusaders begun organizing pro-Israel-boycott rallies in order to defy these suppression\u00a0efforts? In a zillion years, could anyone imagine the popularity-craving officials who run PEN America bestowing\u00a0one of their glamorous awards on\u00a0advocates of the Israel-targeted Boycott\/Divestment\/Sanctions movement? The answer to all of those questions is and will remain \u201cno,\u201d because (as I discussed last week here<\/a> with Bob Wright) the Charlie Hebdo ritual (for most, not all) was about many agendas having nothing to do with the free expression banner under which it paraded.<\/p>\n

In that regard, Stephen Harper is the perfect Poster Boy for how free expression is tribalistically manipulated and exploited in the West. When the views being suppressed are ones amenable to those in power (e.g., cartoons mocking Islam), free speech is venerated; attempts to suppress those<\/em> kinds of\u00a0ideas\u00a0show that \u201cthey have declared war on any country, like ourselves<\/strong>, that values freedom, openness and tolerance.\u201d We get to celebrate ourselves as superior and progressive and victimized, and how good that feels. But when ideas are advocated that upset those in power (e.g. speech by Muslims<\/a> critical of Western nations and their allies),\u00a0the very same people<\/a> acquiesce to, or expressly endorse<\/a>, full-scale suppression<\/a>. Thus can the Canadian Prime Minister pompously parade around as some sort of Guardian of Enlightenment Ideals only, three months later, to act like the classic tyrant.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve argued many times \u2014 most comprehensively\u00a0here<\/a> \u2014\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>applications of hate speech laws are inherently tyrannical, dangerous and wrong, and it\u2019s truly mystifying (and scary) that people\u00a0convince themselves that their judgment is so unerring and their beliefs so sacrosanct that it should be\u00a0illegal<\/em> to question or dissent from them. But independent of that, what we see here again is the utter foolishness of endorsing such laws on pragmatic grounds: they will inevitably<\/em> be used against not just the ideas you hate but the ones you like, and when that happens, if you cheered when such laws were used to suppress the ideas you hate, then you will have no valid ground to object.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/u><\/strong>: Various Israel devotees such as David Frum spent the morning insisting the CBC story is false, and now the Canadian government has followed suit, issuing a statement denouncing it. Unfortunately for them, the full email exchange between the CBC reporter, Neil Macdonald, and a\u00a0spokesman for the Public Safety Department\u00a0can be read here<\/a>, and it proves that the CBC story is 100% accurate.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve argued many times, all applications of hate speech laws are inherently tyrannical, dangerous and wrong, and it\u2019s truly mystifying (and scary) that people convince themselves that their judgment is so unerring and their beliefs so sacrosanct that it should be illegal to question or dissent from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}