01.07.2016 09:56 AM

Why does Canada Post continue to distribute Holocaust denial and white supremacy?

Because they do.  Just this week, in fact.

Here’s an extract from the latest issue of Your Ward News, distributed this week by Canada Post to tens of thousands of homes in East Toronto and beyond:

YWN Holocaust

That is, prima facie, Holocaust denial. That is a criminal offence. Canada has prosecuted such cases in the past, as is well known. Why the Hell is the Trudeau government permitting Canada Post to distribute Holocaust denial?

And that’s not all.  Here’s something from the same issue, in which its editor, James Sears – who has pleaded guilty to sexual assault, and lost his licence to practice medicine for sexually assaulting patients – promotes his association with something called the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE).

CAFE and YWN

CAFE is an organization founded and led by Paul Fromm.  Here’s the Southern Poverty Law Centre on both: “Paul Fromm is a Canadian neo-Nazi based in the Toronto area. He serves as the international director for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a direct descendent of the White Citizens Councils that rabidly opposed school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. He formerly hosted a daily radio show on Don Black’s racist web forum, Stormfront. Fromm also lectures frequently in both the United States and Canada and has appeared at annual conferences hosted by the CCC and the white nationalist American Renaissance…

Fromm has founded several organizations, including Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR) in 1976 to oppose multiculturalism and aid to Third World countries. In 1981, he founded the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE ), which works against the Canadian Human Rights Commission to defend anti-Semites, racists and Holocaust deniers from persecution under hate crime and human rights legislation. These two organizations serve as Fromm’s primary platforms.”

Holocaust denial and aggressive promotion of white supremacy and neo-Naziism, right here in Toronto.

Where is the Toronto Police Service on this? Where are our local MPs and MPPs and councillors? Where is the Crown? Where is the Trudeau government? Where is Toronto’s mayor? Where is the outrage?

Well, as I told my friend Bernie Farber over the holidays, me and mine are outraged. And if the powerful people referred to above don’t start taking concrete action, now, they are going to be named and shamed.

And not just by me.

24 Comments

  1. doconnor says:

    Keegstra was convicted for promoting hatred because he said Jew where evil. Just denying the holocaust isn’t enough, as Ernst Zündel’s convection was overturned.

    • Warren says:

      So you’re okay with all of this, then?

      And read the bloody SCC decision before popping off. Holocaust denial was a key element of the offence. It’s even in the fucking headnote.

  2. dean sherratt says:

    Warren: You gave me a half-way through heart attack when I read the image first and only then your headline.

    I’ve never much interested myself in postal regulations but there is a pretty clear capacity for Canada Post to not deliver this kind of material:

    https://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/manual/PGnonmail-e.pdf

    In particular,

    CRIMINAL CODE AND OTHER OFFENCES
    Any person using the mail for the delivery of any one of the following items commits an offence:
    • articles that are obscene, indecent, immoral or scurrilous

    I think scurrilous is probably the best adjective. Now it is entirely possible that this may be found to be judicially vague but that’s for the courts to handle and let them have at it.

    Now this sort of thing is utterly clear-cut in my mind…not a shadow of nuance. It does enable me to segue into a parallel subject of what constitutes anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, I think its meaning has been stretched and diluted over issues of Israeli relations with its neighbors etc. I take the approach that anti-Semitism is a really horrible thing so I would prefer to accuse someone of any other vice I can think of than accuse them of something so odious. That being said, again, this stuff is obvious, odious and its distribution needs to be stopped.

    I worry that there is a form of quieter anti-Semitism working its way through Canadian society and doubtless elsewhere. I notice that You Tube holocaust-related films have a negative vote usually twice that of ordinary “war films” (about 11% or so). There are also some in US political movements, a very small minority, who associate with the so called “Coffee party” movement who first get obsessed with anti-corporatism that is one of the themes of the movement, then focus on who owns corporations and you can take it from there. I rather quickly unfriended two people who crossed the line. To be clear as I can be…these are fringe elements in a much larger and necessarily a mass and undisciplined political movement.

    I apologize if I digress…

  3. ABB says:

    This stuff exists under the surface, and if we are unwilling to scratch below that surface and expose it, then we are all co-conspirators with it.

    I also want to point out that there are other genocides, such as the Armenian atrocities in the early 20th century (perpetrated by Turkey, which still denies) for which the truth must never be extinguished from human memory.

  4. Peter says:

    Yes to calling Canada Post to account, but I suspect that, absent open incitement, many would be lukewarm about criminal charges. Partly because convictions are tough to get (for good reason), partly because of the incredible cost, partly because of the profile these idiots would get, but I think mainly because most people don’t believe they’re a danger to anyone outside their sewers.

    Progressives routinely dismiss arguments that violence in film will inspire violence, that porn will lead to sexual misconduct, that frothing radical leftists in universities will corrupt youth, etc., etc, but when it comes to hate speech, a lot of them talk as if the words were a bacillus that would infect the public at large if the State doesn’t silence them. It’s pretty selective and patronizing.

    • doconnor says:

      I think a majority of progressives are not in favor of having the state rushing to have the state silence these kind of people. Many of the commenters here have disagreed with Warren on this and he deserves credited for letting them post on his site.

      • Peter says:

        Fair enough, I did over-generalize and yes, Warren deserves kudos.

        It’s been a quarter of a century since Keegstra, which, with respect to Warren, isn’t as unequivocal as he argues and contains very strong dissents. One difference between now and then is that the last perps, opponents and victims of the Holocaust are passing on, which means that the immediate personal pain, insult, outrage and exculpatory implications that flowed from Holocaust denial will soon a matter of historical memory. The syndrome remains as outrageous as ever, but today it’s as much about stupidity as disrupting the public square by inciting hatred and ridicule. I understand many people hold tight to their collective history for generations, but that doesn’t mean ludicrous attempts to question it should be a matter for the criminal law.

  5. Tim says:

    “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
    ― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

  6. nobonus4nonis says:

    there is an ad for “the gutter experts” on the front page of this rag. if this stuff weren’t so serious i’d be laughing at the irony no doubt missed by the scum that publish this crap.

  7. TimL says:

    Just when it couldn’t get more bizarre, he’s also a “seduction guru”

  8. Dork in East York says:

    Warren, I get this rag of shite at my doorstep every month. Ignore it. Pay it no mind. James Sears and his crypto-Fascist rat pack only survive because of the public backlash. Instead, support local papers like Beach Metro News and the East York Mirror. Put together a neighbourhood newsletter or blog. Drown out this clown.

  9. e.a.f. says:

    Remember this from a year or two ago. A postie was refusing to deliver this stuff. The Post Corporations said he had to deliver it and it was O.K. to send it out. Given Steve’s long standing “friendship” with Bennie it always sort of confused me.

    Now you’ve raised the issue again. it might be a good thing is the new federal government had a chat with their “friends” over at Canada Post and canned this rag. I have to agree, its not about free speech, its about hate speech.

    One commenter noted the Holocaust survivors have died off. it is not the burning issue it once was.
    I do wonder why no one has filed a Human Rights Complaint about this.

    of course there are some who would say I don’t care what you write about me, as long as you spell my name right. It would be best if Canada Post just refused the business and be done with it. what if this guy starts in on our newest group to come to Canada, the refugees. It won’t be a welcoming they deserve.

  10. MonteCristo says:

    Canada Post shuts down home delivery to seniors and delivers this rag.

    Deepak Chopra gets $500,000 and they renewed his term just before the election.

    wow…just wow…

  11. Ridiculosity says:

    Just a reminder that when Sears (aka Asshole Extraordinaire) has Canada Post drop his piece of excrement in our mailboxes, any household member may end up bringing it into the house.

    Including young children.

    If you’ve ever seen some of the (doctored) pictures he’s included in this rag you’d agree it’s criminal.

    Perhaps Trump will hire him as his PR guy…

  12. monkey says:

    I think this is vile and disgusting stuff, but I am not sure banning it is the solution. They can then play the free speech martyr which they are not. Better to speak out against it and prove how ridiculous they are. Besides one worry about tough hate laws is when they are quiet, you don’t have any idea how many of them are out there. At least if they can speak out, you know how large they are numbers and can find the appropriate way to fight back. I would much rather stop in their footsteps rather than have what you have in some European countries where they are heavily silenced only to shock everyone when they do well in elections.

  13. Russ says:

    I notice that they’re also busy promoting money laundering. The ad Cash for Cars and Trucks is a classic way to launder illicit funds Pay cash for the vehicle, then sell it and insist on a cheque, which will be joyfully accepted by your friendly neighbourhood bank.

  14. Mapsonburt says:

    I think turning Canada Post into a mail censor would be as bad as these stupid human rights tribunals. Who’s to decide what they do and don’t deliver? Next month will it be anti- abortion or perhaps anti global warming documents ( that isn’t so far fetched … Suzuki has already suggested politicians should be thrown in jail for saying it). If it is hate mail, the go after the sender. I don’t want my postie censoring my mail.

    • dean sherratt says:

      I appreciate where you are coming from but if you check my link, they won’t deliver all sorts of stuff…No one can ever call Canada Post Libertarian.

  15. SG says:

    I am a Jewish Canadian who deeply values freedom of expression.

    Holocaust deniers are loathsome creatures but are entitled to their (warped) opinions and to express them if they so wish.

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