Friday, February 08, 2008
Poor Warren Kinsella
Has Warren Kinsella violated his own closely held beliefs on violating human rights?
Warren Kinsella has been a happy crusader against Free Speech in the Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant cases. He says the cases against them are without merit, but he believes that the process is important... even though it is a totally one-sided process that has convicted every single person to become entwined in it. Even though it puts extreme limits on free speech. Even though Free Speech is an actual freedom, whereas the right not-to-be-offended is not a right. But the process is important, Kinsella tells us.
Why is the process so important? To quote Kinsella:
Okay, fair point. So close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you are Ezra Levant, who is a Jew, and you hear that this prominent Liberal writer named Warren Kinsella has been writing an awful lot of criticism about you. So you go to his website and search for "Levant", and you click on the link titled It's Easy to Get Depressed Some Days. Staring back at you is an image of two swastikas centered with the words "White Power".
Since Ezra is a Jew and is personally named in the same post, this could easily be interpreted as a personal and racist attack against him. And not just Ezra either. Any Jew who wandered across Warren's website and saw this glaringly racist image staring back at them could have just as easily been horrified.
So why shouldn't Kinsella be forced to defend himself in front of the Canadian HRC? For exactly the same reasons why Ezra shouldn't be there. Because when taken in context, neither instance would be considered offensive by most reasonable people. Kinsella posted an offensive image to prove that there are still racist assholes in Canada, not with the intent to offend Jews, even though an uninformed observer could easily be offended by it.
Ezra's publication of the Mohammed Cartoons could, and in has case was found to be offensive to some Muslims. But again, when taken in context, Ezra was just publishing the cartoons to inform the public. At the time, millions of Muslims world-wide were rioting in response to the offensive cartoons. Every single media outlet on the planet reported on the riots, but there were a VERY select few that had the stones to republish the cartoons. Obviously the images were offensive to many Muslims, but the rest the rest of the world has a right to know exactly what it was that caused such unrest. Sadly Ezra was the only publisher in Canada with the stones to actually give the public the complete and unvarnished context of the riots. If a few cartoons are responsible for mass rioting, death, and fatwas, the public deserves to see what the cartoons look like, if not for the sole purpose of gaining an understanding of what Muslims find offensive.
If there were any justice in this country, Warren Kinsella should be held to the same level of accountability as Ezra Levant. But Kinsella's a friend of Richard Warman and Ezra is his avowed enemy. So it begs the question, why can Warren Kinsella post swastika's on his website, but Ezra Levant gets hauled before the thought police for publishing material offensive to Muslims? There is a double-standard there, is there not?
Warren Kinsella has been a happy crusader against Free Speech in the Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant cases. He says the cases against them are without merit, but he believes that the process is important... even though it is a totally one-sided process that has convicted every single person to become entwined in it. Even though it puts extreme limits on free speech. Even though Free Speech is an actual freedom, whereas the right not-to-be-offended is not a right. But the process is important, Kinsella tells us.
Why is the process so important? To quote Kinsella:
So: close your eyes, and imagine for a moment that you are a Jew, and you open the front door to take your children to school one morning, and someone has scrawled a swastika on your doorstep. Or imagine, instead, that you are a person of colour, and you jolt awake one night to see some teenagers running away, leaving a cross burning on your lawn. Or, imagine that you are a gay kid - living in the closet and living in fear - and you step up to your school locker, and someone has scrawled "GOD HATES FAGS" on the front of it.
It's just words, some say; it's just a couple of symbols. Big deal. No one has hit you, no one has beaten you up.
Okay, fair point. So close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you are Ezra Levant, who is a Jew, and you hear that this prominent Liberal writer named Warren Kinsella has been writing an awful lot of criticism about you. So you go to his website and search for "Levant", and you click on the link titled It's Easy to Get Depressed Some Days. Staring back at you is an image of two swastikas centered with the words "White Power".
Since Ezra is a Jew and is personally named in the same post, this could easily be interpreted as a personal and racist attack against him. And not just Ezra either. Any Jew who wandered across Warren's website and saw this glaringly racist image staring back at them could have just as easily been horrified.
So why shouldn't Kinsella be forced to defend himself in front of the Canadian HRC? For exactly the same reasons why Ezra shouldn't be there. Because when taken in context, neither instance would be considered offensive by most reasonable people. Kinsella posted an offensive image to prove that there are still racist assholes in Canada, not with the intent to offend Jews, even though an uninformed observer could easily be offended by it.
Ezra's publication of the Mohammed Cartoons could, and in has case was found to be offensive to some Muslims. But again, when taken in context, Ezra was just publishing the cartoons to inform the public. At the time, millions of Muslims world-wide were rioting in response to the offensive cartoons. Every single media outlet on the planet reported on the riots, but there were a VERY select few that had the stones to republish the cartoons. Obviously the images were offensive to many Muslims, but the rest the rest of the world has a right to know exactly what it was that caused such unrest. Sadly Ezra was the only publisher in Canada with the stones to actually give the public the complete and unvarnished context of the riots. If a few cartoons are responsible for mass rioting, death, and fatwas, the public deserves to see what the cartoons look like, if not for the sole purpose of gaining an understanding of what Muslims find offensive.
If there were any justice in this country, Warren Kinsella should be held to the same level of accountability as Ezra Levant. But Kinsella's a friend of Richard Warman and Ezra is his avowed enemy. So it begs the question, why can Warren Kinsella post swastika's on his website, but Ezra Levant gets hauled before the thought police for publishing material offensive to Muslims? There is a double-standard there, is there not?
Labels: Ezra Levant, Human Rights, Warren Kinsella
