Sec. 13 Dead.... For Now

NOTE: This is a little screen shot heavy. Be forewarned.

On June 26, Sec. 13 of the Human Rights Act cease to exist. As our friend BCL noted however there is no reason why Sec. 13, which was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, can not be brought back by a more enlightened government in the future. In the meantime the good folks at the now moribund Free Dominion have decided to post (a now rare) comment to celebrate the demise of Sec. 13:

It it isn't surprising that Connie would give props to Marc Lemire as Free Dominion had been on the forefront of the effort to rehabilitate Lemire's reputation, characterizing him as a free speech martyr. In fact, they went beyond this and engaged in a little bit of historical revisionism. Not only did they deny his role in the leadership of the Heritage Front from 2001 to 2005, they have all but denied that he had any significant history with the hate group. We have attempted to show them the error of their ways, but it seems they have decided to believe him rather than us. But then they aren't the only ones who have tried to help Lemire cover up a very shady past. Ezra Levant, in two interviews with Lemire, asked about the Heritage Front and did not challenge this response:

Uh, the Heritage Front uh, was active back in, uh, the the 90s and I was a young kid at the time. I had some, uh, interest in some of the things that they were doing in particularly thing like uh opposition to employment equity, things like reducing immigration. So I uh, listened to some of what they were about, and uh, I went away from it. I mean I was involved with them peripherally in my teenage years.

Well, that is partially true, as these articles indicate he was active with the Heritage Front in his teen years (he would have been 18 at the time of the 1993 photo and 19 when they were published):

Keegstra's Death: Relic of the Past Responds

That James Keegstra did not die on June 12 when the news became public, but in fact died 10 days earlier, is telling. The name Keegstra was still mentioned occasionally by the likes of Fromm when he rambled on about Sec. 319 and about free speech in an abstract way, but the man himself had been largely forgotten, drifting into obscurity soon after his final sentencing hearing in 1996. Even his contemporaries appear to have forgotten about him and it seems that few even attempted to remain in touch with the man they, at the time, lionized and rallied around.

Of his contemporaries, many like John Ross Taylor, Doug Christie, Wolfgang Droege, and Martin Wiche have died. Others like John Beattie, Don Andrews, and Ernst Zundel have yet to acknowledge Keegstra's passing, in part because they have shied away from their more colorful past (Like Beattie, who is running for Deputy Reeve in Minden, Ontario) or couldn't be bothered to care.

Such is the nature of the White Nationalist movement.

But at least one of those infamous old relics from the past has decided to make a rare appearance. Terry Long, like Keegstra, disappeared not long after of the Canadian branch of the Aryan Nations' he lead collapsed. Last we heard he was living in Ontario, but he does periodically pop up from time to time. He ran for office under the Doug Christie-led Western Canadian Concept Party. We know that it was Long whom Todd Conroy (former BC Volksfront leader) had been visiting when he got into a near fatal motorcycle accident. And we know that he still keeps up on the state of the movement, as we copies of emails sent by Long to some of the more contemporary members of the movement dating to the 2000s. So while he might not be active anymore, he certainly hasn't changed his views. And when Keegstra died Long (eventually) decided to break his silence as well.

Actually, Western historians generally agreed that the number of Jews who died in Auschwitz numbered between 800,000 and 1.35 million since at least 1961 and the Soviet numbers had been long discarded, but why should we expect revisionists like Long to be accurate?

Paul Fromm also got around to posting a eulogy of sorts, but we aren't sure that yet another one of Paulie's  self-promoting missives is really all that necessary here.

While Keegstra's obscurity is telling, it is also fitting. And so is the fact that his remaining contemporaries will eventually follow him, some likely sooner than others. Ernst Zundel is 75, Long has to be at least in his 70s,  and Don Andrews is around 72. John Beattie, someone who sounds to be in the early stages of dementia, is in his early 70s (UPDATE: Beattie is 72) and Paul Fromm in his mid 60s. Another 10, 15 years....

There will come a point when these men too will shuffle off their mortal coil and their names forgotten. We find this fact to be a comforting one.

Lemire Cries Uncle

We figure we'll go right to the source in this one:

Marc Lemire throws in the towel

It was only a matter of time after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld civil law controls on hate speech as constitutional in the Whatcott case, but Marc Lemire has finally admitted that his parallel attack on the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibition on Internet hate-speech (s. 13) has been gutted (‘please ignore my legal arguments found at paragraphs 84-115 of my previous Federal Court of Appeal factum’).

The background to this is that even before the SCC’s decision in Whatcott, Justice Mosley of the Federal Court reached the same conclusion in October 2012 and upheld both the finding that Marc Lemire had violated the Human Rights Act by posting online hate and that section 13 was constitutional as per the Supreme Court’s previous findings in their 1990 Taylor decision. Lemire’s appeal of that decision is ongoing and both Lemire and the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) filed supplementary legal briefs following the Whatcott decision.

Mr. Lemire caves on the now legally (even more) entrenched facts that civil controls on hate speech are reasonable limits on freedom of expression, are justifiable in a free and democratic society, and are a pressing and substantial objective to avoid the serious damage caused as history has shown. Reading bumps on people’s heads to know what their intent was is still out. Hatred and contempt as narrowly defined by the Supreme Court in Taylor have been properly interpreted by human rights tribunals.

What’s left? Not much. Weak arguments that the Tribunal was right and the Federal Court wrong that severance of the financial penalty provisions was the appropriate remedy to any concerns about them. This, despite the fact that the SCC in Whatcott specifically engages in severance of an obsolete and unused descriptive portion of the hate law to bring the Saskatchewan legislation into constitutional compliance (and modern parlance). Scrambling for a twig to latch onto after that but it’s clear the jig is up. 

Lemire’s factum is here. The Canadian Human Rights Commission’s factum in response is here. 

Lemire’s appeal was always frivolous and now following the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Whatcott, I believe it’s just vexatious. The shame is that by not seeking their costs against Lemire for continuing his appeal after the SCC has put the issue to bed, the CHRC is de facto enabling this waste of taxpayer money. All this, because Mr. Lemire wouldn’t mediate a settlement if a cease and desist order was on the table.

In the end, I think it’s safe to say that despite sharing an interest in disseminating homophobic hate propaganda, Bill Whatcott is waaay off Marc Lemire’s Christmas card list. This one, for instance though, would be quite funny.

Thanks Bill Whatcott for making this all happen. You sir are a superstar!

Mr. Warman seems more whimsical than we are in his choice of "funky music."

We're more inclined to gloat:

Blast from The Past: Nationalist Party of Canada and the Western Guard

UPDATE 3 (replacing UPDATE 1): Never mind. :)
A little while ago we spoke of our interest in documenting the rise and fall of the Heritage Front (and yes, Grant Bristow and CSIS play a significant role in that history, "Narrow Back"). We have received some information and photos, but we thought we would take this opportunity to remind our readers that we would still like your help.

Some of the information we have received actually goes WAY back. Those who know the history of the Heritage Front are aware that it was created by disaffected members of Don Andrews' Nationalist Party of Canada. Nationalist Party members Droege, Bristow, and Lincoln founded the Heritage Front soon after they returned from Libya after attending the the twentieth anniversary celebration of the invitation of the Gaddafi regime, as they felt that the Nationalist Party was no longer an effective means of pursuing their goals. In that sense, the Nationalist Party (according to their own family tree) might be thought of as the Heritage Front's daddy:

Hmmm, we guess then that the Western Guard would be the grand daddy and Paul Fromm's Edmund Burke Society would be the great grand daddy.

All Is Quiet In "White Nationalist" Land: Part III

We've twice (here and here) alluded to something rather odd happening on the Blood & Honour forums (as opposed to the Blood and Honour International/Combat 18 forums). Given that three of their own have been accused of and arrested for a series of assaults in Vancouver, one might expect something about this would be discussed on their website.

And there was a thread created to discuss it. Briefly. So briefly we didn't get the screen shots before the thread "mysteriously" disappeared.

Well, it really isn't all that much of a mystery. Shawn Macdonald, one of the men accused in the series of assaults in Vancouver, is also a moderator on the forums. It appears that he, or someone acting for him, made the offending thread disappear. This is evidenced by the last time Shawn logged in to the forum:

Martin Weiche of the Canadian Nazi Party Dead

Well, another of the old guard of the Canadian racist movement has died. Martin K. Weiche, member of the John Beattie led Canadian Nazi Party (Weiche would later go on to lead what must have been the tiny Canadian National Socialist Part) died on September 2.

Part II: And How Does the Extreme Right React to Jack Layton's Passing? Exactly How You Would Expect

 
In our last article, we discussed briefly the reaction of those one might consider to be "mainstream" conservatives to the news of Jack Layton's death. Those reactions seem to range from sincere admiration for a respected adversary to general douchebaggery. However we didn't discuss the reaction of those we cover on this blog.

Yep, the boneheads have something to say too.

There is a belief that one can measure the worth of a person by the respect that his or her ideological opponents has for that person. In all likelihood, this was intended to apply to ideological opponents who are mainstream and here Jack fares very well. However, we at ARC believe that one can measure the worth of a person by how hated that person is by the most vile, loathsome elements of our society.

Heritage Front in the News Again: Libya Connection

When the people of Libya rose up revolt some months ago, there were very few people who defended the Gaddafi regime. One of those who did defend Gaddafi was Ian Verner Macdonald who, as we wrote about soon after he made his statement in defence of the tyrany in Tripoli, has a very long association with racist extremism in Canada and helped to facilitate a meeting of Canadian racists with the the Libyan government in the late 1980s.

We wrote about the links between the Libyan government and Canadian racists, as well as the fact that the experience in Libya in large part led Wolfgang Droege and others to found the Heritage Front. Now the msm has decided there's a story here as well:

Gaddafi’s ‘Libyan Friendship Society’ with Canada’s racist movement

Stewart Bell  May 28, 2011 – 9:00 AM ET | Last Updated: May 27, 2011 7:54 PM ET

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been a lot of things during his more than four decades in power: coup leader, revolutionary, nuclear proliferator, dictator — and friend of the Canadian racist movement.

Libyan agents began forging ties with the leaders of Canada’s extreme right in the late 1980s. Twice, the Gaddafi regime brought delegations of Canadian “white nationalists” to Tripoli, where they were feted and given cash.

Marc Lemire Edits His Own Wikipedia Article.

Oh, Marc.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens once noted that, “there are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it." And Mark, you're ability to conceal your vanity is abysmal.

Over the last number of years, Mark Lemire has been editing his own Wikipedia entry using the user-name, "Veritas-Canada." It has always been transparent that Lemire and V-C were one in the same. As Veritas-Canada, Lemire attempted to expunge any links to newspaper articles, B'nai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress reports, and any other sources connecting Lemire to groups and individuals associated with the far right, as well as the fact he was the last leader of the Heritage Front. As a result there has been an ongoing edit war on the Marc Lemire article since late 2006.

Well, it looks like Veritas-Canada wasn't getting the job done so Lemire called in some reinforcements.

Oh, did we say "call"? What we meant to say was that Lemire CREATED reinforcements in the form of sockpuppets.