The Harper Government© sure didn’t take long to show us all what they’d do with a majority, eh?
This week, they let a Muslim-hating white supremacist into Canada. For good measure, they gave the creep a platform at the taxpayer-funded National Arts Centre.
Oh, and the creep and his entourage confiscated the notes of QMI Agency reporter Jenny Yuen, too. Then one of his thugs called Jenny up late at night, and delivered a dark warning about reporting things that had not been “approved” in advance.
The free-speecher in question, as you may have heard, is Dutch lunatic Geert Wilders. Admired by Islamophobes world-wide, the Aryan poster boy is infamous for his bon mots.
A sampling: “Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology, the ideology of a retarded culture.” And: “The Qur’an is a fascist book which incites violence. That is why this book must be banned.” And: multiculturalism is “a disease.” And: “Stop the immigration immediately for the next five years for non-Western immigrants.” And so on.
Does wild-eyed Wilders have a “right” to regurgitate garbage like that?
Apparently. Unless and until they promote genocide against a particular group or they “wilfully” incite hatred against said group, leeches like Wilders will persist, slinking along the bottom of fetid ponds.
Did he win many supporters on his Canadian speaking tour? I doubt it. For one of my books, Web of Hate, I interviewed Jim Keegstra, Ernst Zundel and virtually every neo-Nazi and white supremacist leader in North America. In so doing, I found that nothing I could say would condemn Keegstra, Zundel et al. as effectively as their own words.
Their ilk usually end up sinking themselves.
Besides, Wilders isn’t really the issue, here. A more salient issue, for Canadians, is the kind of government we can, and should, expect for the next four years.
For one thing, it’s now apparent that the Harper Conservatives are highly selective in their outrage. When kooky anti-Israel British politician George Galloway wanted to visit Canada in 2009, the Conservatives (appropriately) denied him entry, citing his extremism as justification.
Got that? A British polemicist who is critical of Israel is barred from entering Canada. A Dutch polemicist who spews virulent hate about Muslims and non-white immigrants is ushered in — and permitted to use a federal facility.
Getting the impression that Muslims aren’t a big part of the top-secret Jason Kenney immigrant targeting plan? Me, too.
That’s not all. Islamophobes like Wilders aren’t just welcome to speak at the taxpayer-funded National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa. They’re even welcome after they lie about who they really are!
That’s right. The organizers of Wilder’s Ottawa hate-fest bald-face lied to the NAC about what the speech was all about. They said it was part of Ottawa’s “Tulip Festival.” Well, it wasn’t.
Despite that whopper, and despite knowing in advance they’d been lied to, Heritage Minister James Moore — whose office is responsible for the NAC — about l’affaire Wilders. They didn’t do anything to stop it.
If George Galloway had popped by the NAC to listen to his fellow nutcase, however, you can be sure Kenney and Moore would’ve deployed the super-secret JTF2 commandos to dispatch him. But a Muslim hater? C’mon down!
As the Harperites prepare to embark on their four-year reign, we should all probably re-read George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
You know, the book about how “some animals are more equal than others.” It’s life imitating art, you might say.