The men behind one of Canada’s most vile publications have been found guilty of promoting hatred targeting Jews and women.
In a Toronto courtroom on Thursday morning, James Sears, 55, and LeRoy St. Germaine, 77—one tall with a head full of flowing black hair and the other short and bald—heard the verdict. Sears, the editor of Your Ward News, and St. Germaine, the publisher, defended themselves and their product throughout the trial by saying their writings were satirical.
In his ruling, Judge Richard Blouin directly disputes this characterization, writing “both men were fully aware of the unrelenting promotion of hate in Your Ward News. (They) intended that hatred to be delivered to others.”
Outside the courtroom, after the verdict was announced, Sears, who marketed his publication as “the world’s largest anti-Marxist publication,” compared himself to Jesus.
Richard Warman of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network shared the court's decision with VICE. In it, Judge Richard Blouin writes, "there are, throughout the publication, sometimes subtle but unmistakable calls to action, which, in my view, not only display hatred but promote it."
Blouin goes on to list several examples of this occurring such as when after the Toronto van attack Sears told his readers to shut down women talking down to men with "extreme prejudice," or how he commanded his readers to use jury trials to nullify statutory rape and domestic assault charges.
The decision says that Your Ward News contains "undeniable glorification of Adolf Hitler" and that Jews were portrayed as having Satanic horns, drinking the blood of children, blamed for atrocities, and celebrates past persecution of the religious group. The decision strongly goes after the duo for their views on women, with Blouin writing "any position communicated that essentially denies that an entire half of the world's population are human beings is so outrageously reprehensible that the word "hate" is starkly inadequate." You can read the full decision below.
Your Ward News is a small publication—having around 20 pages per issue—and was put out in the Toronto area. Inside its fold, you would be able to find rape advocacy, Holocaust denial, all forms of anti-Semitism and racism, conspiracy theories, and all sorts of vileness.
One rather notorious passage which preaches against the statutory rape law, reads “age of consent should be the age at which a woman can safely have sex, and not a random number chosen by our ZioMarxist oppressors.”
A small cabal of activists, including longtime political players, anti-hate networks, and Jewish organizations, worked to get these charges laid against Sears and St. Germaine.
“Justice has been served,” Bernie Farber of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network told VICE when the verdict was announced. “It took too long for such an obvious case of hatred and it only points to the need for police to re-establish dedicated anti-hate units within police services.”
VICE reached a grouping of the people who worked against Your Ward News—Warren Kinsella, Lisa Kinsella, Richard Warman, and Bernie Farber—as they were celebrating the guilty verdict over pizza. They told VICE they were happy with the result but working to this point was a slog that lasted over three years. However, it was all worth it because, with the guilty verdict, they broke new ground.
"It's a truly historic decision today," Lisa Kinsella told VICE. "There has never before been a [section] 319 charge laid for the promotion of hatred against women. So not only was that charge laid but they were found guilty. So I'm extremely grateful for everyone who has been involved in this."
The paper would come out quarterly but it stalled in frequency after the hate charges were filed. However, fear of the eventual guilty plea didn’t seem to deter the duo as the 2019 edition of the paper was published online a mere eight days ago. The 20-page edition focuses on the Yellow Vest movement, anti-immigration, how liberals are really communists, how the CBC is “fake news,” Jewish conspiracies and, of course, the trial—they told their audience they were found “not guilty.”
The group celebrating the guilty verdict was aware of the recent publication, and Warren Kinsella stated that the group isn't stopping going after the duo. In fact, Kinsella just served the pair at the courthouse due to the fact their recent "coverage" of the trial they matter-of-fact stated Kinsella committed perjury.
"They're online and global, probably more people read them there than read them in the newspaper," he told VICE. "They're an ongoing problem, they're a threat. All these people you're talking too, we're not going to stop, we're going to keep going after them."
In 2016, Canada Post pulled distribution of the paper—prior to this decision, Your Ward News was reaching upwards of 300,000 homes.
James Sears has been a shitty chameleon of sorts throughout his life. In over 20 years, Sears made his way from being a medical doctor who had his licence pulled after “sexual impropriety with his patients” to a pickup artist known as Dimitri the Lover who would teach classes on how to get laid to finally being a vile hate monger as the publisher of Your Ward News.
In a statement Sears put out to media when the charges were first announced, he called them “politically motivated.” Sears, in an interview with the right-wing YouTube channel Freebird Media, said that he has just been a masterful “troll” for the majority of his life calling his paper “troll gold.”
According to Warren Kinsella Your Ward News was around before Sears and that while it was offensive per se it wasn’t necessarily hateful.
“As soon as he took over it became an avowedly and aggressively anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, racist, homophobic, misogynistic,” Warren Kinsella told VICE when the charges were first laid.
After the verdict, Sears said the duo will be appealing, however, in the meantime, the two will be sentenced on April 26—they face maximum penalty of six months in prison or a $5,000 fine.
This story has been updated to include comment from Lisa and Warren Kinsella, the reasonings for the decision, and corrected a mistake regarding the maximum punishment.
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