"David Lethbridge teaches psychology at Okanagan College in Salmon Arm. He is also a member of the Communist Party of Canada and a frequent contributor to People's Voice, the monthly organ of that miniscule party.
As free speechers, we say that's his right - as long as he does it on his own time and doesn't use the classroom as a platform. We in the populist movement call him Professor Bare Bum, after a bizarre stunt he pulled in May, 1992, when he led a group of rowdies who tried to shut down a meeting of the Canadian League of Rights.
The rowdies shoved old people and vandalized a car. Lethbridge, in highly intellectual diction, called the people at the meeting "filthy, f . . . ing fascists." (Web of Hate, p.61) In frustration at not being able to prevent the meeting, Lethbridge dropped his pants and mooned those going into the meeting.
Being a supporter of communism is a little odd for an intellectual. He must know that this evil system of repression has on its hands the cruel deaths by starvation, torture or just plain shooting of close to 100 million human beings in this century. The carnage caused by communism makes Hitler look like small potatoes.
Stalin induced a famine to break the resistance of the Ukrainian farmers who refused to give up their land. He deliberately starved 8 to 10 million Ukrainians to death and shipped food away from the dying who might have been saved.
Mao's "great leap forward" cost the lives of 30 million Chinese.
Over the past few years, Lethbridge has given himself the task of trying to deny others the right to meet and to exchange views. If he thinks you're a fascist -- of course, in communist ideology a "fascist" is anyone who opposes communist dictatorship -- he'll try to shut you down.
Closed mindedCommunists don't like free speech. In March, 1996, he and a taxpayer-supported professional anti-racist, Alan Dutton of Vancouver, pressured a Surrey hotel into cancelling the Second Canadian Free Speech Conference. Lethbridge has also sent out smear sheets to intimidate hotels to cancel meetings in both Alberta and B.C. of the Third Option for National Unity Committee, a group dedicated to grassroots democracy and constitutional reform.
Last June, he went to Toronto to attend a conference sponsored by ARA -- Anti-Racist Action. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) described ARA as "a collection of anarchists, Trotskyists, Stalinists" and indicated that they were responsible for acts of arson against their political opponents. They have been banned from school property by a number of Ontario boards of education as a "hate group." Yet, Lethbridge threw in his lot with this band of streets thugs and terrorists.
More recently Lethbridge has been crowing about getting Paul Fromm fired from his Ontario teaching position because of his political views.
"There was a lot of work done for quite some time to have this man fired from his teaching position," Lethbridge boasted to the Shuswap Sun (March 13, 1997)
Lethbridge is free to hold whatever views he chooses. However, this freedom must be balanced by a respect for the rights of others to hold and express contrary views.
It's time to rein in the Censor of the Okanagan."Thought for the Day:
"The people never give up their freedom except under some delusion."
(James Madison)