Notice will come tomorrow to tell us if the Supreme Court will hear the Zundel/SIRC matter relating to Ernst Zundel's citizenship. And, hopefully, this week, we will learn also if is is going to be "shekl-business as usual," for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, regardless what Judge McGillis has said.
So now we sit and wait. Can a man like Ernst Zundel in Canada still speak his mind, still question his own people's history, and qualify for Canadian citizenship - after 40 years of living in Canada WITHOUT A CRIMINAL RECORD?
(Don't ask what took him 40 years. It wasn't that he didn't try . . . " And can the Canadian judicial system withstand the Lobby's pressure? And for how long? Months? Days?
We shall know soon. I must say I feel dubious about the first and fairly hopeful about the outcome of the second matter, as judged by my outsider's perspective.
Sometimes I say, jokingly, that people support me because I say what they would like to say and dare not say. Embedded in that attitude is a belief that, first, it is a dangerous and risky thing to speak one's mind about one's truth, wherever it may lead, and secondly, that things will get much worse when certain things get said.
And nothing could be further from the truth. I'll prove it by example.
Take just this article, titled "Internet censors start with Zundel", an op ed piece that ran in The Ottawa Citizen issue - a paper comparable in influence in Canada to the Washington Post in the USA - of Wednesday, April 15, 1998.
Sit tight. I'll quote you a few truly ominous lines:
"A truly frightening document is haunting the Internet, ready to assault the eyes of any casual browser, even children. In harsh language it calls for a violent uprising, a bloodletting to overthrow every institution in society. Worse still, this call to arms has a record of success, having led hundreds of thousands of people to seek their political aims with brutality. Even mass murder was practiced in its name."
And haven't we heard THAT before?
Well, no. Not quite. Not quite this way. Read on:
"Oddly, though, the authorities don't seem to be worried that the Communist Manifesto, and a thousand other works calling for violent socialist struggle, are just a click of the mouse away from Canada's citizen.
"They do, however, seem to be very concerned that Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel's drivel can be found on the Internet. Indeed, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is on the verge of delivering its decision as to whether a California site allegedly controlled by Zundel violates the Canadian Human Rigths Act."
Yep! Words to the Wise and the Thoughtful.
"It is not a coincidence that the CHRC reached into the intellectual cauldron of the Internet - where communist calls for armed uprising compete for bandwidth with unspeakable pornography and the complete plays of Shakespeare - and picked out Ernst Zundel. The man who made hard hats a fashion statement is the darling of censorship advocates."
Yep! Right again.
So what is the op ed's author, Dan Gardner, saying that we haven't been saying all along? You see, he checks the Internet. I have no idea if Gardner checks the Zundelsite, but Gardner surely checks the Net. And that is where he gathers courage.
This kind of stuff didn't show up before in mainstream papers - never! And the reason it shows up today is that there is a cumulative effect when a thing gets repeated over and over again: "Why Zundel? Why the Zundelsite?"
Because we are slaying the Dragon. We fight relentlessly against brute, brazen censorship. And other voices join.
It gets to be quite common that something I point out in one of my ZGrams shows up in Canada's Globe and Mail or Toronto Star two or three days hence. There have been sharp and biting editorials castigating that parasitic, predatory enterprise called Human Rights Commission you never saw before the Liberal Revolution started eating its own children - which is precisely what is happening today.
Writes Gardner, furthermore:
". . . once censorship is let loose among the pigeons, we can never be sure who will be swallowed next. It may seem temptingly easy to censor just Zundel and his nutbar cousins ( . . . bow now to the Holocaust Museum nearest you. . . !) but any such attempt must be based on a generally applicable law. How do we draft a law which nets just Zundel, and doesn't later expand to quash expression we didn't intend?"
Amazing observation. The question is: Who said it first? Why did it take so long?
Writes Gardner, quite correctly:
"Consider the CHRC, now being used to attack Zundel. It forbids any communication over telephone lines that is "likely to expose" groups to "hatred and contempt." Whether the communication is true or not is irrelevant, as is the communicator's intention."
True. Truth is no defense. TRUTH IS NO DEFENSE!
And then, toward the end, writes Gardner:
"Much as we. . . may not want to acknowledge it, the Holocaust deniers have been the catalysts for Holocaust remembrance."
Next time Gardner writes, it will be much easier for him. It doesn't get harder. It gets vastly easier, the more things are said.
This article makes a fine point with which we "Holocaust Deniers" heartily concur:
"In a forum for truly free speech, there is bound to be appalling nonsense. . . But we need not fear this. As Milton wrote: 'Let {Truth} and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?' These words, exciting and beautiful when printed on paper in 1644, are all the more so on a computer screen in 1998."
And so, I may add, is the all-encompassing Ernst Zundel question: "Did Six Million Really Die?"
Allowed in print, as per Canadian Supreme Court say-so on August 27, 1992.
Forbidden electronically, according to the lawyers of every major Jewish lobby group in Canada who have been given the right by the CHRC to massively interfere in the human rights of Ernst Zundel - first by the Human Rights Tribunal, and now by Monday's order of the Court.
And even as we speak, and as we wait with bated breath to have the Federal Court tell us that what we thought was a computer is really merely an answering device (the proof thereof to be delivered later!) and while we wait to see if Canada's Supreme Court has enough backbone to confirm its own wisdom and state tomorrow that what it held in 1992 regarding Zundel speech in print is just as true for Zundel speech in electrons, your worthy ZGram scribe tells you yet one more time that what Canadians may get tomorrow, while they snooze, is ever more repression and, ultimately, handcuffs on their thoughts.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"Emil Fackenheim, distinguished and eloquent theologian, proposes that we must add to the traditional list of 613 commandments a 614th: "The authentic Jew of today is forbidden to hand Hitler yet another, posthumous victory."
(Where Are We? by Leonard Fein, p. 69)