Source is here.Yahoo!News wrote:
EDMONTON (CP) - An Edmonton man is guilty of distributing hate propaganda on the Internet, a Canadian Human Rights Commission tribunal ruled Friday.
The tribunal found that Glenn Bahr operated a website called Western Canada for Us and moderated forums that spread hatred against Jews, mentally disabled people, aboriginals, gays, lesbians, Chinese, Arabs, blacks and other non-whites. The tribunal fined Bahr and the group Western Canada For Us $5,000 each and ordered that they cease posting hate messages on the Internet.
Philippe Dufresne, senior counsel for the commission, said the case was based on a complaint filed by the public.
"We recognize the harm that hate messages can have on Canadian society," Dufresne said from Ottawa.
"The decision is important because it is the latest in a series of consistent tribunal decisions which have found that hate on the Internet will not be tolerated."
If the tribunal's orders are not complied with Bahr could be jailed for contempt of court, he said.
The website and the organization Western Canada for Us was founded by Bahr in Edmonton in January, 2004. The group quickly picked up members in Winnipeg, Vancouver and Red Deer, Alta.
The Edmonton police service's hate crimes unit was involved in the investigation, including conducting a raid on Bahr's home that found white-supremacist literature and Nazi memorabilia.
The Internet forums also spoke of a Jewish-controlled media and a conspiracy against whites.
During the tribunal hearings Bahr said he was promoting free speech and immigration reform.
The tribunal said whether it was political or not, it still amounted to hate propaganda.
During hearings into the case human rights lawyer Richard Warman of Ottawa said in his opening statement that Bahr posted messages that stated gays and lesbians "should be terminated along with retards and any other degenerates that nature would do away with in the wild."
In March 2004, Bahr organized a rally in support of Holocaust denier Ernest Zundel.
So, he doesn't like lesbians, Jews, and non-whites (among many others), and is a Holocaust denier. I don't like him very much.
That said, I feel uneasy about "hate speech laws" which criminalize ideas, no matter how reprehensible. In this case, it is hard to judge the defendant because the website has been taken down as of May 2004 (if I knew the original link, I'd pull it off the Internet Archive, but I don't.) Speaking generally, though, I think we go down a very dangerous path when we try to judge which ideas are too offensive or dangerous to be voiced. I would instead prefer that we allow the "marketplace of ideas" naturally to reject this bigoted speech. The only standard for limiting speech that I can articulate that possibly does not send us down the slippery slope of giving preferential treatment to certain ideas, is to ban only speech that advocates violence against any person or group (for instance "terminating...degenerates that nature would do away with in the wild.") This defendant might qualify under that standard.
To switch gears again, though, I often find when I Google this subject that the people who agree with me that suppression of hateful free speech is bad, are often white supremacists, that subset of religious fundamentalists who have extremely pejorative views about faiths other than their own, homophobes, anti-Semites, and people who take a negative (and often eugenically minded) view of the mentally or physically disabled. This is not good company to be keeping.
Moreover, I wonder if there is something disingenuous about my support for the "right" to engage in this sort of "free speech." You see, if there was significant societal support for these hate ideas, I would say that at that point they would need to be limited for the protection of the targeted minorities; anything else would threaten to lead to a second Holocaust (especially when coming from deniers of the first Holocaust, I guess.) So, am I merely saying that these ideas can only compete in the "marketplace of ideas" if they are destined to fail? And if that is the only scenario under which they are entitled to compete, are they not worthy of constitutional protection to begin with?
BTW - this decision is available online, but the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's website is having some technical problems. I will post the decision, or a link, once it becomes available.
ETA - to change "anti-Semitics" to 'anti-Semites" - oops!
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