Needs Saying
by Virginia Deane Abernethy
The Resolution is to at all times defend the right of people like Tim Murray of Quadras Island to speak the truth. In http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=70" — which is often nothing but the truth and so cannot be defended except with the truth.
Murray exaggerates the extent of free speech in the United States because community regulation and self-censorship are alive and well. Nevertheless, Murray, in Canada, is likely to go to jail well before I do — so my part in this campaign seems second rate.
Canada’s hate speech laws were recently turned against anti-mass-immigration activist http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2470. Perhaps Murray is prepared to sail forth in a small boat from which he will send messages to shore via floating bottles. Certainly I and others will relay them.Meanwhile, all too real is the possibility that Canadian-German-British-French hate speech laws could overwhelm the United States’ free speech First Amendment. The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League [ADL is perennially ready with drafts of hate speech legislation.
Surfacing in Congress, often masked as something with which many could empathize, bills to criminalize speech and thought are a constant threat to become law. Such law would be unconstitutional — but before that bridge is crossed, let us man the ramparts to prevent such surpassingly un-American, foreign ideas from becoming entrenched in our political institutions. In that spirit, here is Tim Murray’s essay, “Should I Care that I Offend You: Speaking the Truth Trumps Ethnic Harmony.”
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Should I care that I offend you?
Speaking The Truth Trumps Ethnic Harmony
Tim Murray
It was Benjamin Disraeli who, after reflecting on Britain’s vaunted intellectual liberty, observed the “we are a nation so fundamentally at one, that we can afford to differ.” By that measure, Britain today, together with its former colonies, are obviously not “at one.” With ethnic heterogeneity from mass immigration has come division, and to deal with that all Anglophone governments have sought to cure the fever by discarding the thermometer. Free speech has given way to racial vilification laws.
Mark Uhlmann, editor of The Record (in Australia) remarked that the purpose of such legislation “is to complement the social intimidation which already greets anyone who dares criticize matters connected to immigration and multiculturalism.” If no voices can be heard against government policy, or if nothing can be seen as remotely close to hatred or ridicule of any group, then the illusion of harmony can be maintained.
The Anzac countries share Canada’s misfortune. They never had a revolutionary break with the British tradition, which was to embrace liberty only as a byproduct of public order. The absurdity of this priority was never better illustrated in the summer of 2007 when the City of Peterborough fined a man for wearing a T-shirt that violated Section 5 of the “Public Order Act”. It read “Don’t Piss Me Off or I Won’t Tell You Where I’ve Hidden The Bodies.” It is interesting that the city council felt it was their mandate to tell the good burghers of their town what they couldn’t read when they had yet to find shelters for the homeless. Most significant was the fact that the offending T-shirt was purchased in Los Angeles, California in the Land of the Free. In America the philosophy has been that you say what you need to say and let the political chips fall where they may. In Britain, on the other hand, Nick Griffin of the British National Party was in court for making anti-Islamic statements. Why? Gordon Brown said that it was important that British Muslims not feel “insulted.” It would be hard to imagine a US Congressman in court for making anti-Hispanic remarks.
Canada has taken the British attitude to censorship to new and higher levels. In August 2004, radio “CHOI-FM”, Quebec City’s most popular talk show station, was dissolved by the Canadian government. Its 33 employees were put out of work. Its offence? One of its talk show hosts criticized African dictators whose children were educated in Canadian universities. This was considered a hate crime against blacks.
Three provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code sections 318.319, and 320 seek to curb the promotion of hate propaganda. Section 319 betrays that British preoccupation with statements made in any public place which could incite hatred and lead, my God, to “ a breach of the peace.” In Canada freedom of speech, we are constantly told, is not an absolute right, but merely one right to be balanced off against other rights, like the God-given right of Islamic wife-beaters to be shielded from criticism of Koranic patriarchal culture. In America, however, freedom of speech is understood to be the condition of all other rights. In Canada most disagreements begin with “I feel offended that you said that.” In New York City it’s “I don’t give a f*** how you feel b****, grow up.” Canada is like one big group therapy session. A gigantic diversity awareness and sensitivity workshop where what you emote is more relevant than what you think. What emerges is cultural diversity, but not intellectual diversity, for there is no independent critical thought. Fostering “respect” and boosting minority “self-esteem” are considered more important than exposing the truth.
The difference between the two North American political cultures can be defined succinctly by contrasting America’s constitutional commitment to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” with Canada’s “peace, order and good government.” So the new totalitarian regime of multicultural and politically correct thought control falls well within our more “British” tradition.
It is no wonder then, that outspoken Canadian Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has set up shop just outside our multicultural police state in Friday Harbor, Washington, where he can write the truth unmolested, like the following:
I remember walking along the beaches in Vancouver a few decades ago. Every single stone sent a flurry of disturbed baby crabs scurrying to find new cover. I was fascinated by the sheer number of tiny crustaceans that I observed on those walks. Today, I have not found a single young crab under a single rock on those beaches. They were picked clean by Vietnamese immigrants that descended like locusts onto those beaches and stripped them clean. And criticism of that exploitation immediately elicited accusations of racism. Today racism, cultural rights, and the right to exploit nature for commercial gain are the weapons used to defend gross over-exploitation of species and the destruction of natural habitats. (The Beginning of The End For Life As We Know It, May 4/07)
Vancouver Aquarium director Larry Nightingale made similar accusations against the Vietnamese some ten years ago, citing their rape of the west coast fishery by brazenly illegal methods, but it is unlikely that if he were to make them now, he would keep his job or his freedom. Nevertheless, Vietnamese behaviour persists today as it did when they arrived as boat people in the late 70s, and when I told my incredulous Member of Parliament that admitting them to Canada was like allowing wolves into a sheep pen. A better metaphor would have been human starlings, a foreign species of bird so aggressive and ruthless that native species are driven out.
The fallacy of anti-vilification laws, or the abolition of ethnic crime statistics, is that by covering our vision with a shroud public hostility will evaporate. It is not hate speech or unflattering crime statistics which “incites” public anger but our cumulative personal experience with the ethnic law-breakers. What ivory-tower academics derisively call “anecdotal” evidence. Academics can conduct all the studies they want telling us that folks from Timbucktu or Booga-Booga are just people like you and me, but as Winston Smith knew, it is what you your own eyes are telling you that counts, not what the Ministry of Truth, the ABC, the Sydney Herald or the CBC say is happening, how wonderfully everybody is getting along, or how the wolves have been transformed into sheep just by setting foot on our shores. If you won’t trust your own senses, at least prefer the copper on the beat in Melbourne to his superior at the police station who must kow-kow to diversity sensitivity guidelines, the media and the like. What Tim Priest said of New South Wales is, I suspect, true of police bureaucracies everywhere in Anglo-America. They are lying mouthpieces of political correctness staffed by gutless wonders with no connection to the reality of street life and whose only ambition is to ingratiate themselves to politicians and reporters.
My eyes see what Watson sees. I see eco-crime committed not just by wicked whites but non-whites. His rogue’s gallery would include the McCaw Indians of Washington State for their “ceremonial” slaughter of whales in Puget Sound. The Australian Aborigines for removing 85% of the mega-fauna of the continent before everybody’s whipping boy, the English, arrived. Native Americans and Aboriginal Canadians can be held to account in many instances for poor stewardship of the land and capitalist development. The Japanese are still whaling. Should these culprits be able to hide behind a shield of anti-vilification laws? Surely no more than the Icelandic whalers or the Newfoundland sealers, who, although white, can claim these activities as supportive of a rare culture. My list would also include the male white yahoos who trash the environment with their ATVs and off-road vehicles, and the Mormons* and Muslims who burden the environment with irresponsibly large families. All of these “identifiable groups” are fair game for ruthless criticism. As someone half Icelandic, I am not offended by Watson’s attack on the culture of my mother’s people. If the shoe fits, wear it. Earth First.
Whether my speech is “hateful” or “offensive” is immaterial. The point is, is it true?
Tim Murray, November 8/07
Tim Murray is a Director of Immigration Watch Canada (http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org) Email him at: gloomndoom@telus.net. He has written for The Occidental Observer. See
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.com/archives/Murray-Archives.html
*We disagree on this point with Mr. Murray. If Euro-Americans are to survive, we must encourage our people to have the largest possible families in proportion to their economic means.