about Islamophobia in the Canadian and Western media. It has just been
redistrinbuted today by WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE (WVNS).
Ed Corrigan
Memo to The Lobby's media tyrants: defamation is not protected speech
by Greg Felton
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/
<http://usa.mediamonitors.net/
"The Maclean's article, and others like it, are examples of
[Islamophobia]. By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same
negative characteristics, including being a threat to `the West',
this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and
promotes prejudice towards Muslims and others. An extreme
illustration of this is a 'blog' discussion concerning the article
that was brought to the attention of the Commission which, among
many things, called for the mass killing, deportation or conversion
of Muslim Canadians."
-- Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights
Commission
The tyrant, by his nature, exists in a state of war with the society
he governs. The interests of the state, the government and the
tyrant are collapsed into a singularity, so a challenge to any act
of government is deemed to be a threat to tyrant's authority, and
hence the state.
Because the tyrant's right to rule is illegitimate, it must be
maintained by constant application of coercive force. There is no
respect for the public good or the rule of law, for that would
presuppose the existence of a higher, objective moral and legal
authority.
When it suits the tyrant's purposes, though, he can feign respect
for the public good. To discredit political dissent he can recast a
protest as a moral attack on everyone, e.g.: "Enemies among us hate
our freedoms!" "No group has the right to tell you what to
do!" "Don't listen to conspiracy theories!" "Report suspicious
people to the authorities!"
By playing the victim and pandering to public insecurity, legitimate
dissent is made to look criminal and the political issue that
motivated the protest becomes lost amid the cacophony of moralism
and demagoguery.
What holds true for tyrants in general holds true for our media
tyrants in particular. Since our media is transparently Zionist and
anti-Muslim, the qualities of truth, story, and Israeli self-
interest have been collapsed into a journalistic singularity. Any
challenge to the integrity or honesty of such a story is a fortiori
an attack on Israel; thus, any attempt to hold our media accountable
to ethical standards of reporting must be resolutely rubbished lest
the challenge engender critical thinking and informed debate.
Thus it came to pass that a human rights case brought against
Maclean's magazine for hatemongering has been drowned out by howls
of hypocritical indignation and character assassination. Rather than
report on the question of bigotry in the offending article, and give
dispassionate analyses of it, tyrants on the Internet and in other
media are busy manufacturing sympathy for the writer in question and
misrepresenting the challenge as an attack on free speech.
Background
On Oct. 10, 2006, Maclean's published an article entitled "The
Future Belongs to Islam," written by Mark Steyn. In the article,
excerpted from his book America Alone (note the appeal to
victimhood) Steyn presents a dystopian future of the Western world
overrun by Muslims:
"On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are
aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young
Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory `of courses': of course,
not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to
provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to
Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support
terrorists--though enough of them share their basic objectives (the
wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to
function wittingly or otherwise as the `good cop' end of an Islamic
good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving
demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the
jihad to move around in."
Steyn's basis for this conclusion is…well, he doesn't give one. It
is enough for him to depict Muslims as an alien people--hostile,
violent, intolerant and a threat to our (gasp!) Western way of life.
What weapon will these radicalized Islamic Europeans use to bring
about the downfall of life as we know it? Sex--lots of sex. Having
children, in Steyn's logic
<http://www.gregfelton.com/
<http://www.gregfelton.com/
act of demographic conquest that will engender civil war.
As a result of the article, the Canadian Islamic Congress helped
launch a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission against
Maclean's for promoting group defamation and hate speech, contrary
to Canadian law. In late June, the OHRC decided not to hear the
case, because its code does not cover material printed in magazines.
Nevertheless, in a rare public statement
<http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/
<http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/
statement, OHRC's chief commissioner Barbara Hall made some key
observations that effectively supported the charge of hatemongering:
"The Maclean's article, and others like it, are examples of
[Islamophobia]. By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same
negative characteristics, including being a threat to `the West',
this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and
promotes prejudice towards Muslims and others. An extreme
illustration of this is a 'blog' discussion concerning the article
that was brought to the attention of the Commission which, among
many things, called for the mass killing, deportation or conversion
of Muslim Canadians."
Given this finding, informal though it may be, the plaintiffs are
expecting a positive outcome from the more jurisdictionally powerful
B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
Media reaction and inaction
Every journalism student learns that free speech must also be
responsible speech. A person may not yell "fire" in a crowded
theatre or violate laws against defamation. Hall's statement was a
clear defence of this venerable precept, which Steyn violated in
spades.
As expected, Maclean's issued a statement praising the OHRC's
decision to dismiss the case, but it did so in a way that betrayed
its real motives. It added: "No human rights commission, whether at
the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to
monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the
nation's media…We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians
who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with
regard to speech issues."
Translation: "We arrogate to ourselves the right to whatever we want
and no oversight agency can tell us otherwise."
This "Maclean's-as-victim" schtick has become the staple of media
coverage, as did vitriolic attacks upon the Human Rights Commission.
One might have sympathy for Maclean's and other media tyrants if
they showed as much concern for the free expression rights of those
with whom they disagree.
Germany and France, for example, can prosecute anyone who merely
dissents from official zionist dogmata about the Nazi holocaust.
German-Canadian immigrant Ernst Zundel, who wrote a tract taking
issue with the number of Jews killed during World War II, was
kidnapped from the United States and illegally sent back to Germany
to stand trial for heresy. Today, his name is a term of the worst
opprobrium, yet all he did was express an opinion. The B'nai Brith,
Canadian Jewish Congress and other zionist agents had no problem
deciding to "monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial
decisions" of his work.
The Lobby also went out of its way to vilify Professor Norman
Finkelstein of DePaul University for exercising his intellectual
freedom. I was even defamed twice in two separate CanWest organs by
media tyrant Terry Glavin
<http://www.gregfelton.com/
<http://www.gregfelton.com/
exercise my right to free expression at the Vancouver Library.
Much of the emptiness of the zionist free-press argument consists in
the fact that news critical of Israel or sympathetic to Muslims is
systematically censored.
We don't read, for example, how settler thugs tied up a Palestinian
to a pole and beat him. Front pages aren't apoplectic over the
Israeli security forces' beating and torture of journalist Mohammed
Omer. The fact that Israel tortures 10-year old Palestinian
children, and forces 70 percent of Gazans to live below the poverty
line is similarly invisible to us, because the right to free speech
is itself not free.
When groups like the Canadian Islamic Congress
<http://www.gregfelton.com/
<http://www.gregfelton.com/
take action against Maclean's or any other zionist medium, they do
so, not to limit free speech, but to ensure that it is not used
instrumentally by tyrants.
The ghost of bigotry past
The essence of Steyn's bigotry is that Muslims are a threat to
Europe because of who they are, not what they do:
"The larger forces at play in the developed world that have left
Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into
Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest
of the world… Some European countries will not be living formally
under sharia, but—as much as parts of Nigeria—they will have reached
an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who
like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the `tolerance'
of pluralist societies."
As you contemplate Steyn's fearmongering for the fate of European
civilization, and disdain for tolerance, I submit this nearly 86-
year-old apocalyptic warning for your consideration:
"Internationalization today means only Judaization. We in Germany
have come to this: that a 60-million people sees its destiny to lie
at the will of a few dozen Jewish bankers. This was possible only
because our civilization had first been Judaized. The undermining of
the German conception of personality by catchwords had begun long
before. Ideas such as `Democracy,' `Majority,' `Conscience of the
World,' `World Solidarity,' `World Peace,' `Internationality of
Art,' etc., disintegrate our race-consciousness, breed cowardice,
and so today we are bound to say that the simple Turk is more man
than we are. No salvation is possible until the bearer of disunion,
the Jew, has been rendered powerless to harm."
(Adolf Hitler, Munich, Sept. 11, 1922).
Small wonder that Muslims have become the new Jews of Europe, but
you won't find this point of view discussed in the media. The Lobby
ensures that some types of expression are freer than others.
My book The Host and the Parasite--How Israel's Fifth Column
Consumed America is available exclusively from
<http://www.gregfelton.com/ <http://www.gregfelton.com/>> until I can
find an honest publisher.
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment