A Jewish-Canadian author is in a battle of words with the Canadian Jewish Congress after alleging the organization props up neo-nazi groups to get “hate crime” legislation passed and expand the role of the country’s Human Rights Commission.
Neo-conservative author Ezra Levant claims in his latest book, Shakedown, that the Canadian Jewish Congress hired ex-cop John Garrity to work for the Canadian Nazi Party in the 1960’s. In 1965 and 1966, Garrity was put in charge of membership for the group and organized the dozen or so “rag-tag band of losers” into an outfit that garned a lot of press coverage.
That media attention was used by the CJC to build up a precieved public threat that persuaded Parliament to abridge Canada’s freedom of speech, Levant contends. The CJC, which had been advocating restrictions on free speech in Canada since the 1930’s, used the Nazi Party’s publicity to successfully lobby for the 1971 “hate law” (Section 319 of the Criminal Code). The end result was the enactment of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which “empowers the Canadian Human Rights Commission to deal with complaints regarding the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet.”
Levant’s claim has been floating around for some time now. Garrity came clean in a 1966 article for Maclean’s magazine, admitting that he handed member and donor information over over to the CJC; however, he did not say his final goal was to curtail free speech in Canada.
Garrity did admit that the Canadian Nazi Party did not conspire to or implement any violent or illegal activities. In fact, any violence Garrity saw was done by Jewish and anti-racist vigilantes. “Sadly, it is the [....] anti-Nazi extremists who, in their attempts to destroy Beattie, provide him with most of the publicity he craves. If it weren’t for the riots and the assaults and the public protest meetings they hold, there’d be no real news,” Garrity wrote in his article.
Back in November 2000, former Canadian Nazi Party leader John Beattie was scheduled to testify at a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that he was a “dupe and a patsy” for the CJC. He was also going to explain how an agent from the CJC (presumably Garrity) “proposed legal maneuvers [sic] that were calculated to frighten and cause distress among Jews.” However, Beattie never testified, a point many have speculated upon.
Levant then contends that some twenty years after the collapse of the Canadian Nazi Party, Canada’s spy agency infiltrated another neo-nazi group, The Heritage Front. CSIS agent Grant Bristow wound up running the now-defunct group, using Canadian tax dollars to foment more hysteria that got Section 13 to expand even further.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission also actively engages in “hate speech” in order to catch and prosecute people for “hate speech,” Levant contends. The biggest offender of such a practice is former CHRC staffer Richard Warman, who has been the complainant in all but two cases heard by the CHRC tribunal this decade. In addition to making tens of thousands of dollars, the CJC bestowed Warman with a special award for his efforts.
The tables were stunningly turned on Warman last month, after the CHRC rebuked Warman for his anti-Semitic postings the White Nationalist website Stormfront.org. Warman defended himself by saying his posts that “Jews are scum” was an attempt to gather information on real Nazis, but the tribunal called his actions “disappointing and disturbing,” and ruled that he risked encouraging
more hateful messages himself.
“Warman’s actions appalled the tribunal, but apparently not the CJC,” says Levant. “Just as the CJC did with Garrity, Nazi opponents continue to stir up neo-Nazi incidents — as if there aren’t enough real threats to Jews as it is.”
Current CJC co-president, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, has dissmissed Levant’s allegations as “fiction” and that all the group did for the Nazis was “to purchase a bottle of rum” for them. Rabbi Bulka wants a retraction to the allegations published in a second printing of Levant’s book.
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