Ezra Levant vs the CJC

Ezra Levant is something of a bundle of contradictions. A self-styled free speech crusader who published the Danish anti-Mohammed cartoons not because he's anti-Muslim (he says) but simply in the interests of opposing censorship. When he was a law student he spent his student union's money (as head of the speakers committee) to fly in Doug Christie (far right lawyer for various Holocaust deniers and alleged Nazi war criminals) to his campus to give a speech not to shock and get attention for himself by being behind an outrageous stunt - but just because he believes in free speech.

Of course, this free speech crusader doesn't believe in free speech if it's about him. He once tried to sue a Canadian Alliance MP for libel for saying unflattering things about Levant's work as Stockwell Day's communication adviser and he's also sued Frank magazine.

So it's ok to bash Muslims and even Jews in the name of "free speech" but criticize Ezra and you risk getting sued. This kind of gives you the idea of where Ezra is *really* coming from.

Anyway, Levant is now in trouble with the Alberta Human Rights Commission for his publication of the Danish cartoons at the same time that Macleans Magazine is facing a human rights complaint for the content of columns by Mark Steyn.

In Ezra's little mind who is to blame for all this?

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The left-wing Canadian Jewish Congress, the special-interest lobby group most responsible for criminalizing speech in Canada,

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I'm no anti-Semite, but if I'm anything to go by, the CJC, and the other supporters of these unconstitutional laws are the ones engendering feelings of contempt.

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[url=http://ezralevant.com/2008/01/odds-and-ends-1.html]Ezra's rant[/url]

Now, I'm no fan of the CJC, they have ceased to be a democratic institution and do not represent the Jewish community - only the small number of plutocratic families who fund the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy and by extension the CJC.

But Ezra's really gone off the deep end, I must say. He alienated himself from the Canadian Alliance/Conservative Party when, like any good Randite libertarian egotist, he put himself over his party and refused to give up his nomination in a Calgary by-election so that newly elected leader Stephen Harper could run and enter parliament quickly. His fringe publication, the Western Standard, has gone belly-up (I guess the market doesn't support his ideas) and now, like a wounded political animal, he is cowering in a corner howling loudly and more desperately trying to get attention for himself rather than slide into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Being critical is one thing, so is defending the rights of neo-nazis to free speech - on a pure civil libertarian plane I can understand and respect that position even if I don't agree with it - but when Levant cites neo-nazi wingnuts like Marc Lemire and Bernard Klatt as if they were credible sources I have to say the poor guy's lost it and is flapping wildly desperate for anyone he can rely on for support no matter how discredited they are. And to start echoing anti-Semitic arguments put forth by people like Lemire in a wild attempt to salvage his own position - well that's just pathetic.

[ 23 January 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]