RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20564/democracy

If you live in a “democracy” where everyone routinely votes to censor and imprison one another, you still live in a police state.

The word “democracy” appears to have become polite shorthand for insisting that an insular minority in control of the American government always knows what is best for the vast, unrepresented majority. Even worse, it sometimes seems nothing more than a convenient disguise for camouflaging abuses of power.

The American system of government is a federation of sovereign states that retain inherent powers not specifically delegated to the national government. It is a republic that separates discrete powers among coequal and competing branches of government — namely the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. It is a representative democracy that empowers the people to vote into office those who presumably will best serve their interests. Most importantly, it is a constitutional system that severely limits government’s authority and proscribes government agents from infringing upon freedoms retained by the people.

Just to be indisputably clear that the government is forbidden from rewriting its own delegated powers in such a way that they violate an American’s God-given liberties, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution — the Bill of Rights — act as a redundancy measure and explicit warning to state actors not to infringe upon or water down the rights delineated there.

A pure “democracy,” on the other hand, can be dangerous to anyone who does not think like, or readily follow, the crowd. Villagers willing to hang a suspected horse-thief before any trial might be acting democratically, but they are still a vigilante mob. If you live in a “democracy” where everyone routinely votes to censor and imprison one another, you still live in a police state.

If too many Americans fail to fully understand why their system of government is far superior to the fickle whims that naturally poison “democracy,” their representatives in government fare no better. For nearly two and half centuries, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, and presidents have twisted and stretched the original intent and plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Their sometimes-questionable fealty to the very document that they have sworn to defend has done us no favors.

Given that the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us copious written records documenting their purpose in limiting the powers of the federal government as much as was practicable and safeguarding Americans’ inherent liberties as clearly as possible, the sheer size of the federal government today and the breadth of its authority might shock their sensibilities. They might be horrified that a fourth branch of government — namely, the vast administrative bureaucracy — has sprung up out of whole cloth and amalgamated enormous powers once strictly separated and delegated to specific branches.

https://dianebederman.com/double-standardislamophobia-a-tale-of-two-cities/

What a difference a decade can make. Today, in 2024, there seems to be a double standard in Toronto. Although Brazau was charged because language can be a weapon, those calling for the extermination of Israel and the Jews are allowed to speak whatever they want and protest anywhere – without fear. 

Islamophobia seems to be everywhere these days – or at least accusations of it. What does it mean?

Too often it leads to silencing people who have questions about Islam and its teachings.  I don’t know of any laws preventing people from criticizing or questioning Christianity or Judaism – in Judaism it seems that what is said is based on context! (Prof. Gray when asked whether pro-Palestinian student activists calling for “Jewish genocide” violated Harvard’s code of conduct on harassment she claimed it would depend on the context.)

In 2015, Eric Brazau, not particularly fond of Islam, decided to run an experiment  on free speech on a Toronto Subway. He, another fellow in Israeli colours and carrying an Israeli flag, and another acquaintance who videoed the proceedings, got on the subway where Mr. Brazau began loudly denouncing Islam and its holy book, the Koran. He did this around the time Israel was at war(always and forever) with Gaza. Seems a passenger was so offended he pulled the emergency cord. The subway was stopped at the next station and police brought in. Mr. Brazau was charged for his actions on the subway. He was denied bail before his trial and was held in custody from his arrest that day, July 29, for five months and nine days.

Ontario Court Judge, Gerald Lapkin, slapped him with breach of the peace (for interfering with Toronto Transit Commission service – the subway was delayed 30 minutes), and causing a disturbance ( using insulting language). A female passenger had testified she had felt intimidated, though not in danger. She had shared her views, too. Judge Lapkin was not impressed. He snapped, “Language can be a weapon, too.”

Now, this was not Brazau’s first interaction with the court over his views on Islam. After Hillary Clinton’s apology in 2012 for the film that “caused” the riots that started in Benghazi,  Brazau had distributed fliers at Dundas Square in Toronto, and on the Ryerson Campus, now called the Toronto Metropolitan University. He was heard shouting:

“I do this in support of free speech & artistic expression. This is my expression.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2023/10/the-management-of-savagery-part-ii/

The dedicated proponents of the anti -Zionist cause in Palestine, Lebanon and across the Middle East have over the last two decades carefully exploited mainstream media outlets such as Sky News, the BBC and CNN, those media organs’ studied neutrality, and the fear of being labelled “Islamophobic”. As  Abu Bakr Naji’s definitive guide to the management of savagery maintained, the Islamist cause  must never overlook the importance of ‘political work’ while also understanding the West’s ‘political game’.[1] The spider’s house of the West is fragile and can fragment. The Management of Savagery thus distinguishes between military strategy and media strategy while planning for the effects of these strategies, as in the wake of a successful attack like the recent barbarous assault on Israel. In particular, the Islamist agenda exploits the West’s open borders, sympathetic media and multicultural tolerance to advance, pro-Palestine and pro-Islamist causes. Sympathetic fifth columnists infiltrate the army, police, civil institutions and, in particular, the media and secondary and tertiary educational institutions. The media and higher education’s woke embrace of the non-Western ‘other’ render them particularly congenial to pro-Palestinian and antisemitic manipulation.

Thus as events in Israel and Gaza unfold, an all too predictable narrative begins to take shape on what Bernard Henri Levy termed the “zombie Left”. Almost as soon as news of the operation occurred, BBC World News trotted out an expert from Chatham House who deplored the Islamist attack but nevertheless contended Israel’s treatment of Palestine and the desperation of its inhabitants apparently left them with little alternative but ‘resistance’. The BBC, of course, eschews the use of the pejorative ‘terror’ to describe the savagery Hamas unleashed. In the ensuing days it became something of a trope in the West’s mainstream media and eleemosynary institutions to opt for moral equivocation and a specious relativism. The attack, soi-disant experts opined, had little to do with ideology; rather, it demonstrated, perhaps too brutally, a necessary reaction to Israeli oppression which the West had for too long duplicitously condoned. Demonstrators immediately appeared outside the Israeli embassy in London chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’. The Scottish National Party refused to raise an Israeli flag outside the Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh. In Sydney a gathering outside the Opera House chanted ‘Gas the Jews’. Meanwhile across the Pacific, more than 30 student organizations at Harvard University endorsed a letter shamelessly blaming Israel for the attacks.

We should recall that before critical race theory there was critical terror theory — a perverse form of deconstruction that found the West, its colonialism, orientalism and Islamophobia responsible for all the problems in the post-Cold War order. This particular species of Western self-loathing first came to the fore in the aftermath of 9/11, but assumed prominence following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Over two decades it has undermined any objective study of terrorism on Western campuses from Aberystwyth in Wales to Queensland in Australia, taking in Harvard on the way. Sedulously promoted across the Anglosphere as a fashionably progressive take on terror that empathises with the misunderstood resistance of the non-West, critical terror theory now permeates not only academe but the mainstream media journalists trained in its discipline over the past twenty years.

https://media5.manhattan-institute.org/iiif/2/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F5%2FThe-Censorship-Bureaucracy.jpg/full/!99999,960/0/default.jpg

In a recurring sketch from a popular early 2000s U.K. comedy show called Little Britain, a bank clerk listens to customers’ queries, randomly types on a keyboard, and then deadpans the catchphrase: “computer says no.” Whatever the follow-up questions, no matter how angry or upset customers become, the response remains the same: “computer says no.” This skit lives on in Britons’ collective psyche mainly because it is funny, but also because it points to a familiar sentiment: the frustration of finding oneself stonewalled by an intransigent bureaucracy.

The sketch came to mind earlier this year when the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) invited me to give its annual guest lecture. The venue was to be the public library in London, Ontario. I titled my talk “Sex, Gender, and the Limits of Free Speech on Campus” and looked forward to the occasion. Then, without any apparent sense of irony, the library cancelled my lecture with one emailed sentence: “As per the library’s policy governing room rentals, we are not able to approve the rental request.” Computer says no.

After much nudging, library staff revealed the specific policies I had unknowingly breached. My lecture was considered “likely to be in violation of library policy, including, but not limited to, the library’s rules of conduct, charter of library use or workplace harassment and sexual-harassment prevention policies.” More specifically, there was allegedly “a risk or likelihood of physical danger to participants or the audience or misuse of the property or equipment.” Finally, my speech might “negatively impact or impede the ability of others to enjoy the services and facilities of the library, and/or library operations.” Thankfully, SAFS managed to find an alternative venue, and my speech was recorded, so listeners can gauge for themselves whether I posed a risk of sexual harassment or physical danger.

Looking back at this event now, what strikes me most is the faceless, bureaucratic nature of censorship. No individual was bold enough to say: “I do not like what you have to say and I am going to prevent you from saying it.” Rather than taking responsibility for the decision to stop me from speaking —and, importantly, to prevent people from hearing what I had to say—library officials hid behind selected quotations from institutional policies. This cowardly approach gives bureaucrats plausible deniability when accused of censorship. Worse still, it allows them to appear almost apologetic: “We support free speech but, unfortunately, policy says no.”