"Hate 2.0: Combating the Radical Right ... "

If we needed another example proving that university humanities faculties are, at best, a waste of time and money here’s one proudly presented in the Summer 2012 Carleton University Magazine:

With a major grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, [Jennifer] Evans and her Carleton colleagues Christiane Wilke, a legal scholar; historian Shawn Graham; and communications professor Josh Greenberg have embarked on a two-year project called "Hate 2.0: Combating the Radical Right in the Age of Social Technology."

Evans and her collaborators will examine the ways social media are being used to combat neo-Nazism and other radical-right strains of thought in Germany and Canada.

The Carleton Department of History announcement of Evans’ grant last summer featured this National Organization of Women (NOW) logo along with these details:

From the perspectives of social and gender history, critical legal studies, and media studies, the research team will examine how local, state, and federal authorities, together with institutionalized anti-hate initiatives [e.g. the HRCs], social justice organizations, and avant guard movements, employ digital media to promote awareness, combat denial, and contest the rise of xenophobic sentiment.






In other words our federal government is ponying up real cash for far-left academic ideologues to investigate ways of combatting a handful of lonely neo-Nazis operating from their moms’ basements. Couldn’t they have at least targeted a real and present danger? Was Richard Warman on the committee that awarded that grant? So many questions.

Oh the humanities! What a colossal waste! Shut down the whole lot and save billions!

Update:  Some of the comments regarding the proper place of Nazism and Fascism on the political spectrum reminded me of this post on the subject a few years ago.

Free speech - what's happn'in?

Kathy Shaidle at FFoF reminds us of an event to raise funds for hubby BCF's legal defense (donate) against a lawsuit from Richard Warman.  As a reminder she points to a segment of Mark Steyn's and Ezra Levant's testimony before the Parliamnetary Standing Committee on Justice and "Human Rights" on the subject of  abolishing Section 13 of the HRA.

I wound up watching the whole thing, again.  Part 1:



Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.

Ezra and Mark were brilliant! The Committee, not so much.  You can see why little of any real value gets done in that place.  A year later, where are we with this?

HRC colluding with Warman?

Mark Steyn on Richard Warman today:

What we have here is compelling circumstantial evidence of collusion between a serial plaintiff and his enablers at the CHRC.

I've written to the federal Minister of Justice about this matter. No reply so far.

Who knew?

Warren Kinsella & Richard Warman - rotten peas in a pod*

In recent days there’s been a blogospheric blizzard surrounding that illiberal Liberal hack and attack mutt Warren Kinsella and professional censor Richard Warman. Kinsella has been busy slagging Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn and at the same time boosting for his pal Richard Warman, lawyer, former HRC investigator and odious serial abuser of the odious HRCs’ odious censorship ‘system’.

A selective roundup:

Blazing Cat Fur: Steyn on Warman, Kate’s email, Oh Hell, it’s all here and here.
Five Feet of Fury: Warman, Kinsella,
Mike Brock: Freespeecher: The New Leftist Pejorative
Small Dead Animals: Freespeecher,
Western Standard: Kinsella is full of s*it
Mark Steyn: Warman vs David Icke, Kinsella’s fog, Warman and HRC "joke jurisprudence",
Ezra Levant: Ruthless bullies - blogger defense fund needed:

I don't think Kinsella is a thinker; he's a doer, or more accurately an undoer. And his goal here was to confuse and chill the growing media scrutiny of human rights commissions generally, and Warman in particular. In a series of over-the-top blog posts (here, here, here, etc.), he has threatened a number of Warman's critics with defamation lawsuits if they didn't stop. It was classic war room style: stampede your opponents with enough threats and half-truths to panic them into a hasty over-reaction.
[...]
Kinsella and Warman are lawyers by profession, but they try to avoid real lawsuits -- better to win by the mere threat of one. Compare their high school braggadocio towards little bloggers, with this rather meek demand letter sent to the Post in response to a column I had written about him. It was properly ignored....
[...]
That reply is not just me being lippy; it's knowing the difference between empty, blustering, Kinsella-ish threats made as a political tactic, and a real legal problem.

If Kinsella, Warman and their ilk are the lead champions of the HRC censorship system, then that alone should be sufficient to completely discredit it. There’s little doubt their quasi-fascistic mentality is well represented within the HRC bureaucracy. After all Warman was once an HRC insider. That should scare the crap out of any reasonable person.

Update (01-31-08): Ezra on "Borin' Warren"

*Note: I had originally considered naming this post "Kinsella and Warman - assholes" but when I started this blog I vowed not to use profanity (I use it more than enough off the web) and I intend to keep that vow.