Ahenakew Guilty

Guilty of being a disgusting bigot, that is - a verdict rendered more than six years ago in the court of public opinion.

 

As for the legal system, Ahenakew has rightly been acquitted:

 

A Saskatchewan judge acquitted Ahenakew yesterday but lambasted the former aboriginal leader for anti-Semitic comments that sparked a nationwide outrage six years ago.

 

Provincial Court Judge Wilfred Tucker called the remarks "revolting, disgusting and untrue" but said he did not believe Ahenakew had the intention of promoting hate when he made them.

 

Ahenakew was charged under Section 319 of the criminal code, a charge that probably should not have been laid in the first place - that's certainly the message from yesterday's verdict.

 

As Ezra Levant aptly puts it, not only did the case against Ahenakew ensure that his words would be repeated over and over and over again, but it probably reinforced his hateful views:

 

Ahenakew has not changed his mind -- he still hates Jews. Probably more than when he was charged with hating them six years ago.

 

Ahenakew's statements about Jews have not evanesced into the air, as they would have had he been properly ignored (or informally rebutted, instead of prosecuted by the state). His anti-Semitic views have been repeated countless thousands of times in newspapers, TV shows and, of course, the Internet. The ramblings of a fool have thus received more of an audience than the thoughtful prose of most best-selling authors in Canada.

 

And Ahenakew's conspiracy theory -- that the Jews control the world, and persecute their enemies -- is just a little bit more plausible, certainly in his own mind and that of his supporters.

 

(While you're there, do read about a certain Liberal operative's five-million dollar lawsuit and Ezra's interesting response)

 

Meanwhile, Nigel Hannaford draws an informative comparison:

 

Nevertheless, under the Canadian Criminal Code, it is not illegal to have revolting or disgusting opinions, or to hold them on the basis of myth and fancy.

 

Indeed, it is not even inevitably illegal to utter them. What is illegal, is to incite others to hatred. There is a Canadian constituency that thinks the Code should be more restrictive, but the Supreme Court of Canada has established the limit where it is to acknowledge that under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, expression is a "fundamental freedom" to be "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

 

The protests of free-speech extremists notwithstanding, it is actually a barbed-wire fence around Canadian free-speech rights. Prosecutions under Sections 318 and 319 of the Code must prove intent and actual harm, and the accused may depend upon due process in the courts, before a real judge, including established rules of evidence, and several common-law defences. For the prosecution, these are high fences to jump.

 

Not so, the generic human rights commission, where the standard is merely whether somebody was offended. In this case, Ahenakew offended everybody -- Jews, and non-Jews alike. (White racists celebrating his acquittal should understand that he doesn't like them either and during the remarks that put him in court, had some choice words for the people in the covered wagons, too.)

 

In any case, had he put himself under the jurisdiction of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission by publishing his hateful words, rather than merely blurting them out, his conviction would have been assured, and quick.