When the British government watched the French Revolution kick-off across the Channel in 1789, it deployed a battalion of undercover agents to investigate any anti-establishment stirrings building up within the country. But as Adam Zamoyski writes in Phantom Terror — his 2018 book about the subject — unfortunately, too many of the informers were being paid according to the sheer bulk of intelligence they supplied. As a result, what eventuated was “a recipe for exaggeration and invention, and sometimes provocation…”. “Mostly”, he concluded, “they came up with no more than baseless gossip.”This is a big problem I have with so-called “hate-watch” groups, or groups that journalists seek out when reporting on the “state of hate” in Canada and elsewhere. In order to stay relevant, they have to keep uncovering nodes of “hate” in all corners of society. Will they ever be satisfied, pull back, and close shop? Not likely.In America, so-called “hate-watch” groups abound. Foremost among them being the hugely flush-with-cash Southern Poverty Law Center. When the New Yorker ran an exposé on the group last year, one former insider stated that he and other staffers always joked that “though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, 'hate' always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year's report on hate groups. 'The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,' we'd say.” The allegations lined up perfectly with previous insider claims reported both in The Progressive and in a Pulitzer prize-winning series published in the SPLC's home state of Alabama.Ontario real-estate agent and school council chair Ravi Hooda immediately lost both positions this week after making a dumb, clearly off-the-cuff tweet related to a mosque being planned in Mississauga. Before his firing (which apparently didn't even include being given a chance to apologize), said tasteless tweet was widely publicized by Canada's SPLC partner, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. The viral tweet was accompanied with a message associating the agent's sentiment with a supposed Islamophobia scourge in Mississauga. In 2017, there were just 158 hate-crime incidents (including graffiti messages) in the Peel region that encompasses Mississauga (home to around 1.4 million people).How many Canadians feel such tattling truly serves the public's interest? If a survey from an American think-tank in which 62% of independents thought people should not be fired for what they write online is any indicator, very few.Which leads me to another problem I have with these groups.During the early stages of the Spanish Inquisition, it's been said some of the more determined inquisitors condemned an overabundance of inhabitants in order to “prove” to a reluctant Queen Isabella how much heresy was happening within her realm and, hence, the “need” for a full-blown campaign of oppression.I actually have little doubt that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network is a determined and motivated lot. Although they are partners with the SPLC, and similarly warn the public whenever they can about Canada's “hate group”-menace, they are pushing hard in parliament for some fairly weighty changes to the law, such as preventing gun licenses for members of “hate groups” and the return of the Section 13 law which had infamously banned “hateful” and even “contemptuous speech” online.With enough drummed-up concern about the “rise of hate” in Canada, such measures are bound to pass.Another problem is good old 'mission creep.'In its early days in the 1980s, the SPLC mostly put its hate-group imprint on skinhead gangs and the KKK. But when even scaremongering talk-show hosts lost interest, they expanded the “hate” label to include “homophobic” Christian groups, advocates for immigration control, and other more mainstream causes.America's establishment media, leaning left- to hard-left as it does, ran with it, dutifully labelling these once-conventional groups as 'hatemongers' in their reportage. So severe have the reputational damages apparently been for these groups (and their issues), they have mounted PR campaigns and filed multiple suits against the SPLC in response.I don't know if banishing once-discussable conservative issues to the poison shelf is an intention of CAHN's, but it's possible. They say they have no political bent, but their mission statement seems to focus on “far-right extremism” only, and when Executive Director Evan Balgord first announced the creation of the group to a confab of far-left journalists in 2018, he apparently stated their goal was 'to push the Overton Window'; a reference to the idea that what policies are considered permissible can change with time.In the context of a “hate”-watch group, to the extent they are successful, their advocacy can indeed help expand the types of opinions considered “hateful”; creating in the process a conditioned reflex among the public to keep such opinions to themselves. Similar perhaps to Soviet Russia, where advocates of free speech, etc., were declared mentally unstable (or simply as “fascists”), such brandings are designed to neutralize one's political opponent without actually engaging with their position.I don't think it's partisan to say this is the last thing we need in Canada. We do not want a corroded public discourse where issues of serious national import can't be brought into discussion without shrill theatrics.We also do not want knee-jerk firings and people's livelihoods being ruined for throwaway tweets. We already have hate-speech laws in this country, if someone utters something truly dangerous, let the police sort it.Robert Stewart is a business-owner in downtown Toronto and the People's Party of Canada's candidate for Fort York-Spadina.
Response from Canadian Anti-Hate NetworkBy Evan Balgord, Executive DirectorRobert Stewart did not contact us prior to publication and National Newswatch does not fact-check and will not correct opinion pieces they publish. It is therefore necessary for us to fact-check this piece ourselves.The Canadian Anti-Hate Network is not partners with the Southern Poverty Law Center. CAHN is an entirely independent organization with a different operating model. Criticisms of the SPLC are not transferable.
We do not exaggerate, invent, or provoke hate as a business model. Period. To imply otherwise is defamatory.
There were more than "just 158 hate-crime incidents" in the Peel region in 2017. Here, Stewart is referring to police-reported hate-crime data, which massively underreports such incidents. This is acknowledged in the annual reports published by Statistics Canada, and can be confirmed by research done by Drs. Barbara Perry and Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui.Hyperlink "Statistics Canada": https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article/00003-eng.pdf?st=5DDbxI6SHyperlink "research": https://www.antihate.ca/we_need_better_hate_crime_statisticsStewart misquotes me to create nearly the exact opposite meaning of what was said. In 2018 I was describing how one of the stated goals of the alt-right neo-Nazi movement is to move the 'overton window' to make racism and other forms of hate mainstream. I was not referring to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.Readers may also find it relevant that only two days before publication, Stewart retweeted a graphic decrying Obama for having "flooded our cities with Muslims."