Will It Never End?

I’m the last guy in the world that wants to give Ezra Levant the attention that he seeks. That said, I’ll not deny that some of the points that he’s made during his recent appearances before an Alberta Human Rights Commission Officer have been excellent, but the fact remains, in my opinion anyway, that Ezra Levant is still riding the same train that he boarded two years ago when he, while still the publisher of the Western Standard, decided to run the controversial Mohammed cartoons.

At the time I accused Levant of running the cartoons for a very specific reason – not one steeped in ensuring press freedoms but rather one steeped in getting himself, and his publication, as much press as was possible. Given the magazine’s extremely low profile, the publishing of the cartoons was a masterful promotional decision. It thrust Levant and the magazine into the national spotlight and, for a time, produced the results that, I believe, Levant was after.

With regards to press freedoms, should the media have published the cartoons? I agree with Levant that, given the stipulations of The Charter, the press ultimately should be the ones to make that decision. Most Canadian publications chose not to run the cartoons, primarily because of the tensions caused by their initial publication overseas, perhaps to ensure the stability of ratings and subscriptions, or to avoid dealing with the numerous complaints that were sure to arise. In the world of corporate media, those are aspects that are rarely overlooked. Levant, who has written for Sun Media, who did not publish the cartoons, knows that all too well I would imagine. Of course, Levant did use the Calgary Sun as a soapbox to rail against their decision, not to mention promote the fact that his own publication had published the cartoons.

One thing that I found interesting was that in his ‘closing statement’ to the Commission Officer, Levant does not employ the term ‘Church and State’, though he does reference various religions throughout the statement to provide transparency. Instead, he blatantly, and repeatedly, uses the term ‘Mosque and State’, an inclusion that devalues the intelligence of some of his arguments. Sure, the complaint against him was brought by Muslims, but when speaking in a grander sense about universal freedoms one would think such immature jabs would be something deemed counter productive with regards to the appearance of intellectual fortitude.

Were this a matter of cartoons being penned and published by a Danish newspaper about Israelis, some of which stereotyped them as murderers without making any distinction between radical Israeli groups and Israelis in general, I’m sure Levant’s views would have been much different, not to mention the reaction of those that populate the Western Standard’s entirely mind numbing blog. Of course, that wasn’t the case; they were cartoons depicting Muslims in a stereotypical light first published in a European nation replete with immigration tensions – not to mention in a world in which Muslims are largely stereotyped in general, and there is evidence of that in stockpiles since 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ezra Levant claims that he hopes that the Commission decides against him, and that the entire affair escalates so that he might be afforded the opportunity to have this affair seen for what he believes it is – an attack on press liberties. Of course, along the way, Levant will also receive a considerable amount of face time, an aspect in all of this that should certainly not be overlooked.

Obviously, I am never going to disagree that the imposition of restrictions on freedom of speech or the press is anything but troublesome, with a few exceptions of course, those being when privately funded media outlets are used for propaganda purposes by foreign interests. I personally believe that this matter is, in its entirety, ridiculous, and that by becoming a matter before the Commission has only demonstrated the inability of those involved to act in a decent and understanding fashion. Frankly, the entire thing reeks of opportunism and close mindedness on both sides.