Canadian free speech activist Ezra Levant has a new book out. I am in the process of reading it right now, because I was lucky enough to get a copy as a gift, autographed! Ezra had to shell out six figures to defend himself from charges that he offended members of a special interest victim group. His new book tells his story, and the stories of many of the other victims of fascism in Canada.

Here is a video he posted this week of his interview with the libertarian Fraser Institute:

Here is his famous opening speech from his first hearing with the Alberta HRC:

Make no mistake. The left has no respect for individual rights. None. Today they confiscate your money to redistribute it to their favored special interest victim groups, while blaming you for working hard. Tomorrow, they arrest and imprison you for saying things that offend their favored special interest victim groups. Leftism is collectivism. Collectivism is fascism.

For more information about the book, the best thing I have seen is Denyse O’Leary’s twelve part series of posts. Part 12 is linked here and contains all of the other 11 parts and an introduction. Here are some excerpts:

Here is a quotation of “Shakedown” from part 2:

The main reason that today’s human rights commissions feel so un-Canadian is that their operations violate the most basic principles of natural justice. As soon as a human rights complaint is filed, the deck is stacked against the accused. For most of Canada’s HRCs, taxpayers foot the bill so that government-paid bureaucrats can investigate complaints and government-paid lawyers can prosecute them. The targets of those complaints, on the other hand, don’t get any government help. Many are too poor to hire lawyers and private investigators. So they must fend for themselves against an army of public paper-pushers.

(A study of the cases in which the Canadian Human Rights Commission investigated allegations of hate speech, for example, foujnd that 91 per cent of the government’s targets were too poor to afford lawyers and appeared either on their own or with representation by a non-lawyer volunteer.) In other words, it’s a turkey shot for the government, with poor, intimidated targets fighting against the unlimited resources of the state. (p. 19)

Check out this quote from Shakedown from part 4:

It’s hard to believe, but government bureaucrats, paid with tax dollars, who are supposed to be promoting human rights and interracial relations, are spending their time becoming members of neo-Nazi websites and writing bigoted comments on the Internet. Their goal is to goad Canadian citizens into replying with their own hateful comments – which the human rights investigators can then prosecute as human rights abuses.

That would be like a police officer setting out lines of cocaine at party, snorting a few himself, then inviting other people to do the same – and then arresting them when they take him up on his offer.

Here is a bit more from part 5:

The March 25 hearing was a disaster for the CHRC. Its staff had to admit, under oath, that they routinely went online under false identities to provoke reactions from neo-Nazis. The CHRC admitted that it had no controls over who had access to these CHRC neo-Nazi website membership accounts. Despite dozens of objections made by CHRC lawyers – apparently to run out the clock on the one-day hearing – the CHRC’s dirty laundry was aired in the national media.

The dirtiest fact of all: the CHRC had logged on to a neo-Nazi website by illegally hacking into a private citizen’s wireless Internet account at her home. It was a means to cover the CHRC’s tracks, so that the identity of the originating, government computers would be hidden. That staggering revelation came from Alain Monfette, a Bell Canada security officer, who had been subpoenaed by Lemire to find out who had gone on online as “Jadewarr,” one of the CHRC’s neo-Nazi codenames. Monfette disclosed to a stunned courtroom that jadewarr’s posts had been made thorugh the Internet account of Nelly Hechme …

Complainants don’t have to pay anything, while defendants are drained of tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. In fact, the defendants taxes go to pay for their own prosecution.

Here’s an excerpt from part 6:

If you’re mad about something in your life, no matter how trivial – no matter if it’s your own fault – there really is no reason not to file a complaint with your unfriendly neighbourhood human rights commission. It doesn’t cost you a thing to start a complaint. Not even the price of a postage stamp – you can just fax your complaint in. If you win, you can get tax-free cash, and often some sort of government order that will try to assuage your feelings – like an order to make those darned pizza boys change the CD at work and stop hiding your stool. And even if you lose and the HRC vindicates your opponent, there’s the cruel satisfaction of knowing that you’ve punished your adversaries by putting them through years of legal hassles.

And one last word from Denyse herself in part 9:

…when I read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago years ago, one thing that struck me was his testimony that, in general, the Soviet regime punished political dissidents much more viciously than it punished street criminals.

That makes sense in a certain kind of regime. Street criminals, after all, threaten only the citizen. Political dissidents threaten the bureaucrat – a much more serious crime.

And one more thing. Although Ezra is Jewish, he is a tireless defender of the free speech rights of Christians. I mean, he goes out of his way to defend our rights – more than highly-placed Christians have done. He is a real hero.

Buy. This. Book.

Further study

Ezra Levant defends free speech in these video clips from the Michael Coren TV show. And remember, fascist HRCs are bad for business, too.