"…AND THE FREE SHALL GIVE YOU TRUTH…"
by Beryl Wajsman
The Conservative Voice, NC
May 14 2007
"In the final analysis liberty, in its most basic sense, lays in the
inalienable right of the people to choose."
~ Simone Weil
"A society that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood
for themselves is a society that is afraid of its people."
~ President John F. Kennedy
"The only way to make sure people you agree with are heard is to
support the rights of people you don’t agree with."
~ Eleanor Holmes Norton
Nothing in any nanny-state society is as insidious as thought
control. It puts the lie to any platitudes mouthed by politicians
about freedom. The Quebec Press Council’s latest decisions are cause
for serious concern, The Council, like much of the "Quebec Model",
should be relegated to the dustbin of history.
The very fact of a society organizing a body overseeing expression and
opinion is in and of itself offensive to any standards of liberty. It
reflects a Stalinist mindset and little else. There are sufficient
protections afforded in our libel and slander laws to make such a
body totally unwarranted.
But when that body adopts as its primary goal the protection of the
collective from any criticism by the individual, and condemns opinions
as being outside of accepted "parametres", we have the beginning of
totalitarianism. It matters little that the Council has no enforcement
powers. It affects people’s perceptions. As the old political saw says,
"Perception is everything."
The perception of demonization will make citizens accept the most
prejudiced orthodox biases merely to avoid government oversight. That
fear affects journalists too. And with that comes the erosion of a
vigourous fourth estate. A liberal society’s lifeblood is the free
battleground of ideas. Free from any state compulsion or coercion. A
state that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood for
themselves is a state that is afraid of its people. It will inevitably
seek total domination over action, association and expression.
Some six weeks ago the Council condemned an article by the National
Post’s Barbara Kay that criticized the participation of political
and union leaders in a rally in August of 2006 that turned into
a pro-Hezbollah demonstration. Look at the Kafkaesque words in
the Council’s decision. It said that Kay’s conclusions aroused
"undue provocation" and made "generalizations suitable to perpetuate
prejudices". All this because she dared question the motivations of
civil society leaders who led a hate-filled march and encouraged
it with their own words. Former PQ leader Andre Boisclair and FTQ
President Henri Masse were seen standing, smiling, in front of
a defiled Jewish prayer shawl. Addressing the crowd, replete with
Hezbollah flags, Boisclair said, "The Quebec I see marching in front
of me is the Quebec that inspires me." But not a word from the Council
on those provocations that truly perpetuate prejudices. After all,
Boisclair and Masse are pillars of the "pure laine" Quebec model. The
Council went on to state that Kay did not put the facts in "context"
and used them to support her point of view. Questioning "contexts"
are the very heart of opinion in a free press! The point of a free
press must always be to challenge interests not balance them. Competing
views precisely on contexts must be fought out without restraint of
the state. But not in Quebec! Here the state sets the "context".
Last week the Council took to task another non-francophone journalist
using roughly the same language. It condemned the Globe and Mail’s
Jan Wong for an opinion piece she wrote that suggested the reasons
for the Dawson College shootings carried out by Kimveer Gill and
Valery Fabrikant’s Concordia rampage as well as Marc Lepine’s (Gamil
Gharbi was his real name) Polytechnique massacre might have been
due to alienation felt by Quebec immigrants because of the failures
of integration into the "pure laine" world. Once again the Council
objected to a journalist’s formulation of an opinion, based on her
interpretation of the facts, because it painted Quebec society in
a negative light. It upheld the complaint of Montreal’s Societe
Saint-Jean-Baptiste that Ms. Wong left the impression that Quebec
society was pre-occupied with "racial purity".
Interestingly the Societe Saint-Jean-Baptiste was also a complainant
in the Kay affair. In both decisions the Press Council took pains to
protect the public impression of the Quebec "collective". Indeed in the
Kay decision the Council used convoluted phrasing to warn against the
"raising of contempt against a category of people for discriminatory
reason". If a category of people were discriminatory would they not
be worthy of contempt? But if the Council’s guidelines are followed
to their logical conclusion there would be none left to condemn them.
In the interests of full disclosure let me say that personally I
agree with Barbara Kay on this and many other issues and disagree
with Jan Wong. But that’s not the point. The only way to make sure
people you agree with are heard is to support the rights of people
you don’t agree with. The Council would silence all. As draconian
as its existence has been from the beginning, the Council seems to
have gone completely out of control. And Quebec – without putting
too fine a point on it – which already has experience in language
control with Bill 101 may be on a slippery slope to thought control
mirroring Turkey’s notorious Article 301.
The Quebec Press Council’s message is clear. Any attack on
"Quebecness"- particularly by non-francophones – will be condemned.
Turkey has such an actual law in place. It is Article 301 of its
Penal Code that makes it a criminal offence to attack "Turkishness".
Just this past Friday Turkey’s largest telecommunications services
provider, Turk Telekom, blocked access to YouTube, following a court
decision deeming that videos appearing on the site were insulting to
the father of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, and to the Turkish people.
Article 301/1 of the Turkish Penal Code, generally called the
"Insulting Turkishness" Law, took effect in June 2005. The law states
"A person who explicitly insults being a Turk, the Republic or the
Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be imposed to a penalty of
imprisonment for a term of six months to three years. Where insulting
being a Turk is committed by a Turkish citizen in a foreign country,
the penalty to be imposed shall be increased by one third."
The law was pushed through by the nationalist "Unity of Jurists"
group. According to PEN International more than 70 writers, publishers,
and journalists are currently under indictment or standing trial
under this law.
Notable cases include that of Fatih Tas, a publisher defending himself
from charges stemming from his publication of a book by Noam Chomsky;
five journalists charged for their criticism of official attempts to
ban a conference focusing on the Armenian massacres; Abdullah Yilmaz,
the editor in chief of a publishing house, who was charged for issuing
a Turkish edition of Greek writer Mara Meimaridi’s best-selling novel
"The Witches of Smyrna"; world-renowned author Orhan Pamuk charged
with "insulting Turkishness" for stating in an interview in Germany
that "thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in
these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it."; Turkish-born
American Professor Elif ^Zafak who came to Turkey on principle, while
pregnant, to face an Article 301 prosecution because of the fictitious
characters she created in her novel, "The Bastard of ^Zstanbul";
and ^Zpek Cali^Zlar who is facing prosecutors because she wrote in a
biography of Mustafa Kemal’s wife Latife that Ataturk had once fled
disguised as a woman.
But the most notorious case was that of crusading journalist Hrant
Dink who was murdered after he was found guilty of violating Article
301 because as editor of the Armenian language newspaper Agos he
published articles in 2004 – before the passage of the law – entitled
"the Armenian Identity".
As troubling as the law itself, is the public atmosphere of hate it
stirs up. As I wrote earlier, perception is everything. As easily
as Turkish passions are aroused to protect secularism, so too those
passions are aroused to extreme nationalism. Stirring up mob mentality
is far too easy. Orhan Pamuk and a number of international observers
were harassed and jostled by a crowd outside his hearing, and the
courtroom was jammed with supporters of the prosecution. When Hrant
Dink appeared at his hearing, members of the prosecution harangued
the defendants, their lawyers, and even the judge.
Pro-prosecution crowds threatened and spat on the defendants and
journalists as they entered the courthouse and threw coins and other
objects at them from the public gallery during the proceedings. At
one point, those inside were unable to leave for around an hour
until police were able to escort them out. One of those trapped in
the courtroom described the scene as an "attempted lynching."
We know about mob mentalities in Quebec as well. The Quebec Press
Council does nothing but inflame extreme nationalist fervour and
threaten dissent. But perhaps its most grievous insult to Quebecers
is that it does not trust us with the ability to chose. We are to be
educated like children on the "right path". Mao would be proud.
Perhaps it is time for the Council to look to its beloved France for
direction instead. Let it heed the words of newly-elected President
Nicolas Sarkozy who said at the time of the Mohammed cartoon riots,
"I prefer an excess of caricature than an excess of censorship." In
the final analysis liberty, in its most basic sense, lays in the
inalienable right of the people to choose.
Beryl Wajsman is president of the Institute for Public Affairs
of Montreal publisher of BARRICADES Magazine
and host of Corus Radio’s "The Last Angry Man"
on the New 940Montreal.
He can be reached at: [email protected]"
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