In some instances, Warman obtained his evidence by provoking extremist statements from obscure online message boards. Sometimes he even posed as a neo-Nazi poster himself, which one tribunal adjudicator later said “diminish[ed] his credibility” and “could have precipitated further hate messages.” Partly because his targets were mostly poor and couldn’t afford legal help, Warman was successful in every case but one. He was awarded tens of thousands of dollars in monetary compensation for the damages he purportedly suffered. As one Huffington Post contributor wryly described Warman: “He’s sacked more peewee quarterbacks than any other NFL linebacker.”

When it became apparent that Section 13 was being used as a bludgeon against free speech in Canada – most notably when three human rights tribunal complaints were launched against Maclean’s columnist Steyn – public opinion finally shifted against it. A 2008 report by University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon identified it as a clear threat to legitimate political discourse and recommended it be removed.

A year later Warman’s final and only failed Section 13 complaint, against Internet provocateur Marc Lemire, was famously dismissed when a human rights tribunal declined to enforce its provisions because it found they were inconsistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ guarantees of freedom of expression. The section was finally repealed in 2013 by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

Stolen identities

As an attorney early in his career, SPLC co-founder Dees once represented the Ku Klux Klan and had his bill paid by the White Citizens’ Council in a case involving the beating of a Montgomery, Alabama Freedom Rider (a group of civil rights activists who fought segregation). In 1958 Dees had campaigned for arch-segregationist George Wallace in the Georgia gubernatorial campaign. According to his former law partner, Millard Fuller, Dees’ “overriding purpose…[was] making a pile of money.” He transformed himself into an anti-racism crusader – with the Klan becoming one of his favourite targets – after discovering it offered an alternative route to riches via the miracle of direct mail solicitation.

CAHN has yet to prove itself as adept at fundraising as the SPLC, which in 2018 generated US$103 million in donations alone. We do know, however, that CAHN boasts of receiving direct funding and support from its big brother south of the border. And in 2018 Toronto-area businessman Mohamad Fakih made a media splash with a donation of $25,000 to CAHN following a successful defamation lawsuit against his online critics.

But now CAHN is facing its own troubling allegations of profiteering from hate. In February 2019 Elisa Hategan, an anti-racism activist and former member of an early-90s skinhead group called the Heritage Front, teamed up with professor and human rights lawyer Yavar Hameed to file a $200,000 civil claim against CAHN. Farber is also named. The lawsuit alleges CAHN Advisory Committee member Elizabeth Moore (also a former Heritage Front member) “fraudulently appropriated several significant elements of Ms. Hategan’s personal life story in order to boost her own credentials as a former neo-Nazi and did this to monetize a fraudulent narrative.” These stolen elements include Hategan’s experience as a former spokesperson for the Heritage Front and later as a defector who helped prosecutors bring the group down.

Moore had simply been an unmemorable Heritage Front fellow traveller, says Hategan. But instead, Hategan claims Moore took credit for a film made about Hategan’s experiences: 1998’s White Lies. Her suit alleges that appropriating her “narrative would be an important method of securing greater publicity, speaking engagements and financial opportunities for Moore, as well as publicity, consulting and speaking engagements for Farber.” On top of this, Hategan alleges that Farber and Moore have disparaged her publicly in order to cut her out from employment and advocacy opportunities, maximizing their own in the process. If true, this wouldn’t exactly be behaviour consistent with an organization “committed to increasing public awareness about the scourge of ‘hate’ across Canada.” The civil trial is set to begin in March.

Theatrical vs. substantive advocacy

While assuming the mantle of hate-fighter sounds like a heroic exercise in defending minority rights and rescuing the oppressed, the crusade embarked upon by the SPLC – with which CAHN, as we’ve seen, openly associates itself – is criticized even by members of the intellectual left as a fraudulent exercise. The far-left Nation magazine has called “anti-hate” advocacy a form of “theatrical” rather than “substantive advocacy.” If advocates were truly concerned about minority uplift, its columnist wrote, they should be fighting more tangible problems like employment and housing discrimination – practising actual poverty law, in other words − instead of simply “fingering militiamen in a potato field in Idaho.”

That the SPLC lost the plot by preferring activities that boosted its fundraising effectiveness over fighting for tangible improvements in its alleged clientele’s lives is not a new idea. As long ago as 1988, a former SPLC staffer admitted to The Progressive that there were “certainly bigger problems facing blacks and the poor” than continuing to tackle a now-toothless Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, said another former staffer, “was such an easy target − easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on”, and so it dominated the SPLC’s attention. Last year, Current Affairs also argued that the SPLC’s habit of elevating minority rights by targeting inconsequential right-wing groups continues a “politics of spectacle.”

Even some liberal voices in Canada have expressed concerns about “anti-hate” advocacy and hate speech generally. Former Liberal Party MP Keith Martin, a doctor of mixed-race background, fought hard against hate speech restrictions during his nearly 20 years in Parliament, saying they represented what Canada fought against in the Second World War. Martin noted that while Canadians have a right to be free from slander, they “do not have the right to not be offended.” Laws like Section 13 created a “slippery slope” in that they could be easily politicized and used to simply shut down debate.

Notable Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is against such laws for the same reason. The criticism seems particularly apt when applied to organized and powerful groups like the SPLC and CAHN. Refusing to debate or engage with groups or people they don’t like, and choosing instead to malign them in the most alarmist terms possible, is to engage in the politics of spectacle. The same goes for the active use or tacit approval of such ignominious tactics as de-platforming, doxing, Antifa mobbing and piling on spurious legal complaints.

Because hate speech charges are so nebulous and problematic, free speech advocate and author Stefan Braun refers to them as a “packaged idea.” When unpacked, Braun writes, hate speech allegations are often revealed to be based on “many different reasons besides the public good, including fear, political expedience, moral comfort, public approval, or even the ‘bottom line.’” And because it is so far from a clear concept, the Supreme Court has ruled that “hate speech” requires intense and highly fact-dependent inquiry. For this reason, hate-incitement is unique in the Criminal Code in requiring a province’s attorney-general to personally sign off on any charges.

Policing hate, in other words, is properly regarded as the most complex and delicate aspect of the entire criminal justice system, balancing as it does the Charter’s guarantees of “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression” with the Criminal Code’s protection from incitement of “hatred against any identifiable group.” Given its intricate nature, why would anyone willingly hand over responsibility for policing hate to a private group of activists that shows so little interest in the legal, democratic and social ramifications of the task and openly styles itself after a badly-tarnished American outfit? And why would so many media outlets give such an outfit the credibility it craves by treating it as a reliable and unbiased source of information?

A better and more civil way

Anyone looking to reconcile concerns over hate speech in Canadian discourse with the demands of free expression is advised to reread Moon’s 2008 report on Section 13. Therein, he suggested dealing with problematic public opinions and statements through engagement rather than prohibition and punishment. “We must develop ways other than censorship to respond to expression that stereotypes and defames the members of an identifiable group,” Moon wrote.

At the very least, before attacking someone in public, branding them “neo-Nazis” or doxing them to reveal their intimate personal details in hopes someone else will make their life miserable, CAHN should first define what it means by the labels it employs. And these labels – hate-mongering, for example – should be applied equally to everyone who expresses such animus, regardless of race, religion or politics.