Ward News case boils down to truth versus tissue of lies
As if to underscore the ha-ha of it, the purported satire, James Sears had himself several chuckles and snorts while Jew-slagging stuff was being examined.
That would be the James Sears who lost his medical licence in the ’90s for sexual misconduct with three women and is editor-in-chief of the odious giveaway rag, Your Ward News.
Co-accused LeRoy St. Germaine chortled alongside, apparently highly amused by evidence from a scholar who holds the title of William Lee Frost Professor of Modern Jewish History at Harvard University, formerly with U of T.
If I were to draw word pictures, akin to caricatures frequently published in Your Ward News, Sears would be a reptilian creature, lizard-like, with straggly rat-tail hair. Actually, he looks kind of like the anti-Semitic exaggerated stereotypes featured in the quarter-annual gazette delivered — unsolicited — to upward of 320,000 people in southwestern Ontario.
St. Germaine, no-neck and bullet-headed, put me instantly in mind of Mussolini.
But of course I wouldn’t stoop to such tropes.
Sears and St. Germaine are on trial, judge-only, each charged with two counts of wilfully promoting hatred against two identifiable groups — Jews and women. Thus far, the evidentiary focus in a Toronto courtroom has been largely on the former.
“Anti-Semitism and antifeminism can go together,” Dr. Derek Penslar testified Thursday. “They certainly went together in Nazi Germany. There’s common elements and common causes.”
In cross-examination by St. Germaine’s lawyer, Ian McCuaig, Penslar agreed that satire can be unpleasant, even ridiculous, and not necessarily hateful, which is what the defence is claiming of Your Ward News content. But Penslar also countered: “I don’t think we come away from Your Ward News thinking kindly of that person.”
Can parody not arise, McCuaig continued, from “a kernel of truth”?
Penslar: “Anti-Semitic speech, like any kind of hostility or hateful speech, will thrive better if it can draw on some kernel of truth … But it gets embellished with hatred.”
As with Holocaust denial, so popular with Jew-hating crackpots who contend that Jews control the world banks and conspiracy-spinners claiming Jews were responsible for 9/11.
“The evidence of the Holocaust is overwhelming,” said Penslar, pointing out that two-thirds of European Jews had been murdered. “It’s the most documented crime in human history. Yes, there are Jews on Wall Street. Do they control international finance? No. There’s the element of truth and then there’s the tissue of lies.”
The lies are what Your Ward News allegedly promotes, landing uninvited on doorsteps, primarily distributed in Beaches wards. (The federal government temporarily barred Canada Post from distributing the publication two years ago and recently made the ban permanent.)
Examples of content: One edition cover which made reference to “6 million lampshades,” drawing upon a rumour that the wife of a Nazi leader had a lampshade made from Jewish skin.
As Crown Robin Flumerfelt told Ontario Court Judge Richard Blouin in his opening address, Your Ward News is “steeped in anti-Semitic language and imagery,” neo-Nazi rhetoric, Holocaust denial and “a veneration for Adolf Hitler and Nazism.”
Since the trial began on Wednesday, it has rapidly become clear that the defence will be staked on freedom of expression and unintended offence taken by humourless sorts who don’t get the joke. That’s a clever posture at the very least, adopting the broad shield of intellectual and artistic licence and sheer silliness. Because silly — cartoonish inane — the material certainly is. And proving promulgation of hatred, as a crime, is a bitch of a thing for any prosecution. (There were 2,073 policereported criminal incidents motivated by hate across Canada in 2017, according to Statistics Canada; 38 per cent of them were violent offences. But I can’t find any data for how many resulted in convictions.) What court was shown Thursday was a 90-minute video of the police interview conducted with St. Germaine a year ago, when he was charged.
Det. Scott Purches, of the Toronto police intelligence unit, asks St. Germaine if he would like to call a lawyer.
St. Germaine: “What would I discuss with them?”
So, have it your way, no lawyer.
The accused agreed that, as publisher, he has the final say in what appears in Your Ward News, a publication costing between $50,000 and $70,000 to produce, per issue, funded almost entirely by donations.
“There are a lot of people who really love what we’re doing, not just in Canada but in the U.S.”
Describing himself as Métis, St. Germaine tells Purches that he has the right to express himself, although he’s been feeling the heat from advertisers and would like to go ad-free in the future.
“Don’t tell me what to read. Don’t tell me what to think. That’s Marxist.”
But hey, he doesn’t hate Jews. “I have nothing against Jews. I have Jewish relatives. I’ve had many Jewish friends over the years. They’re just people.”
If they take offence to his publication’s content, well, that’s their problem. “I don’t think you can ever offend a person,” he says in the videotape. “Whatever goes on in a person’s mind is not offending. Spewing out propaganda is what regular media is doing. That’s a hate machine. We’re not a hate machine, we’re a fun machine.”
Well, could he recall any content published that was pro-Jew? “Not that I can think of.” St. Germaine said he has, however, fact-checked Google for articles that didn’t ring true to his ears. Such as? “Gassed six million people? I don’t buy that s--- at all.”
The trial continues on Monday.