Some Advice for the Canadian Public Safety Minister

[dewline]

The Canadian federal government should do for the Heritage Foundation what they did for the Proud Boys: designate them as a terrorist organization.

(Noting that I have been privately and rightly warned that this might backfire given the setting of precedent, depending on who forms government over the years and decades to come.)

Comments

[armiphlage]

Agreed.

[sabotabby]

I'll wade in here too with my vaguely libertarian belief that we cannot leave these things up to the state. The state does not differentiate between racism and anti-racism, other than that it considers the latter a more active threat to capital. These tools get turned on us just as easily.

I'll give you a concrete example: Jim Keegstra, Nazi, Holocaust denier, objectively a piece of shit who deserved to be hung upside-down so his head can be used as a football for the local children. He used to be a high school teacher and fought for years against hate speech charges and having his license revoked. Paul Fromm also used to be a high school teacher and had his licensed revoked.

Now, there's good evidence that Keegstra's beliefs entered the classroom, but that was not primarily (afaik, it's been a long time since I've looked into the details of the case) the objection to him teaching. It was more his extracurricular activities that got him into hot water.

Let's say, hypothetically, he never let his political beliefs out in front of the kids, not even once. I don't think it's possible, but I have taught with people who have similarly extreme beliefs who do not introduce them to the kids. Should we set a precedent that a teacher's stated beliefs outside of the classroom affect their employment if they're never mentioned inside the classroom? If that's the case, my comment above about Keegstra's head being used for a football would theoretically disqualify me from teaching, as would any number of other shitposts I've made—and the fact that I absolutely believe that it would be good if we could guillotine billionaires and shoot Nazis in the face.

Do I want a guy like Keegstra teaching children? Absolutely not, because I don't want a guy like Keegstra sucking up oxygen. But I'm wary of letting the state decide what is an extremist political belief and what isn't, as they're just as likely to come after me for being antifa or pro-Palestinian or vaguely anarchist or any number of things.