Jay Currie

So five days of “hearings” and, frankly, I am still not sure what it is the Socks were objecting to which would actually fit under s.7. As McConchie pointed out, the Socks provided no direct evidence of hate speech and there is no right to rebuttal in s.7.

However, that is not the Socks or the ‘roos game. To understand that game you have to pay attention to the basic idea of post modern literary theory: it is the reader rather than the writer who gives a text meaning. To give an example – let’s say a pomo literary critic announces that Moby Dick is about Herman Melville’s penis. And let’s say Herman Melville is still alive and says to the pomo critic, “you are wrong, its about a whale.” Pomo literary theory would reject “privileging” the author’s view and would accept the reader’s interpretation as equally, or indeed more, valid than the author’s.

Now this may sound completely crazy but as Mohammedan legal titan Faisal Joseph cited the Collins case(s) that was exactly the button he was pushing. In the Collins cases the Tribunal had a rather difficult time because they knew, and the complainants knew, that Doug Collins was a raging anti-semite, the problem was that his writings really didn’t bear this knowledge out. What to do? Well, what they did was rounded up an expert or two to give the opinion that Collins’ writing was all the more invidious because his antisemitism was occluded. Hidden beneath the superficial surface meanings of his actual words. Voila, problem solved….off with his head.

The Socks and their experts and Mohammedan legal titan Faisal Joseph did not and could not prove that the Steyn piece was, on its face, hate speech. I suspect they knew that going in. But what Steyn wrote made them feel bad so it must be bad. And, on the logic of Collins – which, sadly was never brought to the SCC - once the bad feeling was established it is just a matter of finding an interpretation of the text which will explain the feeling it invokes.

As the Macleans defence pointed out ““These complaints are not about hate speech at all. These complaints seek a fundamental change in speech regulation by human rights authorities which would empower tribunals across the country that would force magazines and newspaper across the coutnry to publish replies at equal length” to articles that this or that group disagrees with — ie the statutory right of reply.” But to wedge the complaints under s. 7 the Socks had to claim hate speech.

As there is no actual hate speech in the article their case boils down to the imputation of hateful motive to Steyn and Macleans based on a scant bit of evidence about how a small number of Muslims may have felt reading the piece.

Preposterously, relying on the pomo version of textual interpretation embraced by the ‘roos in the Collins cases this argument has a reasonable chance of success.

OK, time for adult supervision. Let’s hope that the ‘roos provide a detailed set of reasons and a finding for the complainant (even if the remedies sought are entirely beyond the ‘roos jurisdiction) and then let us move on to a series of real Courts.

However, by way of coda, let us remember Alice as she stepped Through the Looking Glass (as we have this week) and met Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”

(Thanks to Andrew Coyne and Ezra Levant who live-blogged from behind the Basement Looking Glass and lived to tell the tale…at least Ezra did, Coyne’s MIA.)