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[https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jonathan-kay-what-to-make-of-racism-sexism-and-homophobia-from-the-same-people-lecturing-us-about-bigotry
What to make of racism, sexism and homophobia - from the same people lecturing us about bigotry
Jonathan Kay
November 6, 2019 9:06 PM EST
An extraordinary column appeared on the website of Canadian Lawyer on Tuesday. Titled, “B.C. Brazilian waxing case a step backward for trans human rights cases, says lawyer,” the article presented an interview with self-described “transgender human rights activist” Adrienne Smith, who laments that the recent legal setback to scrotal-waxing enthusiast Jessica Yaniv (JY) is “going to put a chill on trans rights human rights litigation in British Columbia.” That’s a rather eyebrow-raising claim given that an exhaustive judgment written up by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal showed Yaniv to be a vexatious racist and grifter who’d deliberately targeted Vancouver-area immigrant women who didn’t have the means to fight back.
Incredibly, Smith complains that, in the words of the interviewer, a good lawyer “would have prevented Yaniv” from expressing the racist animus behind the human-rights grifting campaign. Which is to say: This “human rights activist” regards JY’s racism as “unfortunate” - but mainly because it got in the way of a trans-positive judgment.
It may seem odd to see a progressive go on record to yatta-yatta-yatta racism in this way. (JY has referred to Canadians with South Asian heritage as “turban f—–s” who “should not be allowed in Canada.”) But it is not so shocking as it once was: One of the unsettling aspects of progressive cultism is that its acolytes see their cause as so morally urgent that it justifies tactics that would horrify them if they were employed by the other side.
This is most evident in the debate over trans rights, which now features regular scenes of angry woke men mansplaining gender to feminists. Online, trans-rights extremism has unleashed open season on feminists and lesbians, with some of the charming tag lines being “Let me know if ur a TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminist) so I can beat the s–t out of you,” “Burn them all,” and “S–k my girl-c–k.” At the anti-Meghan Murphy protest in Vancouver on Saturday, a woman carried a mock guillotine emblazoned with the words “Step Right Up TERFs!” When you’re so woke that you forget how to spell “MeToo,” and killing women becomes a punch line.
Some of Canada’s most impassioned and dogmatic anti-racists, when riled up, sometimes betray their own racism. At that same anti-Murphy protest, local activist Amanda Jabbour repeatedly accused an Asian woman attending the event with a non-Asian man of being a “mail-order bride,” even continuing her bizarre taunting after her bigotry was called out. Later on, when video of the event surfaced, her equally progressive employer, PACE Society, put out a statement larded up with social-justice jargon, without offering any apology to the Asian woman who’d been targeted. (PACE Society creepily promised everyone a “third party accountability pod,” whatever that is.)
Meanwhile, this week on Canadian social-justice Twitter, perpetually aggrieved activist Ryan McMahon put out a call to his followers for ideas on “what are we doing about the Canadian media and pundit types that (excuse) the alt-right” and who disguise the truth (as McMahon sees it) that such alt-right forces are akin to Nazis. Among the various obscene and violent suggestions offered in the comments that follow: that such conservative pundits be put in concentration camps that should then be burned down. Because everyone knows that’s the best way to fight Nazis. Meanwhile, over at Briarpatch - a Canadian magazine that inhabits a sort of exalted, interstellar level of social-justice wokeness - an essayist writes of an Indigenous-prophesized mass-extinction “apocalypse” that will annihilate whites while Indigenous people apparently remain safe on their reserves. Like a reluctant Oskar Schindler, the author asks “Do we owe non-Indigenous people saving?” Apparently not. Oh, well.
Needless to say, racism, homophobia and sexism are flourishing on the right side of the political spectrum - sometimes with deadly results. But when this bigotry is observed, it is (rightly) exposed and criticized. The same isn’t true on the other side. Being so certain that they walk with angels, most progressives never bother looking down to see what’s stuck to their shoe.
Anti-Semitism within hard-left anti-Zionist circles has been a problem for decades. But that is now metastasizing into a more general phenomenon, with the result that the social-justice movement increasingly seems like an exercise in hypocrisy and psychological projection. As with the town that had to be destroyed to be saved, bigotry is now being weaponized in the name of … fighting bigotry.
Jonathan Kay is Canadian Editor of Quillette.
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