Fascists supress the ideas of others are try to prevent free speech.

Where the fuck do you morons get the idea of connesting Blatchford to Ernst Zundel. You assholes bear a much closer resemblance to Joseph Stalin

Hi, I just have a few questions for the poster of this article. What is KW Anti-Racist Action? How long as it been around? I also have the same questions about Concerned Settlers of Waterloo Region on the Grand River Territory.

I'm asking because I have been in KW for going on 6 years now, and have been involved in activist work for many of those years, yet I had never heard of either of those groups until now. I remember seeing the Facebook page for the teach-in, and I thought it said it was being done with members of the Six Nations Solidarity Network, was I or the page mistaken?

The reason I am posing these questions is because these groups sound like the sort of thing I would like to get involved in. As a person of mixed-race Native descent, I've always been involved in anti-racist and indigenous solidarity work, and would be quite excited to find that there are groups in KW who specifically orient themselves towards that kind of work.

"The goal of this action was to silence Blatchford" - Gotta love censorship!

I think that you should real On Liberty by J.S. Mill.  Specifically Chapter 2 on Freedom of Speech.  Suffice to say, you're doing it wrong.

I find it hilarious how you equate the ramblings of Christie Blatchford, which are legitimate if not well written criticisms, with racism.

Hi Fascists,

By resorting to violence and the silencing of others you expose for all the bankruptcy of your arguments, and your inability to simply argue with Blatchford.  Your smug and self-righteous attitude is not warranted: in reality you are nothing more than intellectually deficient closet authoritarians.  You are fascists, because you choose to use violence when words would serve you best.  By supposedly fighting under the banner of anti-racism, you bring this cause into disrepute. 

It seems that "racism" has been redefined as whatever statements left - wing activists don't like to hear.

I understand why this strategy is used - it has been effective in the past. But you will see that you have overplayed your hand, like the boy who cried "wolf", and pretty soon no one will be listening to you, whether you are truly fighting racism, or lying (as you have in this case). 

How sad for Canada that this is what our universities are turning into.

So allowing George galloway, who is a known terrorist supporter, to speak is OK but preventing Christie Blatchford not to because she wants to speak the truth is not? Typical leftie moranism, smear them with the R word and suddenly it's OK. I don't think so, Stalin would be proud of you guys, when does th book burning and executions take place?

all these "fascist" responses are so weird.

have you ever read anything by christie blatchford? no? well, it's racist.

it's drivel, and poorly written, and plays to your emotions and isn't backed up by facts and relies on vague and ethnocentric notions of "nationhood", and falls into every category of gender stereotype and is filled with fear and loathing of everything not middle class and "respectable". AND it's racist.

furthermore "freedom of speech" neither prohibits people who disagree from doing so in whatever medium they wish to express it (with their bodies, for instance), nor does it permit the saying of whatever, anywhere, about anything.

just a reminder - the late great CANADIAN no-fascist media theorist Marshall McLuhan referred to millions of things as mediums of communication, including your clothing, your skin, your very body. so, wouldn't that mean that those KW ARA folks were using *their* freedom of speech when they took over that podium. hmmm.

you "facist" accusers really need to tone it down. if you don't like what happened, donate some money to the "christie needs a haircut" fund and stop wasting your time posting here.

It is a bit of an ideological stretch to call Blatchford a racist. I am no fan of her or her writing, but simply because she "sided" with the non-indigenous residents of Caledonia does not constitute racism. I have read much of her coverage on this subject, and while she openly condemns the actions of native protestors and their land occupation, it is a discredit to a free dialogue on the subject to call it racism. I do not remember anything she said being about the indigenous people as a "people," nor do I recall anything she said as essentialist (if anything, the reverse is true -- she frequently characterized the "white" residents of Caledonia as "simple" and "angry).

I haven't read her book. I don't know its contents. I imagine it probably contains much of the same condemnations as her many articles. It is a shame that these protestors chose to exercise their right to protest against Blatchford, because if they think she is a racist, then I guarantee the vast majority of rural and suburbanite Ontario residents agree with her. So you'd appear to have an outbreak of racism on your hands, and if you think that locking her out of this event is "enlightening" the minds of area residents, you have a lot more work to do than you think. Good luck with that.

I have tried to have an open and fair dialogue with Christie Blatchford before sending a series of emails to her with several questions and criticisms of a severley biased article that she wrote. She was rather evasive. That is sherefused to engage in dialogue and answer my questions and instead chose to attack my writing style.

I have read excerpts from her book and she sounds like she is running for office or something.

I don't really have time for middle class institutionalized racism. Which I should say comes through in some of the above comments.

I appreciate this action. At the same time I hope that the individuals involved are constantly challenging themselves.

And if any of you want to criticize me because I don't think that apologists like Christie should be allowed to move around protected by their priviledged middle class peace.

Go buy her book that will show us.

For they provide the rest of us with fodder.

The truth is, the Anti racist Action, or ARA are indicative of the left. They cannot tolerate or abide any opinion that does not conform to their narrowly defined, collectivist idea of the truth. When someone does try to speak up, it is not their ideas that are attacked, but their character. The left likes using ad hominem attacks because they know, deep inside, and yet are afraid to admit it that their cherished beliefs are nothing more than cod swollop.

One og the above posters opined that Christie Blatchford gives no mention of land claims, and tars her as an apologist. The focus of her book is not the issue of land claims, but how the Provincial Government acceeded its authority to an unelected, militant organization that is also suspected of organized criminal behaviour: The Warriors Society. She criticizes the government for abandoning law abiding citizens to a terror campaign mounted by violent, racialist, isolationist extremists within the First Nations community.

Now, if you want to talk about land claims, don't raise that topic unless you know where from you speak. Why? Well, my dear friends, the Six Nations Mokawk on the Haldemand Tract are not indigenous to the area. Like the Cuyuga, they fought for the British during the American Rebellion, and then fled New York for Ontario, and the protection from prosecution that the Crown offered, Then Governor Hamdemand leased them the land for the notional price of One Pound. The land was never deeded to them, but instead lent to them as long as they prmised loyalty to the Crown. Then one of their own sold it off in the 1870's.

So, PISS on the Six Nations. Let them go back to New York and whine after their "traditional" territory.

Chuck in K-W asked some questions that are unanswered:

"What is KW Anti-Racist Action? How long as it been around? I also have the same questions about Concerned Settlers of Waterloo Region on the Grand River Territory."

I hope someone answers.

hey folks,

A few notes about fascism. The best definition I've ever heard is that fascism is the fusion of state and corporate power, linking the demand for profit, efficiency, and expansion to the state's mandate of control and nationalism.

It can't really be understood just in terms of left and right, so let's broaden the spectrum a bit. Imagine a circle. Let the left part of the circle be 'socialist', and the right part of the circle be 'capitalist'. Now, let the top of the circle be 'libertarian' and the bottom of the circle be 'authoritarian'.

Now, we can see both hitler and stalin chilling out at the very bottom of the circle, firmly in the authoritarian section, one a little bit to the capitalist side, one a little bit to the socialist side, both disgusting despots intent on social control. They could probably both accurately be described as fascists.

ARA is (often) an anarchist group, and anarchism can be described as libertarian (top of circle) socialism (left of circle). Small government conservatives are on the other side of the circle, in the libertarian capitalist section. Neither of the two sides that have emerged in the above postings can really be described as fascist. There's definitely a disagreement about appropriate protest, but the huge ideological smears are unhelpful.

And now a quick note about racism too. I promise I'll make a point in just a minute. For me, it's important to distinguish racism from racial prejudice. Racial prejudice is when someone doesn't like a group of people because of their perceived race. Racism is that same prejudice backed up with institutional power, which in canada takes the shape of a predominately white government and corporate class, with a very recent history of overtly racist policies. So when a white person is prejudiced against native people, it's racist because their prejudice is in line with the power structures in society, but if a person of colour hates white people, it may be prejudiced but not racist.

Christie Blatchford might more accurately be described as a racist apologist. This is because she denies the existance of those social structures that make racism possible. The narrative that she constructs is entirely portraying affluent white people as victims, and transforms the entire issue of Six Nations land claims into a policing/crime issue. This ignores the history of colonialism and genocide that saw the Mohawk Nation's numbers be decimated and their once huge territory reduced to a handful of reservations, and those reservations shrunk to fractions of their original size.

Without saying who's right or wrong in the Caledonia land debate, Blatchford wants us to ignore history and only think about policing -- how to manage a problem so that the middle class doesn't have to think about it, rather than trying to understand a problem so that amends can be made.

Another reason that she is a racist apologist is her support of Gary McHail. McHail is quite a bit more overtly racist, questioning the right of Six Nations to any sort of self-determination, and insisting on forced assimilation by way of policing. He also works with avowed white supremists like Paul From. So we see Christie supporting Gary supporting Paul.

And we can't forget that Christie Blatchford is one of the most influential writers in this country.  When she makes invisible a people's history and advocates their forced assimilation by way of her support for McHail and others, her views have a way of transforming into reality. And her views are so strongly in line with the racist, colonial tradition that manifests in actions like McHail's and the short-lived Caledonia Militia that she is making more extreme racist positions seems more acceptable and reasonable.

Many people have been protesting her book in order to create an alternate narrative, one in which Christie Blatchford isn't speaking for all white people when she calls for a policing solution to land claims. Even if a talk is cancelled because of these protests, she is not being silenced -- she is a best selling author and is a regular columnist in a nationaly distributed newspaper. She takes up so much space in the media on the issue of land claims that she is in fact silencing others by her very success at advocating her positions.  Protestors are seeking to use her fame and notoriety as a springboard to gain attention for other ways of understanding the same issues she's talking about.

Christie dominates the public discourse with her racist apologia, using her power and privilege to make possible attacks against people with far less. Some minor, peaceful distruption of one of her many events has managed to get a dissenting view into some news sources. To me, this has introduced another voice into the media and can only be a good thing.

respect,

Danny O

It's rather comfortable to write off the event as a disturbance to free speech. Without the broader context mainstream media reports that an author was prevented from speaking. (Thoughts of censorship are immediately rampant and some think of another recent example where anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott was labled as a fear-mongerer and convinced to present 50 kilometres away from her topic of conversation since venues in Port Hope refused to take such a controversial speaker). I'll admit, when I heard the news of the Blatchford protest I was quick to suggest that this kind of action does not allow for discussion and healthy dialogue. But I had no concept of Blatchford's book and how her opinion on the (“preferential”) police response to Indigenous protestors in Caledonia is considered without any analysis of underlying structures of power and privilege – a blatant disregard of the very real and relevant context of the oppression of Indigenous people in this country.

In her most recent column in the Globe and Mail, Blatchord mentions that in the days since the protest she has been second-guessing herself all over the place. Unfortunately, Blatchford's self-reflection only seems to go as far as wondering whether she should have forced herself onto the stage despite organizers precaution in allowing her to approach the podium. For anyone who has read Blatchford's forum of free speech in the Globe and Mail on most other days of the year, the incident seems to be less about preventing Blatchford from speaking her mind and more about highlighting why it is unjust that her book Fearless portrays an incident as on par with an entire narrative surrounding Caledonia land claim issues. Although Blatchford claims that she “took pains in the book to explain what it is not about”, how can any conflict be removed from its social and historical context? Just as onlookers (myself included) may have initially assumed that the protest was an act of hooligan censorship, there is a need in both cases for an informed analysis.