Thank you to the chair and members of the committee for this opportunity to contribute to the parliamentary study of online hate. I am a professor of sociology and Muslim studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. I specialize in anti-racism and Islamophobia studies.
Currently, I'm conducting a study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council on mapping the Canadian Islamophobia industry, along with the National Council of Canadian Muslims. By the term “Islamophobia industry”, I am referring to a constellation of individuals, groups, think tanks, politicians, academics, institutions, grassroots organizations, media outlets and donors who manufacture, produce, distribute and attempt to normalize fear, bigotry and hatred toward Islam and Muslims.
The research I am doing examines and maps the political, ideological, institutional and economic networks that foment Islamophobic fear and moral panic in Canada. This is essentially an industry of hate, which operates through a variety of tacit and overt means and intersects within a broad, interconnected transnational network. The web of associations in this network connects Canadian white supremacist and white nationalist groups—who, according to Barbara Perry’s research, have grown in number from upward of 100 in 2015 to almost 300 in 2018—with a variety of other groups, organizations and individuals that form the soft power behind this industry and the dog-whistle extremist rhetoric often guised in liberal discourses about upholding free speech, preserving Judeo-Christian democracy and safeguarding Canadian values from the threat of Muslim infiltration. They use online platforms to purvey their ideologies of hate, racism and xenophobia, and connect with other alt-right groups that are rooted in neo-fascism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of bigotry.
This is conceived of as an industry because there are donors who provide financing for the activities of these groups. According to a report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the University of California at Berkeley, in the United States a $200-million, small, tightly networked group of donors, organizations and misinformation experts circulate funding to advance certain political interests. A recent report released by CAIR in the United States, entitled “Hijacked by Hate”, expands this funding base to include philanthropic and charitable donors contributing almost $1.5 billion to 39 Islamophobia network groups.
There is no doubt that this funding is being used to support, maintain and proliferate the online reach of the network of organizations to whom this money is being filtered on such a large scale. Many of these U.S.-based groups have interests tied to Canadian counterparts. We've seen some evidence of Canadian organizations that promote Islamophobic agendas being funded by U.S. donors, which increases the base of their ideological support and opportunities for political mobilization. For example, the anti-Muslim think tank Middle East Forum in the United States—headed by Daniel Pipes, a key player in the Islamophobia industry—provided funding to a conference in Canada for a group called Canadians for the Rule of Law. I attended this conference with some of my students, and was physically assaulted and forcibly removed for asking Christine Douglass-Williams about the kind of Islamophobic rhetoric that had her removed from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation's board.
Further, there are global ties and transnationally linked spheres of influence that circulate with impunity both online and within the public sphere promoting widespread hate and bigotry. A recent report by the U.K. group Faith Matters investigated Rebel Media, described as a platform for the globalization of hate that promotes white nationalism and Islamophobic fearmongering to an audience with over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube. Rebel Media also received $2 million of funding from the Middle East Forum.
We also know that online forums are the primary site where radicalization is taking place. Even online gaming sites have become spaces for organizing and role-playing racist forms of violence. Online hate propagation creates an ideological breeding ground to inspire terrorists like Alexandre Bissonnette, responsible for the Quebec massacre, as well as the New Zealand shooter and Anders Breivik in Norway.
I provide this context from my research as a preamble to contextualize the formation and scope of contemporary industries of hate, bigotry and Islamophobia that operate online and in the public sphere. I’d like to put forth two areas of consideration for the committee today. The first is the controversy between hate speech and free speech. Two, I'd like to offer some recommendations from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance of the Council of Europe in terms of “General Policy Recommendation No. 15 on Combating Hate Speech”, which was adopted in December 2015.
First I'll speak to the hate speech versus free speech controversy.
Challenges to section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act were contested on the basis that provisions that protect prohibited speech inciting hatred of people based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics would violate freedom of speech.
Free speech is not an unbridled right, so it is important to consider its limits. It is vital to differentiate between the legitimate dissent that may include unpopular or controversial views, and speech acts that incite hatred and create poisoned and threatening environments. This critical discernment is what these politically fraught times require and is the work that must be done to balance free speech as a limited right with the protection of human rights, dignity and equity. Only then will we be able to uphold the greater good for all.
Sacrificing human rights on the altar of free speech has become a strategy in the alt-right tool kit of bigotry. In the midst of growing concerns about neo-fascism, white supremacy and white nationalism, alt-right groups are weaponizing free speech and using it as a rhetorical prop in their campaigns of hate and ideological intimidation. These groups engage in tactics such as vandalism, harassment and online doxing under the cover of a free speech alibi. Now, newly emboldened neo-fascist groups are coming out from the shadows of Internet chat rooms and entering the public sphere.
As a flagship case in Canada, I want to remind us of James Keegstra, the Alberta high school teacher who communicated hateful rhetoric against the Jewish community in his classroom, depicting Jews as evil and denying the Holocaust. In 1984 he was prosecuted under subsection 319(2) of the Criminal Code for publicly and wilfully promoting hatred. The Supreme Court of Canada concluded that even though the legislation infringed on freedom of expression, it was a reasonable and justifiable limitation, in a free and democratic society, to protect target groups from hate propaganda.