A group has formed in Canada to profit from attacking non-existant hate while impugning legitimate debate by “right wingers” .
Canada’s SPLC
CAHN began operations in early 2018, billing itself as an “independent, nonprofit organization made up of Canada’s leading experts and researchers on hate groups and hate crimes.” Its mandate, according to CAHN’s website, “is to monitor, research, and counter hate groups by providing education and information on hate groups to the public, media, researchers, courts, law enforcement, and community groups.” And it makes no bones about the inspiration for its domestic anti-hate crusade. In a letter to a House of Commons committee introducing itself to Canadian parliamentarians last April, CAHN claimed to be “modelled after, and supported by, the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the United States.” The letter was delivered several weeks after the no-longer-esteemed Dees was fired for allegations of sexual and racial misconduct.
Naming-and-shaming for thee, but not for me
CAHN makes no evident attempt to acknowledge the massive grey area between hotly debated viewpoints and outright hate. Rather, it actively picks sides and ignores the consequences. The group flatly bills itself as a “monitor” of “right-wing extremist groups” (and then just white supremacist groups, apparently). Warman has explained his purpose is to create “maximum disruption” for alt-right organizations. As such, CAHN habitually ignores equally egregious activity by the far-left. In line with the SPLC, CAHN also generally avoids attacking the speech or association rights of Muslim or Sikh extremists, current allies of white liberals.
CAHN’s Perry as well complains about law enforcement agencies’ tendency to distinguish between hate groups and terrorist groups. To most people, such a distinction might seem clear and reasonable. In the one category are groups holding strong views that many people might find distasteful or even awful, but that don’t incite or engage in violence; in the other are groups planning and/or carrying out attacks. Perry’s preference, however, is to blur the difference between the two – thus conflating the holding of views she considers objectionable with illegal activity aimed at destroying Western society.
