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EDITORIAL: The hateful spate

In defending his client’s right to willfully promote hatred online, the lawyer for Quesnel man Arthur Topham made one undeniable point.

In defending his client’s right to willfully promote hatred online, the lawyer for Quesnel man Arthur Topham made one undeniable point. He argued that in the Internet age, odious viewpoints like the ones espoused by his client can be found just about anywhere.

(We would likely make the same point but with a much different inflection.)

Topham’s website caters to Holocaust deniers, warns of homofascism, and includes the occasional piece positing U.S. President Donald Trump’s role as saviour.

This week, a B.C. Supreme Court judge rightly dismissed Topham’s challenge. We can only hope our justice system will remain vigilant as increasing numbers of emboldened racists ooze from their message boards into the streets.

The thinning barrier between online venom and political discourse was evident when Liberal MP Iqra Khalid recently submitted a motion (not a law) intended to be a roadmap in our government’s fight against systemic racism.

The reaction to M-103 demonstrates its need far better than Khalid ever could.

A flood of threats and insults have been lobbed at the MP, along with a handful of declarations about whose country this really is (we’d guess very few of those notes were authored by First Nations).

And even while Khalid was explaining that Islamophobia is defined as irrational hatred, we witnessed Toronto protesters encircling a mosque and calling for a ban on Islam.

Supporters of the protesters – all of whom seem incapable of comprehending irony – demanded we uphold free expression.

Free speech includes the unpopular and the unusual, but we should never allow it to be a shield for the downright hateful.

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