Monday, April 21, 2008

Ezra Levant gulls the credulous

Ezra's latest post-- immediately taken up by his ragged horde of admirers and water- carriers-- betrays an amazing capacity for mental legerdemain. In it, he pretty well accuses Richard Warman of lying to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2006 by stating he didn't know who "Jadewarr" was.

Actually, that's not quite what Warman said:

MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that
is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?

MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.

MR. FROMM: By whom?

MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.

But this is what Levant had to say at his place on April 9:

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the etymology behind "jadewarr" -- the nom de plume that Canadian Human Rights Commission investigators Dean Steacy, Richard Warman and other Stormfront members used when they posted their online bigotry.

Obviously that provides a missing context. And just as obviously, Levant is gaming his supporters yet again.

There's more. Levant states that Warman was present when a "generic version" of an original "Jadewarr" post to the neo-Nazi Stormfront site was printed off, by CHRC employee Dean Steacy. Recall that this is not the original document, shown to him in front of the Tribunal in 2006. So a second leap is made by Levant: that Warman not only was present during the production of the second, "generic," document, but knew who produced the first one.

So which is it, Ezra? Was Dean Steacy the one and only user of the "Jadewarr" pseudonym? Or was it used by a whole lot of people, as you claimed a mere twelve days ago--in which case his "I don't know" was most likely the plain truth?

UPDATE: (April 21) Some of his commenters are onto this.

(Photo: Alison at Creekside)

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