It’s been largely forgotten, but when Russian military intelligence created online cutouts in 2016 to manipulate the American electorate, the Democratic Party wasn’t its only target.
The most prominent of those fake digital identities was Guccifer 2.0, which took credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee and then provided the pilfered information to WikiLeaks. The other was called DCLeaks. On Aug. 29, 2016, two months after the DNC hack became public, DCLeaks’ now-banned Twitter account told its followers to check out another of its projects: “Find Soros files on soros.dcleaks.com.”
Visitors to the now-shuttered site could find purported documents from the billionaire philanthropist’s Open Society Foundations, which promote liberal values and democratization. They had file names like “public health program access to medicine” and “youth exchange my city real world.” But before those curious about the leaks got there, the Russians wanted to put George Soros in a particular context.
The homepage displayed a photo illustration of a smug-looking Soros in the midst of four scenes of street chaos whose apparent perpetrators were conspicuously nonwhite. They were taken from the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2014, the birthplace—to the consternation of many white Americans whom the Kremlin sought to cultivate—of the contemporary civil rights movement. In both the image and the accompanying text, the Russians portrayed Soros as the puppet master.
“Soros is named as the architect and sponsor of almost every revolution and coup around the world for the last 25 years. Thanks to him and his puppets USA is thought to be a vampire, not a lighthouse of freedom and democracy,” the website proclaimed. The “oligarch” who sired the U.S. vampire, and whose “slaves spill blood of millions and millions people just to make him even more rich” [sic], had a particular background the Russians highlighted in the very first sentence: Soros is “of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry and holds dual citizenship.”
More than two years later, the president of the United States gave a similar portrayal of Soros, though Trump left Soros’s background unsaid. Soros, Trump said on Friday, Oct. 5, had paid for “professionally made identical signs” in the hands of women objecting to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court justiceship. On Tuesday, he followed up by implying that Soros had stiffed these hired “screamers.” In Trump-like fashion, his accusations were a form of mirror-imaging, as Trump himself had paid for people to support his presidential announcement and denied them payment for months, and he appears to have misunderstood a Fox News guest who spoke sarcastically about Soros paying the protesters.
But it was not Trump’s first time making sinister allegations about Soros. He did so in the final advertisement from his campaign, run at the time by the blood-and-soil nationalist Steve Bannon. Its message was reminiscent of the darker periods of European history: the virtuous future of the forgotten, salt-of-the-earth people has been stolen by a predatory elite. As a shot of the Capitol Dome faded into a Wall Street sign, Trump narrated a message to “those who control the levers of power in Washington” right as the camera showed an image of Soros, giving way to a shot of then-Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen, who is also Jewish, as Trump continued speaking about “global special interests.” This followed months of the so-called alt-right transforming “globalism” into an anti-Semitic euphemism, and preceded Trump stocking his cabinet with ultra-rich financiers, Jew and gentile alike.
In the 1980s and 1990s, George Soros was hailed as an anti-communist and post-communist hero. His philanthropy helped smooth democratic transitions from the Soviet orbit in central and Eastern Europe. Alongside that track record was a different one: Soros was a ruthless currency speculator who benefited from, among other things, the 1992 British financial disaster and who once blithely dismissed second thoughts over the world-moving power of his investments, saying, “I am engaged in an amoral activity that is not meant to have anything to do with guilt.” In a 60 Minutes interview from 1998—one that Glenn Beck would famously butcher to paint Soros, who as a boy lived through Nazi occupation, as a Nazi collaborator—Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, remarked that Soros was “Donald Trump without the humility.”
The current portraiture of Soros, now ascendant if not dominant online, isn’t interested in that sort of complexity. For the far right, from Russia to central Europe and increasingly, America, Soros is the latest Jewish manipulator whose extreme wealth finances puppet groups and publications to drain the prosperity of the Herrenvolk. This cannot be dismissed as the preoccupation of ignorable fools on the internet, nor as the equivalent of liberal criticism of the Koch Brothers. Instead, the attack on Soros follows classic anti-Semitic templates, grimly recurrent throughout western history, and some of the most powerful geopolitical figures in the world are pushing it. It’s fueled by Soros’s political activism against a revanchist right eager to view the world in zero-sum racial terms that is on the march across Europe, America and beyond.
“The attack on Soros follows classic anti-Semitic templates, grimly recurrent throughout western history, and some of the most powerful geopolitical figures in the world are pushing it.”
Other Jewish bogeymen may haunt the fever dreams of the vicious, but the scale and intensity of the attacks on Soros are unrivalled. They reveal what the global nationalist right believes is at stake in this present moment. We may one day look back on this era as the Soros Age of anti-Semitism.
“It’s important to distinguish between intent and effect. Of course a person who shares a conspiracy theory about George Soros may not intend to promulgate anti-Semitism, and of course not every Soros conspiracy theory is anti-Semitic. But the image of the rich, powerful Jew who manipulates social and political movements around the world for his own agenda is an ancient anti-Semitic trope,” said Aryeh Tuchman, the associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
“Because Soros’s Jewish identity is so well known, we are concerned that conspiracy theories about George Soros may have the effect of reinforcing this trope and spreading it throughout the broader population,” Tuchman added. “This is especially true when other anti-Semitic tropes are woven in, such as claims that Soros controls the media or the banks, or when he is described using terms that harken back to medieval claims that Jews are evil, demonic, or agents of the Antichrist.”
There will always be this sort of tentacular George Soros figure. There have been many before. One was said to have profited off the bloodshed at Waterloo.
Thirty years after the pivotal battle capping the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a pamphlet circulated across Europe claiming that Nathan Rothschild, a London banker and scion of the Jewish mega-financier family, sped from the battlefield to parlay his insider knowledge of the French defeat into a windfall on the London stock exchange. “This family,” charged an author writing under the nom de plume “Satan,” “is our evil genius.”
It was the fake news of its era. Nathan Rothschild was never at Waterloo. He died five years before the pamphlet’s publication in 1841, leaving him unable to rebut it. But the lie, after a series of adjustments to explain away its baseline factual mistakes, would reach escape velocity. One subsequent version, according to Brian Cathcart of Kingston University London, claimed Rothschild “deliberately provoked a collapse in stock market confidence by encouraging rumors that Wellington had been defeated.”
The form of conspiracy theories follows their function. Here was a Jewish family whose fortune was said to derive from exploiting European carnage. As Jews, they were considered a foreign presence on the continent, one that had taken advantage of their adopted countries’ naive openness to establish a shadowy power that could determine the fate of nations. Accordingly, European publics would not have to look to their distant autocratic governments for their political disenfranchisement, nor would they have to look to a confusing system of capitalist finance to explain obscene discrepancies in wealth. In place of a systemic critique was a Jewish face. More recently, you can find Rothschild references in the QAnon conspiracy theory, alongside, of course, Soros.
A recurrent theme of 19th-century anti-Semitism is that it finds substantial currency at moments when old regimes appear exhausted and fear about revolutionary dislocation intensifies. A tutor to Russia’s final two tsars demonstrated the utility of using Jews as an omnibus explanation for the anxieties of his age. Jews in Russia endured repression of their civil and economic rights—but they only appeared powerless.
“Yids,” wrote Konstantin Pobyedonostsev in August 1879, have “invaded everything, but the spirit of the times works in their favor. They are at the root of the Social Democratic movement and tsaricide. They control the press and the stock market. They reduce the masses to financial slavery. They formulate the principles of contemporary science, which tends to disassociate itself from Christianity. And in spite of that, every time their name is mentioned, a chorus of voices is raised in favor of the Jews, supposedly in the name of civilization and tolerance, that is to say, indifference to faith. And nobody dares say that here the Jews control everything.” Like many before and since, Pobyedonostsev did not pause to reconcile his claimed Jewish interest in exploitative capitalism with his claimed Jewish interest in the socialism designed to destroy it, but a man like George Soros offers Pobyedonostsev’s descendants a way to square the circle.
After Rothschild, there was Max Warburg. Warburg, another Jewish banker, was a member of the Hamburg parliament and said to have an open line to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Once Pobyednostsev’s fears came true in 1917, a forgery about Warburg appeared in Petrograd claiming that he and a “Rhenish-Westphalian syndicate” were financing the Bolsheviks, through the Jewish Trotsky.
A Russian journalist, Eugene Semyonov, provided the forgery to an American diplomat, Edgar Sisson. It had currency for the Creel Committee, an official U.S. government propaganda organ promoting participation in World War I, since it portrayed the Russian Revolution as a German plot financed by Jews. In September 1918, the committee published it under the title The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy. Leon Poliakov writes in the fourth volume of his History of Anti-Semitism that it was the first time that an anti-Semitic forgery was published by a government that was neither tsarist nor otherwise committed to anti-Semitism as a matter of policy. (Warburg himself, 20 years later, would immigrate to New York to flee the Nazis.)
According to Poliakov, the years between the world wars were a boom time for anti-Semitic forgeries in the United States. There was the fake George Washington missive, warning that the Jews, not the British Army, were the principal danger. And there was a fake Ben Franklin prophesy, forecasting Jewish world domination by 1950 or so. Detectives hired by the anti-Semitic industrialist Henry Ford traveled to Mongolia, of all places, in pursuit of an authentic Hebrew copy of the invented Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Another went “looking for the secret channel through which [Supreme Court Justice and Jew] Louis Brandeis gave his orders to the White House.”
Foreshadowing the present day, the upswing of American anti-Semitism came at the intersection of an immigration panic, an ascendant nativist movement, and fears about foreign-borne internal subversion. As the Bolshevik Revolution spread, so did a cottage industry of paranoiacs connecting it to mainstream American Jewry, just as a later generation of Islamophobes would do to American Islam after 9/11. In 1919, a Methodist minister recently driven from Russia, the Rev. George A. Simons, testified to a Senate subcommittee about the Jewishness of Bolshevism.
Simons, speaking through barely concealed euphemism, told the Senate that he had encountered “hundreds of agitators” in the former St. Petersburg who had come from “the East Side of New York,” meaning the Jewish slum. The typical sentiment of Russians to describe the post-revolutionary arrangement, Simons related, was that “it is not a Russian government, it is a Hebrew government.” But, Simons assured the Senate, he was no bigot: “I am not in sympathy with anti-Semitism. I never was and never will be. I hate pogroms of any type. But I am firmly convinced that this business is Jewish.”
Vladimir Putin and the global nationalist right have particular motivations to vilify Soros, though deploying anti-Semitism to do it is entirely their choice.
Soros was deeply involved in post-Soviet economic efforts in Russia in the 1990s, corresponding with the nadir of Russian power that Vladimir Putin considers a national humiliation demanding redress. And though he’s denied doing any such thing, Russians have long speculated that Soros profited off a Russian economic downturn in 1998, a year during which he boasted of being Russia’s largest single investor. (His Quantum Fund claims to have lost $2 billion from the episode.) Prophetically, Soros warned Charlie Rose in 1995 of revanchist eastern-European authoritarianism born of an alliance between nationalist politicians and business interests: “Russia is very much up for grabs. It’s very much a struggle which way it’s going to go.”
Soros’s solution to all of this is liberalism. He took his inspiration from the anti-totalitarian philosopher Karl Popper, best known for The Open Society and Its Enemies, and used Popper’s work to develop a critique of the rapacious capitalism Soros himself practiced as a threat to that open society—conveniently, after he had made his billions. Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which operate in over 140 countries, provide assistance and financing to civil-society institutions that promote transparency, the rule of law, higher education, refugee aid, the rights of marginalized peoples, and democratic accountability.
Accordingly, recipients of Soros’s philanthropy include groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU that in their various ways oppose the agendas of the American right. In 2003, Soros pledged what would for anyone other than him count as a fortune in a failed attempt to prevent George W. Bush’s re-election, fanning the flames of his enemies’ ire. Then, in October 2017, the elderly Soros transferred a gargantuan $18 billion to the foundation, making it the U.S.’ second largest philanthropic organization.
But it’s one thing to be a wealthy donor, even an unfathomably wealthy one: American politics, to its cross-ideological abasement, relies upon them, and scrutiny of them is vital for the very open societies Soros promotes. It’s quite another for such an unfathomably wealthy donor to stand as a singular, nefarious explanation for all manner of global political phenomena. A recent ADL study about anti-Semitism on Twitter took particular note of the frequency and virulence of invocations of Soros for “undermin[ing] western civilization, or following a long-standing pattern of Jewish behavior.” The ADL even found far-right warnings that Soros had engineered the lethal white-supremacist march on Charlottesville as a false-flag operation.
After the teenage survivors of the Parkland high school massacre began their demonstrations for gun control, some let the mask slip. One now-suspended “alt-right” account tweeted that it was “@georgesoros at work.” Softer versions of that sentiment are ubiquitous online. One more humorous version came after someone posted a picture of a bald Britney Spears attacking a car during her 2007 meltdown to joke that it was Parkland’s Emma Gonzalez – prompting an apparently elderly woman to tweet that “these children of Satan… are funded by Soros.” At an “alt-right” gathering in New York convened by Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, drunken panelists referred to Soros as the “head of the snake.”
Larger players in the “alt-right” firmament, echoing their 19th- and 20th-century antecedents, find the malevolent handiwork of Soros everywhere. WikiLeaks, on Twitter, sought to discredit 2016-era reporting in the Panama Papers concerning Vladimir Putin by portraying it as Soros-funded. Bannon’s former home for distorted news, Breitbart, ran a cottage industry connecting far-right targets to Soros, no matter how innocuous the connection. In a typical piece, H.R. McMaster’s consultancy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies – a minor thing, considering it overlapped with McMaster’s Army career – became “Soros-funded” through a IISS affiliation with the nuclear-nonproliferation Ploughshares Fund. Google and Facebook were hit with similar Breitbart smears-by-association through their sins of using credible organizations like the Poynter Institution, which take Open Society money, to reduce the onslaught of fake news. InfoWars similarly highlights Soros money taken by its critics to paint itself as unfairly persecuted.
In keeping with the broader trajectory of the extreme right, the paranoid conception of Soros has moved closer to the corridors of power. In December, the GOP nominee for Senate in Alabama, Roy Moore, castigated Soros in terms redolent with anti-Semitism. Soros’s agenda was “sexual” in nature, said a man accused of child predation, and it’s “not our American culture.” Soros, Moore told a radio host, “comes from another world that I don’t identify with. … No matter how much money he’s got, he’s still going to the same place that people who don’t recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going.”
“Soros’s agenda was ‘sexual’ in nature, said Roy Moore, a man accused of child predation. Soros ‘comes from another world that I don’t identify with. … No matter how much money he’s got, he’s still going to the same place that people who don’t recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going.’”
That same month, Erik Prince, brother of Trump’s education secretary and mercenary CEO, encouraged a GQ reporter to investigate the Clintons’ sartorial choices of purple shirts and ties. “Purple Revolution lore,” the wealthy Prince told GQ. “I think it’s a Soros thing.” (There is no such thing as the Purple Revolution.) A Prince associate and former CIA official, the Intercept reported last year, told would-be donors that McMaster used a burner phone to route the fruits of deep-state surveillance on Bannon and the Trump family to “a facility in Cyprus owned by George Soros.”
More recently, after the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, Senator Chuck Grassley stopped just short of validating the accusation that Soros had paid for those protesting Kavanaugh. “I believe it fits in his attack mode that he has, and how he uses his billions and billions of resources,” said the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. Even Rudy Giuliani on Saturday retweeted someone who called Soros the “anti-Christ.” The “evil genius” that “Satan” concocted in 1841 had found its 2018 incarnation.
Nowhere has the attack on Soros been more geopolitically potent, or as clarifying, as in his native Hungary.
The Hungarian strongman prime minister Viktor Orban, for months ahead of his April reelection, united anti-Semitism and Islamophobia to portray Soros as the string-puller behind a transformational Islamic invasion of Syrian migrants. Whereas some Soros opponents mumble through their anti-Semitism, Orban roars it. Soros is out to deal “a final blow to Christian culture,” Orban charged in November. “It’s Soros’s plan for America, too. PM Orban’s view is deeply well informed & reasoned,” the racist Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King said in December while quote-tweeting an account that used the Soros photo illustration from the DCLeaks page.
In a March pre-election speech, Orban put Soros and immigration in existential terms for Hungary. He pledged to expel Soros as the Hungarians did previous remote tyrannies from the Ottomans to the Hapsburgs to the Soviets. And he applied anti-Semitic tropes not seen from a European leader since Hitler.
“We are fighting an enemy that is different from us,” Orban said, per a New York Times translation. “Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.” Even a previously sympathetic writer, National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty, said the speech read like “a checklist drawn from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Perhaps it’s worth noting that Orban himself received a Soros-funded scholarship to Oxford. But it was not the only irony in this ugly episode. To its discredit, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu wilfully averted its eyes from Orban’s anti-Semitism. Billboards in Hungary last year promoted Orban’s anti-immigrant agenda by using a photo of a smiling Soros to warn Hungarians against letting him get “the last laugh.” Yossi Amrani, the Israeli ambassador, posted on Facebook that the campaign sowed “sad memories”—an apparent allusion to Hungary’s complicity in genocidal anti-Semitism—and “hatred and fear.”
Yet the Israeli foreign ministry undercut its own diplomat. It insistedit had no intent to “delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.” That followed on Israel opting to accept official assurances against anti-Semitism after Orban called Miklós Horthy—Hitler’s Hungarian ally whose expulsions of Hungarian Jewry led to the slaughter of half a million people in the Holocaust—an “exceptional statesman.”
An Israeli journalist, Mairav Zonszein, contextualized the toleration of anti-Semitism within Netanyahu’s broader alignment with right-wing nationalist governments “if it will bolster the Greater Israel movement.” This appears to be an allusion to Soros’s funding of Israeli groups such as B’tselem and Breaking The Silence, which challenge the brutal Israeli treatment of Palestinians, an internal criticism that Netanyahu and his allies cannot abide. Netanyahu, who postures as the protector of diaspora Jewry when it suits him, had tacitly collaborated with an anti-Semite to turn a Hungarian-born Jew into a metaphorically stateless person.
Calculations like Netanyahu’s underscore the ascendancy and the purpose of the global far right. From Russia to America and beyond, the open society is on its back foot against an assault not seen since the 1930s. The assaulters are far from finished. Whereas the previous generation of European nationalists wanted to marginalize the European Union, the current one seeks to take it over. Orban and his Italian ally, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, are crusading on an anti-immigration platform ahead of spring’s European Parliamentary elections. They’re joined, on the outside, by Steve Bannon, who dreams of a pan-European nationalist bloc and styles himself, as he told The Daily Beast’s Nico Hines, a counterweight to the version of George Soros so thoroughly cultivated for the reactionary European, Russian and American imagination.
Soros would not talk for this article. But the Open Society Foundations’ communications director, Laura Silber, called the attacks on him “a tribute,” as his philanthropy “strikes at the interests of autocrats, oligarchs and corrupt politicians” and supports human dignity.
“The voices that are loudest in speaking out against George Soros are those that are authoritarian, seeking to galvanize their bases and consolidate power, ignoring or silencing the most vulnerable,” Silber told The Daily Beast. “They’re doing it by circulating recurrent tropes. The billboards that the Hungarian government put up were eerily similar to World War II propaganda, and it’s telling that they were defaced with swastikas and hateful epithets.”
“The voices that are loudest in speaking out against George Soros are those that are authoritarian, seeking to galvanize their bases and consolidate power, ignoring or silencing the most vulnerable.”
— Laura Silber
The U.S. has been better to and for Jews than any other diaspora nation in history. It’s for that reason that many American Jews, particularly those whose white skin affords them access to the highest levels of the American Dream, often diminish the dangers posed by a mass movement comfortable, wittingly or not, with creating a Jewish scapegoat for its political frustrations. There is also a powerful Jewish collective instinct to avoid calling attention to empowered anti-Semitism for fear of provoking it to violence.
Nearly a century ago, as anti-Semitic propaganda backed by powerful white Americans like Henry Ford proliferated, an American Jewish lawyer and civil-rights leader urged his fellow Jews to confront it. “Events have shown that the policy of silence was a mistake. Not only do Ford’s articles appear every week with undiminished virulence, but worse, the Protocols is distributed in every club, placed in every newspaper,” wrote Louis Marshall in 1921. “It has been received by every member of Congress and put in the hands of thousands of personalities. It is the topic of conversation in every living room and in every social sphere.”
“I’m concerned that the prevalence of conspiracy theories about Soros which paint him as a larger than life, powerful figure has the effect of shrinking that public space where anti-Semitism is not acceptable,” said the ADL’s Tuchman. “If you have fully embraced the notion that there is a powerful Jewish figure manipulating social and political movements around the world to promote his agenda, you’re inching toward the edges of that space where anti-Semitism is acceptable. Soros is a liminal figure in that way.”
William Nygaard, publisher of the Norwegian edition of Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” was shot three times and left for dead outside his home in a quiet suburb of Oslo on the morning of Oct. 11, 1993.
Twenty-five years later, just two days before a deadline that would have foreclosed prosecution, the Norwegian police have at last filed charges in the shooting of Mr. Nygaard, who recovered from his wounds. And the authorities stated what many people had always taken for granted: that the attack had to do with Mr. Rushdie’s book, which infuriated Muslims around the world — a theory that the police played down a generation ago.
“We have no reason to believe there is any other motive for the attempted killing than the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses,’ ” said Ida Dahl Nilssen, a spokeswoman for Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service. The shooting was about more than an attack on one man, she said, it was a violent attempt to shut down free speech.
But the charges, announced on Tuesday, remain steeped in uncertainty, leaving it unclear how close the authorities really are to holding anyone responsible for one of Norway’s most notorious unsolved crimes. Officials have refused to say publicly what evidence they have or how many people have been charged, or to disclose the suspects’ names, nationalities or current locations.
In 1989, shortly after the book’s initial publication in English, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared it offensive to Islam and called on Muslims to kill Mr. Rushdie and anyone involved in publication of the book. But Mr. Nygaard, then the chief of the publishing house Aschehoug, which his family controls, went ahead with publication of a Norwegian-language edition, two months after the ayatollah’s edict.
The Iranian threat, followed by protests and attacks on bookstores in other countries, was not an idle one, and Mr. Rushdie went into hiding for several years.
In 1991, Ettore Capriolo, who had translated the book into Italian, was stabbed in Milan by a man who tried — and failed — to get him to disclose Mr. Rushdie’s location. Mr. Capriolo survived, but days later, Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, was fatally stabbed in Tokyo.
Ayatollah Khomeini died within months of declaring the death sentence. Iran’s government said in 1998 that the threat had been dropped, but religious authorities there have said it still stands, and there is a bounty on Mr. Rushdie’s head.
In the attack on Mr. Nygaard, Norwegian authorities filed charges under a rarely used article of the criminal code, protecting fundamental societal values from attack. Under Norwegian law, if they had not filed by Thursday, they would have been required to drop the case.
“As a consequence of the charges, the investigation may now go on,” Ms. Nilssen said. “We have a strong desire to solve this case.”
On Wednesday, Norwegian newsorganizations, citing unnamed sources, said there were at least two suspects, one from Iran and the other a former resident of Norway with ties to Lebanon.
In a statement provided by his agent, Mr. Rushdie said: “This is good news, and one can hope that this 25-year-old case will now finally advance.” He has long criticized the investigation, and in his statement, he questioned “why the names and nationalities of the indicted persons have been withheld.”
The announcement also came as a relief to Mr. Nygaard, who is retired from publishing and is the chairman of the Norwegian chapter of PEN, a worldwide association of writers that fights for freedom of expression.
Asked if he regretted publishing “The Satanic Verses,” Mr. Nygaard, now 75, replied with an emphatic “absolutely not.” He did not publish the work, he said, to be provocative, but “to build dialogue,” and if given a choice, he would do it again in the name of freedom of speech.
He shrugged off his own remarkable survival and recovery from the shooting, which included months of hospitalization, calling it a matter of mental and physical vigor.
“I used to be a very good Norwegian ski jumper,” he said. “And quite a good publisher.”
After the attack, the police focused principally on investigating personal motives, rather than wider political or religious ones, according to a 2008 documentary by Odd Isungset, an investigative journalist who also wrote a book about the case.
That documentary reawakened interest in the shooting, and the police reopened the case in 2009.
Knut Olav Amas, a former deputy culture minister who now runs a free speech advocacy group, said it was a major “scandal” that investigators did not pursue the possibility of terrorism and a religious motive.
“The Nygaard investigation itself should be investigated,” Mr. Amas said.
At a 2012 celebration of “Joseph Anton: A Memoir,” Mr. Rushdie’s book about his time living under a death threat, he described decisions like Mr. Nygaard’s to publish the book, as “one of the greatest defenses of free speech of our time.”
Good points on the hypocrisy of those arguing Islam is not a religion:
Asma Uddin has an op-ed in the New York Times about an argument I’ve heard and engaged with a lot, always coming from the Christian far right. The argument is that Islam is not really a religion, it’s a political ideology masquerading as a religion and therefore it does not qualify for protection under the First Amendment. It’s an absurd and blatantly hypocritical argument.
“But when it comes to religious liberty for Americans, there’s a disturbing trend that has drawn much less attention. In recent years, state lawmakers, lawyers and influential social commentators have been making the case that Muslims are not protected by the First Amendment.
Why? Because, they argue, Islam is not a religion.
This once seemed like an absurd fringe argument. But it has gained momentum. John Bennett, a Republican state legislator in Oklahoma, said in 2014, “Islam is not even a religion; it is a political system that uses a deity to advance its agenda of global conquest.” In 2015, a former assistant United States attorney, Andrew C. McCarthy, wrote in National Review that Islam “should be understood as conveying a belief system that is not merely, or even primarily, religious.” In 2016, Michael Flynn, who the next year was briefly President Trump’s national security adviser, told an ACT for America conference in Dallas that “Islam is a political ideology” that “hides behind the notion of it being a religion.” In a January 2018 news release, Neal Tapio of South Dakota, a Republican state senator who was planning to run for the United States House of Representatives, questioned whether the First Amendment applies to Muslims.
The idea that Islam, which has over 1.6 billion adherents worldwide, is not a religion was even deployed in a 2010 legal challenge of county approval of building plans for a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The plaintiffs argued that Islam is not a religion but rather a geopolitical system bent on instituting jihadist and Shariah law in America. Because Islam is not a religion, the argument went, the mosque construction plans should not benefit from the county or federal laws that protect religious organizations. The local court ruled against the mosque, but the Tennessee appellate court overturned the ruling and the mosque prevailed.”
The hypocrisy is obvious. This argument is almost always made by people who push aggressively for their version of a Christian nation. They advocate policies based on their fundamentalist Christian beliefs, demand exemptions from generally applicable laws whenever they think their religious beliefs demand it, including the right to discriminate in business if they choose to, and organize primarily on the basis of their Christian views. Their version of Christianity is every bit as aggressively political as they imagine all Muslims are. The difference is that they have actual influence to get their religious views mandated by law, while Muslims in this country don’t have that kind of power and influence.
So by their own reasoning, Christianity is also not a religion and deserves no First Amendment protection. Of course, they won’t follow their argument to its logical conclusion, they just engage in special pleading. Because this is not a serious argument, it’s a pretext for denying the same rights and protections to others that they so loudly demand for themselves.
Sigh. Religious accommodation to ride a motorcycle? Would a government grant an exemption for wearing seatbelts? In line with other provinces, however, even if the justification is flimsy.
“The wearing of the turban is an essential part of the Sikh faith and identity,” stated the Brampton South MPP.
Wrong on two counts: not all Sikhs wear turbans and riding a motorcycle is not an essential part of Sikh faith and identity:
Sikhs with turbans will be exempt from wearing motorcycle helmets starting next Thursday, Premier Doug Ford says, revving up concerns over higher medical and insurance costs.
Highway Traffic Act regulations are being changed to fulfil Ford’s election promise of a helmet reprieve on religious grounds, which the previous Liberal government refused to do for safety reasons despite years of lobbying from the Canadian Sikh Association.
“Soon we will have a right to ride with our pride,” the Sikh Motorcycle Club of Ontario posted on its Facebook page Wednesday.
British Columbia, Manitoba and Alberta already have helmet exemptions for Sikh motorcyclists, as does the United Kingdom. Helmets often do not fit over turbans, which take time to put on and take off.
“The safety of our roads will always remain a priority,” Ford said in a statement Wednesday. “But our government also believes that individuals have personal accountability and responsibility with respect to their own well-being.”
So contentious is the issue that the premier held a news event in Brampton mainly for the local Punjabi media, excluding the Queen’s Park press corps.
Ford’s office defended the unusual move to bypass the mainstream media.
Safety experts said it’s more dangerous to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, with the non-profit Canada Safety Council noting they reduce fatalities by 37 per cent and head injuries by 67 per cent.
“You’re certainly taking on more risk,” said Raynald Marchand of the Ottawa-based group and a rider since 1974, who encouraged Sikh motorcyclists to use eye-protecting goggles at a minimum.
“It’s always better to wear a helmet,” added Brian Patterson of the Ontario Safety League.
The helmet exception for Sikhs exploded on social media, with commentators questioning whether riders should have to sign waivers so taxpayers won’t be on the hook for any head injury treatment costs.
But the safety experts downplayed the likelihood of much impact on the health-care system, given that Sikh riders are a small fraction of the motorcycling population.
“I don’t think the numbers are significant,” Marchand told the Star.
It’s unclear, however, what could happen to overall motorcycle insurance rates, given that companies can’t single out Sikh riders for higher premiums under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Given the size, it may not be significant enough. Insurance companies will look at premiums based on data,” said Pete Karageorgos of the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Ford’s announcement followed last week’s introduction of a private member’s bill on a helmet exemption by Brampton South MPP Prabmeet Sarkaria.
“The wearing of the turban is an essential part of the Sikh faith and identity,” Sarkaria said in a statement.
Le gouvernement Legault s’est montré ouvert à assouplir son projet d’interdire les signes religieux aux fonctionnaires en position d’autorité, mardi. Le député Simon Jolin-Barrette a évoqué la possibilité que les employés actuels puissent bénéficier d’un droit acquis.
La Coalition avenir Québec a été élue sur la promesse d’interdire les signes religieux chez les juges, les procureurs et les agents de la paix, tel que le recommandait le rapport Bouchard-Taylor. Le parti de François Legault souhaite aussi élargir cette politique aux enseignants.
M. Legault s’est engagé à légiférer dès la première année de son mandat pour clore cette question une fois pour toutes.
Mais pour y parvenir, le nouveau gouvernement est prêt à mettre de l’eau dans son vin, a indiqué son porte-parole, le député Simon Jolin-Barrette.
«Notre position a toujours été de s’assurer que les personnes en situation d’autorité et les enseignants ne portent pas de signes religieux, a dit M. Jolin-Barrette. Mais très certainement, on veut collaborer avec les partis de l’opposition et on veut s’assurer qu’on puisse passer enfin à autre chose parce que c’est important d’adopter une loi qui va consacrer la laïcité de l’État.»
«Il y a une chose qui est sûre, c’est que le consensus du rapport Bouchard-Taylor est présent au Québec, a-t-il toutefois ajouté. Les Québécois s’attendent à ce que les personnes en situation d’autorité ne portent pas de signes religieux.»
Le gouvernement élu avait envoyé un signal beaucoup plus ferme la semaine dernière. Son autre porte-parole, la députée Geneviève Guilbault, avait prévenu que les récalcitrants pourraient perdre leur emploi s’ils refusent de se soumettre aux nouvelles règles.
S’il se dit prêt à faire preuve de souplesse quant au port des signes religieux, le gouvernement Legault se montre ferme sur le maintien du crucifix à l’Assemblée nationale. Le rapport Bouchard-Taylor recommandait de le retirer du Salon bleu, où les députés légifèrent.
Mais la CAQ s’en tient à sa «position historique»: elle souhaite qu’il reste où il est car il s’agit d’un «objet patrimonial».
«Ce n’est pas dans le cadre des discussions de déplacer le crucifix», a indiqué M. Jolin-Barrette.
A reminder of the more global approach to integration and reasonable accommodation of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, with appropriate caution to the incoming CAQ government:
Lors de son élection, François Legault a promis d’être un premier ministre rassembleur et de sortir le Québec de la polarisation entre souverainistes et fédéralistes qui a marqué le débat politique des cinquante dernières années. Son premier geste fut de ramener à l’avant-plan une polarisation entre la gauche et la droite, d’une part, et entre Montréal et les régions, d’autre part, ce qui sera le trait distinctif de son mandat.
On ne pourra reprocher à M. Legault de manquer de cohérence. Il l’avait promis : il le fera. Le gouvernement caquiste va légiférer pour interdire le port de signes religieux dans la fonction publique pour les personnes en situation d’autorité. Jusque-là, il n’y a pas de quoi s’affoler et crier à la montée de l’intolérance et du populisme au Québec. D’autres nations ont fait le choix assumé de la laïcité dans les relations de l’État avec ses citoyens. Le rapport final de la commission Bouchard-Taylor sur les accommodements raisonnables, rendu public en 2008, recommandait d’ailleurs l’interdiction du port des signes religieux pour les agents de l’État en situation de coercition : juges, procureurs de la Couronne, policiers, gardiens de prison, président et vice-présidents de l’Assemblée nationale.
Le véritable scandale n’est pas qu’un gouvernement élu tente de mettre en application les recommandations d’une commission qui a sillonné le Québec, pour en arriver à une série de recommandations justes et raisonnables afin de concilier l’interculturalisme et la laïcité ouverte distinctive du Québec avec les exigences d’intégration et de francisation des nouveaux arrivants. Le véritable scandale réside dans la procrastination crasse des gouvernements libéraux de Jean Charest et de Philippe Couillard, qui ont négligé pendant de trop nombreuses années de donner suite aux recommandations. Le fait que Charles Taylor se soit dissocié du rapport depuis n’enlève en rien à la lucidité du diagnostic de l’époque et à la pertinence de l’ouvrage. Nous n’en serions pas là, à rejouer dans le vieux film identitaire post-Bouchard-Taylor, si les libéraux avaient accordé un peu plus de poids aux préoccupations de la majorité francophone.
Il y a toutefois un hic dans la démarche de François Legault. Sans en avoir fait un enjeu de fond de la campagne électorale, il s’éloigne de l’esprit et de la lettre du rapport Bouchard-Taylor en voulant désormais interdire le port des signes religieux pour le personnel de l’État en situation d’autorité (et non de coercition), ce qui revient à inclure dans un éventuel projet de loi les enseignants. Qui plus est, M. Legault menace de limoger les fonctionnaires qui ne se conformeront pas à la nouvelle directive, quitte à utiliser la disposition de dérogation au passage. Gérard Bouchard et Charles Taylor ne s’étaient jamais rendus aussi loin dans leurs réflexions.
La proposition caquiste dévie donc du consensus social arraché à la dure en 2008, sans guère de justification. Malgré le passage du temps, Le Devoirsoutient l’application des recommandations du rapport Bouchard-Taylor. Pas plus, pas moins.
Les fondements du « vivre-ensemble » n’étaient guère menacés à l’époque. Ils ne le sont pas plus aujourd’hui. François Legault s’apprête à légiférer pour régler un « problème » par anticipation, soit l’émergence d’un contingent de femmes voilées dans l’appareil d’État. Disons-le, la femme voilée est encore la mère de tous les maux dans ce débat politique à géométrie variable sur la laïcité. Qu’adviendra-t-il du crucifix à l’Assemblée nationale ? Celui-là semble bénéficier d’une clause de droits acquis.
Le gouvernement Legault rouvre des blessures mal cicatrisées. Déjà, le président de la Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, Sylvain Mallette, a indiqué que les écoles publiques n’avaient nullement besoin de ce nouveau « psychodrame ». « Interdire le port de signes religieux, ça ne donne pas plus de services aux élèves », a-t-il dit. La démarche du gouvernement Legault accentuera à coup sûr le clivage entre Montréal et le reste du Québec, la métropole se trouvant dans une situation unique en matière de diversité et de cohabitation. Des groupuscules de gauche ont déjà fait leur nid, avec bien des maladresses et des raccourcis intellectuels : la CAQ est raciste, liberticide, antiféministe. Un danger social dénoncé avec véhémence lors d’une manifestation contre le racisme dimanche à Montréal.
Dans ce climat de polarisation exacerbée, que vaut encore le rapport Bouchard-Taylor ? Cet ouvrage mesuré assoyait la légitimité de l’interculturalisme dont se réclame François Legault, tout en ratissant plus large. Les nationalistes contemporains ont réduit le débat au port de signes religieux, alors que MM. Bouchard et Taylor élargissaient la réflexion sur les accommodements raisonnables à l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants au marché du travail, à la francisation, à la régionalisation de l’immigration, à la reconnaissance des diplômes et à la lutte contre les inégalités et la discrimination.
Vivement cette approche holistique, réalisée avec doigté et pondération en lieu et place de la précipitation et de l’approximation. À moins de vouloir à tout prix un nouveau psychodrame.
DER SPIEGEL: Ms. Knobloch, 73 years after the end of the Holocaust, right-wing extremists in Germany are once again stretching out their right arms in the Hitler salute. Jews are being threatened in public while parliamentary opposition leader Alexander Gauland, of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, recently said that the Nazi period was nothing but a “speck of bird shit” on German history. What is your reaction to the last several months?
Knobloch: These events weigh on us heavily. By “us” I mean the members of all Jewish communities in Germany. I am actually an optimist, something I inherited from my devout father. After the Holocaust, he was convinced Germany would once again have a future. I have thought a lot about my father recently. And I hope the alarming spectacle of the last few months will somehow come to an end like many others have before.
DER SPIEGEL: You don’t sound terribly optimistic.
Knobloch: I never thought it could get so bad again. Recently, I was at a high school with 300 students and told them: Take the responsibility we hand down to you. Be proud of your country. It has achieved a lot and is continuing to achieve. And as I was speaking, I was thinking: What are you even saying? Is it true at all?
DER SPIEGEL: You have your doubts?
Knobloch: There have been worrisome developments earlier. A few years ago, for example, there was a right-wing extremist demonstration in Munich where marchers shouted, “Jews in the gas, Jews out,” and the police didn’t intervene. But it has never been as bad as it is today. For the first time, a party has made it into national parliament whose program can be summarized with the words: Jews Out.
DER SPIEGEL: You are referring to the AfD.
Knobloch: I don’t actually want to even say their name. “Alternative for Germany,” what impudence. But yes, I am referring to the AfD.
DER SPIEGEL: Do you view the AfD as a Nazi party?
Knobloch: What else are you supposed to call a party that disseminates a platform that makes Jewish life impossible? This party is opposed to ritual circumcision and seeks to ban the shechita of animals, through which meat becomes kosher for practicing Jews.
DER SPIEGEL: There are more than a few Jews involved in the AfD. How can the party be anti-Semitic?
Knobloch: Just like a person with Jewish friends can still be an anti-Semite, Jewish party members are in no way a guarantee that a party doesn’t have anti-Semitic tendencies. The simple presence of Jews, in any case, isn’t enough and a group like the one calling itself “Jews in the AfD” is no proof of the lack of anti-Semitism. Particularly since the group isn’t just made up of Jews.
DER SPIEGEL: Among the established parties in Germany, there is a significant degree of uncertainty about how they should confront the AfD. Should they go on the attack? Ignore them? Try to expose them with arguments? They are trying everything and nothing seems to be working.
Knobloch: I like how the single neo-Nazi in the Munich city council is being dealt with. He is simply completely ignored by the other parties. He files inquiries and they simply go unanswered.
DER SPIEGEL: But in Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, every deputy has rights. And with 92 members of parliament, the AfD is the largest opposition party. How can they be ignored?
Knobloch: There needs to be a consensus among all the other parties. The AfD has positioned itself outside of our liberal values. Period. It bothers me that there isn’t even consensus on this point at the moment. What other viewpoint can there possibly be?
DER SPIEGEL: The debate surrounding how to deal with the AfD recently intensified after an extremely emotional plenary speech by former Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz, who linked the right-wing populists with fascism.
Knobloch: I thought Schulz’s reaction was absolutely the correct one. Everybody needs to know who they are voting for when they cast their ballot for the AfD. Our task is to clearly draw the line. If we don’t, we are merely helping normalize the right-wing populists. I wanted to write Martin Schulz a letter, but I never got around to it because of the Jewish holidays. His dedication is admirable.
DER SPIEGEL: Among other things, Schulz said that AfD co-leader Gauland belongs on the “manure heap of history.” Should he be stooping to the level of the right-wing populists?
Knobloch: We can’t always obey the rules of politesse when dealing with a Nazi party. When politicians from the AfD refer to the Nazi period as “a speck of bird shit” in German history and refer to the Holocaust memorial as a monument to shame, then we need to strike back rhetorically. We are facing a monster. We have to fight it before it becomes stronger.
DER SPIEGEL: Following the recent riotsin Chemnitz, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier harkened to the collapse of the Weimar Republic
Knobloch: That wasn’t an exaggeration. Weimar collapsed because the democrats, who were actually supposed to be the pillars of the system, ducked responsibility. I find it extremely troubling that people today aren’t taking to the streets in large numbers to demonstrate. There are distressing parallels between then and now. You just have to listen to the things politicians from this party say without facing repercussions. It is reminiscent of the rise of the NSDAP (Nazi party). Personally, I feel like it is 1928 again.
DER SPIEGEL: Do you think the AfD should be monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency?
Knobloch: I find it completely incomprehensible as to why that wasn’t started long ago. I am stunned. If the AfD was being monitored, their representative would perhaps tone themselves down in public instead of inciting the population. Instead, there are rumors that Mr. Maassen …
DER SPIEGEL: … the former head of the BfV Hans-Georg Maassen, who wasrelieved of his duties recently for allegedly pandering to the far right …
Knobloch: … may have given tips to AfD members on how to avoid monitoring from the BfV. If that is true, that would be a catastrophe from my point of view.
DER SPIEGEL: Maassen expressed doubt about the authenticity of a video from Chemnitz that showed migrants being chased down.
Knobloch: Someone in his position should not just say something like that without presenting proof. That is a break with our political culture.
DER SPIEGEL: The rise of the AfD is inseparably connected with the refugee policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Do you think it was the correct decision to not seal off the German border in September 2015?
Knobloch: I view the issue through the lens of my own biography. If the U.S. immigration authorities in the late 1930s had approved the visas that my uncle applied for on behalf of his brother, his mother and me, my grandmother would not have had to suffer such a horrific death. She was too old to be accepted into the U.S. There were similar fates people faced that I heard about at the time. That is why I was very much in favor of Germany taking in the people who were living in horrific conditions in the Budapest train station in September 2015. After all, we became a humane country after 1945.
DER SPIEGEL: The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats, believes the chancellor’s refugee policies are misguided.
Knobloch: We can’t take on more than we can handle, I agree with that. First and foremost, we have to help those who have had to leave their homes to escape war. When I see the terrible images from Syria, then we can’t hesitate for a moment. But we need a migration law to decide who fits, who can be integrated, who we need on the job market.
DER SPIEGEL: Do you see a connection between Merkel’s refugee policies and increasing anti-Semitism?
Knobloch: I’m wary on that issue. We don’t have an anti-Semitism problem because people from other cultures are coming to us. That would be an extremely simplistic view.
DER SPIEGEL: You don’t see a qualitative difference between European anti-Semitism from the Christian West and Muslim anti-Semitism?
Knobloch: I didn’t say that. Muslim anti-Semitism works primarily by way of the delegitimization of Israel. And there is a specific form of anti-Semitism that has its roots in the Koran. That also has an influence over how anti-Semitism develops in this country.
DER SPIEGEL: What do you mean?
Knobloch: Anti-Semitism used to be the rejection of a certain group of people. Today, it is simply hatred of the Jews.
DER SPIEGEL: Anti-Semitism has radicalized?
Knobloch: Absolutely.
DER SPIEGEL: Is there a recipe for fighting it?
Knobloch: Not enough is being done, that is the frightening thing. We have been calling attention to the problem for years. And there are actually institutions that should be taking action. Political leaders, for example. Security authorities. Educational institutions. All of them should focus on fighting anti-Semitism, especially given our history. But not nearly enough is being done. Those who are blaming the refugees exclusively for anti-Semitism are making it too easy on themselves. These people, if you will, can’t help it. That’s how they were raised.
DER SPIEGEL: Where do you think the largest shortcomings are to be found?
Knobloch: In education. We are way behind there. You can’t fight anti-Semitism by simply talking about anti-Semitism. You fight it by learning to love your own country and by defending its values.
DER SPIEGEL: In a recent op-ed for the Israeli daily Haaretz, you sharply criticized Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, saying that he has positioned himself as an ally to right-wing populists in Europe. Why did you get involved?
Knobloch: When Mr. Grenell welcomes the rise of anti-establishment populists in a country where the extreme right has won seats in parliament, we Jews feel threatened. The fact that he apparently doesn’t see this connection is appalling. Mr. Grenell uses the same language as the AfD. This cycle of mutual encouragement is a danger to our liberal democracy. In such a situation, I don’t care if he is the U.S. ambassador or whatever else.
DER SPIEGEL: Has Mr. Grenell contacted you at all?
Knobloch: No.
DER SPIEGEL: Would you like to meet with him?
Knobloch: It would depend on the subject matter. I am happy to talk at any time with young people who have adopted different ideas and to try and convince them.
DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Grenell claims to be a great friend of Israel’s.
Knobloch: Friendship is a rather broad term. Many people use it to put themselves in the center of attention because they think it looks good.
DER SPIEGEL: What do you think of the Israel policies of U.S. President Donald Trump?
Knobloch: I have family in Israel: a daughter, several grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. I have a special relationship to the country and advocate for its security wherever I can. The Israeli people want nothing more than peace, I am 100 percent convinced of that. That is why I welcome the fundamental tenets of Trump’s Middle East policy. I wouldn’t, however, have moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. That is such a sensitive issue that doing so merely makes in more difficult to find the solutions to problems.
DER SPIEGEL: You belong to the last generation of Holocaust survivors. How should the memory be kept alive once all those who witnessed it firsthand are gone.
Knobloch: My hopes are very much pinned on young people who are more interested in the history of their own country than was the case 10 or 15 years ago.
DER SPIEGEL: The Berlin municipal official Sawsan Chebli has proposed making it a requirement for young people to visit a concentration camp memorial. What do you think of the idea?
Knobloch: The only camp where it is still possible to really get a sense for the tragedy is Auschwitz. Such visits, though, can only take place if there has been sufficient preparation. Young people have to know what they are visiting. And if one of them doesn’t want to, you can’t force them.
DER SPIEGEL: What do you have against the so-called “Stolpersteine,” the gold-colored paving stones placed in front of buildings in German cities to commemorate Jews who lived there until they were deported by the Nazis?
Knobloch: I find this type of commemoration to be a catastrophe. People trample on the names of those who were murdered and dogs pee on them. The Munich city council has resolved that commemoration must take place at eye level. I hope that our example is followed elsewhere.
DER SPIEGEL: Jews who live in Israel often can’t understand how Jews can continue to live in the diaspora.
Knobloch: In the diaspora or in Germany?
DER SPIEGEL: Does it make a difference?
Knobloch: Of course it does. Given recent developments, I am being asked such questions more often.
DER SPIEGEL: By whom?
Knobloch: The part of my family that lives in Israel has already come to terms with it. My granddaughter is now grown up, but when she was in the ninth grade, she visited Auschwitz with her class. In Israel, it is a visit everybody makes. Afterwards, she wrote me a six-page letter and asked me how I can live in Germany.
DER SPIEGEL: The attacks on Jews in France triggered something of an exodus of Jews fleeing the country to Israel. Do you think there is a danger of something similar occurring in Germany?
Knobloch: Yes, there is a danger. Members of the Jewish community come to me and tell me that they are afraid. It is equal parts irrational and understandable. I try to give them courage, despite everything. That is part of the optimism that I mentioned earlier.
DER SPIEGEL: Ignatz Bubis, one of your predecessors as president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said toward the end of his life that he accomplished “almost nothing.” What are your feelings when you look back on your own life?
Knobloch: He was already quite sick when he said that. I called him and said: How can you say such a thing? I know how much you have accomplished.
DER SPIEGEL: You have a more positive view than Bubis did at the end of his life?
Knobloch: It is a question I ask myself every day, when I see the terrible developments in Chemnitz and elsewhere. But then I always think: I did achieve something. It’s just a gut feeling I have.
DER SPIEGEL: Bubis never wanted to live in Israel, but he wanted to be laid to rest there.
Knobloch: He didn’t want his grave to be vandalized. And given the increasing anti-Semitism, that is a very real danger.
DER SPIEGEL: And where do you want to be buried?
Knobloch: I have our family plot here in Munich.
DER SPIEGEL: Ms. Knobloch, thank you very much for this interview.
The federal council that regulates immigration consultants has temporarily suspended the licences of former Edmonton MLA Carl Benito and one of his sons, as it awaits the outcome of a Canada Border Services investigation of an alleged large-scale immigration fraud.
At a hearing Tuesday, Cindy Ramkissoon-Shears, an independent chairperson of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC), determined there were reasonable grounds to conclude that allowing Benito and his son Charles to continue practising as consultants may cause harm to the public and could undermine the reputation of the profession.
The temporary suspensions mean the Benitos must have no further involvement with their clients. They must immediately make arrangements for another consultant or lawyer to assume their clients’ files.
Benito and his son did not respond to interview requests from CBC News on Tuesday.
The ICCRC is the national body that, by federal law, regulates all individuals, except lawyers, providing Canadian immigration, citizenship, and international-student advising services.
The council only seeks an interim suspension in exceptional circumstances, following a preliminary investigation, when it considers allegations so serious that allowing the consultant to continue to practise poses a potential risk to the public.
The hearing Tuesday heard evidence the ICCRC had received three complaints about the Benitos’ immigration consulting practice dating back to 2016.
But the council only began its investigation after it learned from CBC News on Aug. 16 that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had raided Benito’s home and office in late June as part of a major immigration fraud investigation.
Bundles of $100 bills seized
Court documents obtained by CBC News revealed the CBSA seized more than $250,000 in cash — mostly bundles of $100 bills stashed in two floor safes — as part of an investigation into what the agency alleges was a three-year immigration fraud scheme. The agency also seized numerous cash-filled payment envelopes bearing what appear to be the names of clients.
In search-warrant documents, the CBSA alleged that since Nov. 11, 2015, Carl Benito had counselled dozens of Filipino immigrants to improperly extend their stay in Alberta. The agency claimed Benito organized a scheme involving bogus applications for study and work-permit extensions.
The CBSA also alleges it found at least one Filipino immigrant, and possibly several more, working illegally for the Benitos’ consulting business.
The ICCRC had previously determined there was sufficient evidence to hold a hearing for interim suspensions against Carl and Charles but there was not enough direct evidence to include a third son, Mark, in the proceedings.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Carl Benito’s lawyer, William Macintosh, argued the information contained in the CBSA search-warrant documents did not constitute sufficient evidence because it was essentially hearsay and, in some cases, double hearsay.
But a lawyer acting for the ICCRC said the information in the search-warrant documents, supplemented by similar information contained in the three previous complaints, created credible and compelling grounds to support the suspension of the Benitos.
“In my submission, there are more than reasonable grounds to believe the Benitos have been running a practice, the modus operandi of which was to perpetuate a fraud against the Canadian government,” lawyer Lisa Freeman told the hearing.
Carl Benito did not speak at Tuesday’s hearing. His son, Charles, who was self represented, told the hearing that he had done nothing wrong and was innocent.
None of the Benitos has been criminally charged and none of the allegations from the search-warrant documents has been proven in court. The CBSA has confirmed its investigation is ongoing.
Council investigation delayed
An ICCRC investigator admitted under questioning by Macintosh that the council’s investigation, and potentially a full disciplinary hearing, can’t continue until after the CBSA concludes its investigation.
The investigator conceded the council is wholly dependent on documents from the CBSA for its investigation, and it could take up to a year for the CBSA to conclude its investigation.
In an August interview, the council’s director of professional conduct told CBC News the investigation process can be complicated by the immigration status of individuals who may be critical witnesses in a disciplinary hearing.
Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council director of professional conduct Michael Huynh says the investigation process can be complicated by the immigration status of people who might be critical witnesses in a disciplinary hearing.
“Because of the nature of the services members provide — that is, the members of the ICCRC — a lot of the complainants sometimes are of precarious status,” Michael Huynh said. “So they might not be willing to, after filing the complaint, testify, in which case it gets a little harder for us to procure the evidence necessary to prove our case.”
Huynh said there are also situations where a complainant may have been “complicit” in the immigration consultant’s activities, which may make them reluctant to testify for fear of compromising their status.
Benito was elected to the Alberta legislature in 2008. He became an immigration consultant after losing the Progressive Conservative nomination in 2012.
On websites and Facebook pages filled with photos of beaming clients, “Kuya Carl” (Brother Carl) claims he can help fellow Filipino immigrants secure residency, study permits, and work permits.
“Carl is simply the best in immigration consulting in Edmonton,” one of his websites reads.
In an article recently published in a local Filipino newspaper, and republished on his immigration firm’s website, Benito claimed he was a victim of “sensationalized” journalism.
“We have several clients who are our direct witnesses on how Triple Maple Leaf Canada and Carl Benito conducts his Consulting Services with utmost transparency and within legal bounds and following the guidelines as set by Immigration Canada,” Benito wrote in the article.
Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for the London mayoralty, is under fire after the Guardian obtained an old Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet in which Bailey said that allowing Hindu and Muslim families time off to celebrate their religious festivals would rob Britain of its community and turn the country into a “crime-ridden cesspool”.
The policy is toxic. No, having days off to accommodate religious festivals doesn’t divide communities and in fact the reverse situation (keeping schools open but having religious absences or parents opting out of mainstream education as a result) does. Added to that, for Bailey, the politics are more toxic still.
There is no plausible path for any Conservative candidate to 50 per cent of the vote plus one – necessary under London’s supplementary vote system – that doesn’t run through London’s affluent Hindu communities in west and north-west London. How is he going to get their votes if he is on the record saying their religious holidays risk turning the country into a “cesspool”?
His campaign’s response is a revealing insight into why Sadiq Khan’s aides believe that Bailey will be an error-prone and vulnerable candidate. Here’s their response to the Guardian in full:
“As a descendant of the Windrush generation, and someone who has worked with diverse communities for over 20 years, Shaun knows full well the challenges faced by BAME communities. Shaun has made it his life’s work to help those from migrant and disadvantaged communities, and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous. As someone who has received racist abuse from the Labour party, who let’s not forget branded the community worker a ‘token ghetto boy’, this is a little rich.”
There are a lot of bad political choices to unpack in a single paragraph, but let’s start with the last sentence. Put yourselves in the shoes of one of Harrow’s Hindu swing voters. You backed Sadiq Khan in 2016 but re-elected Bob Blackman, a Conservative, in 2017. You’ve heard that Bailey thinks that teaching people about Diwali in schools will rob Britain of its community and turn the country into a “cesspool”. Why do you give a flying one about Emma Dent Coad saying something racist about Shaun Bailey? Why is that relevant to your life? That’s not an apology.
But it’s not the only bad decision being made here.
Let’s imagine you are instead an older white voter in Bow. You voted for Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Zac Goldsmith. You were suspicious about Sadiq Khan and you still aren’t wholly sold on him. Why do you care about Bailey being “a descendant of the Windrush generation”? Why’s he focussing on helping migrants? What about your grandkids? Who even is this guy who hasn’t even made it to Westminster who thinks he can become your mayor?
Or perhaps you’re a graduate in, say, Richmond. You backed Boris Johnson but you now have complicated feelings about him thanks to the referendum. You voted Liberal Democrat in Westminster and gave Sadiq Khan your second preference in London as you disliked Zac Goldsmith’s campaign. You think Khan is a decent guy but you aren’t sure what he’s actually done. You aren’t entirely sure what Diwali is about but you like living in a city where different things go on.
I just named three groups without which a Conservative candidate cannot win the London mayoralty and Bailey is appealing to none of them. And among liberal graduates and affluent Hindus he has probably suffered a wound that Khan will seek to widen and deepen over the next two years.
Two very different takes, starting with Andrew Coyne:
Be careful what you wish for. Quebec’s election may have signalled a turning away from separatism — the mad, doomed project to wrench apart the country on linguistic and ethnic lines that consumed so much of the province’s energy and wealth over the last 50-odd years. But it has been accompanied by a turning toward other forms of zealotry and intolerance.
The Liberal Party and Parti Québécois may have gone down to their worst defeats in their respective histories, dispatched by voters tired of the ancient existential stalemate and the entrenched/corrupt elites that thrived upon it. But into the vacuum have surged parties peddling other fantasies.
Quebec Solidaire campaigned on a platform that might have been stolen from a student union at one of the less prestigious universities, and probably was. It was rewarded with a doubling of its share of the popular vote and a tripling of its seats in the assembly.
And the “conservative” Coalition Avenir Quebec surged to power on a mix of unfunded tax cuts, warmed-over 1970s-style dirigisme and enriched daycare subsidies. Oh, and beating up on immigrants.
The party will protest at that description, but it is not for nothing that they were feted with victory congratulations from Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader. The party vows not only to slash immigration to Quebec — this at a time of growing labour shortages, in a province where population aging is a particular concern — but to expel those who fail a test of “values” and French language proficiency after three years.
How it would do so, or where they would be deported to, or under whose constitutional authority are among the many questions raised by this odious proposal, to say nothing of the obvious Charter issues. Party leader Francois Legault struggled to explain it during the campaign. But when a voter in Rimouski asked him whether he would fight for “us” against “these immigrants who are erasing us,” Legault was quick enough to reply: “Bien oui!”
If deporting thousands of immigrants was too much for the other parties, on the other great question of the day, whether members of religiously observant minorities should be allowed to work in the public sector, the parties were more in accord than otherwise.
While the Liberals’ Bill 62 would have banned, in the name of “religious neutrality,” covering one’s face, not only for providers but recipients of public services — those wishing to attend school, say, or ride the bus — the other parties would in some ways have gone further.
The CAQ, for example, proposes to ban anyone in a position of authority — police officers, judges, even teachers — from wearing any “conspicuous” religious symbol at work. The party has been admirably clear about what this means: those whose faith requires them to wear such symbols will not only be precluded from being hired for these jobs, but dismissed from such positions as they currently hold.
So to go with mass expulsions of ethnic minorities, add mass firings of religious minorities: the platform, not of some creepy fringe party, but of the newly elected government of Quebec. If Canadians outside Quebec think they can look the other way at this latest manifestation of the province’s famous distinctness, as they did earlier measures banning the display of English in public, they should think again. For it is about to explode in all of our faces.
Bill 62 was already tied up in the courts, the ban on face coverings suspended while its constitutionality is under review. The CAQ’s more sweeping religious bar, should it be passed into law, will quite certainly meet the same fate. But while the Liberals had never indicated they would do anything but accept the courts’ findings, the CAQ leader has again been clear: it will invoke the notwithstanding clause to override any Charter objections.
Perhaps, in the event, we will be treated to the same circus as surrounded Ontario’s recent flirtation with suspending constitutional rights: squadrons of law professors explaining again that this latest demonstration of the clause’s malevolent potential should not be held against it; elderly veterans of the constitutional wars re-emerging to protest that this was not what they intended, either; people who’ve never liked the Charter pointing out, as if it were either new or relevant, that the Charter override is in fact part of the Charter; and so on.
But in one crucial respect this time cannot fail to be different. The federal government could afford to take a pass on the Ontario fight: the override threat came in response to a particularly wonky court decision, soon set aside by an appeals court, after which it was withdrawn; it was far from clear how far the law in question, redrawing municipal election boundaries, offended against rights, as opposed to common sense; and the use of the clause was opposed by every opposition party — and, polls showed, wildly unpopular.
None of these are likely to apply in the present case. The threat to rights is obvious, and serious; it involves no arcane dispute between different levels of government, but blatant discrimination against vulnerable minorities; and yet it is likely to have the support of at least three of the four parties — and perhaps a majority of the Quebec public.
Can the federal government stay out of this? The immediate response from the prime minister was not encouraging. Invoking the notwithstanding clause, he said, is “not something that should be done lightly.” To suppress “the fundamental rights of Canadians” is “something one should be very careful about.” Stop, or I’ll shout ‘stop’ again.
No, sorry, that will not do. The question he will have to confront, the question confronting us all, is this: do we want to live in a country in which people can be fired from their jobs because of their religious beliefs? In which important positions in the public service are off limits to members of religious minorities? How can we possibly?
In contrast, Konrad Yakabuski is downplays the initial language and says wait to see the actual legislation:
The international headlines referencing Monday’s Quebec election left little to the imagination.
In France, where Quebec politics get more attention than anywhere outside Canada, Le Monde spoke of a “crushing victory by the right.” At the more downmarket Le Parisien, the verdict was even more sensational: Quebec Elects a Nationalist and Anti-immigration Government.
The beleaguered Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s truly anti-immigration Rassemblement national, could hardly believe her luck. She tweeted that Quebeckers had “voted for less immigration,” demonstrating “lucidity and firmness in the face of the migration challenge.”
That is hardly the message premier-designate François Legault hoped his victory would send to the four corners of the globe. But Mr. Legault is learning the hard way that what he says now carries repercussions far beyond the tiny bubble of Quebec politics and can influence his province’s reputation not just in the rest of Canada, but around the world.
For a seasoned politician, Mr. Legault was shockingly undisciplined on the campaign trail. His daily press conferences could go on ad infinitum and Mr. Legault would venture answers to reporters’ questions that a more scripted politician would not touch with a 10-foot pole. It got him into plenty of trouble and, were it not for Quebeckers’ overwhelming desire to punish the Liberals and Parti Québécois alike, it might have cost him the election.
So, it is mind-boggling why Mr. Legault chose to waste his first postvictory news conference on Tuesday by answering a double-hypothetical question about what he would do if courts strike down a law that his government is in no hurry to pass. He should have known that nothing productive could come of his outburst, which left exactly the opposite impression that he intended to make.
While the official program of the Coalition Avenir Québec that Mr. Legault leads favours prohibiting persons in a position of authority from wearing conspicuous religious symbols, passing legislation giving effect to this policy is not high on Mr. Legault’s agenda.
Yet, on Tuesday, the premier-designate was already musing about invoking the notwithstanding clause to override a non-existent court decision that nullifies the currently non-existent legislation, whose shape and form remains a matter of pure conjecture.
This is not to say some form of legislation regulating religious symbols in the public sphere won’t eventually show up on the order paper of a CAQ government. The issue of religious accommodation has dogged successive Quebec governments for more than a decade, as rising Muslim immigration has forced the province to grapple with questions of religious diversity.
Francophone Quebeckers’ idea of state secularism may not correspond with the dictionary definition of the concept, given their desire to grandfather the blatantly Catholic symbols of their past, right up to the crucifix that hangs in the National Assembly. But that doesn’t mean the new CAQ government will be able to indefinitely ignore demands to regulate other religious symbols.
There is a large consensus among Quebec’s political class that the best way to settle the debate once and for all is to follow the recommendations of the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor commission on religious accommodation. The commission, led by sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor, concluded that “agents of the state” (such as judges, Crown prosecutors and police officers) should be prohibited from wearing religious symbols.
In 2017, Prof. Taylor dropped his support for the proposal, saying that it had been misunderstood. Indeed, the Bouchard-Taylor report explicitly excluded teachers, civil servants and health-care professionals from the list of public employees it said should be prohibited from wearing religious symbols. But that detail seemed to have been lost on many politicians.
The official CAQ policy would include teachers among those banned from wearing the Muslim hijab or Jewish kippa. But whether a CAQ government would legislate to include teachers in the mix remains highly speculative. What’s more, any legislation regulating when and where police officers or judges could or could not wear religious symbols would likely be limited in scope.
On Wednesday, the CAQ MNA who served as the party’s justice critic in opposition moved to clean up the damage Mr. Legault created on Tuesday. Simon Jolin-Barrette insisted that the new government intends to ensure that any future legislation on religious accommodation would stand up in the courts. He added that invoking the notwithstanding clause, while an option, would never be the CAQ’s first course of action.
The CAQ has brought in Carl Vallée, who served as a press secretary to former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, to help the new government find its communications footing. It likely signals tighter messaging and less freelancing by Mr. Legault in the future.
After all, those headlines outside Quebec can be killers.
Multicultural Meanderings 