At a sentencing on March 13, Arthur Topham, the man convicted of deliberately promoting hatred against Jewish people on his now-defunct website radicalpress.com, was given a ban on public online activity and a six-month curfew.<\/p>\n
B.C. Supreme Court Judge Bruce Butler said Topham, 70, did \u201cnot call for violence; his views were political satire,\u201d and said it was not Topham\u2019s \u201cintent to indirectly incite violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the racist, antisemitic website he founded and on which he posted vitriol until removing the site just prior to the sentencing, Topham wrote that Jews should be forcibly sterilized. He described Canada as being \u201ccontrolled by the Zionist lobby\u201d and Jewish places of worship as \u201csynagogues of Satan.\u201d He could have faced a sentence of up to two years in prison.<\/p>\n
Unrepentant, Topham told the Quesnel courthouse he felt it was his \u201cduty to alert the \u2026 public to the imminent threat \u2026. [of] the Jewish lobby.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Feb. 27 posts on anti-racistcanada.blogspot.ca, Topham informed his followers that his Facebook presence and website would be removed from the web within two weeks and said he would be unable to publish \u201canything on ANY website that has my name attached to it. To do so would mean immediate jail for breaking whatever probationary restrictions that will be imposed on me.\u201d He said his \u201cimmediate concerns are personal family issues and health challenges\u201d and added he was \u201cnot planning on doing any interviews in the immediate future.\u201d On March 8, he exhorted his followers to download any and all items from radicalpress.com for free.<\/p>\n
B\u2019nai Brith Canada, which had alerted the RCMP to Topham\u2019s activities back in 2007, said it was \u201cstrongly disappointed\u201d with the sentencing. In a statement, chief executive officer Michael Mostyn described the sentence as \u201ca mere slap on the wrist which will do little to protect Canadian Jews or preserve the multicultural mosaic of our society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mostyn continued, \u201cMr. Topham is a committed and unrepentant Jew-hater, who persisted in publishing lurid antisemitic content on his website throughout this legal process. Canada\u2019s laissez-fair approach to hate crimes continues to fail minority groups and puts them at increased risk of attacks against their lives or property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mostyn said the timing of the lax sentence was especially disturbing, \u201cas Canada\u2019s Jewish community reels from a series of bomb threats against our community centres, inspired by the same hateful ideology that drives Mr. Topham.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry Abrams, who was the representative for the B\u2019nai Brith Canada\u2019s League for Human Rights in 2007, when he was first to raise the alarm about Topham\u2019s antisemitic writing, described the sentencing as \u201ca rope around [Topham\u2019s] balls.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomewhere in all this, the judge took pity on an old man with a sick wife and bought this thing that Topham and his friends were trying hard to sell: that all this was a parody, a satire,\u201d Abrams said. \u201cSure, I\u2019m disappointed with the sentence, but we have to look at the sum total of this thing. Topham has been exposed as a sick, crazy old man, his stuff is down from the internet and he\u2019s restricted from posting online. This is what we\u2019ve got to work with, and he\u2019s not just given free rein to go back to beating on us Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan Bellerose, advocacy coordinator for B\u2019nai Brith Canada\u2019s League of Human Rights for Western Canada, described the sentence as \u201ca little ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was convicted of hate speech and he\u2019s got a curfew? This almost sends a message that you can pick on Jews and it\u2019s totally OK, you won\u2019t have an existential payment for it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe finally managed to get someone charged and convicted on a hate crime in Canada and the message they send with the sentencing is that it\u2019s not taken very seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is talking about antisemitism right now, and the bomb threats to Jewish communities in Canada, which, of course, needs to be dealt with. But no one is even talking about this [Topham\u2019s sentencing]. That\u2019s an especially bad message to send in today\u2019s climate,\u201d said Bellerose.<\/p>\n