Arthur Topham

A “slap on the wrist”

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.

B.C. Supreme Court Judge Bruce Butler said Topham, 70, did “not call for violence; his views were political satire,” and said it was not Topham’s “intent to indirectly incite violence.”

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 “controlled by the Zionist lobby” and Jewish places of worship as “synagogues of Satan.” He could have faced a sentence of up to two years in prison.

Unrepentant, Topham told the Quesnel courthouse he felt it was his “duty to alert the … public to the imminent threat …. [of] the Jewish lobby.”

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 “anything 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.” He said his “immediate concerns are personal family issues and health challenges” and added he was “not planning on doing any interviews in the immediate future.” On March 8, he exhorted his followers to download any and all items from radicalpress.com for free.

B’nai Brith Canada, which had alerted the RCMP to Topham’s activities back in 2007, said it was “strongly disappointed” with the sentencing. In a statement, chief executive officer Michael Mostyn described the sentence as “a mere slap on the wrist which will do little to protect Canadian Jews or preserve the multicultural mosaic of our society.”

Mostyn continued, “Mr. Topham is a committed and unrepentant Jew-hater, who persisted in publishing lurid antisemitic content on his website throughout this legal process. Canada’s laissez-fair approach to hate crimes continues to fail minority groups and puts them at increased risk of attacks against their lives or property.”

Mostyn said the timing of the lax sentence was especially disturbing, “as Canada’s Jewish community reels from a series of bomb threats against our community centres, inspired by the same hateful ideology that drives Mr. Topham.”

Harry Abrams, who was the representative for the B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights in 2007, when he was first to raise the alarm about Topham’s antisemitic writing, described the sentencing as “a rope around [Topham’s] balls.”

“Somewhere 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,” Abrams said. “Sure, I’m 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’s restricted from posting online. This is what we’ve got to work with, and he’s not just given free rein to go back to beating on us Jews.”

Ryan Bellerose, advocacy coordinator for B’nai Brith Canada’s League of Human Rights for Western Canada, described the sentence as “a little ridiculous.”

“He was convicted of hate speech and he’s got a curfew? This almost sends a message that you can pick on Jews and it’s totally OK, you won’t have an existential payment for it,” he said. “We 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’s not taken very seriously.

“Everyone 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’s sentencing]. That’s an especially bad message to send in today’s climate,” said Bellerose.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article was originally published by CJN.

Topham appeal denied

The appeal of Arthur Topham, convicted of promoting hatred against Jewish people in November 2015, was rejected last month by the B.C. Supreme Court. On his website, radicalpress.com, Topham wrote that Jews should be forcibly sterilized. He described Canada as being “controlled by the Zionist lobby” and said Jewish synagogues are “synagogues of Satan.”

Harry Abrams, who was the representative for B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights in 2007, when he was first to raise the alarm about Topham’s antisemitic writing, said he’d like to see Topham receive the maximum sentence of two years.

“He was convicted in 2015 by a jury of his peers and he’s dragged it out, kept everything up on his website since then and added to it over all this time,” said Abrams, who now serves as chair of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island. “It’s all been hateful, deliberate and with the intention of causing maximum pain and fear to Jews. He’s a sick guy and there has to be some kind of backstop on this.”

The Feb. 20 ruling is an important one, said Adam Fishman, who worked closely with Amanda Hohmann, national director of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights on this case.

“The argument by Topham’s lawyer, Barclay W. Johnson, that the law that criminalizes hate speech in Canada is unconstitutional, had no merit in my opinion,” Fishman said. “Basically, they were arguing that the presence of the internet and the fact that information is more widely available because of it, changes whether that material is constitutional or not. The judge firmly rejected that argument. He wrote in his decision that it actually makes the offence even more serious, by virtue of the fact that it’s much easier to disseminate hate today.

“This also means that when faced with incidents of hate, especially online, police and prosecutors should press charges because there’s no evidence those charges won’t succeed – so there’s no excuse for not enforcing them.”

Abrams speculated that Topham might try to appeal this conviction again in the B.C. Court of Appeal. Johnson said he had not received any instructions from his client on this matter.

Johnson had shared office space with Topham’s former lawyer, Doug Christie, who died in March 2013. “On his deathbed, I told [Christie] I’d look after the rest of his files, and this was one of them,” Johnson explained. “My interest was piqued by going over the issues related to freedom of expression. Ninety-nine percent of the material Arthur Topham posted from other sources is available on the internet, so the question is, what do you do about all this wickedness? I don’t think you use the Criminal Code. We argued that the protections afforded in Canada are of little assistance if you weigh them against what’s available worldwide.”

Johnson said Topham does not have a criminal record and was hopeful he would not serve time in jail. But Abrams begged to differ. “I really think he should spend a couple of years in jail. He’s sadistic and racist, and he’s worked really hard for it.”

Johnson added Topham’s sentencing is scheduled for this Friday, March 10.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article was originally published by CJN.

Limits to free speech

Last week, a Quesnel man was found guilty of criminal hate speech for anti-Jewish postings to his website.

Arthur Topham’s RadicalPress website is packed with the kind of “commentary” you have to read to disbelieve. Many of us imagine we know the sorts of slanders being purveyed in the dusty corners of the internet. You can’t imagine.

In addition to his own material, Topham has made it his side-business to repatriate from the crevices of discarded ideas and republish some of history’s forgotten anti-Jewish hate literature.

Topham was found guilty by a jury under Section 319 (2) of the Criminal Code, which pertains to “Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group.…” He will be sentenced next year.

The law does not go so far as to demand proof of incitement to injure or kill. Yet, among other gems, Topham’s postings call for “the extermination of Israel and all Jews.” In his defence, Topham’s lawyer insisted his client does not actually hate individual Jews. Indeed, he told court, Topham’s wife is Jewish.

Canada’s hate laws are controversial. Where to draw the line between fair comment in a free society and that which is to be criminalized is a very difficult balance. Generally, it is best to confront hateful ideas in the marketplace of ideas and to give them enough air that we can know they exist, and not drive them underground where they can corrode into even worse words and deeds.

This case was addressed under criminal law and not by the quasi-judicial human right apparatus, which is a far more dubious medium. Limitations on free expression should be limited to the most extreme and egregious offences. Indeed, this is the first criminal conviction for hate speech in British Columbia since 2006, so it is a rebuke that is reserved for the most heinous offences.

A democratic society expresses its values in its laws. Incidents like this, which meet the standard of intolerable expressions of hate, are a message from and to our society about what is fair comment and what is not.

On the whole, however, we prefer that our society express its commitment to equal treatment and cross-cultural respect in the context of our civil discourse – in our education system, in the free exploration of contentious issues, in the vocal condemnation by the many of any egregious offences by the hateful few. And that is what we do. In the most extreme instances, our society has agreed to a legal proscription.

Topham’s case will send a message, although it is already being rejected by his advocates as the demolition of free speech in Canada and as the manifestation of Jewish power.

As a society, we should accept the court’s verdict, but also rededicate ourselves to the promotion of intercultural respect. Comments under the story in the local Quesnel newspaper, almost unanimously of the “Jews control the world” variety, suggest we still have a long way to go.