A favourite anecdote of mine involves the late English humourist Alan Coren who, after suffering years of middling book sales, asked his agent just what was it that his fellow Englishmen wanted to read..As the story goes, his agent responded there are three subjects the mass English public regularly buys books about: Books about cats. Books about golf. And books about Nazis..Coren dutifully followed this advice and authored Golfing for Cats, the cover of which pictured a cartoon cat teeing off with a swastika-emblazoned golf flag in the foreground. It became his biggest-selling book by far.. Bob StewartBob Stewart .Nazism sells. From Hollywood films, to historical novels, to the History or ‘Hitler Channel’ (as its derogatorily known,) that 12-year regime which succumbed to its fiery defeat almost 80 years ago is a topic clearly of endless fascination for the British public as well as the rest of the Anglosphere..And with big demand comes assured supply, including from 'non-profit' groups shameless enough to feed, however they can, this neurotic fear and fascination of ours..Earlier this month, free speech-lawyer Caryma Sa'd and independent journalist Elise Hategan took this 'industry' to task in an explosive report skewering one of the biggest such groups out there: the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN)..In one of the tightest take-downs of this abusive industry I’ve ever come across, the pair writes:."Groups whose livelihood hinges on monitoring and fighting 'hate' would be rendered obsolete if hate disappeared overnight. If all you need to establish a 'hate group' is a couple of antisocial misfits exchanging racist memes in a discord chat, it’s easy to see how Canada could have 300, 500, even a thousand hate groups (CAHN has routinely stated 300 Nazi groups operate across Canada.) If you set your filters wide enough, that number is surprisingly easy to reach.You can almost hear the collective 'amen' coming from readers long skeptical of the incessant scaremongering over 'hate groups' in Canada..Coincidentally, just days after the report, CAHN announced it was applying for a $5 million grant from the Trudeau government to police the internet after 'finding' (somehow) that a whopping six million Canadians are regularly consuming “far-right conspiracy theories” online..Whatever their plan is here, is still unknown, but if it’ll be anything like their last federal grant, it’s due the most intense scrutiny government analysts can muster..Last year, CAHN managed to secure $270,000 from us taxpayers to develop a manual for K-12 teachers on how to spot signs of 'hate' among students across the country..While the 53-page manual that eventuated — titled Confronting and Preventing Hate in Canadian Schools — did receive thorough denigration in the media (in it, the group stated the Red Ensign Canadian flag is a symbol of racial hatred,) it has never been mentioned it’s essentially the exact same manual published three years earlier by the US-based group, Western States Center (WSC)..That group’s manual — similarly titled Confronting White Nationalism in Schools — is acknowledged in CAHN’s manual as having been "adapted”, but, according to plagiarism-checking sites online, both manuals are around 94% the same..All that CAHN really changed in order to label itself the author are a couple of minor Canadian examples of 'hate symbols' (including, again, our Red Ensign flag,) the swapping out of references to “US” with “Canada” or “American” with “Canadian”, and a few instances of Canadianized spelling..CAHN even took its own front-page design from WSC’s manual..Now, with permission (which I’m assuming CAHN got), people are free to take another’s work all they want. But here, CAHN received over a quarter-million dollars to do virtually nothing..As it stated in the Heritage Department’s grant announcement, Liberal MP and then-Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen “joined members of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network to launch its new toolkit…[which] was created as part of the network’s project...” (my italics.) Elsewhere, he’s quoted as saying his party “support[s] the efforts of organizations like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network to create real solutions to confront and prevent hate.”.But would most people agree that putting in 6% of the work means you are that work’s ‘creator?' More importantly, does 6% of a 53-page teacher’s manual deserve $270,000 of taxpayers’ money?.After the Laith Marouf-debacle, Heritage Department Deputy Minister Mala Khanna promised to scrutinize 'anti-hate' organizations in receipt of taxpayer funds and even retroactively take back awarded grants..Groups getting paid to find (or is it manufacture?) 'hate' in Canadian society, especially ones taking money for another group’s work, would seem to make the government’s continued sponsorship of this group a complaint-worthy concern..Let’s see how serious is the Trudeau government’s promise to raise its scrutiny standards and hope this industry metaphorically gets its own equally fiery demise..Regular contributor Robert Stewart is a small-business owner whose writing has appeared in the Toronto Sun, National News Watch, and the Post Millennial, among other outlets.
