Jason Kenney Hosting Hate Speech in Social Media

 

By Yasser Harrak

It is amazing to see the Facebook page of the conservative minister of employment and social development infested by radical commentators. His page hosts numerous comments that are very close in content to those made by the supremacist groups. Such comments advocate bodily injury, hatred and discrimination against Muslims. It is hard to believe that the page hosting hate speech belongs to Canada's former minister of citizenship and immigration. We have seen in previous articles the failures of the conservatives in foreign policy. This article is about to tackle some domestic issues in the line of the Conservative Party's failure to well represent Canadian voters. It is not clear to me whether Mr. Kenney's Facebook page is managed by him, his secretary or by a supremacist group. What is clear to me is the fact that Mr. Kenney has only one 17000 Likes page in Facebook where several posts start with "I" showing what appears to be his messages.  Often those messages are added to personal photos sometimes taken by a cell phone. This means that if he is not his page's administrator, someone very close to him is. Knowing that Mr. Kenney may push to delete the racist comments after this article is published, reference comments are saved outside Facebook.

The Symptoms of Conservative Fundamentalism

Following the social media posts and tweets of several Canadian politicians, I noticed that Mr. Kenney's page administrator displayed in several occasions the symptoms of  conservative fundamentalism and narrow mindedness. As an example, his posts in the last three months are self-spoken. It is about a person that shows extreme care about selected issues affecting Canadians and purposely neglects other issues affecting other Canadians while being on their payroll. He feels for some victims of terrorism while neglecting others because of origin, religion and ethnicity.  The following lists recent terrorism related posts by Mr. Kenney on his Facebook page:

November 18, 2014: "Saddened to hear of the latest in a spate of terrorist attacks in Israel, this time claiming several victims in a Jerusalem Synagogue".

December 14, 2014: "Thoughts and prayers for those being held hostage, apparently by extremists, at a café in Sydney, Australia".

January 7, 2014: "Outraged by the brutal terrorist attack against free speech in Paris today. This cult of violence must be stopped”.[1]

Mr Kenney's posts are defenitely not questionable. What we question is his cherrypicking. On the 3rd of November, at leat 20 black Nigerians were killed in a terrorist attack by Islamists many believe they are funded by Saudi Arabia, A close friend and ally to the conservative administration.  Mr. Kenney's page posts did not show solidarity with black people eventhough the impact of the attack was so great. Worse to see, on the 16th of December, 132 schoolchildren ranging between eight and eighteen years of age were massacred by Islamist terrorists (former allies of the US in the cold war era) in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. Mr. Kenney’s page posts neglected the tragedy totally. On the 6th of January, a female terrorist blown herself up in the Turkish city of Istanbul, killing one police officer and injuring another. The attack was also ignored in Mr. Kenney’s page. This suggests that Mr. Kenney’s page uses carefuly selected topics in terrorism to invite supremacists- as we shall see- and host their hate speech and attack on minorities.  It is clear that when it comes to terrorism against Arabs, Turks or blacks, the former minister of immigration is indifferent.

The Hate Speech Hosted and Tolerated in Mr. Kenney's Page

When reviewing the comments in his page, I found a supremacist woman suggesting to take all Muslims, put them in planes and send them back to where they came from, simply because it happens that some extremist Muslims carry barbaric attacks in different places in the world. I replied to her explaining that it is wrong to think that way. I posted for her a link- as an example- of a postal stamp of the French Republic dating back to the early 1900s. The stamp shows some Moroccans that were beheaded by the French army. The message was to say that cruelty and terrorism have no religion. The page admin suppressed all my comments to avoid fair and intelligent discussion. This comes to confirm that Mr. Kenney or his page admin are aware of the comments in the page and do moderate them.

With my experience as a member of the early teams that assisted in establishing Wikipedia by authoring and reviewing several entries in three different languages, I tend to believe that the practice of sockpuppeting is obvious in Mr. Kenney's page. From the comments pattern and -public- information collected on the authors of the radical comments, it seems to me that the administrator of the page uses different Facebook accounts to create fake audience.

Now here are a few examples of the racist and injurious comments hosted in the the Facebook page of our former Canadian immigration and multiculturalism minister:

1. "Islam is a disease. Mosques & Islamic schools need to be closed down before any more bloodshed. Islam is counter to Canadian values and strives to destroy it. No more ISLAMIC immigration in to Canada & deport any Muslims supporting jihad immediately".
2. "There's no such thing as moderate Muslims. The Islam religion is a 'ladder' system. Read about it. And you'll know what I'm talking about".
3. "The only way it will be eradicated is if the moderate, majority Muslims eradicate it. So far, they show very little interest in doing so, which is why they fled their violent countries in the first place".
4. "Just do not allow these people to immigrate to Canada.
5. The Canadian Muslims are very quiet about this barbarism, has anyone else noticed this?".
6. "We need to start limiting the number of Muslims and Palestinian's who are allowed to immigrate to Canada. They bring their hate, and violence to our land”.[2]

In Canada, saying Islam is a disease is similar to saying Christianity or Judaism is a disease. Canadians embrace different beliefs. Any general attack towards a given faith sets a precedence to an attack towards others, and helps ruining the civility that holds Canadians together. The first comment suggests violence threats against Muslims when presenting two choices: one is the eradication of Islam, while the other is the escalation in Bloodshed. The second comment suggests that there are no moderate Muslims. The Third goes further suggesting the eradication of moderate Muslims. I wonder if Mr. Kenney's sockpuppet red in the news that the first policeman who fell at the doors of the French magazine is a French Muslim hero!  I also wonder if Mr. Kenney's sockpuppet knows that those who work long hours in our security agencies documenting, translating and analyzing are mostly Muslims! The rest of the comments suggest ethnic profiling and call for the establishment of a conservative inquisition era. It is a shame to see the most famous social media page of a Canadian politician being a parlor where supremacists gather themselves to tear off the Canadian fabric.

Being presented with the unfortunate and yet real face of Mr. Kenny in the social media, it is certain that Canadians will be searching to learn more about the icons of the conservative party. This will help us relate the dots in many other issues and get clarified as to whether or not the conservatives deserve to be in power.