Barred From Canada: An Update
On March 3 Ambassador James Bissett had a letter published in Alberta’s premier daily, the Edmonton Journal, taking issue with an “assistant adjunct” professor [sic!] at the University of Alberta who had voiced support for the cancellation of my lectures at UBC and UofA because of my “denial of genocide” at Srebrenica:
First, the topic of the speech was The Balkans: Uncertain Prospects for an Unstable Region. It had nothing to do with Srebrenica. Second, Trifkovic's credentials on the subject of genocide are beyond reproach. In June 2006, he was the keynote speaker at a symposium held in Israel on the topic of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia.
It is becoming all too common in Canada for individuals or groups to prevent the expression of views and opinions with which they do not agree. I find it particularly troublesome when a professor at one of Canada's foremost universities publicly supports the suppression of that fundamental freedom and then argues he has always been in "favour of dialogue."
(The formal grounds for my difficulties was my alleged position as a “senior official” of an unidentified government, but “Srebrenica” is, of course, the ever-present elephant in the room.) Bissett’s letter was followed by a much longer diatribe in the March 10 issue of the Edmonton Journal supporting the view that “Canada was within its rights and acted correctly in refusing admission to Srdja Trifkovic, a journalist and political activist”:
Trifkovic writes political commentary, principally for the magazine Chronicles, a polemical publication from an organization of the extreme right, in which he is also an editor. Among scholars Trifkovic is regarded, not as a colleague, but as a curiosity from the side… His arguments are summarized in an article, "The Hague Tribunal: Bad Justice, Worse Politics." [NB: published in Chronicles in August 1996] He also published two books, The Sword of the Prophet and Defeating Jihad, arguing terrorism and violence are intrinsic to the Islamic religion.
As for the claims Trifkovic makes regarding crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, they have been disproven before international judicial bodies such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which has found individuals responsible for genocide in Srebrenica, and the International Court of Justice, which found that genocide was committed… Despite extreme views that would discredit most public speakers, Trifkovic has become a bit of a cause célèbre in some parts of the émigré community, partly because he is amusing and well-spoken and partly because he holds a doctorate… Freedom of movement is a fundamental democratic value and should be restricted only for compelling reason. The Canadian government was right to exclude a participant in violations of human rights from entry to the country and to prevent this misuse of the authority of the university from taking place…
The letter was signed by a multiethnic crew of academics and “independent scholars,” most of whom are regarded—among experts—as neither “colleagues” nor “curiosities from the side,” but as anonymi. A short response came on March 10 from George Thompson of Washington DC:
While mouthing support for academic autonomy and freedom to travel, the posse of professors who favour Srdja Trifkovic's exclusion from Canada in fact seeks to suppress such virtues of civil society. These Guardians of Official Thought can brook no disagreement with their version of what happened during the Bosnian war, specifically at Srebrenica. If their version is unimpeachably correct, however, why is it so important to them to censor those who disagree?
It's sad but not surprising that a small group of academics with an ugly agenda cheers the use of state power to silence dissenters. It's quite worrisome that the state used its power in this manner. Canada has done its university students, and itself, a disservice by excluding Trifkovic from the country.
In the meantime I’ve taken the matter to the Canadian courts; but its background was minutely dissected by Julia Gorin in a long essay published on March 14 on JihadWatch. Following an examination of the background of an unfortunate attack on me by Jihad Watch’s editor, Ms. Gorin points out that the incident at the Vancouver airport on February 24 took place after a Bosnian-Muslim organization called The Institute for Research of Genocide in Canada (ICRG) alerted authorities that a “genocide denier” was within their borders:
In addition to claiming to represent “more than 50,000 Canadians of Bosnian origin”—despite 28,000 of those being Serbs and Croats—IRGC director Emir Ramic sits on the editorial board of a Sarajevo-based Muslim magazine titled Korak (“Step”). Korak, published by the veterans’ association of the Bosnian-Muslim Army, runs articles titled “Israel is a Terrorist Regime” and “Basic Principles of the Law of War in Islam.” The latter asserts that “Jihad is a just and legitimate fight against aggression and a struggle in protection of human rights and freedoms.”
The chief editor of this Islamist magazine, Asaf Dzanic, is also on the “Canadian” Genocide Institute’s board. Perversely, and where the Institute derives some of its “legitimacy,” Elie Wiesel has lent his name to its Board. There are more ironies that Ms. Gorin underlines:
As Canadian former ambassador to Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia James Bissett pointed out, the “Institute” actively engages in WWII Holocaust minimization and denial, of the already minimized and suppressed story of the Muslim-assisted genocide of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies in Croatia—the precursor to the wider European genocide. Ambassador Bissett contrasted the IRGC’s article “Examination of Serbian Deaths in Jasenovac Camp” with the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s numbers. … Elie Wiesel has admitted to being less than careful in what he lends his name to. In October 1993 at a talk he gave at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Wiesel became almost “rhapsodic”… when he spoke of walking through Sarajevo with Bosnian-Muslim wartime president Alija Izetbegovic.
Ms. Gorin points out that my detractors insist on the sanctity of the judgments by international courts to which the United States specifically declines to subject their leaders and soldiers. Given their confidence in UN courts, she adds, they might take a moment to notice that Milosevic was never found guilty—he was found dead, which that leaves him as an indicted war criminal… no more indicted than Tudjman or Izetbegovic, both of whom passed away waiting for their indictments to come:
Consider the efficiency with which the ‘genocide’ designation has been achieved. Note how much speedier, with less trouble and controversy, the Srebrenica “genocide” came to be than the much older and bigger Armenian Genocide. (Meanwhile, as Ambassador Bissett pointed out, “I am not aware of the ‘Institute’ seeking to ban or castigate as ‘genocide deniers’ those Turkish government officials...who are adamant that what happened to the Armenians is NOT a genocide.”) And what about the Greeks and Assyrians? (See “Three Genocides, One Perpetrator.”) Never mind about the WWII liquidation of one-third of Croatia’s Serbs—virtually unknown, much less officially designated as anything. What is the common denominator here? The elite guardianship, and the fevered—and very successful—rush to collect proclamations, resolutions, rulings, compulsory days of remembrance (internationally and locally) is for exactly ONE “genocide,” and of the smallest scale. Just as oddly, it is the alleged perpetrators of this particular “genocide” who can’t kick the label, which is used as a sledgehammer against them in pursuance of, and as a cover for, Islamo-Western geopolitical ends. In what amounts to the biggest false confession in history, the effort has even achieved an admission of guilt from the alleged perpetrators, if only to stop the whipping.
There is something political, and something desperate, going on here. Why is it so crucial for Muslims to have their desperately sought genocide? Enter the final irony of this convoluted, sleight-of-hand situation—from Trifkovic’s deportation, to his being ‘found out’ as an anti-Semite, to “tarring” Spencer with said “anti-Semite,” to criticism of Spencer for not disavowing the latter’s Balkan “pseudo-history”: In addition to the geopolitical purpose that “the massacre” was needed for at the time (an international intervention), there is a far bigger goal. Muslims see the Jews as deriving much of their influence, moral authority, and sympathy from the Holocaust. To compete, they must secure their own. That they are achieving it in between committing genocides themselves (Sudan, Turkey, Kosovo, WWII Croatia-Bosnia, 1990s Bosnia) is a testament to their prowess, and to the West’s stupidity and servility.
Being a genocide denier is not as bad as being a genocide fabricator, Julia Gorin concludes, “a relentless effort that takes on many forms and disguises to make it harder to recognize, camouflaging itself against seemingly unrelated or tangential incidents.”
Entries(RSS)
This report on subsequent events since Dr. Trikovic suffered that infamous insult at Canadian customs should at least entomb the lingering superstition that colleges and universities are leafy enclaves where honest inquiry and informed debate can occur. What they are in most cases - with due regard and admiration for those exceptions - are very expensive modern renditions of Chairman Mao's re-education camps. Slogans and causes are promoted to people with little to no understanding of either but who have an eagerness to number among the enlightened elite.
People unwilling to subject themselves to the party line on matters cannot be debated, they must be labeled with handy pejoratives, even when they are ludicrous or contradictory. Thus the "anti-Semite" canard is pulled from the quiver even when the facts make such a charge completely ludicrous; this is because most will not read or discover the facts, but they will happily parrot the charge to the applause of their mentors.
Huxley's Brave New World and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (mind control from above and below) have both arrived and taken residence in Western society.
I wonder if Canada will deny entry to Marxist academics who deny that Lenin and Mao killed millions of people?
There will come a point, perhaps sooner rather than later, when Dr. Trifkovic will take his place along side that long list of traditionalist and conservatives before him who suffered the same fate. Being a Chronicles editor is evidently a dangerous occupation given the times, soon it will be necessary to mail the magazine in with a brown paper cover like pornography and Hamish Frazier's old clandestine works against those communists he knew only too well.
It was similar years ago( only grown worse with time) when I was in college. Invite Hamish Frazier, or the old Austrian,Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and maybe a dozen students and a few academic types would show up but the Campus thought police would go bezerk. Invite the old man,Louis Farakham from Chicago with his angry body guards or the old wicken witch from Harvard - East, Rosemary Ruether, and they would fill the auditorium with loud cheers and hysteria.
I was pleased to hear Dr. Landess speak about the treatment his friend Mel Bradford recieved at the hands of the neo-cons under Reagan. The old Southern teacher took it for a while but then took Hank Williams advice and stayed in Texas. Maybe its time Srdja, scratch these type of talks given the treatment, the honorarium, the audience, the effort and the effect. Or put another way, teach those who want to learn something and let the left go to hell.
Just a point about leftist political correctness.
I think it is a mistake to mix the old Communism with contemporary political correctness. The former is still largely dead, but the latter is as strong as ever. Why is that? Well, I am sympathetic to the thesis according to which there is an inverse relationship between the strength of classical Marxism and that of "cultural" Marxism. The argument goes like this: as the Leftist parties in the Western world abandonned Marxist class analysis, disowned their old working class constituency, and submitted to corporate globalization, many of them disguised this re-alignment through a fervent embrace of cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism has given the Left a new oppressed people to champion (gays, minorities, the "youth", women, petty criminals, etc, etc) to replace the old oppressed people (the working class and the petty bourgeoisie) that they ultimately found to be too boring. It allows this Left to keep its Stalinist intellectual witch-hunts, all the while staying in the good books of big capital. For example, in the run-up to the financial crash of 2008, this Left had little to say about the schemes of the banksters so long as the latter threw enough sops to so-called "diversity".
What I am amazed with is the number of Serbian professors who wrote to Edmonton journal against Dr. Trifkovic. And who is this Srdja Pavlovic? What exactly is going on? Why would people who should have some degree of empathy for this topic act this way? I did not see any Muslim names as signatories of the letter either!!?
@5 Jack Bailey:
Doesn't surprise me in the least Jack. Keep in mind, being of Serbian origin doesn't mean (anymore) that s/he is an Orthodox Christian, but rather a Bosniak. They won't think twice about selling out Dr. Trif.
Letters from "academics" in the newspaper really shouldn't matter because it is the government of Canada which determines who gets to enter the country and travel in it. And this supposedly "Tory" government has given in to the forces of PC by applying a standard which I doubt it has applied to other persons who could either be regarded as having "connections" to genocide or terrorism for that matter.
Mr. Scallion, as far I (vaguely) know, Canada has a coalition government and the ruling Conservatives are effectively powerless in some respects. Is that the same thing as "giving in"?
@5 Jack, there are many in within the Serb intellectual circles who have swallowed propaganda labeling them as the belligerants in the Blakans. I know many in the Serb disapora who are in denial of their heritage. I do not know Prof. Pavlovic. Perhaps he suffers from these delusions, or perhaps he just finds it more comfortable to travel in the circles he does.
#7 and #8,
Messrs Scallon and Sanjay,
In Canada today, "Tory" in the mainstream sense has come to mean US-style neoconservatism. Hence the Serbs still get the shaft.
I can accept that there are Serbian academics that have a different world view. But to go on record for supporting those who have labeled Dr. S as a holocaust denier is too much. These academics know the official story of the Bosnian war one way or another and they know that the story is flawed in many respects. Ordinarily it would not matter what anyone's opinion is. However,Why it matters is that the phony story is being used as a pretext to nullify the Dayton accords.
it is extremely important to find out who these people are, and why they are doing this.
People who attack and intimidate people like Srdja Trifkovic are not leftists. They do not belong to such categorization at all. I see them as reckless opportunists hired (or otherwise incorporated and payed) to create more-or-less plausable alibies for various major crimes, mostly against Humanity or Peace, comitted by arogant, malevolent, greedy, selfimposed and dillusional Entities which, sadly enough, managed to rule the world. They are all partners in CRIME and connected similar to Organized Crime Syndicates. There is no ideologu here. Manner of their defence is, transparently enough, preemptive offence. Planning goes along the line of "plausable denialability", various "immunities" and plain threats. Murder is popular method also. Victims are the oponents, as well as and rank-and-file guys who outlived their usefulness and worth more dead than alive.
Srdja Pavlovic is a lawyer specialized in political affairs. According to some credible people he did considerable damage to Serbia in the past and continues to do so. Probably the biggest offence to this name is his signature on a document inviting NATO bombing of Serbia back in 1999 (along with late Zoran Djindjic et al) for obvious reasons of personal gains and contrary to interests and wellbeing of Serbian Nation. I forgot the definition of High Treason in any law since humans learned to write, but I remember what suppose to await the perpetrator.
#12
Wow, that is shocking. I would never want to put my own signature on any document that explicity or implicitly would amount to bombing of people in my own country. I say this as a person with not nearly as strong a patriotic fervour, and heavens knows I may even sell out a bit if I have to save my life during a foreign occupation.
But doing that, that is simply outrageous.
The stuff Pavlovic is made of is not the same thing as the stuff of which the rest of us are made.
#4 Jonathen,
The new disguise covers the same sin. Cultural marxism may be worse than the old guard communist. The old guard wore their red jackets on campus and were interested in debating and defending their beach head. Their intellectual heirs are only interested in power without any authority. During the run up to the last Middle East quagmire, there were two headlines --- Faster Please and Slowly but Surely --both coming from the same cultural marxists; Left and Neo-con Right. Their direction of movement today is not only from the top down or the bottom up, but also a growing coalition on their flanks. I think this growing coalition is what you are describing as it manifests itself culturally. These " new oppressed people to champion (gays, minorities, the “youth”, women, petty criminals, etc, etc) to replace the old oppressed people (the working class and the petty bourgeoisie) are not knew at all. Engels had quite alot to say about "liberating" them from the very begiining. One just needed to live until our time to see its fruits.
#14, Robert.
Are you sure?
Based on a cursory overview of Engels' work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" found at wikipedia, I do not see the connection to contemporary cultural Marxism.
Furthermore, the key difference between classical Marxism in its various forms (Marxism, Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism...even Trotskyism) and cultural Marxism is that the former concerns the changing economic structures that will permit a seizure of power by the exploited classes that will then change the economic system of the society. The cultural Marxists (as they exist politically, not necessarily all the nuances of the thinking of people like Lukacz, Adorno, etc), on the other hand, tend to have next to nothing to say about the basic structure of political economy. They talk about how capitalism is racist, or sexist or homophobic,etc, but have no real concept of the socialism with which they would like to replace it with. Campus leftists are largely cultural Marxists. What is their pre-occupation? Seizing the means of production? Not at all, and certainly not for the sake of a working class that they tend to condemn as unfailingly reactionary in its social attitudes. Instead,they just want to have more "diversity" on the board of directors, make more investments in trendy causes,and the like. They tend to see the capitalist economy as a giant cow from which to extract milk for their (often artificial) socioeconomic groups, but I do not think they ever seriously put capitalism itself in question.
Why this distinction? Because Antonio Gramsci was first and foremost a theorist of revolution like Lenin rather than an analyst of socioeconomic change like Marx. He thought that the way to achieve Communist revolution was to infilitrate the institutions of bourgeois capitalist society and to carry out Communism from within. The thing is, by the time all these cultural Marxists from May 1968 have "marched through the institutions", Communism had collapsed. What then? Either deliberately or willy-nilly, many of them rallied to corporate globalization. Just look at Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
Jonathen,
If you are looking at Wikipedia for your information let's drop the discussion. If you had read the Origin of the Family,we would not be having this discussion. Are you a college kid?
Robert, my own father is in his mid-50s, and even he looks up Wikipedia for his information. It's not a college kid thing, but a thing of anyone who happens to live in this generation. The internet makes cursory glances at information too easy.
Anyway, to the gentleman who asked whether Canada would deny entry to other kinds of extremists, it seems that Canada itself produces not a few crazies anyway. I was watching PBS archive tapes of debates between Sowell and Frances Fox Piven. Piven was (or is she still alive?) a true radical, who wanted large numbers of people to go on welfare, in order to blackmail the government. Then, there is a polemic named Naomi Klein, who, on the basis of Friedman's 45 minute meeting with Pinochet, made up a bizzare hypothesis about Friedman being an evil conspirator who wanted to impose global dictatorial regimes. And then there have been a few Canadian feminists who supported eugenics. Craaaazy country, as far as the intellectuals it produces. No offense to all the good and decent Canadian people here; some close family friends happen to live there, by the way.
#16, No I am not.
# 16 Robert; Please watch the road, You are driving into the future using only your rearview mirror. mmc
Yes, I suppose I am. Sorry if I offended you or Jonathen with my abrupt impatience. By the second Sunday of Lent one should have more patience. You fellows carry on, I do enjoy your post.
#20, Robert, your reproach that I had not read the entirety of Engel's book was justified.
No problem. There are alot of books I have not read. I was in a college class reading James Joyce a hundred years ago, and the professor asked what the wedding feast at Cana was and nobody knew.
I thought it was scandalous at the time but all it really meant is that a few knew and would not say, and the rest didn't care. You are certainly not in either of those categories so as I said before carry on without fear and know that I enjoy your posts and participation very much. Chronicles is the only place I even look for serious debate and even here we must satisfy ourselves with virtual annonymity,which resembles human conversation, but is not -- really.
#20 Robert, no offense taken, I love brevity. My post was merely a back-seat driver's poor attempt to use McLuhan's observation to comment on where our drive into the future (wikipedia) has taken us. I'm not all that taken by the scenery, but the shortcuts sure come in handy.
#12. I do not subscribe to the view that Djinjic was necessarily a bad guy nor that the removal of Milosevic was a bad thing. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Djindjic was either naive or betrayed by the State Department's erroneous world view makers.
I am equally unconfortable with those who portray the current Belgrade politics as a conflict between quislings and patriots. That would be too simplistic. There are intelligent men on both sides, constrained by their own worldview.
Likewise there are opportunists, idealists etc. But, this political scene is still very much a conflict between two leftist fractions. One is accepting of the social democrat or American democrat/progressivist paradigm with all its flaws, while the other is the amalgamation of Marxists turned nationalist or Marxists remaining Marxist while pining for some Putin-like savior.
In practice this is a conflict as spoken by Srdja Popovic, Lukovic, vesna Pesic, Liht on one side and Antonic, Vukadinovic, Cavoski, Beckovic, Cosic on the other.
While it seems to be that Dr. S is closer to the second group, I do feel that he is genuinely interested in forming and arguing from the point of view of the real right, something that in the final analysis is not acceptable to this second group. That is, they are unwilling to give up their Marxists beliefs completely.
Thus they are willing to accept Ortodox religion as the signature cultural distinction of Serbs or as the carrier of the Serbian tradition and culture. They are even accepting of the monarchy, but only in the past, and only when it was seen as the defender of this culture. They likewise accept the criticism of the communist takeover when it is seen as the destroyer of this culture.
However, they do not accept the communists revolution as entirely wrong since it brought on the leftist concept of equality in which they believe. Just as much, they believe in planned economy, statism and they pay only lip service to private property. Paradoxically, in this respect they are the same as the very social democrat quislings that they are in conflict with.
The real right does not exist in Belgrade yet, which is why currently one should not take either side.
Dear Jack,
both groups consist of many ex-Communists. They had no say on Rehabilitation of victims of communist regime, restitution of nationnalized property, on lustration. Send a documment in interest of Kosovo Serbs to Mr. Vukadinovic or citizen Cavoski,my bet is you get not response,like recently my poor self.In Belgride there are 1200 members of PEN-Udruzenje pisaca,24,000 public peronalities,the crowds are untachable.Down there competition does not take place among political parties but among dirty guys versus clean guys who have not an even brake. Individuls you named are mostly two-faced Janus headed locals,speak relevant to table partners hand for mouth.They are all but Cavoski and Ms.Pesic actually churchgoers if TV is presnet, but tolerate censorship of press and tlevision.
Kind regards from a member of the silent majority.