Monday, June 02, 2008

Archaeology of a smear, part 3: "Demi" repents

In the first two parts of this series, we saw that the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) was a white-supremacist organization with a commitment to (and history of) racist violence (see see part 1), and that "Demigorgona" and others had opened new chapters Canada in the autumn of 2002 (see part 2). This had soon attracted the attention of human rights activist Richard Warman, who is known for bringing cases of hate speech before the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), especially against those who used the internet to promulgate hatred. And by mid-2003, he had filed a complaint against the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) and its leaders. They were not hard to find: "Demigorgona "(a fraction of whose writings we reviewed in part 2) signed her real name to many of her essays. (I will refer to her by her pseudonym in these posts and redact her real name from any documents I produce here: she has apparently left the racist movement and no doubt would prefer that this be left in her past.)

From that point, the Commission began its work. Unlike most of those confronted by the CHRC, "Demi" saw the error of her ways. She sent a letter to commission apologizing (a copy of which is to the right; you can see an un-redacted copy at Ezra Levant's site). In it she renounced her earlier racism, which she recognized was inconsistent with her upbringing. She had, she says, abandoned the racist sites where she had posted so many messages. Her letter dates from 31 July, 2004, and sometime in the months following she entered mediation through the CHRC. The case is listed at the Tribunal website as settled in 2005 (here).

Demi's letter, however, resurfaced some months after that, and has become controversial recently. I will discuss that controversy in a future post. In the meantime, however, there is some documentary analysis to be done with this text.

To be continued…