XPost: alt.revisionism, can.general   
   From: paul@paulfromm.com   
      
   Richard Warman posed as a supporter on neo-Nazis' websites to "[obtain]   
      
   Joseph Brean, National Post · Dec. 13, 2011 | Last Updated: Dec. 13, 2011   
   3:09AM   
   Richard Warman, the serial hate-speech complainant whose case against webmaster   
   Marc Lemire will be heard in Federal Court Tuesday on a constitutional appeal,   
   is known by many false names.   
      
   The grandest is Canada's Hatefinder-General, a mocking epithet coined by   
   celebrity human rights victim and columnist Mark Steyn. The most improbable is   
   Mary Dufford, as whom he corresponded with Eldon Warman, no relation, a radical   
   anti-Semitic "de-tax" activist, seeking to confirm his receipt of legal   
   documents.   
      
   AxeToGrind, as whom Mr. Warman posted 33 messages on the white supremacist   
   Vanguard News Network between 2004 and 2005, seems to speak for itself. Pogue   
   Mahone, his handle for 93 posts on the white power site Stormfront, means "kiss   
   my arse" in Gaelic.   
   But the longest-lasting alias is Lucy, or Lucie, in honour of Lucie Aubrac, who   
   died in 2007, and was a hero of the French Resistance against the Nazis.   
      
   It is a curious historical nod for the lawyer and thricefailed Green Party   
   candidate whose pursuit of hate-speech cases against neo-Nazis and other   
   hatemongers involved posing as a supporter on their message boards, praising   
   their leaders, and even signing off with "88," a coded reference to "Heil   
   Hitler."   
      
   This unsupervised freelance undercover work by Mr. Warman - who worked for the   
   Canadian Human Rights Commission from 2002 to 2004, and has successfully   
   pursued   
   15 hate-speech cases, often with the CHRC arguing the case on his behalf, and   
   with his help - was a key point in the public outcry against Section 13, the   
   Internet hate speech section of the Canadian Human Rights Act.   
      
   The majority Conservative government has vowed to repeal the law as an affront   
   to free speech, even as the Supreme Court of Canada deliberates on a separate   
   case that could see Section 13's legal foundation struck down.   
      
   At Tuesday's hearing in Toronto to decide whether Section 13 is constitutional,   
   the CHRC is expected to argue that its own practices in fighting hate on the   
   Internet are irrelevant to the question of Section 13's constitutionality.   
   Evidence presented throughout the Lemire case revealed those practices to be   
   heavily influenced by Mr. Warman, who once urged the CHRC to "hold off on   
   informing" Mr. Lemire about the expansion of the investigation against him   
   "until the police take a good look" at some new allegations. No criminal   
   charges   
   were ever filed.   
      
   Details of the extent of the Lucie pseudonym are included in records of a   
   separate libel suit Mr. Warman brought against bloggers. The National Post also   
   was sued over the alleged libel, but issued a retrac-tion and apology, and   
   settled the lawsuit.   
      
   In a forensic analysis of the hard drive of a laptop belonging to Mr. Warman,   
   the word Aubrack turned up 1,460 times, largely from email records of an   
   address   
   in that name.   
   The analysis also turned up "n-gger" and   
   "c--t" 4,062 and 259 times respectively, which René Hamel of Digital Wyzdom   
   Forensic Inc. reported was "consistent with Mr. Warman's lengthy human rights   
   work collecting evidence of hate group activity."   
      
   "I signed up and posted to the neo-Nazi website forums vnnforum.com and   
   stormfront.org as another means of collecting intelligence about the neo-Nazi   
   and white supremacist movements and information about the identities of   
   individuals in Canada that it was my intention to file federal human rights   
   complaints against," Mr. Warman said in an affidavit last year as part of the   
   libel suit. "Purporting to be interested in, or a supporter of, the beliefs of   
   a   
   closed group is a standard practice for obtaining information that would   
   otherwise be unavailable. The vast majority of these postings are entirely   
   banal...."   
      
   To explain why he made comments about two neo-Nazis who do not fit the typical   
   mould - one was not white, the other disabled - he said in his affidavit that   
   "contemporary neo-Nazi groups have often splintered or excluded individuals as   
   a   
   result of arcane suspicions about the racial lineage of members or leaders. It   
   has thus been a useful technique to sow doubt about such matters...."   
      
   In upholding one of his hate complaints, Edward Peter Lustig, chairman of the   
   Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, also said Mr. Warman's hateposing "diminishes   
   his credibility" and "could have precipitated further hate messages."   
      
   Mr. Warman has even been accused of hate speech himself: once when the   
   respondent in Tuesday's case, Marc Lemire, sought to add Mr. Warman as a   
   respondent to his own complaint, on the theory that Mr. Warman had anonymously   
   written a comment on his message board; and later when Alex Kulbashian, whom   
   Mr.   
   Warman won a hate speech complaint against, complained he had anonymously   
   violated Section 13 on Stormfront and VNN. That complaint was dismissed as   
   vexatious.   
      
   Mr. Warman denies writing anything on Mr. Lemire's Freedomsite. Neither the   
   analysis by Digital Wyzdom, nor a subsequent one, turned up any evidence that   
   Mr. Warman had written the message at the heart of the libel suit.   
      
   "Mr. Lemire and his direct associates had always been cautious enough never to   
   spread the allegation outside of the CHRT hearing. Indeed, one of Mr. Lemire's   
   closest associates indicated in an Internet posting that they had legal advice   
   not to do so (presumably knowing they would be sued for libel)," Mr. Warman   
   said   
   in his affidavit.   
      
   Mr. Warman did not attend much of the tribunal against Mr. Lemire, but he is   
   expected to make submissions Tuesday in support of Section 13.   
   jbrean@nationalpost.com   
      
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