Why did this anti-Canadian, anti-white journalist win a free speech award?
The so-called promoter of freedom of expression once titled a piece, 'Giving Maxime Bernier a platform legitimizes his dangerous ideas.'
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I saw this headline in the Toronto Star: "Star Columnist Shree Paradkar Wins PEN Canada Prize for Advancing Freedom of Expression." Now, I know a little bit about PEN. I've actually been a member of it for more than a dozen years, but I was puzzled by this.
Shree Paradkar, an award-winning journalist and equity advocate, has won the 2024 Ken Filkow Prize.
— pencanada (@PENCanada) October 10, 2024
The prize recognizes Paradkar for advancing freedom of expression in Canada. pic.twitter.com/VxUxlkLVh7
I know Shree Paradkar a little bit; I'm not a close follower of hers, and I don't know if anyone is. She just talks about racism all the time, and she talks about racism from a reverse racism point of view, that is, she calls any white person racist. I think she truly hates Canada, or at least everything that Canada is; she wants to transform it into something else, which I find very odd for a new immigrant to this country. If you hate Canada so much, why did you come here?
So I've never really seen her write anything interesting, and I'm certain I haven't seen her do anything to promote freedom of speech. Sort of the contrary. Here's what her company says: "I'm so proud of her. Paradkar won the prize after being nominated by other journalists at the Star for her work advocating for and mentoring reporters from minority communities."
I'm all for mentoring reporters from different communities—black, white, red, whatever. But what's that got to do with free speech? Freedom of speech is to stop censorship of people, usually government censorship but sometimes corporate censorship.
What's that got to do with the fact that she is an affirmative action hire herself and wants affirmative action for others? What's that got to do with it? I'll keep reading.
"Toronto Star columnist Shree Paradkar has won PEN Canada's 2024 Ken Filkow Prize for advancing freedom of expression in Canada. Paradkar won the prize after being nominated by other journalists at the Star and elsewhere for her work advocating for and mentoring reporters from marginalized and underrepresented communities."
PEN Canada told the Star on Wednesday: "Her active and committed support of young journalists of colour is fundamental to expanding free expression for those who are often excluded from the means to articulate the marginalized experience of an unequal society."
Okay, can you do me a favor and just not call it a free speech prize? You can call it anything else; you can call it a Diversity Equity and Inclusion Prize? You can call it an affirmative Action Prize. You can phrase it positively—a prize for bringing along minority reporters. Of course, they're not a minority anymore in Toronto. Toronto is now a minority-majority city; the minority in Toronto and Vancouver and soon other cities are white people. So it's a little bit of chutzpah for someone in the year 2024 who just moved here from India to talk about civil rights.
Canada was always a hospitable place, but it's a bit rich to call yourself a civil rights battler in 2024 for racial equality. We've had that here for quite a while. It's a little bit of stolen valour by Shree Paradkar. She would be the kind of person who would cheer the tearing down of a statue.
If you read her own columns and tweets—and I find them too tedious to read other than the headline—it's just a hurricane of anti-white and anti-Canadian rants. Even though, as I said, she came here as a new immigrant herself, apparently she's an expert on the way this country should be. And over the past year especially, it's basically like reading the news feed of Al Jazeera or some other anti-Semitic state broadcaster. I mean, it's just nuts. I don't know if she actually has a readership, but I thought I would sort of look into the kind of free speech credentials that she has.
Starting with, for example, this story: "Giving Maxime Bernier a platform legitimizes his dangerous ideas." So this is her a couple of years ago writing about how her own newspaper should never have allowed Maxime Bernier, who is a newsmaker, to meet with their editorial board. She said, "Platform does not defeat ideas; if there's anything U.S. President Donald Trump is a shining example of, it is the danger of free speech arguments that validate hate speech and the failure of the concept of sunlight as a great disinfectant of bad ideas. All the platform does is legitimize the speaker, and when that speaker is polished or perceived by the audience as authentic, the platform elevates their stature."
Yeah, let's give this woman a free speech award. Can you believe it? PEN Canada is such an embarrassment!
Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books including Ethical Oil and most recently, China Virus.