Amy Hamm: Brits take on progressive bullies. Why don't we?

The recent backlash against a now-retracted Amnesty International report on “the anti-rights movement in the U.K.” can be considered a case study in Canadian complacency.

Here’s what happened: On July 8, Amnesty International published a report naming dozens of registered charities, businesses and groups they accused of forming an “anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people in the U.K.” The report categorized these actors as either anti-abortion, “ultra-conservative” Christian, involved in “conversion practices,” or gender critical. The list included lesbian and gay groups, like Gay Men’s Network UK, and Lesbian Strength, as well as For Women Scotland (the group responsible for the landmark U.K. Supreme Court ruling stating that women are female) and even Beira’s Place, a women’s crisis centre founded by J.K. Rowling. The groups were accused of “fostering moral panic” with an “aim … to restrict human rights by undermining human rights protections in law and practice.”

Sounding like conspiratorial crackpots, Amnesty also accused these “anti-rights actors” of “seek(ing) a society in which women and men have fixed and distinct roles, based on what they view as ‘natural’ and ‘traditional.’” They argued that gender critical groups (which seek to protect women’s spaces and sex-based rights) or those who utter the descriptive phrase, “gender ideology” … wrongly “portray it as an attack on national traditions, family structures, marriage and religious freedom.” The report was bonkers, and the public reaction swift and excoriating: at least 22 organizations wrote to Amnesty to denounce it in full. Several threatened legal action. And Amnesty backed down.

Two days later, on July 10, Amnesty retracted the report pending review. (Which is still available on internet archives.) It has since issued a statement to media, as reported in the BBC: “We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions.

“Its use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK which is why it was promptly removed.

“We remain committed to defending human rights, including both the rights of women and the rights of trans people.”

In true fighting spirit, one of the listed “anti-rights actors,” Sex Matters, has made further demands of Amnesty to provide evidence for its claims (or admit to not having any); to withdraw additional, previous reports that denigrated gender critical groups; to publicly apologize (including to its own staff); and to retrain its staff and trustees on U.K. discrimination law.

I’m no longer shocked when groups like Amnesty engage in the very behaviour that they accuse others of. (For instance: fostering moral panics by warning of a non-existent attack on human rights or enforcing strict gender roles by pretending that those who defy gender stereotypes must be “born in the wrong body.” In the West, institutional gaslighting is sadly routine these days.) Instead, I experience shock, and envy, at the volume of British opposition to Amnesty’s ideological bullies. Canada has our own ideological bullies to contend with. We seldom put up much of a fight.

Canadians might consider, with a smug sense of superiority, dozens of U.K. horror stories about arrests over social media posts, shocking cases of immigrant violence (and subsequent rioting), or even the sorry scarcity of in-home air conditioning units, a byproduct of alarmist climate-change activism across the pond. At least we’re not as bad as the U.K.! Right?

Not so fast. We don’t deserve to feel smug — not at all. Because Canadians, by and large, roll over and take it when our institutions spend millions of our tax dollars attempting — or succeeding — to force-feed our populace with the delusional, luxury beliefs of a minority of hyper-woke activists. Our indifference is pathetic and our meekness unmatched. At this rate, “go along to get along” should be the opening line to our national anthem.

Where are the teachers standing up for former school trustee Barry Neufeld and teacher Chanel Pfahl, or former principal Richard Bilkszto, tragically dead from suicide after having been badgered about his “whiteness” during a workplace DEI training session? Where are the nurses and doctors standing up for the free speech of professionals? Where is the large, co-ordinated effort to oppose the censorial work of the (taxpayer-funded) Canadian Anti-Hate Network? (Any one of their dozens of often defamatory “reports” warrants the same backlash that U.K. groups showed to Amnesty International.) Where is the widespread outrage that Crown prosecutors are wasting millions attempting to imprison Tamara Lich and Chris Barber over a peaceful protest?

Behind all these stories of victimization are captured institutions and millions in wasted public funds. Why won’t more Canadians take a stand, when it’s so glaringly evident that we need them to?

Our dissenters are too few, and — despite being loud, and brave — they are seldom taken seriously outside of their own circles. The pervasive Canadian mood towards those fighting for our freedoms and rights can be summed up as: “Ah, those old dogmatists/bigots/partisans! We can safely ignore them” or “I’m so glad someone else is taking a stand, keep it up!” It’s not enough. Amnesty International’s backpedalling on its “anti-rights” report is proof of the successes we could attain with sufficient resistance.

If Canadians want to free themselves from the yoke of our ideological bullies, we simply must mount a greater opposition.

National Post