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PAUL FROMM: BIGOT GETS INTERVENOR STATUS
Anti-Fascist Resistance Column, by David Lethbridge
(This article is from the May 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
PAUL FROMM IS NO FRIEND of the Human Rights Tribunal. Back in 1994, he wrote that its activities are "an affront to free men and women and make a mockery of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms." At the time, Fromm was all in favour of "abolishing human rights tribunals." But times have clearly changed.
This past March, it was revealed that Fromm had sought, and had been granted, intervenor status in a BC Human Rights Tribunal hearing. The Okanagan Lesbian and Gay Pride Week Committee had filed a complaint against Mayor Linda Larson and the Town of Oliver. Like most communities in the Okanagan-Shuswap, politically and economically dominated as they are by right-wing Christian fundamentalists, the Oliver town council had refused to proclaim Gay and Lesbian Pride Week in 1998.
Fromm has entered the Tribunal hearings on the side of Mayor Larson, saying that "the gay and lesbian juggernaut has to be stopped somewhere."
Two years ago, Fromm and a number of other white racists, antisemites, and Holocaust-deniers had been scheduled to hold a rally in Oliver. At that time, it took a great deal of persuasion by anti-racist organizations to convince Larson to refuse them the use of town property.
Since then, Larson has been parading herself as a crusader for human rights, and many organizations have invited her to speak on any number of diversity panels. Apparently, though, Larson is less than enthusiastic about the human rights of gays and lesbians.
Significantly, Larson could have formally complained to the Human Rights Tribunal about Fromm's request for intervenor status, but declined to do so. Such a refusal takes on real importance. Larson knows precisely who Paul Fromm is. To refuse to complain about his application is, quite literally, to accept his help.
The Lesbian and Gay Pride Week Committee did file a formal complaint, but was rebuffed by the Tribunal. In a written decision that will go down in history as an example of utter stupidity, the Tribunal maintained that Fromm's organization CAFE (Canadian Association for Free Expression) "has a demonstrated interest in freedom of expression issues in the context of human rights legislation."
When Nitya Iyer, the Tribunal member who wrote this bizarre interpretation of Fromm's "demonstrated interests," was contacted, she refused to comment on her written decision. Indeed, she could not even recognize direct quotations from her own writing, let alone suggest what might have motivated her to write them.
Keith Saddlemyer, the head of the Human Rights Tribunal, was also less than helpful when interviewed. He claimed never to have heard of Paul Fromm.
When Fromm's political history was pointed out to him - at some length - he seemed quite unperturbed. Appallingly, the very organization which one might assume would have a broad, deep knowledge of human rights - the BC Human Rights Tribunal - seems entirely unaware of the leadership of the racist and fascist right in Canada.
The Tribunal may be unaware of Paul Fromm, but Fromm has never wavered in his contemptuous opinion of the Tribunal: "It is a court of the Star Chamber ... they make up the rules as they go along."
The Tribunal hearings will be held in Oliver in July. In the meantime, Fromm has been "demonstrating his interest in freedom of expression and human rights" by joining with Don Black and David Duke as a speaker at the American Friends of the British National Party (AFBNP) in Arlington, Virginia, on March 30.
Duke is an ex-KKK leader and former Nazi. He is currently president of the white supremacist National Organization for European Rights. Black is the neo-Nazi director of Stormfront, the world's first and largest neo-Nazi Internet website. The British National Party is a long-time fascist organization with connections in the US and Canada.
Fromm's recent appearance in Virginia appears to be part of a move to develop deeper connections in the US. For the last two or three years he has been attending meetings of the politically powerful neo-Confederate and white racist Council of Conservative Citizens. In July 1999, Fromm had written an official report for the CoCC on their meeting in Fairfax, Virginia. In December 1999, Fromm was a featured speaker at the CoCC semi-annual meeting in Huntsville, Alabama.
Since the late 1960s, Fromm has been spinning a wide web that has included neo-Nazis like Revilo Oliver and Wolfgang Droege, Holocaust-deniers like David Irving and Ernst Zundel, anti-Semites like Eileen Pressler and Ron Gostick, and right wing organizations from the Reform Party, to the Confederation of Regions Party, the Heritage Front, and the World Anti-Communist League.
No doubt all this experience with such a diversity of fascists will help Fromm in his bigoted intervention against the rights of homosexuals.
As the progressive forces in Oliver take on Paul Fromm and Mayor Larson, the time-honoured chant still applies: Gay, straight; black, white; same struggle, same fight!
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