Montreal hate-speech trial hears debate on whether Nazism directly caused Holocaust
CBC
What started as a hate-speech trial of alleged Montreal neo-Nazi recruiter Gabriel Sohier-Chaput turned into a debate on whether knowledge of the Holocaust is beyond reasonable dispute Friday.
On July 8, defence lawyer Hélène Poussard argued people now throw around the word Nazi outside of its original meaning, and "genocide wasn't originally central to Nazism."
She doubled down on the argument today, saying the prosecution should have brought forward witnesses and experts to define Nazism.
While Sohier-Chaput, 36, scrolled on his phone in the prisoner's box, his lawyer argued the prosecution had put forward a dozen inflammatory headlines as proof, but not the articles themselves, making the proof incomplete.
Sohier-Chaput, who has admitted to writing between 800 to 1,000 articles for the far-right online publication the Daily Stormer under the pseudonym Zeiger, has pleaded not guilty to a single count of wilful promotion of hate propaganda against Jewish people.
If convicted, he could face up to two years in jail.
The case hinges on a single article entitled "Canada: Nazis Trigger Jews By Putting Up Posters On Ch--k Church," using a racial slur to refer to the Asian community.
Using antisemitic memes and editorial comments, the article celebrated neo-Nazi posters pasted on a bus stop in British Columbia and insulted a Holocaust survivor who had been interviewed about the incident.
"We need to make sure no SJW [social justice warrior] or Jew can remain safely untriggered," Sohier-Chaput wrote in the article.
"Non-stop Nazism, everywhere, until the very streets are flooded with the tears of our enemies."
Testifying in his own defence on March 1, Sohier-Chaput said he was using satire that young people familiar with online culture would understand. His goal, he said, was to use humour to end political correctness.
The Crown had argued the phrase "non-stop Nazism everywhere" was inciting violence against Jewish people since Nazism led to the Holocaust. It also argued the Daily Stormer was a neo-Nazi publication, pointing to images of Adolf Hitler and Swastikas pasted all over its homepage.
Poussard pointed to various dictionary definitions of Nazism, which she says aren't precise enough to support the argument that her client was inciting hatred. She said no clear evidence was brought forward to prove Nazis saw Jewish people as inferior.
"What we need to analyze is words and be careful of exact definitions," said Poussard. "To me saying Nazis exterminated six million Jews is not precise enough."
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