Vancouver Zeitgeist
Reflections on Vancouver, British Columbia and other topics, related or not

 

The trials of
Ernst Zundel

His opponents can dance on his grave, says David Cole.
But “in trying to suppress Zundel’s crude stereotypes,
Jews ended up personifying them.”

Greg Klein | August 7, 2017

Ernst Zundel dies age 78

Ernst Zundel at a 2003 Immigration and Refugee Board
detention hearing. (Photo: Aaron Harris/CP)

 

Sometimes it takes outsiders to bring out the most outrageous of Canada’s absurdity. German immigrant Ernst Zundel, who has died at age 78, benefited from a craven and almost unbelievably naïve power structure that unwittingly gave him an international platform for what had been a fringe viewpoint. But then Canada, along with Germany and the U.S., responded with extraordinary vengeance.

Takimag contributor David Cole—he’s Jewish, so that’s okay—revisited the Zundel saga three months ago. With wit undeterred by despair, Cole recounted how a “nobody” struggled through an ugly chapter in Canadian history that demonstrated the frightening limitations of our freedom: The (Chosen) People vs. Ernst Zundel.

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