A Recent History Of The Western Standard

Noted this short piece in the Calgary Herald this morning:

A Muslim leader is praising Calgary police for making progress in their investigation of anti-Islamic postings on a local website last year.

Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada thanked police for identifying two people who posted the remarks on the Western Standard website.

A quick backgrounder. When Ezra Levant abandoned the flaming wreckage of The Western Standard, he left behind one final blog post (which has since been sent down the memory hole). Fans quickly decorated the post with anti-Muslim sentiments. For example:

"...there is no such thing as innocent Muslims. They must all be killed. All of them."

Mr. Soharwardy swiftly organized protests outside of Calgary City Hall, and threatened a complaint via the AHRCC against the Western Standard, which elicited this grovelling apology from Matthew Johnston, the Standard's new Head Honcho. Afterwards, Mr. Johnston vowed to weed out the crazies posting to the WS Shotgun Blog.

What is interesting about the latest development is that, presumably, Mr. Johnston and the gang at WS must have co-operated with the police investigation.

New Western Standard Editors Will Attempt To Weed Out Crazies, Raise The Tone

All mockery aside, a good thing:

On the matter of my apology to Syed Soharwardy...
[...]

The comments that prompted the human rights complaint appeared on an un-moderated blog, posted anonymously by someone who was not a Western Standard staffer or freelancer. I removed the comments when they were brought to my attention as they were offensive and did nothing to advance genuine discussion or enhance the reputation of the Western Standard. And I apologized to Syed Soharwardy as I am ultimately responsible for comments made on this forum, and, again, those comments were indefensible.

Just as the Western Standard magazine content was edited, the Western Standard website content will be edited. We simply want to provide our readers and advertisers with the best product we can.

Moderating the comments on our website will also protect the Western Standard from unfair attacks. For example, as online reader "OBC" noted, tonight we were forced to ban an IP address with 6 user names. This individual was actively working to discredit the Western Standard with anti-Semitic and racists comments that would never have come from any of the thousands of thoughtful readers who visit us online. I removed the comments and reported the IP address to our webmaster.

Kudos.

One point I should like to make, though, concerns the notion that the WS' new editor Matthew Johnston removed the comments "when they were brought to my attention". This is not a particularly credible claim. As Mr. Soharwardy has pointed out, the comments in question remained posted for more than two weeks, and as anyone who has posted to the Shotgun Blog can tell you, while perhaps their forums are technically speaking unmoderated, if the editors want your comments gone, they will be deleted within minutes.

But that aside, Mr. Johnston's actions are a necessary first step if the new editors want their product to be taken seriously beyond the ghetto of far right kooks that currently hover over the WS website. There ARE in fact areas where a Conservative critique can serve as a useful corrective to main-stream thinking, but only if their authors cannot be summarily dismissed as lunatics. I look forward to the day when this is the case at The Western Standard.