‘In today’s world if you aren’t far left, you’re seen as Nazi’

When an academic event was axed by a Canadian university after pressure from left-wing activists who believed it was giving a platform to fascists, one of the sponsors RT spoke to says the label 'Nazi' is being applied to anyone the far-left don't like.

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The panel discussion called “The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses” was scheduled to take place on August 22 in the Ryerson University of Toronto, Canada.

The event was expected to host a number of speakers, namely Professors Dr. Jordan Peterson, Dr. Gad Saad, psychologist Dr. Oren Amitay and investigative journalist Faith Goldy, known for controversial views on gender theory, Islam and other issues.

A Facebook page, dubbed ‘No Fascists in Our City!’ was established by left-wing activists, calling for a mass protest against the panel.

“We believe that transphobia, Islamophobia, and intolerance in all its form are abhorrent, and refuse to be complicit bystanders in it,” the Facebook page reads.

While the university initially approved the event, it was abruptly cancelled on August 16, after being apparently hit by the fallout of the Charlottesville violence in the United States. The clashes and car rampage in Charlottesville left one person dead and dozens injured.

“After a thorough security review, the university has concluded that Ryerson is not equipped to provide the necessary level of public safety for the event to go forward,” the university statement emailed to the National Post newspaper reads, citing the “recent events” as a reason to cancel the panel.

While the views of the speakers might have been deemed controversial by some, they are quite opposite to being “fascist,” psychologist and co-sponsor of the event Oren Amitay told RT.

“Gad Saad had spoken many times that he’s a Lebanese Jew, half of my family, if not more were wiped out by the Nazis in the World War Two, and Dr. Peterson has spoken explicitly against fascism, Hitler, Nazism,” Oren Amitay told RT, adding that the speakers did not quite fit what the protesters “would like us to be.”

“I would hope that when the temperatures have come down a bit, and they would actually speak to myself and other panel members, they would realize that we’re not promoting hatred, we’re not promoting fascism, bigotry or anything of the sort. We’re actually speaking the exact opposite of these concepts,” he added.

The event was aimed at promoting “the right way to have these kinds of discussions” and exchanging opinions, while labeling anything you don’t like “Nazi” is itself an example of “ignorance, simple mindedness, hatred and bigotry,” Amitay said.

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“With identity politics people have become so simplistic that if you don’t fit in this category that they like, if you’re not with them then you’re automatically the enemy,” Amitay told RT. “They don’t care what kind of labels they throw at you, because they have been getting away with it for so many years, which is why we wanted to have this panel. Look at the truth behind the labels – that’s what we were trying to promote.”

The people associating themselves with the far-left wing have been demonstrating “weak-mindedness” for decades, according to Amitay, who believes that the situation is getting worse as such people have recently demonstrated, in the US and worldwide, the complete inability to actually hold a dialogue in any civil fashion.

“That’s definitely indoctrination. It’s simple mindedness, it’s weak mindedness, it’s a way of just dividing the world into ‘us vs. them.’ And this has been going on for the past several decades, much worse than it has been before,” Amitay stressed. “In today’s world if you aren’t the far left, you’re seen as a Nazi.”