Newspaper tied to government-funded Polish group blames COVID-19 on Jews in anti-Semitic tirade
Friday, 7 August 2020 ()
A Polish-Canadian newspaper linked to a community group that’s received almost $300,000 in government funding, twice published an anti-Semitic tirade recently that suggested COVID-19 is a creation of “organized Jewry,” and that Jews were the cause of all the world’s ills.
The article has come to light amid warnings worldwide about a unique wave of pandemic-spawned anti-Semitism.
B’nai B’rith Canada says it has called on police to investigate the newspaper story as a hate crime, alleging it’s a blatant violation of the law.
“To publish something like this in a Canadian newspaper, whether it’s in English or non-English, is criminal. It’s absolutely criminal to pursue this form of hatred,” said Michael Mostyn, CEO of the human-rights group.
“We feel very strongly that this is a case where charges should be laid … We know that hate speech provisions of the Criminal Code are not often used, but this does cross the threshold.”
The commentary appeared first as the leading front-page article in the March 25 edition of Glos Polski, a weekly newspaper based in Toronto that claims to be read by Poles “around the globe.”
Headlined initially “Coronavirus, or fake pandemic,” it ran again in the April 22 edition, both times without a byline.
In discussing the origins of COVID-19, the story suggests that “biological weapons are being worked on in the U.S. and Israel not by just any experts, but (under) the leadership of usually Jewish psychopaths.”
· Casey Babb on COVID-19: An extra sombre Yom ha-Shoah as anti-Semitism spreads with the coronavirus
· Avi Benlolo: The coronavirus pandemic is bringing with it a new level of anti-Semitism
It suggests “organized Jewry” can “laugh their heads off” at the COVID-19 crisis, and that Jewish social media had manipulated the world with “Goebbelsian propaganda.”
In a rambling discourse, it also suggests the radical Islamist group ISIL was a Jewish creation to reduce the population of gentiles, that Israel is “the cause of all the world’s woes,” Jews want to create a Judeo-Polonia state in Poland and that Jews control the world’s stock markets.
It said Vladimir Lenin, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were all covert Jews.
The newspaper’s editor, Wieslaw Magiera, could not be reached for comment by deadline.
A promotional page on the polishcanadians.ca website describes the outlet as a “paper which searches for the Truth, protects the good name of Poles and reminds us of the Polish culture and history.”
The same page says Glos Polski is “edited by” the Polish National Union of Canada. On its website, the Union itself describes the paper as its “press body” and says the two have been inextricably linked since Glos Polski’s launch in 1951.
The Union says it is one of Canada’s largest Polish organizations, formed in part to counter Communist agitation.
It has also benefited from Ontario government largesse in recent years.
The Union received $146,000 in 2018-19 from the provincial Trillium Foundation to make renovations to a 50-year-old community space, and $130,000 in 2012-2013 to replace a roof on a community centre and buy new energy-efficient kitchen appliances.
The association could not be reached for comment.
The article seems to be part of an international trend in racism tied to COVID-19.
“The ongoing global pandemic has spurred a fast-spreading epidemic of hate speech and disinformation including conspiracy theories with a clear antisemitic motive,” said the UN agency UNESCO in June, after holding a webinar on the topic. “Data from the World Jewish Congress shows that in the first months of the pandemic, there was a 30 per cent increase in antisemitic content on social media.”
Mostyn said it is one thing for such hatred to be spread through social media, but worse to see it printed repeatedly in a Canadian newspaper.