FOX News Calls White Supremacist, Holocaust Denier and Anti-Semite a 'Free Speech Activist'

By Heidi Beirich, SPLC's Hate Watch. Posted August 13, 2008.

On Aug. 4, FOX News aired a segment about the Canadian prosecution of conservative author Mark Steyn for alleged anti-Muslim human rights violations. Steyn, the author of the No. 1 Canadian bestseller, America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It, has had three complaints lodged against him for human rights violations by the Canadian Islamic Congress. Two cases have been dismissed, but the Human Rights Tribunal of British Columbia is still investigating a charge that Steyn's work amounts to hate speech against Muslims.

Steyn's book, which was serialized in the well-known Canadian newsmagazine Macleans, contends that Western democracies, particularly in Europe, may become fertile ground for Islamic extremists because of rapidly growing Muslim populations.

While there are many individuals and groups that think the prosecution of Steyn harms free speech in Canada -- including PEN Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists -- Fox News correspondent Steve Brown chose to interview a decidedly odd source: Paul Fromm, who was very sparingly identified on the broadcast as a "Free Speech Activist." That's a pretty weak, not to say completely misleading, description of Paul Fromm. As anyone who lives in Canada or who has access to Google should know, Fromm is Canada's most notorious extremist, whose views form a trifecta of hate: he's a white supremacist, a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite. And he's got a history of extremism a mile long.

"What we are seeing is an effort by minority groups, including in this case radical Muslims, to shut down criticism and that's what it is," Fromm, who habitually mocks Muslims, once calling a Muslim woman "a hag in a bag" while participating in a conference put on by former Klansman David Duke, told FOX about the Steyn investigations. At a 2007 meeting of racists and Holocaust deniers in Atlanta, Fromm pulled the Muslim hate card again, labeling Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama "a crypto-Moslem of mixed parentage."



Fromm's been a source to news reporters before -- but not the type who most American news operations would want to brag about. In 2005, Fromm told the Iranian Mehr News Agency that Hollywood is "controlled by Zionists," discussed "the story of the 'Holocaust' [that] has allowed the Jews to acquire many billions of dollars," and described the Nazi genocide as "a religion created by the Jews for non-Jews."

Fromm, whose Canadian teaching certificate was yanked in 2007 because of his racist views and activities, is a stalwart of the American white supremacist and anti-Semitic scene. He has attended dozens of white supremacist events, including one held to mark the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's death.

Besides running his own extremist group in Canada -- the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee -- Fromm is a national director of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that believes in "racial integrity" and views blacks as a "retrograde species of humanity." Fromm is also a signatory to a 2004 hate group protocol calling for an alliance between various racist and anti-Semitic groups, including David Duke's European-American Unity and Rights Organization and the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

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