March 7, 2005 - 11:49 pm
News 1130 AM All News Radio
Marijuana party candidate upsets Canadian Jewish Congress
Niki Upton/Tamiko Nicholson
The Canadian Jewish Congress objects to comments made by a pot activist comparing the plight of pot users to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The comments were made during a weekend interview with News1130 in reaction to the shooting of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe. Marijuana Party candidate Marc Emery, who’s running against BC’s Solicitor General Rich Coleman in the provincial election, was upset at media coverage that said a marijuana grow operation was behind the shootings. Emergy said, “I compared it to Crystalnacht in 1938 in Germany where a Jewish person, you know, injured a Nazi official and then the hysteria was so great that tens of thousands of Jews were prosecuted.” News1130 chose not to air the possibly contentious comments until playing the tape for the Canadian Jewish Congress. Chair Mark Weintraub says the analogy is extreme and that it almost amounts to holocaust denial in the sense that such a comparison completely trivializes the destruction of an entire ancient civilization. He says it is inappropriate to compare genocide to criminal law.
