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Personalities August 28, 2000 Hotter and nastier with age Punk rocker turned Liberal propagandist Warren Kinsella spews invective everywhere By Kevin Michael Grace
WARREN Kinsella has been a lobbyist, reporter, author, journalism professor, Jean Chretien speechwriter, backroom boy and failed candidate. Today he is a lawyer and freelance Liberal scourge of the Canadian Alliance. But he was once a punk rocker. His combo, the Hot Nasties, released a 1980 EP, The Invasion of the Tribbles, on Calgary's Social Blemish label. Mr. Kinsella is pictured on the sleeve, wearing the kind of hat associated in Canada with Joey Jeremiah of Degrassi High. Punkers were notorious for their constant spitting. Mr. Kinsella's expectorations on Stockwell Day keep that spirit alive. J. Warren Kinsella, as he is known professionally, is employed by the big Grit law firm by McMillan Binch of Toronto. His relationship with the Liberal Party of Canada is unclear. His August 10 National Post column attacking Mr. Day for "apparent efforts to forge an alliance with those who seek to destroy Canada" describes him as "a Liberal Party member." Liberal director of communications Aur le Gervais says Mr. Kinsella is not an employee: "Not at this time, not that I'm aware." He adds, "I'm not aware of any volunteer work he does for the party." It has been widely reported, however, that Mr. Kinsella heads the Liberal Party's election readiness team. So far as it is known, he has not threatened lawsuits over these reports, but he has sued and threatened to sue many commentators over the years, despite having himself authored pieces critical of Canada's climate of "libel chill." (Mr. Kinsella is suing this magazine and reporter. Sent a private e-mail containing a list of questions for this story, he replied with a legal letter, refusing an interview and alleging, "The questions posed and the insinuations raised . . . are malicious and defamatory.") "The Liberals' chief drive-by-smear artist can dish it out, but he doesn't seem to be able to take it," the Canadian Alliance Web site (www.canadianalliance.ca) taunted July 19. The gibe was contained in the fourth of a series called "Spinning Warren's Web." "After years of acting as one of the Liberals' main sources of sleazy stories, rumour, and innuendo, his reaction to Spinning Warren's Web last week was to complain that it hurt his feelings and to threaten to call his lawyers!" A July 12 story on Pierre Bourque's Web site (www.bourque.com) claims, "While Kinsella yesterday was quick to dismiss the whole maneuver to this reporter as a larkish endeavour, sources in Toronto legal circles this afternoon are telling Bourque that 'top T.O. lawyers are looking at the nasty words . . . and considering a legal action against Stockwell Day's party.'" (Mr. Kinsella is acting on his own behalf in his suit against this magazine.) The nasty words were "a Jerry Springer-like obsession with sex and skinheads," referring to Mr. Kinsella's penchant, in his 1994 book Web of Hate and elsewhere, for accusing of neo-Nazism those that disagree with him. The Alliance asserted, "In keeping with our campaign of respect, we removed the offending phrases from our website" but that is not the real story. An Alliance staffer who has worked on "Warren's Web" reports, "We didn't want to back down, but Kinsella called Rod Love and Jim Armour [key Day advisers] to complain he couldn't face his wife with that Jerry Springer line out there." In the July 29 Ottawa Citizen, Mr. Kinsella claims his four-year-old daughter was "delighted" by the Warren-headed, eight-legged spider used to illustrate the pieces. He characterizes their authors as "a young man I once declined to hire for a political job" and another "young fellow who once got angry at me for having the effrontery to object to Holocaust denial." "Spinning Warren's Web" has noted that, contrary to Mr. Kinsella's claims, Mr. Day never described homosexuality as a "mental disorder," nor did he act "as a minister of the crown" to ban John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men from Alberta schools. These, however, are hardly Mr. Kinsella's most pustular discharges. In the April edition of Lexpert, he calls Mr. Day "a certifiable right-wing wacko" -- clinically insane, in other words. The sting of Mr. Kinsella's malevolence has been felt countrywide. From a January 27, 1999, e-mail to Marc Lemire, webmaster of www.freedomsite.org: "You Hitler-loving pillow biter. Too busy stocking up on kiddie porn." (Pillow biter is slang for a passive homosexual.) From e-mails sent to North Shore News columnist Leo Knight (reproduced in his July 17 column): "You chrome-domed troglodyte"; "baldie crypto-fascist"; "I look forward to your next monosyllabic attempt at commentary in der Sturmer!" (a Nazi newspaper). In an April 6 e-mail to Ken McVay, owner and administrator of the Nizkor Project (www.nizkor.org), the Internet's premier archive of anti-Holocaust-revisionism material, Mr. Kinsella requests his help for the third edition of Web of Hate. (The first edition led to a $40,000 defamation settlement with B.C. Reformer Roger Rocan.) Mr. McVay replied, "I have no intention of assisting you, now or in the future." Mr. Kinsella shot back, "I guess I will interpret that as licence to write whatever I want. Glad to see you are cooperating with David Irving on his website, by the way. I'll make sure to mention that in the new edition. Along with your fondness for signing neo-Nazi petitions." It is not at all clear what Mr. Kinsella was driving at here, but it's possible to speculate. The Nizkor Project contains a whole section on revisionist historian Irving (www.fpp.co.uk), attacking his credibility and integrity. Mr. McVay did not answer this magazine's request for information about Mr. Kinsella's attack. Mr. Irving did; he suspects Mr. McVay was brusque because Mr. Kinsella was "slated as a defence witness in my libel action against [historian Deborah] Lipstadt and her publishers." (He was not called to testify.) Mr. Irving says of Mr. McVay, "I admire the work he has done. Like me, he tries to be independent of outside influences, and he outraged the Canadian Jewish community by putting links to 'revisionists' on his Web site . . . in the true Internet tradition. He could not jump over his own shadow, however, which was that Nizkor is an ADL [Anti-Defamation League]-front, Jewish funded Web site." Mr. Irving concludes, "Kinsella has several times in the
past three months applied to me in e-mails for data on the
motives and success of my own Web site . . . He is very
indignant that I have refused to reply to his
messages."
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