Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: human rights tribunal, chrc staff, human rights industry, Reverend Boissoin, Western Standard, Canadian Human Rights Commission (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I was at a low moment, and beginning to fear that our adversarial culture was dying and the open society was losing its will to resist, when Ezra Levant showed that every citizen has the birthright of a little spark, and a grown-up duty to kindle that spark into a flame. Let the bureaucrats do their worst: the tongue and the word are chainless and nothing is sacred except this freedom above all."
— Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great

“If we're not careful, if we force the Ezras in this country to shut up, our freedom of speech could be next.”
— Rick Mercer, in a “rant” from the Rick Mercer Report

“We are not yet three months into 2009, but Ezra may well have written the most important public affairs book this year.”
— The National Post

“I read Shakedown and I am awed at Levant's persistence and powers of endurance.”
— Rex Murphy, in the Globe & Mail

“Why is Ezra Levant the flavour of the month? Dare I say because he deserves to be?”
— Metro Vancouver

“…eloquent and powerful…”
— London Free Press

“…puts everything on the line in the way the best Canadian journalists always did.”
— Ottawa Citizen

“Let me put in a plug for Levant’s new book, Shakedown, which lays out, in example after example, how government-appointed human rights bodies warped the noble mission for which they were created.”
— The Halifax Chronicle Herald

“...By the end of Levant’s book, readers will be left wondering whether it is enough to prune back the commissions, or, as he prefers, to weed them out altogether.”
— Macleans

Product Description

Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is a shocking and controversial look at the corruption of Canada’s human rights commissions.

“On January 11, 2008, I was summoned to a 90-minute government interrogation. My crime? As the publisher of Western Standard magazine, I had reprinted the Danish cartoons of Mohammed to illustrate a news story. I was charged with the offence of “discrimination,” and made to appear before Alberta’s “human rights commission” for questioning. As crazy as it sounds, I became the only person in the world to face legal sanction for printing those cartoons.”

As a result of this highly publicized event, Ezra Levant began investigating other instances in which innocent people have had their freedoms compromised by bureaucrats presuming to protect Canadians’ human rights. He discovered some disturbing and even bizarre cases, such as the tribunal ruling that an employee at a McDonald’s restaurant in Vancouver did not have to wash her hands at work. And the human rights complaint filed by a Calgary hair stylist against the women at a salon school who called him a “loser.” In another case that seemed stranger than fiction, an emotionally unstable transvestite fought for — and won — the right to counsel female rape victims, despite the anguished pleas of those same traumatized victims. Human rights commissions now monitor political opinions, fine people for expressing politically incorrect viewpoints, censor websites, and even ban people, permanently, from saying certain things.

The book is a result of Levant’s ordeal and the research it inspired. It shows how our concept of human rights has morphed into something dangerous and drastically different from its original meaning. Shakedown is a convincing plea to Canadians to reclaim their basic liberties.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771046189
• ISBN-13: 978-0771046186
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #618,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plain scary! Makes Canada look like a 3rd world banana republic, April 4, 2009

By	Winston "Iran Blogger/Activist" (Canada) - See all my reviews

I only thought countries like Iran, Cuba or Saudi Arabia prosecuted people for expressing their opinions. I was wrong. It's scary to think that in a 1st rate country like Canada, a great country, such courts exist. These government sanctioned courts/tribunals make it hard to express your own thoughts and Mr. Levant has embarked on a crusade to expose these Stalinist kangaroo courts and defeat them in the real court of public opinion. I think he has been successful. This is an extremely well done book. Greatly researched, written by a very passionate man who cares deeply about his country and has done so to protect it from these HR courts. Buy this book and let others read it too. Every single Canadian of all stripes must know what's going on and how their tax money is spent. I, for one, am glad that brave men like Mr. Levant have the guts to go through such fights. For their bravery, Canada will be a much better place and a safer place to live. 5/5

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America - PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU VALUE YOUR FREEDOM, April 13, 2009

By	Gerry Wood (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you want to know what happens when political correctness goes unchecked and an important arm of the judiciary is taken over by agenda-driven whackos, then read this book. If you want to know what can happen in your country if you are not eternally vigilant, then read this book. If you want to know what happens when individual liberty is held hostage to the schemes of outlandish social engineers and devious activists, then read this book. It happened in Canada; it's still happening in Canada. It can happen anywhere. It's all true. You can look it up.

This is the story of the hijacking of the Canadian human rights commissions and their downright nasty pursuit of Ezra Levant, whose crime was to publish the so-called Danish cartoons mocking Muslim extremism. He was the editor of a small news magazine; the cartoons were huge news so it seemed appropriate to him to do what he did. Foolish man. As a result, he was dragged before the local HRC and put through the wringer for nearly three years. However, Mr Levant is not a man to go quietly. He fought back magnificently and has launched a nation-wide campaign to bring these feral creatures to heel. And so far, he is winning.

SHAKEDOWN is Mr Levant's story, both his own experience in "court" and his subsequent campaign; it is laced with numerous real-life HRC stories. Read about the woman who had the right not to wash her hands even though she was a restaurant worker; the six foot transsexual athlete who had the right to provide counselling in a rape crisis centre (and of the rape victims who were obliged to comply); the Christian pastor who is prohibited from expressing his opinions even though they are sincere and consistent with his religion. These are a just a few of the truly bizarre stories that help make this book compelling. It is well written; Mr Levant is an accomplished wordsmith. Read it; you will laugh and cry at the same time. It's all true. You can look it up.

Be very, very careful, American friends. You are not safe in your own homes. From the darkest, most fetid recesses of academia, where it first mutated, the cancer of political correctness has taken control of your universities and much of your media; it is creeping into your workplaces and your homes. But be warned: its real objective is mind control. However, all is not lost - read this book.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Profile in Courage, March 28, 2009

By	C. Brobeck "HalifaxCB" (Dartmouth, NS Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a must read for both Canadians and Americans.

It is important for Canadians as it clearly describes the ways the federal and provincial HRC's are undermining Canadian civil liberties as established through centuries of common law and enunciated in our Constition and Bill of Rights. HRC's are free to operate outside our normal legal conventions and the most basic of legal safeguards, resulting in a bureaucratic, Kafka-esque shadow court system that largely operates outside of public scrutiny.


Americans should read this book as a warning as to what could easily lie in their future, given the dysfunctional Congress and an Executive branch that appears to share much of the Canadian Trudeau-era ideology that created the HRCs in the first place.

But most importantly, both Americans and Canadians should read this book to understand when a single individual is willing to stand up against an overwhelming bureaucratic machine, he may, in his own way, triumph for us all.