Gonzaga University is often recognized for basketball, but the 135-year-old Spokane institution is also known for academic initiatives. One is the Journal of Hate Studies, an annual peer-reviewed publication by Gonzaga’s Center for the Study of Hate:

Hate requires a response... The Gonzaga Center for Hate Studies commits itself to better understanding hate and its impact on individuals and society in the hope and expectation that there will be solutions that prevent these horrifying situations in the future.

Fomenting prejudice or hostility against others is worth attention today after organized hate groups took to the streets of Canada to demand that human rights should not be universal. Bigots believe that individual rights are a finite resource and that rights enjoyed by some result in loss of freedoms for others. These people hold views that have ceased to be accepted by the vast majority.

PBS Frontline reported on studies showing that intolerant persons with homophobic attitudes share a number of attributes. Typically, these people are:

• Less likely to have had personal contact with others having lifestyles different than their own;
• More likely to have resided in regions where negative attitudes are the norm;
• More likely to subscribe to fundamentalist religious ideology;
• More likely to hold restrictive attitudes about sex and more likely to manifest guilt or negativity about sexuality;
• More likely to support high levels of authoritarianism and related personality characteristics;
• More likely to be older and less well educated.

Openness declines gradually over many years, often beginning in the 20s. As the years wear on, novelty becomes less and less stimulating, and the world outside someone’s own private and professional sanctums becomes increasingly less attractive.

Set in Our Ways: Why Change Is So Hard

A paper written by Dr. Ellen Faulkner, now of Thompson Rivers University, was published in the Journal of Hate Studies. She reported on a long history of Canadian intolerance:

While the typical hate crime is perceived to be of a violent nature perpetrated by individuals connected to Nazi and neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists, a more insidious form of hatred exists in the form of hate propaganda. In Canada “hate messages take a variety of forms…”

Racism and hate propaganda have long been a part of the Canadian experience, beginning with attitudes toward First Nations persons in the colonial period and the resulting “campaign of de-humanization, de-tribalization and marginalization” to “the poor treatment of the Chinese in British Columbia at the turn of the century”…

A 1982 Gallup poll indicated that 31 percent of Canadians would support organizations that worked toward preserving Canada for whites only”…

Cohen thinks that “North America is undergoing a ‘third wave’ of hate propaganda, the first having been the rise of anti-Jewish and anti-Black hate propaganda in the 1960s, and the second the expansion and prosecution of those efforts in the 1970s and 1980s.” “The third wave is characterized by the dissemination of cyberhate, the expansion of target groups, and the corresponding rise in hate crimes directed at women and members of minority groups.”

…Debates about the necessity of providing protections against hate-mongering are informed by two contrasting interpretations of rights — libertarian and egalitarian…

Homophobic Hate Propaganda in Canada

Another paper about Canada is found in the Gonzaga Center for the Study of Hate. Academics Bessma Momani and Ryan Deschamps wrote Canada’s Right-Wing Extremists: Mapping their Ties, Location, and Ideas:

Canada has a resilient and long-standing international reputation for being progressive and inclusive, but there is clearly growing right-wing extremist (RWE) movements in Canada, particularly those espousing white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and anti-authority views…

Donald J. Trump’s discourse and policies (the ‘Trump effect’) have galvanized Canada’s RWEs and particularly helped to mobilize White Nationalists in Canadian politics.

While RWEs in Canada draw significant learning and even sloganeering from counterparts in the United States, there is less emphasis on gun rights and survivalism and more emphasis on ethnic nationalism, xenophobia, ‘Canadian culture,’ and positing that the political establishment is illegitimate.

…from 1960 to 2015, RWEs active in promoting hate speech have been linked to at least 71 separate terrorist incidents in Canada…

Canada’s Right-Wing Extremists: Mapping their Ties, Location, and Ideas

In the 21st century, Canada is different than it once was. Most of us are proud of diversity and egalitarianism in our country. We value those qualities. Demonstrations by bigots with pertinacious resistance to change will not alter that fact.