Heil 'Victim'!

The National Post takes note of the newest 'victim group' du jour:

Blacks, Jews, Muslims, gays, immigrants ... Nazis: What do all these groups have in common? They were all the victim of "hate crime" in Toronto last year.

Yes, that's right: victim. According to a report presented to the Toronto Police Service last month, the victim category of "Nazi" now appears on the police bureaucracy's official, group-by-group list of hate crimes. True, only one crime is listed in the Nazi category -- a "mischief " offence within 13 Division (the details of which have not been released). Nevertheless, it is jarring to see the words "Nazi" and "victim" equated in any way.

On the other hand, this development doesn't necessarily surprise us. Naziism is (rightly) seen as a byword for evil in our society -- which is why whenever a few dozen skinheads try to have one of their pathetic marches, they usually are surrounded by a far larger crowd of jeering, occasionally violent counter-protesters. It isn't hard to imagine how any public expression of Nazi affiliation in Toronto might lead to a "hate crime" by disgusted observers.

There's a lesson here: Society's obsession with eradicating bigotry has gone so far that even history's ultimate hatemongers apparently classify in the victim category -- much in the same spirit that "human rights" advocates (including, perversely, Jewish groups) champion "hate speech" laws that inhibit journalists such as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant from criticizing militant, anti-Semitic Islamists lest such criticism be seen as "Islamophobic."

Decades ago, when anti-Semitism and anti-black racism were murderous creeds in mainstream Canadian society, the concept of tracking "hate crime" made sense. Now, it increasingly seems an exercise in parody. When Nazis are treated as "victims," the very concept clearly has become meaningless.

Clearly.

Update: My laugh of the day--Mark Steyn's observation that "Nazi is the new black."

Update:

"Nazi, my dear, is the 'new black.'
So puh-leeze do not give 'em flak.
It's not fair when the 'Nazis'
Are treated like patsies,"
Said the virtuous 'human rights' hack

Update: Hearing of the anti-Nazi "hate crime," might those on the receiving end of Richard Warman's Section 13 complaints claim to be vicitms of his "Naziphobia"?

Update: Ezra Levant inquires:

Did Burny really think that the Jews could ride on the back of the hate crimes tiger forever, without winding up in the tiger's mouth?

Why, yes, I believe that was his thinking. Now, of course, the tiger has done to Bernie what one did to Siegfried's Roy.