Both groups co-opted symbols for their agenda.
Via CBC:
The United Conservative Party should remove a member who compared rainbow pride flags to swastikas, says an LGBTQ advocate.
On Saturday, Calgary lawyer John Carpay, with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, spoke at a conference organized by Rebel Media, a far-right media organization that has been criticized for sympathetic coverage of white supremacy.
“How do we defeat today’s totalitarianism? You’ve got to think about the common characteristics. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a hammer and sickle for communism, or whether it’s the swastika for Nazi Germany or whether it’s a rainbow flag, the underlying thing is a hostility to individual freedoms,” Carpay said.
Carpay told CBC News in a phone interview that the 30-second clip gives an incorrect impression that he’s “equating different belief systems” and doesn’t do justice to his 20-minute presentation, which focused on the “nature of totalitarianism.”
“I’m saying that totalitarianism has common characteristics and then I’m saying it doesn’t matter what external symbol is being used when freedoms are under attack,” Carpay said.
“We have to defend the free society. It doesn’t matter what the external symbol might be for an ideology, what matters is our fundamental freedoms being attacked and what are we doing to defend them.”
Carpay said examples of freedoms being under attack include anti-LGBT protestors being removed from college campuses and Alberta government Bill 24, which protects students from being outed by teachers if they join a gay-straight alliance.
HT: BCF