Malcolm Azania
|
|
Malcolm Azania, also known as Minister Faust (for the literary reference, see Faust), is a Canadian teacher, writer, community activist, radio host and political aspirant.
A resident of Edmonton, Alberta, Azania ran as a candidate for the New Democratic Party in the electoral district of Edmonton—Strathcona in the 2004 federal election. He was defeated by Conservative incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) Rahim Jaffer, but came a close third to Liberal challenger and former Alberta Member of the Legislative Assembly Debby Carlson.
On June 7, 2004, National Post columnist Colby Cosh (http://www.colbycosh.com) posted an entry to his weblog referencing one of Azania's posts to Usenet in the 1990s. Titled "JEWS: ENEMIES?FRIENDS?," the post (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2pcf7u%24osa%40quartz.ucs.ualberta.ca&output=gplain) took an essentialist view of race, and charged that Jewish people, in "aggregate", were part of white privilege, which Azania styled "Whitesupremacy", in the similar way, as Azania states, males are part of male privilege or "Malesupremacy". Styling white privilige "Whitesupremacy" came linguistically close to white supremacy, which is in common use to refer to a racist movement.
While signed with his pen name Minister Faust, the post was written under Azania's name and e-mail address.
Critics argued over whether the post was anti-Semitic. B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization thath opposes anti-Semitism, accepted Azania's apology.
While Azania made a strong apology on his website, media continued the story over the next several days. Edmonton's most widely-read newspaper, the Edmonton Journal, ran an editorial cartoon on Friday June 11, 2004 about the issue. The cartoon was, itself, criticized, resulting in the spotlight being shed on the newspaper.
Also as Minister Faust, Azania wrote a comical and satiric science fiction novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, released internationally by Random House in August 2004.