On the men that hate me

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. I support the Third Reich. That’s right. Me, Nora Loreto, high-profile anti-fascist, someone who has struggled against everything that the Third Reich stood for and tried to create, I actually think it was good. The tens of thousands of minutes of podcast tape, the millions of words I’ve written, the organizing work I’ve done — all of that was for show. Because, I revealed myself in a single tweet online to say — hey everyone — I actually think Hitler was great!

Now, if you were to actually believe this, you might be among the group of men who hate me.

This club, while not only men, is notable for a few reasons. They’re all politically connected in some way. They hold jobs that are more important than mine. They make better money than I do. And they’re obsessed — and I mean that with the full force of the word — obsessed with destroying my career.

Take for example Jon Kay. He thinks about me a lot. Like, so much that I’d like to one day break the tension, take him out, pay for a round of sushi and ask him what about me has broken his brain. Recently, writing for his cranial-measuring online magazine Quillette, he wrote this: Nora Loreto, a Canadian activist and journalist who’s infamously suggested that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets for Hamas, on account of “Israel’s mandatory military service.” I don’t think that this particular comment is infamous but it is incorrect to say that I said this. I said that someone could say this and then say that I am not saying this.

Jon quotes David Jacobs, the president of Ontario’s association of radiologists and illiterate irritant, who slices the thread where I say this to make me say something I did not say. David, who apparently is unaffected by how overloaded Ontario’s hospital system is because he has time to invent things about me on Twitter, posted this tweet again this morning, asking what is wrong with “this one.”

This one what? This broad? This bitch? This socialist? This anti-Semite? This fascist? Which kind of role playing is David imagining today, while he isn’t doing whatever radiologists do.

But he’s more or less new to the club. His interest in me bloomed with Israel’s brutal destruction of Gaza so it’s clear that he sees what I say about Israel to be a threat to his worldview. Fine. Doctors can do what they want in our society, after all.

David and Jon can’t ignore me for some reason. God forbid they engage with what I write. Instead, they just invent. Invent, invent, invent and hope that it becomes truth.

The club though has some longtime members, and it’s when they trot the doll that they’ve built in my likeness to punch the fuck out of that is gets really interesting. Like Brian Lilley, who only mentions me when I happen to break through the near total blacklist on me in mainstream media.

Take for example, last year, when CBC’s The National ran a clip of me from earlier that day talking about masks and COVID-19. Lilley “had to rewind” to really make sure it was me on the air. Forget the fact that I’m an expert, I’m a journalist, I spent more time on COVID-19 than most other journalists in Canada; it was too much for Lilley to see that some poor producer didn’t get the memo that I am to be blacklisted and lifted the clip of me from the morning show.

Lilley didn’t need to say much. My mentions were instantly full. Canada Proud made a little meme. I got the message — I need to be silenced at all costs.

At least with Lilley, he knows who butters his bread and who he is paid to help silence. Politically, it makes sense.

But then there are men like Warren Kinesella (whose spitting image I saw at the Conservative convention. I wonder if he knows he has a twin!)

After being bodied for a tweet where he advocated for deporting or charging anyone who participated in pro-Palestine rallies this weekend (the tweet is below and the article he is linking to is called: Pro-Palestine lawyers, law students face 'new McCarthyism,' open letter states,”) Kinsella came after me. An easy channel change, I guess.

As he might as well kill two birds with one stone, he dipped into his files from, I have no idea when, and posted this. Of course, suggesting that CBC should fire me from the one remaining thing that I have access to in mainstream media (and note: I have missed my regular time of being asked on since Oct. 7 — I imagine folks are hoping that I lay low so they don’t need to actually discontinue my participation). Anyway, here’s Kinsella again:

And here we are — back to the time that I said that the Third Reich was good.

Now this tweet was in a thread that was all about whether or not Canada was the glorious anti-fascist force that we say we were in WW2. And there was a lot of back and forth before this tweet. Someone said that it’s good that the Third Reich was stopped (which, yes, of course, it was very good) but I flippantly said that it wouldn’t have lasted forever (which it wouldn’t have) and that US imperialialism wouldn’t have probably happened. That’s incorrect — the US would have figured out how to tango with the Nazis for sure — but anyway, it’s not a serious comment on history or politics, it was a flip tweet, and one of the very few that I have deleted over the years because it doesn’t say something I actually believe.

But none of that context matters.

These men. It isn’t by accident that it’s always chopped up tweets and never anything from any longer form thing I do. It’s never once been anything I’ve said on my many hours of podcasting. It’s never the articles or analyses. It’s always this — the most easily manipulatable text to be used as a cudgel against me, my career, my future or my politics.

It’s funny. The first time, back in 2017, that someone convinced CBC to never have me on again, they must have realized how easy it was. I was on The National and talking about M-103, the bill that Conservatives decided to use for a racial holy war. I was asked on as a journalist and as someone who was close-ish to the shooting at the Quebec City mosque. The complaint to the Ombudsman was enough. I was off for a long, long time.

Then came Humboldt, the issue that is still used to beat me into submission any time someone thinks that I’m out of line.

And now, Palestine. How dare I not toe the line of power.

Of course there have been dozens (if not hundreds) of little things in between that the men who hate me use to keep me in my place.

Now, I’ll be honest. This is a very self-centred post. None of this actually matters in the grand scheme of things. I’m very literally a nobody.

But if my messages are any indication, people watch closely how I am treated by these men who hate me and they are scared that something similar may happen to them if they too were to speak out. Because that’s the real campaign here — marginalize and isolate critics. Destroy them. Denigrate them. Make fun of what they say. Lie about them. Invent things. Turn them into a caricature of someone they are not. Sit back, get a blowb job from the director of coms from your province’s premier. Laugh about how easy it all is. Do it again tomorrow.

And me, lashing out. Supporting Hitler. Being crazy. Reduced to embers. Glueing together pieces trying to re-build self and identity and meaning and truth and a career.