I’m reading the news about edmonton police posting and encouraging people to report what they claim are hate comments. I think Edmonton residents should prepare armbands to remind cops them what they look like. Of course this post was removed by the Edmonton reddit.
The Edmonton Police Service’s recent push urging citizens to report online comments isn't just standard policing. It directly mirrors how democracy collapsed in 1930s Germany.
We are told that laws like [Bill C-9](https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/45-1/c-9) are designed to "protect communities," but history shows how easily vague protective laws can be weaponised. In 1933, the Weimar Republic used the **"Decree for the Protection of the People and the State"** (the Reichstag Fire Decree) under the guise of restoring public safety. Instead of protecting people, it permanently suspended freedom of expression and authorized the police to suppress everyday political dissent.
When legal frameworks use ambiguous definitions of "hatred" which the Canadian Bar association warned could trample on basic Charter rights we recreate the exact conditions of Weimar's **Article 48** emergency powers, where state overreach became normalized overnight.
By outsourcing censorship to citizen-informants flagging standard social commentary, the police are using an old authoritarian playbook. If we continue down this path of state-encouraged surveillance, how long until the transformation is complete? Will Edmonton police soon start wearing armbands?