Screenshot from Your Ward News website. Photo: B’nai Brith Canada.

A blatantly antisemitic, racist and homophobic publication has “no place” at Canadian universities, an official from one of the country’s major Jewish organizations told The Algemeiner on Friday.

Aidan Fishman, campus advocacy coordinator for B’nai Brith Canada, was referring to the recent appearance of Your Ward News — which has been widely condemned by a number of human rights organizations for its neo-Nazi character — on the York University campus.

“Anyone can see that its content is manifestly absurd,” Fishman said of the newspaper, whose graphics are accompanied by text, such as: “Never before have Satan’s ZioMarxist arrows missed their mark,” and “Keep firing, you spazzy putz! The blood of 6 million lampshades is on your hands!” — a reference to the Nazi practice of using the skin of Jews to craft certain products.  

Fishman said his organization received numerous complaints from both Jewish and non-Jewish students at the school, after copies of the newspaper were distributed on the Keele campus.

After alerting York officials, B’nai Brith Canada was told by the office of the president that it “will take appropriate steps to ensure that this publication is not being distributed or delivered to locations on campus.”

According to research conducted by the Jewish group, the editor-in-chief of Your Ward News, James Sears, is a disgraced physician who was stripped of his license after being convicted of sexually assaulting patients.

Sears is also the co-founder of the New Constitution Party of Canada, a political group that B’nai Brith describes as a “neo-fascist outfit which claims to incorporate ‘the heart of Chancellor Adolf Hitler.’” (In August, New Constitution hosted Holocaust denier Monika Schaefer at one of its lectures.)

Fishman told The Algemeiner that the battle to shut down Your Ward News is ongoing. Though a June decision by Canadian Public Services Minister Judy Foote, prohibiting Canada’s postal service from distributing the paper, “severely hampered its operations…, the authorities have not chosen to shut it down at this time,” he said. 

Controversies surrounding antisemitic activity have plagued York in recent years. In September, as The Algemeiner reported, lab technologist Nikolaos Balaskas was fired after years’ worth of his anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist social media postings were exposed.