Tara Henley: What happened to Canada?

2024/01/22 Leave a comment

Tara Henley, who left the CBC over concerns over its overly “woke” approach to stories, continues her critique of narrow identity focused analysis rather than more universal class-based approaches:

…During the same decade or so that housing affordability was tanking in Canada, an ideology arrived that took a radical posture on social issues while maintaining the economic status quo. 

This new line of thinking originated at elite American universities and spread to Canada through social media. It presents itself as leftist but eschews key leftist concepts such as class analysis, universalism, and the importance of free speech. Instead, it views politics through the lens of identity, focusing on equalizing outcomes between identity groups, as well as on problematizing language, criticizing social, cultural, and interpersonal norms, and building up a vast administrative class to advance such efforts.

Critically, it presents its ideas as moral imperatives, trading persuasion for campaigns of public shaming.

It is a political project that’s been widely embraced by economic elites in Canada, from individuals to corporate and governmental leaders, including Justin Trudeau. Though clearly well-intentioned in some instances, in practice it serves to assuage the guilt of the haves and to signal their virtue to the have-nots. (See the prevalence of Indigenous land acknowledgments at public events in Canada. This exercise makes participants look and feel good but does nothing to improve the living conditions of Indigenous people.)

Identitarian moralism, as it happens, has also appealed to a vocal and understandably pessimistic segment of the have-nots—chiefly a class of young, educated knowledge workers, whose economic prospects have markedly declined. As other writers have pointed out in the past, this ethos provides a low-effort outlet for feelings of powerlessness. The causes of Canada’s decline are multifold, complex, and difficult to address. Calling someone a bigot online is relatively easy….

Source: Tara Henley: What happened to Canada?

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McWhorter: The Hidden Lesson of ‘American Fiction’

2024/01/22 Leave a comment

On my watch list:

Cord Jefferson’s film “American Fiction” offers a delightful portrayal of the white fetishization of Black pain — and also, in 2024, at least, one that is more satire than documentary. In the movie, an erudite Black author writes a baldly melodramatic “ghetto” novel titled “My Pafology” in protest of the way white audiences seem to go wild for such material — and to his surprise, nobody gets the joke and white audiences do, in fact, go wild for the book.


America had a conversation of this sort long ago — especially amid the debates over hip-hop in the 1990s and afterward — about treating inner-city violence, sexism and multigenerational poverty as “authentic” and entertaining. I think we can give the non-Black public here in the real world at least some credit. Today they would not embrace nakedly cartoonish tripe like the novel cooked up by the film’s protagonist, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, or the best seller “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto” by the Black author Sintara Golden that inspired his sarcastic stunt in the first place.


However, such exotification of Blackness has hardly disappeared entirely, and the film perfectly captures facets of the contemporary continuation of it. I was especially struck by a scene in which Monk finds that a bookstore has stocked his earlier novel, an adaptation of Aeschylus’ “The Persians,” in the African American section simply because he is Black.


I had the exact same experience.


Twenty years ago, I wrote a book called “Doing Our Own Thing,” a study of the increasing informality in public language in America since the 1800s. It mentioned race only in passing, yet I twice found it stocked in the Black studies (or some equivalent description) section of a bookstore. Apparently someone — at least twice! — blithely assumed that because I’m Black, the book must be an indignant shout-out on behalf of Black English, an appeal that Black people should be able to “do our own thing” (thang?). To the bookstore employees — and perhaps customers — the paramount aspect of a Black author was his Blackness.

But let’s face it: White people don’t get this view of us only from their own subconscious bias or objectification. Black people play a part in fostering this vision, too, in the ways we present our souls to the public. Not in silly novels like “My Pafology,” but more broadly.
Some of us enthusiastically portray microaggressions as grave harms to our well-being, despite the fact that the literature on microaggressions is mostly of questionable scientific rigor and yields only limited evidence that they injure this deeply, or even that most Black people experience them in this way.

Many of us also insist that there remains something insufficient and inadequately “representative” about the degree to which Blackness is depicted in popular culture. The implication is that Blackness is marginalized, held at least at half an arm’s length. Yet a random list of recent Black-oriented films and television shows — “Black Panther,” “Atlanta,” “Black-ish,” “Dear White People,” “Insecure,” “The Book of Clarence” — demonstrates enough richness and variety to make an old-time Southern segregationist retch. “American Fiction” itself has been widely nominated for major awards and features exquisite performances by Jeffrey Wright, Erika Alexander and Myra Lucretia Taylor in particular. An uninformed observer of Black representation in contemporary American popular culture would be mystified that anyone felt there remained any real deficit at all.


Meanwhile, some believe it is antiracist for Black people to portray ourselves as a people for whom standards must be loosened thanks to the legacies of our past. The SAT, for instance, has been presumed such a racist burden that it should be withdrawn — despite evidence that it has been better at identifying gifted Black students from disadvantaged backgrounds than alternatives.


Is it any wonder that white people listen to these kinds of reasoning and feel compelled to think of us as poster children and stereotypes rather than as whole people? There is a straight line from the positions I outlined above, often thought of as forms of enlightenment, and a well-meaning but Kabuki version of pity that becomes a kind of racism in itself.

Source: The Hidden Lesson of ‘American Fiction’

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Black public servants locked in three-year legal battle with Ottawa with no end in sight [and related equity issues]

2024/01/22 Leave a comment

Good overview. One issue I have is the lack of comparison with other minority groups. Citing the numbers for Black public servants without the other groups provides an incomplete picture, as the table below shows, highlighting that other groups have more significant under-representation than Blacks, both at the all public service and EX levels. Disaggregated data for the last six years shows similar differences (https://multiculturalmeanderings.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ee-analysis-of-disaggregated-data-by-group-and-gender-2022-submission-1.pdf):

Jasminka Kalajdzic, director of the Class Action Clinic at the University of Windsor, says the mere pursuit of the lawsuit has already led to more changes than what a public servant could ever achieve with a grievance.

For example, Treasury Board is working on a more accurate self-identification process and centralizing employment equity data collection and reporting. As well, many departments have created anti-racism secretariats.

The government committed to a Black justice strategy and set aside $46 million in funding for a Black mental-health plan, although efforts to get that up and running have been mired in controversy.

The government recently announced a new panel to develop a “restorative engagement” program to address discrimination.

There has also been a flurry of promotions. In August 2022, Caroline Xavier became the first Black deputy minister when she was appointed president of Communications Security Establishment – 33 years after Ontario appointed its first Black deputy minister.

The Black Executives Network, established in July 2020, delivered its first report in June 2023, which noted “tremendous progress” in building a Black executive community over the past three years. The number of Black executives in the federal public service has grown to 168 today from 68 in 2016, with four deputy ministers and 15 assistant deputy ministers and a few dozen directors-general.

That’s still only about 2.3 per cent of the executives in the core public service, while Black people account for about 4.2 per cent of all public-service employees.

“This (issue) is so much bigger than the Black class action,” says Courtney Betty, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer. “This is reflection of Canadian society. This is who we are. And for many Black individuals, that’s what they feel. It’s not a reality for any other Canadian. But for Black Canadians, it is a reality.”

Source: Black public servants locked in three-year legal battle with Ottawa with no end in sight

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Few immigrant applicants to Canadian military get enlisted: Report

2024/01/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

Efforts by Canada’s military to recruit new immigrants have been futile.

In fact, a December 2023 briefing note for Defence Minister Bill Blair said only 77 applicants out of thousands of permanent residents successfully enlisted, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“Between November 1, 2022 and November 24, 2023, the Canadian Armed Forces received 21,472 applications from permanent residents,” said the note Recruitment Of Permanent Residents. “Seventy-seven permanent residents have been enrolled.”

In 2022, the military altered regulations that promised a quicker path to citizenship for landed immigrants if they enlisted as soldiers, sailors and air crew.

Despite the more favourable regulation changes, the note cited lengthy security checks with the abysmal number of successful recruits during that timeframe.

“There are important and necessary measures which need to be completed such as security checks and medical evaluations,” said the note. “As well the validation of security clearances generally takes longer for permanent residents.”

Due to a 35% decline in recruitment numbers in 2022 — from 8,069 to 5,242 volunteers — the military turned to foreigners who had army training to fill the gap.

“The Canadian Forces recruiting group accepts trained applicants from foreign militaries,” said the note. “These applicants include pilots, logistics officers, infantry officers and other skilled professionals who may become enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces if they have permanent resident status in Canada. This enables other permanent residents who meet the same criteria as Canadian citizens to enroll in the Canadian Armed Forces as new recruits or officer cadets.”

The military says at minimum 60,500 fully trained full-time members are required while also setting a goal of reaching 68,000 military forces.

Source: Few immigrant applicants to Canadian military get enlisted: Report

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Chris Selley: Backing the Houthis exposes the raw Jew-hatred of the pro-Palestinian protesters

2024/01/19 Leave a comment

Such extremism has little place in Canada and those publicly supporting such extremism need to reflect more on the impact of their actions:

Canada is broken in many ways, but the ability of different people from very different backgrounds to get along has not thus far been one of them. That’s very much at risk. Obviously many Jewish Canadians arrived many weeks ago at where I now find myself: Overt public support for Hamas, which is only slightly more subtle about its genocidal aims than the Houthis, has destroyed friendships and professional relationships, and weakened confidence in Canada as a safe place for Jews to live.

I abhor the idea of asking any individual Muslim (or any other Canadian) to explain and justify his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We’re allowed to think whatever we want about geopolitics inside our own heads, so long as we can be civil to each other out in the real world. But more and more, these protests are becoming an overt rejection of that latter.

Calling for an end to Israel’s war against Hamas is fair enough. The death toll is appalling, the prospects of a lasting victory uncertain. But if they’re as worried about Islamophobia as they claim to be, Muslim organizations and advocates desperately need to repudiate the naked extremism that now seems to have free run within the cause.

Source: Chris Selley: Backing the Houthis exposes the raw Jew-hatred of the pro-Palestinian protesters

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Tasha Kheiriddin: Trudeau frittered away a good immigration policy for the sake of Liberal votes – National Post

2024/01/18 Leave a comment

Discounts the flawed policy rationale of the Barton commission recommendations but of course, political considerations also played a role. And, as we saw during the Kenney years, the liberals cannot take these voters for granted:

Immigrants are also grateful to the party that bring them in. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau learned this from his father. Pierre Elliott Trudeau took credit for the citizenship of millions of Canadians, even though many had come to Canada under previous governments. Why? Because they took their oath under his watch. And when it came to elections, the immigrant communities of the day — Italians, Greeks, Haitians, Vietnamese — tended to vote Liberal.

The implications of Trudeau Jr.’s replication of this policy are dire. Studies show that they are turning Canadians against immigration: even 62 per cent of current immigrants think we’re letting in too many people. They are impoverishing Canadians, both current and newcomer, according to the bank study. And they are also helping fuel Quebec separatism, as francophones look with alarm at rising immigrant populations in the Rest-Of-Canada. By the end of the century, Quebec risks becoming a bit player in Confederation, with only 15 per cent of its population.

This cannot continue. Instead of flooding the country with newcomers, the government needs to boost domestic productivity. That’s a harder fix — and one that won’t give them more votes. But then again, if Canadians can’t afford a decent life, the Liberals may not get their votes either.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: Trudeau frittered away a good immigration policy for the sake of Liberal votes – National Post

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White Americans who dislike Jews also tend to endorse anti-Muslim attitudes, study suggests – PsyPost

2024/01/18 4 Comments

Survey dates from 2014 but likely same trends apply:

The researchers focused on responses that reflected attitudes towards Muslims and Jews. Questions in the survey pertained to the cultural belonging of Muslims and Jews (e.g., whether participants would approve of their child marrying a Jew or Muslim, their agreement with a Muslim or Jewish ‘vision of America’), their loyalty, assimilation, and perceived power (e.g., ‘more loyal to their religion or Israel than to America’, ‘less like other Americans’, ‘have too much power’), and associated problems (e.g., ‘a threat to public order and safety’, ‘do not share my morals or values’, ‘take jobs and resources’, ‘are intolerant of others’, ‘want to take over political institutions’, ‘do not contribute to my community’, ‘are dependent on welfare and government’).”

The results showed that levels of anti-Muslim sentiment were several times higher than anti-Jewish sentiment. A clear majority of participants disapproved of a marriage between their child and a Muslim and roughly two thirds considered Muslims to be more loyal to their religion than to America. About one in four participants associated Muslims with public safety issues, while one in three believed they did not share their moral values and were intolerant.

In contrast, only about 17% of participants objected to their child marrying a Jew. Thirteen percent disagreed with Jews’ ‘vision of America’, 14% perceived them as more loyal to Israel than to America, and other negative views were less frequent.

Further analysis identified four distinct groups among the participants. The largest group, comprising 54% of participants, held few or no negative views towards both Muslims and Jews (low anti-Muslim, low anti-Jew). Another group, encompassing 26% of participants, exhibited moderate anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish views. The third group, making up 17% of participants, held strong anti-Muslim views but low anti-Jewish attitudes. The smallest group, approximately 4% of participants, harbored highly negative views towards both Jews and Muslims.

Membership in these groups was not associated with education. Men were twice as likely as women to hold high anti-Muslim, but low anti-Jew views. Older individuals were also more prone to this configuration of views. People with lower income were more likely to be in the fourth group (strong negative views of both groups). Republicans and evangelical Protestants were much less likely to be in the first group than in any of the other three groups.

“Although anti-Muslim opinion is more extensive, the two track together empirically and share a cultural logic as connected forms of ethno-religious boundary-making. Latent class analysis shows that anti-Semitism is nested within anti-Muslim attitudes, with political and religious identifications as consistent predictors of opinion,” the study authors concluded.

Source: White Americans who dislike Jews also tend to endorse anti-Muslim attitudes, study suggests – PsyPost

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Ibbitson: Liberals trying to play both sides in Gaza conflict

2024/01/16 Leave a comment

Definition of middle of the road: road kill!

The table below highlights the number of ridings with more than 5 percent religious minorities, highlighting just how many more ridings have significant Muslim populations compared to Jewish populations.

The Liberals find themselves caught between an Israel/Conservative rock and a NDP/Palestinian hard place. And they don’t seem to have a solution, other than to placate both sides, which is no solution at all.

Source: Liberals trying to play both sides in Gaza conflict

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Inside the crisis at TMU’s law school: It started with a letter of support for Palestinians. Now students and staff feel betrayed and donors are pulling out

2024/01/15 Leave a comment

Not really surprising that a school “branded as “a different kind of law school focused on equity and inclusion” would find itself in this mess. Kind of fitting for a university that changed its name from Ryerson to TMU, because of overly simplistic interpretations of history, activist pressure, and hurt to some students and groups, finds itself underlining its blind spot regarding anti-Jewish attitudes and anti-semitism.

Words matter, as advocates and activists rightly maintain. But now many of the activist law students are discovering this in a real personal sense with real consequences. A teaching moment:

…Public reaction was vicious. On social media, signatories were mocked and insulted in posts featuring their LinkedIn profiles, with photos of their faces. The Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith put out a press release, calling on the school to “expel terrorist apologist students.” Some members of the legal community advocated for blacklisting all TMU students from the profession.

“I certainly wouldn’t hire any of these students,” one Toronto lawyer posted on X, “and the fact that some choose to ‘show’ their solidarity by keeping their names hidden means I’d have to write off hiring anyone from … the current crop at @LincAlexLawTMU.”

Under intense pressure from all sides, the institution waded in. What school leaders did would only further fan the flames.

The law school issued a statement that “unequivocally” condemned the “sentiments of Antisemitism and intolerance” the petition expressed, but made no mention of any possible action to address the conduct of signatories. That fell short in the eyes of two Jewish criminal defence lawyers. They penned a letter urging the school to impose consequences to “illustrate in no uncertain terms that hate speech and incitements to violence are utterly unacceptable.”

One of several non-Jewish signatories was former Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Harry LaForme, who is an Anishinabe from the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. LaForme read the aspiring lawyers’ petition as a justification for what happened on Oct. 7, which, he said, disregards the rule of law, and is “completely anathema to Indigenous Peoples.”

LaForme hoped the school would create a safe space internally for signatories to distance themselves from the petition. “They (the students) have to be able to change their minds,” he said.

‘New McCarthyism’ decried by lawyers

In November, TMU hired a retired judge to conduct an external review. Former Chief Justice of Nova Scotia J. Michael MacDonald will meet signatories this month to determine whether their words breached the student code of conduct, which sets expectations for how students interact and communicate.

The school’s decision to outsource the job stoked acrimony, both from those who had been pushing administrators to quickly confront what seemed to them to be clear policy violations, as well as those who believed students were now being subjected to a witch hunt.

“A new McCarthyism” is how the response to the student petition was characterized in an open letter, signed by hundreds of members of the legal community, including Sealy-Harrington, Gadea Hawkins and other TMU professors.

Dania Majid, a Palestinian activist and head of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, signed that open letter. Majid, who faced intense Islamophobia as a young lawyer in the aftermath of 9/11, said the school’s characterization of the petition as antisemitic is “textbook anti-Palestinian racism.”

Majid said the students are being treated “as criminals.”

The fallout also highlighted divisions within the Jewish community, including at TMU. Shiri Pasternak, an assistant professor in criminology, is part of a group of Jewish instructors who don’t believe the petition was antisemitic and are concerned about the implications of the external review on academic freedom on campus.

“We didn’t necessarily all endorse the letter that the law students wrote,” Pasternak said. “But … we strongly believe that students should have a right to express, even imperfectly, their sense of injustice, and raise their collective voices to intervene when they see injustices.”

A campus turned tense

On campus, the atmosphere turned tense, students say. For the rest of the term, fewer classmates showed up for lectures; when they did, people who used to intermingle seemed to be sitting apart. Sam and Taylor said they felt ostracized by some of their peers, and uncomfortable coming to class.

One law school instructor, who is Jewish, moved her classes online after reading the petition. In a complaint to the university, she alleged the petition violated school policies, and had caused her to “worry for my physical safety as a result of my faith.”

Some of the law school’s roughly 450 students were upset by the timing of the petition, which dropped the week before on-campus interviews for placements at law firms.

At least one Bay Street firm asked TMU students whether they signed the petition, and refused to grant interviews to those who did. Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General also required law students working for the province to sign an attestation confirming they weren’t among the signatories, according to a memo from the deputy minister.

Noah Lister-Stevens, a second-year student who participated in interviews that week, was “disappointed” with his classmates for not better contemplating how their words would land. But he said the response of some law firms that seemed to be waging “a scorched-earth campaign,” was “disturbing.”

“None of the students in my school that I’ve ever spoken to are hateful people,” he said. “Everyone that I know who signed that letter is a kind person who deserves to be in that school.”

Sealy-Harrington shared with the Star several statements that he said had been provided to him by anonymous signatories. The statements accuse the administration of defaming the signatories by wrongly characterizing their petition as antisemitic, and of ignoring their pleas for help as they endured Islamophobia and racism from students, staff and the public.

“Nobody condemned the people calling us terrorists, or telling us to die, or describing in extreme detail the vile ways they would harm us or our families,” one statement said. “The school, named for an incredible justice-seeking Black man, acts only when white students complain, not when people of colour are tormented.”

The law school was renamed in 2021 for Lincoln Alexander, who was a lawyer and champion of racial equity. As Ontario’s lieutenant governor, he became the first Black Canadian to serve as a representative of the British monarchy in Canada.

A TMU spokesperson said “we respectfully disagree” with the claims of the signatories.

Administrators and staff have had nearly 200 meetings with students “to listen to their concerns and help them navigate the many available supports,” Karen Benner said in an email. “The university and law school categorically condemn any and all discrimination and harassment directed at our students and faculty, and have taken steps to address them.”

Donors cancel TMU law school scholarships

But the administration’s conversations with donors have been strained.

Criminal defence lawyer Brian Greenspan suspended a $50,000 scholarship. Greenspan said in a letter to the law school’s dean and the TMU president that the school’s namesake would be “appalled” by the petition.

The failure of administrators to categorically denounce the petitioners, Greenspan said, is “a derogation of the responsibility of those who support a civil society and a blemish on the legacy of Lincoln Alexander,” who believed in finding common ground.

The pulling of funding is an inappropriate response, according to Jim Turk, who is the director of TMU’s Centre for Free Expression, and says it takes away opportunities from future students.

Source: Inside the crisis at TMU’s law school: It started with a letter of support for Palestinians. Now students and staff feel betrayed and donors are pulling out

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Lisée: Exagérer avec Bock-Côté

2024/01/15 Leave a comment

Useful review, as much for Lisée’s views as MBC’s:

Je veux rassurer tout de suite ceux de mes lecteurs qui souffrent de mathieu-bock-côté-phobie — oui, oui, je sais que vous êtes là : je ne suis pas un admirateur inconditionnel de celui qu’on appelle MBC. Mais voilà, je dois maintenant vous peiner en ajoutant que j’en suis un admirateur conditionnel. En plus, c’est un ami.

Je suis social-démocrate, il est conservateur. J’exècre l’avant-dernier pape, il le vénère. Je suis critique de toutes les religions, il fait l’apologie de la chrétienté. J’applaudis les programmes d’accès à l’égalité, il en rejette le principe même. Je suis inquiet du réchauffement, cela ne lui fait ni chaud ni froid. Je juge essentiel de faire reculer la pauvreté, le sujet l’ennuie. Il m’arrive même de défendre les droits des Anglo-Québécois, s’il l’a fait, cela m’a échappé. Je suis indépendantiste, lui aussi.

Je viens de terminer son dernier livre, Le totalitarisme sans le goulag (La Cité). Il exagère. C’est bien écrit. Il manie le verbe avec talent, mène sa charge avec élan. On le soupçonne content d’avoir trouvé une habile formule pour trucider tel aspect du régime diversitaire dont il a fait son ennemi personnel, puis en imaginer une seconde, puis une troisième, plus mordante encore, qu’il ne peut s’empêcher de nous proposer. On voit bien qu’il se répète, mais on pardonne, car c’est goûteux. Mais qu’est-ce qu’il exagère !

Si on suit son raisonnement, nous vivrons bientôt, nous, Occidentaux, dans un monde où une banque fermera notre compte simplement par désaccord avec notre opinion politique pourtant légale. Un monde où des manifestations seront interdites préventivement, par crainte qu’y soient prononcés des propos haineux. Un monde où utiliser le mauvais pronom pour désigner le genre d’une personne sera un acte criminel. Où on pourrait être déclaré hors-la-loi pour avoir mis en doute le récit victimaire d’une minorité. Un monde où des policiers pourront nous arrêter simplement parce que nous avons chez nous un livre qui peut être jugé offensant envers une minorité et que nous aurions dû savoir que quelqu’un pourrait l’utiliser pour le montrer à une partie du public et ainsi l’inciter à la haine (Mein Kampf ? L’Ancien Testament ? Le Coran ? Relations des Jésuites ?). 

Un monde où nous pourrons être accusés d’inciter à la haine pour des propos tenus en privé, dans notre salon. Un monde où des employés de l’État ou de grandes entreprises seront soumis à des formations les instruisant sur ce qu’ils doivent absolument penser de l’histoire de leur pays. Et où exprimer un désaccord envers une opinion bizarre — que le racisme serait bien pire au Canada qu’aux États-Unis, par exemple — peut vous valoir des accusations de suprémacisme, vous plonger dans une dépression, vous conduire au suicide.

Quand je vous disais qu’il exagérait. On serait dans Orwell, qu’il cite d’ailleurs abondamment. Bon, c’est vrai, une banque a fermé son compte au politicien britannique Nigel Farage pour raisons politiques ; devant le tollé, ils l’ont rouvert. Bon, c’est vrai, des préfets français ont interdit à l’avance des manifestations, parfois de gauche, parfois anti-laïques, parfois de l’ultradroite, parfois aussi pour interdire de taper sur des casseroles sur la trajectoire du convoi présidentiel. Est-ce si grave ?

Penser que le mégenrage soit criminalisé, c’est du délire. Quoique ce soit souhaité par une pluralité de millénariaux aux États-Unis. Idem pour la remise en question du génocide culturel autochtone canadien. Ce n’est qu’une recommandation officielle, appuyée par le ministre canadien de la Justice, pourquoi s’énerver ? Et ce livre odieux que vous avez chez vous, ce n’est qu’en Irlande qu’une loi pourrait vous entraîner en tôle pour le posséder, pas ici. Et les propos haineux tenus en privé, ce n’est qu’en Écosse qu’on pourrait vous les reprocher devant un juge. C’est loin, l’Écosse.

Quant aux formations obligatoires nous contraignant à croire que nous sommes pires que les Américains, elles ne sont imposées qu’aux employés fédéraux, à ceux des grandes entreprises, pas aux PME. Et, oui, aux directeurs d’école de l’Ontario, dont un a osé dire que c’était inexact, fut accusé d’être un suprémaciste blanc, puis s’est suicidé. Mais n’était-il pas un peu fragile ?

Sérieusement, Bock-Côté trace le portrait de ce qui pourrait nous arriver de pire, si la totalité des assauts recensés contre la liberté d’expression et de conscience devaient s’arrimer et se généraliser. S’avisant qu’il existe un médicament qui semble réduire les opinions racistes, notant que des implants cybernétiques sont en développement, il nous avertit de ne pas écarter la perspective d’utilisation de ces innovations pour contrôler nos élans et nos pensées. Je voudrais lui rétorquer que le pire n’est pas toujours sûr. Je me retiens, car ses ouvrages précédents nous avaient souvent prévenus de dérives dont on ne pouvait croire qu’on les vivrait près de chez nous, mais qui, pourtant, sont arrivées.

Évidemment, s’il s’inquiète énormément des outrances issues de la mouvance woke (un mot qu’il n’utilise pas, préférant parler de régime diversitaire), il est moins disert sur les mouvements de droite qui interdisent des lectures, réforment les programmes pour qu’on ne parle plus d’esclavage aux États-Unis, matent la liberté de la presse en Europe de l’Est. Une partie du livre est destinée à prouver que l’extrême droite politique n’existe pas en soi (il ne nie pas l’existence de groupuscules néofascistes). Qu’il ne s’agit que d’une étiquette servant à marginaliser les porteurs d’un discours dérangeant. 

La démonstration va pour la France,où les thèmes du contrôle de l’immigration et de la lutte contre la délinquance, naguère portée par le clan Le Pen, sont désormais au centre de l’action d’un gouvernement qui se dit d’extrême centre. Mathieu n’en parle pas, mais l’utilisation par les conservateurs nord-américains du mot « woke » pour étiqueter la totalité des positions progressistes et écologistes, même modérées, relève du même phénomène et mérite la même réprobation. 

Et lorsqu’il défend sans la nommer la thèse du « Grand Remplacement » des peuples historiques par les minorités, on cherche en vain dans ses pages les chiffres, l’échéancier, le moment du point de bascule, même si la transformation est visible en France et en Europe dans des cités et des quartiers.

Il y a donc à prendre et à laisser — et beaucoup à ajouter — à l’oeuvre que construit énergiquement l’ami Bock-Côté. Je conçois que les avertissements qu’il nous lance peuvent agacer, déranger. J’estime toutefois qu’il est un combattant de la liberté d’expression. Et que c’est à nos risques et périls qu’on refuserait de l’entendre.

Source: Exagérer avec Bock-Côté

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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