Snyder: The American Abyss: A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.

2021/01/12 Leave a comment

Good long and sobering read:

When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.

Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.

People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.

In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, Mitch McConnell, indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its consequences.

Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

Yet for Congress to traduce its basic functions had a price. An elected institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow. Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie, despite the available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh. Now Trump could demand that senators and congressmen bow to his will. He could place personal responsibility upon Mike Pence, in charge of the formal proceedings, to pervert them. And on Jan. 6, he directed his followers to exert pressure on these elected representatives, which they proceeded to do: storming the Capitol building, searching for people to punish, ransacking the place.

Of course this did make a kind of sense: If the election really had been stolen, as senators and congressmen were themselves suggesting, then how could Congress be allowed to move forward? For some Republicans, the invasion of the Capitol must have been a shock, or even a lesson. For the breakers, however, it may have been a taste of the future. Afterward, eight senators and more than 100 representatives voted for the lie that had forced them to flee their chambers.

Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.

Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.

My own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a coup, and I said so in print; this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.

Like historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear Lügenpresse (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008 did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones. The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.

Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself.

Some of his lies were, admittedly, medium-size: that he was a successful businessman; that Russia did not support him in 2016; that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Such medium-size lies were the standard fare of aspiring authoritarians in the 21st century. In Poland the right-wing party built a martyrdom cult around assigning blame to political rivals for an airplane crash that killed the nation’s president. Hungary’s Viktor Orban blames a vanishingly small number of Muslim refugees for his country’s problems. But such claims were not quite big lies; they stretched but did not rend what Hannah Arendt called “the fabric of factuality.”

One historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.

In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged (for President) Election.”

The force of a big lie resides in its demand that many other things must be believed or disbelieved. To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters and of experts but also of local, state and federal government institutions, from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security and all the way to the Supreme Court. It brings with it, of necessity, a conspiracy theory: Imagine all the people who must have been in on such a plot and all the people who would have had to work on the cover-up.The Presidential Transition

Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.

On the surface, a conspiracy theory makes its victim look strong: It sees Trump as resisting the Democrats, the Republicans, the Deep State, the pedophiles, the Satanists. More profoundly, however, it inverts the position of the strong and the weak. Trump’s focus on alleged “irregularities” and “contested states” comes down to cities where Black people live and vote. At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a crime committed by Black people against white people.

It’s not just that electoral fraud by African-Americans against Donald Trump never happened. It is that it is the very opposite of what happened, in 2020 and in every American election. As always, Black people waited longer than others to vote and were more likely to have their votes challenged. They were more likely to be suffering or dying from Covid-19, and less likely to be able to take time away from work. The historical protection of their right to vote has been removed by the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, and states have rushed to pass measures of a kind that historically reduce voting by the poor and communities of color.

The claim that Trump was denied a win by fraud is a big lie not just because it mauls logic, misdescribes the present and demands belief in a conspiracy. It is a big lie, fundamentally, because it reverses the moral field of American politics and the basic structure of American history.

When Senator Ted Cruz announced his intention to challenge the Electoral College vote, he invoked the Compromise of 1877, which resolved the presidential election of 1876. Commentators pointed out that this was no relevant precedent, since back then there really were serious voter irregularities and there really was a stalemate in Congress. For African-Americans, however, the seemingly gratuitous reference led somewhere else. The Compromise of 1877 — in which Rutherford B. Hayes would have the presidency, provided that he withdrew federal power from the South — was the very arrangement whereby African-Americans were driven from voting booths for the better part of a century. It was effectively the end of Reconstruction, the beginning of segregation, legal discrimination and Jim Crow. It is the original sin of American history in the post-slavery era, our closest brush with fascism so far.

If the reference seemed distant when Ted Cruz and 10 senatorial colleagues released their statement on Jan. 2, it was brought very close four days later, when Confederate flags were paraded through the Capitol.

Some things have changed since 1877, of course. Back then, it was the Republicans, or many of them, who supported racial equality; it was the Democrats, the party of the South, who wanted apartheid. It was the Democrats, back then, who called African-Americans’ votes fraudulent, and the Republicans who wanted them counted. This is now reversed. In the past half century, since the Civil Rights Act, Republicans have become a predominantly white party interested — as Trump openly declared — in keeping the number of voters, and particularly the number of Black voters, as low as possible. Yet the common thread remains. Watching white supremacists among the people storming the Capitol, it was easy to yield to the feeling that something pure had been violated. It might be better to see the episode as part of a long American argument about who deserves representation.

The Democrats, today, have become a coalition, one that does better than Republicans with female and nonwhite voters and collects votes from both labor unions and the college-educated. Yet it’s not quite right to contrast this coalition with a monolithic Republican Party. Right now, the Republican Party is a coalition of two types of people: those who would game the system (most of the politicians, some of the voters) and those who dream of breaking it (a few of the politicians, many of the voters). In January 2021, this was visible as the difference between those Republicans who defended the present system on the grounds that it favored them and those who tried to upend it.

In the four decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have overcome the tension between the gamers and the breakers by governing in opposition to government, or by calling elections a revolution (the Tea Party), or by claiming to oppose elites. The breakers, in this arrangement, provide cover for the gamers, putting forth an ideology that distracts from the basic reality that government under Republicans is not made smaller but simply diverted to serve a handful of interests.

At first, Trump seemed like a threat to this balance. His lack of experience in politics and his open racism made him a very uncomfortable figure for the party; his habit of continually telling lies was initially found by prominent Republicans to be uncouth. Yet after he won the presidency, his particular skills as a breaker seemed to create a tremendous opportunity for the gamers. Led by the gamer in chief, McConnell, they secured hundreds of federal judges and tax cuts for the rich.Mitch McConnell Got Everything He Wanted. But at What Cost?Jan. 22, 2019

Trump was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology. His objection to institutions was that they might constrain him personally. He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly why he has failed. Trump is a charismatic politician and inspires devotion not only among voters but among a surprising number of lawmakers, but he has no vision that is greater than himself or what his admirers project upon him. In this respect his pre-fascism fell short of fascism: His vision never went further than a mirror. He arrived at a truly big lie not from any view of the world but from the reality that he might lose something.

Yet Trump never prepared a decisive blow. He lacked the support of the military, some of whose leaders he had alienated. (No true fascist would have made the mistake he did there, which was to openly love foreign dictators; supporters convinced that the enemy was at home might not mind, but those sworn to protect from enemies abroad did.) Trump’s secret police force, the men carrying out snatch operations in Portland, was violent but also small and ludicrous. Social media proved to be a blunt weapon: Trump could announce his intentions on Twitter, and white supremacists could plan their invasion of the Capitol on Facebook or Gab. But the president, for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats to public officials, could not engineer a situation that ended with the right people doing the wrong thing. Trump could make some voters believe that he had won the 2020 election, but he was unable to bring institutions along with his big lie. And he could bring his supporters to Washington and send them on a rampage in the Capitol, but none appeared to have any very clear idea of how this was to work or what their presence would accomplish. It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.

The lie outlasts the liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?

On Jan. 7, Trump called for a peaceful transition of power, implicitly conceding that his putsch had failed. Even then, though, he repeated and even amplified his electoral fiction: It was now a sacred cause for which people had sacrificed. Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress. In November and December 2020, Republicans repeated it, giving it a life it would not otherwise have had. In retrospect, it now seems as though the last shaky compromise between the gamers and the breakers was the idea that Trump should have every chance to prove that wrong had been done to him. That position implicitly endorsed the big lie for Trump supporters who were inclined to believe it. It failed to restrain Trump, whose big lie only grew bigger.

The breakers and the gamers then saw a different world ahead, where the big lie was either a treasure to be had or a danger to be avoided. The breakers had no choice but to rush to be first to claim to believe in it. Because the breakers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must compete to claim the brimstone and bile, the gamers were forced to reveal their own hand, and the division within the Republican coalition became visible on Jan. 6. The invasion of the Capitol only reinforced this division. To be sure, a few senators withdrew their objections, but Cruz and Hawley moved forward anyway, along with six other senators. More than 100 representatives doubled down on the big lie. Some, like Matt Gaetz, even added their own flourishes, such as the claim that the mob was led not by Trump’s supporters but by his opponents.

Trump is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he is out of the way.

As Cruz and Hawley may learn, to tell the big lie is to be owned by it. Just because you have sold your soul does not mean that you have driven a hard bargain. Hawley shies from no level of hypocrisy; the son of a banker, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, he denounces elites. Insofar as Cruz was thought to have a principle, it was that of states’ rights, which Trump’s calls to action brazenly violated. A joint statement Cruz issued about the senators’ challenge to the vote nicely captured the post-truth aspect of the whole: It never alleged that there was fraud, only that there were allegations of fraud. Allegations of allegations, allegations all the way down.

The big lie requires commitment. When Republican gamers do not exhibit enough of that, Republican breakers call them “RINOs”: Republicans in name only. This term once suggested a lack of ideological commitment. It now means an unwillingness to throw away an election. The gamers, in response, close ranks around the Constitution and speak of principles and traditions. The breakers must all know (with the possible exception of the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville) that they are participating in a sham, but they will have an audience of tens of millions who do not.

If Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B, to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith.

Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.

Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.

Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination.

When that violence comes, the breakers will have to react. If they embrace it, they become the fascist faction. The Republican Party will be divided, at least for a time. One can of course imagine a dismal reunification: A breaker candidate loses a narrow presidential election in November 2024 and cries fraud, the Republicans win both houses of Congress and rioters in the street, educated by four years of the big lie, demand what they see as justice. Would the gamers stand on principle if those were the circumstances of Jan. 6, 2025?

To be sure, this moment is also a chance. It is possible that a divided Republican Party might better serve American democracy; that the gamers, separated from the breakers, might start to think of policy as a way to win elections. It is very likely that the Biden-Harris administration will have an easier first few months than expected; perhaps obstructionism will give way, at least among a few Republicans and for a short time, to a moment of self-questioning. Politicians who want Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the election.

America will not survive the big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.

Source: https://nuzzel.com/digeststory/01092021/nytimes/the_american_abyss?e=6714311&c=zsH9ZmXNh5eMSaix9Dy7Kr6kBCZkryuqvNwFRsSqZy&utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nuzzel

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Pro-establishment figure calls for curbs on Hongkongers obtaining dual citizenship

2021/01/12 Leave a comment

Further crackdown if reflects Beijing’s view and implemented:

Hong Kong’s former security chief has called on Beijing to effectively forbid obtaining dual nationality by revoking the right to live and vote in the city for any resident who acquired foreign citizenship after a “specified cut-off date”.

Pro-establishment lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee’s proposal came as the city government hit back at the foreign ministers of the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia, who had jointly voiced serious concerns over last week’s mass arrest of 55 opposition politicians and activists in Hong Kong under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

Even before the arrests, Hong Kong was already bracing for a surge of emigration after London created a new route to citizenship for locals eligible for British National (Overseas) status. The new visa scheme was envisioned as a lifeboat for Hongkongers in the wake of the imposition of the security law, which Britain has deemed a breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

Describing Britain’s offer as “a slap in the face of Chinese authorities”, Ip said it might be time for Beijing to end its special treatment of Hongkongers and enforce its own nationality law in the city.

“This could be done after a specified cut-off date. Thereafter, Hong Kong Chinese who acquire a foreign nationality of their own free will, will be deemed to have lost Chinese nationality, in strict accordance with Article 9 of the Chinese Nationality Law,” Ip, a government adviser on the Executive Council, the city leader’s de facto cabinet, wrote in an opinion piece in the Post on Sunday.

“If that happens, Hong Kong Chinese who acquire a foreign nationality by emigration or other means voluntarily would automatically lose their right to hold concurrently a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport. They could also lose the right of abode in Hong Kong and the attendant right to vote in Hong Kong elections.”

Source: Pro-establishment figure calls for curbs on Hongkongers obtaining dual citizenship

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Germany: Anti-Semitism commissioner calls for removal of Nazi law leftovers

2021/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

Germany’s anti-Semitism commissioner called for the removal of 29 Nazi-era paragraphs that remain in the country’s laws in comments published on Sunday.

Felix Klein, appointed two years ago by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, said the worst example was a 1938 Nazi remnant in Germany’s present-day law on changing a person’s name.

Jews in Nazi Germany were required under a 1939 regulation stemming from that law to insert a “typical” Jewish forename, Israel for men, and Sara for women, if their first name was not on a “typical” list maintained by the-then Interior Ministry.

Klein, who last year, with Social Democrat Eva Högl and Christian Democrat Thorsten Frei, demanded removal of such wording used to persecute Jews, told the magazine Der Spiegel parliament had already been sent a reformulations catalog.

“The name change law is the most blatant of all,” said Klein, adding that the latest version — dated 2008 and still accessible on the Justice Ministry website — still mentioned the “German Reich” and the “Reich Minister of the Interior,” terminology proscribed by the defeated Hitler regime.

In last year’s appeal, Klein, Högl and Frei wrote that the occupying Allied Control Council had sought to annul that law, but it lingered under Article 125 of Germany’s postwar constitution or Basic Law.

“Anyone who wants to change their first or last name in Germany today is [still] confronted with this anti-Semitic-motivated law from 1938,” they said.

Instead, an amendment should state the “Federal Republic of Germany” and the “Federal Minister of the Interior,” Klein told Spiegel in his latest appeal.

Naturopathy law also tainted

As further lingering examples, Klein cited Nazi-era paragraphs riddling Germany’s current law on naturopathic healing practitioners, its gambling casino ordinance, and a mutual Greek-German law on civil legal assistance.

Klein said the aim of the omnibus legislation before the Bundestag was to review and remove all such leftover Nazi-era passages.

In their 2020 joint appeal, Klein, Hogl and Frei said a further aim was to avoid wording that defined Germany’s postwar federal interior ministers as “successors” of the Nazi-era Reich interior minister and convicted war criminal Wilhelm Frick.

It was Frick, convicted at the Allied Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946, who from 1930 in the-then Thuringia state sought German nationality for the Austrian-born, but stateless, Adolf Hitler, regarded by Prussia as an undesirable alien.

Hitler finally got German nationality in 1932, via the-then-adjacent state of Braunschweig, becoming a year later chancellor and seizing power.

Source: Germany: Anti-Semitism commissioner calls for removal of Nazi law leftovers

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What good are COVID-19 vaccines if people are afraid? We need to build trust with racialized communities, specifically PSWs facing vaccine hesitancy

2021/01/11 Leave a comment

Good practical suggestions;

Never in history have we gone from identifying a pathogen to creating and disseminating a safe and effective vaccine in under a year, however, we have not done a good job of explaining how we have been able to utilize scientific innovation without compromising on safety. Terms such as ‘Operation Warp Speed’ have not helped with hesitancy. Decades of mistrust towards pharmaceutical companies have also exacerbated this.

So, we must discuss vaccine hesitancy. What is it? It describes people who are not flat out against vaccinations, but who are anxious and afraid of vaccines, or sometimes one specific vaccine. Over the past few years, it’s a term that has gained traction even before the COVID-19 pandemic. These are individuals who may be continuously bombarded with fear-based and conflicting misinformation on vaccines.

In a Nov. 2020 poll from Ipsos and Radio-Canada surveying 3,000 Canadians on whether they were willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine when available, a large per cent reported they would get the vaccine, but less than 40 per cent said they would be willing to get it immediately.

This speaks to ongoing underlying hesitancy that must be addressed. Importantly, hesitancy involves not just refusal of vaccines, but delay despite availability.

Given that our health care workers are part of our communities, we can extrapolate that hesitancy may also be prevalent among those employed in vulnerable sectors such as our long-term care (LTC) homes. Several factors may impact their decision making, from concerns and fears around safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, to social, cultural and political influences, as well as logistical barriers that decrease access. Moreover, we must acknowledge that personal support workers (PSWs) in Ontario LTC homes largely belong to racialized communities that may harbour mistrust in the health care system, impacting vaccine uptake. Therefore it is not surprising that in many LTCs, anecdotally, around a third have refused or delayed vaccination. A poll undertaken at Windsor Regional Hospital found that more than 20 per cent of staff from seniors’ facilities are refusing or delaying vaccination.

As part of the scientific community, it is our job as the vaccines roll out to discern these workers’ concerns, fears and to acknowledge their mistrust or skepticism in a compassionate manner. Filling knowledge gaps and busting myths will only go so far. Black and Indigenous communities have had long-standing histories of abuse within our system and if we are to reach these communities, which are disproportionately affected by COVID19, we need to involve community leaders to engage and encourage widespread vaccination.

There is a long legacy of racism and discrimination resulting in significant mistrust in health care by BIPOC communities. And with good reason. If you feel you or your life is not valued, then how can you trust them? This is where tailored trauma-informed messaging is critical. Telling a racialized minority that Health Canada has reviewed the efficacy and safety of the vaccine and considers it safe is almost meaningless to a community that has mistrust across several systems of government whether it be educational, judicial or health care.

Currently, visible minorities are overrepresented among PSWs, making up 42 per cent in Ontario based on a CRNCC/PSNO survey, of which 18 per cent self-identify as Black and 5 per cent as Indigenous. Looking at the broader group of nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates in Toronto, almost 79 per cent are immigrants. So it really should come as no surprise that this group has been hesitant to be the first in line to get vaccinated. However, little is being done to alleviate their fears and concerns.

We must prioritize collection of data. If we don’t see the problem, we cannot fix it. We have minimal data in Canada on vaccine hesitancy in general, and also no data on vaccine hesitancy in BIPOC communities. We know that the number of people refusing the vaccine is not insignificant, but we are not collecting this data.

What is driving their concerns? We know that PSWs are often racialized women; in fact, women account for the majority of nurse aides, orderlies and client service associates. Many are in their child-bearing years and are concerned about impact on fertility. There has been reluctance because the National Advisory Committee on Immunization guidelines as well as the Ontario Ministry of Health did not recommend the COVID-19 vaccine in those who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying-to-conceive. While our obstetricians and gynecologists are rightfully advocating for this group to be able to receive the vaccine, as historically trials have excluded this population, changing messages without adequate discussions may not instill confidence.

We need to increase education, but encourage this information to also come from someone they trust. That could be their primary care providers, a partner community health organization or leaders they work closely with at their LTC homes. We need to be proactive and increase access to culturally sensitive, multi-language trauma informed educational materials.

We also need to break down barriers to vaccine distribution. Much light has been shed on PSWs needing to work multiple jobs as their positions are often part-time without benefits. Vaccine administration cannot just be during the day. Accessibility to on-site vaccinations in our LTCs homes is necessary. Paid sick time in the event of side effects should be mandated.

Lastly, we cannot be dismissive of fears. We must be empathetic, and provide factual information in an easy to understand manner, without any sensationalism or jargon. We must be respectful and compassionate. There is so much work yet to be done to ensure a successful uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine. Because after all, what good is a highly efficacious vaccine if people are too afraid to take it?

Sabina Vohra-Miller is the co-founder of the Toronto-based Vohra Miller Foundation, which aims to make health care equitable and accessible for all. Follow her at @SabiVM.

Dr. Anjali Bhayana is a family physician and staff hospitalist in geriatric rehabilitation at UHN TRI. Follow her at @AnjBhayana.

Source: What good are COVID-19 vaccines if people are afraid? We need to build trust with racialized communities, specifically PSWs facing vaccine hesitancy

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Foreign workers face a lack of safe conditions, abuse and exploitation: Ethnic and mainstream media coverage

2021/01/11 Leave a comment

Useful summary of ethnic media coverage and contrast with mainstream media:

Temporary foreign workers and undocumented migrants have been one of the most affected groups during the pandemic, as covered by ethnic media from May to December. “The fact that in 2020, people are dying on farms in Ontario in one of the richest and most socially and technologically advanced countries in the world, Canada, is truly cause for reflection,” an Italian outlet wrote in early July, after multiple reports of COVID-19 outbreaks at farms employing seasonal workers from Latin America and the Caribbean, and deaths of three Mexican workers.

Outlets carried stories by migrants who said they were forced to start working right after arrival (without the 14-day quarantine) or had to quarantine in rooms that had no food or inadequate space to allow for physical distancing. The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change was cited as saying that it had received complaints from more than 1,000 people that their working and living conditions were crowded, they were unable to maintain the two-metre distance and lacked personal protection supplies.

One of the prominent cases was that of a Mexican farm worker, Gabriel Flores, who won compensation from his employer, Scotlynn Farms, in front of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Flores sued Scotlynn Farms after he had been fired for speaking to the media about insufficient protection at the facility, where almost 200 workers had gotten infected with COVID-19.

Live-in care workers were shown to be highly vulnerable as well. A lot of media attention was devoted to a report titled “Behind Closed Doors: Exposing Migrant Care Worker Exploitation During COVID-19,” based on a survey of 201 migrant care workers and released in late October. The report showed that nearly half of the respondents were forced to work longer hours without being paid overtime. Two out of three workers said they weren’t allowed to leave the house, send money back home or even go to the doctor for fearing of breaking family quarantine bubbles.

What clearly transpired in ethnic media coverage was the fact that temporary foreign workers are the backbone of Canada’s food supply and many other essential sectors, but they are not getting basic rights protection.

In fact, as one Filipino outlet observed, Canada has depended on “cheap immigrant labour” from “Chinese railway workers to the Japanese fishermen, to South Asian farmers and loggers, to the Filipino overseas workers.”

Domestic work, health care and hospitality are all sectors that “capitalize on cheap female labour from the Global South,” wrote another, reporting a story of a Filipino woman who was separated from her son for five years as she was working in Kelowna, B.C., as a housekeeper at a hotel and as sanitation staff at a hospital. The pandemic has cost her and her husband their jobs at the hotel, and she still owes a substantial sum to an immigration agency.

“Guardian angels” of Quebec get pathway to permanent residency

Substantial coverage was given to the precarious status of many asylum seekers working or volunteering at long-term senior care homes and in other health-care settings in Quebec, including the price they have paid with their health.

These workers, whom Quebec Premier François Legault called “guardian angels,” are largely Haitians who came to Canada irregularly from the U.S. According to Montreal’s Haitian community advocate Ruth Pierre-Paul, cited in Caribbean media, hundreds of them have sought out jobs in long-term care homes as a quick way to enter the workforce.

After weeks of advocacy, media attention and petitions to the federal government, in August, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced a pathway to permanent residency for asylum claimants working in health care during the pandemic. Several media outlets praised the move, but many also stressed that the program is closed to asylum seekers doing other essential jobs. This has left many people disappointed and triggered further protests.

International students treated like “cash cows”

International students have faced a lot of uncertainty, anxiety and financial pressure in the pandemic months, and ethnic media have covered these struggles closely. As reported, the main dilemma faced by students before the start of the new academic year was whether to attempt entering Canada at the risk of being turned back at the border (which happened to many) or stay in their home countries and study online.

Until October 20, only individuals with study permits issued before March 18 were able to travel to Canada, and solely for a “non-discretionary or non-optional purpose.” Other students were subject to a travel ban.

For students from China and India, who account for the bulk of international students in Canada, attending university online in their home countries has meant having to study at odd hours and cope with internet issues. As reported, students also missed exposure to local culture, which they thought might later affect their chances on the job market. Some consolation came with a July announcement that time spent studying online abroad would be counted toward a post-graduation work permit.

There has been no relief in terms of cost, however. Universities not only refused to give rebates to those studying online; some have even raised tuition fees for foreign students, prompting comments in ethnic media that international students were treated like “cash cows” by “shameless Canadian universities.”

International students already in Canada also struggled. According to Chinese outlets, many Chinese students decided to stay in the country despite classes going online, mostly because the flights were very expensive and hard to come by. They also did not want to risk being stranded back home. But with high costs of living, few summer job opportunities, almost no help from the federal government, and no social activities, students were reported to be feeling helpless, frustrated, anxious and homesick. 

Punjabi broadcast media noted that many students were under pressure to find work to support themselves and send money back to their families. Concerns were also expressed over “suicidal incidents among international students.”

Non-permanent residents in mainstream media coverage

Similar to the coverage offered in ethnic media, coverage by Toronto Star broadly reflected two major perspectives—conveying government policy and programs and also offering human interest stories reflecting the lived experiences of the newcomers, migrant workers, refugees and international students. 

The paper quite extensively explored how immigrants and newcomers to Canada have been affected by COVID-19 pandemic from the economic, social and health and well-being angles. Dozens of articles addressed the issue of temporary farm workers, highlighting their precarious situation as well as legal battles. Solid coverage was also devoted to refugees and asylum seekers and the processes related to their status, brought to readers’ attention via a number of human-interest stories.

The issues facing international students, whether stranded in Canada or overseas, also received attention. Among others, the Star carried discussion regarding tuition fees and opportunities for foreign students to change their status.

Among the Postmedia Network titles, the Windsor Star appeared to carry the most coverage relating to migrants and the pandemic — perhaps unsurprisingly, given that more than half of the local COVID-19- cases during the pandemic’s first wave were among the thousands of migrant workers employed in the agri-food sector in Southwestern Ontario’s Essex County. 

Another significant aspect of the coverage was the call on the government to create a new permanent residency program for migrant workers, including undocumented workers, in sectors facing labour shortages. Advocates were asking the government to allow migrant farm workers to apply for a 12-month open work permit that would maintain or regularize their status while their application for permanent residency was in process.

Insight from MIREMS media monitoring

“Ethnic media has been instrumental in reporting on and clarifying government policy, processes and programs. It has also documented the unique challenges different migrant constituencies face and has been part of successful lobbying efforts for concrete solutions,” summed up Silke Reichrath, Editor-in-Chief at MIREMS.

Of particular concern were temporary foreign workers, international students, asylum seekers, and undocumented workers.

In terms of immigration policy, a lot of coverage was devoted to the impact of COVID on immigration levels, border closures and travel restrictions, visa extensions for temporary residents stranded in Canada, work permit regulations, farm worker rights and COVID safety protocols, COVID-related accommodations for international students, modifications to the Express Entry draws, and the “guardian angel” program for front-line care providers. Ethnic media frequently aired interviews with immigration lawyers and consultants as well as with lawmakers.

Another concern reflected in the ethnic media has been around family reunification. The processing of spousal sponsorship cases has stalled, and ethnic media has reported repeatedly on protests organized to ask the government to resume processing sponsorships.

Methodology: This ethnic media analysis is based on a selection of 350 summaries of articles and broadcast segments in radio, TV, print and web sources between May and December, 2020. These summaries were selected from about 6,000 items on these issues found in 450 active ethnic media sources in Canada monitored by MIREMS.

Source: https://newcanadianmedia.ca/ethnic-media-highlight-exploitation-of-temporary-migrant-workers-troubles-of-international-students-during-pandemic/#ethnic-media

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Islamic scholars, activists call for ban on British film about prophet’s daughter

2021/01/11 Leave a comment

Parallel between this call and the similar call re Mel Gibson’s 2004 file The Passion of Christ. I remember similar controversies over Martin Scorcese’s 1988, The Last Temptation of Christ, and the appropriateness of the portrayal. The different element is the fear of increased Sunni Shia tensions:

Paksitani authorities banned Jan. 5 the release of the controversial British film “The Lady of Heaven.” They urged social media platforms to remove the trailer of the film.

The Pakistani ban has raised controversy in Egypt about this film. Similar to the Pakistani reaction, a number of social media activists, Al-Azhar scholars and sheikhs of the Salafist currents called for banning the screening of the film. They urged the issuance of fatwas prohibiting its viewing and sent official demands to the United Kingdom to stop showing it worldwide.

The film sparked controversy due to its portrayal of the character of Fatima al-Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and wife of Ali bin Abi Talib, the fourth and last of the rightly guided caliphs following the death of the prophet. On Jan. 2, several Egyptian and international newspapers reported that the film features the voice of the Prophet Muhammad as one of the storytellers of the film’s events.

Commenting on one of the news reports criticizing the film, Facebook user Ahmad Allam wrote, “They do not respect our faith or our sanctities, and when we get angry [and defend] our religion and our Messenger, they say we are terrorists.” Omar Hindawi wrote, “This film should be immediately banned,” while Mona Mahmoud wondered about Al-Azhar’s position on “this humiliation?”

Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest religious authority, issued a press statement Dec. 27 through its adviser Mohammed Mehanna, confirming the steadfastness of Al-Azhar’s position regarding the prohibition of the embodiment of the Prophet Muhammad, all prophets and the family members of the prophet (wives, daughters and sons). The statement asserted that the release of this film consecrates the continued disrespect by the West and some Shiite extremists for the sanctities and beliefs of others. 

Al-Azhar, however, did not announce any measures to try to ban the screening of the film, as demanded by social media activists.

Inquiring about the possibilities of banning the film in Egypt or launching any media campaigns to prevent it from showing in Egypt or abroad, Al-Monitor talked to a source in the Al-Azhar Sheikhdom. “Al-Azhar is not an authority that can ban or permit a film,” the source said on condition of anonymity. “It simply expresses the Sharia opinion regarding the prohibition of embodying the prophet and his family members. Al-Azhar leaders are not concerned with efforts to ban the film abroad and has nothing to do with the delay in its release.”

The film, directed by Elli King and written by Sheikh Yasser Al-Habib, was to be released in theaters Dec. 30, before it was postponed until 2021. No new date was scheduled for its release and the reasons for its postponement have not been disclosed. But some newspapers reckoned the delay came in light of the sharp criticism the film generated or because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A source from the Ministry of Culture told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the Authority for Censorship of Artistic Works affiliated with the ministry is the authority competent to ban or allow the screening of a film when its distributors apply for a request for its release in Egypt. The source explained that the authority cannot decide to ban a film before watching it, adding that the opinion of Al-Azhar and religious institutions on the embodiment of the prophet will be taken into account in addition to the opinions of scholars, if the film falsely depicts or distorts established historical facts.

The Authority for Censorship of Artistic Works had banned the screening of “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004, and “Noah” and “The Exodus; Gods and Kings” in 2014, because they portray the characters of the prophets.

Several Egyptian newspapers, notably Soutalomma and Al-Wafd, accused in press reports Dec. 31 the film and its producers of Shiism and bias toward false stories about Zahra’s death. They said that the teaser of the film shows she was subjected to torture and physical assault causing her to have an abortion and to die at the hands of the Rightly Guided Caliphs who preceded Ali, namely Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, Omar bin Al-Khattab and Othman bin Affan.

But renowned film critic and writer of Arab cinema Tarek el-Shinnawy believes banning the film will create unnecessary momentum and buzz that may encourage Egyptians to watch it out of curiosity. “Sooner or later everyone will be able to watch it when it becomes available on the internet. It is better to allow its screening while holding, in tandem, historical and religious discussions to unveil its fallacies if it truly tells a historically questionable story.” 

The film’s events take place in two different times separated by nearly 1,400 years. It tells the story of an Iraqi child who lost his parents and was displaced by an armed Islamic State attack. The boy then moves to live with his grandmother, who tells him the story of Zahra, the first victim of terrorism in history from the Shiite perspective. The film then recounts the story of Zahra. 

Mohsen Qandil, a professor of Islamic history at Cairo University shares Shinnawi’s opinion. “Any serious discussion about the film would reveal the weakness of the Shiite narrative that contradicts the friendly relationship that Imam Ali had with the Rightly Guided Caliphs who preceded him, even after Zahra’s death. Imam Ali agreed to marry his daughter, Umm Kulthum, to Omar bin Al-Khattab and recommended him [bin Al-Khattab] as his successor.”

He added, “How can bin Khattab be one of Zahra’s killers, while he was on good terms with Imam Ali, her husband, after her death.”

Despite the film being accused of Shiism and promoting false or weak historical narratives, Iranian websites Ijtihad and Al-Alam reported that four Shiite religious authorities — Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpaygan, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, Ayatollah Hossein Noori-Hamedani and Ayatollah Jaafar Subhani — labeled as haram any support or promotion for the film. The fatwas banned viewing it since it deepens the disagreement in the Islamic nation between Sunnis and Shiites. The Shiite authorities argued that fanning the flames of the inter-Muslim dispute is in the interest of those they described as the “enemies of Islam.”

Mohamed Abdel Halim, an Egyptian journalist specializing in religious affairs at the London-based news website Daqaeq, told Al-Monitor that showing the film at this time while Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are witnessing divisions between Sunnis and Shiites will exacerbate existing differences.

“In case this film is shown, Al-Azhar will be forced to refute the Shiite historical allegations. Al-Azhar has always tried to ignore these allegations so as not to worsen the division between Sunnis and Shiites,” Abdel Halim said. “This will abort the sheikhdom’s attempts for decades to achieve rapprochement and focus on what unites Sunnis and Shiites instead of focusing on points of contention, including the historical allegations about Zahra.”

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2021/01/egypt-al-azhar-ban-movie-prophet-daugher-sunni-shiite.html#ixzz6j8s7ef7l

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Most new Order of Canada appointees are white men, despite diversity-boosting efforts

2021/01/11 Leave a comment

For the full analysis, see my deck below:

Most of the new appointees to the Order of Canada in 2020 were white men, despite some progress made in boosting the diversity of the elite group.

Of the 175 people picked for the prestigious civilian honour last year, just over one third were women. About 7.4 per cent were members of visible minorities — up two per cent from the previous year –  and 5.1 per cent were Indigenous, according to analysis by immigration and diversity researcher and former government official Andrew Griffith.

Velma Morgan, chair of Operation Black Vote Canada, called those figures “extremely problematic.”

“We talk about diversity as our strength as Canadians. We advertise that to the world,” she said. “Yet this is not demonstrated when we’re trying to recognize those people who have made contributions to Canada.”

Morgan said institutions can’t expect to command broad public respect when they fail to represent the population.

“Black communities have been here for hundreds of years. So when we don’t see ourselves represented in one of the highest honours of the country, it says something — that we’re not being recognized for things that we have done and continue to be doing,” she said.

Morgan said stepping up outreach to underrepresented groups and enhancing public awareness about the program could help to address the longstanding imbalance. The makeup of the panel that reviews nominations should also better reflect the population, she said.

The Toronto Star reported last month that The BlackNorth Initiative — which pushes corporations to improve the diversity of their boardrooms and executive suites — has written a letter to Gov. Gen. Julie Payette complaining about the low number of Black Order of Canada recipients and has suggested the names of individuals who could be worthy of the honour.

The Order of Canada program relies on nominations from individuals or organizations, which are reviewed by an independent advisory council. That council makes appointment recommendations to the governor general, who accepts them according to convention.

Modernizing honours programs a ‘priority’

Rob McKinnon, a spokesperson for Rideau Hall, said modernizing all honours programs is one of Payette’s “key priorities.”

He said her office has taken steps to increase diversity, such as data collection on gender identity, disabilities and Indigenous and visible minority status through a self-identification questionnaire. The office also has launched communications strategies and social media campaigns meant to increase the number of people being nominated for civilian honours, he said.

“The best way to augment the representation of a merit-based public program like the Order of Canada is to increase the participation of Canadians [in] it, thereby generating a larger volume of diversified nominations,” McKinnon said in an email.

“In that spirit, Governor General Julie Payette has taken steps and asked her team to look at ways of increasing the public profile of all its honours programs and to make the nomination process as user-friendly as possible and easily accessible to all. Such improvements will lead to the recognition of individuals with more diverse backgrounds.”

McKinnon acknowledged that while progress is being made, it’s slow. He noted that while nominations of women to the Order of Canada have remained steady — about 200 per year since 2000, from a pool of 500 to 800 nominations each year — women nominated to the order now see a success rate of about 72 per cent, compared to 58 per cent for men.

Recognizing contributions to building Canada

Diversity consultant Chi Nguyen said the Order of Canada program has clung to a tradition of installing “upper crust” people selected by an elite group – and that must change.

“Often you’re tapping the people who look like you, who run in the same circles as you,” she said.

“So I think those numbers are increasing and they look better than they have in the past … but it still doesn’t recognize the other ways in which lots of newcomers, Indigenous folks are contributing to building our country.”

Griffith, who has tracked Order of Canada appointments since 2013, said while the trend line appears to be moving in the right direction, there is still much progress to be made.

“You want to make sure that the awards — to an extent, not a perfect extent — have that representation of the population,” he said. “Because it highlights that everybody can make a contribution. It highlights that all different aspects of Canadian society are getting some recognition.”

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Paradkar: Why calls to label white supremacists terrorists could backfire on their targets instead

2021/01/11 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion. Prefer white supremacists as more specific:

Any incident of mass violence throws up certain inevitable tensions in newsrooms. What to label the perpetrator? 

Until not so long ago, the news media uncritically ran with the labels that came from politicians who deferred to security agencies who in turn had a vested interest in the social narrative around the incident. This was why certain events were given certain designations and in short order began to be exclusively associated with certain identities.

Terrorist: Muslim, foreigners. Think al-Qaida or Islamic State types, but any visible Muslim could be perceived as being sympathetic to them.

Homegrown terrorist: Muslims, citizens of the West. (How were they radicalized despite growing up amid all this innocence?)

Gangs: Consisting of Black thugs, involved with drugs, guns.

Cartels: Latin Americans, narcotics.

White supremacists: Yahoos, poor, uneducated. And, during the reign of Donald Trump: Trumpists.

Notice the sleight of hand in that turn to elitism? How smoothly those terms take identity out of the picture and offer excuses instead.

It is no wonder then that people on the receiving end of unfair labels rebelled. Was that van driver a white terrorist? Was the mass shooting an act of white terrorism?

It’s an argument that has been renewed with vigour in the wake of white supremacists storming the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday in defiance of an election that kicked out their leader, and led to the question: are white supremacists terrorists?

On Thursday, U.S. president-elect Joe Biden called them “domestic terrorists” and said tackling domestic terrorism would now be a priority. Across the northern border, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh launched a petition asking the prime minister to ban and designate the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization. “(Wednesday) was an act of domestic terrorism,” Singh tweeted. “The Proud Boys helped execute it. Their founder is Canadian. They operate in Canada, right now. And, I am calling for them to be designated as a terrorist organization, immediately.”

On the surface this appears like fairness in motion. It might explain why the petition got so much support that the website crashed.

White supremacists terrorize people, but consider the terrorist label through another lens. Whom will it actually penalize?

Harsha Walia is executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. Voicing what she called “an unpopular opinion” on Twitter, she said: “Let me be clear that calling for the expansion (of terrorism designation) to white supremacists won’t work.” 

Walia, who has long been a community organizer supporting migrant communities and Indigenous land defenders, called laws around terrorism designation “fundamentally regressive,” and said, “I know anti-terror legal infrastructure is rotten by design.” 

That infrastructure includes tighter border controls in the name of national security. Traditionally, that has led to racial profiling at the borders, targeted at non-white people, especially those perceived as Muslims. Treating them as suspicious outsiders then leads to increased surveillance, which requires funding, which means increasing police budgets. 

The alienation legitimizes societal debates around criminalizing aspects of these “outsiders’” cultures, with policies such as banning articles of clothing (looking at you, Quebec) and legal tools such as security certificates to detain and deport foreigners and permanent residents the country deems a security threat. In a violation of the basic principles of justice, the government can deem someone suspicious based on secret evidence that even the accused cannot access. Detainees in Canada have been stuck in legal limbo for years.

As we saw from the blatant police inaction against political rioters Wednesday, our security apparatus is simply not equipped to racially profile the “yahoos.” Not when those yahoos included off-duty police officers and members of the military who flashed their badges and ID cards in an attempt to gain entry. Canadian Armed Forces and police forces already count among their members those with active ties to neo-Nazi and far-right groups. 

Even if our security agencies were equipped to do so, even if they were fine impartial defenders of public security who could identify domestic terrorists by sight, putting the shoe on the other foot is not the solution. We can’t claim to seek a world of dignified equality and actively seek to expand oppressive policies that will surely boomerang.

The “global war on terror and its ongoing aftermath must be dismantled, not bolstered,” Walia said.

Calling white supremacists terrorists and inviting stronger anti-terrorism measures will also likely criminalize legitimate protesters by turning them even more easily into peace disturbers and security threats.

“On the contrary, if we call them white supremacists, naming their movement as what it is, it demands a solution specific to that problem,” tweeted Lea Kayali, a digital communications manager at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Truth-telling. Reparations. Facing our history as a nation founded on white supremacy and dismantling it bit by bit.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/01/08/why-calls-to-label-white-supremacists-terrorists-could-backfire-on-their-targets-instead.html

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2020 brought ugly truths about inequity to the forefront — like how Ontario’s Medical Association still upholds structural racism

2021/01/09 Leave a comment

A bit of a meandering critique, ranging from the well-demonstrated disparities in health to the narrower focus on OMA fee structure for non-insured services. While one can argue the inequity aspects (like in so many areas, not convinced that this is necessarily structural racism:

2020 was an awakening in the ongoing struggle against inequity.

Race-based health inequities highlighted the persistence of structural racism in health care. The importance of diverse representation in medicine became glaringly obvious, and the need to address a status quo of inequality became more urgent. The Ontario Medical Association, a membership organization that ‘represents the political, clinical and economic interests’ of Ontario’s physicians’, from family doctors to specialists, is a powerful organization and a major government partner in administering health care. 

In response to the 2020 awakening, the OMA released a year end communication stating it is committed to enhancing “equity, diversity and inclusion across all facets of the organization” and to promoting those concepts “including their importance at the societal level.”

But this statement is contradicted by their own actions and policies of the last several years. 

Reconciliation, for example, is one of the most pressing matters of our time. Yet, in 2018, the OMA took a major step backward, as the Governing Council summarily defeated a motion submitted by the Ontario Medical Students Association requesting that OMA General Council Meetings open with an acknowledgment and reflection on relationships with Indigenous peoples in Canada. A shift in physician culture towards acknowledgment of Indigenous peoples rights is a fundamental step toward healing. Without this physicians will continue to operate in perpetual structures of racism and exclusion, and health care gaps will not close. 

The 2020 pandemic also revealed the intimate links between race, income and health. Research shows that 87 per cent of Indigenous adults in Toronto live below the Low Income Cut Off. Black, Indigenous and other People of Colour (BIPOC) people made up more than 83 per cent of first wave COVID infectionsin Toronto, and they continue to be over seven times more likely to contract COVID than White Torontonians. BIPOC communities are also more likely to live in multi-generational, inadequate or crowded housing. Overcrowded and unsafe factories, employment in health services or personal support or delivery jobs that ensure those with privilege can stay home, account for much of the high prevalence of COVID in these neighbourhoods.

The OMA continues to perpetuate rules and policies which disproportionately impact racialized communities. 

The OMA publishes the Physician’s Guide to Uninsured Services: a document that details fees that physicians can directly charge patients. Examples include transferring medical records, providing telephone advice, or phoning in prescriptions. 

This 52-page OMA compendium is a remarkably detailed catalogue on how to bill for every conceivable service at a rate equivalent to 2.31 times the value of the 2014 OHIP fee schedule or $411 per hour. The OMA allots exactly 10 lines to the issue of patients’ ability to pay for uninsured services.

Doctors have no training in assessing the ability of patients to pay. The vast majority of doctors have had no experience with living on incomes below the low income-cut off or poverty line. Those who have experienced such poverty left that status long ago. Yet these same doctors are supposed to judge a patient’s ability to pay — patients whose annual incomes are in many cases a twenty-fifth or less of the physician before whom they sit. Patients are compelled to plead poverty in a humiliating interaction with their physician.

Who are these patients who must engage in such unequal bargaining with their physicians? Again, they are disproportionately BIPOC, including immigrants and refugees, who are massively overrepresented in the lower income classes. The OMA’s billing guide is a classic example of structural racism precisely because its effects are felt most by BIPOC communities.

Human rights vernacular is empty talk if the result is entrenched bias and its consequent harm. The OMA creates the culture within which Ontario’s physicians operate. It must tackle head on its own discriminatory practices.

Philip B. Berger is an Associate Professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of TorontoSuzanne Shoush is a Black and Indigenous mother, physician and Indigenous Health Faculty Lead for the University of Toronto Department of Family and Community Medicine. Semir Bulle is the outgoing co-president of the Black Medical Students Association at the University of Toronto and co-founder of Doctors for Defunding Police. Follow him at @SemirBulle.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/01/07/2020-brought-ugly-truths-about-inequity-to-the-forefront-like-how-ontarios-medical-association-still-upholds-structural-racism.html

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Andy Beckett: Brexit may spell the end of the tabloid version of Englishness. Can Labour redefine it?

2021/01/09 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary:

For too long, one version of Englishness has dominated British politics. Proud, white, both confident and defensive, often xenophobic, always anti-Europe, this Englishness has changed as little as the tabloid front pages that have bellowed it out for decades. Brexit is one of its greatest victories. The continuing Conservative ascendancy is another.

Even formidable politicians of other parties have struggled to popularise a different national identity. Gordon Brown got lost in well-meaning but unconvincing generalities about the British national character: in 2007, he praised our “tolerance”, “decency”, and love of “fair play” and “liberty”.

Tony Blair tried to adopt the language of conservative patriotism for Labour’s own purposes. One of his election broadcasts in 1997 intercut promises of a national revival with footage of a waking bulldog. Labour won the election, but the idea that national pride could only be expressed through such dated Churchillian symbols was left unchallenged.

Source: Brexit may spell the end of the tabloid version of Englishness. Can Labour redefine it?

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