Bill Lee
August 24, 2019
Trump in his Florida speech asked how “these people”
could be “stopped”. Someone among the crowd shouted, “Shoot them!” At first
laughing, Trump responded, "That's only in the [Florida] panhandle, can you get away with
that statement.[1]
Given the obscene number of deaths from mass
shootings in the USA
recently it is probably not surprising that some of the old
"rationales" have been taken off the shelf and dusted off. One GOP
“legislator” has opined that there is a link to the spread and consumption of
violent video games. Leaving aside that this is an exceedingly tired trope that
has never been proven, there are a couple of others that clearly have much
greater power as explanations. It is not, for example a fanciful notion that
high capacity automatic weapons are a more likely link.[2] But there
is another issue that really deserves much more full attention. When, oh when
will the denizens political class, the media, and “polite” society in general,
cease being so “civilized” and deferential with the demagogic Trump and his
hate filled, loathsome, bigoted attacks on marginalized people of colour and
immigrants? For example, in May of this year at one of his
self-promotion rallies in Florida Trump said that the USA was being
"invaded by immigrants".
The El
Paso mass murderer, in his manifesto said that he
wanted to stop "the invasion". The fact is that there
is a demonstrably clear line between what the malign bloviator says and
what some of his true believing followers do. The media so often seems to feel
the need to offer some sort of proviso that, “of course Trump can’t be blamed
for the awful act that some “evil”, “bad”, or “mentally unhinged”, etc. person
has undertaken. But that is not true. It is important to understand that a very
powerful and charismatic demagogue[3] doesn’t
have to actually tell people to go and shoot marginalized people. Ian Kershaw
has explained how there is no direct evidence that Hitler ever directly ordered
anyone to begin the great atrocity of the holocaust. He didn’t have to, there
was an ethic and understanding that had been cultivated among the true
believing Nazis; it was called, “Working toward the Fuhrer” which meant that
they should constantly be taking their own actions to further what they knew
Hitler wanted done. They watched and listened for his subtle and not so subtle
hints. This is very reminiscent of what is happening in these acts of white
nationalists murdering Latino people, Jews, Afro Americans and Muslims. He
speaks, they act.
Before I leave this little reflection and I would
like to ponder something about our own country. I am hardly alone in this
concern, but we should not assume because we are not the USA we are
somehow home free on the issue of bigotry and violence. We have our own
xenophobic and racist issues to deal with. For example, we have the
on-line Rebel Media with Ezra Levant braying incredibly appalling racist and
xenophobic agitprop. Recently we have seen the government of Quebec enact a law that discriminates
against wearing of religious garb that clearly has as its real intent
discrimination against Muslim women. We know that the Conservative Party of
Canada harboured the vile colonial racist Senator, Lynne Bayek for years while she
was spewing her vile codswallop against Indigenous people, all on the dime of
the Canadian public purse. Andrew Scheer has received an A grade
from Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights(CCRR)
for promising to repeal many of the gun ownership, usage, and
transportation laws currently in effect in Canada
(https://firearmrights.ca/en/ccfr-report-cards-cpc-leadership-election/).
Further, Canada's
conservatives have a history (the Harper government, for example,
cancelled the registration program of all firearms) of wanting to open the
door to more firearms and less regulation. And finally, the on-line magazine
Vice has reported that Conservative Party's
Senator Pierre-Huguex has confirmed that he is a member of the group,
The Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens, which is a right wing
organization that likes to demonize Muslim people and seems to support Maxime
Bernier’s so-called Peoples Party. We also, in the last couple of years
have been witness to the way the legal system treated the killing (some would
say the cold blooded killing) of Colton Boushie, a young Cree man, by an Alberta farmer. But it
was not only the dismaying knowledge that the court system failed the Boushie
family, but the manner in which the local media managed to go along with the colonial
narrative that somehow Boushie was at fault for his own violent death. More
recently we have heard the howls of protest that the Report of MMIW&G would
have the audacity to link the murders and disappearances, and the lack of
interest by police, with the history of genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. Clearly
the potential for repression of marginalized people is alive and well here.
There are two differences worth noting in this country, however.
The first is that the culture of gun violence here, as in most countries of the
Global North, is simply far less perverted. We have avoided the insanity of the
American second amendment delusion. The USA
is far ahead, or behind, Canada
in the belief that having an automatic military grade weapon is necessary for
individual protection. The second difference is that we have no public person
with the charisma and popularity with a significant base who has espoused the
kind of xenophobic or racist sentiments as Trump has. Not one of the people
mentioned earlier, or anyone else, have made any significant impression on a
large section of the Canadian voting public, yet. Indeed, in the USA, Trump
appears, we hope, to be an anomaly. While he has many enablers in a GOP who
have surrendered any moral sense to him for fear of his turning the wrath of
his antediluvian base on them during a primary, there does not seem to be any
other politician who has the same kind of malign currency with so many
frustrated, fearful and paranoid whitestream people, particularly males. But
let us not be too sanguine, no one really saw the Trump train coming. We owe it
to ourselves to be vigilant and ready to take on the would be demagogues here.
It has been heartening that the blowhard Doug Ford has seen his polling number
drop drastically as his stupidity, mean spiritedness and nepotism have been
unmasked. This should give us some hope but no reason for complacency.
[1]
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-language-mexican-immigrants-scrutiny-wake-el-paso/story?id=64768566.
[2] It should be noted that Trump quietly signed a bill
into law in early 2017 that rolled back an Obama-era regulation that made it
harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun.
[3] The dictionary definitions of a
demagogue suggests person who builds support by appealing to prejudicial,
bigoted and simplistic ideas
Comments
Post a Comment