Last week, Canada and the world reacted to the horrific discovery of the bodies of 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of a residential school. This week, four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario were killed in a racist hate crime, an intentional vehicular homicide. The question is: Why?
. . .
Being American, I have long thought of Canada as the "nice neighbour upstairs," a place where people of all colours, creeds, and identities try their best to live together in relatively peaceful harmony. When I was growing up, well before Trumpism took hold south of 49 and reverberated around the world, Canada for me always seemed like... well, like the kind of place that would produce a mascot team like the Care Bears. Heaven is a place on earth. Nelvana, a mark of quality, a land of peace. We care a lot!
But now I know that Canada isn't utopia and isn't without its flaws. It is a country of people, after all. A white, settler-colonial country founded upon the violent displacement of its original inhabitants. A place where, sometimes, white, settler-colonial inhabitants get angry and ascribe their own motivations of "displacement" to brown newcomers who arrive, oftentimes fleeing the ravages of war either started or otherwise inflamed by white colonial interests.
I still believe that Canada gets many things right that the U.S. does not. But it's not perfect either — and can't always lay the fault for that solely upon its dysfunctional neighbour to the south. And that is why this week's horrific mass murder of the Afzaal family was a gut punch for so many people. For many white Canadians, "this isn't who we are." But brown Canadians and Indigenous peoples have been saying for the longest time, "yes, yes it is."
The important thing to take away is that it doesn't have to be.
But Canadians will have to tell themselves some uncomfortable truths.
And they'll have to listen to just who's been speaking those truths for many, many years.
They'll also have to tune out and stop giving the benefit of the doubt to those who intentionally sow hatred and fear because it benefits their agenda — and because, deep down, many actually believe it, even though they may use that agenda cynically for power and profit.
Tonight, a nine-year-old Muslim boy is in critical condition and without a family because of a violent conservative white supremacist. What he did, did not occur in a vacuum. It was and continues to be normalized and amplified not just by some of the most egregious and inflammatory far-right propagandists, but by a "mainstream" media model that allows for the presentation of hateful arguments as "free speech" to be "discussed and debated" within the supposedly "neutral" environment of the "marketplace of ideas."
To come out in favour of any sort of regulation of that marketplace for safety concerns is to be branded a totalitarian, a fascist, a jackbooted dictator or sympathizer who learned all the wrong lessons from George Orwell. Leaving aside the fact that those who advance such an argument are themselves guilty of doublethink and newspeak, and of accusing their opponents of what they, themselves would do (Joseph Goebbels' projection 101), all marketplaces require regulation of some sort to protect the safety of the public.
You can't just leave a food marketplace up to "buyer beware" and let people die of salmonella poisoning from rancid meat. Likewise, you can't just leave the ideas marketplace up to libertarian principles and let people die at the hands of radicalized peers.
It is crucial to examine the root causes of this radicalization so that those channels can be shut down and people protected from toxic "products" (and those who've "purchased" them). But once again, Sinclair's law of self-interest rears its ugly head:
The Canadian conservative politico-media complex would rather shift all of the blame onto easy targets like Rebel Media than to admit their own culpability in creating and manifesting the kind of environment where such rebels without a worthy cause can thrive. To do so would reveal their own systemic racism that they have worked so hard to maintain, which they benefit from immensely while expressing "thoughts and prayers" that something like this never happens again.
Where was he radicalized? they ask, when a Muslim commits a vehicular homicide attack. Then point their fingers at, say, amateur Da'esh videos, Palestinian-rights activist networks, or competitors with scary foreign-sounding names... like, say, Al Jazeera.
Not one will dare ask that same question when a white man does the same to a Muslim family. For to do so would implicate not only Rebel but its root causes: Koch money, the tar sands, the Globe & Mail.
To do so would essentially bring down the entire blue house of cards that is the Conservative movement in Canada — and the transnational white supremacist oligarchal power network that encompasses it, guilty of fomenting similar hatreds all over the world.
Which is why none other than the chairman of that transnational white supremacist oligarchal power network, and cosplay Bond villain, Stephen Harper, was so quick to denounce the attack, knowing full well that the fingers would be pointed at him and the hatreds he espoused and is currently aiding to flourish across the globe. After all, who better to condemn the Reichstag fire he poured gasoline on, as it set on a slow and steady burn?
And right on cue (which is not to say that this particular law isn't yet another symptom of Islamophobic hate): the Greek chorus of bad-faith conservative politico-media complex actors in English Canada were quick to point their fingers at Quebec over the so-called laïcité law, known as Bill 21. Only a few have been brave enough to condemn O'Toole and his deplorable MAGA North party, and even their own media colleagues (or competitors) — mostly on social media, and most of them... brown people themselves. It is not the job of the hurt party to continually exert emotional labour. White people, particularly those in privileged positions, must call out their own.
But Postmedia will not condemn itself. SUN News will not condemn itself. The G&M will not condemn itself. The "non-confrontational" white sheltered commentariat at CTV, Global and even the national broadcaster (the lesser of three evils) will not dare condemn itself. They will not issue statements of contrition and accountability for the scourge of "both-sides" obfuscation in the name of false objectivity. Their corporate ownership will not endorse the Liberals or, at the very least, condemn the Conservative party writ large, for being wholly and completely a party that has not only embraced Islamophobia, but fanned the flames for political gain.
They'll just hit out at Trudeau over and over again asking why he doesn't issue a full-throated condemnation and denunciation of François Legault... so they can embolden the Bloc, artificially pump the NDP's bespoke-bicycle tires as the "woke" player in Parliament, split the left-of-centre vote, and elect a government of bigoted Conservative Islamophobes who will legislate their hatreds and lower their taxes. Just so they won't have a Trudeau to kick (them) around anymore. (And he hardly even does!)
This is an unspeakable tragedy, and there will be those who say it's not right or "too soon" to "make political hay" of this. Wrong. It is exactly the time to make political hay of it, because it was and is those politicians who allowed this to happen, and are still doing so.
Where was he radicalized? We don't know yet, specifically. We do know, however, where the Quebec City mosque shooter was radicalized. Yes, it was Rebel Media, big surprise there. But where would Rebel be were it not for Postmedia and SUN News? Why would the G&M give Ezra an op-ed space to whine that his free speech was being censored? Where is the parliamentary inquiry into the entanglement, the in-kind political advertising donation involving the Conservatives and their preferred ideological media mouthpieces, that equals the months of wasted resources spent pursuing Benghazi conspiracy theories about the Trudeau family and WE Charity? When will the likes of Sue-Ann Levy be called to account, or Brian Lilley, Hamish Marshall, Conrad Black, or Sith lord Stephen Harper himself?
The answer is: Probably never. Which only goes to show that white supremacy is still the default, de facto system of governance in "friendly" Canada for as long as its media messaging is majority-held by the right. It has nothing to do with Justin Trudeau or his Liberal party. It has to do with Canada's DNA.
The only good news that can come from all of this is that Canadians on average don't seem to be buying what their right-wing hate media is selling — literally, and figuratively. Canadian news media is morally bankrupt. Without government subsidies (one of the few areas, policy-wise, where I'll ever disagree with Justin Trudeau), they would be financially bankrupt as well. Outside a dedicated audience, Canadians are mostly disinterested in Rex Murphy's "white"-knuckle defences of, well, whiteness. They came out en masse to support the Muslim community after this tragic event. They were horrified by the discovery of the Indigenous children. Ever so slowly, the ground appears to be shifting.
But there is much more work to be done. Many good, thoughtful, progressive Canadians are still in denial about, or unaware of, the severity of the situation. Fortunately, they are open to learning and listening. An impenetrable floor of about thirty percent, however, still support the Conservatives, in the face of all evidence of their deplorable MAGA identity. Within that thirty percent is about a 70/30 split between a very vocal and influential minority who are full-blown MAGA/QAnon (the latter), and those who merely tolerate it because they want lower taxes, don't like government telling them what to do, or don't think of themselves as "hating" marginalized peoples but don't really want their lot in life to improve either. Not if it requires their taxes to go up, or their "free speech" to be curtailed, or basically anything that would have them lift a finger to sacrifice some comfort for somebody else.
Or, they just don't like (perhaps viscerally loathe) Justin Trudeau personally, and have come to associate him with all things small- and big-L Liberal — that is, not conservative — and will do so for the foreseeable future, long after he retires from the political fracas. In which case they are apathetic about whatever someone else in the big blue circus tent sewn with white Klan sheets does to hurt Muslims, Indigenous people, LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, or the poor of all walks of life, as long as they feel they're "owning the Libs" and sticking it to Justin Trudeau. The thought process goes something like this:
Oh, a Muslim family is dead. Well, that's too bad. But it's worth it if it makes Justin Trudeau cry, and generates a "thoughtful" op-ed from Andrew Coyne or Jonathan Kay about Justin Trudeau's "performative" tears. It's always worth it if the pundit panels and editorial pages get to generate ratings and clickbait by offering discussions and analyses ad nauseam about the "optics" of whatever Justin Trudeau's reaction is to something meant to own the Libs. Muslim lives don't matter. Indigenous lives don't matter. What matters is obsessing over how can this be twisted to either personally or professionally hurt Justin Trudeau. A brown person in a turban was killed, so let's remind everyone of what Justin Trudeau wore at a party twenty years ago. We don't really care about that brown person in a turban. We just want to "paint" Justin Trudeau as irredeemably racist so you won't look at us.
Conservative politics in Canada is sick. Conservative media in Canada is sick. Conservatism everywhere is sick. Conservatives in Canada are the party of niqab snitch lines and Indigenous issues being "not high on [the government's] radar." Conservative media in Canada is the propaganda of Conservative partisans in Canada. It is the propaganda of lies about "goat sacrifices" at refugee hotels, and of repeated front-page endorsements for the party that made a pariah of Omar Khadr and of Maher Arar, the party whose rank-and-file shart out countless shitposts about "Jihad Justin," and the party that collectively stans for Bloody Bloody Johnny Macdonald. The party is trash. The media is trash. White colonial settler supremacy is trash. Conservatism itself is trash.
If you really want to support #OurLondonFamily and honour the #215Children, do the following: Throw the Conservative party and about 99% of Canadian news media in the trash.
Insh'allah, a better Canada will emerge. One that truly lives up to what Canada aspires to be.
But to get to that place starts with good and decent Canadians asking some important questions. Almost as if they were citizen journalists, in lieu of the corrupt conservative press that offers no valid solutions.
Who are we?
What can we do to change things for the better?
When and where did things go wrong?
...and most importantly, why?