This is my reply to Netjin's blog attack; Eugene Plawiuk, the shame of the Canadian blogosphere
Netjin took issue with my criticisms of Dion, Elizabeth May , The Green Party and my critique of Catholic economic and political ideologies like corporatism and distributism.
Quite correctly he and others have pointed out that Elizabeth May is an Anglican. However last time I checked Anglicanism is simply another form of Catholicism, albeit based on the English Crown. My point about May wasn't whether or not she was Catholic but that she was influenced by Catholic theories of economic justice. Anyways here is my reply.
My my where to begin. Well lets begin with the wonderful book Bilingualism Today French Tomorrow, which as you correctly pointed out is the basis of the Western Canadian Seperatist Ideology.The debate continues in the comments at Netjin.
It was published and circulated in the late seventies amongst the right wing rabble in Southern Alberta, home of the COR, WCC and Reform parties, as well as the old stomping grounds of Social Credit.
When I went to the University of Lethbridge and was on the student newspaper I exposed the right wing Birchite movement amongst the folks there that was quite active. This was several years before the Keegstra affair.
The anti-Cantolic bias of the right has existed in Alberta since the 1930's when the KKK was strong in the province. While attacking Jews and Blacks, though there were few of the latter around to focus on, the KKK focused its attacks on French Canadians and Catholicism.
Since these right wing movements in the West past and present are forms of militant Anglo Saxon Protestant Nationalism this should come as no surprize.
So am I biased because I point out that Mormonism and the right wing Dutch Reformed Church are strong in this region, hence their anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-gay, bias? I think not.
Nor should it come as any surprize that at the same time in Quebec the Right Wing Fascist movement of Arcand was anti-semitic anti-immigrant anti-English and Pro French, Pro Catholic and Pro Quebec Nationalism.
If Liz is an Anglican fine, however in the news article I linked to she credited Moses Coady as the source of her ecocnomic ideology, and then I went on to point out that Coady promoted Distributism a Catholic alternative to Socialism and Capitalism, the original Third Way.
Third Way politics of the Catholic social movements have always been both opposed to and a response to socialist workers movements. Thus they have been usually the basis for fascism. The Blair/Clinton Third Way was simply liberalized statism, on the other hand the Real Third Way movement is the Neo-Nazi's, who have embraced Green and Anti-Globalization politics.
So they can be progressive and they can be conservative, depending on whose promoting the ideology. This is also the problem that Liberation Theology faced, and its inherent contradiction, but that is a tale for another time.
In case you did not get it, and apparently you didn't I oppose all nationalism, and especially hypocrtical nationalism or the panderings to nationalism.
As in the case of the phoney bilingualism debate.
As for Quebec nationalism it is Catholic in origin, it is fascist in practice as we witness in the Quebec of Arcand and Duplessis, it is not the idelogy of liberalism, which is reflected in the great Canadian liberal Joseph Papineau, whom I have blogged about many times.
When it became left wing, it was the FLQ, while spouting left wing rhetoric its practice of misplaced urban guerrilla warfare placed it in the fascist camp.
I have criticized Trudeau for his inversion of classical anarchist theories of federalism and yet I have also praised his liberalism and even his libertarianism.
Political movements like the Green Party and the Social Credit party, are populist, pandering to a broad base, thus subject to no clear political philosophy, containing within themselves left wings and right. It is this contradition I try and point out.
I remember years ago meeting a left wing Social Creditor, who loved reading Lenin. Because Lenin exposed the financial cabal that ran capitalism. Which cabal, well the Rothchilds of course. Yoiks.
I guess I am a contrarian, and one that is shameless about it.
I will call a spade a spade even if everyone insists its a shovel.
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3 comments:
Yes, we're both aware of all this information, but this is the intellectual version of flexing your muscles in a fight.
I fail to see how any of this changes the fact that you're insinuating May's alleged Catholicism, let's refer to her Anglicanism from now on, is somehow impossible to be reconciled with 'progressivism' and then you link it all to fascism. It's not that there haven't been instances of clerical fascism, there certainly has been, but there's been instances of secular fascism as well. You haven't refuted the fact that you accuse May of endorsing ideas that you link to fascism on the basis of her Anglican upbringing, that somehow this upbringing is the deciding factor in her political leanings.
This is the type of slippery slope that you go down when you start judging people by their religious belief, you lump everybody who follows that faith in a certain category and that's a dangerous thing to do that has mostly always led down to the path of bigotry and discrimination.
Do I have a problem with you speaking up against the Roman Catholic's Church flaws and discrimination against women, gays and others that I can't quite think of right now? Absolutely not! These things must be revealed and challenged, but I cannot accept you effectively saying "Well, she's an Anglican, hence that's why she thinks that way."
Judgement by association, essentially. It's a terrible way of thinking things through and you keep doing it over, and over, and over. And that last one was just over the line for me.
Oh, and official bilingualism is pandering to nationalists now? Well, that's nice to know that you apparently don't care for history and the first language of the majority of Canada's second largest province and a quarter of its population that lives coast to coast to coast. I guess you'd rather we just all speak English, eh? J'm'excuse, mais je ne renoncerait pas au droit de m'exprimer à mon gouvernement dans ma langue natal, même si mon statut minoritaire dans ma province ne me dôte pas avec des capacités de langue française très élégante. Since around a quarter of the population is French, it's not pandering to nationalism, it's respecting Canada's linguistic diversity instead of imposing a language on millions of people.
Oh, and by the way, Arcand's National Unity Party was fiercely federalist (hence the name), it was quite fond of anglophones (even got some of its funding from England and according to Norman Lester, from the PM at the time) and definitely anti-Quebec nationalist since you know, it was the National Unity Party, so... That's something else that you need to check your facts on again before ranting.
Be a shameless contrarian that calls spades a spade if you want, but at least do it accurately and with intellectual rigour, because as it is now, you're just yelling on rooftops (quite frequently at that, I suppose I can't say posting with frequency is a bad thing though) with ridiculous associations.
In response to JF's comment: Booyah! :)
I am not opposed to bilingualism, in fact I have blogged on this and how it influenced the creation of Liberal Multiculturalism in Canada. In fact it is the anti-bilingual racists of the right in Canada who also oppose multiculturalism, immigration and now dual 'citizenship'. I wonder how they will deal with the fact that in recognizing the Nation of Quebec they have just embraced dual citizenship in the Federal state.
Since you continue to deliberately misconstrue what I have said about bilingualism allow me to repeat it for you again. Bilingualism is a joke. It is an English Canadian sop to the Quebecois, who could frankly care less about Acadians, Franco Manitobans, etc. They are strictly francophonies. They like their English counterparts want to have one language spoken in their country, hence their reprehensible statist language laws.
In the parliament we have members of the BQ and PC's whose sole language is Quebecois. Thats it. They fail to be bilingual, but this is somehow ok.
While they deride English only speakers for not being bilingual. I find that hypocritical.
Come west my friend and see how much Quebecois spoken. Heck the second language out here is Irish brogue, from Newfoundland.
What I find hypocritical is that English Canadian politicians are told they have to be bilingual, that is speak Quebecois, while the same is not applied to Francophone politicians.
As for Arcand I do know my history and you are mistaking the name of his party for Federalism, it was anything but. As usual with right wing movements they use Orwellian logic to say they are what they are not...Freedom is slavery etc.
Arcands support came from Moseleys British Union of Fascists. And Arcand was a Nationalist and an ethnic seperatist. Another example of this is Farakan's Afro-Seperatism.
Finally all institutional theologies are repressive and anti-humanitarian. That some theologens or acitivists of a particular faith are progressive it is despite their relgion not becuase of it. Social Gospel has the same roots as the its antithesis, and in some cases its Protestant White colonial ideology is exposed as in its support for Eugenics or its thinly vieled disgust for Eastern European immigrants or the Chinese.
Progressivism or reformism has its nasty side too.
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