“The Fifth Columnist”
Paranoia, the Destroyer
Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON [Dec. 1, 2017] On Thursday, the Que-
bec legislature adopted a motion calling on store clerks, no less, to just say ‘Bonjour’ when greeting customers, instead of “Bonjour-Hi.” I always took the Bonjour-Hi thing as an invitation from a bilingual person to converse in either language. If you are unilingual, you signal this by saying one or the other. Hard to believe but the national assembly voted 111-0 in favour of the motion – not coercive they say and yet somehow it was pressed to the top of their “national” agenda! It’s all about respect, the familiar refrain goes. Against this backdrop, we have Quebec’s religious neutrality bill, requiring those receiving state services to have their faces uncovered (recently stayed by a judge). Back in 2011, this headline appeared in an Ottawa newspaper, “Montreal schools move to scan playground chatter: Quebec’s largest school board seeks to make yards, halls and cafeterias French-only zones.” Is it still the 1930s in Quebec? “The playgrounds, hallways and cafeterias of Quebec's largest school board will soon be French-only zones as authorities move to silence other languages - even during recess,” the article went on. “ In a bid to ensure its 110,000 students master French, the Commission scolaire de Montreal has announced a new code of conduct declaring French de rigueur at all times during the school day.” Justifying this school board’s policy, a spokesperson for the board went on, “There will be no language police,” she said. “Instead, monitors who overhear children using their mother tongue during recess will simply remind them of the rules. If they are automatically switching to another language, (the monitor) will gently tap them on the shoulder - not on the head - to tell them, 'Remember, we speak French. It's good for you.” Who is the “monitor” in school board story but the “minder” of North Korea, the “commissar” of Soviet communism? Yes, the state is watching. Conformity is necessary. It was in the 1920s and 30s, spawned from the Great War, when fascism arose. Plenty of people use the word pretty loosely these days, but it’s been defined as an ultra-nationalism driven by emotion, by an intense sense of being victimized, a 8 dialogue
WINTER 2017-18, VOL. 31, NO. 2
chosen people with a greater destiny and a sick mythology that entitles one group of people to act collectively to strip others of their rights. From Robert O. Paxton’s book The Anatomy of Fascism: “At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one’s own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community.” Can you hear the voice of entitlement, of victimization and the abiding paranoia over assimilation, in the chilling phrase “necessary sense of community”? You may well ask, why doesn’t the federal government do something about Quebec’s “un-Canadian” intolerance? There is a precedent for federal government intervention even in a city’s affairs. Former Official Languages commissioner Dyane Adam once intervened with a 70-page affidavit demanding that the City of Ottawa adopt a bilingual policy. When the Liberal Party of Canada, the Canadian branch of Socialist International, wishes to wield the knout (*) for Quebec’s French culture, they are not shy. Yet here we are in the new millennium, French Canada still flirts with fascism while a weak federal government dithers. Not wishing to offend. Lip service paid to the Quebec “nation.” So polite. “We are not infringing on children's freedom,” the spokesperson for the Montreal school board ironically insisted back in 2011. So it goes. Amidst a fentanyl epidemic, climate change, pollution, famine, war, and misery across the globe, there is this bizarre call for “respect” in Quebec. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic more like. Continuing along this vein, while it might be easier to let the tsunami of change wash over her decks while the tongue troopers’ band plays on, still, you have to ask, when does Canadian tolerance become cowardice? Does Canada stand for anything anymore beyond not wishing to offend? Is Canada’s tolerance really a justification to do nothing, to be nothing – nihilistic – making Quebec’s …/ approach somehow principled, even brave? www.dialogue.ca