The weight of the words

Photo Agence QMI, Daniel Mallard

Josée Legault

Tuesday, 22 August, 2017 05:00

UPDATE
Tuesday, 22 August, 2017 05:00

Look at this article

The times are dark. At times, it feels like the same propelled in a distant past that we thought was gone. The far-right, white-supremacist, neo-nazi, Ku Klux Klan, etc, The hatred does not take any more holiday.

Since the election of an american president, xenophobic and misogynist speech and the hate groups are multiplying in the United States. In Charlottesville, the masks have fallen.

Murder of a young racist activist by a militant of the extreme right via the method of the jihadist self-aries. Greetings hitlerites décomplexés. Slogans of a racist and anti-semitic chanted shamelessly by protesters of extreme right-wing armed to the teeth.

Reaction to Donald Trump : trivializing verbal and physical violence of these activists hate by accusing the “two camps” – racists and anti-racists -to be as “extremist” than the other.

Trivialization

Several spoke of the will in favour of Trump as not to alienate the vote of the white supremacist. And if, more simply still, the real reason for its refusal to condemn the racism is that he shares the same ideology nauseating ?

In Canada and in Quebec, the trumpisme crosses already in our borders. If he is fortunately to a much lesser degree, it nevertheless appears that the alleged murderer behind the attack on the mosque of Quebec has been an admirer of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen.

Beyond this attack hate, but isolated, it is important to avoid the trap of the trivialization of the extreme right, as marginal as it is here. A case in point : the demo of The Pack in Quebec city, a group of anti-immigration like the paramilitaries.

Sunday, its leaders are touted to have demonstrated peacefully while activists of the far left resorted to police officers and their supporters. So the temptation is to conclude that the clash of the ” two extremisms “. It looks like the echo of Trump after Charlottesville…

The trap

However, the rioters Sunday were certainly violent, but they were mostly few in number compared to the hundreds of anti-racist activists quite peaceful.

There was, therefore, not “two extremisms” that clashed. The thugs were only there to break. Their physical violence is unacceptable, but it must not make us forget the verbal violence and politics of the far right.

In Quebec, even if they ” recruited “, the far-right groups are marginal. Where the emergency does not legitimize for the sole reason that they are not violent physically.

And what about the demagoguery of Philippe Couillard who, in full pre-election year, makes his cabbage fat supporters ? While he sets himself up as a demi-god of tolerance, he accused the PQ and the CAQ to “inspire” the mobilization of the extreme right. Nothing less.

For or against the positions of Jean-François Côté and François Legault on immigration or the arrival of asylum seekers haitians, this arrow of Mr. Couillard is the “fake news” of the first order. Unworthy of a prime minister, it demonstrates a politician for whom the retention of power justifies the means, even the most heinous.