Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated. – George Bernard Shaw
America needs fewer men obsessed with erecting fences of hate, suspicion and name calling.– William Arthur Ward
Frank A. Pelaschuk
January 29, 2017, Quebec City, Canada, mosque – 6 dead, 8 injured
August 11-13, Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacist rally, one protester mowed down by car driven by neo-Nazi, 2 police helicopter pilots responding to protests killed in crash
March,16 2019 Christchurch, NZ, two mosques– 50 dead, 50 injured
And many, many others
Who are they? What kind of people are they?
To call them crazy, lowlifes, morons, sickos, twisted, is too easy, pat phrases that appear to explain or excuse away the enormity of the acts as if such can be excused or easily explained. They are signs of society in deep trouble, fearful, angry, suspicious, intolerant and racist. Not all the far too many mass maiming and murders are racially motivated but too many are while too many of us stand on the sidelines shrugging and tut-tutting: What can one do, that’s the way the world is today. It need not be.
Following each event racially motivated or not, the reaction is much the same: immense shock, profound sorrow, public aroused, much naval gazing, the rote denial of “This isn’t us”, race to the scenes, instant memorials, embraces, tears, prayers. Pundits pontificate, media endlessly replay images of shocked, grieving survivors, politicians politic railing against violence and hate with varying degrees of sincerity or, as with our own Maxime Bernier, stunning silence which about sums up all one needs to know about him, and racists retreat to the sewer for a day or two or take to the web until the outrage wanes. A few days, weeks, back to business.
Not all mass murders are racist white supremacists nor are all white supremacists murderers, but too many are. Those that aren’t kill in other ways dehumanizing those they fear and hate, targeting them online, harassing them on public streets, on buses, in restaurants and lineups, in schoolyards and at work. Haters seldom work alone, they need the encouragement and approval of other cowards or authority figures to fuel their fear and fury attacking people who have done no harm to them or theirs, whose only crimes appear to be their religion, the colour of their skin, the clothing that they wear, the place of their birth and country from which they have come. Mass murderers, including racists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, likely do not know their victims and have no desire to know them; to do so is to admit the possibility of their humanity, the possibility they may not be all that much different from us and, therefore, not to be feared, hated or blamed. It could be that those who come here from a distant elsewhere do not want what is ours but rather what we all desire and believe are the rights to which we are born: life, security, freedom. What is there to fear from people who are forced to leave the country of their birth only because the life they have known has become intolerable, brutal and unsafe offering no possibility of better simply because of their political beliefs, their sexual orientation, or that they are women wanting only to be recognized as free and independent as any man? Racist haters will not contemplate such a possibility for the risk to their worldview is too great. Could it be possible that all they believed and were fed was and is a lie? If that foreigner, especially the illegal, one more reason to hate and fear him, is not to be blamed, then who is?
For that is the crux. Haters are of a kind. They likely believe that those foreigners, those asylum seekers, those just looking for a better life are steeped by the same awful emotions of envy, anger, fear, suspicion, and desire that poisons themselves and therefore are a threat. Haters do not know these foreign immigrants, these asylum seekers, these illegal border crossers, these people of many languages and shades. Numbed by unknown terrors and made dumb by inarticulate rage and lacking insight, all haters are blind to reality and to facts that conflict with their worldview, a worldview distorted and malign where they, the haters are victims, and those they maim and murder, men, women and children, are the guilty not only because they are different but also simply for being. Such seems to be the sentiments of Australian Senator Fraser Anning who, in the aftermath of the March 15, 2019 murders of fifty and the maiming of another fifty plus Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand by another Australian, tweeted: “Muslims may have been the victims today; usually they are the perpetrators.” He further claimed, “The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.” His was the racist touchstone employed by all his ilk; the great, godless bogyman. Weeks earlier, Anning, had evoked the holocaust with his anti-Muslim stance saying, “the final solutionto the immigration problem is a popular vote.” That’s a racist speaking. And one who likely knows his audience. His statements are so far removed from reality as to be derisory were not the outcomes all too often so predictably tragic. During a media scrum, seventeen-year-old, Will Connolly, standing behind the senator, committed what I consider a very sensible and brave, if not heroic, service by cracking an egg on Anning’s noggin, thereby informing the world that Anning was a man clearly too shameless and stupid to know when he has egg on his face.
But that is how haters work. The big lie, the great fear. They lie to others and themselves. That is not to say that terrorist acts are not committed by foreigners but, as in New Zealand, in the US and Canada, they are often home-grown whites, racists or not, feeding off each with their simplistic, unimaginative slogans telling themselves their white lives are under threat by immigrants, feminists, politically correct politicians, pro-abortion anti-Christian anti-family values bleeding heart socialists, Big Media and fake news, and Big Government and Big Unions. They repeat these stories so often they have morphed into caricatures of barely sentient beings goading each other with stories of greater outrages, real or imagined, by enemies of their perfect way of life. The rage and hate grow, inchoate and formless, without character, coherence or even a glimmer of intelligence. They embrace their ignorance, their fear, and are steadfast in their unreasoning refusal to not only see but to accept or even consider the possibility that any differences can enrich, enliven, and enhance too wedded to an unauthentic cult of victimhood: they are victim and everyone is out to get them. Yet, if pushed, they would find it difficult, perhaps even impossible, to articulate what it is they fear and hate without exposing themselves as ridiculous, if frightening, uninformed conspiracists blind to their own failures and failings.
The sad part is, the victimhood in which they bask, is often buttressed by those whom we elect.
Donald Trump, who has much to answer for regarding the rise of white terrorism around the globe, has given licence to this sense of victimhood inflaming the fires of fear and the spectre of terrorism at almost every opportunity branding Syrian refugees as terrorists and Hispanics as illegals, criminals and rapists. In response to the Christchurch massacre, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, unwilling to offend his fan base including Ezra Levant’s vile, racist, anti-immigration publication, The Rebel, for which Scheer seems to hold a special fondness, bravely tweeted a tepid, generic, all-occasion at-the-ready tweet: “Freedom has come under attack in New Zealand as peaceful worshippers are targeted in a despicable act of evil. All people must be able to practice their faith freely and without fear.” A short time later, shamed for not stating the victims were Muslims and the place of worship mosques, Scheer bravely sent out another tweet. As for libertarian Maxime Bernier, founder of the new what’s-its-name party, not a word. The thing is, both parties, led by Scheer and Bernier, seem to hold a certain appeal to racists, bigots and haters from which neither seems willing to disassociate themselves. Votes are votes. They take them anyway they can.
The United Conservative Party of Alberta, led by Jason Kenney, an ex-federal minister who possesses an understanding of truth far different from me, recently accepted the resignation of star candidate Caylan Ford after private communications came to light highlighting where her sympathies lay in certain areas.
In a Facebook posting following the Charlottesville, Virginia attack which led to the death of a young woman protesting the white supremacist rally, Ford said the following: “When the perpetrator is an Islamist, the denunciation are intermingled with breathless assurances that they do not represent Islam, that Islam is a religion of peace, etc…..When the terrorists are white supremacists, that kind of soul-searching or attempts to understand the sources of their radicalization or their perverse moral reasoning is beyond the pale” ( https://pressprogress.ca/ucp-candidate-complained-white-supremacist-terrorists-are-treated-unfairly-leaked-messages-show/March 19, 2019).
In other words, there’s a double standard, the poor white supremacists as victims! Then, typically of such ilk, further commenting on her resignation, she blames PressProgress accusing it of “colluding” with the source of the material supplied, “a man who, for over a year, has waged an obsessive campaign of intimidation, harassment, and defamation against me…PressProgress has shown itself to be utterly without regard for truth or decency” (Calgary Herald, Shawn Knox, March 19, 2019). In other words, she was misquoted. But, let’s give her her due: when called out, Ford did condemn the targeted shooting of Muslims in Christchurch, NZ. It just took a nudge. Maybe it’s just me, but I still see a bigot and an ex political candidate playing the role of victim. Sure, I may have said those things but why should you hold that against me? Too many hold that attitude; unfortunately, conservative parties and their leaders don’t hold it against those types, that’s their base and pandering is preferable to offending with harsh criticism against racial and religious intolerance. Votes are votes. They take them anyway they can. In politics, shame is for losers.
But haters who turn killers want more than life, security and freedom…many of them want to be famous but possessing neither skills, talent, ambition, intelligence, not even a scintilla of imagination, go about achieving it the only way they can: mindlessly destroying the very ones they fear, envy and do not understand because they, the killers and haters know to the core of their dark, cold bitter hearts that those they kill are unwitting testaments to their own mediocrity. They, the sad, pitiful collective of nobodies measure up to nobody except other mediocrities wallowing in their own victimhood of the mind embracing the hateful myths lacing the messages of Fraser Anning, Caylan Ford, and ex-MPs Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander who many may recall were members of the same party Scheer leads, adjuring us to rush to the special government snitch line to report any “barbaric cultural practices” we happen to notice committed by those godless immigrant Muslims.
Racist haters see immigrants and asylum seekers as law breakers and threats, as people who have made it only because of government largesse and a natural tendency of Canadians to see only the good in others. We are too kind, too forgiving, too lenient, haters say, more willing to help them, those foreigners,than our own. The haters refuse to see, let alone acknowledge, that the “successes” by immigrants is by dint of extremely hard work: learning the ways of a new culture; learning a new language; getting an education; holding down two or three jobs and pooling the wages, resources and unified efforts embodied in the abiding love of family and friends. Haters are losers and know it. It’s easier to pull someone down than raise oneself up. For some, “Success is simply a matter of luck.” Unfortunately, haters never read to the next Earl Wilson line: “Ask any failure.”
***
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. – Thomas Paine.
***
They that can give up essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.— Benjamin Franklin
Political Knocks 