Kista Erikson at Sun News has taken ombage at the fact that Québécois film director Philippe Falardeau's Oscar nominated film "Monsieur Lazhar" received - gasp! - money from the Federal government (hence - double gasp! - from the taxpayer).
http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2012/02/17/sun-news-network-attack-on-monsieur-lazhar-is-just-goofy/
Montréal Gazette writer Brendan Kelly finds her behavior "goofy" but we think there may be more here than meets the eye. Look behind the goofiness and find, perhaps, a political motivation..
Ironincally, Mr Kelly himself appears to find the trace only to lose it again. Thus he writes quizically:
"What an outrage! Apparently our tax dollars went into this film.
Actually I really have no clue why the folks at Sun News are so
outraged. Is it ’cause the film is in the French? That the main
character is an Algerian refugee? That it takes place in that noted
communist hotbed Montreal?"
Yes, Mr Kelly we are suggesting that Krista lost it - unreflectedly or with premeditation (we do not know) - exactly because the film is in French, the main character is an Algerian refugee (both the fact that he is Algerian AND a refugee can be held against him), and that it takes place in a "communist hotbed" like Montréal.
If such an interpretation is true, one can only speculate. However, it does tie in with the rightwing, redneck, reactionary, populist tone of the Harper government in all its doings and gestures. If true, a new level of hypocrisy of neoconservative thinking would be revealed. We all know that the Harper government has made significant overtures to immigrant communities - at least during electoral campaigns, apparently in an attempt to tap into two potential sources of votes within immigrant communities: 1- the immigrant business community and 2- the conservative / reactionary social attitudes of many New Immigrant communities. This would constitute a delicate balancing act indeed because many Canadian rightwingers appreciate neither immigrants nor their particular brands of reaction (Islam as the One True Faith, outside of which there is no salvation, for example). At the limit, one might argue that the populist ideologues are attempting to play off one group of bigots against another so as to muster the intolerance of both against a common enemy ("the Left": liberals, moderates, social democrats, Québécois nationalists, feminists, "secularists"..) We note however that such hypocrisy and internal division would are, by no means, foreign to populists if their past actions are any judge. One need only consider the state of US politics before John F Kennedy and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Traditionally, the democratic party was the "natural ruling party" founded on an unholy alliance of "Jim Crow" - anti-black - local and state politicians in the South and northern working class / immigrant / labor union voters.
Another example is found in Québec during the "Grande Noirceur" - the Great Darkness, the reign of Québécois Premier Maurice Duplessis (reigned 1936 - 1959). Dupessis promulgated a nationalistic, patriotic - Québécois patriotism, anti-State and anti-labor message. Government spending was cut to a minimum as were labor safety regulations. Result: extractive industries (mining, forestry) payed next to nothing in royalties and taxes, environmental regulations were nil, the death toll from industrial accidents for Québécois workers was four times that of neighboring Ontario, Québécois were among the most uneducated and underpayed Canadians. New immigrants - Italian workers in Montréal - actually earned $200 per annum more than unilingual French Montréal citizens, circa 1960. In return, the Québécois were promised they would go to heaven for all eternity while their oppressors, "les Anglais et les Juifs" - the English and the Jews - would burn in hell for all eternity. The irony is that the greatest turn out of voters for Duplessis' Union Nationale party was in wealthy Westmount where the rich Anglais business owners lived! The populist voice often speaks different messages from both sides of its mouth..
Once again, we observe what can only be called the "prostitution of religion" to serve Ceasar. I recall conversations with people that grew up in Québec under the Duplessis regime. At election times, nuns in school would have kids recite the follow ditty:
Bleu est pour le ciel, Rouge est pour l'enfer
Blue is for heaven, Red is for hell
Blue was the color of the Union Nationale party, Red that of the Liberal party. Kids were told to instruct their parents they would go to hell if they voted the wrong color!
Do we not see echos of these attitudes in today's political scene..
We are witnessing a disturbing trend in contemporary societies: a rejection of the "Universalist" perspective of the Enlightenment. Universalism is a deep, "intuitive" ethical or philosophical insight which demands a recognition of the shared humanity or "human nature" of all people and groups of people, a common humanity expressed variously in different socio-cultural, historical environments.
Unfortunately, with the rising tide of reactionary thought and values, it is now becoming acceptable - even excpected in some quarters - to reject "cultural or moral relativism". We are warned in ominous tones and grandiose gestures that such "relativism" poses great moral risks for our collective security. Although what, exactly, is so evil about possessing the capacity to see complex entitities like people, nations, cultures, political views, other religions.. in their complexity and mulitiplicy is never explained. In this game, facts don't count but the "Great Gesture", the knowing - or insinuating - look. One does not argue or debate, one POSES. Politics as theater - some call it demagogy.. I even recall hearing reactionaries calling for a ban on Einstein's Theory of Relativity apparently because it contains the word "relativity" and therefore would, presumably, incite people to think "relatively". Reactionaries, as decades of social psychological research has shown, choose to live in a simplified - not say "mutilated" - world of Black / White, Good versus Evil dichotomies. At its worst, this mutilated and mutilating thinking projects a delusional / paranoid Manichean world view, a full blown retreat from reality into an all embracing, self-reinforcing, autoreferential delusional system: a social or collective psychosis. (All White, all Good) "fortress America" - or "fortress Russia", "fortress Islamic Community".. - is ringed in, surrounded by the omnipresent, omnipotent, insidious corrupting forces of Total Evil, attacking from both within and without. When mass paranoia develops around racial / ethnic / religious identity, we can only speak of "neotribalism" at its worst..
I am currently studying Fascist thought / ideology because I recognize the danger it represents to all that I hold good and valuable and noble in Western culture. One of the common threads in fascist / reactionary thinking is the duping of exploited classes so that, adopting a totally "inauthentic", "alienated"stance toward the world, they identify with the values of their oppressors and support those values to their own detriment. (footnote 1)Truly, truly twisted! As we wrote above: ".. the Québécois were promised they would go to heaven for all eternity
while their oppressors, "les Anglais et les Juifs" - the English and the
Jews - would burn in hell for all eternity. The irony is that the
greatest turn out of voters for Duplessis' Union Nationale party was in
wealthy Westmount where the rich Anglais business owners lived! The
populist voice often speaks different messages from both sides of its
mouth.." Indeed it does, it does indeed..
For Krista's commentary on government funding of the film "Monsieur Lazhar":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiUaPaDkAME
Internal blog link An earlier story on Krista's bullying populist attack on dance artist Margie Gillis:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8403090612918247270#editor/target=post;postID=1372087197201984404
footnote 1 - "Inauthentic" is an insight drawn by Existential philosophers of the 20th century (Camus, Satre) to describe the modern consciousness. We claim to be "for the environment" yet buy SUVs! "Alienated" is Karl Marx's description of the relation of the industrial worker to his labor the results of that labor. The worker does not "own" the "fruits of his labor", his work does not express his personhood or value. It has become "alien" or "foreign". Work is no longer a blessing but a curse, at best a mere economic necessity. Social psychologists use the general term "anomia" or "anomie" to describe the sense of confused disorder, meaningless and insignificance resulting from a preceived lack of common norms, goals or values. In general, anomia is one of the major breeders of fascist, reactionary thought and movements.
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