Geoff Russ: Canada’s left trades class war for racial animosity

The single-most animating phenomenon of the modern left in Canada and across the English speaking world is not class, it is racial resentment. Entire grassroots and intellectual movements are dedicated to what is essentially ethnic cleansing of people and artwork, as well as keeping old world blood feuds alive.

Elected progressive leaders are often less hardline than these elements, but they are nonetheless hostage to them. This is why blatant primitive tribal warfare goes unpunished, and the encouragement of it is fully tolerated.

It takes the most extreme incidents of this racial hatred to force left-of-centre politicians to make any stern denouncements, and even then it is usually words and nothing more. For example, dozens of Jewish-Canadian institutions such as hospitals, synagogues and community centres were targeted with coordinated bomb threats last week.

Yes, it was denounced by the prime minister and the members of his Liberal Party, and the RCMP are investigating, but it should not have taken an organized bomb threat campaign to spur them to action.

The signs were all there that the rising tide of antisemitism in Canada under the guise of “anti-Zionism” would lead to violence, but nearly all progressive parties have sought to sweep the threats under the rug by offering token condemnations and moving on.

Nobody needs to defend Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to state the plainly obvious fact that there are bloodthirsty elements within Canada’s anti-Zionist movement who want to isolate and harm Canadian Jews on the basis of race and religion.

Anti-Zionists are now an important part of the progressive movement, and it would take a measure of bravery, or the desire, that does not exist in the Liberals or the NDP to face them down. It would be akin to the Conservative Party expelling traditionalist Catholics from their coalition, or the NDP kicking out genuine communists, many of whom overlap with the likely larger anti-Zionist element.

The alliance between anti-Zionists and the rest of the progressive left is symbolized by their shared use of the term “colonizer” to refer to people they do not like. For the antisemites it would be Jewish people in the Levant, and for the latter, it would be mostly those of European descent in North America.

Take for instance, the so-called “Tiny House Warriors,” an anti-resource industry group in northern British Columbia labelling themselves as decolonial and anti-industry activists, who have set up camp near the small community of Blue River and terrorized the local community for years. Their goal was ostensibly halt the now-completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

The Tiny House Warriors have threatened TMX employees and their children, and for some unknowable reason, did so on camera and uploaded the footage. “We know where your kids go to school,” says one of the leaders of the Tiny House Warriors as they harass a man and woman at the TMX worksite.

Their leader is a prolific fundraiser, and frequently takes trips to warm, sunny locations like New Zealand, California, and South Africa since setting up in Blue River, which has been questioned by leaders of the Secwépemc people, to whom the Tiny House Warriors hail from.

One of their favourite lines is to call non-Indigenous people “white trash” and demand that they “go back to Europe”.

Like with anti-Zionists, the “decolonial” movement is a significant part of the progressive coalition in 2024. They cannot be written off as racist thugs either, because they are given a shroud of legitimacy by academics who endorse pathologizing entire races and ethnic groups, and pick and choose who can express racial hatred acceptably.

The faculty and staff at the University of Manitoba recently unveiled a scheme to “decolonize” the artwork on display at the museum portraying Indigenous people by removing works deemed problematic, usually painted by someone with the wrong ethnicity.

One of the paintings showed the French-born painter’s impression of Upper Fort Garry in the late 19th century, in what is now Winnipeg. It includes the fort on one side of the Red River, and an Indigenous person next to a teepee on the other.

The university’s very promising minds said the painter sinned by portraying the “direct threat of colonization” and “separation,” rather than “togetherness.” As expected, the same voices asserted that the paintings they are removing were all part an effort to reinforce white supremacy. If their words sound absurd, they absolutely are.

Any notion that academics are inherently enlightened should know that Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid in South Africa and prime minister of that country from 1958 to 1966, was regarded by his contemporaries as a brilliant sociologist and scholar.

Did the University of Manitoba’s fine educators find the painter’s diaries to make certain he was not simply recreating a scene he observed one day going for a walk along the river? Were the artist Métis, would their work still potentially be burned?

Included in a CBC story of U of M plan was a suggestion that the art pieces in question could be incinerated. It does sound like hyperbole, but the head of collections and exhibitions at the Winnipeg Art Gallery was interviewed for the story and stated the following:

“The future will tell whether we burn them down, or whether we store them away and lock them in the vault, or whether we bring them out and use them for discussion.”

If an art gallery employee believes burning artwork is a morally or intellectually acceptable solution for paintings that offend them, it says far more about them than any of the painters whose work they may put to the torch.

As with anti-Zionist and decolonial activists, academics continue to be an important part of the modern left-wing. A large portion of the Liberal party House caucus and Senate appointees are drawn from academia, where ideas that legitimize racialism flow freely under names like “Critical Studies”.

The demarcating of Canadians into the racial categories of “settler” and “Indigenous” have become mainstream, like Hutus and Tutsis.

Those who proudly call themselves settlers and think that makes them an ally, like Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves should know that in another country, they would be the first to be targeted in a racial revolution led by a decolonial demagogue. They should also know that more than a few people in Canada’s decolonial movement wish this was indeed another country, considering how they celebrated the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

Whether it is at the grassroots level or higher, ethnic feuding and race-based attacks are some of the most potent drivers of activism on the left. Even if mainstream progressive politicians tend to have more sense, they are in thrall to those who live and breathe racial resentment on a daily basis, and have not shown they have any courage to show them the door.

National Post