No, the events of violence against politicians were not just the “color” of the first week of the Quebec election campaign. No, Marwah Rizqy’s tormentor is not crazy. And no, Éric Duhaime will not “channel” the aggressiveness of his supporters.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
This first week was fertile in unheard-of facts. Let’s not make anecdotes out of it. Rather, it is the spectacular appearance, in broad daylight, of an evil that is undermining our democratic societies and which is hitting Quebec with full force. There is a lot to be said about these events which reveal a break in the mold of Quebec.
First, the vandalism on electoral signs, the ransacking of Enrico Ciccone’s premises, the virtual blood on the poster of CAQ candidate Sylvain Lévesque and these frontal threats against the liberal Marwah Rizqy are to be denounced without appeal. . It comes after public figures on social media, doctors, scientists, journalists covering the freedom convoy, were threatened. The thing about elected officials is that they are the front line of democracy. It’s come a long way!
But it is a mistake to treat the aggressors as cuckoos, sick people, misfits. The number they are, the assurance of being in their right, with the favorable comments they collect on social networks, we come to think that mental illness has a broad back.
We are witnessing the crystallization of a social phenomenon, of a real movement, which must be treated as such. We must not speak of isolated phenomena: they have the strength of numbers. Where does this movement come from? What does he want ? Is it channelable? What do we do with that, as a society? Here are some basic questions to ask yourself. From now on, not doing so is tantamount to sticking your head in the sand.
Next, we would have to admit that what has happened in Quebec over the past two years involves hatred. The pandemic does not explain everything. The issue is not so much about the freedom to refuse a vaccine. It’s deeper. We are not dealing with cynics, but with haters. A dull anger undermines the collective, which manifests itself more and more openly. After the episode of the “truckers” of Ottawa, instrumentalized, financed by the United States, in connection with the Trumpists, a point of no return has been crossed. The vaccine was just a pretext. What is the aim of this anger and the openly expressed threats? It’s definitely not a valve. It aims to create a climate of fear, that journalists keep quiet. That Internet users think twice before tweeting. How many aspiring politicians do not show up. They want to censor.
And Éric Duhaime, the leader of the PCQ, who embodies this libertarian movement and who attracts the sympathy of many of the proponents of conspiracy fantasies, can he, as he said, channel this energy if he is elected to the Assembly national? Can he calm things down? We can doubt it when we look at the side of the Republican Party in the South, all things being relative: Duhaime is not Trump, and Quebec is not the United States. But Donald Trump’s accession to power has not calmed things down, quite the contrary, and his influence over his troops seems to have increased since he lost the elections.
Will Duhaime be able, will he want to stem radicalization or will he be the first step towards its formalization? His base could paradoxically tire of possible compromises if he is elected. She will look for more hard that Eric…
The events of the past week tell me that there is something broken in our society. We are witnessing the effects and consequences of a crisis of confidence on the part of many in the face of institutions and elites. The very idea of a necessary social cohesion, of a trust that must exist between a population and its representatives, has been undermined. Worse: challenged. Admittedly, the elites, all the elites, whether economic, social, media or political, have proven to be disconnected from the population, to say the least, in recent times. But in the face of them, we discover a decline in civility. A society that favors the passage to the act of disordered people definitely has a big problem.
How do you fix a broken society? I don’t know the quick fix. I am simply stating the observation, worried. And I even wonder if the ambient anti-democratism, basically, was not the best ally of the established order, making the CAQ’s soft center-right project seem reasonable and comforting…
In these dark and uncertain times, the majority will be tempted to fall back on beige and pale blue.