In March 2018, Michael J. Carley, professor of history at the University of Montreal, explained “why Canada defends Ukrainian fascism” in The Strategic Culture Foundation, an online journal considered one of the “pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem” by the United States Department of State.
This would be the fruit of a long Canadian tradition of support for fascism. Already, in the Quebec of the 1930s, “French-speaking public opinion, under the influence of the Catholic Church, hoped for the victory of the fascists and the eradication of communism”, underlined the historian in his text (1).
After 1945, Canada would have opened its doors to thousands of “Ukrainian fascists and Nazi collaborators”. Their descendants are said to have lobbied for Ottawa to support the United States-European Union-sponsored coup in Kyiv in 2014.
And this is how Ottawa would have come to defend the neo-Nazi putschists in power in Ukraine.
PHOTO FROM MICHAEL J. CARLEY’S FACEBOOK PAGE
Michael J. Carley, professor of history at the University of Montreal
“We have now come to the point where our government is supporting a violent and racist regime in Kyiv, a direct descendant of the very enemy Canada and its allies fought against in World War II,” Mr. Carley lamented in his article.
Finally, this observation: “Really, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned upside down. Fascism is democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. »
Needless to say, it’s the world upside down. In the head of this teacher, at least.
A specialist in Russia, former director of the history department, Mr. Carley is giving two courses this winter at the Université de Montréal. One of them is called: The foreign policy of the USSR and Russia (1917 to the present day).
If you want my opinion, it might as well have been called Revisionism 101.
On February 2, Canada sanctioned 16 entities “accomplicating the peddling of Russian disinformation and propaganda.” Among these entities, The Strategic Culture Foundation (CFS).
This online journal is “run by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service and closely linked to the Russian Foreign Ministry,” according to a US State Department report dated August 2020 (2).
I quote from the report: the SCF “is a prime example of the tactics the Russians have long employed to conceal direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda media, and to cultivate local voices that serve as carriers messages. The SCF identifies obscure Western fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists and offers their usually vocal anti-Western and anti-American perspectives a broad international forum to express themselves.”
Michael J. Carley has published 59 articles in this online journal. In his lesson plan, he suggests five to read to his students.
At the start of the war in Ukraine, Michael J. Carley made a name for himself by making inflammatory comments on Twitter. “Donbass and Mariupol are being cleaned of Ukrainian Nazis,” he said. “Russia is winning the war against the fascists in Ukraine. »
Colleagues had expressed their discomfort to Radio-Canada (3). Students had signed a petition for the University of Montreal to crack down on the professor.
The University then recalled that “Mr. Carley enjoys freedom of expression like any other citizen” and that the professor, then on sabbatical, “can express his opinion on social networks, although it clashes with the about other experts on the subject”.
Indeed, if we had to punish all the teachers who write bullshit on Twitter, we would not have left the hostel…
But this is what is taught in class. This is the propaganda that this professor feeds his students, referring them to obscure conspiratorial or Kremlin-run sites.
There, we touch the heart of the freedom of education.
Michael J. Carley reacted to the Radio-Canada report by invoking this freedom, saying he hoped that his “institution can avoid the pitfalls that led to the fiasco that occurred at the University of Ottawa in 2020”.
Thereupon Mr. Carley has nothing to fear. “Academic freedom is not geometrically variable depending on whether or not we like the content of the remarks of a person who teaches in one of our courses,” says the rector of the Université de Montréal, Daniel Jutras, who has no intention of sanctioning the professor.
“Academic freedom, he believes, must ensure that management or anyone else cannot intervene to try to silence a teacher who puts forward questionable or controversial ideas, readings or sources. »
Speaking of questionable sources… Here are “useful websites” proposed in Professor Carley’s lesson plan: Sputnik, Voltaire Network, Jacques Sapir’s Blog and Moon of Alabama.
Sputnik: a Russian state channel that promotes disinformation, banned in Canada and the European Union since the start of the war in Ukraine.
The Voltaire Network: a site that disseminates conspiracy theories of all kinds since the attacks of September 11, 2001 – fomented, as everyone knows, by the American military-industrial complex.
The Blog of Jacques Sapir: the notebook of an economist gravitating in the French Poutinosphere, suspended by the platform which hosted it because of texts “disconnected from the academic and scientific context”.
Moon of Alabama: An obscure website that accuses mainstream media of propaganda.
I would have liked to ask Mr. Carley how all these sites could well feed the reflection of his students, but he declined my request for an interview.
“There is no scientific rigor” in her approach, indignant Katia Sviderskaya, a student of Ukrainian origin who registered for one of her courses in 2020. She says that a classmate completely changed his perception of Ukraine after taking the course. “He started calling me a Nazi…”
Michael J. Carley enjoys freedom of speech and freedom of education. He is lucky to live in a country that defends these freedoms, unlike Russia, of which he is the enthusiastic spokesperson.
There, it should be remembered, teachers and journalists are imprisoned at the first sign of dissent…
This chronicle is not a call for sanctions. I don’t believe in censorship. Only, I invoke my own freedom of expression to affirm this: what this teacher preaches is shameful. That too needs to be said.