It’s not every day that 388 professors, authors and personalities bother to sign a joint letter, published Tuesday in The duty (“These are not just words”), to warn us of “worrying slippages, more and more numerous” in the public debate in Quebec.
Having expressed myself several times, including in these pages, on the need for a debate which, if it can be robust, must always be respectful, I was surprised that my signature was not requested. I understood why once I carefully considered what it was all about.
The signatories help us by giving a total of four examples of what seems intolerable to them. It is first of all an interview given to Stéphan Bureau by Léa Clermont-Dion. She describes her social group of origin in Rawdon as being ” white trash “. A harsh expression, rarely used in Quebec, but common in the United States to designate a marginal, poorly educated white population. Bureau asks her if she would also dare to speak of ” black trash “. “No, that wouldn’t work,” she said.
The exchange was captured by a Quebecor columnist, Mathieu Bock-Côté (MBC), who saw it as an example of “anti-white racism”. (Tasty detail: it was the black slaves of the southern United States who invented the term to denigrate these whites). The argument of double standards stands, but MBC’s charge is a bit heavy, especially since Clermont-Dion makes amends, in the interview, for having used the term. Then, the reproach was made to him on social networks. I come back to it.
The signatories then refer to a tweet where an author and editor wrote this: “Elections and their usual rattles – and even some that we thought belonged to a rancid and bygone old Quebec: immigration, identity, ugly stranger, the accursed intellectuals”. I do not name it because the signatories protest that such remarks lead to a response ad hominem, but mostly because she took down the post. The tweet would have gone unnoticed if MBC had not judged in its blog that “it is difficult to find a more contemptuous remark towards the hundreds of thousands of Quebecers who take the question of identity seriously”.
For me, it’s clear: both positions have a place in our public debate. The author has the right to think and write that these themes reflect a “rancid and bygone Quebec”, others have the right to reply that this opinion oozes contempt.
The third case concerns the author and vice-president of the League of Rights and Freedoms, Philippe Néméh-Nombré. In Sixteen black times to learn how to say kuei, (Mémoire d’encrier), he wrote: “A burning patrol car is a promise. Which earned him, again by MBC, an accusation of glorifying anti-police violence. This sentence is taken “out of context”, write the signatories. I went to read it. I found this other excerpt: “Destroy computers, smash windows, burn patrol cars, block bridges, railroads. But I couldn’t find any context that could suggest that these sentences shouldn’t be taken at face value. It is, at best, a normalization of violence, at worst, its glorification. That the signatories believe that this should pass like a letter in the post leaves one wondering.
Finally, the letter takes us to 2018, in the wake of the attack on the mosque in Quebec. In a text published in The Press, the teacher and psychiatrist Marie-Eve Cotton finds it disturbing that some show empathy towards the psychiatric disorders of the accused, Alexandre Bissonnette, but do not do the same towards the Islamist killers who are, she writes, “no less desperate, afraid, lost, and inhabited by an anger that seeks an object on which to pour itself out”. This time, it is Richard Martineau who steps up to the plate, believing that it is necessary to distinguish “a massacre perpetrated by an unbalanced and depressed person and a bloody attack committed in the name of a cause by a terrorist who proudly claims his gesture”. Here again, both positions must be allowed. (I personally find bits of truth in both texts.)
Signatories complain that the force of the response is disproportionate, in two ways. First, because columnists and presenters have forums with a very wide footprint; then, because their criticisms lead to a flood of often hateful comments on the Web which traumatizes the author of the criticized text. No one is prepared for the torrent of reactions that a strong first statement can provoke. But anyone who puts a toe in the public debate should know that this permanent storm exists. There are only two ways to survive it: for threats, we call 911, for any verbal abuse, we block until the scum clears of our sons.
But the open letter calls on media owners to put their columnists and hosts on a leash. They should refrain from noting that so and so speaks of a “rancid Quebec” and that so and so smiles at the sight of a burning patrol car. In the name of what, exactly? The right not to be contradicted? From right to monologue?
I notice, in the list of “victims” cited and the signatures, people who repeatedly wrote that those who disagreed with them on the question of secularism were, necessarily, opportunists and racists. We understand that, from the height of their certainty of being the only carriers of reason, they would like their intolerance and their disrespect of the other not to be noted by anyone, or that their names be kept silent in the replies, even when they persist and sign in insult.
The argument of the disproportion of votes would have value if Quebec’s media space were not so diversified. Any outraged person can publish his prose on his blog or his networks with the support and relay of his community of views. Open letters are accepted in all media. I admit that it lacks signatures and platforms, say, ” woke to Quebecor, but that is not the case in this daily, nor in The Press nor at Radio-Canada.
One could debate, with supporting figures, the relative media presence of the two great opposing intellectual trends. It should however be known that in politics as in the debate of ideas, everyone is always convinced that the other camp has too much visibility.
I considered it particularly significant to note that the main signatory of this letter, Mathieu Marion, denouncing the lack of restraint and respect and the attacks ad hominema professor from UQAM, said a few days ago on Twitter that the thought of MBC was akin to ” pink slime — that artificial meat the sight of which lifts the heart. Which vaguely reminds me of a straw and beam story.
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