The electoral campaign has not lived a week that intimidation and threats invite themselves into the daily lives of elected officials.
Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy filed a complaint with the police for stalking and harassing communications, while her colleague Enrico Ciccone’s office was vandalized. In the process, the CAQ MP Sylvain Lévesque contacted the police following the distribution of an election poster stained with blood. The tension is great enough for the Prime Minister, François Legault, to appeal for calm on Twitterthe platform of choice for morons who smear and debase their fellow human beings.
The first duty is to put things into perspective. Criticism and virulent comments are not all hate speech, a well-defined form of language that is already prohibited by the Criminal Code. Many lamentable attacks fall into the category of bad taste, vulgarity, insult and crass imbecility. As repulsive as they are, these speeches remain protected by the right to freedom of expression, as long as they are not defamatory.
In their understandable outrage, elected officials must keep a sense of proportion. Cranks who count their subscribers on the fingers of one hand on social networks do not always deserve our attention. They cry out into the void: let the echo of their own stupidity bury their emptiness. And that we block them, as the federal conservative deputy Alain Reyes did recently.
Conversely, the threats and harassment against Marwah Rizqy fall into another category. These are criminal acts, inadmissible, which required a rapid response from the police forces. Mme Rizqy does not have to go out as infrequently as the police would have suggested to him, while the lazy step of justice deals with the case of the alleged perpetrator, who enjoys his full freedom awaiting trial. . When will the electronic bracelet for this kind of individual?
The misfortune of Marwah Rizqy reminds us of a cruel reality. It is women, and people from identifiable groups (people of color), who are the primary targets of violence and intimidation in digital spaces plagued by misogyny and racism. We cannot tolerate it in the name of the right to freedom of expression: both intimidation and harassment are crimes. But how to stop these comments unworthy of a pluralistic and egalitarian society that are spreading in the Far Web?
Among the measures to be considered, it is necessary to legislate to prohibit these convenient screens for bullies that are anonymous accounts on social networks. We need to force these digital platforms to put more effort into the redaction of extreme, hateful and criminal speech, at the risk of incurring financial penalties. We need to demand that the police give more prominence to online bullying in general, and against elected officials in particular. According to the Sûreté du Québec, reports for online threats against elected officials rose from 16 in 2019 to 262 in 2020.
However, we would be wrong to compartmentalize the analysis of the problem. The violence suffered by elected officials is no different from that suffered by journalists. Calls for calm from the political class echo the recent outings of representative associations in journalism and the major media, which complain about the deleterious climate in which they now exercise their profession.
The vast majority of journalists and politicians register their action in the search for the common good and public ethics. Both live in distinct but complementary universes, and although they seek to preserve their distance and their independence, they claim a common adherence to democratic ideals.
These ideals are challenged by the rise of populism, by the freedom of speech and political action of the American far right under the presidency of Donald Trump.
Although the socio-political reality of Quebec has little to do with that of the United States, we are also witnessing here a questioning – not to say a bellicose challenge – of the institutions and proverbial elites that the populists camped at the extremes hate so much. of the political spectrum (mostly on the right, but a bit on the left as well). The health emergency, confinement and vaccination campaigns have reinforced their impressionistic and naive feeling of liberticide.
In the current campaign, only one candidate is seeking to channel that anger and frustration into political action. Éric Duhaime walks a fine line by not tolerating calls for hatred and violence within his ranks, but by accepting misinformation among candidates and supporters of the Conservative Party of Quebec. We will see soon enough if it federates more than it divides.