Managing a daily newspaper means asking yourself a thousand and one questions about language and the choice of words. Each day.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Last Saturday for example, before publishing our first text on the singer Win Butler, we had to ask ourselves how to match the past participle of a sentence pronounced by one of the alleged victims: we write “he dumped me” or “he dumped me” for a non-binary person?
The next day, we wondered about the treatment of “Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ Federal Action Plan”, given that we favor the acronym LGBTQ+ over The Press : we keep the name of the plan throughout and we use the short acronym in the rest of the text?
Other times, the question that arises is more fundamental, such as that posed by a reader in recent days, in the wake of the debate on the anger that is expressed and the degree of responsibility of Éric Duhaime: “But why do you don’t you dare write that the Conservative Party is a far-right party? »
The answer: because he is not far-right.
Words are important, it is necessary to remember that.
Attaching a label to a political formation is a significant gesture: it is immediately categorized by locking it in a small box.
Reporters must therefore do so sparingly, only when this label is obvious and does not cause debate (the Parti Québécois is an independentist party, for example). Columnists and editorial writers have more leeway, because they have the right to express their opinion… but again, words have weight.
When we describe the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) as far right, we hang several pans on it at once: xenophobia and racism, hatred and violence, hostility towards immigrants, desire to attack the state .
Far-right movements “consider the use of violence as legitimate and use authoritarian, even terrorist, ways to defend their ideas, specifies the School of Applied Politics of the University of Sherbrooke. Groups that offer programs with a clearly xenophobic, racist and anti-immigration character are generally associated with this ideology”.
Let’s be serious, the Conservative Party platform does not propose breaking with democracy, not even undermining minority rights.
Ultimately, this formation that its leader describes as “democratic” and “pacifist” nourishes an aversion against the State, against the social safety net, against the system, and more. It does not go so far as to question the justice system or the rule of law.
That said, we are talking here about the official positions of the party. Does Éric Duhaime make foot calls (dog whistle in English) to conspiracy theorists and those who are ready to revolt against the system? Yes.
Has he had denigrating statements in the past about the “poor”, women and even the survivors of the Polytechnique attack? Absolutely.
But that doesn’t make the PCQ an “extreme right” party, any more than it makes Eric Duhaime a leader of this ideology.
We can certainly judge that this formation is playing a dangerous game by flirting with questionable positions.
One can also wonder about the relevance of wanting to “bring discontent within the walls of parliament”. But at most this posture reflects a populist approach, a label that suits the PCQ well.
This formation indeed claims to embody the people and their will, and it supports doing so in opposition to institutions and checks and balances. As Éric Duhaime confirmed last Thursday, declaring that “we others, we don’t need bodyguards, because the people are with us”.
And even more, the Conservative Party can be described as “libertarian”, since its commitments sing first and foremost the virtues of the freedom of choice of individuals against those of social and collective measures: no health measures for all, a two-tier health system, a shrunken state, a major tax cut, etc.
In short, this party dreams of a world in which reigns everyone for himself, not anarchy.
The PCQ is therefore not extreme right, even if, within it, there may be extreme right activists. In the same way that Québec solidaire is not an extreme left party… even if we may find extreme left activists within it.
In the extremes, we find political formations that seek to overthrow the system, to bring society out of democracy. And we are not there with the PCQ or with QS.
Éric Montigny, Scientific Director of the Research Chair in Democracy and Parliamentary Institutions at Université Laval
Could we qualify Québec solidaire as “populist”, on the other hand? What about the CAQ?
There, let’s be honest, we are entering a gray area.
And I’m going to let the political science expert answer: “Québec solidaire may have already had a left populist temptation. But since the arrival of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois as the main spokesperson, we sense a desire to become institutionalized, to professionalize and to broaden its electoral base. »
As for the CAQ, Éric Montigny specifies that it is not a populist, but rather an electoralist: “It is not for nothing that François Legault defines himself first and foremost as a pragmatist. The CAQ aims to reach the median voter. This is located in the center, where the largest number of voters is located. »
But here, we are obviously in the political analysis… no longer in the semantic debate on the good choice of words to use in The Press.