Last week, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said that the arrival of asylum seekers via Roxham Road was fueling the rise of political extremes, as is the case in Hungary or France. Subsequently, he defended himself by claiming the right to calmly discuss the issue of immigration. The fact remains that the damage was done, the amalgam established: immigrants would participate, according to him, in the rise of the far right and the racism inherent in it.
Are the victims the cause of their discrimination?
By blaming asylum seekers for the racism they experience, it becomes easy for those in power to avoid questioning their practices and rhetoric. If the extreme right and racism increase in Quebec, we wouldn’t be responsible for it, the fault is that of the immigrant. But since when are the victims responsible for the hatred that is dedicated to them? To combat sexism and sexual assault, should we limit the number of women? We quickly understand the limits of this reasoning.
Despite everything, in the name of a certain idea of freedom of debate, St-Pierre Plamondon believes that the discussion deserves to take place. We should ask ourselves whether, yes or no, immigrants are the source of their discrimination, but it is precisely by accepting such a debate that far-right ideas are gradually intruding into social discourse, because, must admit, the rhetoric of the PQ leader here borrows from that of the extremes he claims to worry about.
The National Rally, Marine Lepen’s nationalist identity party, tweeted in 2015: “To fight against racism, we must stop immigration. Suffice to say that Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was not proposing anything new. It then becomes legitimate to ask what really engenders the proliferation of far-right ideas and their increasingly disturbing presence in public discourse.
Words, their connotation and their distribution
Historically, for far-right parties, the figure of the scapegoat has always been an effective tool for rallying the majority. It is the fear of the other, that of someone who does not look like us, that of the difference that feeds the feeling of security that we could have towards a government promising us its protection. To do this, a whole semantic field must be created around this otherness, and the connotation must be disturbing. And that’s what’s happening right now with immigrants.
During the provincial election campaign last fall, the CAQ and PQ parties alternately associated immigrants with a “problem”, a “threat”, cultural and social “suicide”, “language decline French” which boils down, indirectly, to the decline of the Quebec identity. It goes without saying that, in Quebec political discourse, the word “immigrant” is intimately linked to the disappearance of a part of our culture. It is these amalgams, and the idea disseminated, publicized and repeated that the immigrant is a danger for us, which contribute to fueling the discourse of the far right.
For a reversal of the connotation
If Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is really worried about “the rise of extremes”, I would invite him to reflect on the images he associates with immigrants and asylum seekers who cross Roxham Road. The fight against the far right inevitably involves language and a reconfiguration of the lexical field surrounding the figure of the immigrant. That’s what the documentary does Essentialsbroadcast on the Télé-Québec website, which reminds us that without asylum seekers and temporary workers, Quebec would be deprived of part of its backbone.
In this film, the words “guardian angels”, “essential”, “work”, “courage”, “efforts” are attributed to those who come from elsewhere. And it is with this kind of discourse, and a minimum of goodwill, that we will not allow far-right politics to take root in our country and destroy our culture.