I have already appreciated François Legault politically more than I appreciate him at the moment.
I admired him when he stood up to activists and journalists who wanted at all costs for Quebec to kneel before the theory of systemic racism. It was courageous of him. I am still grateful to him, as I am for Bill 21.
I even believed that historical circumstances could lead him to reconnect with the idea of independence. Sometimes I still hope for it more or less secretly.
Legault
I stopped when I saw him agree to massive immigration, which will end up drowning, in the words of René Lévesque, the people whom he had not hesitated to defend and whose “Louisianization” he denounced. . I will be classified, as they say, among the disappointed nationalists. For this, I am often harsh towards him.
That said, I find the trial being led against him by radicalized English speakers who are currently daring to compare him to Franco, the Spanish dictator, disgusting. This is what happened in the newspaper Cult MTL – the author of the comparison is Taylor C. Noakes, who is not his first attempt to demonize Quebecers. This is another way of calling him a fascist.
Noakes presents François Legault as an authoritarian and chauvinistic ethnonationalist who would persecute English Canadians in Quebec, and who would need to be driven from power through large popular demonstrations.
But in what mental universe must we evolve to believe for a single moment that English speakers are persecuted in Quebec?
Noakes complains in particular about the policy, already partially abandoned, on universities which only aimed to rebalance, under the sign of common sense, the financing of higher education institutions.
Is it normal for Quebec to finance low-cost studies for English Canadians who want to study at McGill, Concordia or Bishop at its expense? Which creates, moreover, an absolutely insane institutional advantage to the advantage of English universities, while French-speaking universities are now treated as secondary, residual, provincial entities.
This reminds us of one thing: a part, a minority, I want to believe, of the English-speaking community simply never accepted the Quiet Revolution and the “master at home” who fueled it.
It is shot through with a neocolonial fantasy and would like to see Quebecers reconnect with submission in their own country. They dream of making Montreal a city-state – they are the new partitionists.
Universities
As soon as Quebecers move a little, as soon as they protest, even weakly, against the political-demographic dynamic which will lead to their disappearance, they scream at the extreme right, at intolerance, at the withdrawal of identity from the cursed French speakers.
Unfortunately, Quebecers are sensitive to these insults. It is their old colonized complex, never completely erased, which comes to the surface.
However, they should know that one rarely frees oneself by asking permission from one’s master.