The social climate is deteriorating. Incivility is on the rise. Unless you live in a cave, there’s no denying it. More and more elected officials and journalists are also being insulted and threatened. Here as elsewhere.
It happens mostly in the anonymity of social media, but more and more often, the confrontation explodes in person. Even more so in federal politics where the security of elected officials is dangerously variable.
The air is in the air with aggression. It’s obvious. Let’s pay attention because it undermines our ability to live together despite strong disagreements.
If the social climate is deteriorating, several factors explain it. Among them, the extreme isolation of the pandemic, conspiracy theorists, social media and widening wealth gaps.
Since the fall, the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict following the massacre perpetrated on October 7 by Hamas on Israeli soil has done the rest. Everywhere in the West there is even the strong return of anti-Semitism.
Jewish people and institutions are under threat. On university campuses, in the streets or in shopping centers, pro-Palestine demonstrations often turn into calls for the eradication of Israel.
The combination of an alarming rise in anti-Semitism and a bloody war in Gaza also means that there is no way to agree even on a minimal basis.
That basis being Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, the hateful barbarity of Hamas, and the Palestinian people’s legitimate quest for statehood.
At the risk of his personal safety
As Minister of Foreign Affairs in a Trudeau government struggling to find its own moral bearings in this conflict, Mélanie Joly is paying the price at the risk of her personal safety.
At the weekend, while she was walking peacefully in her neighborhood, a pro-Palestinian activist aggressively harassed her while filming the scene for propaganda purposes on social media. Where was the security? Damn good question.
In January, pro-Palestinian demonstrators also published posters indicating where she resides in Montreal. In these two cases, it is not a question of freedom of expression, but of the physical harassment of a minister even in her private life.
At the federal level, before a tragedy strikes elected officials, what are we waiting for to fully ensure their safety?
Disturbing devaluation
Behind this phenomenon also lies a disturbing devaluation of elected officials and Parliaments. How else can we explain that people feel invested with the “right” to insult, harass or physically threaten elected officials?
Beyond an incivility that we feel growing in our own daily lives, there is here a distrust, not to say open contempt, towards the institutions on which modern democracy is based.
This tendency to insult and threaten is so serious that on Tuesday, in the Globe and Maila group of public figures, academics and former elected officials, including Jean Charest, signed an open letter on the subject.
Their message to governments is clear. Come out of denial. Exercise peaceful leadership in society. To understand and counter the causes of this rise in incivility and hatred, invest in research and education.
To this list, I would add, as I wrote a month ago, the urgency of reducing the ambient disarray through fairer and more humane policies.
Otherwise our democratic life will suffer as much as our vital capacity to transact with each other as citizens of the City.