ALL-CAPS OUTRAGE !!!!!!
Itold these two stories back in a column in 2003 but they’re worth telling again in light of the Saturday protests in front of city hall. In 1988, I covered a protest in front of the federal government offices in Kelowna by a group of people insisting that the Quebecois were trying to take over Canada under the guise of bilingualism and multiculturalism.
An organizer came up to me to ask for my name and which media outlet I was with. I spelled out Godbout for her, an old-school Quebecois name, the name of a town in Quebec and the last name of Quebec’s premier during the Second World War.
“Good German name,” she announced, saying the common GOD-bowt that I get all the time, rather than the correct French pronunciation of god-BOO.
Years later, when I was the editor of a newspaper in Salmon Arm, someone did recognize my last name and sent in a letter so hateful that my publisher insisted I turn it over to the police. The writer insisted that I had been planted into his good little town as a French agitator and informed me that “my people” were to blame for caving in to the Nazis and for protesting against conscription during the war.
The hate lives on, only the names have been updated.
Saturday’s protest was by the Canadian Coalition for Concerned Citizens, just the latest version of organizations like the Canadian Association for Free Expression, the Canadian Freedom Resource Centre and the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee, groups with earnest sounding names and repugnant viewpoints about the invaders at the gates.
It’s the Muslims. This motion before the House of Commons regarding Islamophobia is Canada’s first step towards Sharia law, just like bilingualism was the first step towards Quebec taking over Canada was all those years ago. It’s the First Nations. Why can’t we call them Indians like we used to and why do the local natives have to call themselves that name I can’t spell or say and why do they need that park where their cemetery is named after them?
It’s the LGBTQ community. Why do they need that crosswalk and that parade? Where’s my crosswalk? Where’s my parade?
I’m not bigoted/prejudiced/intolerant/homophobic but I am entitled to my free speech and I have a right to share my ALL-CAPS OUTRAGE !!!!! at all of this nonsense.
So when The Citizen runs a story on Saturday about the rally planned in front of city hall against the federal motion about Islamophobia and labels the group as “racist” in the headline, out come out the “mainstream media lies,” “fake news,” “alternative facts” and “I’m not racist but...” apologists all over social media, pounding the caps-lock button on their keyboards before starting their rants.
They’re angry that now they’re in the minority.
They’re angry that the negative slurs are now directed at them and their beliefs.
They’re angry about the rise of cultural and social identities (why can’t gays and Indians be just like everybody else?)
They’re angry about the rise of political correctness because they think their free speech badmouthing the natives and the gays and the Muslims and everybody else not like them is harmless.
They’re angry because the history they learned in school was racist in its whitewashing of other cultures and people (YOU CAN’T REWRITE HISTORY!)
They’re angry that the politicians and the media and the teachers don’t “tell it like it is” anymore.
They’re angry that the people who didn’t get to tell it like it is before because no one was listening are now being heard.
They’re angry about being made to feel guilty for past injustices that they don’t feel guilty about.
They’re angry about being made to feel they should care about the refugees and the transgender kids and the PTSD sufferers and the residential school survivors and the drug addicts and the poor and the disabled and everybody else that they don’t want to care about.
They’re angry that everyone isn’t angry with them and that the people that disagree with them dismiss them as paranoid crazies.
I’M ANGRY BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT MY FAMILY AND MY COMMUNITY AND MY COUNTRY! I’M A GOOD PERSON!
By and large, those last two statements are true, which is a fact too few people proud of their tolerance and liberal views are willing to accept. It’s far easier to demonize these people with epithets than it is to consider the possibility that decent, moral and generous people are angry and scared about societal and cultural change and how quickly it’s happening.
The University of California Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild spent five years in rural Louisiana, getting to know angry Americans, who backed the Tea Party and voted for Donald Trump. Her book, Strangers In Their Own Land, is a brave and insightful attempt to get to know these people and to hear their concerns. More about what she found tomorrow. Neil Godbout is managing editor of The Prince George Citizen and a former reporter with The Penticton Herald.