The Canadian Government Politicises Mass Hysteria !
Mass hysteria breeds the politics of fear. In turn the politics of fear invites repression and attacks on people’s freedom. It can happen anywhere.
Mass hysteria breeds the politics of fear. In turn the politics of fear invites repression and attacks on people’s freedom.
For some time now the Canadian Political Establishment has encouraged intolerance and hysteria to justify its numerous illiberal measures designed to shut down its opponents. Now it has come up with the frightening proposal to turn, what it refers to as denialism into a crime. In an interim report published last week Kimberly Murray demands a legal mechanism to combat that what she calls residential school denialism. Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti responded to her call for punishing so-called denialist by stating that he is open to enacting such repressive measures.
Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Orwellian vocabulary of the Canadian political elites, residential denialism refers to the act of either being sceptical or not believing the officially sanctioned stories about the sighting of mass graves of indigenous children in Canadian residential schools.
For the Canadian political establishment, the promotion of scare stories about mass graves near residential schools that catered to the children of Indigenous people have acquired the status of a moral crusade. Canada’s Liberal Government appointed Kimberley Murray as an ‘independent special interlocutor on mass graves’. Her task is to help Indigenous communities searching for children who died and disappeared from residential schools.
Indian Residential Schools now serves as Canada’s moral equivalent of a Nazi Concentration Camp. Much of this story of evil is based on the claim that 215 indigenous children were secretly killed at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia and then covertly buried at night with the help of children as ‘young as six’.
If true, the horrors at Kamloops rank with some of the worst atrocities perpetrated on Native Americans. However, there is little evidence to back up the story. Despite the use of what the grave hunters call ground-penetrating radar to search former residential school sites for possible unmarked graves, claims of mass killing lack hard evidence. When people point to the absence of facts they are accused of denialism.
The charge of denialism serves as a prelude to punishing people for their thoughts and ostracising them from society. Moral crusaders like Murray use an alarmist language that self-consciously attempts to promote an atmosphere of fear. She charges denialists with responsibility for perpetrating violence. On closer inspection her charge of violence is based on the criminalisation of disagreement with her version of events. Her report stated that ‘this violence is prolific’, before adding that it ‘takes place via email, telephone, social media, op-eds and, at times, through in-person confrontations’. Her expansive definition of violence transforms all forms of verbal disagreement into a cultural crime. That there has been such little pushback against her massive inflation and distortion of the meaning of violence serves as testimony to the moral disorientation of public life in Canada.
My own denialism about the fantasy of mass graves was outlined in a story I wrote in February 2022. It is reproduced below. At the time I was shocked by the outbreak mass hysteria but even more appalled by the readiness of the media and the cultural and political elites to give credence to this fantasy. Today, I realise that this moral crusade has gained momentum and has become a powerful vehicle for encouraging Canadians to feel ashamed about their history. The complicity of the Canadian Government in the project of turning Canada’s past into a source of shame is a story that I will address in a future post.
The politics of mass hysteria envelope Canada
When the anthropologist Sarah Beaulieu reported that she had found 215 unmarked graves near Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia all hell let loose. Though not a single body was actually found, a wave political hysteria engulfed the Canadian media and political landscape.
What Beaulieu’s ground penetrating radar scan found were 215 areas showing soil disturbance. Not bodies but a physical disturbance in the soil. Though she acknowledged that without conducting a proper forensic investigation no ‘definitive’ conclusions could be drawn. the media and the political class piled in to denounce what was they characterised as mass graves.
Soon it was claimed that Kamloops Indian Residential School was implicated in an act of genocide against First Nation People. Zealous moral crusaders presented this discovery as integral to the colonisation of Canada by Europeans. From their perspective the history of Canada is a story of systematic genocide against the native population. The Catholic Church, which ran Kamloops and other residential schools for First Nation children became the target of venomous media hostility.
Tales of genocide, mass murder and mass graves were legitimised by the craven behaviour of the Canadian political class. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to Beaulieu’s claim by describing it as a ‘dark and shameful chapter’ in the nation’s history. On 30 May last year the Canadian Government lowered the flag on its buildings to half-staff. It also created a new holiday to honour ‘missing children’ and survivors of residential schools.
As alarmist stories of genocidal behaviour spiralled out of control, 65 churches were set on fire and vandalised. The desecration of these places of worship were frequently applauded as fully justified protest against a vile institution. Gerald Butts, a political consultant and former principal secretary to Trudeau described the anti-Christian violence as ‘understandable[‘.
Throughout Canada statues of the nation’s historical figures were attacked. In Montreal, the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, was overturned , his detached bronze head symbolically rolling on the ground. The statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislature was vandalised and knocked down. Numerous other statues were defaced and vandalised in an orgy of violence directed at Canada’s historical legacy.
Soon numerous unsubstantiated claims were made about the discovery of other unmarked graves near residential schools. The historian, Professor Jacques Rouillard was one of the few academics, who sought expose the lack of evidence behind the political hysteria that pervaded public life in Canada. He criticised media outlets for further hyping up the story ‘by alleging that the bodies of 215 children had been found, adding that “thousands” of children had “gone missing” from residential schools and that parents had not been informed’.
Typically, those pointed out that not one body was found in Kamloops was denounced as a genocide denier. Writing in The Toronto Star, K.J. McCusker stated that the call for bodies of ‘of residential schoolchildren is nothing more than a racist rant bordering on genocide denial’. He added that ‘what happened in residential schools is not about the evidence. This kind of trolling is part of genocide, as are the actual crimes’.From this perspective not only is evidence unimportant, but the very demand for it is also integral to the furthering of genocide!
The cavalier use of the term genocide to describe an unsubstantiated claim about an unmarked mass grave is in many ways more disturbing than pulling down of statues. The hysterical tone adopted by those who are so free with the term genocide speak to the moral disintegration of public life in Canada. Nor do they confine their fantasy world historical misdeeds to an act of genocide. Some of them refer to the behaviour of Catholic Residential Schools as akin to a Holocaust. In a statement that implicitly insults the genuine victims of the Holocaust, one commentator asks, ‘Is this Canada’s Holocaust Moment’, before answering ‘it is hard and painful for me to say that the discovery of the graves of the children in Kamloops may be Canada’s Holocaust moment’.
There is something truly terrifying about the casual manner with which the memory of the Holocaust is opportunistically plundered to make a very, very small point about the discovery of a soil disturbance. To make matters worse, the authority of academic historians has been exploited to legitimate the use of the term genocide. A statement issued by the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) stated that the ‘history of violence against indigenous peoples fully warrants the use of the word “genocide”
Although, thankfully a group of historians wrote an Open Letter criticising CHA’s statement, there has been little concerted effort to counter the dishonest and alarmist campaign designed to rewrite Canada’s past as protracted era of genocide. Public figures, who ought to know better have simply rolled over and in a cowardly manner became accomplices of the campaign to shame Canada’s past. Instead of countering the outburst of anti-Catholic sentiment, leaders of the Church opted for the policy of appeasement.
When Trudeau demagogically demanded that the Pope comes to Canada and apologise in person many church leaders nodded in agreement. One of the few religious figures,- Fr Raymond de Souza – who spoke out against the grovelling Canadian bishops, pointed out that some of his colleagues have forgotten the meaning of the word, sacrilege.
The history of mass hysteria and of witch hunts has shown that unless it is countered society will fall prey to moral corruption and decay. Looking at Canada and the behaviour of its political leaders and cultural elites it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it has become a nation that has tragically lost its way.
In my next substack post I will be exploring the concept of denialism why we should question its use.