Opinion with Michael Coren Alas, alas. The dark, dangerous ghost has not been fully exorcised. The brutal nationalism that we considered dead and buried at the end of the Second World War is more visible and obvious now, that at any time since 1945. Donald Trump’s nativist populism, Brexit in Britain, the rise of the hard right in eastern and central Europe, and now the prominence of anti-immigrant parties even in traditionally liberal Scandinavia and Italy. It’s of genuine concern and worry, and should be, too. No intelligent person thought that the toxins pumped into the bloodstream of the European body politic in the 1930s would ever completely disappear. The demise of the Soviet Union and Communist Yugoslavia certainly revealed that to be the case. But we assumed, surely, that there were definite limits, that it would generally be controlled and that – if we’re totally honest – it simply couldn’t happen close to home, and certainly not here. Whether we were Liberal, Conservative or New Democrat, as Canadians we knew where the lines had to be drawn when it came to what was politically acceptable and civilized, and that was that. And indeed in Canada, the great national common sense still dominates, I think, but anti-Muslim feeling is out there in force, an ultra-nationalist candidate ran to be mayor of Toronto – while describing herself as a devout Christian – and senior politicianMaxime Bernier made an extraordinary and worrying series of comments questioning diversity…and then broke from the federal Conservatives to form his own party. It’s one thing to speak of the obligations of citizenship, and then condemn excesses and violence performed in the name of religion, but quite another to reject people simply for how they worship. In Britain, a recent survey revealed that close to 40% of Jewish people would consider emigrating if Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister. This is the Labour Party, the voice of the left and of progress and social democracy, and it’s a quite obscene development. In this case, it’s Corbyn’s enormously clumsy blurring of lines between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, and it’s a terribly depressing state of affairs. While Corbyn may come from a radically different place than the rest, and is on the hard left rather than the hard right, there is a continuum at work here, and one that totally contradicts the Christian narrative, that is still implicit if not active in much of North American society. If we seriously believe in the gospel message, we have to regard every person not only as a representative of God, made in God’s image, but also as being quintessentially unique and individual. The collective is never helpful, often dangerous, and always closes down an argument and a debate. Talk of “they,” of “those people,” or of “the other” leads down a dark road and to an even darker place. Every leader, party or philosophy that scapegoats people must first expunge their humanity, to make them appear a faceless mass intent on harming and hurting. At its worst, this is what the Nazis did, but it’s also what the Turks did to the Armenians, the Hutu to the Tutsi in Rwanda, and in so many other attempts at genocide. Those horrors aside, it leads to division and anguish, and is severely damaging to a society that prides itself on its pluralism and tolerance. We are, thank goodness, a long way from the living hell of historical evils at the moment. But when Muslims – even in Canada – are treated as threats rather than neighbours, when LGBTQ people are killed in Uganda and the West Indies, and when neo-Nazis gather in German towns and scream for National Socialism, we know that we cannot be, must not be, complacent. To paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran hero martyred by the Nazis, silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. How right he was. At the moment, the angry, raw noises are not deafening and could even be ignored. That would be fatal, because evil talk becomes evil screams become evil deeds. Most of us have little political power, but all of us have the ability to say when something is wrong, and when injustice has been committed. It’s what makes us who we are, and I have enormous faith in good old common sense and notions of right and wrong. 14 | www.snowbirds.org
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