The ongoing media barrage by many outlets like the CBC and major papers focusses on the perpetrator’s motives and whims certainly giving no pause for careful consideration. Most of what I hear would equally make sense in explaining why somebody would conjure up graffiti statements in the public square. It worries me that there is no proper sense of gravity with the treatment given that is flat in intuition and knowledge, but also assuming premature understanding which prevents learning down the road.
What is suppressed with this trivialization is a depth of context and thought which does not limit itself to the extrovert and militant part of xenophobic sentiment.
From the country where I grew up, I remember well the teachers and shopkeepers, academics and home makers, neighbours, often green partiers and social democrats who gave a friendly face to racism with their subtle ways. A generation ago around the time of the wall coming down it was also a time of growing extremism. Often heard was: ”We are not an immigration country”. Its a clever line; understanding that in this tradition far from being moderates many intellectuals have made hate palatable far more than the extremists ever could I gave a blunt answer to the quote, responding that the opinion flies in the face of any reality that can be observed. Not that it helped much but having had spent some time in Canada by then, I did mention that if the diverse people who live in one’s country are made citizens and when suitable are elected to city councils and parliaments it makes everybody less dumb. To be fair probably some progress has been made since those days in the old country. Also a long time ago I have travelled extensively in Norway and do recognize some problematic European commonalities.
Interestingly hyper-nationalist violence is not going away and there seems to be a very modern component adding onto medieval darkness reaching beyond the European sphere throughout Commonwealth and Western countries.
Its important to understand how the racist cause is constructed. The old fashioned white supremacy garbage is more often recognized than the equally potent modern technocratic component.
What is most inappropriate is this neoliberal prism of supposedly pure economics through which interesting and complicated cultural and society dimensions have been viewed and reduced to trivia and made vulnerable. Through the many builders of our country some of us remember that each aspect is strongest with balance and not by domination, the latter typifying 17th, 18th,19th century Europe.
Not just in that regard is the neoliberal Globalization religion outdated but unfortunately it has invaded much of the space that in Canada, but not only here, once was characterized by a sophisticated, positive and economically very strong nationalism.
9/11, Bolivarian reforms and emancipation from globalist colonization in Latin America as well the need to deal with the crisis brought on by a de facto anti capitalist financialism and a few other events have reaffirmed the power of states and governments.
I feel sorry for those who have to come up with good answers pretty quick. They have little competence available now after all political parties, administrations and most corporate headquarters have for a generation or longer been cleansed thoroughly of the last bits of Keynesian memory and just about every critic of the neoliberal cult of abstract inevitable and static economic theory. The point of it is that under this sort of romantic authoritarianism a lack of a careful balance and consideration of strengthening of medicare and education towards a productive workforce and innovative/competitive not monopolist economy, standing militarist expenditures, between rural and urban interests, healthy ecological food production vs subsidized agribusiness interests, green energy and oil business, codification of the law and realistic access to the law, uncensored public media and community development has created a dangerous vacuum on the national stage. A hollowed out public space can and will be invaded by nationalist extremists and radicals.
This vulnerability Canada shares even with more typical European stylizations of Nation like the US or France for example. Its an indirect, yes, but powerful structural invitation for the worst of the worst of militarism and jingoism propelled by respected modern crusader intellectuals like Samuel Huntington with his bloodthirsty “Clash of Civilizations”; admired in Stephen Harper's intellectual horizon.
The problem is not limited to ‘coalition of the willing’ members of the criminal Iraq invasion and occupation like Norway and Britain. The neoliberal project is not limited to Thatcher, Kohl and Reagan types. The social democratic governments of Ireland, Spain, Greece are the enablers of disaster, prostituting previously earned good will, de-civilizing their own countries by infusing billions into the rotting corpse of illegal debts, renewed speculation and nepotist privatization; arrogantly ignoring not just the lessons of Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentine but also from Iceland which has audited its debt and written off the illegal parts resulting in a stable investment climate and strong economic growth.
The endgame of globalization becomes increasingly dangerous because it opposes internationalist cooperation that came easy to the positive nationalism of the post war era for example. Whereas even the genocidal ethnic violence in Rwanda which far exceeded the horrifying massacre in Norway did not easily register on the radar screen of the one dimensional and neoliberal abstract theory and was barely responded to.
I am becoming increasingly concerned with oncoming dangers of moralistic assertions oblivious to the need of cautious structural reforms and focussed shaping of initiative.
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