John Robson: When Canada Is Demonized From Within, Everyday People Pay the Price

Commentary

Canada stinks. Concentration camp/genocide stinks. They just want you to know that. And I’m not ranting about some unhinged radicals, or communist Chinese influencers. These calls are coming from inside the house.

The invaluable Blacklock’s Reporter, which avoids “experts say” or “sources say” for “documents say” journalism, reveals that “Cabinet in a briefing note likened Chinese concentration camps to Canada’s Indian Residential School system. Diplomats privately told Chinese Communist Party officials ‘not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes,’ said the document.”

Aaaack! What? But it’s part of a large ominous pattern where the privileged who dominate Western societies relentlessly erase our past and undermine our culture yet, strangely, believe nothing much will really change including prosperity, security, or social cohesion.

One scary recent example is the City of Richmond warning people they might not own their house thanks to a classic la-de-dah B.C. Supreme Court land-claim ruling. As one online commentator put it, “If you keep saying you are on stolen land, don’t be surprised when judges give it away to the natives you said you stole it from.”

Duh. And yes, journalist Rupa Subramanya told us so: “the next time you hear a land acknowledgment, you may want to listen closely. It could be the preamble to a future eviction notice.” But what did all the politicians, academics, and general white-liberal-guilt types who did keep saying it think would happen?

Worse, what do they think will happen now? Journalist Andrew Coyne countered: “Aboriginal title is also a property right. It’s just not one that you feel inclined to recognize.” And the usually sensible Terry Glavin snapped: “Everybody has known for at least a half century that unextinguished aboriginal title underlies private property wherever no treaties have been concluded. Grow up, deal with it, conclude treaties.”

Seriously? You think you can start swiping people’s houses, incinerate the social contract, turn the rule of law into judicial salad, and expect everyone to remain calm and carry on with touchy-feely “reconciliation”? Apparently so. Which suggests that we are governed by people with as little interest in how our society functions as sympathy for it.

What’s raging around us is Christopher Lasch’s “revolt of the elites.” Never mind oppressed peasants or proletarians, or even Ortega y Gasset’s “revolt of the masses.” It’s people like Justin Trudeau or Mark Carney, beneficiaries of all our society has to offer, who shudder at Canadian flags flown by regular folks as, in Britain, academics cringe at British and above all English flags, and politicians and police tear them down.

A recent poll in the Disunited Kingdom found that “Public sector workers view Britain less favourably than the public and are more sympathetic to adversaries such as Russia and China and terror groups such as Hamas.” And, for comic relief, “National Trust puts vegan tampons in men’s toilets.”

Vox populi? I think not. But what’s really weird is that, like that bewigged judge plummily sentencing a hapless Briton to 20 months for an ill-advised Facebook post, they seem to think no matter what vandalism they commit, it will remain essentially 1955 out there, the economy effortlessly prosperous, the family and society sturdily self-controlled, the BBC or CBC unhesitatingly respected, free speech a core value.

After Jews were murdered on Yom Kippur at a Manchester synagogue, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said, “I promise you that over the coming days, you will see the other Britain – the Britain of compassion, of decency, of love.” The nation that existed in his grandparents’ youth, before Tony Blair with his “cool Britannia,” Starmer with his indifference to grooming gangs or, in Canada, Justin Trudeau accepting the “Truth and Reconciliation” commission finding that there was a genocide going on in Canada now, with him in charge.

He didn’t surrender himself to the international authorities for some reason. But he certainly subjected us to contempt. And Starmer also said recently that the populist Nigel Farage is neither “liked nor believed in Britain.”

Thirty years ago, and certainly 70, he wouldn’t have been. Now he leads in the polls because so much has changed since, including the indispensable conviction that the government is on our side.

Witness especially the casual, lightning demolition of the Peelian notion that the police are just members of the public paid to do what is incumbent on all of us, here as there. Today instead they facilitate Hamas marches and clear visible Jews from their path, and we do not see ourselves in this conduct. Nor should we.

The astute commentator Matt Ridley recently identified a “boomerang effect” where elites “[l]ament the rise of an opinion or policy without noticing how your preferred policies helped cause it.” So they prate about healing divisions while warning communists not to be like (ugh!) us, and wonder why the peasants are revolting too.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.