He really is that good-looking. Photo by Bryan Adams because: Why not? |
Jagmeet Singh is a historic figure in Canadian history as of Sunday afternoon. I’m happy to have been in the room to see it. Jagmeet faces some unique challenges that fit our moment unfortunately well. I think he’ll come out on top, but not after confronting the essential challenge of progressive politics today.
I’m talking about race.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t say that race would soon become the essential challenge of politics. But I didn’t expect such an intense reaction to the two major popular movements against systemic racism – Black Lives Matter and Idle No More.
I saw nothing wrong with those protest movements – their goals of being treated as genuine equals in their countries and communities are perfectly benign democracy. Yet the reactionary movement has been horrifying.
There’s Donald Trump, the elderly racist dick who’s become President of the United States. There’s the revival of genuinely genocidally-aiming white supremacist groups through social media communities.
In Canada, our own militia groups are forming, thanks to the online radicalization of white nationalism worldwide. There are the Proud Boys, Soldiers of Odin, and the folks who organized the Storm Alliance protests last week.
Tommy Douglas, David Lewis, Ed Broadbent, Audrey McLaughlin, Alexa McDonough, Jack Layton, Tom Mulcair, Jagmeet Singh. |
They’re lying. They are radical white nationalists. They want to enforce a permanent black underclass in America, slaves in all but name. They want to finish the genocide that John MacDonald ramped into high gear – there’ll be no more Indigenous languages whispered or religions appearing. No more Indigenous people, by any means expedient.
This is what white nationalists want. And they want you to want it too.
There is nothing the New Democrats could do to provoke such people more than elect a young, hip, charismatic, intelligent Sikh politician our federal leader, and give him a mandate to work as hard as he can to become Prime Minister. The first Prime Minister from Canada’s only political party to consistently embrace social democracy.
Barely 24 hours after his election as federal leader, other federal leaders were so condescending to him, treating him like a fool who didn't even know how parliament worked. I doubt that if Charlie Angus had won, and his speech included an appeal to make him Prime Minister, Elizabeth May would have read from her tenth grade civics textbook.
Then, Elizabeth May has always been more malignant than she appears.
Even Jagmeet's brightest hopes are tainted with epithets disguised as double entendres. Is his appearance not 'secular' enough to earn Quebecer's support? Let's just call a spade a racist here.
I happen to think that the political party founded by a Baptist minister has room for a leader who defines himself in part through piety to his religion. In Jagmeet's case, that's a religion whose founding values are community solidarity and the fundamental equality of all people. Social democracy, the values of the New Democratic Party.
Jagmeet’s election was a direct message to the white nationalist radicals who threaten to overthrow the principles of equality at the heart of democratic values. Jagmeet’s campaign slogan was “Love and Courage.”
Well, in Punjabi, the phrase also translates* as, “You want to mess with us? Come at me, bro.”
* Very, very, very, very loosely.
I never thought I’d spend my political life in my 30s fighting Nazis. But I’m fighting a bunch of fucking Nazis. So put me on Team Jagmeet.
I am very happy about this too. Gotta say as an aside how much it pisses me off that a bunch of racist shit bags smear the name of my chosen deity for their odious hate groups. It would be nice to meet some of them face to face one day. Here's to the colours of fall: orange and brown!
ReplyDeleteAdam, you've made a small error in the second sentence of your entry. You claim, "his support across Canada was so widespread," which is a link to a CTV News article. However, the article does NOT show where Jagmeet's vote came from. Instead, it breaks down where the ENTIRE VOTE (for all the candidates) came from. It is, "the voter turnout of card-carrying members of the party". I myself initially interpreted it as you have, given that the paragraph starts out with the news of Jagmeet's win. Still, it's a breakdown of all the votes cast by the members, and thus it's not specific to Jagmeet's vote. PS, I too am very happy with the result. I'm very optimistic about the NDP's chances with the positive energy that I know Jagmeet will bring to the party.
ReplyDeleteWell, damn, that was overall turnout. I think everyone I know who's seen that article has misread it. Even the old friend of mine who's an Ottawa reporter now, who originally posted it to her Twitter feed, thought it was Jagmeet's vote share breakdown.
DeleteNow I really want to see the breakdown of the results (if we can). Not necessarily province by province – some of those membership numbers in the territories were so low that a candidate vote breakdown might violate voters' privacy ;)
What I'd like to see are the stats on how the second, third, and fourth choices went.