Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:34 on 2019-03-21 Permalink Reply  

• Steve Q 00:09 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  There seems to be a lot of ”white supremacists” around nowadays….at least according to the medias.
  Funny things is i’ve never met one !

• Faiz Imam 01:39 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  Macdonald has said:

  “if the Chinese were allowed to vote, “they might control the vote of that whole Province” and their “Chinese representatives” would foist “Asiatic principles,” “immoralities,” and “eccentricities” on the House “which are abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.” He further claimed that “the Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics” and that “the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.”

  Also

  “the Chinese migrant “is a stranger, a sojourner in a strange land … he has no common interest with us … he has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations, and therefore ought not to have a vote.”

  https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/was-john-a-macdonald-a-white-supremacist/

  John A. Macdonald is pretty much the dictionary definition of white supremacy. While he has a place in history, that does not mean he deserves a honored place in our public realm.

  And SteveQ, Alex Bisonette was a white supremacist who murdered six people not 2 years ago. Any one of us might have crossed paths with him at some point. But he’s hardly alone. The themes of his ideology, well summarized in the New Zealand shooters manifesto, are quite common among many commenters and pundits in Quebec.

  Ideas of “them” coming and “taking over” “our” land and “our” way of life. It’s all saddeningly common in common discourse.

• Ephraim 08:03 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  Stuck between a rock and a hard place… you don’t want to look like you are giving in to them, so the more they paint it and insist it has to come down, the more you can’t do anything about it. It needs to be non-news to make the decision. It’s easier to just act when it’s all non-news.

• Blork 09:40 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  You have to consider that the world was a much bigger place in MacDonald’s time, and the idea of “globalization” was non-existent. Everyone everywhere was “tribal.” The Irish didn’t want to mix with the Scottish, the French didn’t want to mix with the Germans, the Japanese didn’t want to mix with the Chinese, etc.

  So some of those quotes from MacDonald are more in the realm of simply not wanting the tribe to be diffused. We have 150 years of global shrinking and progressive thinking between then and now, so there is no place for that kind of thinking today, but I can give it a bit of latitude when you consider the time. While the “dog and fox” bit is disturbing, the Chinese bit (“the Chinese migrant is a stranger, a sojourner in a strange land … he has no common interest with us … he has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations…”) seems to be about a resistance to *difference* not an outright claim of superiority. (Again, in today’s world we are highly sensitive to such distinctions, but back then it was normal and was about preserving the culture and institutions as they knew them.)

  Compare that with Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States, who said the following in his “Cornerstone speech” of 1861 which outlined the foundations of the Confederate constitution:

  “…its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

  That’s as white supremist AF. There’s a big leap between “those people aren’t like us and we don’t agree with their values” and “those people are subhuman.”

• Blork 09:43 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  (I should clarify that the current idea of globalization was non-existent, but the contemporaneous idea of “empire” and colonialism was full-on.)

• Ian 11:34 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  While this is true, there are lots of things that were legal and normal in the late 1800s we have the sense to be appalled by now.

  …but as far as thinking other races subhuman, well…

  “When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”

  John A. Macdonald, 1879

• Kevin 12:23 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  100 years from now our descendants will also think we were all whackjobs.

• Ian 12:44 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  If our descendants are truly that enlightened in 100 years, I applaud them.

• Blork 14:15 on 2019-03-22 Permalink

  @Ian, that is certainly an appalling view of first nations life at the time, but I still think it’s rooted primarily in their view that first nations people were “underdeveloped” culturally, as opposed to literally sub-human.

  Bear in mind that European enlightenment culture and thinking was seen at the time as the pinnacle of human achievement, and native people everywhere were seen as being very far from that ideal. The fact that MacDonald wanted them to “acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men” shows this. Compare to the confederates who had no desire to elevate the “negro” to white person levels of education and status, because they believed they were fundamentally incapable of it.

  To be clear: I am not defending MacDonald’s position; I’m just trying to understand it, and as I understand it so far, it is definitely racist but not necessarily white supremacist. (I think the “white supremacist” label is tossed around a bit too easily.)