Free opinion | The political silence of the racist banner

About twenty hooded people in a park in Shawinigan did not try to convince. They sought to be seen. The political class responded by looking elsewhere, towards the small marginal group, the isolated case, the action which “has no place in Quebec”. It is precisely this look that poses a problem.

This reaction is more of a moral reflex than a real consideration of what is happening in Quebec, because it is reassuring for us to think that racism as a political act does not exist here; after all, we live in a peaceful and welcoming society, radicalism is unimaginable.

However, this observation is far from being accurate: this banner is not the fruit of a spontaneous action coming out of nowhere, but rather the logical continuation of a system in crisis which seeks to maintain itself by all means, even the most brutal. Thus, seeing racism as an individual pathology is to look away from its social function as a response to the crisis that Quebec – and the West – is experiencing in its entirety.

Indeed, the deterioration of the material living conditions of Quebecers is palpable: the housing crisis which requires 20% of Quebecers to give half of their salary in rent, galloping inflation which pushes a third of households to go into debt to eat, or even massive underinvestment which led to the poor results of 38% of Quebec hospitals judged by the government to be in poor or very poor condition. This observation inevitably leads to a feeling of downgrading.

However, poverty does not automatically produce racists – it produces anger. And it is hatred entrepreneurs who give it a target, in the absence of any credible alternative narrative carried by humanist social justice policies on the real causes of collective impoverishment.

White supremacism responds to this anger with a horizontal explanation – it’s the fault of immigrants, foreigners, non-whites, because they steal our jobs, receive our welfare, want to “grand-replace” us – while obscuring the vertical explanation: economic elites who dominate us in order to better monopolize the fruit of our collective labor with the sole aim of accumulating capital for their benefit. This white supremacism is a boon for our elites, since it serves a function of dividing society, regardless of any intention, where the crisis should produce class solidarity.

Construction

The Shawinigan banner therefore does not demonstrate that this white supremacism is already established, but rather that it is still under construction in Quebec: it allows us to gradually normalize unacceptable remarks in a just and democratic society, to test our limits, to stage a political action signaling in the public debate and, ultimately, to recruit new members.

The political condemnation of this performance is therefore insufficient, even counterproductive, since it is comfortable, without ever asking for anything and without ever recognizing the part that these same elected officials play in the normalization of what they condemn.

She never puts the spotlight on the material conditions that produce this kind of movement. It does not call into question the identity and authoritarian shifts that have been taking place in our public space for 20 years, from the crisis of reasonable accommodation and the ethnicized debate on secularism that followed, to the media columnists who designate the immigrant as a “burden to be thrown at sea”. This tolerance provides white supremacism with its recruitment vocabulary.

Shawinigan is therefore not an exception to be condemned and forgotten. This is a warning to read. As long as our political elites prefer to manage the spectacle of racism rather than tackling the inequalities that fuel it, other banners will be displayed, in other parks, on other sunny Saturdays. We should not wonder if we condemn loudly enough. But rather what we are ready to change.