Hate Literature

Don MacPherson is all in a dither. What is this guy Normand Lester doing? Giving answer to the hate propaganda against Quebec and the re-writing of history that has been going on in English Canada for years! Doesn't he know that the role of the French language press is to hide those facts, so that English Canada can go on unmolested with its campaign, not only against Quebec independence, but against Quebec itself? The nerve of the guy!

MacPherson uses an old trick. Jacques Ellul, the French jurist and an authority on propaganda, described it as follows: "The propagandist must proclaim the purity of his intentions, and at the same time accuse his opponent. But the accusation... is of having the very same intention as the propagandist himself, of committing the very same crime." So it is not the hate literature and re-writing of history that must be taken to task, but the act of condemning it.

Mordecai Richler set a high example for propagandists. He was not the first in English Canada to peddle hate literature against the people of Quebec. This sort of drivel was going on long before he did it. But he set a standard that was the envy of everyone who had access to space in the newspapers. His book Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! was praised by all and sunder. The Toronto Star displayed a gloating headline: "Quebec dealt a double whammy of scorn". The members of the Windsor Press Club awarded Richler their Quill Prize, based on a preview of the book published in the New Yorker. They found the article "courageous, controversial, deliberately provocative, effervescent, chilling and hilarious".

Historian Ramsey Cook (fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, officer of the Order of Canada) wrote: "Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! is an exuberant social satire... putting the emphasis on human rights in our confused debate on the future of Canada". (My translation from the encomium on the back cover of the French version of the book).

On November 15th 2000, Richler was named Companion of the Order of Canada.

The Toronto Star was right, the book was reeking with contempt for Quebecers. Richler had rooted up some muddled polls that purported to show that 70 percent of all Quebecers were highly anti-Semitic. Of course he never questioned the methodology of a survey that produced such lop-sided results. Such a juicy tidbit had to be nurtured and defended against all challenges, and exploited for all its worth. Nor did Richler stop to look at data that showed that there were much fewer anti-Semitic incidents in Quebec than in English Canada. His mind was made up.

When writing about anti-Semitism in Quebec in the thirties, he came up with a terrifying description of "Jewish men, women and children shot, or hanged, or buried alive, or boiled in their own fat, or gassed, or burned in ovens", and then made it a point to say that "French Canadians were in the vanguard" in denying European Jews a haven in Canada. When talking about anti-Semitism displayed by English Canadians in the same period, he concedes: "Yes, anti-Semitism was rife among the WASP bourgeoisie, which did bar Jews from its clubs, established quotas against them in universities."

Richler knew that anti-Semitism in English Canada was not as benign as what he describes. There were Swastika Clubs in Toronto, there were gangs of Jew baiters on the beaches of Lake Ontario, there were anti-Jewish riots in Toronto and Winnipeg. Richler also knew that those responsible for denying Jews asylum in Canada were not French Canadians, but English Canadians. The main actor, as described by Abella and Troper in None Is Too Many, was Frederick Charles Blair, Director of the Mines and Resources Department, who held sway in these matters. And Blair was aided and abetted by such figures as Charlotte Whitton, future mayor of Ottawa, George Stanley, future lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick and Vincent Massey, future governor-general.

Richler used all the tricks of propaganda available, half-truths, selection of facts and out and out lies. One of his greatest stories is when he relates in his own way an incident that occurred during the conscription crisis of World War 2. He has it that anti-conscriptionists were shouting against Jews in the streets "Kill them! Kill them!" But when you look up the very source he quotes, you find out that it was the pro-conscriptionists who shouted those words. Having invented his own version of history on this episode, in this case the exact opposite of the truth, he concludes in his Postscript that Quebecers were shouting "Kill the Jews! Kill the Jews!"

In his book against this sort of propaganda, Normand Lester describes the character assassination against Lucien Bouchard that was perpetrated, at the time he was premier of Quebec, by the likes of Vivian Rakoff and Lawrence Martin. MacPherson is well familiar with this technique used by all propagandists. Since Bernard Landry became premier, there have not been too many columns that he wrote where he did not indulge in personal attacks on him.

Richler also knew and used that cherished tool of propaganda, as demonstrated by the hatchet job he did on René Lévesque. In his days, the latter had condemned the FLQ in very strong terms. For instance: "If their savagery were in any way representative of the true Quebec, one would want to get as far away from here as possible. One can only wish upon them the worst of punishment: to live long enough to realise that they represent nothing nor anyone of any value, that their acts were not only criminal, but senseless." To qualify Lévesque's attitude with respect to the FLQ, Richler unerringly digs up a footnote in André Laurendeau's memoirs, never confirmed by anyone, that has Lévesque saying "You've got to hand it to them, they are courageous, those guys."

Why did Richler write his book? The answer was written right on the back cover: "Quebec is on the verge of holding a referendum to decide its political future, and Mordecai Richler's gloves are off". In other words, he wanted to create a wave of resentment against Quebecers, so that his readers would vote overwhelmingly against Quebec sovereignty. If that is not trying to create a vote along ethnic lines, what is? Yet, if anyone dares say that there was an ethnic vote, the federalists wrap themselves in the cloak of self-righteousnous and cry "How awful! For shame!"

If there had been only Richler's book and the adulation with which it was greeted across the land, there would have been an indelible blot on the image of English Canada, that would have justified a dozen books like the one by Normand Lester. But there were, in addition, the imitators. The Diane Francises, the Alan Fotheringhams, the Barbara Amiels, the Bill Johnsons, the Howard Galganovs and the Don Macphersons. The latter warmly recommends a book by Graham Fraser, René Lévesque and the Parti Quebecois in Power, which he describes as "fair and nonpartisan". I cannot comment on that book, as I have not read it. But I have trouble believing that Fraser would be fair and nonpartisan. In another work of his, he resorted to the very same character assassination tactic that Richler used against Lévesque, quoting the very same unconfirmed footnote. One would swear that he had plagiarized the master.

Commenting on a recent meeting of Quebec nationalists where Bernard Landry made a speech, MacPherson reports that ex-FLQ Raymond Villeneuve was present. That is enough for MacPherson and his cronies to try to establish a link between the two. He goes on to write: "It's as if Ernst Zundel showed up at a federal Liberal rally in Toronto at which Prime Minister Chrétien was the featured speaker".