The Mégantic Scandal: When neoliberalism morphed into neofascism

I just finished reading Mégantic: Une tragédie annoncée, a 338-page book (Montréal, Écosociété, 2018) by Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny, about the 2013 train disaster in Québec. This is the incredibly disgusting story of how the massive, neoliberal deregulation of financial services (“shareholder rights”), petroleum extraction, transportation of dangerous materials and just about everything else in the USA and Canada (including Québec), resulted in the highly preventable deaths of 47 victims in the village of Lac-Mégantic, near the border with the state of Maine. Saint-Cerny, a veteran researcher and militant with the “Société pour vaincre la pollution”, has done an excellent job in explaining how it came to be that a single, 10 000-ton train carrying a cargo of schist oil from North Dakota, originally intended to be delivered to the Irving Oil refinery in New Brunswick (east of Maine), managed to get away from its owners on a steep slope and blow up the central part of Lac-Mégantic instead.

Saint-Cerny’s book was prefaced by André Noël, a well-known investigative journalist who has  been working for the past couple of years with the Charbonneau Commission, researching the links between several large Québec construction companies and organized crime, corrupting mostly municipal politicians in the Montréal area. While the first part of her book concentrates on how the neoliberal form of capitalism took over most of the companies directly involved in the Mégantic disaster, the second part concentrates on how the deregulation business that had already set up shop in the USA also managed to eliminate initial government attempts at controlling dangerous practices in Canada as well. Not only at the federal level, notably in the Transport Canada bureaucracy, but also at the provincial level, involving the Québec government’s ministries of the environment, economic development and municipal affairs. The last section of Saint-Cerny’s work focused on the reconstruction of the village of Lac-Mégantic and its surrounding area, involving quite a bit of municipal corruption as well, some of it linked to some of the same companies being investigated by the Charbonneau Commission.

For most of the train ride from North Dakota, through north-central USA (including Chicago and Detroit), southern Ontario (Toronto) and southern Québec (Montréal), the railcars and locomotives were part of a Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) train, which was then handed off to the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) (that used to belong to the CPR) shortly after leaving Montréal. In the first part of her book, Saint-Cerny goes through all the gory details about how Wall Street activists like William Ackman, CEO of the Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund, plotted to take over control of most of North America’s most important railways, such as the CPR, as well as most of the up-and-coming schist petroleum (“fracking”) firms, based largely in North Dakota, such as World Fuels Services Corporation, the source of the cargo involved in the Mégantic tragedy.

In the place of relatively paternalistic bosses from days gone by, those unscrupulous investors manoeuvred into power much more vicious, ultra-individualist managers, such as CPR boss Hunter Harrison (voted “railroader of the year” in 2015) and MMA boss Edward Burkhardt, merging most of the US railways into much bigger corporations, as well as taking over both of Canada’s most important railroads, the CPR and its main rival, Canadian National Railways. Individuals of that stripe then set about reorganizing those companies in order to save billions of dollars for shareholders, notably by firing most of their employees in favour of one-man crews instead.

As well as stringing together kilometre-long “unit trains”, dozens of “pop cans on wheels” (oil cars with very thin walls) pulled along by several locomotives, some of them in very poor shape, the lead locomotive in this case having been stuck back together (quite literally!) with epoxy glue, of all things. To save even more money, the tracks that they were running on were also severely under-repaired, particularly in mountainous regions like the border between Québec and Maine. In such difficult terrain, long-existing secondary bypass tracks were deliberately ignored, the locomotives were left running overnight, even at the top of really steep hills, without automatic brakes and with an insufficient number of hand-brakes being activated, and so on and so forth, in enormous detail. Literally hundreds of corrective procedures recommended after dozens of prior “accidents” all over North America were also ignored for the selfsame “economic reasons”. As if all that were not enough, it turns out that the Bakken, North Dakota, schist oil, which ought to have been classified as “extremely” or “very” dangerous when disturbed, was in this case only classified as “somewhat” dangerous on the official papers carried on every oil train in North America! (It was in fact “PG 1” and “PG 2” oil, not “PG 3” at all, “PG” referring to “Packaging Group”.) A deliberate fabrication that had to have been made by either World Fuels or by Irving Oil.

To broaden my own understanding of all this extremely dangerous, neoliberal corruption, I also consulted a second book, Bruce Campbell’s The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal, Justice Denied (Toronto, James Lorimer, 2018, 200 pages). Campbell is a former Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, as well as a leading academic at both York and Ryerson universities in Toronto. This somewhat smaller work is also quite good concerning most of these same events, although it does not go into as much detail about the roles played in all of this by the Québec government and the local municipal elite, especially when it comes to the reconstruction part of the story. It is nevertheless a good complementary read to the Saint-Cerny book, each author providing more significant detail about one or another, sometimes quite technical, aspects of this story.

In her work, Saint-Cerny emphasized the leading role played by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, that greatly accelerated Canada’s descent into all-out, ultra-individualism between 2006 and 2015. She particularly underlined the “contributions” of John Baird, who became one of Harper’s ministers long enough to totally privatize Transport Canada’s already indulgent “control” over the transportation of dangerous substances, delegating all the responsibility for safety to each company’s own private “inspectors”! The same Baird was initially recruited from the equally pro-business, Conservative provincial government of Ontario, where he had already adopted a neofascist attitude toward welfare recipients, resulting in the death of at least one pregnant victim, while under something akin to house arrest.

After his stint with the Transport ministry, Baird, ever bit as disgusting an individual as Ackman, Harrison or Burkhardt, went on to join the administrative board of (what else?) the CPR. Not  to mention a very successful Canadian mining company, Barrick Gold, itself responsible for extremely dangerous operations, especially in Africa. Saint-Cerny, however, also included the current Liberal government of Canada (since 2015) in her denunciations, showing the lengths to which today’s Minister of Transport, former astronaut Marc Garneau, has gone to resist any pressure to adopt any kind of active government role in guaranteeing transportation safety in Canada. (Who also seems to have applied the same complacent strategy toward the Boeing Corporation and the US government, at least over the past several months, in the 2018 Indonesian and the 2019 Ethiopian airline crashes, the latter tragedy including, among dozens of others, the deaths of 18 Canadian citizens.)

From Saint-Cerny’s point of view, the Mégantic tragedy was not an “accident”, nor an “incident”, but a crime, complete with a weapon (the train), ammunition (the oil), a motive (greed) and several well-known perpetrators (including Ackman, Harrison, Burkhardt and Baird). The criminals involved were not at all the three railway employees arrested by a SWAT team from the SQ (the Québec provincial police force), in front of the television cameras, all three of whom were completely exonerated later on by a local jury.

For the past several years, a citizens’ committee from the village has been trying to get large numbers of people to sign a petition calling for a full-fledged (royal) commission of inquiry into that horrendous event. Similar to the ones already set up by the federal government in response to several other crises in the recent past, many of which were a lot less serious than this one. Saint-Cerny also supported the call for such a commission of inquiry in her book, denouncing Garneau’s ongoing resistance to the idea. She also suggested that one of the main reasons why the government does not want to set up such an inquiry is because it would inevitably reveal that Transport Canada never had the slightest opposition to the company’s adoption of extremely dangerous policies like the one-man crew, in spite of repeated claims to have done just the opposite.

Another important aspect of Saint-Cerny’s book is the way in which she put the entire tragedy into a much larger context, by pointing out how it fits in so very well with everything else we know about vulture capitalism. The CPR itself was founded (1881) after a major scandal involving big-time investors from Canada, the UK and the USA providing a slush fund for Canada’s first Conservative government, right after Confederation (1867). From the very beginning, Canada has always been built around resource extraction and railways, the governments of the day being very much under the influence of classic, economic liberalism (laissez-faire), more or less the same ideology as today’s neoliberalism. Successive Canadian governments have always been very kind to mining and railroads in particular, adopting a feudal approach toward those two sectors. For example by letting major railroads control their own private police forces, that take precedence over the regular police whenever any railroad is the least bit involved.

In spite of, I might add, the often-declared support of some of those same governments for economic nationalism instead, which most often turned out (just like economic liberalism) to mean simply helping huge private investors “make” a lot more money than they otherwise might have made, but in a somewhat different way. It is true that there was a strong tendency, caused by increasingly heated conflict between rival empires all over the world for the control of colonies (and semi-colonies like China), for various governments to get more and more involved in economic and social policy (the beginnings of what later became the “welfare state”). A tendency that some historians have called a period of “neomercantilism”, from 1880 to 1980, reinforced by the unusual requirements of the two world wars, the Great Depression and the Cold War. In that sense, today’s neoliberalism, starting with the 1973 arrival of the economic advisors known as the “Chicago Boys”, in Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile, can be seen as simply a belated return to the classic economic and social liberalism of the first industrial revolution (1780-1880).

In both the USA and Canada, as well as in several other Western countries, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1885-1914) are also collectively known as “the gilded age”, a smaller period that was thoroughly dominated by a group of officially-legal crooks known as “robber barons”. But there is really not a great deal of difference between robber barons back then, like John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the current crop of similar barons denounced by Saint-Cerny and Campbell, such as Ackman, Harrison and Burkhardt.

Nor is there a great deal of difference either between the help provided for those barons by the federal governments of both the USA and Canada, back in the Gilded Age, and similar help being provided nowadays by those same public institutions. Besides deregulation, Saint-Cerny also mentioned several times in her book the financial aid that people like Ackman and Burkhardt received from semi-governmental institutions (that did not exist way back when), like the Canada Pension Plan and the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec (a provincial pension plan for public employees). Campbell also made very similar observations in his own book.

Both Saint-Cerny and Campbell emphasized as well the international nature of all the leading characteristics of the Mégantic scandal, such as the involvement of guys like Burkhardt in railway consolidations not only throughout the USA and Canada, but also in both Eastern and Western Europe. Or the very large number of similar tragedies, an all-Canadian list of which would necessarily include the 1982 sinking of the Ocean Ranger petroleum platform off the coast of Newfoundland (84 deaths), the 1992 Westray mine explosion in Nova Scotia (26 deaths), the rural Ontario water contamination scandal in 2000 (7 deaths) and the 2008 listeriosis outbreak in Toronto (22 deaths). Similar compilations can also be made for every other country adversely affected by neoliberalism, such as the 2017 Grenville Tower fire in London, England (72 deaths).

To which I would like to add, for any people outside the Western world who may be reading this blogpost, that I am perfectly aware that tragedies of this kind break out even more often in most of the world’s (more numerous) poorer countries, the number of victims often climbing to much higher figures than the ones cited here. Those third-world tragedies, however, are just as often caused by neoliberalism in those countries as well, which is most often imported into those places by neocolonialism. Including in most of the world’s mainly non-Western, “state-capitalist” countries, where the economic power of the state is still somewhat stronger than the economic power of the private-capitalist sector.

Just like in late nineteenth-century Canada, most of the world’s current state-capitalist countries often claim to be using economic nationalism for “the common good”, but they somehow manage to include a great deal of neoliberalism in their projects as well. The elites in most of those countries are often quite rich and every bit as corrupt as the ones in the Western world, not to mention also being much more interested in empire-building for themselves than in sharing the wealth with any of their poorer compatriots. In many of those countries, disasters on the scale of the Mégantic tragedy unfortunately happen all the time and are not considered (at least not by the people in power) to be terribly unusual.

In the last section of her book, Saint-Cerny also went into considerable detail in describing how provincial and local elites in the Mégantic area succeeded in completely mismanaging the reconstruction of the village after the tragedy. To do that, on the suggestion of a local citizen, she borrowed the shock strategy concept from Milton Friedman’s “disaster capitalism”, as interpreted by a well-known Canadian activist, Naomi Klein. In the first place, 132 days after the explosion, the villagers still alive in Lac-Mégantic were indeed shocked when they saw new MMA trains running on the company’s re-built tracks, carrying exactly the same kind of cargo, in exactly the same kind of thin-skinned cars, riding right through the middle of town once again, even reproducing an even more dangerous loop through the most populated streets than the one that had so obviously contributed to the “accident” only a few months earlier.

Talk about disaster capitalism! The company, since then reorganized under a new name, had profited from the shock produced by the tragedy to reconstruct exactly the same conditions, in the same town, that had so profoundly upset the local population in the first place. Not only that, but the local town council, run by a very energetic mayor, and supported by all the members of the local elite, took advantage of the shell-shock (a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder) from which most of the ordinary local citizens were suffering, to rapidly displace the vast majority of the owners of the destroyed buildings and to reconstruct most of the new downtown a long way from the original site. That was originally located next to the lake that used to attract several thousand provincial tourists in days gone by. Loudmouth promoters were also imported from Montréal to convince some of the more gullible citizens that not just thousands, but millions of tourists from all over the world were going to flock to their isolated mountain village just to visit such a famous disaster zone!

The head of the local caisse populaire (credit union) and the managers of all the large stores and businesses in the area, most of which were just local branches of large Canadian and Quebec chains (“Québec, Inc.”), conspired with the town council to eliminate several of the old-fashioned local factories and reconstruct a new part of town in perfect imitation of the kind of “up-to-date”, single-story housing and commercial buildings that disfigure most of the ugly, uninspiring suburbs that have sprung recently up all over North America. In so doing, they were helped along by the Québec government, especially its economic-development and municipal affairs ministries, which rapidly adopted a new provincial law designed to help the local elite take over everything and run it their way. Which included setting up a phoney citizen consultation process, in the usual way, after all the major decisions had already been made.

Even Québec’s environment ministry was either too complacent, or totally outmanoeuvred, or maybe even betrayed by some of its own senior bureaucrats, to contribute anything useful toward cleaning up the original mess competently. Or even noticing that most of the petroleum that had not either burned off, or been recuperated by the MMA in railcars saved from the explosion, had simply run off and sunk to the bottom of the nearby lake and Chaudière River. It turns out that the environment ministry people did not initially believe the activists from the “Société pour vaincre la pollution” (Saint-Cerny, Daniel Green and other SVP stalwarts having shown up in town right after the tragedy) that the oil had accumulated at the bottom of the lake and the river. Because they did not initially believe the environmental activists’ claim that one of the oil companies had deliberately falsified the work-sheets accompanying the train. (PG 1 and 2 oil being much heavier than the fraudulently designated PG 3).

The Québec government, in those days under the nominal control of the pro-independence Parti Québécois (PQ), did not help much either by adopting an economic strategy that included fostering schist oil exploration in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence region, right before the extremely upsetting tragedy. That PQ strategy, I might add, could be seen as an attempt to help Québec curry favour among “the big boys” in the highly integrated North American economy. But it was most definitely not very well-timed, to say the least, since it certainly seemed to put the independence movement on the side of the very people who had caused the highly emotional, national tragedy that profoundly destabilized the entire Québec population. Why search for independence from Canada if it only means adopting the same disastrous, kowtowing strategy as the Canadian government, or the even more disastrous kind of neoliberalism practised in the heartland of the US empire?

So why did all the incredibly horrible things presented by Saint-Cerny and Campbell in their books about Mégantic, happen after all? Greed, though obviously an important cause, does not seem to me to be a sufficiently profound reply to the question about what motivated the managers and the major shareholders of the offending corporations. Nor does identification with the aggressor, though almost as important a cause as greed, seem to me to be a sufficient explanation for the supine attitudes of the political authorities in this overwhelmingly horrible event, and any of the other deadly events similar to the Mégantic disaster.

I think that if we want to come up with a more satisfying explanation for this kind of criminal-but-legal activity, we should start with the idea that treating millions of ordinary citizens in such a murderous and degrading manner, not just in North America but everywhere else in the world, helps to fulfill dominant personalities’ (investors, managers and top-rank bureaucrats) basic goal in life. Which is their fundamental, shared belief, providing them with their underlying motivation (their number one reason for wanting to get out of bed in the morning), that “We’re everything and you’re nothing.” This certainly seems like what all of this is really all about, an enormous superiority complex that requires continuous renewal of the consolidating conviction of the big shots’ personal self-worth, in “accidents” and “incidents” constantly befalling their increasingly numerous victims. Successful, superiority-confirming, wipe-out operations that turn out to be thousands of times more satisfying than any mere orgasm.

Pulling off a Mégantic, or a Bhopal or a Tchernobyl, yet another tragedy for “those lesser people” and never a problem for any superior person from “our gang”, that can always be covered up, with the result that no one from “our gang” ever has to pay any penalty whatsoever. Getting away with doing something like that: what a rush! It is not even accurate just to describe it as the business equivalent of multiple rapes committed by some wayward priest, nor even the business equivalent of multiple murders committed by some serial killer, that makes the perpetrators feel so good all over. It’s the getting away with it afterwards, a whole lifetime of power, that makes it so dizzily appealing. Appealing, that is, not to the domineering ones’ better natures, but to their primitive, carnivorous natures instead.

Which makes defending their system so incredibly important for these evil people, because they all know that everything they have in this world depends entirely on getting the world’s very numerous “inferior people” to accept their “inevitable” fate. Not only must every slave accept the assigned role of slavery, but every such slave must also do so, not just sullenly but enthusiastically. Simultaneously burbling along about the delightful democracy, the rule of law, the full employment and the abundant prosperity that we have all been so graciously given by our “betters”, in this great land of ours! Or whatever other romantic myths have been successfully sold to similar victims, even in countries led by people who find such over-the-top pretensions as “the rule of law” to be impossibly naive.

This whole process of dominant people’s sadomasochistic control over dominated people may even be somehow linked to French neuroscientist Sebastien Bohler’s theory about dopamine in his 2019 book Le bug humain. According to which a weird part of the brain called the stratium (controlling sensations of pleasure) always pushes aside the cortex (controlling reason), by inundating the body with huge quantities of dopamine, whenever the brain has to deal with (according to him) five particular situations: eating, sex, saving individual energy, social climbing or accumulating essential information.

Although this theory is supposed to apply to all human beings, I think it is reasonable to assume, given the kind of class-based societies in which everyone alive currently resides, that the world’s most deplorable people seem to get more than their fair share of inordinate pleasure out of the kind of primitive social domination that they seek, whenever they succeed in convincing their very numerous victims to accept as inevitable the dominant ones’ position at the top of the social-climbing ladder. Or, as Saint-Cerny put it in her book, quoting Québec humorist Boucar Diouf, the people running large capitalist firms are a lot like hyenas and other such carrion-chasing carnivores in their never-ending pursuit of maximum profit and the asphyxiating corruption that inevitably accompanies it.

La souveraineté pour quoi faire?

Je viens de terminer la lecture d’un livre de Francis Boucher, publié au Québec en août 2018, La grande déception: Dialogue avec les exclus de l’indépendance. Boucher est un conseiller en communications et en relations publiques pour un syndicat de la santé et des services sociaux, qui, tout en se disant toujours favorable à l’indépendance du Québec, a été très déçu de la “Charte des valeurs” du gouvernement du Parti québécois en 2013. Qui visait entre autres à exclure de la fonction publique québécoise des gens portant des symboles “ostentatoires” de leur religion choisie, tels que la croix chrétienne, le hijab musulman et la calotte juive. Le but projeté de cette tentative de législation ratée a été de souligner la séparation réelle entre la religion et l’état québécois, favorisant ainsi la laïcité, la neutralité religieuse, l’égalité hommes/femmes et l’encadrement des demandes d’accommodements adressées aux institutions publiques québécoises, de la part de plusieurs militants religieux.

Du point de vue de Boucher, toutefois, tout ce que cet épisode de l’histoire récente du Québec a réussi à faire, c’était d’éloigner du mouvement indépendantiste plusieurs milliers de gens provenant de diverses minorités (immigrants plus ou moins récents, autochtones, anglophones, etc.), qui, selon lui, avaient été favorables à l’idée d’indépendance autrefois. Boucher a basé la plupart de son argumentation sur une série de longs interviews avec 15 individus qu’il pensait “bien représenter” plusieurs de ces communautés. Tout en ajoutant à son corpus des commentaires provenant de trois militants bien connus du mouvement indépendantiste, soit Gilles Duceppe, Louise Harel et Jean Dorion. Pour Boucher, cette “charte des valeurs”, théoriquement neutre, ne visait en réalité que “les tissus portés par une infime minorité de femmes musulmanes”, et cachait par-dessus le marché une tentative électoraliste du gouvernement péquiste voulant plaire à ce qu’il appelle “le racisme anti-immigrant” de la majorité québécoise, dite “pure laine” (des francophones d’origine canadienne-française).

Dans cet article, j’aimerais souligner plusieurs des erreurs que je trouve les plus évidentes, dans l’analyse très faible de ces événements présentée par Boucher dans son livre. Étant donné le fait que j’ai participé autrefois de façon active au mouvement indépendantiste, ainsi qu’aux controverses concernant les “accommodements raisonnables” et la laïcité, je pense pouvoir contribuer encore quelque chose de valable à ce débat. Surtout dans le contexte actuel, dans lequel le nouveau gouvernement majoritaire, de la Coalition avenir Québec, sous la direction d’un ancien indépendantiste (François Legault), se prête à introduire un projet de loi visant cette fois à interdire le port de ces mêmes symboles à certains fonctionnaires “en position d’autorité”.

Dans son livre, Boucher fait référence d’abord à l’année de sa naissance, 1976, quand le Parti québécois est devenu le premier parti indépendantiste à prendre le pouvoir. Il souligne le fait que le premier chef de ce parti, René Lévesque (mort en 1987), avait une attitude très ouverte envers les minorités de cette époque, tout comme le député péquiste, Gérald Godin (mort en 1994), devenu ministre de l’immigration en 1980, aussi bien que des communautés culturelles en 1981. Boucher a consacré plusieurs pages de son livre aux tentatives nombreuses de Godin visant à améliorer les liens entre le gouvernement péquiste et les minorités ethniques (officiellement désignées “communautés culturelles”) du Québec pendant les deux premiers mandats consécutifs du PQ (1976-1981 et 1981-1985).

Selon Boucher, cette ouverture relative envers les minorités a continué à exister au sein du mouvement indépendantiste, en dépit de quelques incidents mineurs, entre le premier referendum sur l’indépendance, en 1980, et la fin du deuxième referendum en 1995. Le PQ a perdu le premier referendum, puisqu’à peu près 60% de la population votait contre l’indépendance en 1980, tandis qu’en 1995, cette option a été encore rejetée, mais cette fois avec seulement quelques milliers de voix de différence entre les deux points de vue possibles, sur plusieurs millions de citoyens votants.

Boucher prétend que même si la plupart des citoyens minoritaires, n’appartenant pas à la majorité dite “pure laine” de la population, n’ont pas appuyé l’indépendance (ni en 1980 ni en 1995), il y avait quand même une proportion réelle (20-25% dans certains cas) de ces gens qui favorisaient cette cause. Il ajoute aussi le fait que, même si tout le monde parle constamment  de l’option “indépendantiste” dans ces référendums, en réalité la question posée à chaque occasion ne visait pas l’indépendance “pure et dure” du Québec, mais faisait plutôt référence à une association économique avec le Canada après le premier référendum, ou à un nouveau partenariat économique et politique avec le Canada après le deuxième.

Pour Boucher, tout se gâtait le soir même du deuxième référendum, quand le premier ministre péquiste de cette époque, Jacques Parizeau (mort en 2015), très déçu d’avoir perdu de si peu, dénonçait “l’argent pis des votes ethniques” pour ce résultat négatif. Il est vrai, cependant, que 60% des francophones du Québec ont quand même appuyé cette tentative d’indépendance. Boucher n’essaie pas dans son livre d’analyser ce pourcentage d’appui parmi tous les citoyens francophones du Québec, mais on peut supposer que la plupart de ces gens faisaient partie quand même des Québécois dits “de souche”, auquel on peut ajouter une proportion inconnue, mais sûrement moins importante, de citoyens francophones provenant des populations minoritaires. Il ne faut pas oublier, toutefois, que “l’argent” semble plus important dans l’explication de Parizeau que “des votes ethniques”, puisque un appui plus fort de la part des “francophones de souche” aurait fait gagner l’indépendance beaucoup plus rapidement qu’un appui plus fort parmi les ethnies minoritaires.

Cependant, selon Boucher, à partir du discours malheureux de Parizeau, et en dépit de quelques tentatives de reconciliation avec les minorités visées, de la part de plusieurs tenors du PQ, dont Parizeau lui-même, les relations entre ce parti et toutes les ethnies minoritaires (francophones ou pas) sont devenues de plus en plus difficiles. Pour devenir carrément impossibles (toujours selon Boucher) à partir de la promulgation de la Charte des valeurs dites “québécoises”, du nouveau premier ministre péquiste, Pauline Marois, en 2013.

Avant de me concentrer sur plusieurs grandes erreurs d’interprétation commises par Boucher dans son livre, j’aimerais revenir brièvement à ma propre participation dans le mouvement indépendantiste. Je suis devenu membre du PQ au début de la campagne référendaire de 1980, et un des scrutateurs du PQ pendant la soirée du référendum. Même si le PQ a perdu ce vote, et de loin, ce parti a quand même été ré-élu au pouvoir (provincial) en 1981, quand je suis devenu un des sept candidats anglophones du PQ. Dans mon association locale, d’une circonscription électorale très majoritairement anglophone, nous avons décidé pendant la campagne d’envoyer plusieurs dizaines de nos membres les plus dynamiques au comté de Gérald Godin, pour l’aider à garder son siège. J’ai aussi copié le comportement de Godin en essayant activement de convaincre plusieurs gens provenant des “communauté culturelles” à appuyer le point de vue du parti.

Six de ces candidats anglophones (dont moi-même) ont mordu la poussière à la fin de cette campagne, soit tous ceux provenant de circonscriptions majoritairement anglophones, puisque selon les experts du parti eux-mêmes il n’y avait que 7% de la population anglophone du Québec qui votait pour le PQ à cette époque. Je suis quand même resté actif au parti pendant deux ans par la suite, dans mon association locale aussi bien qu’en tant que délégué de cette même association à l’instance régionale du parti. J’ai même fondé un comité régional visant à augmenter les connaissances économiques des membres, en invitant plusieurs ministres à vocation économique de venir nous prononcer des conférences pertinentes.

À cette époque, comme encore de nos jours, j’appuyais l’indépendance du Québec parce que je croyais que chaque nation “sociologique” méritait de contrôler son propre état souverain. Mais aussi parce que le mouvement indépendantiste a été associé à un “projet de société” que je pensais très bien cerné, comprenant un appui très fort à la sociale-démocratie et “un préjugé favorable aux ouvriers”. Un point de vue que Boucher semble avoir aussi appuyé dans son livre. J’ai donc dénoncé à l’époque la décision désastreuse de Jacques Parizeau (alors ministre des finances dans le gouvernement Lévesque), en 1982, de ré-écrire unilatéralement les conventions collectives avec les syndicats du secteur public (la loi 105), un des “écueils” du gouvernement péquiste mentionnés dans le livre de Boucher. Tout en refusant de couper autant dans des nombreux programmes du gouvernement favorisant les grands investisseurs.

Entre autres dispositions, Parizeau a coupé les salaires des employés syndiqués de l’état de 20%, pour faire face à la baisse drastique de revenus gouvernementaux, une conséquence de la récession mondiale causée par le monétarisme. Soit l’augmentation énorme des taux d’intérêt par plusieurs banques centrales, dont la Banque du Canada, officiellement pour lutter contre la montée de l’inflation. Même si le gouvernement Lévesque a promis dans sa législation de ne pas couper les salaires des employés de l’état gagnant moins de 20 000 $ par année, il a quand même coupé les salaires des chargés de cours dans toutes les succursales de l’Université du Québec. En dépit du fait que la plupart de ces gens (moi compris) gagnaient beaucoup moins d’argent que cela.

Dans son livre, toutefois, Boucher ne mentionne pas le fait que Parizeau a aussi décidé dans cette même loi de désindexer les prestations de retraite, une disposition restée en vigueur de 1982 à 1999, qui ampute encore de nos jours les revenus de plusieurs milliers de retraités dans la même situation que moi. Boucher a aussi oublié de mentionner la loi encore plus odieuse de 1983, provenant du même gouvernement, interdisant aux syndiqués le droit même de critiquer publiquement ces coupures du salaire! C’est à la suite de cette loi-là que j’ai décidé de démissionner complètement du Parti québécois, en plein congrès régional.

Même si l’appui du gouvernement péquiste au nationalisme économique et à la sociale-démocratie n’a jamais été incontesté à l’intérieur du parti, je pense que c’est pendant ce deuxième mandat que le PQ a commencé à abandonner réellement ces deux piliers du “projet de société” déjà mentionné. Pour s’aligner davantage sur le néolibéralisme, devenu la nouvelle idéologie dominante du monde entier, à partir de 1979 (l’élection de Margaret Thatcher en Grande-Bretagne). Un point de vue néolibéral qui, au Québec, comprenait l’appui au libre-échange fédéral de 1988-1989 entre le Canada et les États-Unis, de la part des tenors aussi importants du PQ que Bernard Landry et Jacques Parizeau (qui, lui, a reconnu son erreur avant sa mort).

À plusieurs reprises dans son livre, Boucher a dénoncé le néolibéralisme grandissant des gouvernements péquistes, qui selon lui a aussi fortement contribué à éloigner les gens du mouvement indépendantiste. Sans mentionner encore, toutefois, que ce même néolibéralisme a été pratiqué de manière nettement plus fanatique par tous les gouvernements du Parti libéral du Québec, au pouvoir depuis cette époque plus souvent que le PQ. Pour ne rien dire de tous les gouvernements fédéraux du Canada, libéraux et conservateurs, pendant toutes ces mêmes années.

Pour ma part, j’ai continué à participer activement au mouvement indépendantiste pendant quelques années encore, à l’extérieur du PQ, ainsi qu’à appuyer publiquement l’interventionnisme économique de l’État et l’état-providence. J’ai écrit des articles publiés dans plusieurs revues et journaux, assez régulièrement, sur ces thèmes aussi bien que sur la laïcité et les accommodements dit “raisonnables” envers les militants religieux (dont un article sur les accommodements publié dans La Presse en 2007). J’ai aussi continué à écrire sur tous ces sujets connexes dans trois petits livres que j’ai publié moi-même pendant les années 2001-2006, ainsi que dans mon blogue et quelquefois dans les pages de L’aut’journal.

Malheureusement, le livre de Boucher est truffé de toutes sortes d’amalgames impossibles de soutenir dans une argumentation sérieuse. On trouve quelques-uns de ces bourdes dans des points de vue souvent reproduits de ses 15 sources interviewées, identifiées seulement par leurs prénoms ou leurs noms de code, ainsi que d’autres bourdes provenant de sa propre analyse. Tout son livre est écrit dans un langage très émotionnel et très personnalisé, adoptant une attitude angélique et peu rigoureuse envers les préjugés provenant des sources choisies. Très souvent, il dénonce les points de vue de ses adversaires idéologiques avec le même genre d’arguments tirés par les cheveux dont il accuse (souvent injustement) plusieurs de ces mêmes adversaires.

Parmi les interprétations les plus erronées de son approche, c’est son accusation selon laquelle le PQ est censé avoir complètement abandonné l’esprit postcolonial des pays du tiers-monde (tels que Cuba et l’Algérie), qui influençaient beaucoup le mouvement indépendantiste au Québec pendant les années 1960 et 1970. Selon lui, le PQ a adopté récemment un point de vue idéologique du “repli sur l’identité canadienne-française”, soit un retour à l’idéologie ultra-conservatrice de l’ancien premier ministre Maurice Duplessis (mort en 1959). Même si plusieurs indépendantistes de nos jours ne semblent pas du tout aussi révolutionnaires que certains autres indépendantistes avaient été autrefois, je ne suis pas d’accord avec son accusation nettement exagérée par rapport au PQ. Je ne pense pas non plus que les souverainistes québécois de nos jours devraient toujours être “encore plus catholiques que le pape” par rapport aux gouvernements actuels des pays du tiers-monde.

Malheureusement, depuis l’indépendance de ces très nombreux pays, en Afrique et en Asie aussi bien qu’en Amérique latine, beaucoup de gouvernements issus des mouvements anti-impérialistes d’autrefois ont très mal géré des divisions énormes entre des majorités et des minorités de toutes sortes, provenant des divisions culturelles et religieuses très importantes dans chaque pays, aussi bien que des divisions liées au genre et aux classes sociales possédant des intérêts divergents. Soit les mêmes sortes de divisions qui existent dans tous les autres pays du monde, y compris bien sûr dans les pays occidentaux. Les indépendantistes du Québec sont loin d’avoir abandonné l’esprit postcolonial d’autrefois davantage que ceux provenant de plusieurs dizaines d’autres pays, du tiers-monde ou de n’importe quelle autre région.

Depuis le début des années 1980, le néocolonialisme occidental (et japonais), au tiers-monde,  et le néolibéralisme, implantés un peu partout dans le monde entier, se renforcent mutuellement, l’anti-impérialisme et la sociale-démocratie d'autrefois ayant été souvent remplacés par la collaboration avec les pays dominants et les classes sociales dominantes. Même la Chine s’est embarquée là-dedans depuis la prise de pouvoir par Deng Xiao-ping en 1979. De nos jours, il faut donc essayer, ici au Québec comme partout ailleurs, de renverser cette tendance mondiale, et d’adopter de nouveau, encore plus fortement qu’autrefois, les idéaux de la souveraineté et de la sociale-démocratie.

Il doit être aussi évident que le “projet de société” prôné par les indépendantistes progressistes (un mot dont Francis Boucher se méfie) ne peut pas comprendre des phénomènes aussi réactionnaires que le racisme, mais il ne peut pas comprendre la misogynie non plus. À mon avis, on devrait être capable, par exemple, de dénoncer l’attitude anti-féministe des intégristes musulmans, ainsi que le terrorisme islamiste, sans tomber dans “l’islamophobie” primitive de ceux qui pensent que tous les musulmans (ou la majorité des musulmans) sont nécessairement des intégristes ou des terroristes.

Mais c’est complètement farfelu de comparer, comme Boucher le fait, la répression fédéraliste contre le FLQ en 1970, dirigée en réalité contre l’ensemble du mouvement indépendantiste (la Loi des mesures de guerre de Pierre-Elliott Trudeau), avec la répression “autoritaire” de la Charte de 2013 contre l’intégrisme musulman! En plus, Boucher ne mentionne qu’une seule fois dans son livre l’existence au Québec de musulmans (ou des gens d’origine musulmane), anti-intégristes comme Djemila Benhabib, tout en ignorant complètement, et délibérément, tous leurs arguments en faveur de la laïcité à la française. Est-ce que ces gens-là sont trop progressistes pour être aimés par Francis Boucher?

Il devrait être évident en plus qu’on ne peut pas soutenir cette autre idée également farfelue, provenant d’une des sources citées par Boucher, selon laquelle le hijab porté par certaines femmes musulmanes n’est qu’une “autre forme” de féminisme que le féminisme occidental. Quelqu’un capable de soutenir une argumentation aussi fallacieuse que cela ne peut pas prétendre en toute honnêteté s’opposer aux mensonges (“fake news”), répétés à l’infini, des politiciens populistes d’extrême-droite comme Donald Trump. On devrait plutôt être d’accord avec la nouvelle ministre de la condition féminine au Québec, Isabelle Charest, selon laquelle c’est évident que le port de vêtements de ce genre nuit beaucoup à la cause féministe, quelque soit l’origine culturelle de la femme ainsi cachée.

C’est aussi important de ne pas tomber dans le piège évident qui consiste à toujours mettre l’accent dans ce débat sur des vêtements portés par des femmes musulmanes, plutôt que d’inclure tous les autres signes religieux, y compris des vêtements à consonance religieuse portés par les hommes. Ainsi que par des signes religieux et des vêtements à consonance religieuse de n’importe quel prosélyte de n’importe quelle autre religion que l’islam. Il ne faut pas oublier, non plus, de se débarrasser de cet autre symbole religieux très en évidence au Québec, le crucifix chrétien qui orne un des murs de l’Assemblée nationale. Que même le pape ne veut pas voir associé à l’identité nationale dans les pays d’origine chrétienne.

C’est encore plus évident de ne pas tomber dans l’autre piège, nettement plus important, de toujours mettre l’accent sur les signes religieux, plutôt que de souligner d’autres comportements, très souvent liés aussi au fondamentalisme religieux, qui nuisent beaucoup plus aux droits humains que tous ces symboles. Comme par exemple les mariages forcés, l’excision, la peine de mort pour apostasie, les meurtres liés à l’”honneur” de la famille, et des dizaines d’autres pratiques de ce genre. Qui sont, soyons honnêtes, encore pratiquées quand même dans plusieurs cultures et religions d’origine non occidentale, et non seulement dans des cultures musulmanes. Pas seulement dans les pays d’origine de ces religions mais aussi parmi certains groupes d’immigrants minoritaires dans plusieurs pays occidentaux.

Sans oublier non plus que les pays occidentaux sont aussi souvent coupables de pratiques également déplorables, telles que le bombardement de populations civiles dans des pays du tiers-monde qu’ils essaient constamment de “pacifier”. Le terrorisme d’état étant encore plus meurtrier que le terrorisme officiellement privé (bien que souvent appuyé, de façon cachée, par des gouvernements de certains états, tel que l’Arabie saoudite et l’Iran). Le néocolonialisme occidental, aussi pratiqué de nos jours par le Japon et la Chine, nuit aussi énormément aux droits humains, indirectement par le  soutien étranger aux régimes corrompus et anti-démocratiques du tiers-monde, et directement par des investissements dans des industries très meurtrières (beaucoup d’accidents de travail, niveaux excessifs de pollution, salaires de famine, etc.).

En plus, il ne faut jamais oublier d’insister sur le fait que les pratiques culturelles déplorables, de certains pays du tiers-monde, ne sont pas toujours soutenues par la majorité des gens qui habitent ces pays, ni de la majorité des immigrants minoritaires provenant de ces pays. Tout comme la majorité des Québécois d’origine canadienne-française ne sont pas des racistes chevronnés. Finalement, partout dans le monde, il faut éviter de sur-estimer, aussi bien que de minimiser, le pourcentage de gens qui favorisent toutes sortes de comportements socialement réactionnaires. Des comportements qui sont encouragés et subventionnés par un très petit groupe de gens ultra riches et ultra puissants, partout dans le monde, dans le but de préserver leur domination sur des milliards de gens beaucoup moins riches et beaucoup moins puissants qu’eux.

Évitons également de sur-estimer, ou de minimiser, le caractère raciste de toutes sortes de communications provenant de beaucoup d’individus faisant partie des cultures majoritaires, en Occident aussi bien qu’ailleurs. Dans les débats entourant le port des symboles religieux, au Québec par exemple, le racisme peut faire partie des discours de certains individus issus du groupe majoritaire, voulant interdire le port de ces symboles. Toutefois, le racisme peut également faire partie du discours de certains individus provenant de populations minoritaires, voulant porter ces mêmes symboles uniquement pour narguer les populations majoritaires. Il y a quand même des millions de femmes musulmanes dans le monde qui ne portent pas le hijab ou n’importe quel autre vêtement, ou symbole religieux, du même genre. Ce qui démontre que le débat n’est pas vraiment lié à la liberté de pratiquer une religion quelconque versus la libération de la femme, mais beaucoup plus de libérer le monde entier des mouvements intégristes et ultra-conservateurs. Même le fait que beaucoup d’anglophones du Québec, et du reste du Canada, condamnent chaque tentative québécoise visant la séparation de la religion et de l’état, peut aussi être attribué au racisme, au moins partiellement.

Dans chaque région du monde entier, le fondamentalisme religieux, avec le nationalisme ethnique (totalement opposé au nationalisme civique), sont les deux piliers idéologiques des mouvements populistes d’extrême-droite. Un fondamentalisme religieux qui est aussi souvent d’origine chrétienne, hindoue, sikh, bouddhiste, juive ou confucéenne, que d’origine musulmane. Toutes les religions du monde possèdent leurs propres factions fondamentalistes, une observation qui s’applique également à toutes les confessions de toutes ces religions, telles que le Catholicisme, le Protestantisme et l'Orthodoxie de la religion chrétienne, ou le Sunnisme et le Chiisme de la religion musulmane.

En fait, ce n’est pas le multiculturalisme en tant que tel qu’il faut rejeter, soit l’idée de faire vivre harmonieusement ensemble sur un même territoire des communautés culturelles provenant de beaucoup d’origines différentes. C’est plutôt la version “essentialiste” du multiculturalisme qui doit être rejetée, selon laquelle n’importe quelle culture ou religion, telle que la religion musulmane, doit toujours restée fidèle pour l’éternité à ses concepts d’origine et n’a pas le droit d’évoluer le moindrement par la suite.

Une idée totalement fallacieuse qui provient surtout des théoriciens occidentaux du postmodernisme, selon lesquels il faut rejeter le concept même de “droits humains”, tels que conçu par les philosophes du siècle des Lumières. Puisque la diffusion de ce concept n’a pas réussi à éliminer le capitalisme, le colonialisme, le racisme, l’esclavagisme et toutes les autres formes d’exploitation humaine, par la suite. Comme si on n’a pas le droit de croire à un meilleur avenir pour le monde entier, ni même pour notre propre pays, parce que la philosophie libérale du XVIIIe siècle n’a pas été capable d’effacer tout ce qui est mauvais chez l’être humain, de toutes les cultures différentes, par un coup de baguette magique!

La souveraineté pour quoi faire, alors? C’est entre autres pour s’éloigner de l’idéologie multiculturelle à la Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, extrêmement bien enracinée, malheureusement, dans le fédéralisme canadien, selon laquelle n’importe quelle lubie individualiste, provenant des mouvements intégristes d’origine religieuse, a plus d’importance dans la société que la liberté républicaine de reléguer la religion, une fois pour toutes, à la sphère privée de la vie. C’est aussi de développer davantage ce qui reste de la pauvre sociale-démocratie québécoise, ayant subie depuis trop longtemps les élans néolibéraux, et parfois néo-fascistes, provenant des grands empires situés à l’extérieur du Québec. Ainsi que de s’éloigner davantage des économies trop dépendantes des industries extractives, surtout celles liées aux produits particulièrement polluants. Et de s’éloigner également du militarisme belliqueux des mêmes grands empires qui nous entourent. Donc, de cette façon, de faire une contribution québécoise, aussi modeste soit-elle, au progrès de toutes les valeurs humaines, plutôt que de subir la régression constante de ces mêmes valeurs.

“Billions of big babies”: now more than ever

Back in 2006, I published a book called Billions of big babies: the secular imperative, in which I argued that people all over the world were plunging into “a perpetual state of childishness” because of the revival of all sorts of outdated religions and ideologies that kept them from accepting even the slightest responsibility toward solving, or at least confronting, any of the world’s major problems. Most of my current blogposts are focused on the same kind of ethical considerations, lambasting the joint, neoliberal/neofascist “open conspiracy” by which such tremendously important issues as the rapidly deteriorating natural environment, rapidly escalating geopolitical confrontations between rival forms of imperialism, exacerbated by a renewed fascination with cultural and religious cleavages, exponential increases in private debt which will probably soon lead to a much more devastating financial crisis than the one that took place in 2008, and rapidly increasing divisions between the already unprecedentedly polarized social classes—are all being completely ignored, considerably downplayed or at best, only hypocritically addressed, by the world’s leading political, economic, social and cultural decision-makers.

With the exception of a relatively tiny group of radical intellectuals, and a small coterie of largely ineffectual protesters, this pollyanna attitude has also infected a vast portion of the world’s “ordinary” or “common” people. To be sure, there are several billion people out there, adults and children, who are forced to work all the time, just to stay alive, and do not get much of a chance to indulge in any kind of “childishness”, legitimate or otherwise. But for those other billions of people who do possess that luxury, most of them seem to be spending all their “off” time these days indulging various personal addictions toward whatever fantasy of deliberate ignorance that has been concocted for them by increasingly powerful forces, in the often overlapping realms of commercial publicity and populist propaganda.

Such as the idiots in the UK who managed to shut down that country’s most important airports for several days by flying their derelict drones, for the “fun” of it, as closely as possible to extremely vulnerable passenger jets containing thousands of potential victims. Old-fashioned “sales resistance” toward crappy goods and services, and even crappier ideas, seems to have almost entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. I even saw a title in a list of popular books being advertised last month, called, believe it or not, “The subtle art of not giving a (damn)”, although it was not the word “damn” that was actually used in that title. As a result, it no longer seems hard to understand why superhero movies, based on comic-book characters created for kids, have become so popular among millions of adults, in many different countries.

One of the most interesting articles that I read recently, denouncing the same kind of “cultural infantilism” that I was analyzing, was New Zealand psychologist John F. Schumaker’s “The personality crisis”, published in the November-December 2018 edition of the world-news magazine known as The New Internationalist. Schumaker drew on a whole series of extremely pertinent sources, to make the point that the deliberate dumbing-down of contemporary society and the rise of the sociopathic personality have created a “climate of apathy” and an aversion to responsibility that makes solving such horrendous problems as planetary destruction of the natural environment practically impossible.

“The cultural backfire effect”, in which the constant confrontation of ingrained cultural beliefs with extremely uncomfortable facts that undermine those beliefs completely, has resulted in people refusing to face up to reality even more than before, and “doubling down” on those disproved beliefs instead. In other words, extremely dangerous forms of deliberate denial, typified by such unhinged personalities as Donald Trump and Elon Musk (both individuals not specifically named by Schumaker in his article), means that most people living nowadays have been “perfectly groomed” for apocalyptic disaster. People like Trump may be completely clueless, or under the hypnotic control of a foreign Svengali, and people like Musk may be highly successful technocrats, hypnotized only by their own exaggerated personalities, but what they have in common is an innate sense of self-entitlement that is not at all related to any of their accomplishments.

My criticism of Schumaker’s article is not focused against anything that he wrote, but rather on the fact that he only referenced environmental degradation as the one overwhelmingly important issue whose potential resolution is being undermined by such cultural infantilism. In my opinion, the potential collapse of the entire world economy, enormously exacerbated social divisions and constantly escalating geopolitical confrontations, especially among the nuclear-armed powers, are every bit as dangerous as imminent ecological failure. Not so much as separate problems but more as highly intertwined complexities, that can only be confronted, all together and all at once, as interconnected threats to ongoing human survival. Which makes the current doubling-down on traditional forms of cultural indifference to scientifically evident realities that much more frightening. Not to mention also confronting society with the other horrendously difficult problem of trying to figure out how to go about combatting both elitism and cultural infantilism at the same time.

The other comment that I would like to make to what Schumaker was arguing is that this cultural infantilism is by no means confined in today’s world to the predominantly private-capitalist group of countries that includes most of Western civilization and Japan, countries on which the arguments of many of the sources referenced in Schumaker’s article seem to be focusing. In reality, quite similar kinds of infantilism have also infected all the other cultures in the world, including predominantly state-capitalist countries as culturally divergent as China, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia, along with most of the other countries in the former Third World, be they emergent economies or failed states. The long-standing division of the world between a small number of powerful imperialist states, on the one hand, and a much larger number of much less powerful states, and even less powerful stateless peoples, all of those geopolitical entities acting as a sort of mirror image of the enormous income and power divisions among the social classes, has also been intensely exacerbated in recent years during the same process of cultural polarization.

All these analytically separate trends have converged into an “open conspiracy” of overlapping ideologies, that (in spite of appearances) includes both multiculturalist neoliberalism and ethnic-nationalist neofascism (which supports neoliberalism in the socio-economic sphere of activity), as well as cultural infantilism. All parts of the globe are currently being affected by all three of those ideological tendencies, which, just to make things even more complicated, are also quite often expressed through religious fundamentalism, which is always extremely sexist, always “racializes” minority religions within each respective sphere of domination and often promotes barbaric acts of private terrorism, and state terrorism, as well.

This observation applies not only to Muslim fundamentalism, but also to Christian fundamentalism, and similar, antediluvian movements operating within all the other “old-time” religions in this world. Including the “animist” religions still being practised by thousands of indigenous peoples on every continent. In my opinion, it is impossible to understand what is going on in today’s world without considering how all these not-so-separate ideologies are constantly interacting with each other, as if they were all just analytical facets of the same highly complicated, anti-humanist form of cultural atavism.

In every cultural region, and reflecting the influence of those same ideologies converging to different degrees within each region, the deliberate refusal to take responsibility for anything and everything has become the entire world’s most important trend. Perhaps because it has been promoted for the past several decades by thousands of capitalist organizations all over the planet, not only by the leading, multinational, private corporations but also by the state-capitalist enterprises that currently mimic liberal maximization of private profit. In today’s world, every single, revenue-generating production process, and provided service, has been sliced up into dozens of separate, sausage-like sections, in a concerted attempt to avoid any responsibility on any one company’s (or any one country’s) part for the quality, or lack of quality, to be found in each and every finished product or service.

This same type of chopped-up-into-little-pieces approach has also been adopted, whenever possible, by every large political, social and cultural organization in the world, and even by every infected individual active on every one of the world’s social media, in an attempt to make sure that artificially “happy” people can just go on having as much mind-numbing fun as possible, forever. Without having to be rudely interrupted by anyone else’s complaints, whether those complaints come from mistreated workers, or misled customers, or downtrodden members of one’s own family. Not to mention being interrupted by the kind of fake friends foisted on fellow fraudsters by faceless functionaries from Facebook!

More and more deplorable people exist in every part of the world, and include not only the openly racist and sexist rednecks backing up Donald Trump, as referenced by his 2016 liberal opponent, Hillary Clinton, but also indirectly racist and sexist people like the Clintons themselves, as well as mainstream collaborators such as Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau. All those “internationalist” politicians unsuccessfully try to hide their own deplorable characteristics behind neoliberal elitism, an ideology that not only accentuates the already horrendous divisions between the social classes, but also by the same token adversely affects women and minorities even more severely than it also adversely affects men from various different ethnic and religious majorities.

The polarization of competing social classes, promoted all over the world by neoliberalism, has greatly contributed toward creating the “objective conditions” necessary for the Trump presidency, the Brexit fiasco in Britain, the yellow-vest movement in France, the Greek crisis, the largely neofascist government in Italy and several other European countries, the Bolsonaro presidency in Brazil and the rise of ultra-right-wing populism in several other Latin American countries, as well as the rise of even more authoritarian governments throughout Asia and Africa than the ones that already existed decades ago.

Now more than ever before, deplorability is therefore to be found concentrated not only among the richest and the most powerful elites, but also in a somewhat more diluted fashion in the various intermediate classes, all the way down to the lowest members of the human condition, in the so-called lumpen proletariat (beggars, criminals, prostitutes, etc.). All the world’s deplorable individuals, from whatever class and from whatever culture, are jointly refusing to be held accountable for a severe decline in everything positive in this world, such as genuinely sustainable development, social solidarity, empathy, humanism, pacifism, or even much maligned good manners. All those absences coming together in the overall refusal of millions of deliberately barbarian human beings in every part of the world to support any kind of universal values, which they all see as being uniquely directed only against their own culture by all the other, “obviously inferior” cultures.

A really excellent way in which to try to come to grips with all this ideological regression, not only that promoted by out-and-out, raving-lunatic, pro-fascist populists, but also by the more respectable kind of liberal elitists, is to turn the current fact-checking campaigns started up recently by some of the mainstream media into a more comprehensive, more radical exercise. “Radical” in this sense meaning getting down to the root causes of whatever kind of problem is being discussed. A legal expression long since adopted in several American states for oath-taking can prove to be useful in this context, namely the admonition not just to tell the truth, but to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” as well. Both of which are much harder to do than just to focus on one small part of what is deemed to be true.

Useful, that is, as long as we drop the addendum tacked onto that expression in several of those states, “so help me, God.” From a fact-checking point of view, since there is no way of intelligently validating the existence of the religious entity known as “God”, there is no way of maintaining a serious focus on the material facts when metaphysical concepts are introduced into the argument. As the French scientist, Pierre-Simon Laplace, pointed out to the emperor Napoleon in 1804, when asked why God had no role in his theory of the universe, the answer was that Laplace felt that he had no need whatsoever to refer to that particular (metaphysical) concept. We should also avoid getting waylaid by such other popular slogans as “all facts are relative”, whose influence was bolstered by the kind of deconstructionism that was quite popular in philosophical circles several years ago, since all the facts concerning every situation are by no means equally relative.

A really good example of what I mean by being radical, especially when it focuses on facts that are often ignored, or at least severely downplayed, by establishment figures, comes from comments made by several commentators after the recent death of former US president, George HW Bush. He was praised for being much more polite and gentlemanly than any of the current crop of deliberately foul-mouthed reality-show graduates like Donald Trump, thereby emphasizing the severe, recent decline in good manners among increasingly right-wing-populist politicians all over the world.

In fact, however, GHW Bush deserves to be remembered much more for a number of considerably more important reasons, such as his 1991 invasion of Iraq, to “liberate” the Kuwaiti emirate from Saddam Hussein, but even more importantly for being the leading instigator of the UN’s 1991-2003 economic boycott of Iraq, that killed about 500 000 people in that country. Many, many, more people in Iraq were killed by the boycott than by either the first invasion, or the second one carried out by GHW’s son, George W Bush, that eliminated Hussein and his regime altogether. Or even by both of those invasions put together.

This was the radical fact that should turn out to be the most important thing everyone should remember about GHW, not his gentlemanly attitude toward his opponents in the political establishment of the USA. In a similar vein, GWH’s father, Prescott Bush, should be remembered not so much for his own gentlemanly demeanour, but for his enthusiastic participation in the patrician coterie of American millionaires who supported Adolf Hitler’s regime for quite a long time. In other words, while it is true that politeness is an entirely necessary quality in human society, and should always be supported as much as possible, it is far from being the most important quality that people can possibly possess, especially those who are politically active.

Another situation that should be treated in a much more radical manner is the critique that a number of leading commentators have developed concerning the current world trend, also heavily influenced by the same overlapping ideologies identified above, toward increasingly authoritarian regimes all over the world. Liberal-minded people can legitimately bemoan the fact that multi-party democracy itself is being rapidly replaced by ultra-right-wing populist governments like the ones currently dominating such formerly liberal countries as the USA, Brazil, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, India, South Africa and so on. Thereby joining, or threatening to join, the list of such even more firmly authoritarian regimes as China, Russia, Vietnam, Iran, the Philippines, the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Columbia, Guatemala, Honduras and a host of others.

Most mainstream commentators, however, inevitably fail to mention that the liberal democracy that is indeed declining all over the world, was never all that democratic in the first place. In a world in which the income gap and the human-rights gap between the social classes is constantly being enlarged on the whole (in spite of a very small number of regional exceptions), to say that “democracy is declining”, without embarking on a much more radical analysis about how limited democracy has always been even in liberal countries, is to miss the main point.

The main point being that exaggerated class divisions have always undermined democracy, which can only become somewhat closer to a description of reality with the adoption of a comprehensive, “cradle-to-grave”, series of social programs designed to considerably attenuate enormous differences in income and political power. While it is often easier to adopt some of those programs in a liberal democracy than it is in an authoritarian regime (even under totalitarian “communism”), commentators of whatever political stripe ought to freely recognize that merely political democracies (“one person/one vote”) can never entirely overcome the deleterious influence of fundamental class divisions. As for the total abolition of social classes altogether, that interesting idea has never been successfully implemented anywhere, and continues to exist only inside the feverish brains of a few isolated dreamers. It goes without saying, however, that very few of the world’s mainstream commentators will ever admit to this sort of radicalism, since it would undermine their own preferred, wishy-washy ideologies completely.

Which is not to say that liberal democracy is completely useless, for all sorts of interesting reasons. One of them being that my blog, and thousands of others like it, would never last for more than two minutes in any completely authoritarian regime. The goal of which, as the new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, pointed out recently, is to do away with ideologies like socialism, communism and anti-imperialism forever, along with all the people who still dare to believe in such things. In fact, Bolsonaro went even further than that, by mimicking dozens of other freshman dictators in the past, pretending that he really wanted to do without “any ideologies” at all and to govern Brazil strictly according to its constitution. As if ultra-right-wing populism were not in itself an obvious ideology, and as if the Brazilian constitution, like all the other constitutions in the world, were not self-evidently ideological in origin as well.

It is a common characteristic of all “strictly pragmatic” strongmen (caudillos) to try to get their political base to agree with everything that they do, simply because they are doing it, and never to question any of their policies. Disagreeing with them is their definition of “ideology”, just like Donald Trump’s definition of “democracy” is agreeing with him, no matter how many thousands of lies he tells and how many times he changes his mind from one day to the next, about every single policy. All the authoritarian regimes running all the countries listed above always define what are for them mere words, like “democracy” and “ideology”, as being whatever they want them to be. Even if their definitions change completely from one political situation to another. Which is also another excellent example of yet another aspect of the “cultural infantilism” identified by John Schumaker in his article.

Radical fact-checking can also be used to challenge the pretensions of many naive environmentalists, in countries like Canada where a couple million indigenous people live alongside seventeen times as many “settlers”. That is, whenever those naive environmentalists pretend to believe that all “First Nations” people are inherently good ecologists, living “close to nature”. Until they stumble across many different indigenous groups who support resource development projects in their regions for exactly the same reasons as “settlers” do. Mostly in order to get jobs located close to home, if only for a limited number of years. It turns out that living “close to nature” does not often result in being able to provide adequately for a burgeoning population.

The Anthropocene proposal is another possible example of what can happen when even good environmentalists take their arguments a little too far. In this case, I am not at all criticizing the Anthropocene idea for pointing out that the human impact on the natural world, since at least the industrial revolution (1780-1880), has increased exponentially over the past two centuries. There is no doubt about the fact that agricultural and industrial pollution, all over the world, has resulted in the much more rapid disappearance of thousands of multicellular species than used to be the case, at least since such colossal events as the enormous meteorite collision that apparently led to the destruction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Nor am I denying the effects of climate change, that is expected to cause global warming by about four degrees by the year 2100 (although humans might not  survive long enough to witness that particular event). The stupendous accumulation of plastic forms of pollution in the world’s oceans is also a very real threat for marine life, including the fish that millions of people depend upon as their main source of food.

My criticism of the Anthropocene concept is centred instead on the attempt to turn the deleterious effects of human-caused pollution into a geological argument. From the fact-checking point of view, it seems to me that geological events take place on a much larger time scale than the mere 200 000 or 300 000 year time-scale of human (homo sapiens) existence on this planet. There are also quite a few potential causes for the possible destruction of human life that are not in any way caused by human intervention itself. One should never forget that entirely “natural” (non-human) causes of catastrophic events potentially leading to our collective demise also include such things as another collision between the Earth and a truly large piece of space junk (like the one that presumably knocked off the dinosaurs), or the eruption of a truly giant volcano (like the one that presumably lies under Yellowstone Park in the USA, or other ones apparently located inside the Indonesian archipelago).

People are not going to get anywhere with arguments about human irresponsibility if we exaggerate our effect on the physical universe. Of course disruptive human behaviour is much more threatening than any possible natural causes of potentially catastrophic events, for the same reason as before (the totally different time scales involved). In any case, one way or the other, the disappearance of all human beings, for whatever causes, would not have much of an effect outside our immediate astronomical environment.

Getting back now to those much smaller-scale realities, within the human realm of things…Another fascinating example of how to radicalize mainstream fact-checking, related to infantile regression in society, has to do with analyzing the articles written every day by thousands of newspaper columnists (where such people still exist). About such things as trying to figure out why parents of children living in countries where primary and secondary education are supposed to be provided for free by the state, still end up paying thousands of dollars per year for “non-essential” educational materials. Those columnists regularly point out, quite rightly, that most of what is officially deemed non-essential is in fact quite essential after all, if all the children involved are supposed to end up getting a decent education, not just those whose parents are rich enough to pay for everything that is being ignored by the government. Or those fortunate enough to belong to a schoolroom class in which the teacher ends up paying for the materials instead, out of his or her own pocket.

Some of the columnists involved are then able to trace that situation to governments, even in relatively rich countries such as Canada, which have been practising austerity for the past forty years because of the nefarious influence of neoliberalism. What the vast majority of those columnists refuse to do, however, if they want to keep their jobs, is to take the next obvious step by pointing out that those governments are often obliged to adopt such austerity programming by the fact that a large number of really important multinational corporations, run by private capitalists as well as by state capitalists, have managed to avoid paying the larger amounts of taxes that they used to be paying several decades ago, when many of those public educational systems were initially set up.

The tax evasion involved having been in some cases stupidly encouraged by governments competing among themselves for new, practically non-existent investment in any non-speculative sector of the economy, by deliberately lowering taxes on rich investors and their corporations, far below the rates that used to be charged. Or by the corporations directly adopting various legal (and illegal) stratagems, more than ever before, by registering most of their largely financial investments, and their profits, in the world’s very numerous tax havens. Not to mention actively supporting enormous increases in the levels of corruption, and criminal activity in general, in every single country (some more than others).

Infantile regression of contemporary society can also be found in the recently developing trend  of providing for poor people’s welfare by eliminating government welfare checks and returning to the age-old practice of providing “alms” through philanthropy and private charity, especially religious charity. Those people who set up all the government-supported welfare systems, back in the twentieth century, did so because they realized already back then that private charity was totally incapable of providing adequately for poverty-stricken people, and that anyone who pretended the contrary was simply condemning most of them to life-threatening misery. It is nothing more than barbarian backtracking in society to promote private charity (as an alternative to public welfare) nowadays, for neoliberal or for neofascist reasons, especially given the fact that the entire world population has doubled over the past fifty years. Not to mention the other pertinent fact that although total world wealth has also doubled during the same period, most of it has been gobbled up by extremely rich people, who only make up about one percent of one percent (one ten-thousandth) of the world’s current population.

Which brings to mind yet another example of how to do radical fact-checking. This one has to do with the so-called “population bomb” of the 1970s, when several commentators tried to convince everyone that the world population was increasing much faster than anyone had ever expected before, particularly in Asia. In fact, it turned out that many of the world’s most populous countries, some in Latin America but most in southern and eastern Asia, experienced a radical decline over the past fifty years in the average number of children actually being born to women in the potentially fertile age group. Much the same as similar changes had already taken place before that in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Japan (the first of the Asian nations to successfully industrialize).

In this case, the radical part of the fact-checking has to do with the recent realization that although birthrates have indeed declined in most parts of today’s world, with the notable exception of most parts of Africa and western Asia, the current world population is not only double what it used to be during the 1960s, but is also still steadily climbing higher all the time. Not as much as some exaggerated predictions had pretended to reveal, but nevertheless a lot faster than what is good for the world these days, when the combined effects of neoliberalism and neofascism have eliminated any recent progress in fighting against poverty.

It is therefore exceedingly disgusting to fix so-called “extreme poverty”, as the World Bank has done, at the absurdly low level of people earning less than two dollars a day. Instead, we should be fixing the real level of overall poverty, enabling most people to earn an income capable of providing them with at least a modicum of hope for the future, forty times higher (at about eighty US dollars per day). A change in practice that would give everyone a much more realistic picture of how much progress still remains to be done in the fight against poverty. Even in a world in which progress, especially social progress, has become a dirty word, detested by every country’s most reactionary, and thereby most deplorable, people.

Another popular expression in the world media these days, that is desperately crying out to be fact-checked, is the assertion that there are already 400 million “middle class consumers in China”, with many more millions being added to the list every year. Given the fact that a “middle class” person in China earns only about one-tenth of what an average middle-class person earns in the USA, the use of that term merely serves to hide the reality of relative poverty in that country, an omission that is even more obvious when commentators attempt to use the same argument for countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico. People also have a tendency in this context to overlook the fact that all those countries possess enormous populations that do not get anywhere near even those so-called, “middle-class standards”. This is simply just another method of indirect lying, by omission rather than by commission (as in more direct lies coming from people like Trump).

Discussions about religion in the world media also provide us with hundreds of other excellent examples of debates that require radical fact-checking in even more obvious ways, since the claims being made are so incredibly at odds with reality. There was a recent case in point about some judge in the province of Ontario (Canada), who got all upset about the “spiritual trauma” that could be caused to some of the more orthodox Jews due to the fact that some bakery in that province came up with a cake mix that claimed to be composed of kosher food, when in truth it was not. The newspaper report about that event quite rightly reminded readers about how several thousand such products have in fact been manufactured in a kosher way, at least since the Second World War, in dozens of countries all across the planet. Even if the vast majority of the people consuming those products have not been Jewish at all, let alone those of the more orthodox variety.

What was missing in this particular report was any reference at all about how peculiar it is to oblige non-religious people, or those coming from some other religion, or even liberal-minded practitioners of the same religion, to consume kosher products, when no one in those same countries has ever been forced to consume halal products, or any other similar religious fare. An even more radical remark would be to compare this situation with the equally unusual situation in which private schools (such as many of those in the neighbouring province of Quebec) often receive considerable help from the government, the entire population helping to pay for private-school education that is quite often under the control of various kinds of religious educators, emphasizing purely religious content, rather than the usual secular fare. Curiously enough, the province of Ontario has never decided to subsidize religiously-organized private schools, particularly for the large Catholic minority in that province, like the governments in Quebec have been doing. So why should Ontario refuse to subsidize religion in one instance, and willingly do so in some other instance? Coming up with comparisons like these is what radical fact-checking ought to be all about.

Another even more interesting example comes from the USA, in which the House of Representatives patted itself on the back (so to speak) for having recently authorized the wearing of religious headgear (such as the hijab) inside the building, for the first time in history. The problem here, from a radical fact-checking point of view, is that the journalists reporting on this event cannot legitimately denounce other legislative assemblies as being intolerant for not doing the same thing. Without also pointing out that the people wearing such headgear, ostensibly for religious reasons, are also indulging in intolerance towards any of the world’s women, who have chosen instead to free themselves from the discriminatory effects of fundamentalist forms of religion. In spite of religiously-inspired theories about how religious people are much more serious, and sincere, in their “deeply-held” beliefs than are people following mere secular ideologies, the fact remains that there is no intelligent way of distinguishing between the more or less deeply-held beliefs of religious and non-religious human beings.

Radical fact-checking should also be used to help solve a number of other problems that have cropped up again in the news, such as the proposed extension of patent and copyright protection. These programs were initially set up, at least ostensibly, to reward major effort, on the part of large corporations as well as on that of creative individuals, so that such people and their organizations would be properly reimbursed by society for their contributions to material and cultural innovation. In fact, as has been pointed out repeatedly in dozens of different reports, after about five or ten years of this protection racket, very few of the big-name companies or well-known individuals from whatever variety of star-system, have gone on to produce anything more, possessing any significant social value. Instead, patent and copyright protection have quite often become just another way to make umpteen gobs of money for a very long time, for no good reason. In the meantime, extremely useful innovation, in certain limited cases like investigative journalism (which is always innovating by definition), has not been protected in any way, shape or form. Quite the contrary.

In fact, the general decline in journalism has become, at one and the same time, both a cause and a consequence of the dumbing-down of society, coming at the worst possible time, when critical thinking has never been more important to nothing less than the survival of the human race itself. Unfortunately, many of today’s journalists do not seem to be all that interested in investigative work, and end up copying a lot of their material directly out of the press releases that they receive from professional publicists hired by whatever private corporation, government agency or other official source that is being written about. Which, to say the least, does not contain a great deal of critical thinking.

The accompanying decline in the overall levels of shared cultural, background information, which is to say at least minimal levels of popular knowledge about science and society in general, is also directly related to declines in primary and secondary education. Focusing not only on mere statistics about the number of people going to school all over the world, but on the dumbing-down of educational curricula instead. (Which is often exacerbated by the exceedingly poor material conditions in which many schools operate, all over the world.) Children being educated  should be receiving much higher levels of general knowledge these days, not the much lower levels that have been reported in most parts of the globe. As for critical thinking, it is often at school that young people learn how to copy from someone else’s work, thereby preparing at least some of them to become successful publicists, or plagiarizing journalists, later on.  

Yet another general example of issues that could benefit immensely from radical fact-checking is in the functioning of millions of historical monuments, erected over the years all over the world. A case in point that was in the news recently was the fact that the obscure, seldom-seen monument to the Irish potato famine of 1847-1849 in Montreal (Quebec), near the Victoria Bridge, is apparently going to be much enlarged and enhanced. Local authorities have finally come up with a plan about how to make this monument much more well-known and well-visited in the near future. Which in my view ought also to be planned for another extremely poignant monument, about the same horrendous event, that is also hidden away, and therefore seldom seen, along the waterfront of the city of Toronto (Ontario). Among the projects decided upon recently in Montreal was the installation of a vegetable garden on the site, to presumably remind people of the origin of the famine, a blight that wiped out most of the potato plantations on which most of the Irish people back then depended for most of their food.

From a radical fact-checking point of view, what is missing in this case is any reference to the fact that Ireland back then was under the total colonial control of the British Empire, which had recently adopted an extreme form of economic (and social) liberalism, the ancestor of today’s neoliberalism. That particular famine ended up killing about a million people, sent another million into overseas exile (such as to the British colony of Canada), and also forced several hundred thousand others to become cheap labourers in the nearby island known as Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).

What is also left out of the equation in most media accounts of that event is the fact that the same Irish colony was also producing, during the same period, enormous quantities of other agricultural products (meat, dairy and so on), at least some of which could have been diverted by imperial government intervention into feeding the starving multitude. Rather than being mostly shipped over to Britain, to make a lot more money for the mostly absentee landlords that owned the best agricultural land in Ireland. Doing so, however, would have been anathema to the prevailing ideologies of the period, not only economic liberalism but also British imperialism. Which according to historians like Mike Davis was also largely responsible for several other nineteenth-century famines, such as the even more murderous ones in “Third World” colonies like British India.

What is really good, on the other hand, about monuments to the Irish famine, and other such events, is the fact that at least they have as a subject things (even very negative things) that directly concerned millions of “ordinary” people. Unfortunately, most historical monuments in the world are more like most of the ones to be found in Paris, like the emperor Napoleon’s famous “Arc de Triomphe”. Which was apparently defaced recently during one of the more violent episodes of the “yellow vest” protest movement in France. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the particular individuals who carry out such vandalism, but it ought not to be forgotten that the vast majority of the world’s historical monuments, be they in France (the Louvre is another example), in the USA (the White House), in Russia (the Kremlin) in Egypt (the pyramids), in India (the Taj Mahal), or in any other country, were erected by extremely rich and powerful people whose original intent was to impress the masses of “ordinary” people about how excessively important their “superiors” were. And, presumably, to remind those less well-off, and less well-treated people, about what kind of “fire and brimstone” might fall upon their heads if they ever forgot the lessons learned from admiring such impressive monuments.

There are also dozens of other stories appearing in the news these days, about equally simplistic or childish ways of thinking about things, that also cry out for radical fact-checking. Such as showing how incredibly hypocritical all sorts of different official pronouncements, as well as editorial opinions, can be when they furiously attack (quite rightly) tobacco smoking, while simultaneously supporting, often through legalization, increased smoking of marijuana instead. Not much critical thinking going on there. Or whenever certain people from the academic world, or some governments or political parties, get very upset about Islamophobia (the popular opinion according to which all Muslims are terrorists), while at the same time promoting the kind of religious essentialism (all Muslim thought comes from its origins and cannot ever evolve in any way without ceasing to be Muslim) that provides ideological cover for religious extremists, many of whom do indeed go on to become active terrorists.

Just re-reading everything that I have written so far in this blogpost makes it difficult to imagine how human beings are supposed to go on surviving for a very long time. In spite of the fact that we are being faced with quite a few increasingly difficult problems, we are nevertheless simultaneously dumbing-down our responses to any of those problems, adopting instead more and more simplistic, reductionist and childish approaches to every possible issue. To be sure, no one can hope to become an expert in every field. Unfortunately, most of the experts in each one of those fields are very much inclined to be exceedingly biased in favour of the rich and powerful people who employ them. Some of the world’s most important people can be very good at accumulating large quantities of capital, and others may be very good at obtaining, or holding on to political power. But none of those people can be trusted to be unbiased when it comes to solving, or even confronting, the world’s most important existential problems. No one seems to have an overall vision about what a fully adult attitude toward all of this could possibly resemble. There does not seem to be any way out of the maze into which we have all so childishly blundered.