Trans-Continental Hackery

Poor Ed Morrissey. His attempt to gin up a scandal based on the insane, evidence-free ramblings of Curt Weldon is going down in flames. So now he’s bringing his inimitable brand of tendentious hackwork back north, with similar results. His new attempt at a scandal is an unequivocal claim that the new Governor General of Canada is a Quebec secessionist. This is certainly a problem for Martin if true. Even leaving aside the fact that Quebec secessionism is a reactionary movement, suffused with racism and anti-Semitism, obviously a secessionist should not be the formal head of state. But how credible is Morrissey’s assertion? His source is a sloppily written Globe and Mail article. Once you strip out the guilt-by-association, here’s the entirety of the evidence:

Hard-line separatists in Quebec have unearthed quotations by Ms. Jean and [her husband] Mr. Lafond from a book he wrote in 1993…

[…]

“Independence isn’t given away, it’s taken,” she said to a group of high-profile Quebec nationalists…

[…]

In the book, Ms. Jean is also featured joining in a toast to “independence.” She says, “C’est fini, les petis peuples!” (Which translates roughly as, “No more, dominated people!”) She also notes that there are “three choices for independence.” She says that in Haiti, the country of her birth, the choice was “painful.” In Martinque, it is that of “compromise” and in Quebec it is “on hold.”

So, Jean said that oppression and being dominated is bad, but that secessionism is Quebec is on hold. So, Jean could be a secessionist, or she could a Quebec nationalist who thinks that the aspirations of francophones can be realized within a federal Canadian state. Given her long-standing ties to the nationalist Liberal Party, the latter is rather more likely. And, to state the obvious, if you’re claiming without qulaification that Martin “Named [a] Secessionist To Governor-General Post” you’re going to have to do better than that.

But, of course, there’s an additional problem for Morrissey. He notes at the beginning that “the popular Giles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois not only control a majority of seats but also align themselves with Martin’s nemesis, Conservative Stephen Harper.” And, of course, there’s nothing new here; it was Brian Mulroney who made Lucien Bouchard one of his most powerful cabinet ministers, although at least when Mulroney aligned himself with Bouchard he wasn’t yet an overt secessionist. But Morrissey doesn’t seem to recognize the howling contradiction in his logic here. To summarize Morrissey’s apparent position:

• If a nominee for governor general, made by a very nationalist Prime Minister, made an off-the cuff comment more than a decade ago that, if you squint hard and make a variety of dubious assumptions, can be interpreted as expressing sympathy for Quebec secessionism, this is a massive scandal.

• If a conservative political leader engages in an alliance with a political party that is overtly, unambiguously secessionist in 2005, great–you should vote for him!

Yep, Morrissey’s analysis of Canadian politics is just as coherent and persuasive as his analysis of American politics…

…In comments, Pithlord objects to my characterization of Quebec secessionism. It is, perhaps, too simplistic to call it “reactionary”; it depends on the issue. But I stand behind my claim that it is “suffused with racism and anti-Semitism,” although of course this does not imply that every pro-secession Quebecer is racist or anti-Semitic; I’m sure that a majority are not, and many proponents are decent progressives. Notheless, claims that secessionism are based on “civic nationalism” are just implausible, starting with the fact that Quebec is already part of a pluralist and civic nationalist democratic political culture. Parizeau’s “gaffe” (in the sense of mistakenly telling the truth) reflects the demographic reality of the secessionist movement, which rejects and is rejected by ethnic minorites and anglophones. The “civic nationalist” myth is about as plausible as the claim that race had nothing to do with the Republican takeover of the South. (The underlying point of Parizeau’s remarks, of course, is that “ethnic voters” are not real Quebecers.) I do not, ultimately, believe that Quebec secessionism is a progressive project. (I carefully distinguish this from Quebec nationalism and the political shifts of the Quiet Revolution, which were certainly necessary and just.)