Another view on the protest culture
Blogger Penny Red inquires into our student and popular demonstrations while entirely buying the script of “the history of subjugation of French-speaking workers in Quebec before the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s.” Metafilter looked at Speak white today too.
ant6n 16:10 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
Are you implying that that idea is untrue? I wouldn’t be able to judge either way, being too young and not here long enough, so I wonder what you think would be a more accurate ‘script’?
Kate 16:19 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
I tend to see a larger role for the Catholic church than is envisioned in the story that says the bad Anglos were responsible for the repression in Quebec before the 1960s. And Maurice Duplessis was not an anglophone. I am not saying there weren’t anglo-backed businesses that took advantage of the situation but I think in Quebec the brainwashing had already been accomplished by religion.
Susana Machado 16:44 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
From my very scientific poll of having asked my mother-in-law and her older sisters… The Chruch at the time seemed to have been doing most of the repressing and then point at those eeeevil protestants that spoke english on top of it as an excuse to “we are defending you from those boogymen” In fact one of the aunts was saying that in her youth ( 40s.. 50s ) the priests would end their sermon by ” and may god given strength to our mother the Church to defend us against the english” . The anglos were certainly not all innocent either but most of what I’ve heard was in those tones. … Unless THAT only happened in my in-laws family… as I said my poll was ” very scientific”
Kate 20:51 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
Someone’s browbeating me on Twitter about this post, to which I will reply here because I’m not about to break up my response into 140-character tweets
1. Incidentally, the “script” you claim @PennyRed is “buying” is one single sentence in a long article. Nothing else merited comment? Why did I single out this element in Penny Red’s blog post? I think partly because it demonstrated she’d accepted this issue simplistically, which calls into question her general judgement on things going on here. Don’t mistake me – it’s a complex situation and even people who’ve lived here forever and paid attention to issues don’t necessarily agree on what’s going on. But it helped me take her pulse quickly.
2. Read your blog response; are you implying the majority of the ruling class in Qc up to & including Duplessis wasn’t anglophone? I was not. But most of the people running everything in North America are anglophone. They don’t stop short at oppressing their own people, let alone people in other countries, speaking other languages, etcetera. Quebec francophones were not alone in being oppressed as workers, but it wasn’t the English-speaking plutocrats who imposed Church-based passivity and poor education on them – they bought that themselves before the industrial revolution came along.
Is it worse or better to be oppressed by one of your own, speaking your language? If you have to learn another language to make a good living, are you oppressed, or are you in the same boat as millions of people on this planet who have to learn English, Mandarin, Spanish or Swahili to get by?
qatzelok 22:09 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
@ Kate: “the brainwashing had already been accomplished by religion.”
BY religion, yes. But FOR whom?
Kate 22:36 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
I think a lot of people here really believed in the religious line, no kidding. I also think plenty of people felt that it was important other people should buy it, even if they didn’t themselves. A lot of the upper crust knew that religious beliefs were useful in keeping the working class in line, and that’s not true only of Quebec, but the control the Catholic church held in Quebec until the 1960s was something special. It’s not for nothing it’s called the grand noirceur.
You can debate forever about the connection between control and religion. I had a fight on this blog once when I wondered aloud how much the “settlers” of New France, your Maisonneuves and Mances, believed they were bringing enlightenment to the savage, and how much they actually knew they were using religion as a method to soften up the natives for conquest.
J.B. 23:44 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
It took me a while to figure out that I could reply here rather than on twitter. Suffice it to say I think you’re being exceptionally inflammatory by writing off the notion that Francophone Quebec working class people were subjugated by English bosses as something into which the author “entirely bought in,” as though this was not a relatively well-documented phenomenon. This arrogant dismissal of Anglophone power structure’s role in the suffering of lower class Francophones is something I was raised on (by the Anglo-Quebec side of my family, not by the working-class Québécois side) and if I’m browbeating you it’s because I really bristle at the extent to which Anglophones both within Quebec and without want to deny as much as possible the responsibility of any people of their linguistic group in subjugating others.
Yes, obviously the Church is responsible for the blunt end of the stick, and Duplessis likewise, but who had the money in Montreal in the 40s? Who were the bosses? Who were the executives? On the well-to-do side of my family, they were anglophones, who worked in banks and insurance. On the working class side of my family, there were Francophones who worked in labour or door-to-door sales. I was raised in a mixed Franco-Anglo neighbourhood where it was common mythology that French-speakers were poor, immoral, selfish, dirty, uncultured animals, and I’ve seen that attitude reflected in many places over the years. It’s impossible to divorce that sort of racist contempt–bred of colonial domination–from class politics and imagine that because English plutocrats were oppressing workers everywhere, therefore the experience of Francophone working people was therefore made worse ONLY or mainly by the tampering of people of their own language. Please. The fact that entities like the church and politicians collaborated in that colonial domination doesn’t change its nature.
(A point, incidentally, seemingly lost on many bigot Péquistes and their fiction of “de souche,” “pur laine” great-great-great-grandchildren of white immigrants, to whom this land supposedly belongs, rather than the First Peoples they took it from. The Liberals too– won’t we have great fun watching them attempt to impose Strateco’s uranium mining, which Mistissini just flatly rejected, on that community with the argument that since it’s Cat. 3 JBNQA land, it doesn’t belong to the Nation of Mistissini but rather to “Québec.” If it isn’t one fucking plutocrat, it’s the other. But I’m not forgiving my Anglo forebears: they were racist thugs and many of them did their best to raise me with those attitudes, so I’m not ever letting them off the hook.)
qatzelok 00:18 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@ Kate: “how much the “settlers” of New France, your Maisonneuves and Mances, believed they were bringing enlightenment to the savage, and how much they actually knew they were using religion as a method to soften up the natives for conquest.”
First of all, they didn’t think they were bringing “enlightenment” to anyone. Quebec was colonized pre-Enlightenment.
Secondly, if the natives were “softened up for conquest” with Christianity, what does this say about Europeans? That they were also rendered politically castrated by being forced to be Christian? But FOR WHOM?
Kate 00:48 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@qatzelok, the word “enlightenment” has a more general meaning than the specific one of the 18th century intellectual enlightenment you’re using.
Many Christians really, really felt that they held the truth and were bringing hope to the savages and saving them from a grim afterlife. There are photos of a St-Jean-Baptiste parade in the 1950s with chars allégoriques labelled with things like “supporting missionaries” and “bringing religion to the savages” and “strengthening the veneration of the Virgin Mary” and things like that. It’s almost impossible to overstate how strong this collective belief was at the time.
It is hard for us to get our heads around this, but some people really believed it was an objective truth and conversion was the most important thing you could do for non-Christians. Yes, as recently as 1950s Quebec. They were doing it because they were Christians and felt they were helping save people and thus would be rewarded in Heaven. It was of absolute, paramount importance in people’s minds.
Added later:
1954. “Nos artistes au service de Notre-Dame” as a float in the St-J-B parade. Go have a look at the rest of the set on the Archives de Montréal site.
So it’s not a question of FOR WHOM. It would require a long, careful teasing out of facts with citations and so forth, but when the Europeans came to North America there had to be a mixture of people who were coming to bring enlightenment (I will use this word, and no, I’m not confused about the century) to the savages, people working for the French king and hoping for personal advancement, and people out to make a profit. Some of them could probably manage to do all three at the same time without feeling too much strain, some were likely giving lip service to religion while setting up fur trading stations and raping the native women. I am not enough of an historian to guess at the proportions, but I’m pretty sure of the general threads, given the result.
I don’t think Quebec has ever quite processed its fast flip from religion en masse to nationalism en masse. It may take another generation to gain some objectivity on its effects.
qatzelok 10:35 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
Kate, Europeans were forced – by violence – to convert to Christianity in the 4th Century. This was done to soften them up and make them easier to rule over. In essence, Europeans were ruined, and then turned into drones to ruin other people. This has happened many times in history, with slaves fighting to enslave other people. All you need is a liberation text to do this. And some guns and money, of course.
Jack 10:54 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
J.B. what frustrates many english speakers is this convenient binary, rich blokes, poor down trodden french speakers, is that it’s a cartoon. It’s the most reductive way to look at Quebec history, but it is the most productive politically. Since you dealt in anecdotes let me pitch this one. When the Habs were great, they had local Montreal players named Moore, Harvey, Worsley, Marshall, coached by a Bowman. Every one of them, the sons of working class english immigrants, have you ever heard their stories, has their class ever been acknowledged? No , because it doesn’t fit with a comforting victim narrative, when you are a victim you are never wrong.
Kate 11:00 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@qatzelok, I don’t think it was that simple. Consider the text of Beowulf. It was written by someone not long after the Norse conversion to Christianity and I don’t think he’s faking his belief in the new Christian god. Nobody forced the Norse to convert: this was not a society with a gun to its head. I would like to see you try to make a Viking accept a new belief system by force.
There were complicated reasons. One was that often a king could see an advantage in conversion and his people had no choice but to follow. It was that era’s version of joining the European Community (in fact, if someone hasn’t written this idea up I have dibs on it).
But you could also make a case that the old Indo-European pantheon of gods were played out. People had been sacrificing to Odin and pals for a long time and maybe the myths no longer answered their new questions. Maybe they were ready for something new.
If a new religion gets traction in a place like that, you’d better believe people saw some advantage in switching.
I know Christianity was imposed on people in many places (often because the ruling class switched then decreed the folk practices of the people illegal or immoral, later because colonizers showed up with better technology and either you joined or they killed you). I am no fan of it. But I think we miss a lot by simply saying “people were forced to accept it by violence.” It was often a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
Kate 11:51 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@Susana: exactly. The thing that distinguished the Québécois then was religion, not language. After religion collapsed, more passion was devoted to language.
@Jack: yes.
@J.B.: As Jack says, it wasn’t as clear as all that. Working class anglophones and allophones were also being oppressed in the times we’re talking about. I do not accept your claim that I’m being arrogant. I come from several generations of people who worked in factories around Montreal and spoke English. I am not about to apologize on behalf of plutocrats who have nothing in common with me but the language we speak.
ant6n 12:32 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@qatzelok
I’d argue that Christianity gave Europeans a basic value system that helped them overcome the mess of the dark ages; a value system that evolved over the centuries (first via Luther, later via enlightenment, etc.) to the (nearly) secular humanism that exists there now.
J.B. 12:45 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
Jack, yes, I have heard the stories of working class anglos in Montreal–especially the Irish in Griffintown, the Jews in the area that les habitations Jeanne Mance are now. The existence of the oppression of working people is not the issue here– rather, it’s the argument that because all working people are oppressed, those subject to systemic colonial racism because they were French were not MORE oppressed, and anyone who believes that is “entirely buying the script.”
There’s a corollary here that I use gently because, much to the chagrin of sovereigntists, the experience of the French under English rule was nothing like slavery. BUT people like Jim Goad in the US (author of “The Redneck Manifesto”) have argued that all working people in the south were subjugated and oppressed, yet we focus on the suffering of the black population. The answer to that, obviously, is that while working people are oppressed, those who have additional forms of oppression placed upon them are more oppressed than others who– in the Montreal context–at least have the benefit of speaking the dominant language.
Kate, I’m not asking you to apologize, because it has NOTHING to do with you. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, either, that my forebears were racist and taught me really shitty attitudes about French people. That’s not my fault any more than my great-grandfather’s attitudes to the French are my fault. But pretending that the French working classes were not directly and significantly subjugated, independently of others of the same class, due to the language they spoke, seems to me an extremely difficult position to defend. There were aggravating factors from the francophone side as well, but economic domination plus racism will always equal something more damaging than economic domination alone, even if that on its own is a terrible thing.
Jack 13:13 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@JB… “those subject to systemic colonial racism because they were French were not MORE oppressed” and then later you write,”But pretending that the French working classes were not directly and significantly subjugated, independently of others of the same class, due to the language they spoke, seems to me an extremely difficult position to defend”, isn’t that what your first paragraph did ?
Robert J 13:17 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
Lots of good points here.
There is a nationalist “script” that oversimplifies the oppression of the francophone working class. It’s unfortunate because aside from this idea I think that Quebec should probably become a seperate country eventually (I’m an 8th generation Canadian anglo by the way).
Quebec has always had a different cultural identity from the rest of Canada, but the prominent role of French here is just one part of that. Politicians and journalists use the language card to attract easy attention. What we need is a leader and a political class that knows how to put forth Quebec’s values (and their difference with the ROC) without reducing it to language.
Kate 13:23 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
J.B., then what follows? I’ve always had difficulties from being an anglo in Montreal, not advantages. Most of my old friends left a long time ago and will never come back. Believe me, no rich anglo is going to hire me because I’m a fellow anglo, so i don’t even get the advantages people get in other places because of being in a minority group, of getting help from within the group. There’s no solidarity among Quebec anglos. We disown each other at the drop of a hat. Viz., our exchange.
Robert J: If Canada keeps going in the direction Harper wants, in a way it soon won’t exist any more, if a country means shared values like protecting its citizens from poverty, protecting its territory from rampant damage and so on. Canada will just be a wide open strip mine for anyone to come and pillage. If Quebec can hold out against this then yes, it probably deserves to be its own country.
I feel sorry for the eastern provinces the day that happens, though.
Robert J 13:30 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
I think that Quebec’s process of repatriating powers from Canada will help other regions (such as the Eastern provinces) to reevaluate Confederation. I’m in favor of separation because I believe in regionalism as a general principle. Large federations tend to bulldoze over local culture and values. They’re good for building transcontinental railways/highways but not much else. A loose federation of North American states that served mainly to coordinate shared infrastructure and negotiations between states would be better for everyone.
J.B. 13:35 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
Jack, what you’ve read of my first paragraph was my attempt to restate what I felt Kate was doing in her phrasing of the issue in the original post, a phrasing I disagree with.
Kate, the only thing I think one can do is be sensitive to this history, while not being so sensitive as to ignore the fact that it also fostered the anti-semitic conscription riots, or present-day péquiste scum attempting to stir up fear and hatred over the idea that good pur-laine folks might be eating halal meat without even knowing it. Recognizing the history of racism against the Québécois doesn’t have very much to do with one’s daily existence as a Quebec anglo, but denying that power and racism sound to me like part of a script of aggrieved Anglo victimhood that I grew up hearing. The organization of power is different today than 70 years ago and people who believe in decent common values– the right to be well cared-for in a hospital when you’re sick, the right to be educated without graduating with debt it will take decades to pay off, etc.–have to shift with the time and recognize that it’s people like Desmarais and Peladeau who are the greatest obstacle to those ideals.
Jack 13:47 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@JB thanks for the clarification, I however disagree with your premise. An Irishman from the Point and a Frenchman from St.Henri working for a Scotsman up the hill ,means exactly the same thing.The desire for the mantle of victim hood is a post WWII phenomena that is saught now by every ethnicity and is increasingly ridiculous.Especially in a place like Quebec where every significant political,economic and cultural lever is pulled by someone whose origins are in France.
qatzelok 23:30 on 2012/06/17 Permalink
@ Kate: “Beowolf”
This was written many centuries after the forced conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Also, Rome itself was allowed to keep its Roman gods for a few generations after the “colonies” had been pacified with the Christ meme.
@ ant6n: “I’d argue that Christianity gave Europeans a basic value system that helped them overcome the mess of the dark ages”
Or, this forced conversion to anti-nature superstition ruined Europe, and by extension, the rest of the world as it was colonized to enslave it and pollute it (with the best Abrahamic intentions). Our current age is looking fairly dark, and this is in no small part due to the ubiquitousness of miracle-expectations and superstar God, and a special relationships to the magical cosmos that defines our social hierarchies.