Dan Freeman-Maloy: The question is whether Canada is going to stand with an increasingly isolated North Atlantic Alliance, under exclusive U.S. strategic direction, or look to the majority of humanity—the formerly colonized world—with some respect.
And you have a move right now to say “No” at the United Nations. “We don’t give a damn what the Third World says, we’ve got the powerful on our side.” And you’ve got a move in Canada to say, “Immigrants should have left their politics at home.”
The old original Canadian population groups—the old principal, ethnic settler groups—support Israel, and the immigrants have to shut up. You have an attack on what limited gains have been made through what was often a fairly flimsy anti-racist branding exercise in Canada.
But the question right now is: will the Third World—as represented by its governments—and will Third World peoples—as they are represented in the populations of the Global North, including Canada—be allowed to speak truthfully to the accurate record, as concerns Palestine and other issues?
Or, is there going to be this massive attack from the old centres of power, who still think they can get their way, because there was a period where their people were dominant?
Now, their dominance is still there, but they do not have the power to impose what they’re trying to impose right now. Everybody knows they’re lying. Everybody knows they’re bullies.And if what they aim to do is just impose their lies as truth—in Canada, it’s not going to work, in an increasingly diverse Canadian society.
So I think we should not be overawed by the bullying displays we’ve seen in recent weeks, but should instead understand that we are looking at a system that’s overplaying its hand, and that we need to move cautiously, but with commitment and resilience, knowing that time is on our side, and this is not how it’s going to be for long.
These things are opening up. There has been an extraordinary backlash.
But powers don’t act like Israel has acted, when they feel in a position of strength.
This is an awful, heart-wrenching crisis. But it’s also a power lashing out in the sort of racism that does correspond to strategic decline, and figuring out how, with the utmost preservation of life, we can help direct these developments in the interests of more people, I think is something that we really need to pour some energies into.
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– Katia Lo Innes, Associate Producer, The Breach
