The Establishment and Antisemitism

Antisemitism has become routine, and too much of the establishment, including the government and the media, is uninterested. (1500 words, 8 minutes)

The Trudeau government stood firmly against the entirely imaginary antisemitism of the Freedom Convoy, a protest that had no antisemitic element whatsoever, but now has more trouble with the real thing.

Bullets were fired at a Jewish school in Toronto this week. Again. I have lost track of the number of attacks — firebombings, shootings, vandalism — on Jewish institutions. Antisemitism has become routine, and the reaction of the establishment, led by the Prime Minister and including the media, is mere rote pro forma press release pabulum, lacking conviction and scandalously ineffective.

The same people who used the Emergencies Act against peaceful protesters and who continue to abuse the criminal justice system to persecute the leaders of the entirely peaceful Freedom Convoy are not too concerned about antisemitism, nor about open support for terrorism, nor ongoing violence in the streets. A large part of the problem, as I wrote last week, is that the new antisemitism comes from the left. This leaves our leftist establishment at a loss.

Robyn Urback of The Globe and Mail has noticed the hypocrisy. But The Globe, like the rest of the elite media, is part of the problem. Its account of the Freedom Convoy was strongly alarmist and complicit with the government’s “unacceptable racists” narrative, while its reporting on antisemitic and anti-Israeli protests portrays them as at least in part justified, or at any rate legitimate. The Globe has this in common with the rest of the mainstream media.

The New Antisemitism of the Left

We saw last week protests in Vancouver in which in which protesters shouted “Death to Canada!” in the same breath as, “Death to the United States, and death to Israel!” The protesters also expressed support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and burned a Canadian flag.

It would sound supercilious to observe that the protesters overestimate the importance of Canada, whose disappearance would have no effect whatsoever on the Middle Eastern questions that exercise them so greatly (in that at least they are very Canadian). But the protesters see Canada as a Western country — on that they are right — and it is the West that is the true object of their hatred. This new antisemitism of the left is an antisemitism that is at bottom anti-Western and anti-patriotic. The Jews, once accused of un-patriotism, are now accused of being too American and by extension too Canadian.

Elite Media on the Freedom Convoy

Urback begins by describing the Freedom Convoy as a threat to order, and an “organized menace”. I live and work in downtown Ottawa, and had not been paying great attention to the news when I heard honking in the street. Going outside, I discovered a joyful scene, full of happy people, and some really nice trucks. Clearly, Urback is getting her information from The Globe and Mail, which doubled down on swastikas, but did not trouble to speak to convoy participants or leaders. But while Urback is wrong about the Freedom Convoy, she is right that the same standards applied then would make the current pro-Palestinian movement also a national emergency.

I wrote about my observations at the time of the Freedom Convoy here. The more industrious

Rupa Subramanya

, now of

The Free Press

, spoke to 100 participants, which is about 100 more than most mainstream outlets, and found neither racism nor extremism.

What the Truckers Want

Elite Media on Leftist Protest

The opposite side of the mainstream media’s bias is displayed by their prevaricating “both sides” approach to antisemitic protest. Long-lasting occupations at universities were reported as matters of civil liberties (of the protesters), of anti-colonial or anti-war or pro-Palestinian protest, and as legal contests involving the property rights of universities. Harassment of Jews and journalists by the occupiers was simply not reported. Disruptive and violent street protests, including those with smoke bombs and pyrotechnics, are similarly ignored.

We are dependent upon Rebel News and other oppositional or independent journalists, chief among them the indomitably sardonic Caryma S’ad, for news of the ongoing low-level violence surrounding these protests. Here is Rebel’s Alexa Lavoie reporting on an occupation in Montreal:

The problem is one not merely of government policy, but of hegemonic opinion, which is to say of the mainstream and credentialized opinion that appears in The Globe as in the rest of the prestige media. Elite opinion downplays or simply fails to report ongoing violence and harassment. When antisemitism is reported, it is covered as isolated incidents, as matters for the police blotter, and is not connected to the larger antisemitic and anti-Israeli movement. This is one reason why the violent left targets independents: the far left wishes to control coverage, and knows they can rely on the averted eyes of the elite media.

Progressive Ideology and Media Coverage

A large part of the problem is that the antisemitic and pro-Palestinian protesters speak the same language of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as many of the journalists on The Globe and the rest of the elite media. The media do not (always) share exactly the same ideology as the protesters, but they do have adjacent ideologies. The moderate newspaper-writing left believes that the extreme left is well-intentioned, likely has half a point, and is at any rate a legitimate voice moving society in a good and progressive direction.

The elite media believe none of these things about populist protest, which they therefore view as rationally incomprehensible. This incomprehension leaves them grasping at conspiracy theories (Russians, foreigners, far-right podcasters) when covering ordinary Canadians who object to being bossed around by Ottawa. It leaves them open to the government’s propaganda, as became evident during the freedom Convoy, when there was direct collusion between the government and the media.¹

Right-wing violence, if any could be found, is congenial to both forms of leftism. Left-wing violence is openly advocated by the far left, but more difficult for the moderates to explain away. We have it on the authority of The Globe, four years ago, that Antifa is a conspiracy theory, and they have published nothing further on the topic in the ensuing four years, evidence to the contrary being passed over in embarrassed silence (I provide one instance that I saw personally, an Antifa protest in Ottawa, here.)

There is also a racial element to the elite media’s relative unconcern with leftist violence. Many pro-Palestinian demonstrators are recent immigrants, and have brown skins and unusual names. Our elites are axiomatically in favour of “diversity” and hence of mass immigration. Antisemitic violence puts them in the uncomfortable position of suspecting “racialized” people of bad actions. Embarrassment leads again to silence.

Urback: A Refreshingly Naive Legal Proceduralism

Urback ends by asking, “Why is some intimidation tolerated, while others elicit a federal response? When, exactly, does a crowd cheering for the death of Canada become an emergency?” She thereby accepts the government’s characterization of the entirely peaceful Freedom Convoy as “intimidation,” while posing, not entirely rhetorically, the question of two-tier policing.

Urback’s naive legal proceduralism — in plain language, she applies the same rules to the Freedom Convoy and to antisemitic protest — helpfully illustrates the fact that laws in Canada today, as across the West, are not applied equally to all. We live under a two-tiered legal system. The rule of law is at an end when those in favour with power, or belonging to privileged groups, or demographics whose support the ruling party hopes for in an impending election, enjoy special dispensations, while those who shout “Freedom” or honk horns but will never vote Liberal face frozen bank accounts, police horses, and months or years in prison.

Urback is clear that she is not advocating the use of the Emergencies Act, i.e. the War Measures Act, against anti-Canadian and antisemitic protesters, and I agree with her. It seems in any case that the government does not know who is guilty of many of the worst attacks, so they would not know who to arrest or whose bank accounts to seize. I for one do not trust them with any more power than they already have.

Enforce the Laws We Already Have

It is already illegal to shoot at schools, to firebomb synagogues, to threaten, to assault or to harass, to fire pyrotechnics in public streets, to vandalize businesses. All that is required is to enforce the law. The government had to fabricate charges of violence or incipient violence against the Freedom Convoy. Now antisemites have brought the real thing into our streets. Where is the RCMP, the OPP, the Hendon Project, CSIS, the CSE, the NSIA, FinTrack, and the rest of the alphabet soup of police and intelligence agencies used with such vindictive enthusiasm against Tamara Lich and the joyful truckers?

1. Urback should speak to her colleague Marie Woolf, formerly of Global and now of the Globe, who is in Public Order Emergencies Commission documents coordinating Freedom Convoy coverage with Liberal aides.