The thing that most struck me in this article is just how little I have in common with these people
There are lots of people I disagree with, but these people and I don’t even have a shared perception of reality. The things that have got them so mad they want to rip apart their country are things I couldn’t bring myself to care about if you put a gun to my head
steve-rap on
It reads like the “rise and fall of the third reich”
People mad about something. Leaders attaching emotions and a movement behind it. People blindly follow. Well. The rest doesn’t go so well but it took them a long time to realize they were pawns
DingBat99999 on
I grew up in Calgary. I had to leave after university as the province was in yet another of those doldrums triggered by a fall in international oil prices. Moved to Toronto to find work.
Imagine my surprise when exactly 0 people in Toronto spent any time thinking up ways to screw Alberta. Just people going about their own business dealing with their own problems, not blaming anyone else.
Now, I gotta be fair. Most of the people I remember from Calgary weren’t like that. But there were definitely some I remember as walking records of imagined injustice. I loved the city, but some inhabitants were a little bit…. whiny.
Councillor_Troy on
At some point there needs to be a reckoning with and public shaming of the the legions of pundits, politicians and assorted politicos who sternly lectured us for years that all of this rising right wing extremism was actually just a sincere disagreement about energy policy that we had to coddle and validate.
nuhuunnuuh on
The great debate within the North American white nationalist movement since at least the 1960s was whether to purify the Aryan core, or broaden the base and accept a broader definition of “white” which encompasses the demographic majority, including Roman Catholics of Latin descent, Slavs, and even some of mixed race. Lineage-tracking one-droppers vanguardists vs. practical big tent racists.
So: the big tenters won. And their white nationalist ideology is the mainstream ideology of the Republican party in America now. America was always white supremacist but this is different somehow: it is the specifically dysfunctional hateful paranoid worldview of a particularly conspiratorial neo-Nazi far right that has gone mainstream.
That’s what a vote for separation in Alberta is a vote for. A republic for white Albertans to take control back from the multicultural globalists. That’s how they understand it. It’s what the referendum is really about.
It’s what America’s neo-genocidal rumblings are about, too. Listen to the ideology that’s coming out of the White House. Great replacement theory. White people victim of genocide in South Africa. Targeted changes to US aid funding that seemed specifically designed to kill as many HIV+ Africans as possible. Even the antivaxer positions have clear social Darwinist undertones.
Neo-Nazis -> alt-right -> current admin.
Strangely Trump himself isn’t a believer but he’s so far gone it doesn’t matter. Both Vance and Hegseth are fully indoctrinated — holy crusaders for white Christian civilization. God help us.
ChimoEngr on
> Sylvestre said Canada leads the world in “assisted suicide,” then alleged that “they take and sell the organs.”
The first statement may be true, but we’re a long way from Larry Niven’s Known Space universe where ARM harvests the organs from everyone convicted of any crime.
> “Would it be unreasonable to think that maybe 200,000 of them could be foreign soldiers?”
Yes. I’m struggling to think in what world that would be a reasonable concept.
> I look forward to seeing battleships on Edmonton’s mighty shores.)
Gotta love an Arrogant Worms reference.
> per capita the Prairie provinces are better represented in Ottawa than Ontario.
Given how they ignore any arguments about Canadians being per capita greater emitters of green house gases than Chinese, I don’t see that getting much traction.
> “Do you support an immediate halt to all immigration from Muslim nations?”
Hmmm, that sounds familiar for some reason, like 2017 was crying out to be heard again.
33rdDivision on
The barely-disguised white nationalism of the entire Albertan separatist movement is grimly amusing to me, for the sheer banality of their vision.
Not only is it not within the same solar system as anything remotely resembling reality, the revolutionary society it pines for is one where… people can open-carry firearms, drink beer in public, be Christian, have their kids learn about the virtues of oil and gas in grade school, and not have to see any brown people living their lives.
That’s it. That’s the sum total of what they consider to be an Albertan culture so vehemently different from the rest of Canada that it warrants seceding.
Ontario gets a lot of stick for being the Canadian default and apparently not having a culture of its own. But if this is what Albertan separatists mean by this, they have absolutely nothing to boast about either.
Poe_42 on
Every separatist I’ve spoken with the truly believe everything will be the same, except they won’t have to pay federal tax. They believe somehow every federal service and department will magically appear at no cost. Most believe the province will be so rich that they won’t have to pay any taxes what so ever. Hell many believe BC and Saskatchewan will jump in and join as well.
I haven’t met one that had any grounding in reality.
toilet_for_shrek on
>“Immigration and deportation” shot to the top of the list immediately. This surprised only me.
My God. Smith, like PP, was just as pro-mass immigration and foreign worker as Trudeau was until it became unpopular. The irony is lost on these people
9 Comments
The thing that most struck me in this article is just how little I have in common with these people
There are lots of people I disagree with, but these people and I don’t even have a shared perception of reality. The things that have got them so mad they want to rip apart their country are things I couldn’t bring myself to care about if you put a gun to my head
It reads like the “rise and fall of the third reich”
People mad about something. Leaders attaching emotions and a movement behind it. People blindly follow. Well. The rest doesn’t go so well but it took them a long time to realize they were pawns
I grew up in Calgary. I had to leave after university as the province was in yet another of those doldrums triggered by a fall in international oil prices. Moved to Toronto to find work.
Imagine my surprise when exactly 0 people in Toronto spent any time thinking up ways to screw Alberta. Just people going about their own business dealing with their own problems, not blaming anyone else.
Now, I gotta be fair. Most of the people I remember from Calgary weren’t like that. But there were definitely some I remember as walking records of imagined injustice. I loved the city, but some inhabitants were a little bit…. whiny.
At some point there needs to be a reckoning with and public shaming of the the legions of pundits, politicians and assorted politicos who sternly lectured us for years that all of this rising right wing extremism was actually just a sincere disagreement about energy policy that we had to coddle and validate.
The great debate within the North American white nationalist movement since at least the 1960s was whether to purify the Aryan core, or broaden the base and accept a broader definition of “white” which encompasses the demographic majority, including Roman Catholics of Latin descent, Slavs, and even some of mixed race. Lineage-tracking one-droppers vanguardists vs. practical big tent racists.
So: the big tenters won. And their white nationalist ideology is the mainstream ideology of the Republican party in America now. America was always white supremacist but this is different somehow: it is the specifically dysfunctional hateful paranoid worldview of a particularly conspiratorial neo-Nazi far right that has gone mainstream.
That’s what a vote for separation in Alberta is a vote for. A republic for white Albertans to take control back from the multicultural globalists. That’s how they understand it. It’s what the referendum is really about.
It’s what America’s neo-genocidal rumblings are about, too. Listen to the ideology that’s coming out of the White House. Great replacement theory. White people victim of genocide in South Africa. Targeted changes to US aid funding that seemed specifically designed to kill as many HIV+ Africans as possible. Even the antivaxer positions have clear social Darwinist undertones.
Neo-Nazis -> alt-right -> current admin.
Strangely Trump himself isn’t a believer but he’s so far gone it doesn’t matter. Both Vance and Hegseth are fully indoctrinated — holy crusaders for white Christian civilization. God help us.
> Sylvestre said Canada leads the world in “assisted suicide,” then alleged that “they take and sell the organs.”
The first statement may be true, but we’re a long way from Larry Niven’s Known Space universe where ARM harvests the organs from everyone convicted of any crime.
> “Would it be unreasonable to think that maybe 200,000 of them could be foreign soldiers?”
Yes. I’m struggling to think in what world that would be a reasonable concept.
> I look forward to seeing battleships on Edmonton’s mighty shores.)
Gotta love an Arrogant Worms reference.
> per capita the Prairie provinces are better represented in Ottawa than Ontario.
Given how they ignore any arguments about Canadians being per capita greater emitters of green house gases than Chinese, I don’t see that getting much traction.
> “Do you support an immediate halt to all immigration from Muslim nations?”
Hmmm, that sounds familiar for some reason, like 2017 was crying out to be heard again.
The barely-disguised white nationalism of the entire Albertan separatist movement is grimly amusing to me, for the sheer banality of their vision.
Not only is it not within the same solar system as anything remotely resembling reality, the revolutionary society it pines for is one where… people can open-carry firearms, drink beer in public, be Christian, have their kids learn about the virtues of oil and gas in grade school, and not have to see any brown people living their lives.
That’s it. That’s the sum total of what they consider to be an Albertan culture so vehemently different from the rest of Canada that it warrants seceding.
Ontario gets a lot of stick for being the Canadian default and apparently not having a culture of its own. But if this is what Albertan separatists mean by this, they have absolutely nothing to boast about either.
Every separatist I’ve spoken with the truly believe everything will be the same, except they won’t have to pay federal tax. They believe somehow every federal service and department will magically appear at no cost. Most believe the province will be so rich that they won’t have to pay any taxes what so ever. Hell many believe BC and Saskatchewan will jump in and join as well.
I haven’t met one that had any grounding in reality.
>“Immigration and deportation” shot to the top of the list immediately. This surprised only me.
My God. Smith, like PP, was just as pro-mass immigration and foreign worker as Trudeau was until it became unpopular. The irony is lost on these people