Americanization and Hillier’s Race War

The head of Canada’s armed forces is trying to start a race war. This general Hillier, who weeks ago explained the intensification of Canada’s military campaigns in Afghanistan with comments like: “These are detestable murderers and scumbags, I’ll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties… We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.”

That was Hillier’s contribution to poisoning the airwaves with hate.

The head of Canada’s armed forces is trying to start a race war. This general Hillier, who weeks ago explained the intensification of Canada’s military campaigns in Afghanistan with comments like: “These are detestable murderers and scumbags, I’ll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties… We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.”

That was Hillier’s contribution to poisoning the airwaves with hate.

This week, Hillier tried his hand at fear.

“Osama bin Laden, some time ago, indicated Canada was a target,” he said on Candian TV. “As a responsible citizen of the world we have been involved in the campaign against terrorism, and, of course, we try to bring stability to places that are unstable and therefore have acted as hotbeds for supporting terrorism. All that, I think, does make us a target”.

Both comments are based on profound, willful ignorance of what terrorism is, how it works, who does it, and why. Both are based on caricatures and racism. And of course, both come directly from the United States and would have fit perfectly with that political context.

And of course, the whole point of these interventions is to try to make the Canadian political context (never *that* different) the exact same as that of the US.

So, too, the ‘security’ measures proposed by these ‘responsible citizens’ who are doing their best to ensure Canadians will face terror – not because Canada is such a ‘responsible global citizen’ but because it is not. Because it is complicit in the mass murder in Iraq, the slow genocide in Palestine, the invasion and occupation of Haiti. To protect Canadians from the terrorism of opportunist organizations who prey on those desperate for revenge against vastly superior, abusive militaries, Canada would do well to distance itself and its foreign policy from that most irresponsible of global citizens.

But instead, Canadian plans to protect our ‘security’ by instituting no-fly lists. Cameras on transit systems (watch out for those poor people). And so on.

This is deadly. And to the degree that Canadians fall for this, we will be helping our own destruction – not just the physical destruction of innocent victims of the attacks Hillier seems to take such pleasure in predicting, but in the destruction of the social protections and democratic potentials that this society has left – as we are helping the destruction of others, in Haiti and other places.

To the degree that Canadians fall for this, we are also blinding ourselves to real threats. There is a campaign in Toronto to set task forces and increase policing in response to a rash of shootings in various parts of the city. Canada has a decent system of gun control. Handguns are restricted firearms and have to be registered. Where are all these guns coming from for the shootings? Could it be that this vaunted border that is supposed to stop terrorists is allowing guns to come from the United States? How about sealing the border to guns and letting people travel freely? That would be just crazy, wouldn’t it?

The shootings and the guns are quite serviceable to the Hillier constituency. Not only do some arms syndicates make profits and some expendable people get killed (mostly black kids), but the fear created by the crime can be used to justify increased policing, repression, and imprisonment. Sound familiar?

Canada has atrocious foreign policy, hate, fear, crime, punishment, and a beaten up social welfare system with socialized health care. Look south and look at the future. More atrocious foreign policy, more hate, more fear (terror, even), more crime, more punishment, and no health care.

You (or, say, a Haitian, before the coup when they had a very few freedoms and liberties) could be forgiven for having an image of Hillier or Stephen Harper in your mind, and thinking: “These are detestable murderers and scumbags… They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties…”

Author: Justin Podur

Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction. Teach at York U's FES. Author. Writer at ZNet, TeleSUR, AlterNet, Ricochet, and the Independent Media Institute. View all posts by Justin Podur