TOT (NDP) Supports Violent Goon Bigots

EFL commentary below. TOT (NDP) same as PQ. Marois & NDP join militant sovereignists in Bill 103 protest - Violent separatist groups buddy up with the PQ, Bloc & NDP

By DON MACPHERSON, The Gazette June 8, 2010
Who says Pauline Marois is a snob? The Parti Québécois leader proved again yesterday that she's willing to associate with anybody, no matter how disreputable, as long as he's a sovereignist.

Yesterday, the nationalist Société Saint-Jean Baptiste de Montréal announced the formation of a coalition opposed to Bill 103, the Charest government's proposed language legislation.

Marois is among the leaders of the coalition, along with leaders of the federal Bloc Québécois, other sovereignist groups, and labour organizations.

Members of the coalition include the federal New Democratic Party, the provincial, left-wing-sovereignist Québec solidaire party, and several other nationalist organizations.

The latter include two small extremist groups, the Réseau de résistance du Québécois and the Jeunes Patriotes du Québec.

Both groups are notorious for using violence or the threat of it to try to intimidate political adversaries, even other sovereignists, and disrupt their events.

And the willingness of Marois and leaders of other mainstream parties and organizations to accept support from them represents acceptance of their goon tactics.

As recently as last November, the RRQ organized, and the JPQ supported, a disorderly demonstration in Montreal against the visit of Prince Charles.

Before that, threats of violence from the RRQ last February forced the cancellation of a re-enactment of the battle of the Plains of Abraham.

The RRQ was not to be outdone by the JPQ, which the year before that had tried to disrupt a meeting of a small English-rights party, federal Liberal Justin Trudeau's campaign launch, and even a PQ nominating meeting.

All of these incidents were well-publicized. Yet prominent mainstream sovereignists continue to associate with the groups, and even provide them with moral and financial support.

The cancellation of the re-enactment on the Plains of Abraham made it possible for sovereignists to hold a reading of nationalist texts on the battlefield on the 250th anniversary of the battle in September. Among the texts was the 1970 manifesto of the terrorist Front de libération du Québec.

The PQ and the Bloc provided financial and technical support for the event, and Marois and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe accepted to participate with RRQ leader Patrick Bourgeois as readers.

Last year, Marois, other PQ members of the National Assembly and Solidaire MNA Amir Khadir contributed financially to the JPQ for a march. The group also publicly thanked Bloc members of Parliament for donations.

Elected representatives of the PQ and the Bloc regularly participate in more orderly activities of the JPQ.

And as Marois, wearing her white scarf of ethical "purity," spoke at the news conference held by the coalition yesterday afternoon, a representative of the RRQ, Mathieu Boucher, stood directly behind her.

(As the news conference ended, Boucher shouted at me that I was a demagogue a Gazette journalist who was present.)

It's not clear what role the JPQ and the RRQ will play in the "massive" mobilization against Bill 103 that coalition spokesman Mario Beaulieu promised yesterday. But Beaulieu said demonstrations and rallies are already being organized.

But keeping that promise of "massive" mobilization might not be easy.

The day after the proposed language legislation was announced, the story failed to make the front pages of most newspapers in French Quebec the next day. And the day after that, it had disappeared entirely. Bill 103 was starting to look like a one-day wonder.

Marois must feel she needs all the support she can get - even that of goons.

There's a reason this blog is titled "Eugene Forsey Liberal". When Forsey left the NDP, it was over their recognition of Quebec as a nation, as he recognised that premises lead to conclusions, and getting into bed with QC nationalists, and accepting their premises, could only lead to terrible consequences for any decent social-democrat or liberal, or patriotic Canadian. And so we have seen. I know many NDP supporters outside Quebec are unaware of what their party is up to in Quebec. It is simple. The NDP, in Quebec, is so desperate for support that it has thrown in with the worst bigots, bigots so bad that Lucien Bouchard attacks them...and the NDP defends them. It started with symbolism, "QC as a nation", which inevitably provided the premise to overthrow the Official Languages Act and minority language rights nationally. Now the NDP supports repressing fundamental rights and freedoms, even beyond what Charest is doing. The NDP is associating with and supporting violent bigots. And these groups, we may laugh at them, but they are no joke, no more than your local ethnic supremacist group is, wherever you live. As you know, it's easy to laugh at them, but as unbalanced as they are, they are serious, and use violence, and hurt people and things.

We all have policy differences with our parties. But it seems to me that supporting bigotry, and real, violent bigotry, should be beyond the pale for any decent human being and any decent political party. I urge NDP supporters outside Quebec to read through the links in this post, and do further research on their own. If you are a decent human being, you can no more support the NDP and its pro-bigotry and pro-violence policies in Quebec than anywhere else, I would hope. If you lived in a close riding and there were votes to be had from communautarian-minded white supremacists, would you support a nominally left-wing party or candidate who went trolling for their votes, either through overt actions or through winks and nudges? Why would you have any lower standards for Quebec and Quebeckers? Are we inferior? Less worthy of consideration? Less important than your own province or riding? When did it become OK to turn a blind eye to your party's support of the repression of fundamental rights elsewhere in the country, to ignore the company of goons it is keeping? I urge you to either change your party's policies, pronto, or, like any decent person, reconsider your support for that party. How else can you live with yourselves, now you've read this post and know what's going on?