Who would have thought to see that? Books burnt in Canadian schools. Not 1, not 10, not 30, but almost 5,000 books destroyed by a Francophone Ontario school board (I knowlon the article of Thomas Gerbet of Radio-Canada).
As in Afghanistan under the Taliban; as in Germany under the Nazis, where students were invited to purge their libraries of all Jewish, anti-German and Communist books; as in the time of the Inquisition, when the executioner burned in the public square the works deemed heretical.
Obviously, today it is quite different: “It is a gesture of reconciliation with the First Nations”, said Lyne Cossette, spokesperson for the Providence Catholic School Board who carried out this pruning. ideological, and it is, she added, “a gesture of openness towards the other communities present in the school and our society”.
These books were taken from libraries, burned, destroyed or recycled on the pretext that their content was “obsolete and inappropriate”, that they presented “false historical information”, “negative images” of “indigenous people”, that they used. words to ban, or because the committee in charge of this purification had “not liked” the painting appearing “on the cover” of one of the redacted works.
However, can we see in this liberticidal act a gesture of “reconciliation” and “openness”? Well-meaning people might say to themselves, just like our Prime Minister Justin trudeau, that, even if they themselves will never agree to this [sic] let us burn books ”, there needs to be some understanding and that it is not“ up to non-Aboriginals to tell Aboriginals how they should feel or how they should act ”. Moral relativism, when you hold us!
On the contrary, it is up to all of us, human beings and Canadian citizens, to declare loud and clear that doing this is intolerable in a democracy. It would also be necessary to remind this lady, her bosses the school counselors, the members of the censorship committee who agreed to indulge in this sinister masquerade, as well as Suzy Kies, “independent researcher” and alleged Native, that it is is always in the name of Good that we burn books.
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In this regard, should we be reassured that Quebec schools have instead “decided to keep controversial books, but to put them in a special place”? The measure is certainly less shocking than delivering books to the flames, but the fact remains that reviving the famous “Hell” of the religious libraries of yesteryear is an act of censorship which proves those who attack them right. to freedom of expression and creation.
However, the logic of these censors and these book destroyers is always the same: whether in the name of God the Father, of Karl Marx as read exclusively by the Party, of the Führer and his twisted conception of the Culture German, of “wokism” and its ritual denunciation of racism, or of the Aboriginals in whose name Suzy Kies claims to speak, the Author is still opposed to the authors and denies them the right to exist, because he is the only one to hold the truth.
Whatever their motivations, and whether or not they engage in spectacular fireworks, the censors do not tolerate the diversity of opinions any more than freedom of thought, and even less this freedom of expression without which a democratic regime would be nothing more than an empty shell. For them, there is only one tolerable speech, theirs.
This is why their dogmatism can only be anti-liberal and authoritarian. It is also why they feel hatred for reason, the scientific method, argued and civilized debate, preferring peremptory declarations and denunciations. In this regard, they fall under the banner of what Zeev Sternhell called the anti-Enlightenment, a current which was once the prerogative of the extreme right and which now thrives within a certain left and, paradoxically, until at the heart of the liberal parties.
This militant anti-nationalism is clearly manifested in the words of Ms. Susy Kies (also co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Commission of the Liberal Party of Canada) who asserts, without fear of ridicule, that people “like her, who memorize the knowledge transmitted orally, are more reliable than written records”.
Truly ? The Athenians of the Ve century BC AD already knew that it was better to be able to trust written laws than just the arbitrary word of judges! Will we trust, two thousand five hundred years later, to such “keepers of knowledge” who, in the name of nebulous traditions, claim to possess infused science and claim the right to impose on everyone their own reading of history? ?
Thankfully, these claims of Suzy Kies just took a hit with the revelation that she lied and that she’s not even Indigenous. However, the reaction of Justin Trudeau, who was careful not to condemn this autodafé, is cause for concern. Tacitly encouraged at the highest level of state and by the leaders of various institutions, censorship is here for good. Especially if we do nothing, collectively, to protect freedom of expression.
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