Dean Del Mastro Plays the Race Card From an Incomplete Deck

When Dalton McGuinty released his party platform, one item had Federal Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro in a flap.

The $10,000 incentive to employers who hire immigrants.

For Del Mastro it brought back chilling reminders of Bob Rae and affirmative action, that made it difficult for him as a "young white male".

Mind you, according to Del Mastro it did not mean that he couldn't find work, only that it restricted his opportunities. He should have tried living as a non-white male, or a female of any shade, when doors were permanently closed. For many there were no opportunities at all.

To me this Peterborough MP is a "chilling reminder" of the racism of his Reform-Alliance-Conservative Party. They were singled out in the 1995 book The Colour of Democracy, as bending toward "white supremacy".

This way of thinking characterizes the ideology and behaviour of right-wing Supremacist groups such as the Heritage Front. While such groups can, to a certain extent, be ignored because of their small numbers, such thinking is also evident in the doctrines of the Reform Party [those doctrines written by their policy chief Stephen Harper], who won a substantial number of votes in the federal election of 1993 and who hold 52 seats in Parliament.(1)

Reform members were notorious for racial slurs.

Tim Hudak is going to have enough trouble removing the shadow of Mike Harris, without having to contend with the wider shadow of the Reform Party.

Hudak himself weighed in, suggesting that it was an insult to immigrants to be singled out. Rich coming from the man who sought Jason Kenney's advice on how to mine votes by exploiting immigrants.

I found that offensive.

The fact of the matter is that immigrants remain among the poorest of Canadians. They are also more likely to be exploited in the workplace (2).

Del Mastro's colleague, Lee Richardson, once suggested that most crime is committed by immigrants, not those you lived next door to. He was wrong of course, but it didn't matter. They were convenient scapegoats.

I look forward to the day when hiring incentives are not needed, but unfortunately, today is not that day.

I think that this was not only a smart political move, since it challenges Hudak to remove the "hand up" to those he's hoping to court, but it is the right thing to do.

Sources:

1. The Colour of Democracy, Racism in Canadian Society, By Frances Henry, Carol Tator, Winston Mattis, and Tim Rees, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995, ISBN: 0-7747-3255-5, Pg. 24

2. Persistent Poverty: Voices From the Margins, by Jamie Swift, Brice Balmer and Mira Dineen, Between the Lines Toronto, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-897071-73-1

And finally on Hate Groups Being Validated by the Conservative Movement

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Nothing has done the electoral and moral credibility of liberalism more harm than the failure to take this attack seriously" - Michael Ignatieff, University of Toronto, 1998

The final part of the documentary: White Power USA: The Rise of Right-Wing Militia in America, is simply an interview with the filmmaker and author of the book Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Chip Berlet.

Berlet relays the same message that Michael Ignatieff did more than a decade ago. There is a great harm in not taking this attack seriously.

When the Reformers first hit the Hill in 1993, the Toronto Sun referred to them as a "bunch of dung kicking rednecks" and the media asked "who are these yokels and who voted for them?"

We; myself included, never took them seriously. Every horrendous remark and action just left us shaking our heads. When the party was infiltrated with the Neo-Nazi Heritage Front, no one was surprised, except the Heritage Front themselves.

"The expulsion enraged the Heritage Front, which saw the Reform Party's policies as very similar to, if not indistinguishable from, its own. How could a party that went on record opposing immigration policies that "radically alter" Canada's ethnic make-up turn around and shun a group like the Heritage Front, Droege asked, when the Heritage Front supports the very same approach? Privately, spokesmen for B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress admitted that Droege had a good point." (1)

My gut reaction is often to laugh, but I'm not laughing now. The Religious Right, the Conservatives (Republicans and CPC), and the far-right have created a volatile and toxic mixture. We have to start taking them seriously.

I've been writing about this and a new youth movement that is carrying on many of the same activities, and included a posting on Kyle Bistrow. My initial reaction to Kyle was that he was a hate monger, but after reading more about him and watching an interview, I saw something else.

Kyle emailed me and we corresponded a bit, and I think he's a smart kid with so much potential. He's now considered to be an up and comer in the Republican party and I hope by the time he wins a seat, and he will; that he's softened a bit. He's not a neo-Nazi, and not really even racist. He's just fighting for what he believes in. And I think for many people in all of these movements, their motives are just as genuine.

But it's the people who are exploiting them, and tapping into their fears, who really need to be exposed.

Murray Dobbin wrote a posting on Harper's new Fox News, and the thought that Canada will now have a station like that is appalling. The Glenn Beck's of the world are the real threat because they legitimize this stuff.

...The man in charge of developing the network – and getting it past the CRTC – is Tory* Teneycke – formerly Stephen Harper’s junk yard dog in charge of intimidating and manipulating the media.

You might recall seeing him on the CBC which shamefully hired him as a “commentator” less than a year after he left Harper’s employ (in violation of CBC rules). Like most of the communications types in Harper’s stable he specializes in bullying and attack-dog tactics, the very same approach honed over years on Fox news in the US.

Don Newman, CBC columnist and former host of Newsworld’s ‘Politics’attacked the idea characterizing Fox news in the US as “hugely polarizing.” Fox “mainly spews out propaganda that is dangerously misleading and often factually wrong….It specializes in drive-by attacks and misrepresentations, and is positively Orwellian at times, claiming to be ‘fair and balanced’ while implying that its competitors aren’t. (2)

Sigh.

Footnotes:

* Should be Kory. He was a "storm troop' for Preston Manning, part of a group that went around raising hell at Liberal campaign offices.

1. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg 243-244

2. Canadian nightmare: Fox News North, By Murray Dobbin, June 21, 2010