An old vintage in new bottles?
A caller named Joseph said he thinks "that's wrong," and Miller said he agreed.
"You know, like frankly, if you, if you're not willing to show your face in a ceremony, that you're joining the best country in the world, then frankly …" Miller said, before the caller interrupted to say, "send ya back."
"Yeah," Miller said. "Frankly, if you don't like that or don't want to do that, stay the hell where you came from, is the way."
Miller went on to say that "I think most Canadians feel the same."
Yes we do.
Now let's spent a moment going back, way back, to that distant epoch known to history as the 1970s. During that barely recorded age, a mixture of myth and memory even in the minds of our finest scholars, the Portuguese were relatively new comers to our fair Dominion. Officially the first Lusophones arrived in 1953 and came in dribs and drabs over the next thirty years. There was a particular surge around 1974-1976. That was during Portugal's touch and go transition from fascist dictatorship to social democratic republic.
One of the big push factors was that, at least for a few months, it looked like the Reds might take over the whole of Portugal, or that a civil war might erupt. It's unlikely the Americans would have tolerated a member of NATO, and so strategically well placed a member at that, going over to the other side during the Cold War. That said we are talking about the Gerald Ford years. The Americans had abandoned the South Vietnamese to their fate at about the same time Red militias were training near Lisbon.
Those not terribly keen on becoming communists, my free market leaning father among them, decided to get out of Dodge. Canada let him in and the rest is history. Now how do you think dear old dad was greeted when he came here? Welcomed with open arms? Saluted as a valuable addition to Canadian society? Nope. He was either tactless ignored or greeted with "Go Back the Hell Where You Came From".
This was in fact the traditional greeting provided to new immigrants from the Irish famine to sometime in the mid-1980s. I suspect the Portuguese and the Pakistanis were the last groups to really get in the neck. Toronto legend has it that more than a few Pakistanis where shoved in front of subway trains back in the 1970s. I tend to take these stories with a grain of salt but, needless to say, the brown folks were not popular back then. The Portuguese being semi-white, and terribly useful when concrete needed to be poured, got a marginal pass.
Your humble correspondent is fond of many aspects of Canadian history. The casual endemic racism and ethnic bigotry of those long gone times are not fondly missed. The reason the phrase "go back the hell where you came from" has a certain emotional resonance is because for a very, very long time it was motivated by fear and bigotry of the lowest variety.
Larry Miller, MP, choose his words very poorly. Yet I don't believe, and until I'm provided with strong evidence to the contrary I won't believe, that Mr Miller was motivated by bigotry. The objection wasn't to the people or the country of origin, it was to the pernicious practice of the niqab. Like the majority of Canadians he finds these articles of clothing oppressive to women. We have spent centuries fighting to establish the equality of the individual in Canada. This is a throwback we neither want nor need.
A comparison is sometimes drawn between the niqab and the Sikh turban. It is a deeply absurd comparison. The latter is a statement of faith and the former a statement of oppression. The objection to the niqab is only very partially based on any lingering bigotry in Canadian society. It is the values such a mode of dress represents that Canadians find truly appalling. What Larry Miller was trying to say is that the values of oppression and legal inequality have no place in Canada. It is to those anti-Canadian values we say: Go Back The Hell Where You Came From.
While the Islamic body bags do repress females as chattel, they also are a statement of Islamic supremacy that says: "we have come here not to assimilate with your satanic nullity of Western culture but to displace it with the Shariah", more an act of Jihad than "immigration". Islam means submission and that's not just for the "congregation".
If anyone has trouble with this analysis just look at what happens when Muslims live with any other culture in significant numbers. Hint, it's not a happy peaceful fit.
Posted by: John Chittick | Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at 12:47 AM
It must be noted that people have the right to wear what they want, just as they have the right to not like it.
" just look at what happens when Muslims live with any other culture in significant numbers."
They're doing just fine in Albania, Kurdistan, and Kazakhstan and Calgary.
Posted by: Cytotoxic | Monday, March 30, 2015 at 11:40 AM