In a wonderful article in Canada’s National Post on May 7, Ari Blaff submits that it is actually hatred rather than compassion that fuels the politically woke. A former student at what used to be known as Ryerson University, he recalls how in 2017 that school’s Student’s Union fought to cancel what was scheduled as Holocaust Education Week on the grounds that Israel is a racist country bent on genocide. While one is entitled to disagree with any given Israeli political policy, Israel is absolutely the most civilized nation in the Middle East, many of its Muslim citizens perfectly happy with their citizenship there. The notion that the Jewish quest for a stable homeland, pejoratively referred to as Zionism, is morally comparable to Nazism, is a gross distortion of the facts, both past and present. But the Student’s Union at Ryerson was not interested in the facts, indeed was perfectly willing to censor debate on Hitler’s annihilation of millions of innocent Jews out of “compassion” for “oppressed” peoples [Palestinians, etc.] represented by terrorist organizations [Hamas, etc.] that regularly launch bombs into densely populated Israeli enclaves, once again killing innocent Jewish women and children.
Of course what used to be Ryerson is now known as Toronto Metropolitan University, Egerton Ryerson’s contributions to the Residential School System making him eminently worthy of cancellation by the woke mob. That Residential Schools had not even begun to operate at the time of his death is apparently irrelevant; so also his many positive contributions to Canadian culture, including the progressive notion that elementary and high school educations should be free for all citizens. As I have said repeatedly, vilifying 19th C. Canadians intent on educating our Indigenous on the grounds that their plan was actually a form of cultural genocide, is ignorant, arrogant and utterly impervious to historical reality. Were a woke contemporary to travel back to the 1870s and inform Ryerson of the Postmodern concept that all cultural regimes are equally worthy of defense, Ryerson would no doubt have deemed him to be insane! We’re replacing absurd superstitions with Science, he might have declared! Sadly, it’s not an argument of any merit to the woke Left for which Reason no longer seems to matter.
As Blaff’s article illustrates, the eagerness of the woke to define hatred as the motivation behind a myriad of Western cultural institutions and traditions is itself based on an intense hatred for anything of a Western [i.e., Capitalist] origin. In many cases those declared to be the victims of White arrogance have said they never felt victimized at all. While the Washington Redskins are now the Commanders and the Cleveland Indians the Guardians, 90% of North America’s Indigenous have said they never felt offended whatsoever by the teams’ original names. Similarly, Blaff points out, the family of Aunt Jemima is actually saddened that the company which produced the pancake syrup associated with her name has chosen to remove her image from its product.
Contrasting her to sensible people able to distinguish real racism from harmless examples of “cultural appropriation,” Blaff cites woke activist Maria Givens who stated last year: “Every time the Cleveland Indians played the Detroit Tigers, nearly five million Native-Americans were put on a level playing field with an animal.” Really? I’ve watched those two teams play dozens of times over the years and it never once occurred to me that the Indigenous were being compared to animals. Of course if ferreting out Hatred is one’s life obsession, one is likely to find it in every nook and cranny!
School president Mohamed Lachemi, in explaining the removal of Ryerson’s name from what is now Toronto Metropolitan U., said in a letter to his student body: “I want to assure everyone that our new name is not about erasing our history.” Intentionally or otherwise, he is lying! The Neo-Marxist critiques increasingly espoused by “intellectuals” in the years after W.W. 1 were always intent on fundamentally changing Western Civilization. An agenda re-engaged by the Woodstock [my] generation, it has culminated recently in the absurd woke compulsion to demonize every aspect of our culture, past and present. At its heart, of course, is the simplistic notion that Capitalism in no way rewards merit and achievement, but is merely a way for the “privileged” to keep the “oppressed” in their place.