Bird brained in Quebec

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Feb 20 06:07:46 PST 2003


N P Childs wrote:


>This from the guy who was a cabinet minister when separatists lost
>the referendum in 1995, was checking into a hotel the night of the
>loss, and felt the need to berate a Hispanic house staff member,
>accusing her people' of losing the referendum for the real
>Quebecios. Earlier that evening his party leader, hammered at the
>time, launched his 'concession' speech by blaming 'money and
>ethnics' for the loss. This latter comment was understood in Quebec
>to mean the Jewish community in Montreal.
>
>There may be a good argument for Quebec being a nation, but these
>guys ain't it. Nice to see though that their contempt isn't just
>reserved for racial groups but economic ones as well.

Funny, though, how often nationalism produces this stuff, isn't it? You need all those despised excluded Others to define the nation. And once you've defined the nation, you want to establish a nice hierarchy within it. I suppose there are exceptions, but they're not easy to find as this sort of thing.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list