Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Paradoxical Québécois ethnic and civic nationalisms

Quebecers are in the midst of a rather noisy and often confusing debate centred on Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois’ proposed controversial Charter of Secularism. This oxymoronic Charter would restrict the use of religious symbols, except the Catholic crucifix, within public sector institutions. The debate demonstrates vividly the paradoxical clash between traditional ethnic and modern civic nationalisms that now bedevils Quebec and many European Union states. Homage is paid to an inclusive civic nationalism while states increasingly promote the religious and cultural values of the majority while curtailing — via discriminatory legislation — the rights of religious/cultural minority communities.

Ethnic nationalists define and proscribe an ideal nationalist-state as one that is overwhelmingly homogenous: linguistically, religiously and ethnically/racially. For ethnic nationalists, a majority sociological ‘nation’ is coterminous with the state. Members of minority communities of every description have a responsibility to conform to the values and the norms of the majority ‘nation’. The citizens of minority communities, however described, must integrate and eventually assimilate into the majority ‘nation.’

Civic nationalists define and proscribe a nation state as one that is religiously, ethnically/racially, and linguistically pluralistic. Civic nationalists emphasize the equality of citizens and promote common shared values among all citizens. The state is the servant of all citizens. The state is not exclusively the instrument of a majority ethnic/religious community — in rare cases a minority ethnic/religious community– to advance its own interests.

These often tragic and sometimes bloody battles between competing nationalisms, ethnic and civic, have historical roots that go back centuries and are linked to the rise of modern nation-states in Western Europe. For powerful nationalist-states like France, Germany and Italy, which were largely but not exclusively homogeneous in terms of language, race and religion, it was relatively straight-forward to promote their traditional respective ethnic nationalisms that were focused exclusively on the survival and promotion of their majority ‘nations’. They often did so while fostering emerging but not always successful civic nationalisms in the hope of promoting ever-stronger allegiance between individual citizens and their increasingly powerful states.

Far less powerful and far less homogeneous emerging states – Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and all the Balkan states to name only a few – struggled valiantly, but not always successfully, to balance the rights of their dominant ethnic/religious majorities with the rights of their beleaguered minorities. These pluralistic states rarely had the means and the opportunities to foster and to embed a dynamic civic nationalism, one that cemented the allegiance of all their citizens to the central state.

This struggle of competing nationalisms is a constant dynamic of Canada and Quebec histories. The outcome of this clash, as in Europe, was never guaranteed. The 1837-38 secessionist rebellions between Louis Joseph Papineau’s petit-bourgeois Parti Patriote movement and the powerful British Imperial Forces epitomized a clash between French-Canadian and British Imperial ethnic/religious nationalisms, both of which were, and continued to be, camouflaged by contemporaries and later on by historians, as civic nationalisms.

Canadians have witnessed similar nationalist struggles many times: first, during the heated debates over the Union of the Canadas, 1841-64 and Confederation, 1864-1867; second, between the jingoistic British-Canadian Imperial Federation movement and a more aggressive French-Canadian nationaliste movement led by Henri Bourassa, 1885-1914; third, during the bitter struggle over conscription during the Great War of 1914-18 and World War II, 1939-45; and fourth, the contemporary battle beginning in the 1950s between Canadian civic nationalists promoting a more social and economic interventionist Canadian state and Québécois neo-nationalists and secessionists promoting either a more powerful Quebec interventionist nationalist state within a redefined federation or an independent Quebec state.

Today, as a consequence of Quebec’s prolonged state-centred ‘Quiet Revolution’, there is an unquestioned consensus among Québécois politicians on the Québécois identity and what needs to be done to protect and promote it. How should the Québécois nation perceive and relate to the ‘Other’, that is, the diminishing Anglophone and growing Allophone minority communities? Formally or informally all provincial political parties, representing a large majority of Québécois voters, support Marois’ Charter of Secularism. Why? Because Jean Charest, François Legault, and Françoise David share Marois’s paradoxical embrace of Québécois ethnic and civic nationalisms. There is no disagreement within the Québécois political class concerning Marois’ rather questionable conception of separation of Church and State. The Quebec state will remain nominally Catholic for historical legacy reasons while imposing a legislated ‘secularism’ that, in the words of Haroon Saddiqui of the Toronto Star, “masks European-style intolerance.”

A Muslim PQ candidate, Djemila Benhabib, made painfully evident the contradictory nature of this Charter of Secularism. She vigorously rejected the PQ’s decision to give the Catholic crucifix prominent display in the National Assembly and other public venues while simultaneously proclaiming her strong supporting for Marois’ Charter of Secularlism. In so doing, Dkemila Benhabib, as an immigrant, was confirming the Parti Québéçois’ long established ethnicity-based immigration policy. All of Quebec’s political parties rejected Trudeau’s 1971 policy and program of multiculturalism that was based on pluralistic civic nationalism. Québécois leaders argued that multiculturalism guaranteed that in Quebec the ethnocultural communities would retain their respective identities and not assimilate into the Québécois society. For immigrants opting to integrate, the majority, it was argued, would chose to do so into the Anglo-Quebec community thereby reinforcing its economic, social and cultural powers.

Instead, Québécois neo-nationalist and secessionist politicians promoted and put into place of a policy of ‘interculturalism,’ one that is based on the concept of Franco-conformity. All immigrants who are selected by the Quebec government to settle in the province are expected to speak French or to learn quickly the French language. The immigrants’ mastery of the French language will accelerate their integration and eventual assimilation into the Québécois economic, cultural and social environments. In due course, proponents of the Franco-conformity model contend, Quebec will become an exclusively French-speaking homogeneous nationalist state, one in which francophone ethnic and civic nationalisms are fused into one.

Of course, in a globalizing 21st century world a coercive policy of Franco-conformity is a rather unrealistic and counter-productive dream. Immigrants, as they have always done world over, will integrate at their own pace and to the degree that they chose. Immigrants will continue this pattern whether or not governments impose policies and programs that are either progressive or coercive. Immigrants increasingly have the choice to move on to other more receptive and promising host societies and countries.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Michael Behiels

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