LONG POST:
Last night this chick named Faith Goldy was invited by the Laurier Society For Open Inquiry to hold a talk on the campus I work at as a part of the Unpopular Opinion Speaker Series hosted by Lindsay Shepard. It's our third meeting. The last two meetings was a video presentation about the "pronoun debate", the other was a talk by Alberta lawyer James Kitchen from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
I only knew a bit about Ms. Goldy. She's an ex-Rebel Media (If Fox News is a bike, Rebel Media is a trike- but at least it's Canadian content!) chick who makes her money by being one of those brash Ann Coulter-types.
She was suppose to talk about immigration, border security, multiculturalism and white ethnocide. It sounded like it would be interesting (I've always found the white genocide types to be pretty hilarious, in the same way most people these days who screech their tailored victim-narratives, are.)
Faith was supposed to speak at 700pm but by 600pm there were already a few hundred people at the quad. The protesters brought drums and signs and trotted out a chick Native speaker who informed us that we we all on stolen land, then started speaking Native. Everybody cheered. But in terms of demographics it was mostly white kids, bitching about other white people, about white racism towards PoC.
Aside for myself there may have been maybe ten people who were black, and a sprinkling of central asians. It was kind of weird. People kept giving me knowing nods and trying to fist bump me.
A few cops and campus security dudes milled around, but It was actually fairly tame at that point. The vibe was almost festive.
At 6:45 there was a huge, huge lineup at the Paul Martin Centre. Including myself, I think there is maybe 40 people in LSOI, and we got priority seating, however, we were told that the plan on the protestors part was to bring as many people as they could into the room as to exceed the fire code (300 max), and then make as much of nuisance as possible.
Before the talk could really get underway someone pulled the fire alarm and some representatives of Antifa showed up. A few blasts of an airhorn, shouting, a bit of a scuffle and....the decision was then made to shut it down.
Just like that.
I was kind of pissed: I wanted to hear what this chick was all about. I mean, as a child of immigrants, I wanted to know what her beef with immigrants was, if she had any decent
arguments, and if there was any validity to her complaints. I wanted to understand where all the Bloodworth's and RIPWarriors of the world are coming from, if there was any basis to their ceaseless mewlings and dark prophecies about racial dynamics in the West. I was also very interested to see how she would address the accusations of racism made against her. Ezra Levant had to fire her (he's like the Canadian version of....Hannity? He heads up Rebel Media) for interviewing and being too chummy with Nazi's during the Charlotteville protests last summer.
But a bunch of 20 year old's in combat boots, air horn, masks and red and black flags,
made that decision for me.
I was kind of pissed. So I confronted some of them outside. It was the first time I've ever talked to any of those Antifa people. It was very brief and went exactly like this:
Me: "What's with mask, pussy?
Child: "We're the good guys!"
Me: "But if you are the good guys then why are you pussy's wearing masks?"
Child: "Because of surveillance-capitalism."
Me: lol
They were pretty insufferable in the way people who deal in ideological absolutes are. They reminded me of a screaming baby that won't stop crying, no matter how you much you try to console it. Eventually you have gently put it on the bed, leave the room, and breath for five minutes and let it hopefully cry itself out.
And I think that's what Canadian society is doing right now in this age of rockstar-activism. The majority of Canadians that
actually have to work for a living are being as patient as can be.
But after events in Hamilton, and after actually speaking to some of the protestors and the Black Bloc/Antifa LARP dudes, my feeling is that eventually they are gonna go too far. And then it's a shaken baby syndrome for their ass. And I think it's inevitable.
Their sense of victimhood is linked to some hazy a sense of entitlement which is fuelled through the obsequiousness and pandering of the media and our current federal government.
My fear is that eventually the pendulum will swing the other way.
