Empathy or Totalitarianism?

Frances Widdowson and the Quesnel Mob

Professor Frances Widdowson addressing the Quesnel City Council

By

James Pew

“There’s terrible censoriousness that’s happening in Quesnel, and people are punishing people for discussing this book.” - Frances Widdowson, comment during CBC interview

My last update on the Quesnel file was on Tuesday. Professor Frances Widdowson who, like me, is one of the authors of the controversial book, Grave Error, was on her way to attend the Quesnel City Council meeting, and hopefully say a few words in defense of our book. Read  Widdowson Takes Quesnel to get up to speed.

The Quesnel council meeting was held yesterday. It was an embarrassing and shocking clown show. It was the inspiration for the title of this piece: Empathy or Totalitarianism? And it is clear from the video of the meeting (embedded below) that toxic levels of woke empathy and broken thinking have saturated public institutions across the country, and taken on a totalitarian character. Quesnel’s city council is the epitome of this.

At 1:20 minutes, Frances’ time begins. Her question concerned the claim of the discovery of unmarked graves in Kamloops, BC, which had been discussed without challenge at the previous council meeting:

“Does the council concern itself with misinformation? Does it oppose misinformation being spread and entered into the record.” - Frances Widdowson

The council did not provide an answer. It is obvious to anyone who takes the time to watch this council meeting that the participants were terribly biased, disrespectful and unwelcoming. There was no interest in understanding the motivations of Pat Morton (the Mayor's wife), the Mayor, Frances, or anyone critical of the claims of the Aboriginal Industry. And even though it has been made clear through various Canadian media that the book is a bestseller, there is no interest in its contents, only in denouncing it.

For over an hour, the council permitted various activists and indigenous leaders to speak freely for as long as they liked. Many of them spoke emotionally and aimlessly at length. They were not interrupted, and were offered every indulgence to express themselves - one of them even spoke in an indigenous language that no one in the room could understand. However, when Pat Morton and Frances had their turn to speak, the rules and the tone changed dramatically. All of sudden, a strict adherence to a one question rule was enforced. The other gallery members in attendance and the city councilors themselves were openly hostile to Pat and Frances. It was a disgrace, and extremely difficult to watch an admired colleague and friend treated so disrespectfully.

During a segment where an indigenous person was questioning the Mayor, an unidentified speaker from the gallery can be heard saying, obviously referring to Pat Morton: “Mess up your wife a little.”

The situation in Canada has turned into an alarming totalitarian catastrophe entirely hostile to our liberal democratic tradition. I commend Frances Widdowson for once again shining a much needed sliver of light on what has rapidly evolved into a dark and existential hour in Canadian history.

In an email exchange with Frances earlier today, she had the following to say:

I have concerns about how the pursuit of truth is under threat and the breakdown of democratic principles such as equality under the law.

Besides the fact that Quesnel city councilors completely manipulated procedures to stop members of the public from questioning what they were doing, it seems to me that there are three main issues about "Grave Error" that have come to the surface:

1. The May 2021 false claim that the remains of 215 children were found at Kamloops, and the continued acceptance of this (even by a CBC Associate Producer);

2. How contesting the idea that the residential schools were genocidal is seen as arguing against gravity or for a flat earth (Sean Carleton, the Canadian Historical Association, etc.); and

3. The refusal to accept that the residential schools provided educational benefits to students, even though some kind of "colonial" school system was necessary to educate pre-literate tribal societies.

Of all of these issues, the Kamloops case is key, because the Politically Correct Totalitarians don't care about the evidence; all they want to do is impose their own views on others and use anti-democratic measures to stop people from contesting them.

We are in serious trouble. The emerging totalitarianism must be fought with everything that we have before it is too late.

I share France's concerns. There is an encroaching totalitarianism in Canada that is undeniable. The Quesnel City Council meeting was a Kafkaesque nightmare come to life. We are indeed in serious trouble.

It is mind-boggling the extent to which empathetic people have surrendered their critical thinking capacities over issues and narratives either dominated or imposed by the far-left Critical Social Justice totalitarians. Indigenous issues in Canada, most notably anything that falls under the rubric of “reconciliation,” provides the most illustrative example of this tradeoff between rational thinking and emotional outburst that has occurred within the psyches of too many Canadians who have fallen prey to the Critical Social Justice mind virus.

On Monday Frances was interviewed by a “she/her” CBC journalist named Jordan Tucker. I mention that Tucker’s a “she/her” not because her “she-her”-ness isn’t obvious to anyone who sees her headshot or hears her feminine voice during one of her interviews, but because the inclusion of this obvious-to-anyone-with-half-a-brain information is meant to signal that Jordan Tucker is a woke maniac with no rational grip on reality, just like 99% of the maniacs who attended the clown show in Quesnel. Listen to the interview here.

By all means formulate a defense of Jordan Tucker and the brainwashed progressives, corrupt indigenous leaders, genuflecting activists, and every sort of disingenuous self-interested participant in the embarrassing circus that has been unfolding with steadily increasing intensity since the publication late last year of Grave Error. If my colleagues or I have gone too far in any of our statements, or if we are incorrect in any of our claims, please hold us to account, and demand we correct the record. For the sake of truth, this is imperative.

At times, I can’t help but feel that I must not be correct in my extreme condemnation of so many people (who the Grave Error co-authors and myself claim are spreading mis-information), I must have something wrong, some fact or argument I have not yet considered. The same must also be true of my colleagues. We simply must all have missed the plain and simple truth that the Quesnel city councilors, and the mob who attended the meeting, can see clear as day. What hurts the most, is that they can see this profound and unanswerable truth without the benefit of countless hours of the type of work engaged in by Frances, and researchers like Nina Green, and other writers associated with the IRSRG. 

I’m the first to admit that it sounds like what my colleagues and I write about is a conspiracy (even though many of us repeatedly state we feel that the “Aboriginal Industry” is not a conspiracy, but a set of processes involving mostly well-intentioned people, and some self-serving people, which has corrupted the reconciliation that so many Canadians desire). But facts and evidence, of which Grave Error is not short of supply, matter far more than the emotions of hysterical people who have decided an issue has been decided, even though most of the details of that issue make little sense. As Frances wrote, they have equated criticism of the claims of “Truth and Reconciliation” or of unsubstantiated unmarked clandestine graves of murdered indigenous children with being a “flat-earther.” 

There is a hysteria aimed at suppressing the truth. Anyone who criticizes the rhetoric of “Truth and Reconciliation,” or challenges the claim that residential schools were genocidal, is immediately branded a “residential school denialist.” Thanks to soulless activist-academics, and traitors to Canada’s founding ancestors, like Sean Carleton, and his ridiculous writings, interviews, and social media blather, further confusion and fuel to the fire has clouded the issue to an impenetrable opaque. This leaves indigenous people, who are essentially being used by people like Carleton and others who benefit from their perpetual marginalization and suffering, left to languish indefinitely while the activist class advance their careers. Some, like Carleton, publish writings in esteemed academic journals, and make many appearances in prestigious mainstream media.

The Tyee’s Amanda Follett Hosgood had her say earlier today. However, the best part of Hosgood’s hogwash was a comment by Grave Error co-editor Chris Champion. Here is his comment:

As a co-editor of Grave Error (which has several chapter authors of whom I am not one) I must correct at least one of several solecisms in this article by Ms Hosgood.

She states that 'The book makes the incorrect claim that survivors’ stories about Indian residential schools ... are “either totally false or grossly exaggerated.”’

The book does not make any such claim and this, I think, shows quite clearly that Ms Hogwood has not read the book.

Instead she misquotes promotional material at https://www.amazon.ca/Grave... and manipulated it inaccurately. Here is the direct quote:

"Public discussion of Indian Residential Schools issues is now filled with the following assertions, all of which are either totally false or grossly exaggerated:
-Thousands of “missing children” went away to residential schools and were never heard from again.
-These missing children are buried in unmarked graves underneath or around mission churches and schools.
-Many of these missing children were murdered by school personnel after being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, even outright torture.
-The carnage is appropriately defined as genocide.
-Many human remains have already been located by ground-penetrating radar, and many more will be found as government-funded research progresses.
-Most Indian children attended residential schools.
-Those who attended residential schools did not go voluntarily but were compelled to attend by federal policy and enforcement.
-Attendance at residential school has traumatized Indigenous people, creating social pathologies that descend across generations.
-Residential schools destroyed Indigenous languages and culture.

These bulleted points are all, as Grave Error demonstrates, "either totally false or grossly exaggerated."

There are other inaccuracies but I shall leave it there. The author, Ms Hosgood, should read the book.

I agree with Chris, but would add, EVERYONE should read Grave Error, becuase Canadians have been misled for too long, and the totalitarians are here - they are taking over! This is code red, the eleventh hour, but there is still time to correct this grave error and catastrophe caused by the radical woke totalitarian subverters and our terribly incompetent, weak and pathetic leaders.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read How the TDSB manufactured racism

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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