“When will the right protest?” by Nathan Giede (Feb. 20), confuses me. I suppose it depends on what Giede means by “right,” but in the name of some of the “pet causes” he lists (sacredness of the unborn, promotion of family, right to own firearms, and objection to the Charter) the right has often protested in Canada.
The Aryan Guard (Alberta) often turns up to counter-protest at anti-racism rallies. In August 2017, the Canadian Nationalist Party held a rally at the University of Toronto to coincide with the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Virginia. They were protesting Canada’s immigration and multiculturalism policies. Just last year, in June, they and the Yellow Vest movement hit Pride parades in Hamilton and Toronto. The CNP has party status and runs federally in a few ridings, something Geide would admire as a (for the time being) “loyalist.” Their platform is anti-Islamic, anti-communist, anti-gay. In Quebec, the Parti Independentista has staged numerous events in support of independence and against immigration. Campaign Life has, for 42 years, rallied and marched against fornication, euthanasia, abortion and transgender rights.
These are only recent activities of the right. There’s a solid history of right-wing protests in Canada going back through the Ernst Zundel and Keegstra trials (and the rallies connected thereto) to the Canadian Union of Fascists (1930s) and Lionel Groulx’s Ligue d’Action Francaise (1905). Groulx, like Giede, wanted Canada’s “sad constitution and the wicked elite that enforce it” burned. He would’ve especially hated the 1982 addition that Giede wants “torched while all the world watches.”
However, Giede needs to specify more clearly what he thinks the right stands for, before he encourages it to “block roads and sing chants.” When the revolution does come, a revolution that, he says, “I may very well join,” he could end up with some unwelcome companions behind the barricades. After all, the right-wing Association of German National Jews supported Hitler and helped him get elected, only to find out he had other plans for Jews. And the Russian trade unions supported the revolution until Lenin and Trotsky decided to eliminate them.
John Harris
Prince George
