Gilles Proulx and Richard Martineau went off on the Chinese community in Brossard, Quebec, a Montreal suburban enclave that hosts a significant Asian community.
Gilles Proulx is an old-time hater who unabashedly unloads on everything Canadian, native and the non-pur-laine element of Quebec, making frenzied racist characterizations that I must admit are sometimes entertaining.
His paranoia, pain, outrage and hatred is all-consuming and watching him or listening to him 'lose it' over language or anglo oppression or native indulgence is sometimes entertaining in a schadenfreude sort of way
What he says on the air has me shuddering to think what he says off the air.
To his credit, he also unloads à la Mordechai Richler on his own francophone community sparing them no quarter with his acerbic and nasty characterizations of a people too weak to defend their culture and society in the face of this perceived Anglo oppression.
But Richard Martineau has none of the flair, charisma or smarts of Gilles Proulx. He is just plain nasty, racist and simplistic.I don't know if he dumbs down his columns in the Journal de Montreal to suit his low-brow audience or if he is a product thereof.
His one-dimensional racist screeds offer no subtlety or nuance and his simplistic view of Quebec as under mortal attack by Anglos, ethnics and Canadians are tinged with a Trumpian sense of enemies and us/ them themes.
However, putting the two together on a radio show is a recipe for excess and believe me if their exchange would take place in English, there isn't a media outlet in North America that would air it.
For those who have French, take a listen to the gratuitously racist exchange about Quebec's Chinese community that includes insult after insult, including Mr. Proulx using a hideous and mocking Chinese accent to make his point. Who actually does that today?
I'm sure Proulx would take offence at being called a racist. "I no tinkee so, me likeee them"
but if the shoe fits....
Martineau:Oh, Gilles, you're gonna flip out over this...... From a flyer from Royal-Lepage in Brossard. (Now speaking in English) On one side is a picture of the agent,"Buying or Selling Your house? I can help" The other side is in Mandarin so it's in two languages Mandarin and English.
Proulx:It's not the first time I've seen this on the south shore of Montreal, which is a Chinese kingdom. Brossard has completely transformed itself and there's nobody in charge like an elite or the OQLF to intervene when you complain. A friend of mine got into a dispute over a cancelled transaction. The Chinese seller sent him a letter in English. I told him to complain which was a waste of time he explained because the OLF wouldn't intervene, which we can call a 'death by a thousand cuts'....(Proulx continues in an demeaning and burlesque Chinese English accent.)
...The good little Chinese are now our dominators and future dominators of the Earth.."Chicken Fried Rice, chicken pineapple wit dat?"Martineau: (laughing at Proulx's mocking)Ha! Ha! The lady is named (doxxing removed) who writes (now speaking in mocking English) "I am here to help you find the perfect house'Proulx: (In mocking English)
Yes I am here to help you, you fucken French-Canadian! You're a bunch of idiots and cannot stand on your legs.Martineau:Royal Lepage will say that it's a private enterprise and we're here to make money. Our future customers are Chinese and English, so we don't give a hoot about French.
(now in mocking English) They don't give a flying fuck!Proulx:
I'll repeat what I said before, Canada is a racist country. which I accuse of trying to destroy this tiny village of Quebec.
These are the same hypocrites who complain about the Canadian media's so-called Quebec-Bashing.
Making insulting fun of ethnics and Anglos is par for the course in the Quebec media which is shielded from scrutiny because nobody in the rest of Canada or North America pays any attention to what is said in Quebec's French media. The CRTC is too timid and intimidated to intervene and since nobody in the ROC listens or hears the racism spewed, considers that it's better not to rock the boat.
The basis of this racism is the underlying notion that Quebec belongs to old stock French-Canadians alone with minorities, anglos and even natives considered interlopers with no legitimate right to help shape society.
The idea remains that these 'foreign' elements in Quebec society owe fealty and respect to the French Canadian majority and are obliged to mimic and integrate, abandoning their religion, language and heritage in order to satisfy the will of the majority.
That dear readers is the definition of ethnocentric racism ...