Language Insanity Sweeping Quebec

Back in high school, a million years ago, I learnt a valuable lesson about the human condition, not in the classroom, but in the most unlikely of places.

Over fifty years ago, the scene in Montreal's Northmount High cafeteria of an out-of-control food fight remains indelibly stamped in my mind.
It started out innocently enough but before you knew it, too many otherwise rational and level-headed students were flinging food across the room in an orgy-like scene of mayhem and depravity.
The lunchroom monitors' efforts to intervene and restore a semblance of order proved woefully ineffective and it was abundantly clear that there was no stopping the bedlam as adrenaline coursed through the bodies of the frenzied participants, a scene that would ultimately play out to its exhausted conclusion.
While the majority of students in the cafeteria participated in the pandemonium, a significant minority either fled the scene or sat in utter dumbfounded amazement, taking in the scene in abject disbelief (myself included) wondering what mystical evil force had overtaken these people?

The lesson I took from that scene was that ordinary people can get caught up in the moment and despite their better and rational judgment be swept up by the mob into acting irrationally or otherwise believing commonly held nonsense just because everyone seems to be doing it or believing it.

When the Stanley cup riots occurred in Montreal it explained why normally law-abiding citizens deemed it acceptable to break windows along Ste. Catherine street and loot the stores.
And you'll no doubt remember that aspiring young lawyer who mugged before the camera wearing a thong over her mouth instead of a mask, mocking and insulting sanitary measures as the party aboard a chartered Sunwing jet turned into a drunken debacle. The personal and professional consequences were devastating.
 What on Earth was she thinking?

Collective insanity is even more dangerous when it applies to entire populations as demonstrated by Hitler's successful campaign to convince rational and usually level-headed German people that their misfortunes were all the fault of the Jews.
How could almost the entire nation embrace a patently false, libellous and dangerous concept so gratuitously?

And recently Valdimar Putin demonstrated that even in a modern world, the majority can embrace utter and complete nonsense in believing his concocted nonsense that Ukrainian Nazis posed a threat to Mother Russia, to the point that close to 100,000 Russian casualties have so far been sacrificed over a fantasy with nary a complaint.
And the saddest part is that once in the throws of hysteria there is no reasoning, no convincing, no abating and certainly no useful debate to be had.

Sadly such is the case here in Quebec, where mass hysteria over language has taken root, spurred on by a cynical and evil Premier Legault who channels Putin in callously fomenting rage and disgust over fantasy, the nonsense wherein Quebec is deemed to be under existential threat over language.

Just like a food fight which starts off mildly enough, with one idiot tossing a single plate of food, it inevitably escalates into an orgy of depravity, placing Quebec on the very same path of idiotic and hurtful excess.

Like Hitler's taunts over the dangerous Jews and Putin's taunts over Ukrainian Nazis, Legault's xenophobic and anglophilic missives have gained wide acceptance in the media, the true driver of public opinion.

In Russia, Putin's media sycophants are doing his dirty work, inflaming public opinion with hateful and racist rhetoric, and providing much-needed backing for the tragic Ukrainian war.

It's easy to understand that facts don't matter to these people and debate is a useless exercise in futility. Truth doesn't matter when a popular lie is so convenient and fun.
Like Donald Trump's loyal followers who still believe that the presidential election was stolen, no amount of debate, facts or truth will sway their unshaken faith in the lie.
There's no use in trying to convince them otherwise

Sadly the same is occurring in Quebec with our evil Premier and his racist minister Simon Jolin-Barrette spewing the vilest of untruths about English, anglophone and ethnics aided and abetted by a compliant media of closeted and open separatists eager to push the falsehood in order to promote their dogged pursuance of the twice rejected sovereignty option.
It is in fact the perfect storm of cognitive dissonance.

The Premier is being emboldened by the wide acceptance and media backing of his nonsense, upping the rhetoric with each week, recently offering up  this hateful missive

"It's important that we don't put all cultures on the same level; that's why we oppose multiculturalism," Legault said.

All this to say, that here in Quebec we are well past the nascent stage of collective insanity. 
There can be no debate or discourse with those dedicated to the lie of French fragility.

And the more we complain, the stronger the movement. grows.

No committee, political party, scholarly articles in the Press or any countervailing action or movement can have the slightest effect.

In fact, opposition and dissent to the idea of an existential threat to French in Quebec feeds into the paranoia, further strengthening the idea that Quebec stands alone against the world.

Parroting Putin's and Hitler's paranoiac exhortations that their societies are in mortal danger because of evil outside forces, posing an existential threat, Legault and his evil minions have employed the historically tried and true device of scapegoating and blame to cast anglos and ethnics as the enemies of the state.

Sadly, there is nothing we can do to stop the insanity.

Like those students uninvolved in the food fight, all we can do is observe the depravity and hope it ends soon.

I'm not so sure it will.