Quebec Premier Channels Donald Trump in Pedalling the Big Lie about Language

Premier Legault Pedals the Big Lie

It's one thing when dedicated sovereigntists and language nationalists peddle the big lie that in Quebec the French language is in mortal danger, it is to be expected.

But when the Premier of the province embraces the populist trope it crosses into risky territory where reality is divorced from fact and where dangerous and out-of-control consequences result.

Everybody expects dedicated nationalists to scream bloody murder over language, it is the only issue, albeit manufactured, that they have remaining.
When the only tool in the belt is a hammer, everything looks like a nail and so we are bombarded with fantastical stories of language gloom and doom, spun by con artists extraordinaire, bullshitters and flimflam artists who would make Donald Trump blush with envy at their inventiveness.

Speaking of Trump, over these last months we've watched in stunning incredulity at the dismal saga of his cynical and dishonest campaign to overturn the results of the election over manufactured and nonsensical claims of voter fraud.
We sit in our armchairs and ask ourselves how stupid his followers must be to believe such utter tripe,  without ever making the connection that the exact same situation is occurring here in Quebec, where another manufactured and phony controversy has been cooked up by devious sovereigntists and language militants and now, sadly adopted by our Premier in a naked and cynical attempt to wrest more power for Quebec from Ottawa and more specifically to consolidate his hold on power as Premier. 

Mr. Legault executes to a tee the propaganda strategy invented by the Nazis and perfected in the modern era by Mr. Trump.

That is to tell the big lie, blame a certain identifiable minority, use the complicit media to whip up anger and dissent in the faithful.
So the comparison to the Nazis is not so outrageous as our Premier would pretend when he admonished a prominent hitherto media darling lawyer Anne-France Goldwater'who made such a reference.

Another chapter from this populist playbook is to portray the Quebec nation as a poor victim of the evil Canadian media, painted as merciless Quebec-bashers ad nauseam by the sovereigntist media. The pseudo-intellectual Mathieu Bock-Coté is a typical example of the pot calling the kettle black where he somehow misses the irony when he describes in an article these Canadian bashers as 'White Rhodesians.'
This phoney hypersensitivity to criticism is particularly galling considering the insults and mud flung at Canadians and Quebec's minorities on a daily basis by these Quebec's nationalist media thugs.

And so we in Quebec are living a political fantasy no different than the "Stop the Steal" nonsense that continues to grip America. While it may be easy for us to dismiss the American movement and its adherents as ignorant fools, it isn't so easy to admit we are gripped by the same type of political fantasy woven by cynics with similar ulterior motives. 

Here in Quebec, we have our own version of this big lie fantasy which I will dub... "Stop the Language Steal," a fantasy unsupported by statistics and facts.

While we are bombarded with cries of impending language extinction a la Chicken Little, there is nobody of credibility that can point to statistics that actually support the claim.

There is however one fantastic scholarly rebuttal of this language nonsense, an article written in French by Etienne Cardin-Trudeau, a doctoral student of political science at the University of Toronto.
If you have French, please read the fascinating account HERE{fr}.  

"The media bubble linked to the decline of French in Quebec is almost artificially created by a whirlwind of rehashed news and columns written by people with an interest in fanning the flames of identity nationalism. "

"This entire media fracas and political fuss is focussed mainly on the back of two trends: the decline of French as a mother tongue and as a language spoken at home. For mother tongue, the decline predicted by Statistics Canada is 78.9 to 70.1% by 2036. For language spoken at home, the decline is expected from 81.6 to 74.4%. The federal body released these projections in 2017.

What we are rarely presented with is the background to these numbers. Notably, the similar decline predicted for English in the rest of Canada.

Thus, English as a mother tongue in the rest of Canada would drop from 74% to 66% by 2036. If we take the language most often spoken at home, the expected drop is from 85.2 to 80 , 1%.

Two things, therefore, appear obvious: first, the proportion in the rest of Canada of people speaking English most often at home is similar to the proportion of Quebecers speaking French most often at home. In 2036, there would even be a greater proportion of people with French as their mother tongue in Quebec than of people with English as their mother tongue in the rest of Canada.What we are rarely presented with is the background to these numbers. Notably, the similar decline predicted for English in the rest of Canada.

In other words, if French is in danger of disappearing in Quebec because of the decline of French as the first language spoken at home in Quebec, a similar fate must await the English language in Canada where the decline of English as a first spoken language at home is more precipitous.
Ha! What utter nonsense!

Mr. Cardin-Trudeau's devastating take-down of the 'French is in danger' fantasy, is replete with data, context and analysis that is hard to refute.

So how have the language conspiracy peddlers reacted to the article?
To date, I've read no rebuttal to this scholarly work, nor have I seen any interviews on television or radio with the author. I dare say that the article is so toxic to the language fanatics that like a Chernobyl three-head fish, nobody dares touch it.

Like those media types in America who push the discredited theory of an election steal, when faced with tangible evidence of contradictory facts, they choose to ignore it, hoping that those they are attempting to deceive will remain oblivious to the truth. 

Every time you hear a Quebec politician or a media type complain about the decline of the French language understand that it is merely a device.

For the Premier, it is an attempt to sow fear amongst voters that they are in mortal language danger and that only he can deliver them from evil.

The nationalist media pedalling the nonsense of language doom is nothing more than a jaded attempt to drum up hatred of Canada, anglos, ethnics and immigrants to drum up support for sovereignty.

Here in Quebec, we actually face a bigger challenge over the big lie of the decline of the French language than the danger faced by Americans over the fraudulent claims of an election steal.

For every lie spun on FOX, Newsmax, OneAmerica New and conspiracy-based talk radio there are countervailing voices on CNN, MSNBC, NPR and mainstream news sources.

Here in Quebec, there is sadly nobody in our political class, either federal or provincial or in the media willing to oppose the big lie.

It is important for all of us to openly and vociferously deny that French is in Danger fantasy because to ignore it is to give it credence and oxygen and provides our political opponents with a victory based on fraud and deceit.