HANNAFORD: Canada, Australia, victims of their own illusions

Confronted at very short notice with the need to respond to an egregious hate crime – the slaughter in Sydney of 15 Jews by radical Islamists – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese completely exposed the moral vacuum at the heart of Western democracy.Instead of damning the perpetrators for what they were, he blathered on about a general confrontation with extremism — right-wing extremism, no less — and the need for harsher gun laws.He could not, however, find it in himself to call out the incident as an Australian manifestation of the Islamist extremism that has been a growing problem worldwide since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.Unfortunately things are no better in Canada, where the government prefers to talk only in the most general terms about terrorism..HANNAFORD: Safer in Israel than Toronto.Check out my interview with Vivian Bercovici in which she describes what it’s like to be a Jew in Toronto, where the police tell Jewish Torontonians that when a rowdy group of Jew-baiters walks through their neighbourhood, they should just stay off the sidewalks..What’s going on? Have we all gone mad?Some people try to explain this reluctance to bell the cat in electoral terms. This Liberal government has admitted so many Muslims to Canada in the last ten years, that it now fears their influence at the polls could swing seats.To some degree this may be true.However, it seems much deeper than just that: Radical, aggressive Islam breaks the western paradigm… and nobody wants be the one to admit it..In the West, we have come to accept the ideal society as one in which people of all races, all cultures and all religions, will live in gracious harmony in a ‘free’ and equal society. Religion, above all, is a private affair (see John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration) and for 300 years we have tried to act as though it doesn’t belong in the political arena.This sounds nice and a far cry from the jingoism that informed so much of our recent history. Non-radical, non-aggressive Islamists are fine with that.But what about the other guys?And what if your progressive immigration policy gets it wrong?We may think religion is a private affair, but not everybody does. So what happens when we accept immigrants from countries where they think religion is not private but that actually it’s the only thing in politics that matters? .What happens is that you get a Bondi-style outrage and nobody knows how to fit that into the narrative, or what to say.Or you get what Ms. Bercovici was talking about, urban intimidation of Canadian Jews by pro-Hamas mobs, and nobody wants to call it out for what it is – and take effective action to stop it.Why?Because if you admit that the national ideal is not working, not only would people call you racist; you would be undermining the great national fantasy upon which we have built Canada's secular state. We would be admitting we were wrong.To do that, it takes a particular kind of politician – one in whom courage and insight come together – and we haven’t elected one like that for years..Not that we didn’t develop the fantasy with the best of intentions. It must be admitted that in the Second World War, we all saw where perverted nationalism, hatred and racial stereotyping can lead. Those who recoiled in horror and wondered if there was a new way for people to live together, were not entirely wrong.But they did rather let their hearts run away with their minds. And there was also a confidence among the victorious allies – understandable but wrong – that just as our armies had proved to be superior, so would our ideas be so self-evidently correct, that the whole world would gratefully sign up for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ or at least for ‘peace, order and good government.’As we have now discovered, there’s a lot of the world that not only doesn’t buy it, but has other objectives altogether..But if as a public official you are wholly invested in the official fantasy that if you just get the basics right, all men can live as one, and somebody challenges that assumption by shooting people because they’re the wrong race or religion – you experience cognitive dissonance. This is not supposed to happen.You scramble for a response.And you fail..Australia responds to Islamic terror attack with massive national gun 'buyback' program.In the pathetic case of Mr. Albanese, he answers a shooting by Islamic extremists with a call to tackle right-wing extremists and a more stringent firearms ban.No sir, the problem did not start with the guns….In Canada, people standing on a street corner praising the death of Jews in Arabic (per Ms. Bercovici) – or harassing Jews on the street, or even in the neighbourhoods where they live – does not merit a government response. It’s just protesters exercising their legitimate Charter right to protest, I suppose.I refer those with a deeper interest to Lynne Cohen’s insightful article in C2C Journal. The rot is deeper than we think.In Canada, (and apparently in Australia) it’s time to face the facts.Our refusal to confront reality is not an act of tolerance; it is an act of abandonment. Governments exist to protect citizens, not to preserve comforting myths about how the world ought to work. When leaders refuse to name Islamist extremism for fear of disrupting an ideological narrative, they leave minorities exposed and the broader society unprepared. Canada and Australia still have a choice: confront the problem honestly, or continue down a path where denial replaces governance. History suggests that pretending nothing is wrong is rarely the safer option.

HANNAFORD: Canada, Australia, victims of their own illusions

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