In the late 1980s, I had the opportunity as a young man to tour Guatemala, which was in the midst of a prolonged and terrible civil war. I had the good fortune in my youth to have been fairly well travelled, and trips to Mexico had shown me how well I had it as a kid growing up in Canada. In Guatemala, though, I got to see a different level of poverty and suffering in a nation where the government was the prime cause of it.In Guatemala City, the street children numbered in the tens of thousands. Desperately begging and victimized by all forms of predatory monsters, they huddled in groups in alleys and landfills, trying to scrape by. In even the most impoverished of societies, parents were usually still present at least while children grew up. The issue in Guatemala was that the government would send agents to the homes of people at night to conduct “enforced disappearances.” Those identified as dissidents or even prospective dissidents would vanish. It was an effective and horrific means of civilian control. The death squads usually came quietly in the night, and the disappearances always reminded neighbours that they could be next on the list at any time. Everybody feared the government knocking on the door.A March 1985 study by the Juvenile Division of the Guatemala Supreme Court estimated that over 200,000 children had lost at least one parent in the war. Many of those lost parents were due to death squads. The orphaned children also reminded citizens what could become of their kids if they caught the eye of state enforcers.Thankfully, Canada has never had anything like this (and spare me comparisons with residential schools). I am not implying the country is in a state anywhere close to that of Guatemala in the 1980s. But I wanted to establish the end result of unchecked state authoritarianism so readers understand why we must fight against all indications of it. Rights tend to be lost incrementally..One of the most effective means of state intimidation of citizens is the unexpected knock on the door from government agents, and we are seeing it happening today.Recently in BC, Tanya Gaw got an unexpected knock on her door. She was greeted by a pair of bedraggled-looking federal plainclothes officers. She recorded an eight-minute conversation where she was informed that she was under investigation for the alleged wilful promotion of hatred under section 319(2) of the Criminal Code. In other words, she had said things on the internet that hurt somebody’s feelings.The police indicate they are obligated to respond, with one officer saying, "We received a complaint. I have to action it. I have to go talk to you."That’s pure bunk. Police receive countless frivolous complaints from people, and they typically don’t send non-uniformed federal officers to people’s doors in response to them. The point of going to the door like this is to say, “we are watching you” and that “you had better watch your step.” The arrival of these officers on Gaw’s doorstep wasn’t an act of law enforcement. It was an act of state intimidation over a perceived thought crime, and we can’t understate how serious this action is..Even if the complaint warranted a communication, a phone call would suffice. Or uniformed officers could have been dispatched. Uniformed officers aren't as disconcerting as those in plainclothes, though. Guatemala didn't send people in uniform. Secret police are much more frightening than uniformed ones. To be fair, those at Gaw's doorstep did have badges, but that's a subtle display of identity.Canada is moving down the road of the UK, where there were more than 12,000 arrests of citizens in 2023 alone for social media postings. Only one-tenth of those arrests led to convictions, but that wasn’t the point. The goal is intimidation by police to make citizens fearful of what they may say or think.The UK has something of a child grooming gang problem and other dangerous crimes that could be addressed, but instead is dedicating time to chasing down thousands of citizens who allegedly said offensive things on the internet. The intent of the state here isn’t crime control. It’s thought control.In Canada, where bail is given to some of the most odious of violent criminals, the state is relentlessly pursuing people like Tamara Lich, who is nearing the end of a house arrest sentence for participating in the Trucker’s Convoy protests. She presents no realistic threat to society and has been fastidious in abiding by probation conditions, yet the state is appealing her sentence and trying to send her back to jail. That’s because Lich committed a crime that the state sees as unforgivable. She stood up to the regime, and she embarrassed it. When protecting the pride of the government becomes a higher priority than protecting the safety of citizens, you know the state has become rotten..Canada is a long way from where Guatemala was in 1988, but when the government begins embracing tactics of citizen intimidation such as the knock at the door, we must raise the alarm. It’s easier to stop the development of authoritarian regimes when they are in their infancy rather than once they have established full control.Gaw’s case must be taken seriously, and people should be alarmed.Be sure to note the deafening silence of regime media outlets in this case. The state expansion messaging control goes well beyond the doorsteps of individuals in Canada. But that is fodder for a different column.
