The Cloak and Dagger of Mario Dumont

When Mario Dumont was swept to power in 2007 as the leader of the opposition, few questioned his political support. Indeed, in true populist form, Dumont appeared to garner support from all quarters of the Quebec electorate. Outsiders dependent on English-language press reports outlining Dumont's policy stances were led to believe that he was the herald of a renewed era in 'democratic' Quebec politics, a new face that would change the tired discourse in the nation of Quebec. In my naivety and impetuousness, I too jumped on the bandwagon prior to the election to some extent, expressing my interest in the political appeal of his candidacy, though I never publicly or privately supported him. It seems now, looking back (though surely not to those who follow Quebec politics more closely than I do), that we were all duped - that the larger than life media profile of Mario Dumont grossly misrepresented his policy positions.

I remember talking to a friend who was living in Monreal prior to the election - someone I trust, with more or less progressive credentials. I was both shocked and tantalized when he told me he hoped Dumont would win the election. I had been following the campaign from a distance to that point, and had been impressed with the way Mario Dumont had been handling himself. Yet I was uncomfortably aware that Dumont didn't appear as a left-leaning candidate, despite the efforts of MacLean's to shade him thusly. So, snapping back to my diligent self, I reviewed just where Dumont stood, and my hopes and dreams were shattered. Union busting, fiscal 'conservatism' (read: tax cuts for the rich), racist immigration policy, only a short list defining just where Dumont stands. Add to this Dumont's recent comments on the 'riots' of Montreal, and perhaps we see the budding of a young fascist.

The problem I have with Dumont's deception is that, like with my friend, it gained wide credence among Quebec youth. It is true that increasingly I see young people sadly manipulated in their political and economic views by their desire to feel 'important, practical, and knowledgeable', in the same way that the great 'counterculture' campaigns - developed equally in corporate boardrooms and suburban garages - prey on kids desire to be 'cool'. But the success of the ADQ cannot be attributed to the hapless pandering of a minority of youth to the ideals of a class whose ranks they can only hope to join in some distant dystopian future. Rather, the ADQ has dragged in genuinely good-hearted and interested, if misguided, political participants with the false promise of a new kind of politics. What they have delivered is deceit, apathy, and the entrenchment of reactionary politics for a province that once claimed to be a leader in progressing Canada.

This experience has taught me a lesson, though I'm not entirely sure if I've truly learned it yet: rhetoric and representation are only half of the great progressive political equation - the balance is policy. In other words, what is spewed out of the mouths of candidates may go far in renewing political interest in otherwise apathetic voters, but it must be met by tangible policies that support that rhetoric. This is a lesson my friends in the United States desperately need to ensure they have learned as the campaigning comes down to the wire. On the democratic side, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are pulling a little of the ol' ADQ 1-2. Clinton representing her policies in an unfaithful manner, Obama ensuring his rhetoric speaks louder than his policy proscriptions. On the Republican side, that well-known party of fear-mongering, expect John McCain to pull every populist trick (including claiming that the Democrats are populist) to connive his way into office.

Hate Speech, the Rule of Law, and Human Rights Commissions

Some time ago, I saw an episode of TVO's The Agenda on "Free Speech and Human Rights Commissions" which spurred me to write a comment, mainly in response to other comments posted shortly after the show aired. You can see a list of these comments, as well as a blog posting by the producer which got them started here. I never got around to posting my comment, mainly because I couldn't condense what I wanted to say into TVO's character limit, because I figured my comments would do much more harm than good, and simply because I was too riled up to think things through. I've decided to post those edited comments here, now that a little time has passed allowing me to gain some critical distance:


First off, I wish I had caught the first showing of this Agenda episode, as it sure seems to have attracted quite a lot of reactionary and quixotic defences of Canadian liberalism. As a product of said liberalism, through and through, but with enough sense and awareness to be considerate of the lived experiences of many others who are not, I thought I would make a comment regarding the "justice" of hate speech laws as enforced by human rights tribunals. Free speech is a vacuous concept to begin with. Though this argument is likely beyond the reach of the less pensive and more assertive, there has never been a word or concept that I have learned that did not ultimately come from someone else. To say that our speech is "free" is misguided, since we always speak within the necessarily restrictive context of our knowledge, and our language. If speech is not some abstract concept, some ideal to be garnered from upon high or to be internally extracted, but rather a socially embedded practice of negotiating relationships between individuals, it needs to be wielded with the conscious understanding of the impact that it may have upon those relationships. To claim that racist tracts, or any other form of hate speech, are fully protected by the law of "free" speech, is to raise that specific individual freedom above the freedom of the harmed group in the hierarchy of values.

The problem lies in the fact that group identities are not separate from individual identities in many cases. This point comes home to me consistently when Canadians attack American nationalism. Most do not have the intent of putting down the individuals that their attacks will ultimately be disseminated to; that they have this effect and that those people view them as attacks is pointed. Group identities do have deep meaning for people who identify with that group, and generalized attacks on one's race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc. can have the same effect as when one is subjected to libel. This is especially the case when this form of 'libel' is so rampant that it translates into tangible structural discrimination from job markets, services or political opportunity, as was (and is) the case for many visible minorities in North America.

I am not a lawyer, but I study the law enough to have a working definition of "the rule of law" handily memorized. Gerald Frug, a noted Harvard law professor, claims that its primary function is to protect against the 'arbitrary exercise of power'. This may take the form of the usual suspects that come to mind (governments, corporate entities, interest groups, etc.), but what about when that entity is an entire culture? Indeed, Human Rights Commissions have been designed primarily with this latter construct in mind - when 'libel' is so widespread that everyone believes it, the victim of it has nowhere to turn for 'equal treatment before and under the law". Thus, to claim that these laws place a certain group of people 'above the law' completely obscures the unequal positions of various groups in society. It is the dirty secret of liberal societies that claim that everyone is equal, and yet refuse to ensure that this will be the case at the substantive level.

It is also disingenuous to claim that these commissions allow for the politically-motivated manipulation of "free" speech, if one also argues that there is some kind of apolitical set of laws we can enforce, as Ezra Levant claims. That the most ardent defenders of this line of thinking are white, male, and usually so absorbed in their own world view that they are deeply intolerant of alternatives (despite their claims to liberalism) is testimony to the interests that anti-hate speech laws threaten to challenge. Those hardcore believers in the "rule of law" should welcome the introduction of any law that further limits the scope of the arbitrary exercise of power. Instead, they are also the ones who most vociferously oppose it, since it challenges their own personal "enclaves of opportunity".

But one can ask a more simple question: if everyone agrees that racism et. al. are bad things, as all but the most extreme do publicly, then why should they fear laws or commissions that limit the public exercise of this hate speech? No one wants to use these words, or make these arguments, and if these commissions are able to engage with the concept of culture that liberal legal traditions with their bias on the individual are incapable of (or refuse to), then power should actually be exercised less arbitrarily. But in fact, hate speech is constantly being exercised and perpetuated by people all around the world - by members of groups with substantive power against those without it - and therein lies the reason why people like Ezra Levant fear these commissions so much. The cloak of "free" speech is convenient for preserving power relations, since they ensure that oppressive culture can be perpetuated through public discourse. This form of arbitrary power, or its exercise, may not be as easy to conceptualize as the individual, but its effects are equally debilitating for those whom if afflicts.


Now dormant on the Agenda's website, this debate must rage on. I am not against free speech in any way, but since I do believe in society and community (as tangible entities in conjuction with the individual), I also believe that the speaker must weigh just what effect their words will have - both directly and indirectly - more broadly. We all wield power with the words we speak, and we need to think to what ends we want to direct that power. As a member of the academy, I can muster considerable power and authority on some topics when I don my professional credentials. But because of this, I also realize that I have a lot of power to give up to others. As always, this issue, ultimately, must not be a debate about free speech, but a debate over who's values are reflected in public discourse and institutions.

Democracy and the Rule of Law: Reflections on Gerald Frug

Listening to Gerald Frug talk about the concept of rule of law in relation to cities reminded me just how manipulative elites can be. Frug, a distinguished Harvard law professor, is concerned with the deconstruction of the idea of the rule of law as it is popularly understood and disseminated by politicians, businesspeople, and "think" tanks. As Frug points out, this usually is a particular model of market regulation focusing on improving the ability for individuals and groups to engage in capital accumulation. Hernando de Soto has argued in The Mystery of Capital that this, more than any other reason, is why the "third world" is still mired in poverty. In contrast to this notion of rule of law, Frug argues that its importance is in "restraining the excercise of arbitrary power".


This concept seems quite fair, but what exactly might we constitute as "arbitrary"? Fundamentally, Frug points out that arbitrary power is any decision-making authority that is not democratically excercised. This too warrants a definition: for Frug, "democracy is a lived experience" empowering people with greater control over their lives, rather than a simple electoral formula or representativeness in a legislature. Thus, Frug's ideal-type 'rule of law' is one that ensures that everyone's voice is involved in decision-making processes. As potential sources of arbitrary power, Frug cites governments, elite experts and professionals, and relevant to his city theme, neighborhood groups.

Beyond a dichotomous assertion of individuality implicit in Frug's understanding of rule of law, he hints at an essential point: if the legal system is founded, as in any representative democracy, on the arbitrary decisions of an elite minority (via the legislature and judiciary), then just how "legal" is it? Frug looks to the communal norms, customs, and checks on power in shantytowns around the world - in short the 'informal' segments of society - and determines that these arrangements are legal in their own right. The imposition of a formal legal system, especially when it is imported from afar via the WB and other development agencies, is clearly an excercise of arbitrary power that infringes on the legal structures of these state-autonomous regions. Now, the legal system of these informal shantytowns may be highly corrupt, immensely hierarchical, patriarchal, and brutally repressive - but then again, looking back on its historical development, so is our own.

Frug instead insists upon a notion of the rule of law that is flexible, situational and context dependent - one that is dynamic, not relatively static, and one that protects the "weak" from the "strong" instead of institutionalizing the power of the latter. Though he discusses this concept with reference to urban localities, he emphasizes that these local structures must not simply form an addition to the formal [national + subnational] legal structure, but radically transform it.

Elites who have a considerable stake in the particular idea of rule of law that is currently being disseminated (read: the formal liberal-capitalist legal structure) seek only to totalize its presence over society. This expansion, while often cloaked in the language of freedom and democracy, is clearly anti-democratic in the sense that it only empowers a small minority. But it is also opposed to the Frugian spirit of the "rule of law", in the sense that it seeks to bolster the hegemony of arbitrary power. This oligarchical format runs the risk of degenerating to blatant totalitarianism, as even if the content of the laws remain fairly liberal in nature, the structure of the legal system will not. Even Friedrich von Hayek warned us against this in The Road to Serfdom!

The rule of law is a welcome ideal that we must always strive for, if it is employed in the Frugian sense. But we should be intensely critical of this concept at all turns. If the bourgeois, questioning absolutism, asked "Whose rule should we submit to?", deciding among themselves on themselves via nascent "democracy", we the masses should ask the same question. Whose laws do we follow, even if we agree with many of them? Who determines which laws are right and just and which are not? Thinking about these questions for only a little while should reveal a radical disconnect between our "rule of law" and democracy.