Core Concepts – The Hungover Pundit

Core Concepts 7 – The Gun Post

A few years ago I got involved with a local community group whose membership was quite a bit different than the left-leaning activist crowd I’d been accustomed to dealing with. Local farmers, construction workers, a couple of veterans, retirees, and so forth; your typical white, second- and third-generation semi-rural Ontario working-class types. Good people, for the most part, although I knew going in I was going to be dealing with a much more conservative group than I was used to.

But I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not, even for the sake of an easy time, so eventually the conversation drifted to politics and it was discovered that I was, in the parlance that a couple of the folks decided to use, a “liberal.” (I don’t describe myself as a liberal, mostly because Canada has a Liberal Party that emphatically isn’t; I prefer the term progressive.) And a couple of the middle-aged men decided to chide me for what they considered my “liberal views” must be; mostly, they harped on the “fact” that I as a “liberal” must be anti-gun. I must want hunting to be illegal. Criminals love unarmed victims. How would I defend my family without a gun, and so forth.

Core Concepts 6 – Anarchism

The other day I had an online interaction in one of the groups I follow: Someone trollishly interjected the opinion “Anarchists should be behind bars. How is that even debatable?” into a completely unrelated discussion of last Saturday’s incident at the Yellow Vests demonstration in Hamilton. The incident in question was a Yellow-Vest “protester” harassing, attacking and assaulting an LGBTQ+ family; including threats of abducting the family’s kids and, it has come to light, spitting on a three-year-old child. (No arrests have been made, by the way, and City Hall’s response was to advise the family not to attend counter-protests at City Hall anymore.)

But it’s the anarchists who should be unilaterally locked up, right.

So I — politely enough — challenged the guy advocating for blanket arrest of an entire ideology, and as the discussion progressed he got more and more trollish, even claiming that he “used to be an anarchist” but that “anarchists that act out their beliefs should be punished” and so forth. It was your basic “I’m a troll and it’s fun to make extreme statements to see how people react” nonsense that I try not to encourage. My primary takeaway from the interaction wasn’t that this guy could be convinced — feeding trolls for the sake of feeding trolls isn’t my bag — it was that a lot of people in the group lacked an understanding of what Anarchism, as a political philosophy, is and isn’t.

Core Concepts 5 – Self Care

I’m going to admit it: after six weeks of the dumpster fire that is Hamilton politics since Pride, I’m starting to get a little shagged out. The drama continues this week, with Hamilton achieving the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of reported hate crimes in Canada. The Mayor was unavailable for comment… which of course sparked a wave of derision on Twitter.

Following that, the CBC ran a story on one of three separate complaints to the OIPRD regarding the police response — or rather, lack of one — to the attack on Pride. They mayor’s office released yet another boilerplate statement “Hamilton for All“, presumably not understanding that “all” is increasingly seen to include Nazis and Fascists.

Core Concepts 4 — Our Home On Native Land

Today is National Indigenous People’s Day in Canada.

As a settler who is trying to understand Native issues and work in solidarity with Native peoples it has been my habit on this day, ever since a friend passed on a challenge a few years ago, to “Share on social media the names of the First Peoples whose territory I live on, the Treaty or Treaties which govern where I live, and the place where my ancestors came from.” Usually I just make a short post on Facebook, but since I’ve got this new blog, I’m going to expand my usual post.

Core Concepts 3 — Intersectionality

I was doing a bit of research into intersectionality theory for today’s blog post, thinking I know kind of how I want to explain it, but if someone has done it better then I can quote and link to them — you know, standard blogger stuff — and Google throws out a link to a YouTube video titled “What is Intersectionality?” So I click it, thinking maybe I can link to it if it’s well done… and it’s Ben Shapiro.

Unexpected Ben Shapiro spouting bad alt-right logic about “leftist fads” and how “white identities are valued less” is a nasty fucking thing to stumble into while hungover and before I’ve had any coffee. No warning at all. Plus he’s got the world’s smuggest, most annoying voice and about forty seconds in it set up this sort of post-bourbon reverb inside my skull that I could taste in my teeth. Brutal.