Canada must avoid U.S., U.K.'s political descent, human rights advocate says

Recent attacks in Orlando and Istanbul by Muslim extremists have had a strange mirroring effect on a similar wave of xenophobia in Western politics. As the U.S. and its allies sink deeper and deeper in Syria and Iraq, unable to solve the ISIS conundrum, nativist blowhards in both Britain and America have succeeded in using/exploiting anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment for political gain. Thus the British exit (or Brexit) from the European Union and the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S.

Trump took to his proverbial soapbox right after the Orlando attacks to rail against what he saw as the establishment's pathetic "political correct response," something that, according to him, keeps America from "thinking clearly." This same culture of crippling "political correctness" and appeasement toward Muslims and immigrants is what pro-Brexit voices like the U.K. Independence Party's Nigel Farage and his supporters rant and rave about when criticizing European liberalism.

The issue of anti-terrorism has fused with anti-immigration arguments on the domestic front, playing right into the narrative that Muslim extremists around the world particularly ISIS (Middle East militants fighting to establish an Islamist state) love to push: The West hates Islam and doesn't want Muslims in their countries, so come join us. At the root of this dynamic is a deep socio-economic dissatisfaction among the citizens of Western democracies, a significant portion of whom have turned to scapegoating as a way to explain their predicament.

If Canada fails to extricate itself from this globalizing trend and falls into a similar situation, no amount of "pro-tolerance" rhetoric from the Trudeau leadership is going to hold off a corresponding wave of nativist sentiment that'll surely come to the fore, something former PM Stephen Harper demonstrated many times during his tenure.

Immigrant vs. non-immigrant possibilities

Attacks in Orlando and Istanbul have given extra ammunition to right-wing nativists laying out just how irreconcilable the relationship between immigrants and "the West" truly is. Not only do immigrants suck up social welfare and jobs, the story goes, they're also the source of extremism and violence in otherwise peaceful societies.

It's easy logic to follow and has taken on new dimensions in the post-Sept. 11 era to eventually cough up figures like Donald Trump. The complex social and political negotiations that have to occur in lieu of a balanced existence between different ethnic or cultural groups is dismissed as unclear thinking or political correctness. This was something Stephen Harper invoked, just without the Trump-like bombast.

Yet history shows the best of Canada's social fabric is woven by such negotiations and compromises. Canadian citizenship has, however limited, been animated by the ideal of brokered coexistence leading to mutual respect and then to prosperity. Everybody can come together to do their part. In Winnipeg a couple of years ago, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and Islamic Social Services presented the United Against Terrorism handbook. The currently popular image of Muslims being little more than terrorist sympathizers who are incapable of living with their neighbours neglects the fact that a significant portion of tips received by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Canada, the U.S., etc. come from Muslim communities.

• United Against Terrorism handbook released at Winnipeg mosque

But facts hardly ever get in the way of a good, forceful argument these days. In a time of systemic economic failure, people are asking why it's so hard to be paid a living wage, put their kids through school and get rid of crippling debt. It's just so much easier to scapegoat the Other than it is to explain, introspectively, the nuances of a failing set of centrist, neo-liberal policies.

Root of the problem

It's not correct (nor sufficient) to blame "old white racists" for the advent of xenophobic politics and spectacle. The force and numbers behind this rise in social antagonism is rooted in the failing political and economic policies that globalized neo-liberal culture has embraced.

The subprime mortgage crisis, giving way to disappearing jobs and lower wages, combined with austerity measures and political deadlock in Parliament and Congress, have created a situation where piecemeal, incremental change has seemingly become utterly inadequate (if not impossible). If the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in Britain's Labour Party and the success of Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Democratic primary signifies the left's preference for a drastically newer form of politics, then the rise of Donald Trump, UKIP, Boris Johnson, etc. represents a similar sentiment among the political right.

The difference is that though the latter sentiment traffics in the language of economics and policy, it's run and fuelled by a deeply confused resentment and frustration that manifests itself in collective prejudice and xenophobia. The success of Donald Trump is due at least in part to him revealing this in a public way.

Canada isn't immune to this kind of demagoguery. If the rise of Justin Trudeau doesn't convert into major economic and social progress for the middle and working classes, then the ghost of Stephen Harper may very well come back in the form of a nastier, more divisive politics. It's hard to move into a new form of governance through commercials, speeches and slogans alone, especially when there's a decade worth of Harperism to extricate one's party from. A failure to do so in the Canadian scene will be followed by the same kind of ignominious descent seen in the U.S. and in Britain.

Steven Zhou is a Toronto writer who has experience in human rights advocacy. He has worked for Human Rights Watch, OXFAM Canada and other non-governmental organizations.