Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Republicans do not trust women.

So many bastards, so little time.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Fight them, without becoming them!

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

The words do not have to be perfect.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Yesterday in Stochastic Terrorism: The Quebec Shooter

Yesterday in Stochastic Terrorism: The Quebec Shooter

by | 131 Comments

This post is in: , ,

We now know, because we waited so as not to look stupid in public, that there was only one shooter at the Quebec City Islamic and Cultural Center:

So who is he? He’s this lovely young fellow:

La Presse tells us:

The other apprehended person, Alexandre Bissonnette, is expected to appear this afternoon at the Palais de Justice in Quebec City in connection with the attack that left six people dead and injured 19 people.

We also now know that the other suspect, who was taken into custody at the scene, a Quebecer of Moroccan descent, was in fact a witness:

Quebec police said on Monday that only one of the two young men arrested after the murderous shooting at a mosque in the city is a “suspect”, with the second “now considered a witness.”

Motive is still unclear, though there are a number of places on line with speculation after looking through Mr. Bissonnette’s Facebook posts.

Reader Interactions

131Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    Before anyone asks, yes, I’m aware of the RUMINT (rumor based intel) that Bashar al Assad suffered a massive stroke and is, at least, brain dead. As soon as I see it confirmed somewhere outside of Britain’s The Sun, I’ll do a post on it.

  3. 3.

    Brachiator

    The other apprehended person, Alexandre Bissonnette, is expected to appear this afternoon at the Palais de Justice in Quebec City in connection with the attack that left six people dead and injured 19 people.

    So, which Islamic country is Bissonnette from?

    Oh, wait….

  8. 8.

    CarolDuhart2

    They’re denying it, but this stuff reminds me of how terrified dictatorial press is of reporting bad news. As a result, nobody is taking them at their word.

    And if he is that ill, they may be trying to hide it for fear of all hell breaking loose at their end.

    This is one advantage of democracy-there’s a clear succession. We can tell the truth about things like this, and carry on. In Syria?

  10. 10.

    trollhattan

    Say the magic words, SAY THEM!

    “Radical Islamic terrorism.”

    See, now that we have a president with the balls to utter the magic words, religious terrorism no longer exists. Was that so hard?

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    Looks a little like the fellow who played Harry Potter in the movies…Daniel Radcliffe? Speaking of which, HP author JK Rowling is a goddess on Twitter, and she hammered a Nazi frog so well he’ll likely stay fucking hammered:

    BOOM!

    And, back on topic, I’ve seen live reports that allege Trump’s chronically flustered mouthpiece referenced the Quebec shooting as an example of why Trump’s Muslim ban is a good idea. It sounds unbelievable, and maybe it’s not true. But with this crew, I really would not be surprised.

  14. 14.

    Kristin D

    @Brachiator: Conservative trolls on FB and Twitter have already declared that one of the shooters was a Syrian refugee. It doesn’t even make sense.

  15. 15.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Brachiator:

    Who would succeed him if this rumor were true?

    As far as the people of Syria are concerned, Fenrir. Their world is going to go through A Great Devouring.

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Reflecting on literal decades of “Castro on death bed” rumors it’s not a bad idea to be circumspect here. BBC has nuttin’ at the moment.

    Still, inquiring minds want to know: Who are Assad’s Uday and Qusay? Or does Vlad get to pick? Does Bibi get a vote?

  20. 20.

    Ryan

    He’s white! Who saw that coming? I suppose we’ll have to add Canada to the list of banned countries now.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @CarolDuhart2: The Jester is reporting:

  25. 25.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Betty Cracker:

    I envision the angry frog boy chortling over how very clever he imagines himself to be… for about a minute. Oh, to enjoy his impotent tears of rage!

  26. 26.

    CarolDuhart2

    @trollhattan: I agree. It’s possible that he could die, they bury him secretly (nobody is going in for a state funeral given the situation), and then announce his death.

    Vlad may well already have someone lined up as a replacement in Assad’s inner circle. Or at the very least, have made an offer to someone to support him just in case.

  27. 27.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: We were in Quebec City last year, and as we were driving, my young son noticed that there was a shooting range, right in the middle of the old town! So my husband took him for a half hour of target practice. I don’t know what kind of guns, the main point being, of course they have guns and can get them even in countries like Canada. Think of Anders Breivik, in Norway. Whatever theoretical justification is behind their killings, they all have in common that sense of personal grievance for not being admired as much as they think they deserve. I bet this guy turns out to be exactly the same as the rest of them.

  28. 28.

    lamh36

    @IsaacDovere
    NEWS Obama office statement: “President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.” /1

    @IsaacDovere 5m5 minutes ago
    “the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.” /2

    @IsaacDovere 4m4 minutes ago
    Obama statement: “Citizens exercising their Const’l right to assemble..exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake”

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Quebec City.

    I was heavy pedaling the irony.

    @Ryan:

    He’s white! Who saw that coming? I suppose we’ll have to add Canada to the list of banned countries now.

    Well, there are Quebec separatists, but they have been relatively quiet of late.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @trollhattan: As indicated in the tweet I posted, White Hat Hacker The Jester has reported that Russian military has surrounded the government buildings. I have no way to confirm any of that.

  33. 33.

    Major Major Major Major

    I’d read interviews/statements/quotes from people there that the shooter(s) were shouting Allahu Akbar!, it would not surprise me in the slightest that a white supremacist would do this while attacking, under the assumption they wouldn’t get caught and people would pin it on sectarian fighting (in Quebec??), in fact I assumed it’s what happened.

  39. 39.

    aimai

    Hey, can anyone suggest to Putin that he borrow Trump to run Syria for a while? I won’t quibble if he needs to take Pence and Bannon with him.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: That “the President” at the beginning of the quote is going to leave a mark on a number of people. Specifically one who tweets from an unsecurable, because of age, Samsung Galaxy 3…

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @CarolDuhart2:

    This is one advantage of democracy-there’s a clear succession. We can tell the truth about things like this, and carry on.

    It doesn’t always work that way in practice. Plenty of US presidents have concealed very serious health problems: Wilson’s strokes, Eisenhower’s heart attacks, Reagan’s Alzheimer’s, etc.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    @Adam L Silverman: RUMINT, dog help us! There are many things that make me wholly unsuitable for the military, but I suspect the mania for creating faux-acronyms / portmanteaux such as that would drive me battiest. :)

  52. 52.

    Timurid

    Russian military has surrounded the government buildings.

    Was it the dreaded lead embolism? Perhaps in 9×18mm Makarov?

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Betty Cracker: When I taught my security course at UF, I had a module on Intelligence. We covered the Intel Cycle, the structure of the US and some other countries’ Intel Communities, and the different types of Intel – HUMINT, ELINT, SIGINT, etc. I had a test question: ELINT is:
    a) The fuzz that collects on electronic equipment like monitors, TVs, and computers.
    b) Intelligence collected from human sources.
    c) Intelligence collected via electronic means.
    d) Intelligence collected from signals, including communication.

    I routinely would get 10% of the students pick A. BTW: the HUMINT question was exactly the same except a was: The fuzz that collects on people when they are stationary for too long. Same thing – 10% of the students would pick a.

  55. 55.

    Gus

    @Kristin D: And now that it’s out there, the loopier among the crew will undoubtedly insist that M. Bissonnette is a fall guy and this is a false flag operation. Guaranteed you can find that if you have a strong enough stomach to read through the nuttier sections of 4chan or whatever.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: I saw the same reports. Saw them last night before doing the post, but decided it wasn’t germane as we didn’t know anything yet.

    As for acronyms, there’s also OPSUM (operational summary) and my favorite: WTF – water treatment facility.

  58. 58.

    A Ghost to Most

    If Assad is as described, why are we not speculating that it was the russians? It’s irresponsible.

  62. 62.

    Peale

    @rikyrah: “The president is trying to react to a crisis that has been ongoing for a period of time,” (Which is why we needed to act in ways that would cause the most harm! 24 Baby. Boom! Boom!)

  63. 63.

    Peale

    @A Ghost to Most: Maybe he found out that the Easter Plan for ISIS involves a “tactical nuclear strike” against all the cities in his country where an ISIS fighter might be hiding.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Brachiator: Yep.
    Armed:
    http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3841/751/1600/Plastique01.jpg
    Disarmed (also Disrobed):
    http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3841/751/400/Plastique02.jpg

    Remember she was created during the 80s when there was a wave of separatist violence. So she was topical. And it allowed the writers to come up with the innovative response: having firestorm transmute her clothing into air, scooping up the bombs, and then disposing of them.

  68. 68.

    Brachiator

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Remember she was created during the 80s when there was a wave of separatist violence. So she was topical.

    Yep. “Death is my weapon and my lover.” I think a character like this might be too controversial for, say, any upcoming Suicide Squad movie.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Betty Cracker: By and large my UF students were really good. Same when I taught at University of Central Arkansas. The other two universities I was at before I gave up on being an academic were just soul suckingly depressingly bad.

  77. 77.

    montanareddog

    How long before President Bannon’s sockpuppet tweets out to claim credit for Assad’s alleged stroke, due to the stress caused by his greatest EO of all time?

  79. 79.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: Wouldn’t be a .45. We haven’t used .45 ACP in years. We use NATO specified 9X19 (Parabellum), which is ball ammo – no hollow points. Conventional Forces, barring a few exemptions, use the M9 (Beretta). SF has a choice between some SIGs and GLOCKS. The US Army just awarded the new handgun contract to SIG Sauer and the M9 will be phased out with the P320 modular handgun system over the next decade or so.

  80. 80.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Brachiator:

    I remember buying the very first Captain Canuck comic (No. 1) when on a Boy Scout trip to the land where nobody says “out and about in a boat” correctly. Early 70s, IIRC.

  82. 82.

    rikyrah

    This Situation Is More Dire Than I Want to Admit
    by Martin Longman
    January 30, 2017 12:36 PM

    Anyone who writes daily for a living is going to occasionally have periods when writing doesn’t come easily. Every once in a while, you won’t feel like writing. Maybe you just want to veg out or do something normal. Maybe you can’t find anything truly inspiring to discuss. Maybe your creative juices get depleted and need to be recharged.

    I have a different problem. I want to write and have plenty to write about. I just don’t want to say what I feel I have to say.

    Call it a heavy heart or something too close to despondency. Call it an uneasiness with stating plainly what is growing painfully obvious. I’m naturally inclined toward calm and suspicious of hyperbole. If I find my political heat boiling too quickly, I tend not to trust myself and to doubt the value or utility of what I have to say.

    I have to toss those reservations aside to make commentary on the state of our nation. This is a five-alarm fire, and anything I might say about it can hardly match what even some Republicans are already saying. For example, Eliot Cohen has taken a tone that is so dire and vituperative that it would be very difficult for a liberal like myself to surpass.

    Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity—substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. The sooner Americans get used to these likelihoods, the better.

  84. 84.

    Shalimar

    @Gus: We don’t have to read through the nuttier sections of 4chan and Free Republic anymore. Alex Jones does it for us to get ideas for his paranoia empire. If it’s stupid enough, he will steal it.

  85. 85.

    p.a.

    @aimai:

    Hey, can anyone suggest to Putin that he borrow Trump to run Syria for a while? I won’t quibble if he needs to take Pence and Bannon with him.

    Haven’t those people suffered enough?

  87. 87.

    spc

    @Barbara: Yes, they do, with more controls. In a nutshell, you can own semi-automatics or shotguns with a PAL (personal arms license). Extensive background check, 30 day cooling off period and training certification required. PALs have to be re-issued every 5 years. Concealed and open (outside of hunting activities) carry are not allowed in public, Private handgun ownership requires a special permit and specific cause (hard to get).

  88. 88.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Teaching at a community college can be pretty dreadful, too. As with everything some students and colleagues were motivated, energetic, intellectually curious… others were soul sucking.

  89. 89.

    debbie

    I’ve been listening to the debate in Parliament. I wish there were more in attendance, but there isn’t a bit of Trump love there.

  90. 90.

    Lavocat

    Well, since he’s a blue-eyed white boy (and probably a Christian), I’m guessing that the American press will dutifully avoid calling him a “terrorist”. Just because.

  93. 93.

    Miss Bianca

    Damn. Saw some reference to this somewhere else. So sorry to see it. Somehow, I keep hoping and expecting that our neighbors to the North are more immune to this type of “bigotry with extreme prejudice.”

  96. 96.

    Elmo

    @Adam L Silverman: DHS isn’t on a nationwide standard yet. They’re either using .40s or 9mm, depending on region, and last I checked there were still a few holdouts using .357 SIG, which is the worst stupidest caliber of ever.

    Maybe there’s a reason DHS is consistently rated the worst Fed agency to work for…

  97. 97.

    Adam L Silverman

    @FlipYrWhig: No, before my time. I was there as a visiting professor during 2005-2006. I was quietly recruited, applied for, and received a tenure track spot at a different university (my last job in academia and absolute nightmare of toxic leadership, unprofessionalism, and criminality). What I didn’t know at the time was that my department at UCA had gotten the administration to authorize a sometimes used H/R policy to allow my position to be converted from visiting to tenure track/tenured. In hindsight, I should have stayed, but I’d already committed to what I had thought would be a better position. The students were good. My colleagues were wonderful. Conway, AR is a bit of meh and Little Rock isn’t much, but considering what I wound up signed up for, I should have stayed. Of course, had that happened, I wouldn’t have made the career switch I did.

  98. 98.

    rikyrah

    SCOTUS Fight Will Change Everything
    by Martin Longman
    January 30, 2017 2:42 PM

    There was no filibuster of Robert Bork’s 1987 confirmation for the Supreme Court. He was given a vote on the floor of the Senate and defeated 42-58. There was no filibuster of Clarence Thomas even though one could have been theoretically sustained considering that he only received 52 votes to be confirmed as a Justice to the Supreme Court. In both cases, the Democrats granted their unanimous consent to a motion to proceed to a full confirmation vote. However, there is no possibility that there will be unanimous consent to proceed to a similar vote on the nominee President Trump announces tomorrow night at 8pm. Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, for one, will exercise his right to object.

    The best precedent for this happened when John Kerry objected to proceeding to a vote on Samuel Alito, but his effort went down to defeat and Alito was confirmed with 58 votes, which was less than the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. If those Democrats who refused to confirm Alito had refused to allow a vote at all, he would likely not be on the Supreme Court today.

    I say “likely,” because it’s possible that the Republicans would have responded by invoking the so-called Nuclear Option and taking away the minority party’s right to stop a vote on Supreme Court nominees. It’s hard to say if that would have happened back in 2005, but it seems more certain that it will happen this time around.

    ………………………….

    In this case, no real effort has been made to prevent a filibuster, which is the same as inviting one. That can only mean that the administration’s expectation is that the Senate will invoke the nuclear option and do away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.

    This will, of course, cause a massive uproar and it will drown out all the things people are talking about today, from the Muslim immigration ban to putting Steve Bannon on the National Security Council to the Russian question to the wall on the Mexican border to the threat of war over Taiwan with China to Trump’s inability to discern the difference between reality and fantasy.

    Maybe that’s half the point, especially because conservatives are so motivated over this Supreme Court appointment that they’ll set aside everything else to fight for it.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    @Adam L Silverman:

    She’s been a member of Task Force X/The Suicide Squad. Including in the animated universe.

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I remember buying the very first Captain Canuck comic (No. 1) when on a Boy Scout trip to the land where nobody says “out and about in a boat” correctly. Early 70s, IIRC.

    I clearly have not kept up with comics.

    I did watch the animated “Batman: Assault on Arkham” not too long ago. Pretty good, although the Batman had a minor part in this outing.

  102. 102.

    Shalimar

    @Adam L Silverman: Reading Heather Hudson’s subsequent biography makes me glad I quit reading comics around 1990, sometime before James Hudson came back from the dead the first time. The Delphine Courtney story was well done. All the rest of that death of the month special event bullshit sounds horrible.

  104. 104.

    Mike G

    @Ryan:

    He’s white! Who saw that coming? I suppose we’ll have to add Canada to the list of banned countries now.

    He killed Muslims, but isn’t one himself, so the Trump Assministration doesn’t consider him a terrorist, more of a hero.

  108. 108.

    Timurid

    @rikyrah:

    Arab American Slave Catching Kapo Darrell Issa.
    There’s no racism like intra-ethnic racism… someone should tell that fuck that the Fair and Lovely will work better if he drinks it…

  111. 111.

    Chip Daniels

    @Gus:
    Everything that makes them look bad is a false flag operation.

    Except they never get their story straight, because shortly after they say that, another knucklehead will pop up and heap praise on the shooter or excuse his actions.

  112. 112.

    Lizzy L

    @Gravenstone: I despise Darrell Issa, but I really object to this. I’m not interested in murdering people. Let’s vote the bastard out of office; he can go back to his car business.

  113. 113.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elmo: They’re using .40 S&W because that was the FBI/Federal LEO round. FBI is now dropping it for 9mm, so its being phased out. .357 SIG is actually quite interesting for a boutique round. I have a very close friend who is a SWAT sniper and he can’t stand the in betweens like .40 and a lot of the boutique rounds. He thinks there kind of silly in terms of operational requirements. His take on .357 SIG is that the ballistics actually demonstrate that it is equivalent to its namesake .357 Magnum.

  114. 114.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Brachiator: Much better than the actual Suicide Squad movie. I’ve downloaded the new Justice League Dark, but haven’t watched it yet.

  115. 115.

    Doug R

    @Adam L Silverman: Canada actually went through a long fight involving the long gun registry.
    It was a talking point for the Harper government and they axed it after about a billion dollars had been spent.
    The province of Quebec sued for the data collected in their province before it was wiped.

  118. 118.

    Elmo

    @Adam L Silverman: They’re *supposed* to all be using .40 S&W. Pretty sure there’s at least one Region still on the 9mm with some .357 SIG.

    My objection to the .357 SIG isn’t at all about the ballistics; I know less than nothing about those. But you can’t staff a nationwide police force with a firearm caliber that’s manufactured, as near as I can tell, in artisanal small-batch locally-sourced quantities, lovingly hand-made by retired Nevada ranchers with hand-presses in their basements.

  121. 121.

    chris

    @Adam L Silverman: Just got in and catching up. Separatist violence ended pretty much in 1970. The separatist cause has never ended and goes on to this day.
    The last election in 2015 was partially fought over things like banning Muslim womens’ headgear and other charming stuff like that. The conservatives even proposed a “Barbaric Practises Hotline” at one point. Some of that got really nasty in Quebec, thank dog they lost bigly.
    And yes we have gun laws but you can probably buy an AK47 here if you abide by the rules on barrel length and magazine capacity. Neither of those are hard to get around, needless to say. Also, as someone pointed out last night, it’s a very short trip to the border and the land of freedom-to-own-a-rocket-launcher.

  122. 122.

    spc

    @chris: Yeah, but because of the ethnic chauvinism that exists in corners of the separatist movement, one generation’s Marxist FLQ terrorist could become another’s white nationalist terrorist. This has all the hallmarks of a lone-wolf stochastic incident but the shooter was known as a troll and there are certainly active skinhead groups in the province.

  123. 123.

    chris

    @spc: Agreed, that’s where I was going with “nasty.”

    I’m wondering/waiting to find out if the shooter is a follower of Ezra Levant and rebelmedia.ca. For those who don’t know that would be Canada’s breitbart.

  124. 124.

    spc

    @chris: That’s where it gets weird. A separatist white nationalist or a federalist white nationalist? A very Quebecois question.

  127. 127.

    chris

    @spc: Indeed, but this guy is more likely just a typical wingnut asshole who wouldn’t understand the distinction.

  128. 128.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Gus: Or a poor innocent fall guy who just happened to be passing by as the evil Muslim man shot up the Mosque arrested by the police on Trudeau’s orders so Canadians never get to find out how his policy of welcoming refugees is putting them at risk everyday!

  129. 129.

    DHD

    Updates on this:

    The second “suspect” who turned out to actually be a witness was arrested because… he was in the process of administering first aid to the victims when he saw men with guns (a.k.a. cops) enter the room, so he ran.

    Thousands of people in the streets of Montréal, Québec City, every other city in Québec, and Ottawa in solidarity with the victims. It’s approximately zero of your American degrees out there. Unfortunately I hit the tail end of the Montréal one so I missed the speeches and just saw a small contingent waving anti-fascist banners and chanting slogans, surrounded by a large number (probably a thousand) of cold, confused people trying to decide how long to stick around.

    The presumed shooter was an Internet troll who ranted about “feminazis”.

    Yes, Sean Spicer really did say what you think he said. I’m beyond words as to how offensive that is.

    No reports on just how the hell Bissonnette got that gun.

  130. 130.

    steverinoCT

    @Adam L Silverman: The Navy’s ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) setup for communicating with SSBNs is/was in Wisconsin. I had heard that the call sign (it was a radio station, after all) was “WTF.” But a quick hit on Wikipedia (don’t rely on 25-year-old memories before posting) shows it was the location, formerly known as the Wisconsin Test Facility.
    Thus an amusing party anecdote bites the dust.

  131. 131.

    DHD

    @chris: You absolutely cannot legally buy an AK-47 in Canada. But if you are a nice blue-eyed white boy with a convincing story, you can almost certainly drive one hour to New Hampshire and buy anything you want with nearly zero chance of getting searched at the border.

    1970 was a long time ago, and all of the violent separatists of that era are either dead or ended up as politicians, labor organizers, etc., but it’s also worth pointing out that the FLQ was exclusively a movement of the extreme left (e.g. some of the responsible for the October Crisis went into exile in Cuba). The extreme right in Québec has historically been opposed to independence and vehemently opposed to the overwhelmingly secularist and social-democratic sovereignist movement. (Note: we generally do not say “separatist”, at least in French, because the goal of this movement has always been “sovereignty-association” which you can think of as being like the SNP’s goal of “independence in Europe” for Scotland).

    Instead, Quebecois fascists historically professed allegiance to the old school of “French Canadian” nationalism which was based on ultramontane Catholicism and irredentist dreams of resurrecting the old province of New France. More recently, the actually existing extreme right, which revolves around a handful of popular and populist radio personalities in Quebec City, has been fairly strongly associated with the federal Conservative Party.

    This has perhaps changed a bit over the last 10 years or so. The “de-demonization” of the Front National in France has allowed some more conservative sovereignists to say “hey, why can’t we be like them, they just want to take their country back, right?” After an electoral disaster in 2007, where it ran a hugely “inclusive” slate of candidates including many visible minorities, Muslims, and indigenous people, the Parti Québécois turned its back on its previous platform of “civic nationalism” and conservative intellectuals like Matthieu Bock-Côté gained influence in the party. Still, the sovereignist movement, if not the PQ itself, remains strongly leftist and anti-fascist. The question is how much it represents the sentiment of the wider population.

    The aftermath of this horrendous terrorist attack will reveal how much of the spirit of Réné Lévesque and Gérald Godin remains in Quebec.

Comments are closed.