Since the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, there have been several instances of xenophobia against Russians living abroad that have gone largely uncondemned in Canada and other parts of the world.
These incidents are occurring despite the historic lessons of the internment of Japanese-Canadians and Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the recent focus on rooting out “systemic racism” that has dominated public discourse by elected officials and government departments, as well as many news outlets.
Some experts maintain that these incidents and a host of others demonstrate that the values and ideologies being promoted in society today are falling short.
“I remember if people claimed that the virus came from the Wuhan lab, they’d get accused of having xenophobia. Whereas nobody is saying that about Russia, because Ukrainians and Russians are of similar ethnic background, and they’re white, like the white people in Canada,” Rod Clifton, professor emeritus of sociology of education at the University of Manitoba, told The Epoch Times.
Part of the reason for the difference in response, Clifton says, results from the Chinese communist regime’s success in spreading its propaganda that criticism of the regime is the same as being racist against Chinese people. But, he says, it’s also due to the fact that the social policies that are preached by many and implemented by policy-makers as “anti-racism” are in fact racist, because they tip the scales to the benefit of one race or group while disadvantaging or disparaging another.
“Blatantly, it’s racism, but they say it’s correct racism because white people have always been in domination,” he says, pointing out that historically, people of some races have dominated people of other races in different parts of the world “since the beginning of time.”
Clifton says some sociologists have argued that “ethnic propinquity is so deep in people’s souls” that when there are times of high pressure, such as wartime, that sentiment comes out.
“During the Second World War, Japanese people who were our neighbours and farmers, like other people, and we were getting along fine, were pigeonholed. Same with Germans: If you look at the Canadian census, from the mid 1930s the number of Germans in Canada went down, because many Germans were allocating their ethnicity to Yugoslavia or other places, but they were actually of German background,” he says.
However, instead of focusing on reducing the harms that such prejudice may cause, Clifton says the focus and values in society in recent times have shifted to issues such as racial identification and ideas that “white people are always racist against brown people.”
Philip Carl Salzman, professor emeritus of anthropology at McGill University, says this shift in values is because of the prevalence of ideologies that are based on division.
“An ideology that is based on division disregards what we have in common, like human rights. All of these ideologies are based on the idea that there are oppressors and there are victims. And whether that’s based on gender or race, or sexual preference, all of these tend to divide us,” Salzman said in an interview. “[The perpetrators of these ideas] care more about fighting the enemy that they posit in their ideology than they care about the interests of the people that they allegedly support.”
He notes the prevalence of this issue in various sectors of society, including academia, politics, professional sports leagues, and the media.
Difference in Values
Earlier this year, Chamath Palihapitiya, co-owner of the NBA team the Golden State Warriors, said that “nobody cares” about the persecution of the Uyghur ethnic Muslim minority by the Chinese regime. “I’m telling you a very hard ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line,” he said.
The NBA and other professional leagues such as the NFL have been rife with protests against racial inequality in the United States, with players and coaches kneeling during the American national anthem as a sign of protest, rather than standing in a show of respect. The gesture has been allowed to continue despite the leagues’ rules that require standing for the anthem.
Yet when it comes to those who call for upholding values of human rights and dignity in places like communist China, the NBA has taken a different stance.
The Epoch Times contacted the NBA for comment, but didn’t hear back.
Michael Rectenwald, author and a former professor at New York University, says part of the reason for the difference in taking a position on China’s human rights issues versus issues in the United States is financial.
“They are totally beholden to China because of the incredible income that the NBA and other sports leagues receive from the Chinese market,” he said in an interview.
The other part, he says, is ideological.
Government’s Selective Focus
When it comes to values-based foreign and domestic policies in Canada, a similar discrepancy can be observed, with the Liberal government focusing on specific areas when it comes to human rights, while ignoring others.
Ottawa has maintained its focus on China for business interests, while being careful with its tone, even as Beijing held Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in captivity in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on an extradition request by the United States.
“It is therefore quite jarring to come upon the China section, which opens with bizarrely warm and friendly sentiments, talks about economic opportunities rather than China’s actual economic blackmail of Canada,” he said.
This selective focus can be seen in other areas of Canada’s diplomacy and foreign aid as well.
“The only people applauding the Canadian government, the only people excited about what the Canadian government is doing, are the activists—the radical activists in the West. And that’s because the Canadian government is achieving their dream across the African continent,” Ekeocha said last year.
Mark Milke, a policy analyst and author of the book “The Victim Cult: How the Grievance Culture Hurts Everyone and Wrecks Civilizations,” says human rights used to be about issues such as ensuring people have the right to vote, worship freely, and not be subject to torture. But in many Western countries like Canada, that focus has turned to issues such as “equal statistical outcomes,” he says.
“The prime minister and his colleagues are of little help in recognizing real evil around the world, when they focus on mythical injuries such as microaggressions, or equate cultural injury with genocide,” he said in an interview.
“The prime minister ignores human rights violations in Iraq among Christians, ignores actual human rights violations in China vis-a-vis Muslims, and yet focuses on some weird, woke notion that if every group defined by ethnicity is not equal in outcome—income or jobs in the public sector—that somehow that’s discrimination.”
Milke says the issue goes back to a lack of historical depth and “a generation consumed by grievances based on identities.”
Shift in Values
Salzman says due to the change in values, he’s not so sure that if people today were faced with an atrocity like the Holocaust, they would behave more righteously than the people at that time, despite the historic lessons.
He says Western societies have gotten to the point that many have lost faith in their own culture, and “they make a virtue out of condemning it.”
“The West, especially the Anglosphere, was triumphant after World War II, and looked like we had every opportunity to build a very strong society. Canada was a serious country. Canada I think had the fourth-largest Navy in the world after World War II. And now it looks like we’ve decided that it’s more important to destroy our society and to destroy other members of the society than to build. Now the United States, Canada, and Europe have gone into huge decline,” he says.
Rectenwald says Western societies are drifting toward what he calls “corporate socialism” or “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” where the state allows for-profit operation of monopolistic corporations that are in allegiance with “progressive or leftist values” demanded by the government, leading to the elimination of the middle class and the civil society.
“Unless we can really serve the values of free enterprise, liberty for everyone individually and as groups, the right to self-determination, and the right of religious expression, we’re in trouble,” he says.
Clifton says the dramatic changes in the value system in the West started in the mid-20th century in universities due to Marxist ideology dominating academic institutions, and later became more prevalent in society as university graduates moved into various sectors.
“Now they’re in the media and government agencies, and they’re reflecting the same kind of perspective. And they’re pretty intolerant of other perspectives,” he says.
If society continues down this path, “we’re going to fold in upon ourselves,” he says, adding that instead, people should be working toward healing divisions, achieving unity, and upholding their culture.
“We should really be working on how people can cooperate across provinces, across municipalities, across political ideological debates,” he says.
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