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Federal Election 2019

"wokism" is also known as Identity Politics.

In case you are not familiar with this, I would look it up. It's where people think about things and play politics based on a particular identity bucket, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social and economic status, etc....

So people look at things as Rich People Bad, Poor People Good...Man Bad, Woman of Color Good...... and the result of this thinking is instead of judging someone on their particular merits, you judge them based on their "bucket".... so for example when Trudeau criticized Americans in December for "rejecting two women president candidates" and linked that as an attack on women's rights.... instead of framing the discussion as, Harris the candidate lost to Trump the candidate based on the merits of each candidate and campaign.

I lived for 12 years in a nation where identity politics resulted in the death of 80 million to 100 million people over the past 100 years at the hands of government. And globally I would say it contributed to the deaths at the hands of government of 150 million, depending on what statistics you look at. Marxism is based on Identity Politics - "All Rich people are evil and bad" for example. Canadians and Americans have not faced this type of darkness in their history, so they are not aware the path this type of thinking leads to when you look at politics in terms of Identity Politics - eg. "this person is trans so they must be correct", or this is a "white man so he cannot be allowed to take this position"

Canada is a very progressive society.... but that progressiveness can continue based on the merits of individuals.... and not just because they belong to a certain identity to label who they are. If that makes sense.
Are you really trying to link "Identity Politics" as practiced by liberals in Canada (and the US) to deaths under Russian Communism? (I presume Russian Communism? If not please, clarify) Please, justify that link, enlighten how "wokeness" is going to kill hundreds of millions of people. If your concern is that people are going to be sorted into a class/caste system, those being labelled as "woke" are the least of your concerns. By your own definition, it's those throwing around "woke" as a pejorative, in order to group people they disagree with into "others" that you should worry about.
 
Are you really trying to link "Identity Politics" as practiced by liberals in Canada (and the US) to deaths under Russian Communism? (I presume Russian Communism? If not please, clarify) Please, justify that link, enlighten how "wokeness" is going to kill hundreds of millions of people. If your concern is that people are going to be sorted into a class/caste system, those being labelled as "woke" are the least of your concerns. By your own definition, it's those throwing around "woke" as a pejorative, in order to group people they disagree with into "others" that you should worry about.
Yeah, he's got the Russian propaganda and right wing talking points down pat.
 
Are you really trying to link "Identity Politics" as practiced by liberals in Canada (and the US) to deaths under Russian Communism? (I presume Russian Communism? If not please, clarify) Please, justify that link, enlighten how "wokeness" is going to kill hundreds of millions of people. If your concern is that people are going to be sorted into a class/caste system, those being labelled as "woke" are the least of your concerns. By your own definition, it's those throwing around "woke" as a pejorative, in order to group people they disagree with into "others" that you should worry about.
The practice of Identity Politics is dangerous because it conditions the mind to believe it's politically correct to think a certain way, to act a certain way, and others that do not think and act in this PC way are somehow 'deplorable'. They are less moral (or even evil).

This is counter to our Western society (Canada, US, UK) which is predicated on pluralism and freedoms of thought and speech, and through this discourse, we arrive at the best result. Under wokism/identity politics, the prevailing group believes there is "justice" in silencing and even eliminating other groups because they are somehow seen as less moral, or even 'evil'. There is a slippery slope, and societies end up committing acts against the people deemed to be 'deplorable' that they would not have otherwise committed. And people in the society who believe they are moral are ok with these acts against those who are not politically correct, such as silencing them or "cancelling" them because somehow those people are 'bad'.

While in our traditional system in Canada (and US and UK), the measure of the society is how everyone's rights are protected. Not so in wokism/identity politics. If you are apart of the bad group, then it's ok to be silenced, rights trampled, violently dealt with, arrested, and in some cases, it gets even worse. Empathy for humans is lost. Rational thought is circumvented.

Again, it's a focus on the identity of the person or group, as opposed to the merits of their views or arguments. People are placed in a good bucket, or a bad bucket. And then there is no room for discourse, because the 'source of the argument is a bad person'. The argument isn't even considered.

In China, where I lived, the result of this was catastrophic. 80 million to 100 million deaths at the hands of government with people cheering on with moral righteousness!!!!!! The stories involve darkness beyond what people raised in this nation can believe. Decades ago, after I returned from China as a student, I could see how deeply the thinking ran within our university educational systems. But today, this way of thinking is conditioned not just through schools, but through media (all of the media, especially the CBC), social media, the corporations and other institutions. I'm not saying that what's happening in Canada will result in hundreds of millions of deaths. Because we have a fairly stable society. But everywhere it can produce behaviors that are unprecedented against a group of people that are labeled as somehow being 'bad'. "Cancel Culture" Cancelations, censorship, lawfare, unlawful arrest, and worse.

And it's very easy to manipulate people who have adopted this way of thinking. The Leader just declares the group to be in the "bad" unPC bucket, and the entire society gangs up against them - because they believe they are morally right.

For example, the Leader can call a group of those that are dissenting and protesting "Racist" and "Misogynist" and then they are seen by a society as evil. People trained to be 'woke' no longer look at the argument, or feel empathy for the humans - but see these Racist and Misogynist people as 'deplorables' or "unCanadian" etc..... The people are not necessarily racist, nor misogynist - but the Leader said they were. That's enough, and then the society is ok with silencing these people, trampling their constitutional rights and sometimes even worse.

People will even accept the enactment of Martial Law, and infringement on everyone's right. The Emergency Act was never used before in Canada but wokism ushered it in. It was used to quash dissenting view. Arrests were made. And although the media doesn't report this, some of the people arrested were held without trial for the longest period in Canadian history. This is because the police never had evidence of the charges they accused them in the media, such as conspiracy to murder police officers, and so the people were held in remand for years from their families with no visits, on what amounted to at best be mischief charges. Many of the people at the protests were beaten to a pulp like I have never seen on Canadian soil. I saw these videos. They were not shown in Canada.

The prevailing view for Canadians, created by the Leader, and the media, was these were white nationalistic racist misogynists - yet my friends were there. They are very left wing people who just believe in 'My Body My Right'. I was personally at the protest in Toronto and all races of Canadians were present. This wasn't about white nationalist racist misogynists as it was painted in our woke media and leadership in order to manipulate the Canadian opinion.

You probably know that the protesters had bank accounts frozen. Insurance cancelled. And were debanked (meaning not allowed to have any bank accounts). Did you know that the two largest amounts ever raised in crowdfunding history in Canada were for this cause and were frozen by the government? Even worse, hundreds of Canadians that donated to them had their accounts frozen, and then thousands of Canadians who donated had their bank accounts closed (debanked). I had friends who had all their bank accounts closed and their house mortgage cancelled because they dared to express their political view by donating $100 to this cause. When one of them took it to the provincial authorities for adjudication, the response from RBC was 'we don't agree with their political views'. Finally, one of the Canadian banks (Scotia) apologized to Canadians and accepted accounts from people who were debanked by all the other major banks. You probably realize that a person who does not have a bank account will have serious difficulty working and eating.

This occurred in Canada, because Identity Politics was used to manipulate the masses into believing that it was ok to take away the rights of these 'deplorables'. In my personal opinion, this was the lowest point in Canada history since the internments of certain minorities (mainly Japanese) in WWII. And in foreign investors minds, it's unconscionable. This is one of the reasons the Canadian economy is doing so poorly over the past couple of years - because foreign investment has run from here now that it lacks confidence with a government that can so egregiously break the constitution to stop politically dissenting voices. That's what happens in banana republics.

Since this is a Leaf website, it's probably best not to continue with some of these political discussions. What I write was not widely reported, and probably something people don't agree with, or prefer to avoid all together. But I just wanted to answer the questions you had, and provide a different perspective than the one the schools and leadership and media has been conditioning us with.
 
"People who have adopted this way of thinking are very easy to manipulate." This far, we agree.

But there's bad news: Identity Politics is practiced by both sides of the political spectrum. People on both sides can be manipulated. For instance, if someone were linking the Canadian left to the Cultural Revolution in China without good evidence, they may be trying to manipulate someone else who spent time living in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.

Your example, the "Freedom Convoy" is very evocative to a certain audience. Controversial extreme emergency measures were used during a pandemic against Anti Vax protesters. By reducing the whole situation to wokeness gone mad - even if I need to paint white supremacists as the victims - I would doubtless find some who would swallow the entire message, without questioning whether they may be becoming exactly what they claim to oppose.

Nearly sixty years ago, Mao told the youth of China that rebellion was justified to cleanse the Chinese Communist Party of bourgeois elements that had infiltrated and taken over the government. Today, you're proposing we need to root out woke elements that have taken over the government.

To prevent another Mao, of course.
 
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