The CBC is on a crusade to smear Jagmeet Singh and it is
loathesome, contemptible, and wholly on brand for a network which regularly
platforms white-supremacists while limiting working class and marginalized
voices to the fringes.
On Thursday last week the CBC’s David Cochrane interviewed
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, and repeated the same questions on Sikh nationalism
and the dispaying of images of Talwinder Singh Parmar at Sikh events as had the
CBC’s Terry Milewski previously. This was followed by a CBC News story entitled
“Jagmeet Singh now rejects glorification of Air India bombing mastermind,”
implying, disingenuously of course, that Singh had erstwhile approved of the
glorification of Talwinder Singh Parmar, which is false and libelous.
In the interview with Milewski Singh repeatedly tried to
clarify that the narrative of an irreconcilable conflict between Sikhs and
Hindus is a false narrative, but Milewski was only interested in having Singh
condemn those who display Parmar’s image. Jagmeet clearly and unequivocally
condemned the bombing of Air India in the strongest of terms:
"It is unacceptable that the violence that was committed, the heinous massacre that was committed, is something that Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus all denounce, and I regularly denounce it on the anniversary. Its something that we are all collectively opposed to, there is no question about this, it is completely unacceptable, it needs to be denounced as a terrorist act."
This, however, wasn’t enough for Milewski, because Milewski
didn’t care about Singh denouncing the Air India bombing, he wanted Jagmeet
Singh to denounce *those members of the Sikh community who display Parmar’s
image.* This is a very different thing. Milewski was in effect demanding that
Singh police the sentiment of the Sikh community. On Thursday, Cochrane again
wanted exactly the same thing – not merely a denunciation of the Air India
bombing, but a condemnation of a particular sentiment within some part of the
Sikh community. To this Singh responded:
“Because of the history, the ongoing violence, the genocide, the persecution and descrimination. There are some in the community that don't accept the official record. I will still attend events to reach out and speak to people.
Personally I think the displaying of a picture of Mr. Parmar is something that re-traumatizes and hurts and injures people who are suffering so much in terms of that loss in their lives, and I don't think it's appropriate. So I don't think it should be done, but if someone else is doing it an event I still think it's important for me to reach out and speak to people and talk about my journey, how I felt that same pain and that same trauma of knowing that people who looked just like me were singled out and killed, targeted and murdered. I think its important to talk to people about what we can do to transform that pain into something positive."
Hysterically insisting that Singh must answer for and
condemn ambivalence towards the Air-India bombing isn’t ‘journalism,’ it’s
parochial race-baiting and dogwhistling. Dogwhistling is when one phrases
things so that a certain, almost invariably white, community will be alerted to
a racist or prejudiced subtext. In this case, Milewski and his fellow
race-baiters are attempting to paint Jagmeet Singh as somehow vaguely connected
to a horrible tragedy which evokes fear, suspicion, and xenophobia. As AndrewMitrovica writes, “this hysterical pile-on is intended to paint a simplistic
caricature of Singh as first and foremost a Sikh, not a Canadian, born and
raised in Canada.”
There is much to criticize about Jagmeet Singh. He is young,
inexperienced, and vague, his sloganeering is orange-liberal bafflegab, and he
obtained his position by soliciting the support and party machinery of the NDP
chauvinists like Brad Lavigne and Hélène Laverdière who are chiefly culpable
for reactionary positions on economics and foreign policy. It is unwarranted,
however, and illegitimate in the extreme to try to portray him as answerable
for Sikh nationalism and terrorist sympathies in the Sikh community.
Milewski’s only response to this charge is that Cochrane also put
the question to Justin Trudeau as well - so clearly, he argues, it must have
nothing to do with Jagmeet being Sikh. This is ludicrous, disingenuous, and
lowbrow. Why is this issue being pressed now? It is because a Sikh is a leader
of a federal party. Asking Justin Trudeau to condemn those who valorize
Talwinder Singh Parmar isn’t analogous, but asking him to condemn those who
valorize genocidal war criminal Winston Churchill for starving 3 million
Bengals to death might be. On the one hand violence is prismatic, and different
communities view different historical violences differently, and on the other
Jagmeet Singh is no more answerable for those who admire Parmar than Trudeau is
for those who admire Churchill. That many white people consider Churchill a
hero doesn’t negate or undo his demonstrable legacy of barbarism, white-supremacism,
and genocide, and Milewski wouldn’t expect any white politician to reconcile
the two and be answerable for it. So why try to make Singh responsible and
answerable for Parmar and the some segment of the Sikh community’s views on
him?
The Laurentian elite is threatened by a charismatic social
democrat who threatens their largess, the wealth of their gated communities,
and their favorite neoliberal fraud, Justin Trudeau. The political angle of
focusing on his Sikh heritage, and whatever convenient smears they can glean
from it, is deployed cynically, as a cudgel to dissuade middle-class voters
from throwing their lot in with working class and marginalized peoples.
I had thought and hoped that this kind of banal race-baiting
was beneath an otherwise venerable reporter like Terry Milewski, but alas, it
seems it is not. It is disappointing and sad that this, playing to the racist
peanut-gallery, is how Milewski deigns to spend his ‘semi-retirement’
years. Make no mistake, the crusade
Milewski and his associates like Cochrane are on is not even in the slightest
journalism, it is slime.
If Jagmeet Singh’s electoral hopes were to be impinged upon
because a few racist pundits promulgated lies, smears, and disinformation, that
would be a great loss for Canada. Singh is a fresh face, and deserves scrutiny
from both the press, and his party base, for the content of his platform and
the function of his party, for his vision for Canada politically and
economically. These questions are relevant, these questions are legitimate, and
one can only hope he rises to the occasion. The kind of third-rate parochial
smears than Milewski and Cochrane are pushing, however, deserve universal condemnation.
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