Does the Conservative party celebrate feminist and socialist collectives? Or other institutions that promote values which boost their political opponents? Certainly not. So, why does the NDP celebrate Canada’s military?
Last week the RCMP charged current and former members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) for an extremist plot that allegedly involved creating an anti-government militia. They had a massive trove of weapons and were charged with terrorism-related offences. The charges against these far-right CAF individuals followed a few days after a report came out about an Islamophobic, antisemitic and sexist Facebook group run by members of the CAF’s Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa.
Controversy over racist, far-right members of the military appear periodically. In 2020 CAF engineer Patrik Mathews fled southward after he was outed as a recruiter for The Base, a neo-Nazi group that helped him go underground in the US. Matthews was eventually convicted on charges related to plotting to poison water supplies, derail trains and kill people to provoke conflict to create a white “ethno-state.”
Besides access to training and weapons, the far right is attracted to the CAF because of its racist, patriarchal and authoritarian character.
The CAF are the institutional embodiment of ‘toxic masculinity’. In 2015 Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps published a report that found a “culture of misogyny” in the Canadian Forces “hostile to women”.
It is also a hotbed of white supremacy. That should be no surprise given its history. Up to the end of World War II Royal Canadian Navy policy required that “candidates must be of pure European descent.” (more...)
Telling truth about military is better for all of us
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