THIELMANN: Eby hoists own party on petard of 'Nazi rhetoric'
Three weeks ago, alongside the Conservative Caucus, Independent MLA Tara Armstrong rose in the BC Legislature to oppose the NDP’s latest UNDRIP-inspired treaty.
In a blistering speech, MLA Armstrong condemned what she called the treaty’s blood and soil theory of indigenous land rights, rejected its race-based privileges, and stressed the need for individual equality before the law irrespective of ancestry.
That sparked a smear campaign to brand Armstrong a "Nazi."
You might ask what, specifically, Armstrong said to warrant such scurrilous accusations.
Did she praise a fascist figure?
No.
Did she make an anti-Semitic statement?
No.
Did she propose a racist policy?
No. In fact, she did the opposite.
Armstrong uttered the words “blood and soil” in the process of condemning blood and soil ideology. And for that alone, Premier Eby and other UNDRIP defenders preposterously twisted Armstrong’s words to falsely assert that she had somehow endorsed "Nazi rhetoric."
Despite how unreasonable it was to interpret MLA Armstrong’s quote as an endorsement, a mass smear campaign — inclusive of TV news segments, radio shows, "news" articles, and even a motion to censure — all assailed Ms. Armstrong at once with that same talking point.
Each of the parties repeating these smears apparently was banking on its audience never actually listening to Armstrong’s speech, which unequivocally demands full and equal citizenship for all Canadians irrespective of race or ancestry.
Full and equal citizenship under the law is not exactly something the Nazis were famous for.
The need to explain logic as simple as this sounds silly, but this is the level of discourse promulgated by our Premier, whose party has dropped 10 points behind the BC Conservatives according to a recent poll.
If you condemn blood and soil nationalism and call someone out for following it, you are not endorsing blood and soil nationalism. You are doing the opposite.
Condemnations are not endorsements. Condemnations are condemnations.
If we are to take the Premier’s logic at face value, every Holocaust historian must be guilty of “using genocidal rhetoric” merely for reporting on Nazi atrocities.
But no good deed goes unpunished.
Sitka Media Guest Columnist
Even Nico Slobinsky, a Vice President of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, amplified Eby’s attack line, going so far as to claim in his own Sitka Media opinion editorial that Armstrong’s condemnation of blood and soil ideology somehow "dishonour[ed] the memories of the victims of the Nazi regime and the lived experiences of its survivors."
This claim does not hold up to the slightest scrutiny.
The ideology commonly described as “blood and soil” long predates the Second World War and has appeared in many nationalist movements both before and after it, from 19th-century German romantic nationalism to Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa and Hutu ethnic nationalism in Rwanda.
The phrase is shorthand for the belief that a particular ethnic group possesses an ancestral, mystical, or inseverable connection to specific territory from which political rights and claims to sovereignty are said to flow.
And it is precisely the theory upon which Eby’s UNDRIP-inspired treaties are based. The K’omoks and Kitselas treaties both acknowledge the supposedly “inextricable” ties of specific ethnic groups to specific tracts of land within British Columbia and grant those groups unique governing rights on that basis.
Furthermore, Eby really is not in any position to complain about false comparisons to Nazi Germany. His MLAs repeatedly make grotesque comparisons of Canada’s residential schools to the Holocaust.
NDP MLA Joan Phillip is on record describing residential schools as "much like what happened with the Jewish people in Germany." NDP Minister of Indigenous Relations Spencer Chandra Herbert described residential schools as “places of torture, rape, [and] genocide.” Countless NDP MLAs refer to residential school students as "survivors."
This is despite the fact that there have been no homicide convictions or confirmed murders at any residential school during the 150-year duration of the program.
None.
If Eby and his allies are looking for politicians using "Nazi rhetoric," he has plenty to choose from, but MLA Armstrong is not among them.
Eby’s attempts to cut down Armstrong merely hoisted his own MLAs on the petard of "Nazi rhetoric." And more importantly, it revealed his own desperation, as support for race-based law, treaties, and UN declarations continues to drag him to new depths of unpopularity.
Tim Thielmann is a former Indigenous rights lawyer, the director of the Making a Killing documentary, and the current chief of staff to MLA Tara Armstrong.
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