Extreme Right in Quebec?: The Facebook Pages in Favor of the 'Quebec Charter of Values'
| Autor: | Frédérick Nadeau, Denise Helly |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
Radicalization
business.industry media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences Immigration Public debate Charter 050801 communication & media studies Context (language use) General Medicine Public opinion 0506 political science Politics 0508 media and communications State (polity) Political science 050602 political science & public administration Ethnology business media_common |
| Zdroj: | Canadian Ethnic Studies. 48:1-18 |
| ISSN: | 1913-8253 |
| DOI: | 10.1353/ces.2016.0004 |
| Popis: | In August 2013, the Government of the Parti Quebecois first introduced the idea for a Quebec Charter of Values. This led to a stiff debate during which anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiments were expressed by government officials, newspaper columnists and other well-known public figures. These opinions were in turn appropriated and disseminated by a number of citizens throughout social medias. In some regards, these attitudes and opinions are akin to those of extreme right movements and parties in Europe and the United States. In this article, we ask whether we are witnessing the rise of an extreme right in Quebec, a political stance so far estranged to this society. We start with a conceptual discussion of the notion of extreme right and then proceed to analyze the arguments put forward to support the Charter of Values. We conclude that even though the debates do reveal the "radicalization" of certain segments of public opinion toward the right, it is not possible to categorize this shift as the blooming of an "extreme right" in the full sense of the term. Resume En aoiit 2013, le gouvernement du Parti Quebecois lance pour la premiere fois l'idee d'une "Charte des valeurs quebecoises". Dans les mois suivants, le projet va generer d'intenses debats durant lesquels de nombreuses personnalites (politiciens, editorialistes, chroniqueurs, comediens, etc.) revendiqueront publiquement des postures anti-immigration et anti-islam. Ces prises de position seront ensuite appropriees et largement relayees par divers groupes de citoyens sur les reseaux sociaux, dont Facebook. Dans la mesure ou ces discours s'apparentent a ceux de mouvements ou partis politiques qui, en Europe, sont associes a l'extreme droite, cet article demande si les debats autour de la Charte sont revelateurs de l'emergence d'une extreme droite quebecoise. II debute par une discussion conceptuelle autour de la notion d'extreme droite, puis entreprend d'analyser les arguments avances par les partisans de la Charte pour soutenir le projet. Si nos observations permettent d'etablir la > effective de certains segments de l'opinion publique vers la droite, ce glissement ne peut etre categorise comme etant revelateur d'une > dans le sens plein du terme. INTRODUCTION In August 2013, the Government of the Parti Quebecois first introduced the idea of what was to become Bill 60 (1)--also known as the Quebec Charter of Values--which primarily aimed to affirm the secular nature of the State, along with gender equality. Among the suggested measures, its most controversial related to the prohibition for employees of the public and para-public sectors, to wear an "object which ostensibly displays one's religious affiliation" (art. 5). Other articles require employees and users of public services to provide and receive services with their "face uncovered" (art. 6 and 7), and ban activities and practices in childcare and schools "such as dietary practices stemming from a religious precept" (art. 30). The Bill generated a large public debate, during which anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiments were expressed (Helly 2014). According to surveys, 51% of respondents declared themselves in favor of the Charter in September 2013. Their proportion grew to 59% in January 2015, and 16% of the respondents revealed having a negative perception of immigrants (Presse Canadienne 2015). But while anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments have crystallized in the form of political parties and radical right-wing movements in Europe, such organization hasn't yet proved successful in Quebec. This might explain the abundant corpus of research in Europe (Art 2011; Betz 2004; Blaise and Moreau 2004; Camus et Lebourg 2015; Klandermans and Mayer 2006; Mammone 2015; Mudde 2000; Nikolski 2013; Perrineau 2001; Pirro 2015), and the relative scarcity of the literature in the Canadian context, although we have been noticing a growing interest in the last couple of years (Baron 1997; Bernier Arcand 2013; Bernier et Campana 2015; Hubert and Claude 1991; Kinsella 1994; Tanner and Campana 2014; Young and Craig 1997). … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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