Saturday, the 22nd of August. About 5 PM.
The shop I work at is empty of customers, when one walks in.
The shop’s only other employee and the owner’s father are working in the back.
The City of Calgary has a bylaw requiring everybody in a public place wear a PPE mask or something similar, so I did not get too detailed a look at my customer. All I could tell was that he was a decently tall male in his early twenties, possibly still a teenager, with slightly longish dark blonde hair.
He wore a white T-shirt, emblazoned on the breast with black capital letters the words:
I think my jaw may have dropped underneath my mask (or, it may have just been open anyway, since it’s not really easy to breath through). I am used to seeing things of the like on the Internet, or hearing about it on Fox News Radio and SiriusXM Patriot.
But to see it in person is on another level.
I had a choice. I had, according to my boss, the store’s owner, the right to refuse service to any customer. I did not have to disclose the reason (which is a good way to avoid a class-action lawsuit or a complaint to a human rights commission).
I could have unleashed all my emotions on this kid. I could have thrown a fit at him.
But I decided not to. I decided to take his money.
Besides, I am reading the works of Marcus Aurelius, and I knew he would not approve of me if I had lost my temper.
Nobody came into the store while I was serving him, and none of my coworkers came up from the back while I did so.
After I securely had his payment and had given him his product, as he started to take a step or two away from the counter, I told him in deadpan tone something along the lines of:
“Hey. If you want to come back in here, don’t wear that shirt. It’s illegal.”
He looked at me, seemingly stunned at being challenged.
I added: “Alright? Don’t wear it again.”He began staggering away rather quickly. He appeared to want to retreat from the confrontation. But his pride forced him to stop before he opened the shop door and he turned around and said something like:
“You do get the meaning behind it, right?” I guess he felt his shirt was at least semi-justified.
I simply said: “Doesn’t matter. It’s illegal.”
With that, he opened the door and left.My minor confrontation was over.
I have a few comments.
A Word in Decay
I am sure that I am not alone in recognizing that the word “racist” has been undergoing a semantic shift in the English language for no less than a decade now.
Whether one prefers to consult the dictionaries of Oxford, Collins, or Merriam-Webster, one will find that the meaning of the word “racist” has in the common parlance shifted a considerable distance from its historical definition. Indeed, having been so overused in recent years that, like a machined part that has been repurposed for something that it was never designed to do, the word “racist” has mutated to the point where using it for its original purpose is nigh impossible:
- Our previous prime minister, Stephen Harper, was labelled a racist for leading efforts to establish a national telephone hotline through which one could anonymously report domestic violence especially related to an Islamic cultural context.
- Humanitarians lobbying the federal government to give expedited refugee considerations to Yazidis (in other words, putting them at the front of the line, ahead of Muslim Arabs) in Syria and Iraq fleeing the onslaught of ISIL was labelled by Justin Trudeau as racist. You may remember his press conference outburst in which he stated his opinion on that idea: “That. Is. DISGUSTING.”
- When the news broke a number of months ago that the new covid virus spread to the world from China, a number of politicians and media talking heads labelled as racist anybody who wanted to avoid associating in areas of frequented by Chinese immigrants, and even those who wanted the federal aviation authority to stop all flights from mainland China.
- Acknowledging that George Floyd was a convicted criminal and had a history of being a thug has become, thanks to the activism of “anti-racists”, almost a death sentence.
I don’t hold any hatred towards any person based on one sole demographic aspect about them. However, taking the above pointers into consideration, I consider anybody who willingly wears a T-shirt that reads “WE SHOOT RACISTS” to be a threat to my safety. As a social conservative who does not share the enthusiasm of “official” Canada towards current immigration rates, who does not affirm the verity of the BLM movement’s beliefs, who is very obviously light-skinned (you name it; I make a very bad hand in “politically correct poker”) – I am one of those “racists” that the designers of that shirt print are in favour of not merely jailing, not just exiling, but shooting.
Thou Shalt Not Offend The Communists Or The Fundamentalist Muslims
Oh, there is racism in the world. It’s just not where the official anti-racists are looking.
A number of years ago, ISIL made an attempt to exterminate the Kurdish people, viewing them as an impurity in the centre of their Islamo-Arabic state. Kurdish men were shot if they were lucky, beheaded or incinerated if they were not. Kurdish females – I don’t mean merely women, I mean females of all ages – were used as sex slaves, and even traded as commodities to be sold out of cages. Some women managed to be preserved to the point where they became mothers of children fathered by ISIL troops. Others were mutilated (deliberately in many cases) to the point where they were physically incapable of giving birth. Being viewed as an impure race in the eyes of ISIL’s Allah, many ISIL troops wanted to see to it that Kurdish women not only would not, but could not, procreate.
It was only through the efforts led by Michelle Rempel that the Liberal government in Ottawa formally (and coolly) acknowledged this was happening.
Today there is another genocide under way, in western China. The Communist Party of China stole East Turkistan decades ago while the world was preoccupied elsewhere. Now, the people of East Turkistan are being interred in “re-education camps” so that their culture can be monitored and reengineered by Beijing’s apparatchiks. Reports have leaked that Turkistani women are even being sterilised as part of population control efforts.
It is unfortunate that the captors and tormentors of the Turkistanis cannot be bombed into oblivion the way Russia and NATO did to ISIL.
May the families of these victims of genocide find joy in a better tomorrow.
We see the trend in the New Left, and even in the old establishment Left, that they only levy their judgment on one if one does not pass certain qualifications. In the case of the first example given in this section, they avoid scrutinising fundamentalist Muslims if at all possible. Fundamentalist Muslims, in spite of being socially ultra-conservative, are a political client of the New Left and the Liberal Party of Canada. They will never voluntarily apply their judgment on each other so long as they share the common goal of eliminating old-stock Canadian social conservatism in order to make way for their revolutions.
Phony Genocides
Alas, the fog of history and ignorance of current facts can be cleverly exploited by some in order to create guilt in their political enemies. We may be led to believe that genocide has occurred where there was none.
Opponents of the yet-to-be-completed Trump Wall along the U.S.-Mexico border like to adhere to the belief that the Anglo settlers of Texas, led by the likes of Augustus Magee, James Long, Haden Edwards, and Sam Houston, committed genocide against a race/culture called the “Tejanos”. Extremists on this position like to even claim that Texas is an illegal state and should be reabsorbed back into Mexico.
But there was never a race called the Tejanos. “Tejano” is simply a Castillian (Spanish) word to describe the people of the northeastern-most districts of the Mexican empire. Ethnically, and even culturally, “Tejano” is a name of distinction without a real difference from other residents of northern Mexico.
(Addendum: I support an independent Texian Republic.)
Over the decades, the various Palestinian parties, militias, and their allies in the global anti-Israel BDS movement have liked to claim that the Israelis have “committed genocide against the Palestinian people”. This is a claim that just never seems to grow stale. The Middle Eastern appetite for war is simply insatiable.
I don’t typically like to comment on the Israel-Palestine question, as there is no position that one can take without getting in serious trouble with somebody. I prefer to think that it’s just not my circus. But I do feel comfortable enough to state that Israel has never committed any sort of genocide. Although it is proven that the IDF has killed a number of civilians (decades ago, even whole Palestinian villages), including non-Palestinians who’ve gotten in their way, the label of “genocide” is not appropriate. There is no Palestinian race per se; they are merely one subsection of the many subsections of Arabs, who are spread as far east as southwestern Iran and as far west as Morocco. Although the Palestinians are entitled to pursue a sovereign state in which they can live in safety and prosperity, as all people are, they are not entitled to the status of genocide victimhood.
More recently, a new favourite of the international development advocates as emerged: the “Rohingya genocide”. The story cooked up goes something like this: a small race of people in northern Burma, called the Rohingyas, were suddenly targetted by Buddhist supremacists for extermination. They have been denied jobs, are victims of intentional famines, and even of indiscriminate murders by the Myanmar Army. Some of you may remember the television commercials (made by UNICEF, if I remember correctly) from a couple of years ago, asking for your donations to help the Rohingyas.
My friend Kevin J. Johnston (who will be running for mayor of Calgary next year) travelled to Burma and made a documentary called ‘The Rohingya Lie’ exposing the truth: that the Rohingya, as with the Palestinians, are not a race per se. The people identifying themselves as “Rohingya” are naught but illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who took advantage of jungle cover in the same way the Viet Cong infiltrated South Vietnam, and built illegal settlements in rural areas of northern Burma. Moreover, although the Myanmar Army was present in the areas where Kevin was filming and interviewing civilians, the army was there not to attack the illegal immigrants, but rather to protect locals from rape and looting. The “Rohingyas” considered themselves holy pilgrims to a land of infidels. Anybody who knows the particularities of the world’s major religions ought to be suspicious of any report of Buddhists striking first in a situation in which Muslims and Buddhists are suddenly forced into coexistence. Buddhist fundamentalism is extremely pacifist, while Islamic fundamentalism is very much the opposite.
Will I Live in Peace Again?
As we return to the original incident as to why I wrote this article, I want to thank the reader for spending their time with me thus far. I hope you are feeling more enlightened than before you began this article and I hope you will find something intelligent to share with somebody.
After I came home from work, not quite five hours after the minor confrontation, I phoned Calgary Crimestoppers. I explained in detail what happened, and I told the operator that if need be, my boss had access to the security camera video, if they wanted to examine it. I told the operator that I was less concerned about this particular individual, who was not all that threatening to me, than I was that some people felt that it was acceptable to wear shirts saying that they would like to shoot somebody. I added that I was planning to phone the CBSA and tell them that there was a strong possibility that items with slogans that the Criminal Code of Canada would define as intimidation and/or incitement to murder could be being imported into Canada.I was not scared or even really rattled by the incident. However, as I mentioned in the opening section of this article, and I want to emphasise it here: it is different when something happens in front of you, as opposed to when you see it on video or hear about it on the radio.Even when we think we are prepared for a possibility, we not only hope that the worst will not happen, but we also subconsciously believe it never will. We don’t believe that history is happening and will happen right in front of us. It does not appear with an advance warning, like in eighteenth-century warfare with a rhythm of drums and the sight of tall fur hats announcing the arrival of our opponents long before they set foot in front of us. It can appear quickly and quietly, with little or no warning.
Somebody can step in front of you and tell you (verbally or otherwise) that they want to shoot you.
It happened to me.
Postcript
Join me in calling the CBSA hotline to inform them that Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, and their associates may be exporting goods into Canada that may be in violation of the Criminal Code. The hotline is live Monday to Friday, and the number to call is 1-888-502-9060.Please reference the following sections of the Criminal Code of Canada when you call.
