Students for Western Civilisation’s latest postering campaign is a protest against recent threats—some of them realized—to remove or tear down a number of symbols of European-Canadian history, culture and identity.
The targeted symbols include, at least: the name and sculpture of Egerton Ryerson at Ryerson University, in Toronto (1); the name (2) and sculpture of Sir John A. MacDonald and other sculptures of Canadian Prime Ministers (3); a sculpture and other commemorations of Edward Cornwallis in Halifax (4); a sculpture of King Edward VII in Toronto (5); a sculpture of Winston Churchill in Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto (6); the images of Sir Robert Borden and William Lyon Mackenzie King on our bank notes (7); and the South African War Memorial at Queen Street West and University Avenue, in Toronto (8).
We see these attacks as among the first of many in what will become an ongoing process of ethnocide against European-Canadian culture. Ethnocide is defined as “the deliberate destruction of the culture of a people”.
In each case, the perpetrators provide their rationales, usually by citing notions of “diversity”, “inclusion” or the idea that the land does not, or did not always, belong to European-Canadians. But we feel no obligation to engage with the arguments of those who aspire to destroy us, because our destruction is not debatable.
A liberal European-Canadian might find himself convinced by those arguments that attempt to legitimize his cultural destruction. He might embrace his cultural elimination, and willingly take his place at the bottom of a sociocultural hierarchy, all the while apologizing for the evil of his cultural or political existence. Or perhaps he might just feign that he is persuaded in order to rationalize his own cowardice, to hide from the struggle, and to neglect his duty of self-preservation. But we are not liberals, we are nationalists. We will never be persuaded to accept our own destruction, because our destruction is antithetical to our ultimate political objective, which is the continued survival, strength and wellbeing of our people, in every sense, including cultural.
Our hope is that both liberals and nationalists can unify on the overlapping ground of our two ideologies, which is the principle of self-determination. We acknowledge that cultures evolve, change, and progress with time. However, we do not view these destructive threats as part of an internal evolution among European-Canadians, instead we see them as an external attack on the culture of one people at the hands of other peoples. This is an infringement on our cultural autonomy. We feel that attempts to couch these attacks in the rhetoric of “justice” or “equality” are disingenuous and that the true motivation of this ethnocidal phenomenon is a bid for cultural and political power by non-Europeans who harbor sentiments of resentment and contempt towards European people.
That this project of destruction is not motivated by genuine liberal principles is made clear by the fact that the destroyers do not say a word about the symbols of non-European people, such as the sculpture of Sun Yat Sen in Toronto’s Riverdale Park. Sun Yat Sen held race realist views just like John A. MacDonald; his Chinese Nationalist Party supported the cultural assimilation of minority groups just as did Egerton Ryerson’s residential schools; his party violently oppressed those minorities just as Edward Cornwallis did; and his statue in Riverdale Park is representative of a people who benefit from “settler colonialism” in Canada (9). And yet there have been no such displays or performances to advocate the removal of his statue.
Thus, it is clear that the motive behind the removal or destruction of our cultural symbols is for the very reason that they are, indeed, symbols of our people—European-Canadians—and their destruction is, therefore, correctly labeled as ethnocide.
We are aware that many, if not most, if not the vast majority of European-Canadians support maintaining these symbols, but are afraid to speak up due to an intellectual climate wherein assertions of “white” or European identity are heavily policed and oppressed, and that those who dare to object face great social, financial, and even legal risk in doing so. This is why European-Canadians require formal institutions and representatives to speak on our behalf. Students For Western Civilisation aspires to fulfill that need by continuing to advocate for the cultural and political interests of European-Canadians and European Civilisation wherever it exists.
1 http://torontosun.com/2017/07/04/student-leaders-target-ryerson-statue-in-canada-150-campaign/wcm/4ba10a16-4870-49bc-929d-8a7d7b00dfee
2 http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/removing-macdonalds-name-1.4268975
3 https://www.change.org/p/wilfrid-laurier-university-stop-the-statue-project
4 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/cornwallis-statue-halifax-protest-removal-1.4206909
5 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/dumping-statue-in-the-don-river-a-statement-about-colonialism-performance-artists-say-1.4376266
6 http://nationalpost.com/posted-toronto/winston-churchill-society-not-happy-after-bronze-statue-of-former-british-pm-moved-after-35-years
7 http://www.macleans.ca/news/viola-desmond-king-borden-historians/
8 https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/09/03/what-should-we-do-with-torontos-controversial-statues.html
9 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/dumping-statue-in-the-don-river-a-statement-about-colonialism-performance-artists-say-1.4376266