Here is what the French thinker Georges Sorel, author of the
classic Reflections on Violence
(1907) might say of Harper’s anti-terrorism legislation, Bill C-51. Note how Harper creates an epic state of mind
(for example, in the struggle against “evil”, otherwise known as Satan) by
minimizing debate, criticism, and dismissing analyses of said Bill C-51.
In the course of these
studies one thing seemed so evident to me that I did not believe that I needed
to lay much stress on it: men who are participating in great social movements
always picture their coming action in the form of images of battle in which
their cause is certain to triumph. I
proposed to give the name of ‘myths’ to these constructions, knowledge of which
is so important for historians: the general strike of the syndicalists and
Marx’s catastrophic revolution are such myths.
As remarkable example of myths I have those which were constructed by
primitive Christianity, by the Reformation, by the [French] Revolution, and by the followers of
Mazzini. I wanted to show that we should
not attempt to analyse such groups of images in a way that we break down a
thing into its elements, that they should be taken as a whole, as historical
forces, and that we should be especially careful not to make any comparison
between the outcomes and the pictures people formed for themselves before the
action.
I could have given one more example which is
perhaps even more striking: Catholics have never been discouraged even in the
harshest trials, because they have pictured the history of the Church as a
series of battles between Satan and the hierarchy supported by Christ: every
new difficulty that arises is an episode in this war which must finally end in
the victory of Catholicism.[1]
***
By employing the word
‘myth’ I believed that I had made a happy choice, because I had put myself in a
position of refusing all discussion with the people …[2]
[1]
Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence,
ed. Jeremy Jennings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 20.
[2] Ibid., p. 21.
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