Talk:Lionel Groulx

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[edit] Other sources

The REVUE D'HISTOIRE DE L'AMÉRIQUE FRANÇAISE has a very interesting Web site: http://www.cam.org/~ihaf/rhaf.html

It is very good for understanding how scholarly this publication is, if you do not happen tp have the publication at hand.

However, URLs are so fickle that I would not want to place a link within the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.230.45.61 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Antisemitism

This article has been changed rather fundamentally several times with respect to Mr. Groulx and charges of antisemitism. However, it hasn't been discussed here on the talk page.

I dislike the rather one-sided and apologetic nature of the article as it presently stands. To paraphrase: you can't really call him an antisemite because he wasn't nearly as antisemitic as others -- and besides, everybody was a bigot back then -- so only misguided revisionists would accuse him of antisemitism. Besides, he was only antisemitic sometimes. At one point, the article was slanted the other way -- but it did actually cite sources back then. This is a step backward.

The article should name sources for assertions and fairly represent both sides of the debate. Cleduc 19:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this comment.

It was inter alia Groulx who was responsible for Canada's failure to accept Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Canada, the second largest country in the world, accepted the least number of Jewish refugees fleeing certain death in Europe; for the sole reason that they were born Jews. (See: Abella and Troper's None is Too Many).

Quebec was, and is, saturated with antisemitism, it is indeed telling that he is so widely commemorated therein (A major Montreal subway is named after him, a University of Montreal building, and a mountain range, and many, many more.)

The tie-in to refugees from the Holocaust is an essential point missing from the article. It shows that antisemitism has consequences; and in this case, the mass-murder of an entire people.

--Lance6968 20:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Cleduc. There's no question that some discussion of the anti-Semitism issue is relevant and notable to Groulx's article, but I agree that it should be properly sourced and should represent both sides of the debate honestly. Bearcat 06:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I have re-instated previous contributor's contributions to this article. As is clear from the edit history of this article, there has been an effort to downplay, eliminate, or otherwise justify Groulx's antisemitism: i.e., his pathological hatred of Jews and Judaism.

Unfortunately, there has been an attempt to white-wash Groulx in French Canadian society rather than honestly dealing with its past; and this white-washing is further evidence, sadly, of how little has changed in French Quebec. --Lance talk 21:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It's also the case that a significant sector of the English Canadian media has a vested interest in depicting Quebec society as uniquely racist, while simultaneously whitewashing the substantial evidence of similar racism in English Canada. I mean, yeah, Groulx said and did some really problematic stuff, but so did a lot of English Canadian figures of his era — and the Canadian media isn't nearly as interested in uncovering anglo-Canuck racism as it is in maintaining the patent fiction that Quebec was the only part of Canada where racism and anti-Semitism were ever on display. You hear a lot more handwringing about Lionel Groulx than you do about the similarly whitewashed Emily Murphy, for instance; you hear a lot more fretting and tut-tutting about Adrien Arcand than you do about the only member of his party who was ever actually elected to a legislature in Canada, P.M. Campbell in Alberta. As I've already stated, I have no objection to an honest discussion of anti-Semitism in Groulx's writing, but you absolutely will not characterize Quebec society as possessed of some uniquely virulent strain of racism that was nonexistent in the rest of Canada, because it most certainly did exist just as much outside of Quebec as in it. Bearcat 01:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
It also needs to be noted that Esther Delisle is not an unproblematic source; she's herself been criticized for the quality of her research; even critics of Groulx, who aren't overly inclined to whitewash Groulx's work, have dismissed Delisle's work as fabricating or altering quotes. Bearcat 02:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • You added editing contemporaneous with my own. So there appears to be a conflict here. Your edits, that I saw during my own edits, were highly tendentious and defensive. Your argumentation is in the nature of Tu quoque. I agree that English-speaking Canada also was virulently antisemitic; that, however, does not exculpate either French Quebec then nor those that hold these views today. Perhaps we can, herein, set out an agreed set of facts; and then, once there is a consensus in repect thereof, the main body of the article can be further edited. Your references to Richler appear to demonstrate that you misunderstood his criticisms. Richler was directly effected by antisemitism both by the "English" and the "French"; unfortunately, the Jewish people of Quebec has been used as a weapon both for and against French Quebec. Finally, you are entitled to your opinions; but not the facts.--Lance talk 04:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not saying it exempts anybody; I'm saying that there has been a false and widespread assumption that Quebec was unique in having anti-Semitic public figures. You've made that claim yourself a couple of times on Wikipedia talk pages. That assumption cannot and will not stand unchallenged; it's a POV claim belied by the facts. Criticism of Delisle's work, some of which has come from people who posited the same conclusion as she did, cannot be buried, either. I have no interest in defending Groulx; I agree entirely that he was antisemitic, and I'm not from Quebec, so I have absolutely no idea what potential reason I would have to defend the guy. But when Gérard Bouchard, a scholar who agrees with the basic conclusion that Groulx was anti-Semitic, still criticizes Delisle for altering or inaccurately quoting a full 75 per cent of the actual quotes from Groulx in her work, that creates a pretty big problem WRT citing her as an authoritative source.
What I have an interest in is keeping Wikipedia articles factual and NPOV — for one thing, you will not insert into the article any unsourced claims about how much Groulx's particular strain of thought is or isn't still present in modern Quebec society. And you need to show a source for the assertion that Delisle was dismissed precisely because some people thought she was Jewish herself, too. I'm not being tendentious; I'm trying to prevent this from devolving into a POV war. I don't mind removing the bit about Mordecai Richler if you dispute it; the criticism of Delisle's scholarship, however, has to stay in the article.
And, for the record, I'll believe you have equal interest in both English and French Canadian antisemitism the day you start putting even fractionally as much effort into Mackenzie King as you've been doing here and at Quebec bashing. Bearcat 05:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • You accuse me of claiming that: "...that Quebec was unique in having anti-Semitic public figures." Your accusation is false; and, I believe this accusation to be a personal attack.
Unfortunately, French Quebec antisemitism is patently not unique. Indeed, I am startled by the close correspondence between antisemitism both in French Quebec and in Poland. Both were Catholic peasant societies rife with illiteracy, superstition, and lack of economic development. The role of the Catholic church and its theology in respect of Jews is crucial in understanding how an unsophisticated population can be made to believe the most outrageous accusations against Jews by persons who have never met a real, flesh and blood, Jewish person. There have been reports that in Poland there still exists a belief that Jews consume the blood of Christian children. Other equally outrageous beliefs exist in Quebec today. French Quebec, I aver, has a profound ignorance of Jews and Judaism; and I have even seen it creep into articles in Wikipedia. As for antisemitic attacks against Delisle, I have witnessed it here at Wikipedia, (see: the deletion discussion of "Quebec bashing," and my comment there); and I recall the 1990s debate of her study that devolved into antisemitism. Finally, I do not have any agenda to have any particular point of view expressed in Wikipedia, I merely am personally offended by arguments from ignorance and clearly biased assertions and antisemitism appearing so prominently on the Internet. Wikipedia is usually the first few entries on any given Google search.--Lance talk 05:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
My reading of Delisle's book is that, since French Canadians knew nothing about Jews and Judaism, their views of Jews and Judaism were formed by the Catholic church; including Groulx. The "Jew" in the title of her book is not Jewish, but an artificial construct invented by the Catholic church. Those that dismissed Delisle as a "Jew" fall into two categories. First, those French Canadians that see all opponents as "Jews," and label them accordingly. Second, those that truly hate Jews, both the Catholic conception and the flesh-and-blood Jew, and use the word "Jew" as a term of abuse. If Delisle made errors, that I am prepared to accept, but the criticism of her persists despite the same conclusions were reached by others; and the truly hateful reaction to her work, as well as, so many high-level, ("official"), manifestations of antisemitism in our own time invites the conclusion that much has not changed in French Quebec.
If you have better sources than Delisle, then I say kol ha-kavowd, (Hebrew for "more power to you"). As for King, I am equally as outraged that this bizarre individual is honored in Canada.--Lance talk 06:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
And, as far as King is concerned, I was unaware of the Wikipedia discussion of him; and I thank you for pointing it out to me.--Lance talk 05:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
King really was an odd duck on so many levels, it's true...but I'm also pretty sure we're not the only country in the world ever to have had such a deeply weird leader. Bearcat 06:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)