I condemn arson. The most I can say in support of the persons presumed to be burning down Catholic churches in Canada is that I fully understand how it came to pass that some indigenous people in Canada might wanna burn down all the churches. I don’t condemn their rage. I don’t condemn any statement that justice has been denied for hundreds of years and remains out of reach. And, yes, I do see a violent response as inevitable to the kinds of repeated injuries that Canada as a nation and the RCC as a church have inflicted on indigenous peoples.
That doesn’t mean that I think violence is okay. But the Catholic church is not the victim here, and strictures against blaming the victim are inapplicable. If we want to understand what’s happening, we must be allowed to say that the RCC has long embraced policies of genocide, and not being a church insider, I can’t even say that time is over. Is there no Catholic church even now who steals children from parents and actively tries to eradicate an entire culture in the name of converting the next generation to holy Catholicism? I cannot answer that question yes or no. It pains me to say it, but if the RCC has no credibility on this issue that is not victimization. That is not antiCatholic prejudice. That is the natural result of years of lies and misdeeds and coverups. The RCC is the architect of its own credibility. If they have done a poor job building it, the problem is not prejudgement. It is postjudgement. It one natural outcome of the RCC’s actions.
I wish for better for Canada in the coming days. I would write something about that wish, but I certainly couldn’t put it better than Buffy Sainte Marie. (Embed not allowed by youtube, but song available here.)
The great flood of tears that we’ve cried
For our brothers and sisters who’ve died
Over five hundred years has washed away our fears
And strengthened our pride, now we turn back the tide
We will no longer hear your command
We will slide your control from our lands
Re-direct the flame of our anger and pain
And pity the shame
For what you do in God’s name
We will stand for the right to be free
We will grow our own society
And we will sing, we will sing
We will sing our own song
As a bloke name of John F. Kennedy said: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Look, in a way I do agree. Arson is bad. It’s pretty fucking horrible, even. Yet: Nobody has died, so far. Nobody’s even been hurt. Is violence against inamite objects really that reprehensible? How does is stack up against systematic empire-driven genocide?
Can anyone really claim truthfully that non-violent, completely 100% legal and state-sanctioned civil-rights movements have ever achieved anything notable on their lonesome? Without a counterweight Malcolm X to break the mold?
It doesn’t even matter how awful the RCC is. What matters is that they are [i]practically[/i] beyond reproach, no matter how many children they keep raping and murdering.
Nothing so far has worked because that’s what happens when power is challenged. The Canadian state is just as responsible for protecting the RCC as is every other western state doing the same.
How the fuck are victims supposed to react, then? Apparently, arson is not an option. Violence against inamimate objects is crossing some impermeable line.
What’s left, then? Are victims supposed to sit quietly in their chair until called upon? They will NEVER be called upon. That’s rather the point of sitting them down in the first place.
I’m not joking. How is that incredibly justified anger supposed to manifest? Twitter?
From what I’ve been told, last year white protesters were pretty cavalier about doing property damage on native lobster fishermen. I believe there’s a good chance that those churches would still be standing if the people protesting against natives had behaved different.
The tit-for-tat might seem a bit childish but it’s a fundamental aspect of every social contract. Property damage was tacitly allowed when white people had an issue with native fishermen, so it’s reasonable to assume that those protesting the catholic church have the same allowance. Perhaps more so since, by every metric, mass child graves are a way bigger deal than any amount of lobster fishing.
There is good reason to advocate for de-escalation, but I don’t think that advocacy will do anything without accountability. I’d have expected someone to go full Nuremberg when talking about triple digit dead children, but it’s just not happening. Native americans of all sorts have been, historically, excessively nice about the genocide that has been done to them, and if they are starting to lose patience, that’s a sign that the canadian government needs to get their shit together and start prosecuting those responsible for the residential schools.
So, I have great commenters, and I largely agree with all of you. I’d like to continue the conversation, though, by focussing on where you ask questions or on the small areas we disagree, but also interjecting where I’m afraid that you **think** we disagree, but we actually don’t.
Responding to Lurker from Mexico first:
It was a lot worse than that. I wrote about it at the time.
This is why I have said, many times, that Crip Dyke’s law is, “The only radical idea anyone has ever had is accountability for people with power. Everything else is just reform.”
Completely agreed.
@Cubist:
Yes. The entire quote. Yes. I should have used it myself.
Last, but not least, @Klatu:
It is worthy of condemnation, but “Should I condemn?” is a simple binary.
“Is it really that reprehensible?” asks a yes/no, but requires an appreciation for gradations of harm. I agree that harms can and often MUST be ranked. Public policy does this all the time. When asked to rank the harms, no. Burning down a church (or any building) is a relatively small harm compared to many others. It’s particularly relevant to compare burning down a church compared to the kidnapping of children and active efforts at genocide. We’ve lost dozens of languages in Canada alone because of our genocidal policies. The harm done by burning down a church (that was insured!) isn’t remotely in the same league.
Actually I not only don’t claim that, I’ve argued the opposite. I’ve argued for valuing the radicals and risk takers, the outlaw activists. The last time I did so was just a couple weeks ago. You even commented on the thread, Klatu.
No, I value the Malcom Xs and the Nehrus. I can also value Emma Goldman without endorsing her attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. That’s what I’m trying to do here. Arson is a step too far for me, but there are many illegal actions I would support. Hell, just the lunch counter protests were illegal. As Thoreau said, when the law imprisons good people, the place for any person of good conscience is in prison.
My big ethical problem is that it’s a dangerously unpredictable weapon (as you acknowledged). If some group of indigenous activists wanted to take sledgehammers to a church in broad daylight, I would happily form a human chain around them to give them time to do their work, even if the work destroyed the church as utterly as these fires have.
Agreed.
The victims are supposed to react just as they have: by lashing out at the people victimizing them. Burning down churches is EXACTLY how they’re supposed to react. This is why I say above that the Catholic Church is not the victim here.
But at the same time, I can only judge an ethical situation through my own moral code. I’m a pretty rigid pacifist, but I also **know** my morals cannot be implemented by everyone. I’m such an over the top pacifist that I have declined to engage in physical self defense against assaults (and declined to do so multiple times). I’ve written elsewhere about how I’m not quite sure, and I don’t think I can ever be sure, how much my depression affects how I determine my morals. If I feel myself to be worthless, then risking even a tiny harm to another person is to inflict more harm than preserving my life can justify.
I can’t choose to be a person without depression. And I know that as a practical matter I can’t choose to ask other people not to engage in self defense even if I thought that was the right call (and no, it is not the right call). So I’m stuck with a moral sense that says, “This risk of harm is too much because of the potential harm or the level of risk; this other risk of harm is acceptable because the risk is low or the harms are less.”
I can only praise or condemn using my own moral code, not those of others. But as a thinking human being, I’m fully aware that not everyone (indeed not even myself) conforms to my moral code. The actions of Canada and the RCC are **expected** to create ever more violence. It breaks my heart, but it’s an absolutely foreseeable consequence of a campaign of genocide.
For me, anything that doesn’t risk human lives and health (or at least where the risk to them is very small). As I’ve said before, the violent destruction of a church in broad daylight by sledgehammers would be acceptable to me. it’s completely against the law, and yet if I saw that happening I would stand between the police and the activists until arrested. (I would also expect to be arrested and accept my punishment, but then try to use the imposition of punishment on me to highlight the injustice of the state: that’s how civil disobedience works. You provoke the state to inflict under public scrutiny the callous injustice it routinely inflicts under a bureaucratic “Somebody Else’s Problem Field”.)
I’d even feel differently about burning down a church in the dead of winter (again, so long as no one was inside) because during this heat wave the already unpredictable weapon of fire becomes more so. If everything outdoors was covered in a blanket of snow, breaking a window, pouring an accelerant inside the building, and throwing in a flare creates a different risk to the persons nearby. A much lower risk.
And, again, I wouldn’t be **happy** about arson in that case, but I don’t know that I would condemn it. It’s still fire, and still risky to humans, but the risks are very different.
This is a complicated issue, and I expect disagreement, but after reading what you have to say, I don’t expect that you and I are that far apart.
Of course, there’s another issue to which you’ve alluded but which none of us have addressed head on: the potential for ending injustice or compelling reparation of past injustices. I would be opposed to even petty vandalism (spilling blood on concrete steps that can be easily cleaned up with just a couple hours’ time, so the “damage” is merely 30 to 60 bucks) if it didn’t have the potential to do more good than harm.
There’s so much good that needs to be done, and so much past harm that needs redress. A huge symbol like a church fully engulfed in flame has the power that merely standing up during the T&RC tour to say, “talk is not enough” could never possess. Mere talk isn’t enough. I think T&RCs have positive potential, but they’re not enough. They’re never enough. Yet many Canadians think that **is** enough. To see that churches are burning more than 5 years after the T&RC is going to be a huge shock to a lot of Canadians. When shocked like that, there’s at least the potential that some people who were complacent choose to act. I certainly hope for that outcome.
And, finally, some people might be wondering why I weighed in at all. My primary message wasn’t for the indigenous people victimized by Canada or the RCC. I likely would have stayed silent since I was not able to morally support the church burnings and I did not want to risk being seen as supporting the RCC or the government of Canada.
But the conversation was already happening. People were already expressing happiness at the arson right here on FtB in a thread that PZ started.
My hope isn’t that my writing is read by indigenous activists and they feel bad for supporting arson. No, if indigenous activists read this at all, my take away for them is that I’m willing to put my body between them and the police (or the white supremacists trying to attack them). I can do that whether or not I fully support or even whether I condemn their tactics.
My hope is that people on FtB think more deeply about their ethical positions with respect to the church burnings. It seems to me that the conversation there was too dichotomous, with some seeming to easily support arson while others seeming to easily not just arson, but also seeming to condemn property damage more broadly (though most of what I saw focussed on the dangerous unpredictability of fire, where I completely agree).
No, when indigenous activists burn down churches in Canada, that’s to be expected, and it’s not my job to tell them what they’re **being** good or bad: that’s for their internal discussions.
But if this conversation is happening right here where I blog, remaining silent where I disagree is something very different than remaining silent on the issue when speaking to indigenous activists.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me. That’s a reason why I don’t speak up more often and more strongly on issues of Palestinian justice. I’ll speak in certain circles, but not here… unless the conversation is already going and I think the conversation is missing something important.
I hope that clarifies some important things left unaddressed or ambiguous in the OP.
First of all: Values-wise, we probably don’t disagree at all. I would never knowingly harm anyone, or so I hope.
Putting aside for a moment the morality of laying an actual fire: I’m saying it’s about as just a response as there has ever been to the RCC in particular. You murder children? You get burnt. The RCC itself has to agree with this sentiment, according to their own calcified beliefs. Isn’t fire and brimstone their entire deal? You don’t get to complain about a bit of fire when you condemn 99% of all humanity to an eternity of torture for having sex the wrong way.
But that is there (up in the clouds) and not here (where reality takes place).
The only reason you lay a fire is BECAUSE it’s a fucking fire. There’s no nice way to go about it. The chaos and destruction is entirely the point! (And I sound way to enthusiastic about that.)
Or am I wrong? Just how effective would a symbolic burning be? It would certainly lose some of its edge.
Again: I don’t advocate. I’m saying it’s effective. It certainly started this conversation.
Yeah. I guess I’m stumbling my way toward that point. I don’t think anyone is planning on burning all the churches out there. I suspect (not being indigenous myself) that this is a visceral reaction in the hopes of sparking some real justice and lasting change.
My only real disagreement is this:
If it were at all LIKELY that justice by sledgehammer could ever take place, I’d be with you all the way. I just don’t see it happening.
And definitely: It’s not the same thing for indigenous people to burn down a church as it is for some rando with some random grudge. I never meant to imply that. It is certainly not my place, as a white european, to tell indigenous people how to be angry.
Right there with you.
And I agree the sledgehammer scenario is less likely. There’s no reason for indigenous people to trust Canadian justice. The Toronto Sun called these burnings “hate crimes” which made me RAGE it’s such a bad understanding of the situation or what a hate crime is or both. So from the indigenous perspective lighting a match in the middle of the night accomplishes the same physical destruction while providing a fuckload more insulation from Canadian in/justice. I really do get it.
But there are times when the world sees a Dharasana Salt Works action, and I can dream.
A good point, that.
Um, it was not just the Catholic Church that ran those indoctrination camps, was it?
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[OT]
CD, I literally began to write but then deleted three comments in relation to your personal sentiments and their basis. Anyway, I want to say I think your very principles entail you’re worth no less than anyone else, though you seemingly alieve otherwise.
It’s hard. I have treatment depression & I can articulate that I’m worth the same as anyone else, and when I’m making a formal argument I would NEVER argue that I’m worth less than anyone else, yet when I’m pressed to make a decision I consistently weight the benefits to me less than those to others.
Some of that is conscious altruism, but it’s been through long exploration in trying to beat this persistent depression that maybe the reason I’m so willing to defend others’ rights to self defense or whatever differently than I defend my own is because in my private semiconscious thoughts I actually value my rights less.
I have a lot of evidence that I really do devalue myself, but it’s ultimately impossible (by definition) to know for sure how our unconscious minds work.
So I just try to stay aware of it, and when I have time to reflect (which isn’t always) I try to ask myself if I would make the same decision on behalf of someone else. It’s not perfect, but it helps.
No. But the Catholic church ran more than 50% of them. I’ve seen different numbers from 60% to 2/3rds. I’m not sure exactly why the variation. Possibly some schools changed hands?
In any case, what makes the Catholic church different and these specific church buildings different is that they literally are built on lands that were supposed to be guaranteed to indigenous people forever. The 4 churches that have been burned were on land that should **never** have belonged to the RCC, because the government of Canada, acting as trustee for the BC bands and first nations (they’re listed separately because of treaty status), gave permission to the RCC to build churches there, with no compensation for the land given over to church use.
So the RCC has a piece of paper saying they get to use the land, but they don’t own it, the people who do own it never gave them permission to be there, and don’t want them there now. But they have this permission slip! So they neither seek to actually buy the land (fair market value would probably be refused, but if they offered enough, who knows? Some groups might even sell and allow them to stay.) nor to leave.
It’s this particularly weird status of being on land supposedly reserved for the tribes that makes these churches **extra** offensive.
That said, if things continue, i would expect government buildings and/or other, nonRCC church buildings to be burned in the future.
Surely the people who started them are long dead by now? And the catholic orders that ran them don’t seem to be very active either. So whom would you prosecute?
We also have to ask the question why were religious orders running these schools, orphanages and asylums? And the uncomfortable answer is that the government and society at that time couldn’t be bothered and were happy to foist off the job to whomever volunteered.
For one thing you can prosecute the corporate entities, the way that Trump’s corporation has been indicted for fraud even though the corporation can’t perform an action that isn’t done on its behalf by a person.
I haven’t looked into the corporate history of the residential schools, but some of them were owned directly by RCC dioceses that still exist, and surely others were owned directly by dioceses whose assets & liabilities were passed on to still extant entities (most likely other RCC dioceses).
There are many reasons to do this, the chief being communication to society that we take these crimes seriously. The second, however, is that such a prosecution has the power to force open (through subpoena) records that would otherwise be closed to us. The Truth & Reconciliation Commission tour surely did good things for some people. I heard people whose voices cracked telling the room what it meant to them to be able to say how they were wronged to people who were willing to listen respectfully. Just that is, of course, **something**, but the RCC continues to conceal records, and a prosecution of church entities can bring those out into the light.
Also, even if the people who started them are long dead, others who worked in them and abused children are not necessarily so. Statutes of limitations matter, and probably most of them would not be prosecuted (or be legally prosecutable), but you never know until you do a serious look at what crimes where performed when with whose involvement. There may well be crimes that were arguably committed, with sufficient evidence to bring to trial, where the crime has no statute of limitations and at least one potential defendant is still alive. I’m not saying that’s true, but it’s sure worth investigating.
Of course, I’d look into prosecuting the government agencies that had a duty to the nations & BC bands as well. No point in stopping the investigation at the government’s door. We know that they were involved and we can’t trust their statements about the extent and the time period. So investigate the hell out of that.
I have not hoped for a backlash against my words on FtB or elsewhere, but I have expected one from people making false equivalencies, defences of catholicism inc., personal attacks, etc. And yet strangely, I have seen very little.
I suspect and hope two years of BLM and the public knowing about the sexual abuse for decades has done more to silence them, to make people wake up and realize where the real problem lies. I have seen apologists saying “shut up, it’s canada day!” and the like, but they’re few and far between. Maybe public opinion is changing. I doubt that saying “investigate the fires after investigating the murders” it what quelled apologists.
Two more churches have burnt down, this time anglican. That linked CBC item reeks of intent to characterize and demonize those burning churches as “attacking religion” or “terrorists”, that these were “random targets”. It wasn’t a random, or “anti-religion”; several ‘residential schools’ were run by the anglicans, and abuses were committed there. Funny how the CBC doesn’t know its own reporting; the second is also from the CBC.
Agreed.
But given the contemporary issues that the First Nations are dealing with, and recognizing that it is not a binary one or the other choice, I would argue that the affairs of the living should have priority over those of the dead.
So, yes; investigate and prosecute insofar as it gives the living closure. Otherwise, prioritize efforts to reduce the contemporary issues.
A lot of Indigenous people are religious. The churches being torched are the places of worship of the people who live in those communities. As one friend, a residential school survivor, put it “My faith is in God and Jesus Christ, not in the people who did horrible things to us.”
Righteous anger is one thing, but expressing it in a way that harms your friends and relatives is another.
That’s an important perspective, too.
ardipithecus @14, so the indoctrination worked on those people.
Meanwhile: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/church-residential-school-compensation-1.6082935