This
article was written for and first published in
Captive Canada:
Renditions of the Peaceable Kingdom at War,
from Narratives of WWI and the Red Scare to the Mass Internment of Civilians
Issue #68 of
Press for Conversion (Spring 2016),
pp.2-4.
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Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade
(COAT).
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The Canada Syndrome, a
Captivating Mass Psychosis
By
Richard Sanders, Coordinator, Coalition to
Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)
“The only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”1
Although appealing as a
rhetorical call to action, this well-known aphorism on acquiescence hides the
more disturbing reality that “good” people are sometimes very directly involved
in actually helping to carry out atrocious travesties of justice. In fact,
institutionalised programs of systemic violence, abuse and exploitation cannot
succeed without the active support and complicity of sincere, well-meaning
people.
Huge
institutions filled with “good” people are essential in the planning and
administration of major crimes against peace and humanity. With the best of
intentions, such people also create and propagate the most eloquent narratives
to justify, promote and cover up criminal transgressions. Canada is not exempt
from this pattern. The history of our so-called “Peaceable Kingdom,” from its
very roots, is replete with grave injustices wrought by fervent believers who
thought they were doing the right thing. Driven by a profound desire to promote
progress, all-too-many Canadians have collaborated in such offences as
occupation, ethnic cleansing, land plunder, genocide, chattel slavery,
internment camps, weapons exports and a slew of wars fed by corporate greed.
Despite this ongoing imperial tradition, Canadians are still ready to embrace an
extremely flattering and self-righteous national mythology. Canada’s official
story portrays this country as a shining beacon spreading its enlightened code
of ethics and benevolent ideals throughout a dark and troubled world. Sadly,
this self-satisfied myth of exceptionalism is utter moonshine; an intoxicating
swill of political hogwash that has been lapped up as the gospel truth by
generations of citizens on the right, left and centre. Now marketed under the
heart-warming brand “Canadian values,” this cultural koolaid is regularly
dispensed by our national cult makers. Although Canada’s soothing elixir is a
strange brew laced with hypocrisy, duplicity, artificial maple flavour and
patriotic Red Dye, it’s main ingredients are commonly listed as peace,
multiculturalism, human rights and democracy.
The
fanciful idea that Canada symbolises these worthy ideals did not arise out of
thin air. Throughout the nation-building project that spawned this country, the
heartfelt conviction of Canada’s dominant, west-European settler society was
that the pioneers who forged this blessed kingdom were on the imperial
frontline, promoting morally-superiour “Christian values.” This proud Canadian
identity myth—proclaimed with missionary zeal and hubris by progressives and
conservatives alike—has repeatedly gone beyond enthused ethnocentrism to push
the limits of racism, xenophobia, religious elitism and political paranoia.
The
guardians and gatekeepers of Canada’s official fairy tales have vilified and
targeted certain people as the enemies of progress. Aboriginals, nonAngloSaxons
and those feared as the potential recruits of radicalised socialists have been
scapegoated, bullied, outlawed and forced into mass captivity on reserves, or
interned in prisons and labour camps. Their supposed crimes have included
threatening the status quo by standing up for justice, equality, peace and
labour rights, and spreading counternarratives that oppose the accepted biases
of mainstream culture. Ironically, the most powerful proponents of our national
myths—while posing as champions of the deified mantra of “Canadian values”—are
our main obstacle to achieving these noble ideals.
Colonial
Occupation Psychosis
The
pattern of social stereotyping upon which Canadian identity myths are founded,
is not unique. Other nations built on colonial expansion and occupation have
developed similar mass delusions. Canada’s version of this imperial psychosis
shares symptoms with the cultural pathologies that evolved in the US, Australia,
South Africa, Israel and elsewhere. These settler societies were leavened with
a profound sense of entitlement and superiourity—religious, ethnic, economic and
political. To carry on, such cultures have required convincing narratives to
rationalise the seizure of indigenous peoples’ lands, the curbing of their
rights, and the restriction of their movements to the point of mass captivity.
Settler syndrome is a culture-bound psychosis so deeply rooted in Canada’s
mainstream identity, that it remains difficult to remedy. Like psychoses found
in individuals, diffuse social disorders are marked by a loss of contact with
reality. Being irrational, such belief systems are highly resistant to reason
and fact. For example, the narratives used to bolster Canadian exceptionalism,
gloss over or deny responsibility for genocide and are out of touch with
historic and present-day realities of abuse.
The
Canada Syndrome also includes fantasies that parallel the delusions of grandeur
found among megalomaniacs. Individuals who overestimate their power and
selfworth have grandiose beliefs, often involving spiritual themes. Mass
pathologies may similarly be marked by social complexes that rely on exaggerated
tales of racial, national and/or religious superiourity.
Cultures that overvalue themselves, typically devalue others, treating them with
suspicion and fear. Like other settler states, Canada has endured prolonged
episodes of mass paranoia that were deeply rooted in racism and classism. These
social outbreaks of political and religious xenophobia have been driven by
deluded, self-righteous missions that cloaked abusive behaviour behind
lofty-sounding pretexts, like the protection of Canada’s civilised, Christian
culture. Such collective obsessions are spread with fearmongering narratives
that can reach fruition in pandemics of mass hysteria, moral panic and war
fever. In Canada, settler psychosis painted First Nations, nonWestern Europeans,
and radical leftists as foes to be contained, physically and otherwise.
The
Canada Syndrome is a cultural malady that closely parallels what psychiatrists
have labelled “Antisocial Personality Disorder.” The American Psychiatric
Association (APA) has described this mental illness as “a pervasive pattern of
disregard for and violation of the rights of others...as indicated” by such
antisocial behaviours as “deceitfulness,...repeated lying,...or conning others
for personal profit,” “aggressiveness” and “lack of remorse” and “being
indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen” from others.2
Health Canada’s official Report on Mental Illnesses in Canada
relies on this US definition.3
Besides relying on the APA, the Canadian Psychiatric Association also uses the
World Health Organization (WHO) as a reference for pidgeonholing mental
illnesses. Both sources define psychiatric disorders as being outside the
boundaries of accepted “social norms.” For example, the WHO defines “Dissocial
Personality Disorder” in terms of a “gross disparity” between the individual’s
“behaviour and the prevailing social norms.”4
Similarly, the APA’s criteria for “Antisocial Personality Disorder”
includes “failure to conform to social norms.” This focus fails to recognise
psychopathic individuals whose delusions and behaviour do conform to the
broadly-accepted norms of society at large.
When Social Norms are
AntiSocial
Forty
five years ago, a group of Black psychiatrists asked the APA to recognise
“extreme bigotry...as a mental disorder.” APA officials rejected the idea, says
Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, “because so many Americans are racist,
even extreme racism in this country is normative—a cultural problem rather than
an indication of psychopathology.” Poussaint has continued to argue that the APA
should “designate extreme racism as a mental health problem by recognizing it as
a delusional psychotic symptom.”5
Racism, like other forms of chauvinism, is a delusion that is symptomatic of
both individual and mass psychosis. Neither form of pathology should be
accepted or rationalised away.
Just
as those with antisocial disorders justify their abusive behaviour, captive
institutions also create narratives to cover their crimes. Predatory, state
bodies survive by disguising structural violence behind stories that legitimise
their malevolent programs as if they were beneficial to victims. This process
rewards those who are able to create and disseminate progressive-sounding
narratives that will soothe society’s collective conscience.
While
individuals seized by psychosis may remain completely unaware of their illness,
those spellbound by a mass psychosis find it as impossible to perceive as their
own accent or ethnicity. Captives of Canada’s settler syndrome may become
unsettled if the sweet rhetoric of their myths clashes with bitter reality. To
retain a sense of normalcy within a fictive state founded on blissful ignorance,
many Canadians cling to the national faith with poetic folktales about our
wondrous “Peaceable
Kingdom.”
When
poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief”
in 1817, he was describing literary devices that use mundane, natural,
real-world imagery to create a “semblance of truth” in order to instill “poetic
faith” in an imaginary world.6 People
willingly accept unreal premises of imagination so that they can be carried away
by their momentary indulgence in an artform. But what of citizens who suspend
their disbelief for prolonged periods by putting blind faith in state
narratives? Consumers of such political artifice are like unwitting subjects
trapped in a lifelong, nationwide PR experiment without having given prior or
informed consent. Suspending disbelief in order to enjoy a contrivance, also
exists in law. “Legal fictions” are lies that are accepted as truth in order to
gain some benefit. A key example of this is “terra nullius” (“empty land”),
which has long been used to justify the seizure and occupation of Aboriginal
territories by Canada, the US, Australia and other settler states.
Captives of culture-bound psychoses like the Canada Syndrome are ardent
nationalists who remain blind to the official myths that have abducted them.
This parallels a psychological phenomenon in which kidnap victims adopt
favourable attitudes toward their captors and promote their interests and
narratives. The Canada Syndrome is the Stockholm Syndrome on steroids.
The
term Stockholm Syndrome was coined by a Swedish, police psychologist when
hostages identified with their captors during a 1973 bank heist. A few months
later, this made-to-order syndrome, now called capture bonding, made headlines
with the kidnapping of American media heiress Patty Hearst. After conspiring
with her captors in various felonies—including armed robbery, bomb making,
hijacking, assault and kidnapping—Hearst was arrested and put on trial. Saying
she had been brainwashed, Hearst’s lawyer used the Stockholm Syndrome as a
defence. Thanks to President Carter, Hearst served only two of her seven-year
jail sentence. She was later pardoned by President Clinton.
Hearst’s grandfather, William Randolf Hearst, was a corporate tycoon and a
Democratic Congressman for New York.
As the “Father of Yellow Journalism,” and the hegemon of a newspaper empire, he
fabricated vast webs of deceit to perpetuate mass psychoses like the “war fever”
that fuelled the highly-profitable Spanish-American war of 1898. The
Hearst-family story reminds us that while individuals may at times be kidnapped
by the narratives of their hostage takers, masses of people are captured heart
and mind every day by the crime-promoting myths of news companies owned by
“law-abiding,” billionaire media moguls.
Although carefully-crafted narratives are key to seizing the public mind, one
should not imagine that everyone who creates and spreads these poetic myths are
necessarily intent on deception. Propagandists are often captivated by the
narratives that they are diffusing. In fact, the most eloquent and convincing
champions of farfetched narratives are those true believers who blindly see
their enslaving delusions as if they were liberating ideas that must be spread
far and wide in order to make others free.
Renditions:
From Extraordinary to Banal
In
studying the captivating power of myths, we inevitably invoke different meanings
of the word “rendition.” Narrative renditions of history capture and organise
diverse versions of past events. They can also seize and express feelings of
identity based on cultural constructs like race, ethnicity, nationality and
ideology. “Rendition” also refers to the act of taking prisoners, including
covert abductions that spirit away alleged enemies of the state.
While
secret CIA teams use “extraordinary rendition” to illegally grab victims under
cover of darkness, the widespread popular narratives that abduct people en
masse, and in broad daylight, are considered legal. Carried away in plain
sight by delusional beliefs, victims of “ordinary rendition” can be moved to
profess anything as the truth, from false histories to utopian fantasies. In
contrast, victims of torture will soon confess to anything just to free
themselves. But those rendered captive by myths are blissfully unaware of their
captivity and cannot even imagine their need to escape. As such, no chains,
fences, walls or bars are needed to immobilise them. Held hostage by false
narratives, some quietly acquiesce to abetting harmful programs, while others
take active roles in grave crimes—even kidnapping and torture—because they truly
believe they are aiding the greater good.
The
official narratives used to capture hearts and minds are as mundane and prosaic
as the well-respected institutions that fabricate and distribute them. State
bureaucracies, political parties, the mass media, corporations, NGOs, churches,
the family and other ubiquitous institutions of culture, are the chief purveyors
of Canada’s
prevailing mythos. Speeches, sermons, lectures, news items, novels and bedtime
stories serve as common delivery systems for the memes that have coddled
Canadians into complicity. Using hackneyed clichés and platitudes, beguiling
myths are conjured up to render state crimes as if they were noble efforts to
protect our ever-precious “Canadian values.”
When a
psychopathy like the Canada Syndrome becomes normalised, decent ordinary people
may feel a disturbing sense that the cultural system they inhabit is mad. To
suppress such qualms of cultural dissonance, captives of a mass psychosis reach
out for any kind of rational-sounding justification to help suspend their
disbelief, keep calm and carry on. The talking points supplied by their pious
narratives allow people to maintain a blissful ignorance of state crimes, and
their role in supporting them.
Are
hostages of official myths culpable for their wrongdoing? Should such captives
be held accountable, if they meant no harm, but were only trying to do good? In
law, liability rests on whether reasonable care was taken to avoid actions or
omissions that could reasonably have been foreseen as likely to harm others.
So, yes, they are guilty, if they should have known better.
“Plausible deniability” is usually applied to figures in spy agencies, or
corporate and political bureaucracies, who are trying to hide their guilt from
the public eye. The term is also useful in seeing how captives of mass psychoses
cover up the truth, not from others, but from themselves. It is a mental alibi.
By avoiding facts that conflict with their false narratives, individuals can
retain a studied ignorance that keeps them happily unaware of their own guilt.
This careful inattention to facts may become such a reckless disregard for the
truth as to cause gross negligence.
In
law, wilful blindness and contrived ignorance refer to the deliberate avoidance
of facts. The very act of looking away confirms that one did have a
blind-eye knowledge of the denied fact, or at least some good reason to suspect
its existence. This awareness, known in British courts as “Nelsonian knowledge,”
is named after the Admiral who put a telescope to his blind eye and then
honestly said he did not see what he knew was there.
A Theory of Social Control & Social Change
Canadians should not overlook their country’s longlived tradition of using mass
confinement to enforce social control. Examples include slavery, reserves,
WWI/WWII internment, 1930s “Relief Camps” and Cold-War plans to jail thousands
of radical leftists. From the “Red Man” to “Reds,” those found literally or
metaphorically “off the reservation,” have been forced into captivity. Even
those going “beyond the pale” by merely thinking “outside the box” of
acceptable political discourse, have been caged—physically and otherwise. The
mere threat of detention has also served to scare whole communities into staying
in line.
This
issue of Press for Conversion! looks at WWI labour camps and the
narratives that justified them. Using the pretext of foreign war to wage a
domestic crack down, Canadian authorities interned 8000 single, poor, urban
men—mostly east Europeans. These men had, not coincidentally, already been
profiled as a grave threat to the political, economic and religious status quo.
For
decades before WWI, reform-minded Christians of the Social Gospel movement
demonised Aboriginals, and nonwestern Europeans who they saw as fearsome,
radicalised aliens. Social Gospellers not only supported keeping “heathens” on
reserves, they ran genocidal residential schools, and rallied their flocks
around Britain’s
imperial wars, at home and abroad. These progressives also turned a blind eye to
the political witch hunts that targeting godless socialists during Canada’s “Red
Scares.”
Looking back on the mistakes of our forebears, some progressives are quick to
absolve heroic activists of the past by saying that we should not use hindsight
to judge history. However, there were many people in those times who
did see and oppose these injustices. Even a century ago—besides the
Aboriginal, Asian and African victims of the Canada Syndrome—there was a
powerful movement of radical socialists, of largely Ukrainian, Finnish and
Jewish heritage, who were not penned into place by the blind faith that Canada
is a righteous, “Peaceable Kingdom.”
This
publication explores a history of progressives who unwittingly abetted imperial
programs. Understanding and stopping such collaboration is still absolutely
central to the global struggle for genuine social progress. For example,
many good well-meaning activists and NGOs are now cheerleading the UN’s
“Responsibility to Protect.” Like unwitting shills building public confidence in
a deadly shellgame, these progressives are helping craft humanitarian excuses
for US/NATO-led wars. Backing this muscular creed, aids in formalising the
age-old ploy of using fictive pretext narratives to legitimise the greedy
exploits of empire. Someday, people will look back on this shameful history and
say: “They should have known better.” By then it may be too late.
References/Notes
