American politician George Wallace wasn’t always the racist he became in the 1960s.
But after losing an election in Alabama in 1958 in which he ran with the endorsement of the NAACP black-rights organization against an opponent supported by the Ku Klux Klan, Wallace infamously vowed that “I will never be out-n-----ed again.”
More recently, and closer to home, the Parti Québécois under Pauline Marois has followed a similar course.
In the 2007 election, Marois’s predecessor as PQ leader, André Boisclair, conceded the “identity” issue to the Action démocratique du Québec party. As a result, the ADQ replaced the PQ as the leading alternative to the Liberals.
After the election, Marois replaced Boisclair. And whether the issue was language or religious accommodations, the PQ would not be out-xenophobed again.
On Wednesday, the PQ’s agriculture and food critic was rushed into action to capitalize on a rising wave of hysteria in some media over halal meat, which comes from cattle and poultry slaughtered according to Islamic ritual.
André Simard had to admit that the halal slaughter is legal and that the slaughterhouses where it takes place are government-regulated and -inspected.
And he had to admit that for the rest, since he lacked information other than “hearsay,” he didn’t actually know what he was talking about.
Nevertheless, he was worried that halal meat represents a health risk, and that it is being sold to Quebecers without their knowledge.
Later that day, Agriculture Minister Pierre Corbeil responded with a statement assuring Quebecers that all meat produced in the province is safe to eat and comes from animals slaughtered “without cruelty.”
But that didn’t stop the fearmongering, minority-baiting Journal de Montréal from screaming from its cover the next day that “We’re all eating halal.”
The PQ critic also showed a concern for the humane treatment of animals that was as selective as his concern about food labelling, worrying that the halal slaughter did not conform to “Quebec values” and was an “unreasonable accommodation.”
Simard’s use of those code words from the religious-accommodations debate gave away the PQ’s real message.
The message about halal strikingly echoed that of Marine Le Pen, candidate of the extreme-right, xenophobic Front national party in the current French presidential election campaign.
Even before the PQ contributed to the Halal Horror, its “secularism” had been compared to that of the Front national by a French historian, sociologist and author cited extensively in a column in La Presse on Wednesday by Rima Elkouri.
Jean Beaubérot told Elkouri the PQ’s message has become “pro-pure laine (old-stock French-Canadian) and anti-Muslim, whether it likes it or not.”
And, he said, “I don’t know how Pauline Marois could manage a conception of secularism that in France has become the conception of the extreme right while she is of the centre-left.”
On Friday, Elkouri, in another column, and La Presse’s chief editorialist, André Pratte, compared the PQ’s message about halal to that of Le Pen.
But the PQ isn’t seeking the approval of commentators in a federalist Montreal newspaper. It’s after the votes of the soft nationalists outside Montreal who five years ago responded to the ADQ’s campaign against religious accommodations by almost putting it in power.
In France, the popularity of Le Pen’s position on halal has led incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy to take a similar one.
He wasn’t going to be out-xenophobed, and neither will Marois. Because in France or Quebec, in politics, xenophobia works.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: MacphersonGaz