Samra Habib’s book, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir, is screaming at you. The cover is bright, present, bold, and certainly intriguing, and the words inside are not dissimilar. Taking the reader through her personal childhood journey, from her story of migration to the messy, beautiful, complicated experiences that have grounded who she is today, one almost feels as if they’ve picked up a diary.
When the book begins, we are in Pakistan. We meet Habib’s family; we are familiarized with her likes and dislikes, what her parents reward her for and what she is punished for, her frustrations, her passions, and her future goals and dreams. Habib lays a foundation that allows readers to navigate her personal development with a deeper understanding of her origins and influences. Again, it feels as if one is reading young Habib’s diary — the emotions feel raw and present, as opposed to remembered and reflective.
It should be said, however, to the readers who are looking for another narrative on the “Good Immigrant”, someone who escaped their backward country for the promise of a free life in Canada and is inherently grateful: you will be disappointed. Of course, Habib is grateful, as she reflects later on, but she does not ever paint Pakistan as a place she wanted to escape from. She thinks back on that time of her life rather fondly.
Habib’s childhood in Canada is for the most part quite difficult, painful, and lonely. She deals with racism and discrimination, both directed at her and her family. She bears witness to the difficulties her family has in adjusting, in finding work, in paying bills, and in finding community. Bearing witness to your parents’ struggles, not only financially and socially, but also in being targets of discrimination and racism, can have lasting effects on a child, especially one who is still acclimating to a new language, culture, and lifestyle.
As someone who immigrated to Canada as a child with her parents, I could relate to Habib’s story. Seeing how my mother’s accent was received, how strangers in our building reacted to the smell of our food, or the stares my parents would get in public just for speaking in Farsi to one another, taught me what was and was not accepted in Canadian culture. It pushed me to lose my accent, to refuse my mother’s incredible home cooked lunches, and to never speak a lick of Farsi around an English-speaker. Painfully, I internalized a shame for my own ethnicity that I’m still learning to undo.
Habib goes through a similar journey. To avoid ridicule, she makes compromises until she feels safe enough to explore more authentic parts of herself, like her unique sense of fashion (in part inspired by her Pakistani roots) when she’s older. Habib’s entire journey is about learning, unlearning, and relearning. From a young age, she learns what is important to her family, her cultural roots and traditions, and then her Canadian peers. But as she grows older, she starts to deconstruct these truths and to question them for herself and sometimes even for others. In her unlearning, there’s confusion and sadness, but also excitement and growth. She falls in and out of love, in messy ways that feel contradictory to her growth. It’s at times frustrating, but mostly wildly relatable. She commits herself to new mediums of expression, like photography, and dedicates her energy and her intellect to storytelling through this platform. She questions and explores her sexuality, not just in terms of queerness, but in what it means to be attached to another human both physically and mentally. This is her unlearning — being open and vulnerable, trying new things, questioning norms.
Relearning is where we leave Habib. She discovers queer spaces and communities in Toronto, and she finds ways to share that with her family. She finds solace, connection, and above all, inspiration from other queer South Asian people and other queer Muslims. These new discoveries not only create a sense of belonging and even purpose for Habib, but further ignites her desire for visibility; she wants these stories to be shared, to be heard, and to be cemented in text, photography, video, music, etc.
We Have Always Been Here serves as written proof, not for all, but for those who can hold the text and see themselves in it. As a first-generation immigrant, so many parts of the book made me want to scream: I wanted to yell Habib’s words from the rooftops, I wanted to tell her stories to other people, because they were my stories. They were my complicated feelings and my messy experiences. Habib went through the painful process of learning, unlearning, relearning, and then shared that experience with us. This does not mean, however, that her story stands for all of us. It simply provides a foundation, a sense of community, and an urgency for others who can read this memoir and see themselves. We Have Always Been Here is proof of an experience and narrative that is otherwise at its best manipulated, controlled and diluted, and at its worst nonexistent. It is a narrative of existence, of being together, and therefore of “being” with just a bit more ease.
This book review was written by Niki Mohrdar, program assistant for Canoo.
As we were unable to gather in person for 6 Degrees Montréal due to COVID-19, we convened two brilliant writers — Jessikka Aro and Cory Doctorow — for a discussion on the challenges that disinformation poses and the need for societal resilience.
Aro is a Finnish journalist and information warfare expert. Doctorow is a British-Canadian writer and activist. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two laid out the current “epistemological crisis” we face, how the West’s push for improved media literacy can be weaponized by disinformation experts, the rise of big tech, and the challenges of defining, addressing, and removing hate speech online.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
6 Degrees: Jessikka, can you start with some reflection on your work and experience, and then you two can take it from there?
Jessikka Aro: I started investigating Russian trolls, and specifically their impact on citizens in 2014. I very soon learned that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were enabling this state-sponsored information warfare, propaganda, and disinformation. Unfortunately Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been really naive, even negligent. The companies have been more interested in securing their finances than our security. From my point of view, this all comes down to the rights of consumers. We as consumers, as the users of products, should be able to consume safe content. And at the moment, the content is not safe.
Cory Doctorow: I think that when we talk about disinformation, we put a lot of emphasis on the fact that people disagree about what’s true, and we don’t talk enough about how people know that things are true, which is to say, we over-theorize differences in beliefs, and under-theorize differences in epistemology. And I think that if we’re going to understand disinformation and why it’s effective right now, we need to examine our current epistemological crisis, the rise and rise of big tech, and the thing that enables the rise and rise of big tech, which is the rise and rise of monopoly and inequality.
I think that in a complex technological society, it’s not possible for individuals to assess the validity of everything just to survive the day. It’s been the historic media literacy claim: do your own homework, ask yourself what the speaker has in it for them, read up on the sources, and find out if it’s true.
Danah Boyd has talked about how that traditional media literacy rule of thumb is actually an incredibly easy thing to weaponize. “Do your homework” has its place, but I think rather than rendering technical subjects legible to lay people – and we’re all lay people in subjects we’re not experts in – what we’ve historically done to navigate this complexity is to have legible processes. This involves experts presenting different views, adjudicating claims, showing conflicts of interest, reassessing based on new evidence. And historically, that’s been how we know things: through a valid process.. What we’ve experienced over the last 40 years is a de-legitimization of the process, and that has created the fertile ground for believing in conspiracies.
This collapse of trust is what disinformation campaigns exploit, and while we should be trying to figure out how to get people to stop believing untrue things, we really have to reassure people — through action that makes power more pluralistic and accountable and attuned to the truth — that what our truth-seeking exercises conclude is true is actually true. And that way, they can rely on official accounts of truth – advice about vaccines, advice about economics – rather than having to find these cults of personality, where you find someone who seems like they know what they’re talking about and believe them, rather than looking to the experts.
JA: During my investigations, I found regular Finnish people who had changed their ideas, attitudes, or behaviour, specifically because they were impacted by Russian troll accounts with fake profiles, and pro-Kremlin blogs. We’re seeing now in this global health crisis that Russia is aggressively pushing more and more conspiracy theories about coronavirus. For example, that it’s actually the United States who created this virus, or that this virus is a way to attack China. The western world is trying to pre-empt the spread of this virus, and instead Russia is attacking us with trolls.
CD: Russians are gonna Russian. I come from a family of Soviet refugees, and am no apologist for Russian human rights abuses, or the corruption in the Russian state. We can do things to try to down-regulate Russian bad activity, but what we really should be focusing on doing is increasing our resilience.
Russia is a failing, desperate, flailing state: it has increasing mortality, it has decreasing productivity, it is in chaos.
JA: And think about that country being our neighbour!
CD: Right? So if this disintegrating basket-case of a petrostate presided over by a guy who’s frankly not that smart, and who manages to run the country by either terrorizing people or impressing them by wrestling bears, if they can have such an out-sized impact on the rest of the world, we should worry about that guy, but we should also worry about what it says about our lack of resilience. What did 10 years of austerity in the Eurozone do to people’s trust in their institutions? People believe in terrible things in concert with the terrible things going on in their lives, and people stop believing in institutions when those institutions fail them.
JA: You talked about this distinction between true or false — that is one aspect of disinformation. In my experience, the most harmful forms of information warfare are crimes conducted; we’re talking about illegal threats, libel, inciting hatred against minorities. That’s what’s in the toolbox of the Russian security services. I understand that for social media giants it’s really difficult to start judging whether they’ll allow people to spread conspiracy theories, but please, can they stop the crimes?
CD: Patrick Ball, from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, worked closely with the Yazidi during the genocidal attacks, and one of the things that the Yazidi did was upload video with first person accounts of the attacks and video evidence. These were taken down as extremist violent content. This is the central question of how we get justice for the most brutally victimized victims of this kind of criminal act. If we’re worried about hate speech inciting violence, then we need also to worry about the violence in itself.
JA: About defining hate speech, and the difficulty of defining hate speech, I agree to a certain point. It can be really difficult, for even highly educated moderators of traditional media comment sections. Because language is beautiful and eloquent, and you can do so many wonderful, and horrible, things with it. But then, part of the stuff that Facebook and other companies are letting slip through the cracks is not really rocket science. Part of it is groups that harass and attack and stalk individuals, and fantasize about their deaths. Users have tried to report these groups, and I went to Silicon Valley to the Facebook headquarters to report them personally, and they still exist.
CD: I don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram. I think they’re a force for evil in the world.
What you’ve identified is the impossibility of responsibly operating a platform at the scale that Facebook operates at, or that Google or Twitter operate at. If you have 2.5 billion users and you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you have to handle 25,000 one-in-a-million user cases a day. You’re not going to get that right.
I think we should just break them up. I think we should just shatter these companies. With something like GDPR, we said “if you want to collect all this data, then you have to spend all this money to create a compliance regime to ensure that you’re handling it responsibly” and a year later there are no European ad tech companies, only American ones, because they’re the ones who can afford it. Instead, we should just say “Don’t collect data. No collecting data. Illegal. And if we catch you doing it, we break your company up, we fine you so much that you go out of business, we jail your executives.”
JA: I completely agree. Thank you for bringing that up. I’ve been wondering why Facebook and other companies haven’t been sued by so many people, by so many nations.
In Finland, everyone is quite well educated. We have free university, too. That might be one reason we’re often referred to as a really resilient nation. It’s a great philosophy, and policy. Of course it’s not possible everywhere, but that’s really where the best resilience comes from. It comes from being able to critically read the media, to critically read the internet, to recognize fake news, to recognize argumentation mistakes, the real basics of what they’re teaching in Finnish classrooms. Also, regulatory options are needed, not just by the European Union, but also in North America, where they have the most power to really regulate these companies.
Then of course any type of voluntary efforts – journalists are training kids for free, going around to schools. But what I’ve really been wondering is that there is not a massive citizen-led voluntary action against these social media giants; the tyranny, basically. I don’t know why so many consumers are accepting this as the new norm and the new reality. Robert Mueller’s investigation about Russian interference in the U.S. election revealed that 126 million Americans had been impacted and touched by Russian trolls before the election. As a government, wouldn’t you want to protect your citizens?
There are different roles for governments, tech platforms, and citizens to play in addressing, mitigating, and building resilience to disinformation. Read about the ICC’s Citizen Resilience Project here, and check out interviews with Swedish philosopher Åsa Wikforss, and members of the global online counterspeak movement.
It has been a challenging time for the arts and culture sector. The volume of cancellations and closures has left many organizations, on the one hand, quickly responding to the sudden changes, and on the other, seriously wondering what their future looks like. The challenges are ongoing as museums, galleries, festivals, and theatres continue to grapple with difficult decisions every day. With this in mind, it is the second question we wish to dedicate this newsletter edition to, as a respite from the hardship and as a reminder of what lies ahead.
Without diverting attention from the more immediate challenges, we have to wonder what the longer-term implications of these adjustments and, in some cases, dramatic changes will be. How will this crisis transform the arts and culture sector?
We have asked different leaders from arts and culture to share their thoughts on what they see as possible paths forward. Their responses offer a diversity of perspectives and point at different opportunities for action. Here’s what they have to say
It’s too early to say exactly what the sector will look like on the other side. We may be on the verge of a paradigm shift in the way museums operate.
During the pandemic, we have seen some museums pivot quickly, providing virtually accessible resources. These contributions reinforce the value of museums and the critical role they can and must play in society.
That being said, museums risk not being able to fulfill their much-needed role. Several have closed their doors, exhibits have been cancelled, collections lack the constant care normally afforded to them, and many workers have been laid off. We worry about the hardest hit, the many small museums.
We appreciate the government’s relief efforts, but they are not enough to ensure the sector’s viability. So we are advocating for a dedicated museum relief fund to support lost revenues and an emergency development fund for digital activities. We are also maintaining pressure to update the 30 year-old National Museum Policy. If funding was at the appropriate levels and if what the policy covers was modernized, museums could ostensibly be better poised to weather the situation.
There’s no question the museum sector will need to adapt to a new reality. I remain hopeful that with adequate support and modernized policies, the future of our sector is bright.
Right now, many of us are in rapid response mode. But, for those of us who have a bit of capacity, I hope we have some time to dream about the future. Here’s an article I wrote about how to slow down, take stock, and reimagine my role in building a more equitable future.
The question I’m holding is – how do we want to transform ourselves in the long term because of this crisis? What new futures do we want to create? If we acknowledge that “normal” was not fully equitable, how can we change that?
Because of these questions, I’m spending a lot of time visioning. Especially for cultural organizations, I think it’s meaningful to envision how we want to reopen and who we want to be our partners in making that happen.
If you have five minutes, I invite you to write a journal entry imagining that bright day, and how the world might be different. It might help you figure out what you most want to do next.
COVID-19 is forcing the music industry as a whole to take a step back and reevaluate how musicians and audiences interact with each other.
So much of what drives music revenue is built around the gathering of human bodies, in large quantities, into contained spaces. And both medical and music industry professionals agree, we likely won’t be able to do that again for quite some time.
Perhaps here is where change can happen and it can be driven by each and every one of us.
In the past few years, the music industry was scrambling to find ways to remain relevant. Record labels were becoming artist management companies and large concert promoters owned all the commercial radio. Now that we’re in lockdown, we still see how relevant music remains while the gatekeepers put in place to profit from art become less and less relevant.
As music consumers, we have the power to engage and support our favourite artists directly through digital portals created by and for artists. We have the collective power to support locally and to help emerging and mid-career artists flourish both financially and creatively.
And artists need to not just adapt to the technology but expand the constraints of these platforms through creative and unorthodox thinking. Musicians must become well-rounded creatives, capable of not just writing and performing songs, but delivering eye-catching visuals and theatrical experiences built on multi-disciplinary methods and aesthetics.
A return to directly empowering local, grassroots artistic communities is a tangible step towards an equitable and inclusive arts economy.
COVID-19 has already been transformative for many within the arts and culture sector. From the fear of layoffs to anticipated budgetary cuts over the next while, the arts and culture sector faces an uncertain path forward.
But within this uncertainty, lies opportunity.
What has become apparent within the COVID-10 crisis is the importance of human connection within a context that is, necessarily, limiting our ability to connect in person. In this context, the arts and culture sector can play a key role in generating and maintaining human connection.
As such, COVID-19 may indeed act as a catalyst for a reinvigorated commitment on the part of cultural institutions to fostering empathy, understanding and connection, and doing so in innovative ways. For instance, encouraging institutions to experiment with new, remote ways to connect and to share stories is just one way in which the focus of our work has already changed; as this crisis develops, it may also engender new innovations in delivery and communication for the sector as a whole.
New formats for delivery and communication to foster human connection may also necessitate other changes within the sector, beyond the immediate. For instance, a greater focus on digital engagement and the retention of specialists in the field of online design and delivery may be required. In addition, an understanding of the barriers to access that many face in a digital world reveals deep structural inequity and will surely require institutions and professionals to find innovative ways to enhance inclusion and participation.We can all agree that this is a terrible time for humanity. COVID-19 endangers lives, weakens the vulnerable and creates collective anxiety, particularly notable in the arts sector, which now finds itself disoriented. These are violent times in many ways, but they could lay the ground for profound transformation and place meaning at the centre of our existence and our organizations.
Upon leaving the camp in 1946, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote about the importance of meaning as a true source of resilience. According to him, the question wasn’t what do I expect from life? but rather what does life expect from me? Considering what we could give over what we couldn’t get as a way to create meaning. This can help us ask ourselves some good questions in relation to our cultural institutions:
What do we want to cultivate?
Whom and what do we want to care for, individually and collectively?
Why do performing arts? For what purpose? Why?
Where are the needs?
How can we help today?
Let’s use our creativity and collective intelligence to answer these questions. Let’s use the limitations as a basis for inventiveness. Let’s put aside the past and the future that cause us so much anxiety and focus on how to honour the living right now. This is certainly the best position from which to build trust with our communities and become part of a new system.
One of the main challenges museums will face after COVID-19 is having to balance the pressing need to collect and preserve the testimonies of those who have been most affected, with the obligation to adhere to strong ethical principles such as the minimization of harm and respect for human dignity.
Many of these communities, which have been historically excluded or misrepresented in many of our museums, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Museums have a responsibility to ensure that the stories of the underrepresented won’t be lost, overlooked, exploited or replaced by privileging only heroic narratives.
I believe and I hope that after COVID-19, museums will be pushed to be more self-reflective and work more ethically when researching, collecting, archiving, interpreting and exhibiting the stories of historically marginalized communities.
It is our responsibility as museum professionals to bring these discussions to light so that the museum sector can emerge stronger and in solidarity with the communities we intend to serve.
The global creative community has taken a remarkable leadership role in organizing, adapting and responding to the health emergency. This timely and proactive reaction has raised visibility of the sector, establishing it as a fundamental and necessary part of contemporary life. I am confident that this recognition will help strengthen public budgets for the sector and will lead to greater sustainability for the community.
A large number of cultural activities have been virtually reprogrammed using digital technologies, immediately multiplying their audiences and global outreach. These creative endeavours have helped to alleviate the psychological stress of millions of people who are in isolation, preventing the spread of the virus.
This renewed presence of cultural goods and services enriches the cultural diversity within the digital landscape. Most importantly, it reminds us that on the other side of the pandemic culture and art await us in a physical space; a place where the desires, illusions and dreams of humanity coincide globally. The day we get to attend our first concert after these adverse times, we will experience it as if it was our first time. We will never forget the value of culture again.
*These responses have been edited for clarity and length
In these challenging times, we are seeing communities come together to support their most vulnerable. Unfortunately, we are also seeing certain communities become the target of hateful attacks online and off.
Mathieu Marion, a member of francophone group #JeSuisLàCanada, shared his perspectives on combating hateful, false and misleading information through counterspeak, COVID-19, and why what happens in digital spaces matters in the physical world.
Can you describe what the counterspeak movement is and why groups like #JeSuisLà are important?
I think the counterspeak movement aims to neutralize social media’s multiplier effect on all kinds of hateful information that impacts our ability to get along and harms the health of our rule of law and our democracy. These networks give higher visibility to hateful rhetoric that can influence public opinion by polarizing it into extreme political positions and even provoke attacks like the massacre at the Sainte-Foy mosque in January 2017. So, we have to react and do our part as community members.
Unfortunately, Facebook (to cite just one example) very rarely removes hateful comments or statuses after one or more complaints and when they do, it’s random. Certain media in Québec (like CBC or La Presse) have recently started to moderate their Facebook pages to remove hate speech. But the situation isn’t ideal. There’s still work to do.
However, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms, responding to a hateful comment isn’t effective: the discussion that follows never convinces the original poster to change their opinion and it draws attention to the hateful comment, rather than minimizing its reach.
And people often get worked up and might end up replying with insults, risking getting their own account blocked if Facebook says what they wrote violates its community standards. So, it’s not worth the time and it actually does the opposite of what’s intended. Plus, extended discussions with extremists on social media has an impact on our mental well-being.
That’s why the #JeSuisLà tactic seems more promising. When you ignore other hateful comments on a thread and leave a positive comment using facts and reasoning, plus hashtags like #JeSuisLàCanada and #JeSuisLàQuébec, your comment will get likes that will push the thread higher in the FB algorithm, making most of the hateful comments invisible and drawing the attention of new people who view the thread away from those comments.
We’ve noticed that comments with these tags rarely prompt hateful responses. The tags seem to dissuade people.
Why did you decide to get involved with the #JeSuisLà movement? Were you inspired by a particular experience, comment, or article?
I learned about #IAmHere in this Guardian article. After that, I was able to find and join the Canadian group #IAmHereCanada. I then got permission to use #JeSuisLàQuébec for a francophone team.
Given the political context in Québec, using just #JeSuisLàCanada would have had a negative effect because it would have been easy for nationalist critics to dismiss a comment with that hashtag as “federalist.” Unfortunately, it seems difficult to attract members for this francophone group at the moment.
From what you’ve observed, what topics are most likely to attract problematic comments?
In Québec, it’s topics around secularism and the Muslim headscarf that attract the most hateful comments because of the vigorous public debate on questions such as reasonable accommodations that led to the Bouchard-Taylor report in 2008, the Parti Québécois “charter” in 2013-2014 and more recently, the Québec ban on religious symbols. Another topic to add is immigrants entering Canada unauthorized at Roxham Road on the border with the United States. Most of the immigrants are of Haitian or African descent and they’re targeted in racist reactions.
Immigration in general is a hot topic because Quebecers in some age groups and regions are afraid that their people and culture will disappear and see immigrants as a risk to their survival. Reducing the number of immigrants is a recurring topic currently. Multiculturalism is also often criticized because it’s seen as a policy aimed at destroying Québec, rather than respecting the rights of minorities and helping them integrate.
Other topics like climate change lead to outbursts that target Greta Thunberg, young people ecologists, etc., rather than minorities.
In the context of COVID-19, what has changed in terms of the involvement of participants and/or the content that you see online in the news and comment sections?
At first, COVID-19 had a calming effect: the main columnists that feed xenophobia in the province turned their attention elsewhere. But for some time now, fear is pushing people to look for scapegoats for the crisis and media content that mentions Jewish, Indigenous, or Muslim people often receives many racist comments.
In terms of dangerous, hateful, misleading or poorly informed remarks, what action would you like to see from government? Civil society? Ordinary community members?
I don’t really think the government can do much without running the risk of getting accused of censorship. However, certain politicians — like Maxime Bernier — should stop adding fuel to the fire in order to gain sympathy and votes. Others need to become more aware of the reality on social media and the abuse that happens there. I would say that the first issue is having independent media, an essential condition for the health of our democracy. They have financial difficulties and the government should find a way to finance them better.
In Québec, there are a number of organizations doing effective work, like the Commission des Droits de la Personne et des Droits de la Jeunesse and the Ligue des Droits et Libertés. Here again, the financial means to do good work should be provided. Unfortunately, the Quebec Press Council is not a very effective tool for countering fake news and hate-filled columns.
As for regular community members? I’d love to see more of them join #JeSuisLàCanada!
In these challenging times, we are seeing communities come together to support their most vulnerable. Unfortunately, we are also seeing certain communities become the target of hateful attacks online and off.
We spoke with Alena Helgeson, founder of #iamhereCanada, on her efforts to combat hateful, false and misleading information through “counterspeak”, COVID-19, and why what happens in digital spaces matters in the physical world.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you describe what the counterspeak movement is, and why online groups like #iamhere are important?
Counterspeaking is basically going into platforms or social media comment sections, and creating an alternative message. We’re seeing a vocal minority that is trying to perpetuate a particular message that isn’t true — disinformation, or lots of subtle (or not so subtle) racism — so to be able to provide a message of facts really helps. The silent majority can see [that message] and can start to balance what might be true and what might not be. Plus, counterspeaking helps carve out space so that people who might feel silenced or marginalized have that space to share their thoughts and their viewpoints.
I’ve talked about the Dangerous Speech Project out of Harvard — they really focus on what dangerous speech is. Hate speech is very subjective. What might be considered hate speech to one person might not be to another person.
Dangerous speech is any type of expression — whether it’s written or pictures — that will increase the risk of one group violently attacking another, or even being tolerant of violence. When President Trump talks about the “Chinese Virus”, that’s not really hate speech, but it is dangerous. What it’s doing is inspiring or activating groups of people to start doing a lot of anti-Asian attacks. We’ve seen that with Muslim people or Indigenous people — we see things that aren’t hateful, but certainly stirs the pot so people will be more tolerant of acts against those groups.
That’s really why it’s important that there are counterspeaking measures, so that that tolerance level doesn’t change, or so that it doesn’t swing so that society accepts attacks and hate.
How do you know what platforms, news articles, and comments to engage in?
In our group, we’ll invite people to look for articles and things through social media. Every day one of our moderators will go through and scan news articles, and we look for anything that can be thought of as dangerous speech, or hate speech, and then we post that in our group and invite members to go and make comments on it. They link their comments to the thread in the group, so that we can go support them.
Why did you choose to get involved with #iamhere? Was there a particular moment, comment, or article that inspired you?
A couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend and he started talking about all these anti-Muslim things, and how he was afraid because he knew that as soon as [Muslims] got that call from their religious leaders, they would kill all the white people, including him and his neighbours. And I was really surprised that anybody [I knew] would think that. And then I started thinking that if he thinks that, and was so able to shift into that mindset, there must be other Canadians that feel that same way, too.
I started doing some digging and ran into the the #iamhere movement, and I joined the U.K. group to see how they worked and what they did. There are a lot of issues that are very universal, so I was able to interact with them.
And then [the shooting of] Colten Boushie happened. And that tragedy sparked so much hate in the media, and on social media, that we just thought it was time to start something in Canada.
What are the most common topics you see problematic comments on?
Racism is huge; Islamophobia, LGBTQ2S+ issues all across the world, gender, anything that has to do with women. Climate change — Greta Thunberg is a huge, huge target. There are so many people that attack her everywhere. And in Canada and Australia, anything related to First Nations communities is also always very inflammatory.
And then recently, with COVID, very anti-Asian stuff.
In the context of COVID-19, what has changed in terms of participant involvement or the content you see online in news stories and comment sections?
We’ve noticed that anything to do with COVID — and maybe it’s because people are feeling oversaturated — participation levels have really dropped. A lot of conspiracy theories in the comments, lots of disinformation, lots of people suddenly thinking that they [are experts on] viruses and healthcare. And, again, many comments against Asians.
When you say participation has dropped, do you mean participation from #iamhere members? Yeah. Within the group there are fewer people wanting to interact with those posts as they go by. Right at the beginning there were lots of people jumping in with proper facts, and now it’s sort of dwindling a little bit.
People, I think, are just tired. So, we’ve tried to counter that by sharing really positive stories: volunteer work, or business owners giving away food to homeless people, or landlords going out and buying groceries for their senior residents.
What do you say to those who criticize that engaging in counterspeak is just “feeding the trolls”?
We’ve heard that argument before. When we interact online, we try really hard not to engage the trolls. You don’t see a lot of us countering them directly. What we’ll do is post a standalone, objective, fact-filled comment that people can boost or reply to. When we ask members to do a standalone, that helps, so that you don’t accidentally boost the comment of a known troll or someone sharing disinformation, because commenting on it amplifies it.
Also, you don’t always have to make a comment. You can go in and support the ones that we suggest supporting, or find other ones worth boosting.
What would you say to people who withdraw from online spaces because they feel that they are targeted due to their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality?
That’s really hard. The common reaction is to just not want to engage. Lots of people withdraw, and don’t read comments — it’s a coping mechanism — but their voices are necessary. We’ve talked about how diverse Canada is, and we need those diverse voices. We need those voices to help set the tone and shift the conversation. And they can tell us when they’re feeling attacked or targeted. We’re 150,000 strong worldwide, so when they need help we can call in those groups. They just need to know they’re not alone.
Can you share an example of a time you were able to effectively support someone online or address an incorrect or problematic narrative?
Don Cherry’s comments before Christmas was a big one. There were lots of articles — some of them supporting what Don Cherry said, and some of them just reporting. We would see a lot of people saying “well that’s just the way he is”, “ he’s always been like that”, “‘you people’ could be anybody”. So we were able to go in and break down what it meant, and why it was problematic.
We try to show people that they’re not the only ones speaking out against something hateful. It’s one of the ways we carve out space for people to share their opinions, and it helps when we comment as well, because it encourages others to speak up.
What role can we play as advocates for one another without speaking on behalf of someone else?
The last thing we need are saviours. I was talking to my partner, who is never sure how to help in these situations. He doesn’t want to go in as a white guy acting like a superhero. I think it helps to be able to redirect to the voices of the people who are marginalized. If I’m commenting on something that’s anti-Asian, then he can come in and support or amplify my comment. That’s one way that it’s great to be an ally — letting marginalized voices be heard, and supporting them, without speaking for them.
Many people right now are finding that they have more time on their hands. Do you see this as an opportunity to get involved in more of this work?
I think we’re in a time of a great reboot. It’s a time to be able to reflect on what you want to do, and how you see yourself. I think it’s making people slow down and giving them a chance to listen to their heart.
With regards to time, we know that people are scrolling through right now more than they’re speaking up. They can find the time to be more of an activist, if they choose to be. I like to think that we’ll be a more compassionate world when we get out of this thing.
How would you help someone see work with #iamhere as volunteer work, or activism – just like getting involved in your community?
We have to stress that online work is activism. You’re creating a narrative. We see the influence of what’s being said online when it carries into real life. Online you create narratives, you create perspectives on different topics, whether it’s Indigenous people, or refugees, and we hear those things being echoed in grocery stores. It’s so important to engage online.
Ross is from the South Coast of Australia and moved to Canada in 2015. He says he chose to move to Canada for the natural beauty and inclusiveness. Ross became a citizen mid-April of 2019 and says the biggest change for him has been “the joy of anonymity, and being part of the brilliance of pure multiculturalism. I feel free and at home.”
Ross is an avid user of Canoo. In addition to visiting venues, he also regularly takes advantage of the free tickets offered to Canoo members by email for concerts and performances. “[Canoo] is so splendid,” says Ross, “I have seen my first opera, AGO, ROM and a few smaller galleries. I have just attended a music recital that I wouldn’t really have seen without the pass. My experience of the pass allows me to be more engaged with the events I would not have been aware of.”
Ross firmly believes in the importance of arts and culture. “It has always been my belief that you have to know [the] past to understand the now and the future of a culture,” he explains, “So I have found galleries and museums key to travel and my world education. The galleries with their amazing staff always make for a totally enjoyable experience and a great memory. Without art/cultural heritage of any kind, we are nothing at all; we would just exist and go through the motions. The arts/places have to be held up as a mirror of the past, and [they] now help point to the future.”
When asked if he had any additional comments, Ross said, “I just want to thank all the faceless people that help us become Canadians, the people that volunteer at all the events and the people at Canoo. Most of all, remembering my first feelings when I arrived in Canada, [I believe] anything is possible here. Thank you, Canada.”
A few weeks after she took part in 6 Degrees Berlin 2020, the 6 Degrees team sat down with Åsa Wikforss to talk more about dis- and misinformation in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, its impact on inclusion, and how we can collectively counter false narratives and polarization.
Wikforss is a Swedish professor of philosophy who does research at the intersection of philosophy of mind, language, and epistemology. With the publication of her popular book, Alternative Facts: On Knowledge and its Enemies (not yet released in English), she has become a leading public defender of reason and truth against enemies of knowledge. In 2019, she was awarded a large interdisciplinary research program, Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences and Cures, funded by the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
6 Degrees: What do you think is a key misunderstanding in the way we talk about or define disinformation?
ÅW: Well, first to distinguish between dis- and mis information. Usually disinformation is more harmful because it has a propaganda function to it, it’s targeted — it’s meant to have political effects, and manipulate emotion in a way that misinformation doesn’t. Because disinformation is intentional, unlike misinformation, and it’s designed to foster certain beliefs, it’s typically more harmful.
Certainly when it comes to immigration, the political purpose is quite clear: to create a split between “them” and “us”, and drive that kind of nationalistic message forward.
The other thing about disinformation that is worth paying attention to is that disinformation need not mean that things that are said are false. If we define disinformation simply as information that’s designed to cause false beliefs — which I think is a good definition — then you can disinform by saying true things. You can make a selection of things that fit your narrative, and you exclude all the others. When it comes to immigration in Sweden, for example, there’s been a very concerted effort to create a false narrative. As soon as there’s something bad that happens that relates to immigration, they trumpet it out over and over again. They use gang violence — which is a societal problem in Sweden — and put a lot of focus on the role of [asylum seekers] to paint a picture of Sweden on the verge of collapse.
They pick their facts really carefully, then say things that are actually true, but the overarching message is false. That works quite well. But it’s trickier than something where you explicitly say what’s false.
How do you fact check things like this that aren’t false?
That’s exactly why this type of disinformation is so much more dangerous — you can’t just stamp it false. The answer to that kind of disinformation is good journalism. You fill in the missing facts, you provide the complexity and nuance that is missing to give the full picture. The problem is that that requires serious journalism that no one has time or money for anymore. It also isn’t as exciting; it’s hard to get lots of clicks doing that kind of journalism. This is a dangerous type of disinformation precisely because it’s hard to fact check, and because as human beings we love narrative, we love stories. So we get sucked into it.
Does that attraction to narrative connect to our cognitive biases? How does that cause us to fall for or spread misinformation?
You can see the link between narratives and confirmation bias, for example. If you’re caught in this narrative that Sweden is about to collapse because of immigration, you will be inclined to believe false statements that fit that narrative — fake news about immigrants will fit nicely with that, confirming the picture you already have. Moreover, you’ll be very observant of bad things that have to do with immigration that you might not have seen otherwise. You’re on the lookout for evidence that confirms this narrative you’ve already accepted. Narrative provides a structure for your experiences and the information that comes to you and shapes it in a way that interacts with our biases.
Do you think becoming more aware of our cognitive biases helps us counteract that?
If you think of confirmation bias it’s an interesting one. This bias is an unconscious psychological mechanism that we don’t have all that much power over. Everyone has it. Researchers have it; they want to confirm their theory. So why does research work? It works because of the institution. The institution is set up so that we examine each other, we question each other. It’s set up to counteract biases and error. So, it’s the social dimension of properly set-up institutions that allow for critical reasoning in a group that makes us overcome the biases. We can counteract the biases we have in a group.
That speaks to the importance of institutions, and their responsibility.
Institutions are key to democratic society, but also key to science. It’s key to all the things that we value, because as individuals, we’re pretty lost! Even if we’re super smart and diligent. If you lock up a super smart scientist, they’ll come up with some crazy theories, because there’s not enough feedback from other people.
So, what are some of the strategies that institutions can adopt to counter dis- or misinformation?
It’s not as simple as just going out and telling people how things are. We should instead go out and talk about the institution, and how it works.
In general, people don’t know how institutions work, and how they come to conclusions. In science, truth wins out over time. We have theories, we make mistakes, but things tend to correct themselves, because we have the institution. I think the same is true for journalism. What’s the difference between a serious journalistic institution and a propaganda platform, other than intentions? It’s how they work. How they have fact checkers, editors, internal review. They should make clear how they work to explain why they should be trusted.
What you’re talking about is transparency. Would that have the same effect in government and civil society?
I think transparency is key there as well. If we look at COVID-19, every government has different ways of doing things. In Sweden, we have politicians and an expert health authority. Politicians cannot make a decision that is not recommended by the health authority. They can’t decide to close all the schools until the health authority says so. That’s a kind of transparency that made me trust political decisions much more. So one could think that transparency, when it comes to political institutions, could have a similar function. If you want to build trust then that’s exactly the thing to do.
What about individual action to counter mis- and disinformation? Especially in the context of COVID-19.
When it comes to this kind of thing, go to the very established sources, where there is an institution backing up the information that is coming out. Don’t look up “Paul in Wherever” and his platform, or whatever you manage to find. With COVID, all the world’s scientists are working on it. And when there is real news, it will be known. Stick to the serious and established sources, and accept uncertainty.. Don’t trade uncertainty for some certainty in what’s false.
Do you see the spread of mis- and disinformation as being a threat to civil society and civic participation?
Sure. That’s its goal much of the time. There’s a certain type of political propaganda where the goal is to set one group against another. That’s what the Russians are doing in Sweden, and also in the U.S. They want to maximize polarization. They find these wedge issues where there’s potential for polarization, like immigration, and drive disinformation in such a way that one side perceives the other side as ugly or crazy. That’s one thing that disinformation has succeeded in: giving a skewed and horrible picture of the other side. And, of course, that will affect civil society. It comes out on social media, but it can’t be contained there. It has effects in real life, too.
In that context then, how do we balance the need to correct misinformation and misunderstandings with the need to bring people together through shared values to reduce polarization?
It depends on the context. But in society we need to address it. We know this from research on feminism and microaggression, if you let it pass in public, you’re condoning it. So it’s not really an option. The challenge then is how do you respond to it without putting the other person so much on the defense that it will just backfire. If you look at the research on fact resistance, it’s important to remember that it’s about emotion, not an information deficit. A similar thing holds for hateful comments, racial slurs, or things like that. In the public context one needs to speak up, but do it in such a way that the other person doesn’t feel threatened or shamed, because that’s not going to help either. And that’s a tricky balance!
And there’s the question of what you do online. If you should call it out, or if it’s “feeding the trolls”.
It’s a harder one online — it can be feeding the trolls. It also depends on the context, but can often not have the effect that you would like, that this person and all his friends will change their minds. That’s not going to happen.
One thing is Mina Dennert and the #iamhere movement. She’s lined up all of these people on Facebook who go in and, instead of trying to put down the hateful people, support the person who is subjected to hate. That might be the most efficient way to get the hateful people to stop, too. Make them think, “is this really the side I want to be on?” It works really well, and it’s very moving to see.
And in real life one can do something similar. “We’re here, and we’re not going to let this pass.”
It will be interesting to see after COVID-19, maybe this will counteract polarization. In Sweden, I can already feel it a bit, people coming together. I just saw some statistics now that the Swedish Nationalist Populist Party — a fascist party, basically — they’ve been as big as the Social Democrats lately, but in the last week their support has gone down and the Social Democrats have gone up.
You can feel there’s a move towards the feeling of “us” again. We must come together and help each other. So maybe this kind of a crisis will counteract polarization.
For more on misinformation, disinformation, and countering false narratives, check out the ICC’s Citizen Resilience Project.
As of today, the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science has partnered with Canoo to welcome new Canadian citizens into their space with free admission.
Canoo is a mobile app that helps new Canadian citizens celebrate their citizenship by providing free admission to over 1400 museums, science centres, art galleries, parks, and historic sites across Canada.
The Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science is a buzz of activities of all kinds: exhibitions, multi-sensory shows, educational activities, talks, and corporate events. Its mission is : to inspire, amaze, and make it possible for the public to discover nature, science, and the richness of collections from our natural heritage. Learn more on their website.
Canoo members in Sherbrooke, QC, and the surrounding area, check your app to learn more about the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science and to visit!
To find more places to visit near you, be sure to enable location services on the Canoo app. Learn more about the app on the Canoo Help Centre.
On the 172nd anniversary of democracy in Canada, we spoke to John Ralston Saul, co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and author of Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin, about why March 11 should be a national holiday, what lessons we can learn from LaFontaine and Baldwin, and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Why is March 11 the anniversary of Canadian Democracy?
On March 11, 1848, the Canadas and Nova Scotia tricked the British into giving them responsible government. It sounds boring, but what it really means is that parliament has the power, instead of the imperial authority. Whoever has the votes in parliament decides who the governor general can call to be prime minister and form the government. So, from the moment that parliament has the power over who governs and how the money is spent, you have democracy and virtual independence. You can’t be a colony when you control those two pieces. So, March 11 is the beginning of democracy in Canada and of Canada becoming an independent country. And it is the beginning of the end of the British Empire because that model is then slowly, slowly followed by other countries, beginning with New Zealand and Australia.
So, Canada was the first out of the British Empire to have responsible government or democracy?
We’re actually the first out of any of the European empires. Canadians understate all of this. The world was controlled by the English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and American empires and the first country to talk its way out was Canada. Before that, we had only the Americans, who fought their way out, which was the old-fashioned way LaFontaine and Baldwin used political methods to accomplish something which the British governing elite opposed.
Can you talk a bit about LaFontaine and Baldwin and what they mean to this day?
Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin were the visionaries and leaders of the government – the Great Ministry, it was called – that came to power on this day 172 years ago.
What’s wonderful is they are two really odd guys. They didn’t meet until they were in their thirties. They came from two different cities, two different languages, two different religions. Suddenly a few years after the failed rebellion in 1837, they were brought together. I don’t know what they thought of each other but they quickly realized that they had to do something. And they were real fighters by temperament.
In fact, LaFontaine, when he was a young man, had been a boxer — an intellectual and a boxer. He started political life as Louis-Joseph Papineau’s main bodyguard. And Baldwin was a strange, romantic figure.
From 1840 to 1848, they fought, fought, fought. Everything but physical violence on their side. It was quite dangerous, I mean their lives were at risk many times. They often had to flee Orange Order club-wielding mobs. They were cool and very calm and courageous. At last, they won the election of January 1848. By 1849 the anti-democratic forces attempted what were in effect counter coups. In 1849, when the Orange Order and the anti-democratic elites burned down the parliament buildings and tried to assassinate them, they refused to send the soldiers in to open fire. They said — we’re just going to wait this out, we’re going to try and keep order as calmly as possible. And so, they set the model for a very stern, but non-violent approach to government.
By the time they got to power in 1848, they were already not that well. It had been such a hard fight. Three years later when they left, they were exhausted. Ready to die. They were in their fifties and a few years later they were dead. It killed them, doing this really killed them.
Do you think that March 11 is a day that should be celebrated more than it currently is?
Yes, absolutely.
Until the worship of John Macdonald began in the 1960s — really an attempt to be like the United States and to have this single heroic figure, which, of course, couldn’t help but backfire — until then, LaFontaine and Baldwin had always been major figures in the story of Canada. They were talked and written about endlessly. With the LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture and all the work that we’re doing at the ICC, we’re coming back to that idea that Canada is not a place with one leader or one hero — it isn’t about heroes, it’s about ideas, strategies — inclusion, the public good, egalitarianism. Egalitarianism was central to the 1848 idea of Canada – endlessly invoked.
March 11 is an incredibly important date because it sets a pattern for the country at its best. Remember that 1848 was the year when most of the European countries went through what they called the democratic spring of Europe. They overthrew their undemocratic governments in France, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian empire, et cetera. Nova Scotia and Canada were part of that revolutionary change. But within about six to nine months, all those governments had been overthrown by the old anti-democratic forces. The only places where democracy survived were the Canadas and Nova Scotia. It’s really quite remarkable. They survived by being incredibly tough and by refusing to let violence run the show. So, I think it should be celebrated enormously. We must try to understand this success.
It’s worth remembering that, just before they formed the government on March 11, [LaFontaine and Baldwin] got the legislature to pass its first pro-democracy bill, which was a bill setting up an immigration policy for Canada. So, the very first act of a democratic parliament in Canada was to pass an immigration bill. It’s pretty amazing.
What do you think could be done to celebrate March 11 more?
I think it should be an official day in Canada.
It should be a day on which people and politicians, citizens, and schools talk about where they feel our democracy should go. Because LaFontaine and Baldwin were all about that: you can only have democracy through strategies for improving society. That’s how they did it. It wasn’t nationalism; it was improving society and the public good. I think their names — but above all their approach — what they taught us about how to build democracy in Canada, should be in schools. There should be continual discussions about how we can improve our societies, just as they did in 1848. Parliament and the legislatures should mark the day.
Do you think the conversation about how we can improve societies is missing in the public dialogue?
Yes. So much of journalism is about power. Who is winning, who is losing. And about very specific issues. Fine, but there is very little stepping back and saying, what do we need to do in order to create a more inclusive, a more just society. A lot of the work that we are trying to do at the ICC is about that, in terms of new Canadian citizens, in terms of immigration, in terms of citizenship. And I think that there really has to be enormous emphasis on the role of ideas and working out where we can go. Because if you don’t have a big idea of where we should be going, it all ends up in directionless infighting.
What role do you think everyday citizens could have in not only promoting LaFontaine and Baldwin, but also in having this conversation about where we can go as a society?
That’s why I’m always talking about citizenship. here are three or four things that a citizen can do, should do. One of them is really to be talking with families, with friends, in social clubs, classrooms, hockey arenas, workplaces, talking about where should the country be going. Why do we have homelessness, poverty? What should jobs look like. What policies are needed on Indigenous questions. These things need to be thought of, not just in terms of the policies of the day, but they have to be thought of in terms of what do we really want to do. And people can talk about that in many places. Most of us participate in all sort of social, family, religious, professional gatherings. But we don’t organize enough as citizens to talk with each other about where we think the country should be going. It’s not just a thing for political parties. It’s something for each one of us.
What can we learn from that initial government – the Great Ministry – in the context of today’s increasingly polarized political landscape?
The fascinating thing is that it was, of course, polarized then. It was the pro-democratic forces against the anti-democratic forces. That’s how we ended up with a burnt down parliament. But in the end, most of the anti-democratic forces changed sides. A large number of the people who had opposed LaFontaine and Baldwin ended up adopting most of their ideas, their ideas about democracy, their ideas about bilingualism, their ideas about inclusion, their ideas about social policy. They were largely adopted. We are living today on foundations built by LaFontaine, Baldwin, and their allies. What is fascinating is that out of that great reform party — which was called the Reform Party and the Great Ministry — came both the Liberal party and the Conservative Party. Effectively, the Reform Party split in two and most moderates joined one or the other. Why? Because they understood — they both accepted the idea — that they had to advance the common good or they couldn’t expect citizens to support them.
We have to get away from the idea that competition in politics is only about opposition. It may be about different approaches, but it has to be about improving and strengthening the public good. And I think that is one of the great messages that came out of [the Great Ministry]. The lesson is that there is something called the common good and it has to be served. And we must remain centred on that. If children are not eating properly, if newcomers are marginalized, if people are homeless, if treaty negotiations stretch on for decades…we have to talk about these real issues and about what makes dignity and citizenship possible.
The day Canada became a democracy cannot help but be a defining moment in our history. One hundred and seventy-two years ago, on March 11th Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine was summoned by the Governor General, Lord Elgin, to form a new government. Why? Because the grand coalition of Upper and Lower Canadian reformers had won a clear majority in the election of 1848. For the first time, in any part of the British Empire, it became clear that the people and not the imperial authorities would decide who was to form the government.
March 11, 1848 is one of the most important dates in Canadian history. It marks the beginning of what we might call modern Canada. Another way of putting it is that March 11 marks the beginning of Responsible Government in Canada — the now axiomatic idea that governance is properly carried out by elected citizen representatives and not colonial powers. It was a defining moment for representative democracy in Canada, marking a paradigm shift in its modes of governance, and laying the legal foundations for a society based on inclusion and egalitarianism.
In March 1848, a Reform government – it was called The Great Ministry – led by Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin came into power in the United Province of Canada (the territories now known as Ontario and Quebec). During its three years in power, the Reform government laid the legal foundations for egalitarianism, instated a system of public education, and insisted on a non-violent approach to politics. (When protesters burnt down the Parliament buildings in Montreal, the government ordered the police forces not to open fire on the crowds.) It was, as author and ICC co-founder John Ralston Saul has noted, an “astonishingly atypical” beginning for modern democracy in Canada, given the political discord in Europe and the United States at the time. Inclusion, restraint, debate, representation, egalitarianism — the precepts of good governance as we understand it today, forged by an unlikely heroic duo of Francophone Catholic and Anglophone Protestant.
“The first law passed by The Great Ministry created a Canadian immigration policy designed to protect immigrants. This is the foundation of our refugee, immigration and citizenship policies today,” says John Ralston Saul, who wrote a biography on the two leaders. “The example of LaFontaine and Baldwin is that democracy in Canada only works if we are willing to leap forward with important ideas and policies that strengthen egalitarianism and the public good.”
In 2000, John Ralston Saul founded the LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture, an annual lecture given by a prominent public intellectual. The lecture honours the legacy of LaFontaine and Baldwin, gathering Canadians for debate and dialogue in the spirit of the public good. Past speakers have included George Erasmus, Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, His Highness the Aga Khan, Naomi Klein, Naheed Nenshi, and Robert Lepage, Michael Sandel, and Sue Gardner.
Visit 6 Degrees for more information about past LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture series.
