Terry Glavin 格立文

Author, journalist. National Post columnist. Macleans magazine refugee. Formally sanctioned by Moscow. A human wrote this.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

Okay, that's it. I'm pinning this. I'm being drawn ever closer to the proposition that a majority of X's 611 million (alleged) users are in fact AI masquerades, fake-name trolls and Putinbots.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

@AaronPaulBMC @LeighCl68689106 https://t.co/N6odrxAkg2

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

I co-authored a book with the former students of the residential school where Aaron's grandmother was abused. I'd be prepared to go to jail over this too.

[Aaron Pete @Aaronpete_]

I'm prepared to go to jail over this.

My grandmother Rita Pete went to St. Mary's Indian Residential School. She experienced terrible abuse. As a consequence, she struggled with alcohol use most of her life.

My mother was born with FASD as a consequence of her using alcohol to cope with her trauma.

I am Chief of my community Chawathil First Nation. I am working to address the longstanding impacts of these past policies through renovating homes, building new homes, creating childcare, and growing businesses through economic development.

I have interviewed people who went to Indian Residential Schools. I have interviewed people who believe Indian Residential Schools were awful, horrible schools, meant to remove the Indian from the child.

I've also interviewed people who believe they were well intended, generous investments by Canadian taxpayers meant to assimilate a society and had shortcomings.

Like with many things, the history is dark, complicated, and with any policy that existed for a long time, across a whole country - there were different experiences.

No one story tells us everything. No report shares the full experience of the individuals who went. No commentator today can disprove someone's lived experience with statistics.

The path forward is not to criminalize speech, questions, or debate.

The path forward is empathy for past attendees.
The path forward is truth based on facts.
The path forward is real conversations.
The path forward is to lean into complexity.

If the government criminalizes this, then I will be a criminal for having these conversations.

If I am a criminal by the laws definition, then I am committed to going to jail over this.

[Lana Payne 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 @Lanampayne]

We will not stand for the rights of workers to fair and free collective bargaining including the right to strike to be eroded, weakened or attacked.

Unifor has a proud history of collective bargaining and groundbreaking wins for workers.

We are not going back.

[中国人权-Human Rights in China @hrichina]

Why the Bloodshed in Tiananmen Square Must Be Remembered

On the 37th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre

Beijing, June 4, 1989.

When tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, when gunfire tore through the dawn, and when students and ordinary citizens seeking freedom and democracy fell on the streets of Beijing, the world witnessed one of the defining tragedies of the late twentieth century.

Thirty-seven years later, many still ask a difficult question:

Did the Tiananmen Democracy Movement fail?

If measured solely by developments within China, the answer may appear to be yes. The democratic aspirations of 1989 were crushed. Political reform was halted. The truth of what happened has been systematically censored, and generations of Chinese citizens have grown up knowing little or nothing about the events of June Fourth.

Yet history is rarely confined by national borders.

Viewed from a broader historical perspective, the significance of Tiananmen extends far beyond China itself.

The events of June 1989 exposed to the world the lengths to which an authoritarian communist regime was willing to go when confronted by peaceful demands for freedom and political participation. They also revealed a universal truth: no government, regardless of the size of its army or the sophistication of its propaganda, can indefinitely escape a crisis of legitimacy once it loses the trust of its people.

Only months after the bloodshed in Beijing, the communist world began to unravel.

In June 1989, Poland’s Solidarity movement achieved a historic electoral victory. Hungary opened the door to democratic transition. On November 9, the Berlin Wall fell. The Velvet Revolution transformed Czechoslovakia. Romania’s communist dictatorship collapsed. By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had ceased to exist.

Within just two years, a political system that had dominated half of Europe disappeared.

The democratic revolutions of Eastern Europe were, of course, the result of many factors: economic stagnation, reform movements, national aspirations, and the internal crisis of the Soviet Union. Yet many historians have noted that Tiananmen also left a profound mark on this historical moment.

Images of the crackdown, broadcast by international media outlets such as BBC and CNN, reached audiences around the globe. People in Eastern Europe witnessed both the courage of Chinese students demanding freedom and the brutality of a regime willing to deploy tanks and live ammunition against peaceful demonstrators.

For democratic activists across Eastern Europe, the students of Beijing became symbols of moral courage. The image of the “Tank Man” emerged as one of the most powerful symbols of resistance to tyranny in modern history.

For communist leaders and military commanders, Tiananmen served as a warning.

Many recognized that ordering troops to fire upon their own citizens would not only deepen political crises and invite international condemnation, but would also leave an indelible stain on history.

As democratic movements spread through Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, and other cities, most governments ultimately chose not to follow the path taken in Beijing.

In East Germany, protesters carried banners declaring, “No Deng Xiaoping-style repression.” Many dissidents later recalled that the courage shown by Chinese students strengthened their own determination to continue the struggle for freedom.

For this reason, Tiananmen should be understood not only as a Chinese tragedy but also as part of the broader global movement that helped bring the Cold War to an end.

The young men and women who died in Beijing could never have known the full impact of their sacrifice.

They did not live to see the Berlin Wall fall.

They did not live to witness free elections return to Eastern Europe.

They did not live to see the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nor did they live to see hundreds of millions of people gain political freedoms that had once seemed impossible.
Continued…)

[Holly Doan @hollyanndoan]

.@SenateCA by 41 to 32 vote kills proposal to criminalize Indian Residential School “denialism.”
“Senators may have already noticed the online backlash to the amendment has begun.”
— Senator @pierremmoreau
https://t.co/fKVVNQoKHD
@Dawn_Moncton @SenatorWanda @SeanFraserMP @JusticeCanadaEN #cdnpoli

[Jonathan Kay @jonkay]

oh yeah totally. we'd all be living in Reconciliation Utopia now if it hadn't been for @TerryGlavin @CarsonJerema and their nefarious @nationalpost compatriots

[Ruchi Wali 🇨🇦 @WaliRuchi]

Veteran Journalist @TerryGlavin speaking about his encounter with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, in Punjab, India.

More to come.
Please like, share & subscribe.
@Safety_Canada @csiscanada @rcmpgrcpolice

https://t.co/gTqQsMR4tB

[Hong Kong Watch @hk_watch]

On the eve of the 37th anniversary of the #TiananmenSquareMassacre, Hong Kong Watch stands in solidarity with pro-democracy activists in #HongKong and around the world in commemorating #JuneFourth.

As our Chair @benedictrogers says, we must ensure that the truth prevails, and that the courage and sacrifice of those who lost their lives in pursuit of democracy are never forgotten.

https://t.co/0rRZ02y9HO

[cbcwatcher @cbcwatcher]

After fueling church burnings and national outrage with overhyped, unverified “mass graves” claims at Kamloops (still unconfirmed by excavation years later), CBC has a new target: Reverend Norman McPhee

While accepting an honorary degree from Cape Breton University, the priest praised a residential-style girls’ school (Fatima House) he helped found in Honduras decades ago. He noted the children there are happy, joyful, and grateful, and that while Canadian residential schools “don’t get good press,” this one does good work and is well-regarded locally

CBC framed his comments as shocking and insensitive, airing upset reactions from Indigenous audience members and highlighting apologies from McPhee, the university, and the diocese

CBC — still facing backlash for its role in the 2021 moral panic that led to over 100 church arsons/vandalisms — should reflect on its own past reporting before policing “wrongspeak” on residential schools.

CBC never learns. CBC should be hanging its head in shame over its previous false reporting, instead it funded a fake satire show to target the people that exposed its own manufactured moral panic! @brodiefenlon

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

If you want to see what happens when the Frankfurt School gets a government badge, a pension, and a corner office in Ottawa, look at Bill C-9.

This is not just another “hate speech” bill. It is a sign of a much bigger shift.

The old political arguments were about wages, factories, class, ownership, and the economy. That was the old Marxist world. Today’s politics is about language, symbols, identity, emotion, culture, and who gets to decide what “harm” means.

Parliament has stopped arguing about who owns the factory.

Now it wants to control the dictionary.

Bill C-9 reads like a critical theory seminar that escaped campus, found a suit, and got hired by the Department of Justice.

Under the older liberal model, the law punished actions. Assault someone? Crime. Vandalize property? Crime. Block access to a building? Crime. The state dealt with what you actually did.

But C-9 moves the centre of gravity from action to meaning.

What did your words mean?

What did your symbol represent?

What was your motive?

What cultural message did your expression create?

That is not law as a neutral referee. That is law as a cultural therapist with police powers.

The most revealing part is the proposed removal of the long-standing “good faith” religious defence for hate propaganda. That defence existed for a reason. It protected freedom of conscience. It recognized that in a free country, people may express religious beliefs that others find offensive, outdated, or wrong, as long as they are not wilfully promoting hatred or violence.

That was not a loophole.

It was a guardrail.

But to the modern ideological mind, an ancient religious text is not treated as a source of conscience. It is treated as an artifact of power. A legal protection for religious speech is no longer seen as freedom. It is seen as oppression wearing a church hat.

So the guardrail has to go.

And what does government offer instead?

Trust us.

Trust that prosecutors will be reasonable. Trust that judges will interpret the law narrowly. Trust that ordinary Canadians will not get dragged through the process for saying something unpopular, traditional, religious, or politically unfashionable.

Sorry, but that is not how liberty works.

Rights are not protected by hoping the state behaves itself. Rights are protected by limiting what the state is allowed to do in the first place.

That is what makes the Senate debate so revealing. The Senate was supposed to be sober second thought. The old establishment airbag. The place where bad laws were supposed to slow down before hitting the public at full speed.

But now even the Senate is wrestling with a bill built from an intellectual toolkit designed to dismantle the very traditions the Senate was created to preserve.

Bill C-9 does not build social cohesion. It does not repair trust. It does not ask why people are angry, alienated, or radicalized in the first place.

It does what modern bureaucratic progressivism always does.

It manages symptoms by expanding state power.

It turns culture into a compliance file. It treats offensive expression less like a social problem to be answered with argument, courage, and moral confidence, and more like a hazardous substance to be regulated by experts.

The Frankfurt School wrote in dense, foggy jargon to expose hidden systems of power.

The joke is on everyone.

The modern state did not reject those tools. It absorbed them, stripped out the revolutionary romance, bolted them onto the Criminal Code, and called it public safety.

Bill C-9 is what happens when cultural theory becomes administrative power.

It is what happens when the state stops protecting public order and starts managing public meaning.

And that should worry anyone who still thinks freedom means more than government-approved speech.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

Seconded.

[Holly Doan @hollyanndoan]

Imagine if there was a government accountability news website that monitored all those parliamentary committees and unannounced amendments so that other media could then write opinion pieces?

Get the story first from Blacklock’s Reporter: https://t.co/Y4eev8rZu1

@SenateCA @CdnHeritage #C9

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

@Bratt_world @GG37374104 Kamloops is just a tiny part of the story. The match that lit Trudeau’s fuse.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

I am so done with these people. The harm they've done to genuine abuse victims, to my country, to reconciliation, is incalculable. All to protect themselves from accountability for the lies they've been telling. https://t.co/8sLvdtPEEV

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

@GraemeMenzies @CoryBMorgan Yes.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

What a country. A Senate committee votes to embed a conspiracy theory in an already broken and stupid hate crimes bill. It's often said that 'First they come for the Saturday people, then they come for the Sunday people." In Canada it was the other way round.

[Becca Wertman-Traub @becca_w13]

VERY important read by @TerryGlavin today in @nationalpost:

“By equating residential schools with the death camps of the Shoah, advocates of criminalizing residential schools denialism trivialize the Holocaust, a classic sign of antisemitism.”

https://t.co/llzfhw7G4M

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

@FakeSurrey @MelissaMbarki Facts won't stop anyone who doesn't think facts are real.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

@nspector4 Well, to be fair to that reporter, Auld Red Socks was also tricked into allowing the Chinese Communist Party to vet the appointment of Catholic bishops in China, so. . .

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

@NGMcLaughlin Thanks back, Neil. Also I agree with your point 100 percent.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

Rachel Gilmore is an attention-seeking crank. It's not just about the misreported "mass grave" claim. In any case, that error "made in 6.5% of articles five years ago" was what caused Justin Trudeau to lower the flags on all federal buildings for more than 5 months.

[Rachel Gilmore @atRachelGilmore]

Now the Globe guy who first shared this is sharing posts from Michelle Rempel and Jason Kenney shouting out TERRY GLAVIN for his “courage” in doing this bullshit in 2022.

Shame on you, @PatrickBrethour. I think the public is owed further explanation here.

[Terry Glavin 格立文 @TerryGlavin]

I shouldn't be giving this attention-seeking crank the attention she seeks so I won't refute the several massive errors in this single tweet of hers, but no, I've never focussed on that one small (!) error for any purpose, but rather on the cascade of incitements and errors that began with the false reports of a mass grave at Kamloops.
I just wish people would stop weaponizing the pain from the residential school era to promote QAnon theories comparing residential schools to Auschwitz and Treblinka.

[Rachel Gilmore @atRachelGilmore]

Yes, the conversation sparked by the discovery of possible unmarked graves on residential school sites prompted a national reckoning that was long overdue.

Even if there were errors in 6.5% of articles five years ago, we know children died in these schools. Bone fragments have been found. At least 4,000 children died at these schools, which would be unacceptable if it were any other group. Extensive, painful eyewitness testimony validates the truth of these horrors.

The fact that you focus on one small error in reporting as a means of invalidating an entirely necessary broader national conversation is evidence that there's only one "attention-seeking crank" here, and it isn't me.

[Melissa Mbarki @MelissaMbarki]

Define denialism because I questioned how the media told our stories.

The residential school in my community was one of the last to close in 97. I saw the impact this school did to my community, family and friends. We have a right to tell our stories that aren't exaggerated by the media and the current government.

Does this mean that residential schools will now go to jail for questioning the msm narrative?!