The White Poppy Quislings

As my American readers may be aware, in Canada we wear a red poppy on our lapel during the week leading up to Remembrance Day (you guys call it Veteran’s Day).  The tradition traces back to Maj John McRae, who penned the following poem in 1915, shortly before losing his life in the First World War.

Remembrance Day isn’t a topic I’ve addressed before because, quite frankly, there’s nothing for me to say; the words have been written, the speeches recorded, and it is our duty as patriots to intone them about the cenotaph on the 11th of November – not to re-invent them.

However, this year, a group of students at the University of Ottawa have begun a campaign for White Poppies, as described in this “Maclean’s on Campus” article written by associate English professor and anti-Canadian quisling Todd Pettigrew:

Students at the University of Ottawa came under fire this week for supporting the white poppy campaign, a drive to get people to wear a white poppy rather than the traditional red one, on the grounds that the red poppy can be seen as a tacit support of war itself. Since white is traditionally associated with peace, the white poppy is meant to meant to support remembrance but with an emphasis on peace rather than war itself.

Too bad. The red poppy does glorify war. And it has been so successful in doing so that it seems as though its supporters don’t even realize they are doing it. Celyn Dufay, the Ottawa student at the centre of this imbroglio is quite right in explaining, simply enough, “we want to work for peace.”

Pettigrew’s article speaks of an absolute ignorance of history.  The First World War was one of the greatest calamities to ever befall the European race.  A failure of institutions, of tactics, of societal change – an inevitable failure which nobody could have forseen, a failure which could only be learned from, not predicted.  It was a tragedy of epic proportions, a war waged by machines where men became ammunition, to be torn apart and destroyed in the frozen hell of No Man’s Land.

Pettigrew, as an associate English professor, should know this; it had a profound effect on our culture, which was reflected in many excellent works (All Quiet on the Western Front, for instance).  For some reason I suspect that his expertise is restricted to modern garbage like In the Skin of a Lion, and other such Globe and Mail favourites.

Time for some actual history: while it might be utterly shocking to a mind steeped in pop-culture rebellion and CBC talking points, the historical fact of the matter is that there were pacifists such as himself back then, refusing to serve, and denouncing those who did.  They were widely, and correctly, condemned as cowards and subversives – not to mention that it was their ideological fellow travellers who kicked things off with the plot against Duke Ferdinand in the first place.

The pacifists didn’t have a plan back then, and they don’t have a plan now, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to lecture their betters.

Again, the rhetoric of heroism is clear. Deceased soldiers are not dead but “fallen.” No one went to war because of wartime propaganda that stoked racism or shamed them into it, but rather because of their “courage.” And no talk of the needless slaughter of millions of pawns in power struggles of empires. No, only talk of “sacrifice” as though the soldiers wanted to die. How can the Legion and its supporters look anyone in the eye and claim not to glorify war?

Perhaps there are times when war is necessary and that may require men and women who are willing to go to war. But even if there is, doing that which is necessary is not necessarily heroic. There are such things as necessary evils. The white-poppy students are suggesting war isn’t one of them. It’s quite within the bounds of civilized discourse for students to suggest that there is nothing heroic about signing up to kill, being trained to kill, and then going and killing. This is not to dishonour the memory of the dead, but to rethink it. In this view, the dead soldier is not a hero. He’s a victim.

What Pettigrew fails to realize is that the euphemism “fallen” is used, not to cover up the horrors (the men using the term were there to witness them first-hand), it’s to protect the fragile, womanly temperament of males like himself.  He thinks that these were nothing but the cynical struggles of empires, failing to realize that empires are people.  If an empire collapses, it’s people are going to suffer.

Glorifying war?  Of course it’s glorifying war, you contemptible craven!  War – by definition – is glorious because it’s absolute hell.  There is nothing more terrifying, and yet necessary for the survival of a nation, than a citizenry willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.  I ask you, Pettigrew, what do you think is more glorious than that?  Studying the stilted prose of post-modernist authors?  Doing pilates with your wife?  Hiding under your bed and phoning the cops when a group of thugs break into your home?

As for the spokesperson for the White Poppy movement, a student by the name of Celyn Dufay, he – she? – is beneath my contempt.  These students are a bunch of pencil-necked cowards, hiding behind a row of police, brainwashed by their professors, screaming about their rights and freedoms, while sucking up government and parental money to get worthless degrees, and spending their weekends in drunken debauchery.  Rather than trying to learn and develop workable solutions for making the future a better place, they pout, they whine, they refuse to participate, and they criticize the men of virtue who’ve worn Her Majesty’s uniform.

Don’t mistake this group of vile degenerates for a peace movement.  This is just another Marxist-built false-dichotomy: another distraction to sew discord in our nations, manipulative words to manufacture ignorance.  Dufay and Pettigrew might be useful idiots, or they might be actual subversives, but either way they’re the sort of slime who ought to be spit on in the streets.  Like Marxists everywhere, they seek to erode the Good – in this case martial valour, patriotism, courage, and our filial duty to know our roots.

They seek to drain us of all vitality, leaving us as a nation of tumble weeds, flitting about between hedonistic pleasures, with no direction, and no connection to our fellow citizens; cogs, then, friendless and atomized.  They are cultural vampires of social decline.

In the face of their abyss, shouting “Love!” is the most rebellious action you can perform.  I stand for virtue; I remember my past; I will defend my fellow citizens if called upon, and I have no interest in the foul-smelling white flowers in their garden of death.

The blood of patriots keeps my poppy ever red.