Federal Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney is either feigning outrage to score political points or he is a zealot who can鈥檛 take a joke. Either way, he should put his Twitter account back in its holster.
Kenney took to Twitter on Thursday to bluster at Green party Leader Elizabeth May after May tweeted about plans for a monument to the victims of communism. She noted that there were no plans for a monument to the victims of capitalism.
As May, the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, said later, she was satirizing what could become the never-ending building of monuments to victims of the world鈥檚 many 鈥渋sms.鈥�
Kenney, however, went into full apoplexy mode and said that 100 million people have been murdered by communist regimes in the last hundred years.
鈥淔or Elizabeth May to make light of that as some sort of cute political joke is grossly irresponsible,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t dishonours the memory of those people and the many millions of Canadians who fled communist regimes to enjoy Canadian freedom.鈥�
May made a legitimate point. It鈥檚 hard to find an 鈥渋sm鈥� that isn鈥檛 stained with blood. We could easily erect monuments to those killed by Catholicism, Protestantism, feudalism, racism, imperialism and any number of others, including capitalism.
How do we decide whose victims are worthy of memorials? Who will judge whether your ism is more heinous than my ism? In the end it will be political, just as the communism memorial is political.
May had every right to question the monument campaign, and Kenney knows it.
