Quebec and the Future of Populism

A new fifth column

Modern political systems exhibit much adaptability in absorbing and neutralizing populist resistance. Populist movements, often seen as critiques of progressivism and globalization, are increasingly co-opted to stabilize existing frameworks. Quebec serves as a prime example, transitioning from a Catholic, blood-and-soil nationalism to a secular civic nationalism centered on language and identity after the Quiet Revolution. François Legault’s government exemplifies a modern populist strategy, appealing to nationalist sentiments through policies like secularism, immigration caps, and language preservation, while avoiding outright independence. His leadership highlights how nationalism, when framed around civic values, aligns with liberal goals and strengthens systemic stability. Similar trends are seen in Ireland, Hungary, and elsewhere, where nationalist rhetoric has been tamed or co-opted by dominant liberal systems, showcasing their flexibility.

This co-optation strategy ensures that populism, while appearing to challenge the status quo, often reinforces it by moderating its demands in exchange for economic stability or political success. Civic nationalism, more adaptable than ethno-nationalism, allows states to address local identity concerns without disrupting liberal frameworks. Populist movements risk becoming tools of the systems they critique, reinforcing the dominance of global managerialism. The global populist wave, exemplified by Meloni and Legault, demonstrates the precarious balance between resistance and systemic integration, raising doubts about whether populism can achieve lasting change or simply serve as a pressure valve for liberal hegemonies. Ultimately, the adaptability of these systems ensures their long-term resilience, co-opting nationalist energy while maintaining control.

Reactionaries and those of the paleo tendency are going to be proven right regarding the issue of moderation and what is becoming a modern-day Third Positionism. If the gamble of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is feasible and something that the elites can swallow it as long as they can wrap their progressivist managerialism in what they themselves lambast as the fasces, then one would not need look further to see the more developed mirror image of this process right across the Atlantic, where the regime has managed to dispense with whatever vestige of the cross or fasces to reinvent the subversion of civic nationalism once again. The example of Quebec holds particular interest because it shows how this phenomenon can easily manifest in a society that is at least publically committed to an ideal of civic nationalism and secularism rather than something that is rooted in blood-and-soil nationalism.

The Canadian province of Quebec has long been notorious for its stubborn local nationalism, mainly focused on the French language, and was once a Catholic bastion deep in the heart of Protestant North America (check out Maurice Duplessis and the Union Nationale, the closest that anyone north of the Rio Grande has gotten to implementing integralism). After the leftist Quiet Revolution, this nationalism has shifted towards an almost militant left-wing secularist nationalism, basically forcing Canada to adopt national bilingualism and all sorts of constitutional concessions.

The issue of Quebecois independence also started to rear its head at this time, with the succeeding newly-awakened nationalist Quebec governments raising the issue to the forefront amidst fears that the federal government was effectively treating Quebec not as a nation within Canada but just as a typical province, while blocking its measures to maintain its unique identity. While having experienced two failed referendums, the idea of Quebec as a nation has become rather embedded within the political culture of its society, always lurking behind every election or governmental legislation.

Recently, the ‘right-wing’ government of Francois Legault has been re-elected with a larger majority government, giving him four more years of complete rule over the province. Many commentators describe his government as having achieved the so-called ‘sweet spot’ of Quebec politics, his Coalition Avenir Quebec gaining the support of Quebec nationalists and French-speakers who might not be as adamant about independence, his government not making any push in such a direction, while attracting other voters with a fresh and business-friendly approach removed from his conventional rivals, the Quebec Liberal Party and the pro-separatist Parti Quebecois. Gaining power shortly before the pandemic, he's been a staunch vax shill, nearly managing to implement a tax on the unvaxxed, and used his majority to mandate that gas-powered vehicles were to be outlawed from sale in Quebec by 2035. On secularism, his government had passed a bill outlawing the public officials from wearing religious garb, from the police down to teachers. In Canada’s political climate, public opposition to this came not from the religious right, who did nonetheless do so, but from the multicultural left, who considered it an attack against non-Christian/secularist immigrants who may wish to be employed by the state, mainly rallying around Muslim women and the hijab (riding roughly the tail end of the counterjihad) and also Sikhs and the turban.

More interestingly, Legault’s party had presented a rather hard line on immigration, going hand in hand with a push to strengthen the usage of French within Quebec. His bill 96 had been controversial for greatly reducing provincial government support for English speakers in lieu of intensifying efforts to maintain and increase the usage of French in both public and private settings. Alongside this, his government remains adamant with introducing and maintaining a hard cap on the number of immigrants being allowed into the province, given its special control over matters of immigration, while also administering a ‘values test’ meant to screen out migrants for entry (the test is rather very basic and easy, but it might cause problems for the less educated) and prioritizing those with backgrounds in French (meaning that French speakers in the Caribbean or Francophone Christian Africa have a leg up of sorts alongside Francophone Europeans). Legault's language is rather instructive, explicitly stating that through his policies, he wanted to avoid a Louisiana-style situation, where French was eroded over time after incorporation into the US, and has given him a following of sorts from some populists abroad with similar concerns while also strengthening himself as the only viable candidate for Quebec nationalists and those friendly to separation.

It's easy to see here how cooptation could function, as even his main critics have not dared to invoke the memory of Hitler against him, despite the ease of which it could be applied towards his policies. Instead, the rather milder appeal to common Canadian liberal values has been the main line of attack, with Legault hinging his defense on secularism instead as a countervalue to the multicultural system being promoted in the rest of the country. Racist, yes, but never Nazi or Hitlerian, as contended with other similar figures, while also invoking a similar native reaction from the locals who would otherwise be wary of the infringements of Ottawa. With the anchor of Catholicism having been swept away in the Quiet Revolution, nationalism rooted in the land and the language becomes the only perceivable avenue of resistance, leaving itself wide open to a recapitulation to the system even while railing against it. In other parts of the world, a similar strategy is rather viable to adopt, toeing a thin line between invoking liberal values in defense of nationalism in contrast with invoking nationalism in defense of liberal values (such as in the ideal of a proposition nation). You may apply strict immigration caps and even language requirements, but only if you can make sure that the immigrants are not loyalists of their faith or will attempt to carve out exceptions for their own communities or politically incorrect practices. You may appeal to the sense of nationhood among your countrymen, but only if it serves to advance the agenda of ‘communitarianism’ and being a good global citizen at the end of the day. Indeed, it may even be possible for the system to reassert itself in this manner if the framework of multiculturalism becomes too insecure and unstable to maintain.

The fact that Meloni is practically trying a similar gamble only shows how flexible the system can be in order to maintain power, and in the same vein, expect for a detente on social issues while economic and foreign influence continues to expand through the Euro and other EU institutions. The Visegrad states and the intense pressure being faced by Viktor Orban’s Hungary goes to show how the line is easily drawn for underdogs hoping to make it big. Ireland, having lost the vital tensions with Britain that so animated its nationalist movement, has fallen easy prey to Westernized hegemony, shedding its Catholic roots as if they never existed and eagerly embracing every nation-killing mindset adopted by its neighbors. Such prospect is rather intriguing to ponder on, as to whether or not a prospective independent Quebec would go down the same path. For other nations, such a similar bargain of tamed nationalism in exchange for the promise of prosperity remains very much alluring, even in the midst of a global economic downturn mainly exacerbated by those same dominant Western nations that shows no sign of stopping any time soon.

The continuing tensions between Quebec the rest of Canada elicit this sense of identity amidst the changes that in all other cases it has followed and even been a pioneer of, whether in secularism, declining fertility, increased managerialism and social engineering, etc. In the same vain, civic nationalists and secularists can easily seize on such a model of political messaging, especially if directed against groups that can be easily made as enemies of the awaited national secular state, and whose capacity to resist is much degraded. Just as Legault and Meloni had managed to gain victory by climbing over the remains of his spent and weakened rivals, so too can the hegemon achieve victory simply by latching on to whatever resistance gains popularity to cede some ground and thereby gaining a chokehold everywhere else through its invisible hand. The future of populism thus becomes far more fraught with danger and uncertainty.

Read Hoppe on Middle American populist pretenses