Fringe Voices from the Community
Addressing Professor Ryan's Defense of Ethnorama News
The following is the second of three essays reviewing and responding to three articles published in the November issue of Ethnorama News Winnipeg; this essay responds to the article "The Deplorable State of the Federal New Democratic Party" by Professor John Ryan, which appears on pages 5 and 11 of the issue.1
PREFACE - AN ADMISSION
Over the course of writing this essay series, I must admit I have experienced a fair degree of emotional vacillation, my will to endeavor variously moving from high to low and back again. At times, I felt empowered, inspired, pushed by the force of deeply-held beliefs to challenge what I see as mistruths and myopia; at other times I felt drained, with a creeping sense of the Sisyphean futility to challenging an entire industry of lies; and, sometimes, if only for a split second, my mind would slip into a spell wherein the lies and the distortions would saturate my reality - the space where the propagandist's seeds sprout.
Any work where you must subject yourself to negative, confusing, and contradictory imagery and ideas runs the risk of wearing down one's resolve; the high rates of depression and burnout among content moderators, those tasked with sifting through the detritus of online ignorance and hate, speaks to this cost. The shape of this cost is generally specific to the character of the content in question: constantly looking at vulgar and violent imagery will haunt, but it will not push one to question their reality; constantly looking at manipulative imagery, however, can push one towards a form of disillusionment. The more precisely and subtly this manipulative content is constructed, the greater is its efficacy in this regard.
In this sense, it can be relieving to have one's own view of reality fortified by bald-faced, absurd expressions of manipulative content, its base vulgarity so obvious that it almost appears to be satire. So, after working to rebut Heller's work point-by-point and thus having to wade through many subtle forms of propaganda, it was almost cathartic to read Professor John Ryan's piece titled "The Deplorable State of Affairs in Canada's Federal New Democratic Party." In many ways, this dissembling, shameless mess of an 'article' is the archetypal example of everything that is wrong with Ethnorama News, both in content and appearance - truly, it is the pièce de résistance of the November issue.2
THE ARTICLE
Before discussing the matter at hand - namely, the NDP's decision to withdraw support for Ethnorama News - Professor Ryan begins by enumerating some of his critical bona fides with respect to the party. He cites a number of articles he has written over the course of the last several years in which he criticizes the NDP's "reactionary" foreign policy positions on Venezuela, the White Helmets of Syria, and the Maidan - all sacrosanct subjects amongst the fringe left.
Ryan then pins the cause of the NDP's electoral failure in 2015 on its "abandon[ment] of basic social democratic principles," citing the Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom's appraisal of the party as lacking a "raison d'etre." While I am sure one could make a reasoned argument in this regard, as I'm sure Walkom did, in this context Professor Ryan has chosen to conflate the rejection of fringe foreign policy positions with "veer[ing] to the centre-right." Rejecting morally-bankrupt and reactionary autocrats like Assad, Putin and Maduro doesn't constitute a rejection of social-democratic principles, it is its very embodiment. This act conflating fringe political positions with mainstream ideological constructs is, in fact, the core problem with this type of content being supported by sitting NDP MPs and MLAs, as it allows for the laundering of political extremism into the public discourse.
Next, Ryan discusses the NDP's divestment from Ethnorama, stating that Blaikie and Gazan had both informed Ethnorama that they had been "instructed by the Ottawa NDP" to remove their advertisements. The verb "instructed" here is key - what Ryan is implying is that these weren't principled decisions made by the Members themselves, but were simply the execution of orders issued from above. This framing of the issue as produced by pressure from above - while potentially accurate - contradicts the official statement provided to me by the party on behalf of the members, which states the societal harm caused by disinformation as the impetus for the members' and party's collective decision. However, Ryan's purpose here isn't to frame Blaikie and Gazan as dishonest, per se, but to establish a conspiratorial narrative of top-down and outside control.
Ryan repeats a claim made in Ethnorama's editorial that Gazan made a false claim about pressure from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress; I respond to this claim in my previous essays discussing the editorial "Free Speech for Peace." This apparent confusion about UCC involvement stimulated an interesting series of suppositions out of Ryan:
"Leah Gazan now apparently says that the Ukrainian Canadian Congress wasn’t involved in this matter. If that’s the case, who was it that was instrumental in getting these two MPs to withdraw their advertisements from Ethnorama? Was it pro-NATO federal NDP members? If so, based in Ottawa, how did they discover my article in Ethnorama?"
This seems to be a running theme of the November Issue - inorganic, top-down pressure from afar is responsible for the series of events that resulted in the NDP's divestment. The inability for either Ryan or the Ethnorama News editorial board to consider the potential that local, grass-roots pressure and principles formed the basis for the NDP’s decision speaks to both the false sense of moral certitude and the paranoid grandiosity that seem to define the publication - and the conspiracy theorist in general.3
it seems that anything but unconditional support for Ethnorama News - in the form of advertising dollars - is considered 'censorship.' No consideration is made for the fact that the NDP is responsible to its donors, its members, and the public at large for how those funds are used, and thus the party has an implicit fiduciary duty to divest from organizations that actively undermine the party's stated principles.
RYAN AND THE UNZ REVIEW
In order to buttress the credibility of his earlier article at the center of this issue, Ryan states the following:
"I would like to note that my article had been originally published by Global Research on April 27, then reposted the same day by The Unz Review, and later reposted in two parts in August and September by Ethnorama. In the Unz Review there were 149 comments devoted to my article, with very few who added more to what I had to say."
The website that Ryan is invoking as a reliable platform for critical discourse, the Unz Review, is an even more fringe site than Global Research. The ADL and the SPLC both list it as a platform for white supremacism, Holocaust denial and other extremist ideologies - but don’t take their word for it, go to the site yourself and see. You'll find the work of their "columnist" Andrew Anglin listed second only to editor-in-chief Ron Unz himself. For those who don't know, Andrew Anglin is the editor of the site "The Daily Stormer," named after the famous Nazi-era propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer. The Unz Review refers to Anglin as "the world's most-censored writer," and, in keeping with its state goal of platforming "a collection of interesting, important, and controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American mainstream media," it only follows that they would publish such illustrious titles as "Elon Vows to Promote 'Citizen Journalism' to Destroy Lying Jew Media," "Jews Have an Absolute Power to Prevent Anyone from Doing Business," and "Jewlash: Following Ye Interview, House N***** Noreaga Sucks Jew Cock Live on Video." These three works are among over a dozen written by Anglin and published in The Unz Review over only the last month.4
The idea that Professor Ryan would cite his contributions to a white-supremacist hate site among his accomplishments speak to his absolute lack of credibility. In trying to comprehend why he even brought this point up, I concluded Professor Ryan is either an extremist, or simply extremely stupid - likely some combination of both. This passage, above all, demonstrates what I meant earlier about the article being so absurd that it appears to be satire of itself. It's also worth noting that Ryan proclaims his support of Russia's supposed 'denazification' campaign while simultaneously publishing content alongside actual Nazis.
Beyond citing his positive reception in the Unz Review, Ryan reassures the reader that the "facts" in his work are "fully and properly documented" - an interesting statement given that his article provided no evidence to back his assertions, and most of his claims are easily debunkable. Ryan then asserts that the criticism it has received is due to the fact that it "challenged the view of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress." This last statement seems intentionally misleading, as he already demonstrated there is no evidence the Ukrainian Canadian Congress had any involvement in the affair only three paragraphs earlier.
SIMPLY REPUBLISHING
"The federal NDP did not cite any specific objections to my article, except for where I had it published. For some bizarre reason they wanted to punish Ethnorama for simply re-publishing my article."
This idea, that a publication has no responsibility for the content that it publishes, is a reoccurring theme across the November issue. It's also logically inconsistent, given the fact that the very same publication, and the very same article, criticize the mainstream media for the content that they publish - a clear double-standard.
The assertion that Ethnorama was punished for "simply re-publishing" his article ties in to the claim made by Ethnorama News in their own editorial that "one should not conflate the position of Ethnorama with the positions of articles it prints." The claim that Ethnorama News prints "alternative" views is itself belied by the fact that all of the articles and contributors represent the same political perspective, and that Ethnorama's editors respond to criticism with accusations of censorship.
Further, the claim that Ethnorama News simply republished Ryan's work, and does not share his positions, might be believable if it weren't for the content in the November issue. The fact that Ethnorama, in its editorial, asserts that Ryan's construction of events is accurate and reliable is an admission of their agreement with the position of the article. It seems strange that they are criticizing other's for jumping to a conclusion that they simultaneously verify as accurate - how dare you come to the correct conclusion!
But the relationship between Ryan and Ethnorama certainly goes beyond ideological likeness, or mere syndication. Based on the fact that Ethnorama actually got Ryan to write a piece specifically responding to this situation implies a degree of personal familiarity. Beyond that, Ryan mentions in his own piece claims made in the Ethnorama editorial that appears in the same issue - indicating that Ryan was given access to Ethnorama News content before it was published. Such a degree of coordination makes the claim that Ethnorama “simply re-publishes” his work seem unlikely. It also indicates a degree of editorial oversight and back-and-forth that would presumably enable Ethnorama News to vet the content of the work they publish. One can only assume that the editors of Ethnorama News read Ryan's new piece before publishing it and concluded that citing The Unz Review as a credible source wasn't worthy of their editorial input, and was fit to platform - a highly-concerning fact in itself.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The editorial team at Ethnorama News seems to want to have it two ways - they want to be able to print and platform any outrageous claim they like, but without any responsibility for it. They want us to believe that they 'simply republish' the work of John Ryan, and do not share his positions, when it is clear that they are closely associated and do, in fact, share his positions. And, when confronted by the fact that a mainstream political party doesn't want to be associated with - or fund - Kremlin apologism and genocide denial, Ethnorama and Ryan respond by accusing the NDP of censorship, and of capitulating to pressure from some nefarious conspiracy of pro-NATO MPs and Ukrainian communal organizations.
All of this, while disturbing, would be somewhat unnoteworthy if it weren't for that fact that Ethnorama News has had the support of federal, provincial and local politicians going back several years. Its no wonder - the newsmagazine has in the past generally featured pretty reasonable content, and has given a platform to voices in Winnipeg's newcomer community. But its gradual shift towards promoting disinformation - and its intense entrenchment into this position in the face of criticism - has destroyed its credibility.
This essay was actually intended to be released as the third of the series so as to mirror their order to that of their subjects within the November issue of Ethnorama News. However, I chose to rearrange the order of publishing for a number of reasons.
Some time elapsed between when I first wrote the essay series and when I finalized the editorial process for them, especially this article and the article addressing Henry Heller's piece in Ethnorama News. On further assessment, I realized that this piece spoke more significantly to the heart of the matter - namely, the various journalistic and editorial breaches being made by Ethnorama News. This fact is both a product of Ryan's piece's unique offensiveness, as well as how it reflects on the relationship between Ryan and the editorial team.
While the piece by Henry Heller regurgitates many of the same arguments vis-à-vis the Ukraine war, as well as adding further conspiratorial embellishments, my analysis of his work is more point-by-point refutation of his various claims - many being related to the subject of the war itself. For all these reasons I felt that it made more sense to release Ryan's article by the end of November and bring attention to some of the concerns that arise from it, and leave the Heller article to be released later.
By content, I mean that the nonsensical claims made in Ryan's piece spoke to the general quality of the content found in Ethnorama News; by appearance, I mean that - for reasons I explain in the piece - the very appearance of this article in the November issue speaks to the poor judgement and lack of responsibility that defines Ethnorama's editorial policies. These constitute two interrelated but distinct problems, wherein the latter is causative of the former and has broader implications than simply publishing poor information.
Indeed, this construction is the kernel of the archetypal conspiracy theory: powerful forces are manipulating events from afar in the service of their evil intentions, and they are suppressing “free-thinking” heroes - such as the conspiracy theorist - to that end. The black-and-white moral absolutism, the dogmatic rejection of other ways of thinking, the dehumanization of the perceived threat as an “evil other,” and the common characterization of that threat as “alien” or “external” in origin, all contribute to the xenophobic and authoritarian turn that conspiratorial movements invariably take.
As of the writing of this essay, on or before November 15, 2022.