Phil Anders for theWedge.LIVE
The world watched yesterday as these young Antifa activists assaulted an elderly woman screaming as loudly as lungs would permit, “Nazi scum,” inches from her ears, and blocking her way into hearing a federal candidate.
The world did not side with the activists. The overwhelming dread at the video captured gives us hope that civility is not dead.
Most of us loved our grandmothers and have a propensity to handling our elderly with kindness.
The woman’s son, Don Henderson, who accompanied his mother showed unusual self-control. The story he wrote today in Hamilton News was flawless and shaming in its truth.
Before you read his story, watch the provocation below.
by Don Henderson
Apparently in the view of some I’m “Nazi Scum.” I just didn’t realize it.
As I and my retired and slow-moving mother made our way to the front doors at Mohawk College — the PPC event was going to be her first political event in almost 40 years since her ex-husband was a town councillor — a black-masked and rage-filled youth decided to scream as loudly as possible in her ear that she was a Nazi. Once inside, my mother complained of having trouble hearing in that ear which was particularly cruel since we were attending an event that required us to listen to ideas. I felt terrible because I wanted to treat my mother to an evening out while preparing to make an informed vote in our federal election.
On our way in, those same mask wearing youths decided they wanted to “school” me on how I was also a Nazi. The irony of this attempt to be educated by the uneducated outside an institute of education is not lost on me.
What these bullies did not realize is that I’ve already had an excellent teacher on the subject. My grandfather.
And unlike these misguided youth, he actually went to Europe to kill Nazis. He served in England, Italy, France and Germany.
My fondest memories of my childhood were sitting on the carpet next to my grandfather’s recliner, wide-eyed as he would tell story after story of World War II. Yet, despite the horrors he endured, each story was laced with a life lesson well beyond the norms for his generation. I remember him explaining why racism doesn’t make sense since you can take the heart out of a black man and put it into a white man and it works just fine.
He did his best to speak in a positive way, but behind the stories he carried the weight of the sacrifices that war puts on a person. His brothers were captured and force-marched as prisoners of war. Tortured and starved until the end of the war, they came back to Canada as damaged souls, one of them sleeping under his bed out of fear and unable to have children.
This behaviour is rising. Our children, youths and students have been co-opted with propaganda, violence and fear. Those who stem these provocations know full well the fear centres in the brain are not fully developed until the mid twenties. Our youths are useful for their hidden agendas.
This temperate man and his mother are showing us a fine example of how to turn the other cheek. Response is futile in the heat of the moment–youths showing their power at the expense of the weak.
These kids seem to have no idea that the candidate is a populist–in theory far from a Nazi. But so what.
At the root this is the silencing of thought, opinion–kettling citizens into group-think by force. It is an attack on individualism. And the kids just don’t know they are participating in a future they will soon hate.
Division in its extreme representation is on display, here in placid Canada. We are not in Kansas anymore.
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