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The High Aryan Warrior Priest of Canada stirred.

“Jesus wasn’t a Jew,” he said, without blinking.

It’s a sunny, warm spring 1986. I’m a reporter for the Calgary Herald, now a Postmedia newspaper. Along with award-winning Herald photographer Larry MacDougal, I’m in the Caroline, Alberta kitchen of Terry Long, the then-recently-anointed leader of the neo-Nazi group called the Aryan Nations.

Larry and I have spent hours with Long, listening to him describe Jews as “the spawn of Satan,” non-whites as “mud people,” and Adolf Hitler as “Elijah the Prophet.” Seriously. With a straight face.

When the interview was done, and Long’s words were safely preserved in my tape recorder, I decided to challenge him.

“Mr. Long, Jesus was always Jewish and a rabbi,” I said to him, as Larry looked at me, wide-eyed. “And the Holocaust is a notorious historical fact.”

Long didn’t haul out one of his many firearms and shoot us, as Larry later told me he expected. Instead, Long almost seemed bemused by what I was saying.

He went into his family’s cluttered living room and returned with a “bible,” one published by the Aryan Nations. In it, he patiently explained, Jesus Christ was in no way Jewish. And the Holocaust did not happen, in any way, shape or form, he added.

“There’s proof,” he said. In other words, if historical facts don’t conform to your prejudices, then simply conjure up new proofs. Write your own bible, create your own history.

That’s what Terry Long did — and Jim Keegstra, and Ernst Zundel, and every other Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi leader I ever interviewed, too. They denied, dismissed and debated the Holocaust, to whitewash the crimes of Hitler and his regime.

And they created a Jesus Christ who wasn’t ever a Jew. Because the Messiah couldn’t be the “spawn of Satan,” then.

That’s what the experts blandly call historical revisionism. And it is underway in this country, right now. But not about Christ or the Holocaust.

It’s about what really happened inside those so-called residential schools. And what is buried in unmarked graves behind them.

Denying Indigenous children and babies are found in those graves — or, if they are in those graves, that they all died of natural causes. No crimes were committed, in other words.

That’s historical revisionism — in the current context, it’s denial of what is almost certainly cultural or literal genocide. It’s a disturbing trend, and this writer has seen it growing in recent days.

On social media, in comments underneath columns like this one, alongside articles about the increasing number of unmarked graves being discovered: The deniers are out there, patiently denying history. They’re relentless.

Is it to whitewash the sins of Sir John A. Macdonald? To excuse the Liberals, whose party was in power for most of the years in which residential schools operated? To subtly (and not so subtly) express contempt for the pain of the Indigenous community?

The reasons vary. The methodologies, too. But the effect is the same: To deny history. To sanitize the misdeeds and the crimes of the past.

It needs to stop. The residential schools existed. More than 100,000 Indigenous children were forced into them. Thousands died. And some — hundreds? thousands? — did not die of natural causes. (Why bury them in unmarked graves, then, if not to hide wrongdoing?)

Debate is good. Dissent is good. But denying terrible misdeeds — when there is proof of those misdeeds — is a terrible, terrible thing to do.

To both the living and the dead.

— Warren Kinsella was a Special Ministerial Representative for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs

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Is Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party going to win the coming election?

Yes, probably. But not because of him, really. He’s likely going to win because of us.

Yes, us. Ten reasons.

1. Midstream horses. The pandemic has been the most disruptive event of our lifetimes — politically, economically, culturally, personally. During a crisis of this magnitude, nobody likes to change horses midstream.

2. Incumbency matters. When you have power, you have the edge: The media pay more attention to you; you have money to spend; you make consequential decisions. Your challengers have none of that. Incumbents always have the upper hand. That’s particularly the case since COVID hit.

3. Scandals are irrelevant. Justin Trudeau has had more scandals than any prime minister in more than a generation. But it doesn’t matter. The media and political people squawk about scandals too often, so the public tune it out. Until you are led away in an orange pants suit and handcuffs, they just don’t care.

4. Editorials are irrelevant. We in the media can write editorial endorsements until the cows come home. But what we want voters to do doesn’t matter — plenty of studies show that voters are not swayed by editorials. At all.

5. Voters are their own editors.People receive most of their political information from social media. That gives them the ability to choose what and when they want to see and read. And they tend to only follow sources who correspond to their own biases and opinions.

6. Low information. We live in an era of low-information voters: They are too busy with trying to make a living, raise their kids, and pay the bills. They don’t have time to worry about what the media and politicians worry about. They just need to know the basics. Trudeau gives them that.

7. Hope trumps fear. After the pandemic, after what we’ve gone through, people don’t want to hear any more bad news. They only want to hear good news. Trudeau is exceptionally good about focusing on the positive and ignoring the negative.

8. Ideas count. Voters don’t want to hear why the other guy is bad. They want to hear what you will do, and when you will do it. During the pandemic, Trudeau has been using the public service to come up with ideas. His Conservative opponents have come up with none.

9. Optics matter. Did you know that Erin O’Toole is actually younger than Justin Trudeau? I’ll bet you didn’t know that. How you look and sound on a voter’s TV or computer screen matters more than what you say. That’s depressing, but it’s reality.

10. People are happier than they were. The flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, people are increasingly getting their second dose of vaccine. They feel pretty good. And Justin Trudeau knows it.

As depressing as it may be, Trudeau is likely to win again.

And we are the reason. Not him.

— Warren Kinsella was special assistant to Jean Chretien

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Is there an Indigenous vote, and will they vote for Justin Trudeau?

It’s not an unimportant question.

With Justin Trudeau leading only a minority government — and with two dozen Liberal MPs having won in 2019 with only a few hundred votes — small constituencies can determine many political fates.

Except the Indigenous population, and the Indigenous vote, aren’t all that small.

Five per cent of Canada’s population identify as Indigenous — close to two million people. First Nation, Inuit and Metis voters, age 18 and up, make up potentially a million voters.

That’s a lot of votes.

In the right places, that many votes can determine the outcome of the next election, expected later this year.

Not as many Indigenous people vote — certainly not as many as are entitled to.

As an Elections Canada study put it: “A significant number of Aboriginal [sic] people, as individuals and communities, still regard participation in non-Aboriginal elections or plebiscites as a threat to their unique rights, their autonomy and their goals of self-governance. Such persons hold a philosophical belief about the legitimacy of Aboriginal self-governance that differs fundamentally from that of the Canadian government.”

That’s one reason they don’t vote as much as they could, or should. Another reason: broken promises.

Justin Trudeau has broken many of the solemn promises he’s made to Indigenous people.

In his 2015 election platform, he promised to get clean water to Indigenous communities, and end the so-called boil water advisories.

He hasn’t done that. At all.

He promised to make their lives safer and better.

But, at places like Grassy Narrows, mercury still poisons the environment and the people who live there.

And when a diminutive woman protested that fact at an exclusive Liberal Party fundraiser, Trudeau had her ejected — and sneered: “Thanks for your donation.”

He promised to reconcile — in effect, build a more respectful relationship — with First Nations.

But he’s spent millions on lawyers to overturn a human rights award won by Indigenous children.

Seriously, he’s doing that.

So, considering Justin Trudeau’s abject failure to reconcile with Indigenous people, and improve their lives, are they going to vote for him again?

They did in 2015: 40% voted Liberal then. However, after Trudeau politically mauled Jody Wilson Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, and exiled her from his party, that number plummeted to just 21 per cent in 2019.

So the Indigenous vote is not a monolith. They are not partisan sheep.

While they tend to vote Liberal more, there are plenty of Conservative and New Democrat indigenous voters.

Every party has had Members of Parliament drawn from indigenous communities, too.

Full disclosure: my firm has represented First Nation, Metis and Inuit groups for years, from coast to coast. I have learned, along the way, they are like any other constituency: they vote in their self-interest, as determined by economic, social and cultural realities.

So is voting for Justin Trudeau in their self interest? Indigenous people are best qualified to answer that important political question, and they will.

This writer suspects that the recent discovery of hundreds of bodies of Indigenous children and babies looms large in their thinking, just as it does for the rest of us.

Indigenous people know that the inaptly-named “residential schools” operated for decades mostly under Liberal governments.

They also know that, while the Liberal Party of Canada may talk a good game, the fundamentals haven’t really changed.

On the very day the more than 700 tiny Indigenous bodies were discovered in unmarked graves in Saskatchewan, Justin Trudeau shrugged.

He dismissed calls to fire his incompetent and tin-eared cabinet colleague, Carolyn Bennett, who had smeared Wilson Raybould, suggesting that the respected Indigenous leader was more concerned about money than her own people.

The Indigenous vote matters. It votes. Will it go with Justin Trudeau a third time?

Well, if results matter — and they do — they shouldn’t.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s special assistant

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Nobody knows a lot about Martin Niemöller, probably, but they certainly know about the Lutheran pastor’s most famous statement.

You know it, too.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

“Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Niemöller’s truism goes back to 1946, and was about the cowardice of German clergy and academics as the conflagration of the Holocaust grew and grew, consuming millions of innocent lives.

But his words have been applied to many other injustices in the intervening years.

Because there have been too many other instances of repression and bigotry.

One such case of repression and bigotry is underway, right now, right here, in the province of Quebec.

In Quebec, two pieces of legislation have been conjured up by that province’s crypto-separatist regime, like a witches’ unholy spell.

One, Bill 21, targets what minorities wear.

The other, Bill 96, targets the language that minorities speak.

They’re like demonic twins, Bill 21 and Bill 96 are.

Using the bland Kafkaesque prose of government apparatchiks, the first one expresses hatred for Muslim women, mainly, and tells them what they can wear.

Using the same sort of bloodless idiom, the second one expresses hatred for English-speaking people.

It’s no surprise that Quebec’s intolerant government disgorged these two bills during the pandemic, when they knew the majority would be distracted by its own problems.

What is a surprise is that the son of Pierre Trudeau — and the leader of the party once led by the likes of Jean Chretien and Mike Pearson — would go along with Quebec’s evisceration of human rights in Canada.

Quoting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to Quebeckers is a bit of a waste of time.

But their own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms — which actually predates Canada’s, by almost a decade — is very important in Quebec. It’s a matter of pride.

And those two bills, 21 and 96, violate the Quebec Charter in 38 separate ways.

This week, this writer had the great honour of being on a panel with Clifford Lincoln, a former Quebec MNA and a fierce fighter for Canada.

No longer as young as he used to be, the intensity of Lincoln’s passion for human rights — and Canada — were undimmed.

Speaking to the Quebec Community Groups Network conference, Lincoln noted that no less than Nelson Mandela said that the majority always owe a debt to the minority. And that the strong owe a debt to those who are not as strong.

Where, then, are those who would defend minorities in Quebec? Where are the rest of us? Why are not more Canadians speaking up?

There is plenty of reason to do so. Bill 96 actually gives the French language police the power to seize and break into people’s personal phones – to see if they are speaking enough French. And Bill 21 actually goes after Muslim women who wear a simple veil – or Jews who wear a Star of David – when they work in government.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Canada is being unravelled, quietly, right now in the province of Quebec.

Our “leaders” in Ottawa are silent. They’re eunuchs.

But where are the rest of us? Why aren’t other Canadians also raising their voices in protest?

Because history shows one unvarnished truth:

When they come for me, they may someday also come for thee.

— Warren Kinsella was special assistant to Jean Chretien.

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The job of the media is to come down from the hills to shoot the politically wounded.

So, let’s put a few rounds in the carcass of the Green Party, shall we?

Let’s start by telling a tale. But full disclosure first: My political consulting firm has acted for every single federal political party. All of them.

(One exception: We haven’t represented the political party led by Maxime Bernier, who was last seen wearing handcuffs in the backseat of an RCMP cruiser, arrested for violating Manitoba public health laws.)

But we’ve worked for everyone else. The Green Party included.

I first met with Elizabeth May, then the Green leader, in Ottawa in the summer of 2019. Some of her senior staff were there, too. We talked about my firm running the Green Party war room in the election.

May eyed me warily. “You make me a bit nervous,” she said.

Recalling that unfortunate time in 2015 when May appeared at a press gallery dinner (see photo above), I replied: “Likewise.”

Anyway, we agreed my firm would be hired. I warned her that, when that news leaked out — because everything leaks in Ottawa, eventually — it would attract controversy. She assured me that she could handle it.

She couldn’t.

Fast-forward to July 2019. May is at a pre-election rally in Guelph, and someone stands up to ask her a question about me. The questioner is distressed. She says I’m nasty (guilty) and she’s upset (good). In front of several hundred people, May insists she said this to me: “What you did in politics previously was despicable, and he said, ‘Yeah.’”

This wasn’t just false. It was a whopping whopper. It was fabulist fiction. It was a bald-faced lie.

She didn’t say that. I didn’t say that.

I fired off an email to all of the senior Green staff who had been at the same meeting, gently reminding them I am a lawyer, and that I planned to publicly repudiate May unless she did so herself, govern yourself accordingly, etc.

May issued a grovelling tweet hours later, in which she whimpered that “some past campaigns had been despicable — not Warren.”

Long story short: A couple of my staff dealt with the Greens thereafter, but not me. I’m old enough to know a clown show when I see it.

Fast forward to 2021, now. The Green Party has an impressive new leader who happens to be (a) female, (b) Black, (c) Jewish, and (d) not Elizabeth May. I note this only because I think (b), (c) and (d) are relevant.

Hamas starts firing rockets into Israel, and Israel properly acts in self-defence. The rest of the planet descends into paroxysms of “anti-Zionism” (read: Anti-Semitism). The Green Party joins in.

One of their MPs, a non-entity from New Brunswick, tweets that Israel is a state that practices “apartheid.” Last time I checked, “apartheid” is the whites-only system of laws promulgated by South Africa. Israel, meanwhile, has two million Arab citizens, some of whom are members of the national Knesset legislature, the civil service, the judiciary, and the army.

If that’s apartheid, it doesn’t sound like it’s very effective apartheid.

Anyway. The new Green leader — who is, as noted, Jewish and Black — declines to agree with the “apartheid” blood libel. The MP non-entity thereupon defects to the Trudeau Liberals, who the MP says share her “apartheid” defamation. Senior Greenies start demanding the new leader be fired for being moderate.

Elizabeth May, still regrettably an MP, is heard from. She chastises her successor, and says she wants the anti-Israel defector back.

Had enough? Me too. And I don’t think, anymore, that we need to come down from the hills and shoot the wounded Green Party people.

They’re pretty good at shooting themselves.

— Warren Kinsella was special assistant to Jean Chretien

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