Populism

Frontier City: 91�Թ�’s Shawn Micallef takes on populism and potential in Toronto

Romi Levine — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 17:00:32 +0000

Frontier City: 91�Թ�’s Shawn Micallef takes on populism and potential in Toronto

Romi Levine Thu, 03/09/2017 - 12:00

Cutline

Shawn Micallef's new book ‘Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness’ explores what's behind the rise of populism in Toronto (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Populism

Innis College

University College

Shauna Brail

Smart Cities

City Hall

Toronto

Before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, before the United Kingdom voted in favour of Brexit, there was Rob Ford.

The late former mayor of Toronto made it clear that populism was alive and well in Canada. But what drew people to become loyal followers of Ford Nation?

That’s what Shawn Micallef is exploring in his new book Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness.

Micallef is an author, co-founder of Spacing Magazine, a Toronto Star columnist and a lecturer at University College and Innis College at 91�Թ�.

“When you're downtown, it's very easy to be seduced by the prosperity of this place with cranes in the sky,” Micallef said at a book launch on Tuesday at Innis Town Hall. “There's a lot of Toronto that doesn't get to participate necessarily in all of that prosperity and all of that Sesame Street urbanism.”

Micallef was joined by Shauna Brail, 91�Թ�’s presidential adviser on urban engagement and director of the urban studies program, who moderated the event, as well as Jennifer Pagliaro, Toronto Star city hall reporter and former city council candidates Alejandra Bravo and Keegan Henry-Mathieu – who were both interviewed for the book.

Frontier City tells the story of Toronto’s neighbourhoods often neglected by downtown-centric politicians through conversations with 12 former non-incumbent City Hall candidates on walks around their wards.

“What was great about underdog candidates – people who were challenging power – was they were critiquing power. They’re not trying to hold on to it,” said Micallef. “They're a lot freer to come up with ideas, to talk about the future potential of the city – what’s wrong with it and where it's going. That kind of liberation of thought was a fun thing to explore.”

Panelists at the Frontier City book launch, from left to right, Jennifer Pagliaro, Alejandra Bravo, Keegan Henry-Mathieu and Shauna Brail (photo by Romi Levine)

Henry-Mathieu, a Ward 7 candidate, said he enjoyed reflecting on his neighbourhood with Micallef.

“It was the first opportunity for me to really walk around and see the neighbourhood differently – to be able to make that connection between the greatness of our people and the potential of our neighbourhoods.”

It’s important for all Torontonians to remember that different people experience the city in different ways, said Bravo, who was a candidate in Ward 17.

“It's important to challenge our generalized assumptions about how inclusive and diverse our city is,” she said.

“For so many people, they've only ever known low wages, high unemployment, really expensive housing – this generates a sense of insecurity and fear about the future. That's what a lot of our neighbours are contending with.”

The danger comes when we think we’re immune to the discourses the United States has been confronted by, she said.

“We have a tendency to mythologize Canadian exceptionalism,” she said.

If City Hall continues to brush these issues aside, Toronto runs the risk of electing another Ford-like leader, said Micallef.

“These looming crises of being left out of the prosperity that a lot of people in the city enjoy means it's going to come back,” he said. “There's no one on the radar yet, but if a populist leader with the magical charisma that Rob Ford had...if another person like that comes along, they'll be unstoppable.”

But Micallef’s message is also hopeful, said Pagliaro who cited an exerpt from the book that reads: “We're always longing for a city we don't allow ourselves to have.”

“It is both an urgent callout but also something that's very hopeful,” she said.

91�Թ� researcher's book on Soviet-era dissidents can shed light on Trump's populism

ullahnor — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 17:31:57 +0000

91�Թ� researcher's book on Soviet-era dissidents can shed light on Trump's populism

ullahnor Fri, 01/20/2017 - 12:31

Cutline

Ann Komaromi: “In the same way they didn’t want to be a stooge of the system, today we should be aware of the dangers of being a cog in the wheel and serving hidden interests who want to circulate harmful messages” (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Peter Boisseau

Author legacy

Peter Boisseau

Topic

Global Lens

Soviet

Literature

Faculty of Arts & Science

There are important parallels between a Soviet-era dissident movement and the modern digital culture that helped Donald Trump gain power, says Associate Professor Ann Komaromi of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Komaromi recently won the 2016 AATSEEL award for her book, Uncensored: Samizdat Novels and the Quest for Autonomy in Soviet Dissidence. Samizdat writers were focused on their responsibility as citizens to challenge the propaganda and hypocrisy of the USSR, the communist state that included modern day Russia before it dissolved in the 1990s.

Authors such as Vasilii Aksenov, Andrei Bitov, and Venedikt Erofeev broke with official taboos by writing about things like rampant alcoholism and anti-Semitism while being rigorously self-reflective about their own generation’s complicity in the Soviet system.

“I think they were trying to convey something important to us about being careful of the more insidious forms of control we encounter,” said Komaromi, who will receive the award at a ceremony in San Francisco in February.

“In the same way they didn’t want to be a stooge of the system, today we should be aware of the dangers of being a cog in the wheel and serving hidden interests who want to circulate harmful messages.”

The fake news and disinformation planted online by Russian government operatives that helped Trump win the U.S. presidency demonstrates why we need to share information responsibly, said Komaromi.

Trump’s social-media fuelled populist appeal presents the same kind of dangerous cult of personality the samizdat warned against in the era after the death of Joseph Stalin, the strongman leader who ruled the Soviet Union with violence and terror.

Instead of being passive consumers or tools of manipulation, people should guard against the intoxication of social media echo chambers sharing conspiracy theories without any reflection or analysis, she said.

It is nothing less than our responsibility as citizens in an Internet culture.

“Since everyone now participates in passing on information on social media, the important thing to learn from this is the critical self-awareness about how you work within the system in a responsible and reflective way.”

Samizdat writers were limited by a decidedly lower-tech version of the peer-to-peer sharing and publishing offered so effortlessly by the Internet.

They wrote their stories on typewriters and circulated them to friends in the hopes they would make copies and pass them on to others.

Komaromi has helped create a 91�Թ� digital archive that includes rare samples of some original manuscripts and art from samizdat novels, much of it typed on fine onion paper with graphics painstakingly crafted by hand. Although not as well known in the West as celebrated authors such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, the best of the samizdat writers were popular and influential in the Soviet Union between the late 1950s through to the late 1980s.

While the dreaded KGB secret service and Gulag forced labour camp system still existed, this period in Soviet history was somewhat more permissive than it had been in the Stalin era.

Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev personally approved the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s classic One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, although that was a rare exception. By comparison, samizdat writers were often harassed and threatened by the KGB.

Rather than indict communism and the Soviet system as Solzhenitsyn did, these samizdat writers criticized society in fictionalized, semi-autobiographical books. Nonconformist poets and artists also used samizdat to experiment in ways not allowed by socialist realism as they were written, noting the constitution was full of liberties and rights that were ignored.

It is an area of study Komaromi has had largely to herself, but she says the award signals a growing interest in late Soviet culture.

“I think I was doing my research a little bit ahead of the curve of interest, and I’m glad this brings a little more visibility to my work, because it probably means there will be more people to work with now.”