Zionist tries to shut down indie magazine
David Bezmozgis gets his tallit in a twist over attitudes toward Israel in Canadian arts
Another day, another hysterical Zionist article about “muh antisemitism” in “the culture.” Yawn. But as this concerns Canadian literature, I feel it behooves me to address it, much as Sire did last time this happened.
Giller Prize spotted panhandling for funding outside Parliament
OTTAWA—Times are tough for private literary prizes in Canada. To whit, the Giller Prize was spotted early Wednesday morning panhandling for federal funding on Wellington Street near the East Block of Parliament. Known for its gaudy televised galas and myriad connections to the Zionist industrial complex, eyewitnesses reported the venerable 31-year-old f…
The source of the petulant whining this time around is one David… Bezmozgis? How do you even pronounce that? Lemme just take a look at…
What? No. No fucking way. You’re kidding. This is an AI summary, I don’t think we can trust—
LMAO. Well, let’s just say nominative determinism theory is about to be vindicated yet again.
Anyways, David Brainless is mad because The Ex-Puritan put out a call for submissions for a special issue concerning “Resistance and Hope.” The issue says it hopes to be, as Brainless reports, “a creative folio of political education that consolidates ‘Resistance’ as armed struggle against US-led imperialism.” Further,
Ms. [Bahar] Orang [the issue’s guest editor—Eds.] writes that she deplores “zionist (sic) demand[s] to ‘condemn’ this group or that group” and wishes “to affirm [that] revolutionary violence [...] is a historically accurate, materially grounded, and ethically sound position to hold.”
Brainless isn’t a fan of this kind of talk. He’s mad specifically because the call shouts out Palestinian resistance, which Brainless takes issue with, and has used the opportunity to publish an article in The Globe & Mail, one of the country’s biggest newspapers with six million active subscribers and which was literally founded by one of Canada’s Fathers of Confederation, to spotlight an indie magazine with a few thousand followers on Instagram and a total of $22k in government grants over the last ten years which probably still runs into the red after paying its contributors. This has engendered, as I’m sure Brainless expected it would, a (proportionally massive) harassment campaign—not only of The Ex-Puritan but even of the League of Canadian Poets simply for having shared the call, which is, you know, just their job.
Brainless spends most of his ink whining about how this is disrespectful to all the casualties on October 7th or something, also going so far as to mention all the alleged “gender-based violence” which took place. Sure, 300 of those casualties were explicitly soldiers, we still don’t know just how many of those casualties were the result of Israeli friendly fire (many of which were reportedly not accidental), no one can confirm anything about these alleged sex crimes because Israel forum shopped the shit out of an assessment they knew was primed to consider every single case put forward to them as a confirmed sexual assault before even investigating it1 (which certainly doesn’t make me confident about the veracity of the claims!), a lot of those killed lived in settlements and kibbutzim specifically set up to be a “living perimeter” to keep the Palestinians in place, and that, in retaliation, the Israelis have since killed dozens and dozens of times the alleged casualty count of October 7th (and frankly I think it’s probably a lot more even than that!), including ten times the proportionate killing of children (3% of Israeli casualties on October 7th were children, vs. 30% of Palestinian casualties after October 7th), which I’m sure will be “rebutted” by the claim that Hamas “uses human shields,” in spite of said claim being debunked by both Human Rights Watch and mainstream journalists like those at the BBC, and in spite of the fact that Israel itself has been accused of using human shields by Amnesty International.
In a… interview cited by Ms. Orang, Mr. Omar said that “it stands to reason that if the outright intention had been to indiscriminately kill, the number of Israeli casualties in the initial days would probably have been significantly higher.”
Well, I don’t see what’s so appalling about Orang’s statement, that’s just true—given that 30% of Israelis are under 14 years of age, the casualty statistics do not suggest Hamas targeted children in the attacks. Still, maybe don’t raise your kids as a “living perimeter” (I want to make clear that this isn’t “my opinion,” this is the language used by the settlers who live there) around an open-air concentration camp?
That a writer in Canada can pitch an editor on an issue of a magazine whose purpose, at least in part, is to lend intellectual cover for the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7
Isn’t this entire article lending intellectual cover for the atrocities committed by Israel on… always? Check out the ways that Brainless deliberately obscures the truth in order to accomplish his ideological goals:
Canadian Jews represent 1 per cent of Canada’s population but they are now the objects of nearly 70 per cent of hate crimes.
You can read these reports on “antisemitism” yourself and find that the majority of what they’re calling “hate crimes” are literally just saying “Israel is bad and I don’t like it.”
For those who feel differently and have an essay for ISIS or a haiku for Hamas, The Ex-Puritan is accepting submissions until Aug. 7.
Brainless wants readers to assume that Hamas is on par with some kind of Salafi jihadist group. Hamas and ISIS aren’t remotely the same thing, Brainless. In fact, Hamas fought an entire war against ISIS.2 But let’s focus on something Brainless does get right:
You might ask why you should care about an issue of a literary magazine most Canadians have never heard of.
Sure. The Ex-Puritan is not a famous magazine. I’ll be honest, it isn’t even a very good magazine. I might even call them pretty fucking annoying.
But anyways, famous or not, the fact that most Canadians have never heard of The Ex-Puritan doesn’t really matter. Most Canadians also haven’t heard of Malahat, Fiddlehead, PRISM, etc. The Ex-Puritan is not necessarily a “small dog” in Canadian lit magazines, they’re well-known if this is a topic you keep up with, but most Canadians (most people, really) don’t read literary magazines to begin with and couldn’t tell a James Wood from a James Woods. This obviously bitter and petty attempt at a slight on Brainless’s part is meaningless. David, if they’re such a non-entity, then why are you writing an article in The Globe and Mail about them? I have no idea who David Brainless is, but he has a Wikipedia page and an op-ed in a major Canadian magazine, he’s obviously someone, otherwise I wouldn’t be fucking writing this! If I wanted to insult David, I wouldn’t sneer and pretend he’s a nobody, because then who am I for taking shots at him? Besides, I can just post this photo of him instead.
Frankly, the mandate for the issue up for discussion felt to me like a bunch of virtue signalling. In spite of the issue’s claims to be grounded in some kind of “materialist” revolutionary politics—certainly a lot more tolerable than the magazine’s usual wussy lib bullshit (see: above)—this is still pretty obviously immaterial. It’s fucking poetry in an indie magazine. Calm the fuck down. This is LARP. The Ex-Puritan wasn’t going to accomplish anything with this issue of their magazine, but now, thanks to Brainless, they kinda will, even if they lose their funding and get harassed out of existence in the process.
The general Canadian public doesn’t know about The Ex-Puritan. But most of what people are going to see here—even your standard Globe and Mail Readers—is yet another example of Zionists trying to bully people. A ton of Zios are presently harassing Ex-Puritan and the LCP, but these people are merely a very vocal (and nasally) minority. What people like Brainless don’t understand is that they are only shooting themselves in the foot. They’re so fucking butthurt about people supporting Palestine that they impulsively react by sitting down even harder on the issue to try and smoosh it, but all it does is go further up their asses. It would honestly be a much better tactic to simply ignore it, especially to something no one is paying attention to or cares about, but they just. can’t. help it. And part of that is the extreme amount of copium they’re imbibing. At least 61% of Canadians now hold “unfavourable” views of Israel. I’m sorry (not really lol) but you’re never putting the cat back in the bag, and it will only get worse. International opinion is swinging wildly against Israel. In many influential countries, Israel’s unfavourability now dwarfs South Africa’s in the 1980s. And as America’s international influence wanes, Israel will slowly find that it’s most stalwart supporter simply will not have the pull it used to have. Those who know my political commentaries know that I am not an optimist, but I think the truth here is, for once, quite optimistic in the long run: Israel as we know it, Israel as a “Jewish state,” will cease to exist in our lifetimes. What that means and what it will look like is anyone’s guess, but of this much I am certain.
But that’s the big picture. The little picture, the localized one we’re talking about in Canadian media, still sucks. A wanton bully like Brainless, someone “unintentionally” directing hate mobs toward a barely funded indie lit magazine from within the pages of one of the most widely-read newspapers in the country, can do whatever he wants and face basically no repercussions. The Ex-Puritan may have to take its email down because of all the harassment they’re going to continue to receive, while David’s inbox, meanwhile, will probably be full of these same pervs harassing The Ex-Puritan telling him how “brave” he is for stomping on a tiny independent bug with the power of his institutional print magazine boot. Those who think people like Brainless are assholes, a demographic which dwarfs Brainless’s supporters in sheer numbers, will likely stay out of it.
AND FOR MORE CANADIAN IMPERIALIST SHITHEADS:
The celebrated Vietnamese-Canadian writer whose family feasted while Vietnam starved
[This piece was originally written in 2024]
An excerpt for those of you without institutional access; a worthwhile read:
inb4 a Brainless defender hits me with “mmm but isn’t ISIS also claiming to be an anticolonial resistance movement? checkmate!” Sure, so does Israel, and that’s bullshit too. I don’t select sides based on what they simply “claim to be.”