Imani Walker approved : “The Francophone POC of Mikinoc Waajew” by Pierre Vallieres : newly bowdlerized

Stalin’s Great Terror DELIBERATELY created the greatest generational-and-social upward mobility in Russian history

Pierre Vallieres’ famous separatist screed, written in 1968 while he was in prison, was deliberately modelled upon the great excesses of Grand Opera.

The English translation captured that over the top excess perfectly and titled it “The White N****** of America”.

As Wikipedia still refers to it, but in the uncensored original version. They have more testicles than me.

So did the CBC  - for over half a century.

But not anymore, thanks to the young and ambitious Imani Walker.

No, the CBC’s Wendy Mesley was not beheaded, escorted to the killing fields or sent to a Gulag for her crime.

Merely fired, like thousands others in the last few weeks.

She will survive financially : many others will have to declare personal bankruptcy.

Thomas Bowdler has lots of work cut out for him.

Grand Opera for a start ; all those trigger words and stressful scenes.

No longer will the heroine curse her God to the heavens while (too) slowly dying of a stab to the heart : now like Henry Fonda, she will ‘nicely and politely’ die to a string of mildly Mid-Western golly gees, oh my gosh and jeepers creepers. The piano player’s eh hem ‘instrument’ will reveal discretely covered up legs, n*ked no more.

Its easy to laugh this off : but please don’t.

For all Great Purges throughout history have always led to rapid social and generational upward mobility : there were always exactly as many winners as there were loser-victims.

Great Purges, throughout history and across continents, have never targeted the working class young digging ditches but rather the middle aged, middle class, managers.

Them gone : exiled, murdered, imprisoned, fired : who takes up those key posts ?

Who is quietly cheering from the sidelines as the blades flash down ?

As Nova Scotia self-made zillionaire RA Jodrey was always wont to ask, “where and when exactly does this deal sugar off ?”

We know a great deal about how, where, when and why Stalin’s Great Terror ‘sugared off’.

It was not, totally, the paranoid act of a barely sane tyrant, but rather Stalin’s targeted effort to remove middle class managers and replace them with a still-being-trained cadre of reliably working class young and ambitious engineers.

The middle class, middle aged victims knew it - and so did their young and ambitious upwardly mobile replacements.

They were still there, running the show, half a century later, when the USSR fell apart....