Author, historian, journalist and broadcaster Gwynne Dyer visited Arcola on the eve of Remembrance Day 2016, where he spoke to high school students from Arcola and Carlyle about terrorism, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and the effect of technology on society. Dyer also took questions from the audience after his speech.
Introducing himself, Dyer said: “My job as a journalist is making sense of stuff while it's still happening. You get half of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and you're trying to put it together while you're still writing it.”
Dyer walked his audience through a brief but nuanced history of Islamic terrorism, adding: “Since 9/11, terrorism has been topic number one and a lot of people worry about it. But terrorism is smaller than it looks. It's designed to look big to media and if (the terrorists) get lucky, the government will do stuff that serves the purpose of the terrorists.”
“But it's always smaller than it looks but it's designed to look big. And it's always designed to get a reaction.”
Dyer said that terrorism is not a new phenomenon, adding that in the 20th and early 21st century, Canada has lost six people to terrorism-including from FLQ (Front de liberation du Quebec) activities in Canada in the 1970s. “But in terms of news value, (those deaths) are the same as one bad car crash. However, (because) these deaths are because of terrorism, there's a media feeding frenzy.”
He added that because terrorist attacks-small or large- are so shocking and garner so much attention, governments “are forced to do something. In the case of Prime Minister Harper, after the Ottawa attack, “There was nothing he could really do, so he changed the law, which nibbled away at our civil liberties...They're little things, but our civil liberties weren't what they were before.Terrorism has that effect. He did something, because he had to do something.”
“In Canada-a country of 36 million- four people were lost to terrorism in 2014. Two were innocent army reservists and two guilty terrorists,” said Dyer, adding: “The response got us going to the point where tens of thousands of soldiers went abroad. One hundred and fifty died, combatting a problem that may not have required a military response at all.”
“Terrorism is a technique, a tool, and anybody can use it.”
Dyer stated that the origins of Islamism and current terrorist attacks began in the 1970s.
“Currently, all terrorists are Muslims,” he said. “But I did not say all Muslims are terrorists. More to the point, they're all Arabs-actually Arabs are only one-quarter of the world's Muslims. So that's where you want to look to figure out what this is all about.'
“In the Arab world-except for Tunisia, every single government is a dictatorship.”
“Terrorism was a part of revolution (since the 1970s). And revolution is not easy to make. It's hard to overthrow a dictatorship. You need a big new idea to put you in power to overthrow a dictatorship.”
“The tragedy is that Islamism is the big new idea. It's not a religion,” he added. “It's a revolutionary new doctrine that uses the religion.”
“Terrorism makes the government behave really badly, which makes the people support the revolutionaries.”
“In the end, it's all about making the revolution happy.”
Dyer predicted that in the end, the so-called Islamic State-IS- “will go back to being terrorists without a country within five years or so.”
Dyer told the sudents: “This will probably last the rest of your lives-or the first half of your lives, but I believe there will be no big attacks. A few small attacks are possible, because it's not humanly possible to eradicate the thing, but they will age out and have generational turnover.”
“And frankly, you can live with that.”
Dyer added that he altered the topic of his planned address in Arcola, because: “You may have noticed that there was an election in the United States with a rather surprising result.”
“Mr. Trump is an unusual person to be elected American president. He talks like a revolutionary -when he talks about tearing up trade agreements, for example,” adding: “Canada is a big trading nation and it does 80 percent of its trade with the U.S.”
“The recent deal Canada made with the EU (European Union) will help a lot.”
“When Mr. Trump says he will renegotiate trade deals or tear them up, he's concerned with Mexico because of (manufacturing) plants that have moved there.”
“But we will be what the military calls 'collateral damage.' I think something like that is likely to happen to Canada. We're heading into some fairly stiff headwinds in terms of our normal trade agreements with the U.S.,” added Dyer. “Mr. Trump made some very major promises to the people who voted for him.”
“We have a problem here,” he added. “Mr. Trump was elected by and large by the part of the American population that was very hurt by globalization-largely, the old, white working class who have lost an enormous amount of jobs (who live) in the states the Americans call 'the rust belt.' Those jobs went elsewhere or vanished.”
“He's not going to be able to walk away from that- they elected him.”
“But is the problem really what Mr. Trump says?” asked Dyer. “I think he is, in fact, on the wrong track. In the 80s or 90s, yes (he would be), but today, if you brought those industries back to the U.S., a lot of those jobs aren't in those industries anymore. America is producing twice as much in its factories as it did 20 years ago. The Mexicans, the Chinese or the Canadians aren't taking those jobs away-it's automation. You can do the same job now, with fewer people.”
“As the machines get cleverer, more jobs get taken away. Every ATM is the ghost of three bank tellers, for example. And it's moving up through the skill sets a software gets more sophisticated.”
Dyer closed by telling his young audience: “We are in a very big time of change here. Jobs are evaporating. Is it a disaster? It is if we let it be one. But the wealth is still here and we're still as rich as we were before as a society.”
“The question is: How do you figure our how everyone in society has enough money to live on and self-respect, even if they're only working part-time?”
“We are in a second industrial revolution here. The transition then was pretty difficult, but we're all richer and happier as a result.”
“With this technological revolution, that is really the task of this generation,” said Dyer. “The point is not to treat it as a catastrophe, but as an opportunity.”
“It's not a disaster yet, so don't treat it like it is.”
Visit organizer Regi Maher-who has arranged two visits to Arcola School by Dyer-says: “ This was a timely visit by an internationally-known and respected journalist who gave an important speech to an attentive audience. The students were very engaged and their questions really demonstrated that, as well as their interest and concern about our world today.”
