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The Current Transcript for February 3, 2017

Host: Nora Young

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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Abdelkrim Hassane. Khaled Belkacemi. Aboubaker Thabti. Mamadou Tanou Barry. Ibrahima Barry. Azzeddine Soufiane.

NORA YOUNG: The names of the dead from Sunday's terror attack on a Quebec City mosque. They were fathers, brothers, sons, members of the community, Muslim Canadians. And even as their families and the whole country mourn their loss, their deaths cast light on the fact that anti-Muslim sentiment remains far too pervasive in this country. We began today with a panel of guests sharing their experiences as Muslim Canadians and their reflections on last Sunday's tragedy. Then it was a novel set in a dystopian future—the year 1984. But in today's world of fake news and alternative facts, George Orwell's doublethink and newspeak seem more relevant than ever.

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We’re not only inventing words. We’re destroying them—scores of them, thousands every day. It’s beautiful. Newspeak.

NY: We’re talking Orwell and Trump in half an hour. Plus speaking of Trump, some of the businessman president's fiercest critics are coming from Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

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CEOs of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others speaking out against the travel restrictions as well. The AirBnB going above and beyond on Twitter saying his company is providing free housing to refugees.

NY: Corporate activism in the age of Trump—that's in an hour. I'm Nora Young and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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How Muslim Canadians are coping after Quebec City attack

Guests: Shireen Ahmed, Farida Mohammed, Mohamed Huque

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It is with a heavy heart that we come together this afternoon to grieve the loss of these innocent lives. But as a community and as a country, together we will rise from this darkness stronger and more unified than ever before. That is who we are.

NY: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal yesterday speaking at the funeral for three of the six men killed at a mosque Sunday in Quebec City. Mr. Trudeau offered uplifting words highlighting the better angels of our nature and saying “This is who we are” as Canadians—a people who will pull together and overcome. But the sheer evil of what happened in Quebec City last Sunday is also forcing a reckoning with the persistence of Islamophobia in pockets of Canadian society. Today in Quebec City, another funeral will be held for the remaining three victims. It's a time when feelings can still be quite raw. But we wanted to bring together a panel of Muslim Canadians today to talk about their experience of living in this country and how Sunday's terror attack has touched their lives and communities. Shireen Ahmed is a sports writer and activist focusing on Muslim women in sports. She's in our Toronto studio. Mohamed Huque is the executive director of Islamic Family and Social Services Association. He's in our Edmonton studio. And Farida Mohamed is a teacher and president of the Montreal chapter of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. She's in our Montreal studio. Hello to you all.

FARIDA MOHAMED: Hello.

SHIREEN AHMED: Good morning.

MOHAMED HUQUE: Good morning.

NY: Farida Mohamed, let’s start with you. Yesterday on the day of the funeral in Montreal, a mosque in the city was vandalized. How are you feeling right now being in Montreal?

FARIDA MOHAMED: Well, that was incredulous to hear the news of a mosque being vandalized right after the funeral. You know? Right after we saw the feeling of support, the feeling of sympathy that fellow Quebecois were giving to the Muslim community, we were still shocked to see that some people would go ahead and commit acts of vandalism.

NY: Mhm. What are you hearing from Muslims in Quebec this week in the aftermath of the shooting?

FARIDA MOHAMED: Muslims in Quebec are shocked. Sad—very sad—but there are many who are hopeful, hopeful that now we are going to be dialoguing more. Hopeful that we are going to bring forward these feelings or sentiments of Islamophobia or discrimination or racism. They are going to be more out in the open. We're going to be able to discuss them openly instead of having a part of the population in denial. You know? So there is a feeling of hope and people are getting together, different organizations, different Muslim groups, different women's groups. We are getting together in order to be able to discuss in dialogue and figure out what can we do? How can we keep avenues of communication open?

NY: Shireen Ahmed, you have four children. How did you tell them about Sunday's shooting?

SHIREEN AHMED: Well, two of my children are teenagers so they have access to social media. But I was hoping it would be off because it was in the middle of exams and that's something that also occurred to me because my family has been very—the mosque has been a huge part—several mosques in my area—have been a huge part of their lives. So I was worried at how they would react in terms of how triggering it would be because they attend regularly. And not just some of them in the mosque specifically, but my son's high school has a Friday congregational prayer of 300 people, 300 students. So it's not only in spaces like mosques. Muslims congregate to pray where it's possible and where they can. So I was just sort of, I was concerned. I was so upset myself. It happened to be my daughter's birthday on Monday so it was sort of like you know happy birthday kiddo, and oh, by the way, make sure that if you're ever attacked you need to follow these steps. It's not an easy conversation to have. And they had a lot of questions but they were very sombre. And you know the biggest one was how could this happen? Like how could somebody violate a space like that? That's just the essence of that space is about spiritual practice and worship.

NY: Mhm. Mohamed Huque, you’re in Edmonton. How is the community there handling this?

MOHAMED HUQUE: So I think in a lot of cases where you have tragedies like this, it's really an opportunity for a lot of people to show solidarity across lines. And so I attended the vigil here in Edmonton just like so many other cities across the country and I saw thousands of people—both Muslims and non-Muslims—really gather together and it was a very warm gesture. We had you know elected officials. We had other faith leaders give their remarks. So I found that the outpouring of support from within the wider community has been incredibly heartwarming. You know I'll give you a couple of anecdotes. I work for a social service agency here in Edmonton and probably a week, the last week or so, so I've taken to count the Trump's executive ban on Muslims. We've seen a spike in donations from many non-Muslims. I'm originally from Toronto and back home in my local mosque, there was a number of high school students who were dropping off handwritten letters of support to Muslims and dropping it off the local mosque there. So I mean these kinds of instances I think are really an opportunity for sort of the country to kind of rally behind Muslims who for a long time have been the sort of embattled community.

NY: Shireen, what's your family's experience been personally with Islamophobia?

SHIREEN AHMED: Well, I mean we're lucky to live in like a [unintelligible], the city where there's a lot of Muslims. I mean the experience of my kids has been and they also attended full time Islamic schools when they were younger. And so there are communities. But in the wider community, you know there's micro aggressions, I guess you could say. There's comments. There's mispronunciations of names incessantly. I've had to—you know and their children so they're also learning as they go and they don't necessarily, the younger ones don't have the experience to be able to be as firm. You know they’re children. And if a teacher mispronounces their name incessantly, some would say that's not outright Islamophobia but it's not helpful. And I think that name calling is a big one. People making comments about me. People are like oh yeah, you know my youngest was called a terrorist and he's soon to be 11. It was happening when he was about seven and it was just in passing and it was very odd because he kind of didn't know how to react. And you know you have to have these conversations with him and we had conversations about you know you treat people kindly. But we also have conversations of you don't tolerate this kind of behaviour like if you’re in a space where you think you can defend yourself, please do that. So we're certainly advocates of that. This particular incidence, there's a lot of healing required. This was really traumatic on many levels for a lot of members of the community. So in addition to growing and moving forward—and I agree with what Mohamed said—to show solidarity for other communities, it's also important to look back and say this has been festering for a while. This isn't new. So as the outpouring from Canadians is so heartwarming and appreciated, it's important to understand this is a systemic thing and it's been there for a long time.

NY: Farida, living in Quebec, how have the discussions around reasonable accommodation of Muslims affected your everyday life?

FARIDA MOHAMED: Well, there are people out there who believe that the government or the society is giving way too much recommendation. There are instances where people mention that you know immigrants should integrate fully, assimilate, and we don't have to—they don't—it's almost as if they should not be having their cultural baggage with them. You know? They should get rid of their cultural baggage and just absorb all the Canadian and Quebecois values. I'd like to point out that it's true we do come with our cultural baggage, most immigrants. We do. But that doesn't prevent us from absorbing or from living and incorporating Canadian values within our life. I mean those values we hold dear to our heart and therefore, we have no problem with living in a democracy. But we do like to have a little bit of our culture with us to keep with us and to share with others. Unfortunately some people may not like the fact that people stick to their culture and Muslim women are actually visible minorities when they wear the hijab. And that has not resonated well with the Quebecois public event even though the young people do not have too much opposition to the hijab because they've been growing up with seeing this at school. A lot of school kids do wear hijabs. Not all Muslim girls, but a lot. And the youth are used to growing up with that. But it's the adults who have a problem with these visible symptoms if you will, or religious signs that are overt and they take exception to that.

NY: Mohamed, what would you like to see done to combat far-right extremism?

MOHAMED HUQUE: There are some really good things I like about the media coverage since the Quebec City attack and that's been sort of this national period of mourning and sort of collective sense of let's reflect and figure out what's happened. One of the things I don't like though is that it's been sort of characterized as sort of this lone wolf and that I think decontextualizes the incident. Here is a terrorist who became radicalized after being influenced by online hate speech and rhetoric. And often when we say that, we're referring to Muslims but in this case, this was a right-wing extremist. So one of the things I'd like to see sort of more attention paid to these kinds of groups. I know a 2016 study by Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens found that Quebec actually had the highest number of right-wing extremist groups, something about 20 to 25 active groups. So there's so much public attention. You know public safety spends a lot of money on countering violent extremism, these programs that are primarily aimed at Muslim communities. And I'm wondering how much of that is actually directed to these right-wing hate groups. You know how much funding and how much resources are given to hate crime units in police departments across the country. Those are the kinds of questions I'm curious to know. And you know when the premier of Quebec mentioned you know sort of you know we are at fault meaning public officials and then you know the society at large is at fault in the sense that there's sort of a share of blame to be played across you know public commentators and politicians, but really I want to be able to identify who are these individuals who are really influencing these sort of the right-wing groups.

NY: Shireen, what do you think about the reaction to this attack from other Canadians?

SHIREEN AHMED: Well, I think that as I mentioned, there was flowers and handwritten notes being left at mosques and the CCM has also—the National Council of Canadians Muslims—has seen also a rise in donations which is really important because in addition to supporting local communities, supporting organizations that also advocate against Islamophobia is really important. Just to touch on something that Mohamed said, Mr. Couillard mentioned during the funeral about public officials being responsible on the rhetoric. I think it's also important to look back and see that things like Bill C-51 that criminalizes Muslim communities is really, really important and that's been in play since the Harper government. And this isn't coming out of anywhere. The rhetoric around it, the conversations around this have been there for a while. So in addition as we move forward as Canadians and appreciate the solidarity, the support, the e-mails, the messages, I've had people check in with me. School boards in the Peel District I know—and I think the TDSB had their flags at half-mast—this matters to children because they see it as somebody recognizing their pain and their grief. They have had support staff in schools ready to talk to children. This is really important as well. You know coworkers checking in with each other, are you okay? You know I had someone send me a gift certificate for a Second Cup for coffee just to say you know I know you rely—like that was incredibly kind. Just a little bit of empathy right now as we move forward, but also to recognize and to have the difficult conversations about racism and xenophobia. Canadians are wonderfully warm people but also extremely uncomfortable when it comes to discussions like this and they need to be had.

NY: You were born in Canada. Born in Halifax. What do you think when people say that we should be more welcoming to Muslims in Canada?

SHIREEN AHMED: Well, I find that problematic for a variety of reasons. I mean my children are second-generation Canadians. They don't need to be welcome. This is our home, particularly keeping in mind that we're all settlers here. This is stolen land anyway. So I find it slightly odd when I'm being welcomed into some places and inherently my home but is also on stolen land anyway. So I mean I guess the sentiment is—do a little bit of research. Getting back to your previous question in terms of how to be an ally, that information is available online from various centres, there's groups of people that participated in a panel in Toronto at Daniels Spectrum last month on how to be an ally, what to do. Amplify Muslim voices and just listen to them. I mean we're not a monolith. We all have different opinions. But essentially doing a little bit of homework on the people that are as Canadian as you is crucial.

NY: Farida, can or should the Muslim community do anything to bridge any cultural gaps?

FARIDA MOHAMED: Well, I think the Muslim community also has its work cut out because they should be building bridges also with Quebecois mainstream society and at the same time, you know I think it's important that immigrants not live in ghettos. They should try and learn the language. It's very important in Quebec. French is an important language and that's why young children, young immigrant children are put in French schools. And unfortunately these kids sometimes do not do well because at home, parents are speaking another language and I think that also is one of the barriers facing immigrants. They have to learn the language. It is language that is very much alive, French, and it would help people you know to perhaps be better received or better perceived. But saying that, you know there are a lot of immigrants from the Maghreb and these are French-speaking countries and yet they still face discrimination sometimes if they look like visible minorities. So I wouldn't say that the onus is only on the Muslim community but it's also on mainstream society, on other people to go halfway. I think both the Muslim community and other non-Muslims, we need to meet halfway. We need to dialogue. We need to find out what are the things we can work together on. You know and because we all want to create a society, a democratic society and a safe society and a peaceful society. We all want to live in it together. And let's not forget the fact that the demography of Quebec has changed drastically and if it wasn't for immigration, Quebec would be in a dire economic position because of immigration, many jobs you know are filled. There are many skills entering Quebec. The schools are filled with immigrant children. If you think about the amount of teachers who wouldn't have jobs today if it wasn't for immigrants coming in and filling the school with. So you know it's important for Quebecois in general to realize that the demography of Quebec has changed and it is for the benefit of Quebec. It’s not for the detriment of Quebec at all.

NY: Right. We're nearly out of time. I wanted to close by asking Shireen, will you continue to attend mosque with your family?

SHIREEN AHMED: Absolutely. I mean I think there's things that can be done within the community, discussions to be had about safety and security and how to best do it from within the community. And there's also an important piece of community partners to be had. I know that there's been presence of heightened law enforcement which is in a way problematic as well because we don't have a necessarily easy relationship with law enforcement. But that being said, we have to find ways to move forward. Abandoning mosque is not a solution. Muslims are great. We can pray anywhere. I mean but to be able to accommodate our needs and stuff, and I think part of the piece is social and today's Jumu’ah prayer, Friday prayer will be healing for a lot of people in a lot of ways. And I think that's really, really important. I've had calls of people saying can we go with you just to observe? Absolutely. Everyone is welcome. And that's a really important piece. Like my healing will definitely, definitely be part of it will be at the mosque.

NY: Right. Farida, will Sunday's shootings change how you go about your daily routine?

FARIDA MOHAMED: No. Because that's the first thing I thought, that we cannot give in to fear and not frequent the mosque. The mosque is a sanctuary. The mosque is a place where you know we can interact peacefully. We can have a quiet place to communicate with God. It's also a place for socializing. It’s a place for bonding. And I think that we should not be giving into this fear and I will encourage my fellow Muslims to carry on frequenting the mosque. And you know we cannot give in to fear. We cannot let terrorists win.

NY: Mohamed, you have a young daughter. Are you optimistic that she'll see more tolerance in her lifetime?

MOHAMED HUQUE: Absolutely. I'm generally an optimist so I like to think that you know moving forward when my daughter grows up, I'd like to tell her that you know at times when her father was fighting against Islamophobia, when our country was going through a difficult time and there were people before me that sort of paved the way so that our country is generally much more tolerant and more much more progressive than it used to be in the past. And I look forward to the point when she grows up and she grows up into a society that's far more tolerant and progressive than it is now.

NY: I want to thank you all for your participation. I know it's been a difficult week. Thanks so much for joining us.

MANY VOICES: Thank you.

NY: Shireen Ahmed is a sportswriter and activist focusing on Muslim women in sports. She was in our Toronto studio. Mohamed Huque is the executive director of Islamic Family and Social Services Association and he was in our Edmonton studio. Farida Mohamed is a teacher and president of the Montreal chapter of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. She was in our Montreal studio. Stay tuned now for the CBC News. No alternative facts there. But then a discussion about George Orwell's 1984 and what's driven it to the top of the best seller charts in the past two weeks. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Orwell experts examine uncomfortable reality of 1984 in the age of Trump

Guests: John Sutherland, Jean Seaton

NY: Hello. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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NY: Still to come, we'll get to some of your feedback about Conservative commentator David Frum's warning yesterday that if American citizens remain indifferent to their new president, then an American authoritarianism could soon take shape. Also in the next half hour, we'll hear about one of the perhaps more unexpected sources of public criticism US President Trump is facing from the business world. But first, when Uncle Sam meets Big Brother.

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VOICE 1: You did not answer the question.

VOICE 2: I did answer your question.

VOICE 1: No, you did not.

VOICE 2: I did answer your question.

VOICE 1: No, you did not.

VOICE 2: Yes, I did.

VOICE 1: You did not answer the question of why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood. Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office on day one.

VOICE 2: No, it doesn’t. Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point remains—

VOICE 1: Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts four of the five facts he uttered.

VOICE 2: Hey, Chuck. Why—hey, Chuck.

VOICE 2: The one thing he got right was Zeke Miller. Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.

NY: Ahh, alternative facts. That of course was Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the President of the United States Donald Trump speaking on NBC's Meet the Press. Her contention that the White House spokesperson had not been lying about turnout size at the inauguration but rather offering alternative facts was a signal to many that a new unusual chapter had definitely begun in Washington. A chapter that reminded lots of people of something they'd read before, perhaps way back in high school. Yes, it was George Orwell's novel 1984 that introduced phrases like “Big Brother”, “newspeak” and “doublethink” and “alternative facts” seems like it might have been ripped from the same pages. Since that interview, sales of the classic novel about a nightmarish totalitarian future went through the roof, taking a book first published in 1949 to the number one spot on Amazon. My next two guests understand the relevance of Orwell's work today. John Sutherland is the Emeritus Lord Northcliffe professor of English at University College London. He is the author of Orwell's Nose: A Pathological Biography. Jean Seaton is professor of media history at the University of Westminster and the official historian of the BBC. She's also the director of the Orwell Prize. They're both in London. Hello.

JEAN SEATON: Hi.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Hello.

NY: So before we get into the relevance of 1984 to today's world, John Sutherland, perhaps you can give us a quick refresher of the plot.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Well, it's obviously futuristic, but at the same time it's rooted in the present, where Orwell was when he wrote it. That’s 1948 to 1950. The story itself is about what he called the last man in Europe. The last Liberal we might say—Winston Smith—he’s named after obviously Prime Minister Churchill. What his job is to fabricate fact. He works for the late version, the degenerate version of The Times newspaper, the paper of record and it is his business to put uncomfortable facts down the oblivion hole and recreate new facts, what we would call “alternative facts”. And that’s very necessary to the state because he who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the future controls— but Orwell believed that in fact fabricating history was the way in which tyrannies consolidated their tyranny. And he—Winston that is — thinks at the beginning of the novel that there is hope in the proles, so he loses that hope, the proletarians, and what happens is he mounts a rebellion. He thinks he's joining a revolutionary underground force and initially he's allied or helped by a member of the Inner Party. He's in the outside party called O’Brien. But O’Brien, it turns out, is really taking advantage of him and Winston ends up being tortured and brainwashed. His mind is taken and it's changed into a man who loves Big Brother and he's become a good citizen. And that's how it ends. It ends very pessimistically, him awaiting the bullets in the back of the neck, loving Big Brother.

NY: And why do you think those words by Kellyanne Conway might have had people reaching for their copies of 1984?

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Our great novelists have access to truth which are universal and which are historically relevant. I'm very cheered by this. I don’t think people are escaping anything by turning to 1984. I think what they're trying to do is to find some sort of interpretation of where we are now. I find that very heartening, the notion that literature can be something that we turn to.

JEAN SEATON: I think that the reason why people are turning to 1984 is because previously—I don’t know what John thinks—1984, you read it as if it was about Eastern Germany under communism or about North Korea and as a warning about what surveillance might go and do in the future. And now, I was very struck by that when I read it last week. I was in India actually. It doesn't feel distant to me anymore. It feels as if that's where I'm living. I'm living in this new territory in which reality, people think they can play with reality and can get away with it.

NY: John, what do you think? Do you agree?

JOHN SUTHERLAND: I do, yes. On the, you know the kind of increasingly fictional world we live in and we have to turn to fiction to find out what the facts are. But one of the things I'm interested in 1984—I don't know if Jean would agree with this—is that it seems to be one of the dangers we're facing now, is a sense in which we feel that we have a monopoly of right thinking and there are these great masses. I mean Trump is still supported by a majority of the American people. Somehow they don't get it. You know they don’t understand things and that's very dangerous. It leads to something which Orwell put right in the middle of his novel—and at the time he was advised to drop it but refused—Emmanuel Goldstein's theory of oligarchical collectivism. It sounds like a drunkenness test. But what he’s saying is that a group of people, what we would call an elite, dominate a mass who are stupefied for the purposes of that domination. I detect now a sense you know that in America, you know the two great coastal metropolitan cultures, are in a condition of contempt for the flyover states as they're called, the proletarians. Now it happens. I was born working class. I’m no longer working class. But it does seem to me that if I think about it, my grandparents had a much clearer notion of what the great slump and the Great Depression of the 1930s was than some op-ed writer in say, the New York Times or whatever. I think we have to really keep ourselves as it was sort of online with what Orwell calls the proles. Winston loses faith in the proles and that it seems to me leads to the ultimate pessimism of the book. Pessimism. I don't know if Jean would agree with that.

JEAN SEATON: I want to come back to the pessimism because I don't quite agree with that actually. But I certainly think—but you know we've all been pedaling—there are many reasons for why the world is what it's like now. And I don’t think that the media is the only one. I think that the feelings of people are very often distant from metropolitan centres. That globalization—I mean it’s global, anti-global feeling. People distant from metropolitan centres have not done well out of globalization and they feel resentful. And I think that we need humane policies to address that. So I completely agree with John and I feel as if I've spent the last four or five months absolutely pedaling to understand why this has happened because you just have to understand it—not despise it—you have to understand it. And there's a big democratic failure for liberal democratic progressive politics to produce leaders that look convincing. That must tell us something about politics. But the capacity of the way in which people relate to each other online can produce whether you're an anorexic frankly or you know somebody wants to blow somebody up or somebody who favours Trump, it's produced a very unique and peculiar set of circumstances in which you never have to encounter somebody that you disagree with and you never have to adapt or amend your views. And that's what's scary really because media made you encounter in a trivial way lots of things you didn't agree with but at least you took them on.

NY: Right. I want to play you a scene from the movie version of 1984. In this scene, a party official named O'Brien is explaining to the book's hero, Winston Smith, why the party will never be overthrown.

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VOICE 1: Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you.

VOICE 2: We control life at all levels. We create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old ideas that the proletarians will arise. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless animals. Humanity is the Party.

VOICE 1: I don’t care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later, they will tear you to pieces.

VOICE 2: On what evidence?

NY: John, what did Orwell think about the proletariat or the working class? And when you hear people talk about how Donald Trump supporters voted against their own self-interest, do you hear any echoes of Orwell's opinion of the proletariat?

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Obviously he said he was a man of the left. And his whole life, during World War II for instance, he would give away his ration coupons to people he felt sort of needed them more than he did. God knows he wasn't a fat man. But at the same time, there is this kind of Etonian quality about him. If you think about Animal Farm, the book which is most often you know sort of collaborated with with 1984, who else could run that farm except the pigs? I mean the chickens have two legs and two legs good. But you know the idea of a Jones’ former farm being run by the chickens or by the sheep or by Boxer, you know the hard working—is nonsense. This is the point that TS Eliot made when he turned the novel down, Animal Farm, that is. He said you know well, you know the pigs should be running the farm but they should be better pigs. And I think Orwell played with that idea at the end of his life. I don't think he had faith in the people quite as much as he did the beginning of his career—and people do change—when you know he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London. And yet his whole life he made a physical identity. The first time Malcolm Muggeridge met George Orwell, he thought he was meeting a tramp. He said expected to see his trousers held up with string. And Orwell made that physical and in fact, he never had any money, never owned a house. He couldn't bear to own anything because he felt what you owned owns you. He was above all that. It was almost a kind of puritanical religious aestheticism. No, I mean you know asceticism, asceticism that he practiced. I think he never had an ultimate faith in the masses, the people, the folc.

NY: Jean, can we just shift gears back to the question of social media? Donald Trump’s been communicating with Americans and the world through his Twitter account. What do you think Orwell would think of that kind of communication by the president of the United States?

JEAN SEATON: I think we could just see it as an extension. I mean he is gifted with a certain kind of prescience. So the telly in the corner is the one that sees you, although Winston can hide from it. He can hide around the corner of his room and the telly can’t see him. And of course now, we routinely can't hide from anything. I mean you know my telephone, my credit cards, talking to you. Anybody can find me. And I think that Trump reaching into the personal feelings of people directly is—we don't seem to have a way of managing that.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: One of the things I've picked up from Jean—and it's something new for me—is when she was saying that the function of things like Facebook, Instagram, Twittering and so on, is really to brew or to some extent consolidate prejudice. You know you tend to talk to like-minded people. That never occurred to me before but I think that's right. I think there are all sorts. We're living, it seems to me, in a kind of techno tyranny at times. It is a very interesting time to be alive, I have to say, even though in fact one doesn't like everything one sees around. But I'm very glad I've survived you know to see this happening. And it is fascinating but where that goes, I don't know. I mean we need another Orwell alive. If only he lived. You know we need another Orwell now to actually prophesize for us.

NY: John, were you surprised that 1984 zoomed to number one on Amazon after the election of Donald Trump.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: To be honest, yes. I didn't think anyone thought it would actually sort of turn to a novel under the kind of political pressure we've been experiencing. But it's very heartening that people do. They bring a new relevance because in fact you know it’s their own lives presumably they're trying to fuse into the experience of reading that novel. I mean I think Orwell wrote some very great fiction but this one seems to have been really picked up all over the place and is being translated everywhere. It's being to some extent—it is not being imposed on schoolchildren, it's being offered them and they consume it too. The novel lives.

JEAN SEATON: Isn’t one of the reasons the novel lives is that it's very, very pared down? Because he was dying.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: I mean Jean knows this well, but when he was in the hospital room at University College Hospital, one of the ways in which Orwell controlled his panic was just to write, as a journalist, all that was around him in the room. He had a fishing rod at the end of his bed. Pathetic. I mean in the literal sense. It breaks the heart to think of it. And he found if he put things down on paper, he to some extent controlled his panic and controlled them.

NY: Right. Jean, Orwell had sort of a complicated politics. How would you describe his politics?

JEAN SEATON: He's always a man of the progressive left. He is in favour of redistribution. He's in favour of people talking to each other even though he doesn't manage it. More equably, he's in favour of justice and fairness. He starts off—and I think this is very important from 1984—in a way as a more classic lefty. And he starts off as you know [unintelligible], all sorts of things and there are two things that really changed him. One of which is of course going to the Spanish Civil War, actually fighting in the Spanish Civil War and being wounded in it. And although Spanish historians dispute the effect of that, just for a moment let’s hang on to the really good effect of it: aversion to the ideology of communism which is why he had such trouble in getting 1984 and Animal Farm published. And he becomes you know in The Lion and the Unicorn or My Country Right or Left, he’s very dispassionate about what I think is the kind of patriotism which is being stolen from me—a kind of critical patriotism. I mean you know I want my country to be better. It doesn’t mean I’m not a patriot. I want it to do better, be better. Be fairer, more just. So his politics evolves and that's why he’s also quite interesting because he was prepared to identify along with somebody like Hannah Arendt actually, that fascism and communism weren’t opposed ideologies, absolute terrifyingly. They shared much more than they were against each other.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: I’d like to come back to her, but when she said that she doesn't ultimately read it as pessimistic, where does she find the optimism?

NY: Jean?

JEAN SEATON: Perhaps in my cheery little glass half full. So I think I find the optimism oddly in the structure. So you both got the Goldstein bit, which is really riveting, really, really riveting. I mean it's the machinery for laying out an ideology. But that's an old kind of insertion. And then there's the afterword in which there is an account. You realize that what you’ve read is an account which is being kept because the reform of the language has gone on. That's to say there is a time after Winston Smith and there is a time when that could be seen with some accuracy with some historical eye. And so [unintelligible]—I never thought of saying it actually—but it's the structure of the novel which is quite radical actually. It gives you a sense of a world outside the actual life of the novel which has gone on, which understands that the novel has things to say and so that is a hopefulness. I think there is a little bit of hopefulness in— I mean Orwell wasn't sentimental like lots of left-wing people about the proles in a way that's quite dangerous. But he was also, you know women the woman hanging up the washing has a vigour of life. She reminds me of a [unintelligible].

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Isn’t that a lovely sort of scene because she's singing popular music, isn’t she? And somehow it has wings. It does. It's the nicest sort of most attractive thing in the novel in many ways.

NY: I want to play you both a clip from the Republican convention that took place back in July. This is General Michael Flynn addressing the convention.

SOUNDCLIP

We do not need a reckless president who believes she is above the law.

[Sound: Crowd chanting “Lock her up”]

Lock her up. That’s right. Yep. That’s right. Lock her up.

NY: That was Michael Flynn, who's now Donald Trump's national security adviser. Jean, did that remind you of anything from 1984?

JEAN SEATON: It's Two Minutes Hate. In 1984, you have to gather every day and express hate at a film. And of course, the people who express hate [unintelligible]. And in the book, Winston Smith notices that although he has a reservation—he knows he's just got to do it, he's got to compose his face, he'll be in trouble if he doesn’t do it—the woman next to him, by the end of the Two Minute Hate, is really hating. And the sort of trashing of how it might be we were disagreeing with each other in the pursuit of a better life for all of us, let alone the misogyny frankly. I mean Hillary Clinton—there are lots of problems with Hillary Clinton—but there is something deeply terrifying about a man summoning up and that kind of hatred of a woman. I think it's one of the most frightening and chilling and we shouldn't react to it emotionally. We have to understand what we could do to combat that kind of—those people can’t have understood the horror that they were engaged in.

NY: John, why is an Orwellian character like Emmanuel Goldstein, who’s this possibly fictional opposition character, useful for populist politics?

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Well, I think as Jean as put it, it funnels hatred which is a very useful energy supply for dictators, for sort of as it were, tyrants generally. You've got to have someone to hate just to deflect it from yourself. At the end of the novel, one of the most awful kind of last words, we're told that Winston Smith has won his final battle. He loves Big Brother. This is the man who was tortured for shouting down with Big Brother. But that love means he's got—I suspect at the end he still hates you know Goldstein, who is said—I mean there's been a lot of discussion about this—but it seems to be based on Trotsky. Orwell himself, he stood apart from political parties because he felt that they took you over. He was a kind of transcendent thinker politically. It's very interesting. I mean the political substratum of 1984, as in fact that last clip made clear, is still relevant. I hadn't thought until this program about the connection with the Two Minutes Hate and the obscene charge against Hillary Clinton who was a senator and had done very good things in that role. I feel sort of very glum even putting that in my mind.

NY: Jean Seaton and John Sutherland, thanks so much for your insights on this.

JOHN SUTHERLAND: Thank you very much for letting us talk.

JEAN SEATON: Thank you for a really interesting conversation.

NY: John Sutherland is the author of Orwell's Nose: A Pathological Biography and Emeritus Lord Northcliffe professor of English at University College London and Jean Seaton is professor of media history at the University of Westminster and is also the director of the Orwell Prize. They were both in London. So what do you think? Do you see shades of 1984 in the Trump administration? Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, find us and comment on Facebook or e-mail from our site, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up next, Facebook and Apple. Uber and Lyft. Ford and Starbucks. Some of America's biggest corporations are uniting this week in their condemnation of President Trump's controversial travel ban. As they speak out, we're talking about the role of corporate activism and the Trump administration. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

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Corporate CEOs push back on Trump's policies

Guests: Dirk Matten, Margaret Heffernan, Jeffrey Jones

NY: Hello. I'm Nora Young and this is the Friday edition of The Current. In a moment we'll look into the corporate activism shaping up in the US, but first let me take a couple of minutes to share some listener feedback to an interview on yesterday's show. Anna Maria Tremonti talked to David Frum, the Conservative commentator and former speechwriter to US President George W Bush. He's emerged as one of President Donald Trump's most vocal critics. His latest piece for The Atlantic is titled How to Build an Autocracy and that's what he explained.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID FRUM: You can see the beginnings of the corruption and then you can see the president asserting. That press conference the other day, the press secretary explained that those officials—presidential appointees who don't agree with presidential policy—must quit. That's actually not the way the United States government works. If you work for the State Department, they have all kinds of channels where you can continue to execute the policy and you can express your view that the policy is mistaken and the Trump administration wants to turn those things down. But think of the power it puts into the hands of someone like President Trump who's going to fire people for reporting the truth about Russian involvement in American elections.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Is Donald Trump deliberately setting out to create an autocratic state?

DAVID FRUM: I don't think—he's not so strategic. He's setting up to steal. That's his big goal, is to become the richest man in the world abusing the powers of the presidency.

NY: To hear Anna Maria’s full interview with David Frum, visit our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, download our podcast or hear it on the CBC Radio app. Those of you who heard it had lots to say on Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. @Teelin tweeted: “Obviously David Frum is right. We are witnessing the beginnings of fascism in the US. Autocracy is the start. @aqua_maureen added: “I never liked David Frum as too right wing but hurray for him! Great interview. Intelligent analysis wins the day.” Andy Doyle-Linden of Calgary writes: “It was refreshing to hear a cold dissection of the risks arising from a Trump presidency. Too many Trump articles fall into the trap of not getting past hysteria, disdain and disbelief.” Lorraine Forrest of Chilliwack, BC writes: “I was reminded of something expressed quite often by my parents when I was a young woman. The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. I guess the old adage that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, may be coming true again.” And finally, Chris Vouzoupoulos on Facebook commented: “Where was this rectitude 15 years ago when David Frum helped the Bush administration bamboozle the American people into a needless war that led to the death of tens of thousands of Iraqis, waste of trillions of dollars and the rise of ISIS.” You can contribute to the conversation on our social media too. Find us on Facebook, CBC Radio The Current, tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, or send us an email through our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Bridge]

NY: You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I’m Nora Young. To the corporate world now and how it's responding to the rule of Trump. The CEO of Uber Travis Kalanick surprised the worlds of politics and business yesterday when he made it clear that he would not be sharing a ride with President Donald Trump. The Uber CEO quit the president's business advisory group just ahead of a meeting today with the president. The surprise departure comes after a week of mounting criticism from the business community of President Trump's travel restrictions on people from a list of majority Muslim countries and corporate leaders are expected to have tough questions about the travel restrictions when they meet with the president today. Already corporations including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Starbucks and more have openly criticized the new restrictions. Here's the CEO of Ford, Mark Fields.

SOUNDCLIP

Well, the core to our values as a company is respecting all people and all the policies in our company support a diverse and inclusive workplace. And we don't support policies when we see it's not aligned with our values and we agree with the president on a number of different policies and this particular one we do not.

NY: And so it seems it's not just the protesters on the streets and outside the airports that are sounding off against the new president's controversial executive orders. Today we're taking a look at the role of corporate activism in the age of Trump. Dirk Matten is a professor and the Hewlett-Packard chair in Corporate Social Responsibility at the Schulich School of Business at York University. He's in our Toronto studio. And Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur and author whose latest book is A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the Competition. She's in Bristol, England. Hello to you both.

DIRK MATTEN: Hello.

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Hi.

NY: So Dirk Matten, how surprising is it that these major corporations are speaking out against President Trump's travel ban?

DIRK MATTEN: Isn't that wonderful? We get support now out of the most unlikely quarters. And in some ways it is surprising. Business is about business, about caring to customers, shareholders. Right? And suddenly we see them deeply involved in the political arena. And the explanation of course on the surface is very much linked to their customers or their employees, in the case of Uber. These companies are first and foremost affected by these policies. But nonetheless, these policies affect us all. And it is interesting that corporations step in to protect basic civil rights as these are, right, because they feel the heat of those changes first. But nonetheless, they morph into a political role and that's, I think, fascinating to watch.

NY: Margaret Heffernan, what have you been thinking as you watch this reaction from corporate America?

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Well, it's interesting because after Trump was elected, I kept arguing that it might be corporations that would prove the strongest bulwark against some of his undemocratic intent. And I think everyone thought I was nuts because they always thought companies only cared about themselves. So you know I'm equally delighted and pleased to see that actually they've been quite courageous. They've been quite bold and they've moved very quickly to point out that you know the government has to be responsible for all the people, not just the people who elected it. So you know I really welcome their intervention. I think on some level, you know they had no choice in the sense that they had to stand up both for their employees and their customers. Nevertheless, it is clear that you know not all CEOs of all companies affected by the travel ban have been so forthright. And I think what you’ve seen you know in the Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s change of position, from lowering fares for Uber drivers in New York so that they could defend essentially strike break what was happening at New York airport to his stepping down now, is a recognition that voters take this very personally and they can vote with their dollars as well as you know in the ballot box.

NY: Dirk, how significant is it that Uber’s CEO has quit the president’s advisory group? It’s quite an about face. Is that a signal that the protests might ramp up?

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: It's a total about face but I have to say, you know Kalanick has proved himself generally inept in public. So this is consistent with his prior performance.

NY: Mhm. Dirk?

DIRK MATTEN: I think it's quite significant that he starts the conversation basically by leaving it. Others have, like Elon Musk today, they go to Washington and continue the conversation. That's another strategy. In the case of Uber, I would say it's particularly interesting as the company faced criticism in the way they treat their inverted commas “employees” in the past, so I think there was maybe more pressure on him to deal with this really pressing issues of his employees.

NY: Mhm. Margaret, still by far, most corporations have been silent on this. What does that tell you about the president's support within the business world?

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Well, I think it doesn't necessarily show that they support him. I think some are waiting to see where the wind blows. I think one of the important side effects of the protests was that it made people who previously felt ambivalent realize that they weren't alone. So clearly some people are looking over their shoulders. I mean it's a very tricky position for chief executives because it was clear when Trump started attacking pharma and pharma’s share prices went down, that the president has and is willing to misuse the power to impact companies’ stock prices. So this is on many levels a significant risk and I think part of what you're seeing is a kind of testing of the waters, which is how far is business prepared to stand up for itself despite the risk of a very irresponsible president?

NY: I want to go to a clip now. The CEO of Starbucks responded to the travel ban by saying he was going to hire 10,000 refugees in the next five years. But even before this ban, Howard Schultz spoke about corporate responsibility. Have a listen to what he said back in December.

SOUNDCLIP

We feel very strongly as a company that our role and responsibility—in addition to making money and building shareholder value as you know—is to demonstrate a level of social impact in the communities that we serve. I think that as we go forward, we will have an active voice in demonstrating what I've said before: the moral courage to address things that we think are important to the promise of America and the American dream.

NY: Dirk Matten, what role should big corporations have in shaping society through activism?

DIRK MATTEN: I think as the Starbucks CEO said, corporations are such a large part of how society works these days that they can no longer just say we are providing product and we are making our shareholders happy but we have a broader role in how society is run. And this is what we see, that corporations now assume that role and influence these debates on how we should live and what the fundamental human rights of individual employees, customers and beyond that should be. And corporations seize more and more of this broader social role.

NY: Margaret, some applauded Howard Schultz has promised to hire refugees but others are boycotting Starbucks for hiring refugees over Americans. We also know that more Americans support the ban than do not. Could go either way, couldn't it, for their bottom line? How are these companies making those calculations?

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: It could go either way in the short term but in the long term to be a credible business, what they say about themselves in public, what they say to their employees within the corporation, what they say to shareholders has to be consistent, you know because in the age of social media the inconsistency will pop out immediately. And having made many statements on this front, in some respects you know Schultz now absolutely has to show that he's willing to put his money where his mouth is. But I think there is a further issue here, which is companies thrive in very stable, healthy democracies and they require governments and infrastructure and education systems and so on, to function well. And so either I think what you're saying is a new chapter in a long discussion which is about the relationship between corporations and society, and whereas perhaps in the nineties, it was fashionable to say there is no relationship. The business of business is business, which you know which Friedman said. I think now you're seeing that there is an interdependence. That society needs functioning wholesome sustainable businesses and businesses need functioning sustainable societies in order to thrive. And I think what you are saying in their very clumsy, inept, unthought through measure is that Trump is introducing, is a sense that while I can just do whatever I want. That's not the way that wholesome sustainable companies work or countries work.

NY: Dirk, what do you make of that?

DIRK MATTEN: Well, I think there is an interesting trade-off between what the responsibility of business is and what the responsibility of government is. And we see business stepping into that more social role every time when governments retreat. We have this long-standing debate about sweatshops. That includes governments in so-called developing countries. The fascinating thing we now see with Trump is that it happens right on our doorstep in this so-called development—the oldest if you want—liberal democracy. And it is here where corporations step in, as Margaret points out, by self-interest. But in the long term of course, this is also quite problematic because corporations are not set up to do this. They do it driven by self-interest. But the interesting idea is that women's rights, refugee rights, anti-discrimination, these are civic entitlements normally looked after by the government because they should not be dependent on the self-interest of whoever protects them. That's you know two centuries ago, paternalism. There were companies and industrialists who did all sorts of good things and funny enough, we are coming back a little bit into that era. When I said wonderful at the beginning, that was meant slightly ironic because that's not why we have corporations. That's why we have governments and these things should not be things corporations give us if it is in their interest than if they are pressured. But these should be entitlements, things we can rely on.

NY: I'd like to bring in one more guest. Jeffrey Jones is a columnist with the Globe and Mail who's been looking for Canadian corporate reaction to the new US administration. He joins us from Calgary. Hello.

JEFFREY JONES: Good morning.

NY: Jeff, you reached out to Canadian companies and CEOs. Why did you want to do this?

JEFFREY JONES: Well, we had seen over the weekend that there had been some immediate corporate response to the Trump immigration and refugee bans and we saw you know a bit of a trickle from the Canadian business community. I mean you saw how the tech industry immediately stood up and said well look, you know if the US doesn't want to take this talent, we'd be happy to expand the Canadian tech industry. So early on this week—it wasn't just me—I mean Globe and Mail reporters kind of fanned out and canvassed a pretty large contingent of the Canadian economy. So banks, energy transport, the tech industry, insurance, and we got, I would have to say the response was little more than a trickle. And actually it was downright crickets in a lot of cases. So either no comment or rather no response at all. So there was a lot of hiding on this issue.

NY: Right. You're in Calgary in the heart of Canada's big oil sector. How do you interpret what's going on?

JEFFREY JONES: Well, the oil patch right now is in a very tricky position as it relates to the Trump administration. One of the other executive orders that he signed obviously—and this is one of the first ones—was to put the Keystone XL pipeline back in motion after the industry had hoped for the better part of a decade to see this project move forward. So I mean it's a difficult position to say. Well, on one hand yes, we support this industrial move that the president supports but now is also the time to stand up and say wait a minute. What's happening with immigration and refugees is wrong.

NY: I should mention that our producers also called several companies in Canada, the US and even in Europe and none of the ones we contacted wanted to speak. Margaret Heffernan, can you understand why most companies are hesitant to speak out, no matter what their position?

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Yes. I think most companies would prefer to really have a more clearly defined role vis-à-vis government. And I think it is absolutely correct that this kind of blurring of roles, you know while it is better than nothing given the current regime, I think what Dirk says is correct, which is you know government has specific rules which really you don't want to see companies having to undertake. And you know when the system so to speak works, the government knows that it has a role which is distinct, not the same as the roles of corporations. And I think what you're seeing now is that corporations are stepping in because they can't see any other way to counterbalance what is a very dangerous and threatening trend. But it's not what you want to see. You want to see a healthy respect and tension between government and corporations. But you don't want to see that we depend for our democracy on multinational global corporations. If that's where we are and it might be, that only signifies how quickly the world has become more complex and dangerous.

NY: Dirk, are you surprised by this response or lack of response from Canadian corporations in particular?

DIRK MATTEN: In some ways Canadian corporations as yet are not that affected by it and in some ways they benefit from it because I know a lot of my students who is now rethink their career plans and find Canada—especially if they are from an immigration background—just the safer place to be. So in some ways for them, it's a competitive advantage, as they say. But I think beyond that, I think it reflects a different government set up. I mean government institutions here still work in a slightly different way, if you think of health care education and other things, so it's a different mindset, maybe also a different approach of the current administration here in Ottawa. So I would say that is one aspect but on the whole, I would agree that I'm also slightly underwhelmed by the reaction here. It was basically the Manulife CEO and John Chen of Research in Motion who took a stance on this issue and there are for instance, all the big four or five banks who have substantial operations in the United States and must be affected by this. Well, we have so far heard not that much.

NY: Jeff, what do you think? Should we be expecting more from Canadian companies on this and have you heard from any Canadian companies since writing your article?

JEFFREY JONES: I've heard from—let's say not on official channels—I've heard from people below the CEO level who have said you know Jeff, you know not for publication or anything, but you know I kind of like the tone of what you said. So it was interesting when you mentioned the Uber CEO stepping back from the president's advisory committee and some of that had to do with pressure from his own employees so. I did want to say something else though. This has to be that this issue hasn't been thrust upon the corporate community. The companies in this country, if you take a look at their websites, especially the larger ones, all publish these corporate social responsibility reports where they talk about the strides they've made in environmental performance, in governance and in what they do in their communities. Right? So the question is how bad do policies of a major trading partner have to get before a Canadian company stands up and says wait a minute, this is wrong. Yes. I mean obviously the business of business is business but I mean we saw in Fort McMurray over the spring, how the corporate Canada you know stepped up and helped 90,000 people who were suddenly homeless.

NY: Margaret Heffernan, what do you think about what's ahead for corporate America, especially given this kind of you know delicate balance that we've been talking about?

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Yeah. Well, I think you know the truth about corporate America is that it doesn't have only one perspective and one voice. I think it's absolutely true that the very many companies that have value statements and corporate responsibility programs are going to be tested now in terms of was this window dressing or do they really mean it. And I suspect that what you'll see is a polarization across corporations, very similar to the polarization you see within the electorate. And you know choices will be made about which side are we on? And that will ratchet up the debate. I'm not sure it's going to shed a lot of light on the debate. And I think the real challenge for everybody going forward is how do we deal with a very threatening volatile situation in a way that can reduce threat and improve dialogue? And that's going to take some immense subtlety and creative leadership.

NY: Dirk, do you think we're going to see more of this type of corporate activism in the days and years ahead?

DIRK MATTEN: I think we have to. I think the way Donald Trump is approaching for instance, their core business model, which includes outsourcing to areas of cheap labour, there will be many fronts on which this is going. There's really one point I find quite encouraging here that right at the beginning, particularly the tech industry is in opposition to Trump and we know from history that all authoritarian regimes, let alone dictatorships, need business. They need companies to produce the gear—be it simply weapons or surveillance gear—to do what they want to do. And the tech industry, if you see the tendencies after 10 days in Washington going where they are going, the tech industry will play a crucial role in terms of surveilling, monitoring, cutting civil liberties, privacy and all these things. So in that sense, I'm quite encouraged and heartened but I think we're just seeing the beginning and it is good—since things will only ratchet up—that we have seen a fairly polarizing and clear stance of that crucial industry.

NY: Mhm.

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Because some tech companies of course are strikingly silent.

DIRK MATTEN: Of course.

NY: That's true, yes.

DIRK MATTEN: Especially the defense industry has been completely—kept their voice out of this debate.

NY: Jeff, briefly: do you expect anything to change in Canada in terms of the corporate reaction?

JEFFREY JONES: You know I think that that just like anything, corporations have to respond to the society around them. And we've seen it in all kinds of other issues when it comes to corporate philanthropy. We've seen it with environmental issues especially. I mean they've been pulled kicking and screaming into having to act and I don't see why they can't do the same on an issue of injustice when it comes to immigration and asylum seekers.

NY: I want to thank you all very much for your insights on this. Thank you so much.

MARGARET HEFFERNAN: Thank you.

JEFFREY JONES: Thanks.

NY: Dirk Matten is a professor and the Hewlett-Packard chair in Corporate Social Responsibility at the Schulich School of Business in York University. He was in our Toronto studio. Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur and author whose latest book is A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the Competition. She was in Bristol, England. And Jeffrey Jones is a columnist with the Globe and Mail. He was in our studio in Calgary. And that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Tom Power speaks with AR Rahman, the composer behind the Oscar winning anthem from Slumdog Millionaire. And remember you can always take The Current, q or Spark with you on the go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally today, we were talking about George Orwell's 1984 and newspeak earlier in today's show. One of the alternative facts that the protagonist of 1984, Winston Smith is compelled to believe is that two and two equals five. English rockers Radiohead took that for the title of a song on their 2003 album, Hail to the Thief. We'll leave you with Radiohead and “2 + 2 = 5”. I'm Nora Young. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: “2 + 2 = 5” – Radiohead]

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February 3, 2017 full episode transcript

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