Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 103: Laughing in Pandemic Times 鈥� with Charles Demers
Speakers: Paige Smith, Am Johal, Charles Demers
[theme music]
Paige Smith 0:06
Hi, I'm Paige Smith with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Our guest for this episode of Below the Radar is author, activist, voice actor, and Juno nominated comedian, Charlie Demers. Charlie joins our host, Am Johal, to talk about the mechanisms of Trumpism, the dismal year of stand-up comedy that was 2020, Charlie's new novel, and his studies in theology. I hope you enjoy the episode.
[theme music fades]
Am Johal 0:44
Welcome, everyone to Below the Radar. Glad you could join us. I'm very happy today to be joined by my friend , a long-time Vancouver legend, published author, comedian, social activist, so many things. Welcome, Charlie.
Charles Demers 1:02
Thanks for having me Am.
Am Johal 1:03
Charlie, wondering if you could just begin by introducing yourself a little bit.
Charles Demers 1:08
Sure. I am a, as you say, comedian and writer, Vancouver has always been my home. I've known you since we worked on an anti-racist demonstration out in Surrey in the late 90s, which is disturbingly long time ago. But it's been great to know you this whole time. Yeah, I am, like an East Van dad in all of the cliched ways. And right now, I'm in mothballs, like much of the less fortunate trenches of the professional managerial class. So, I've been like relatively safe during COVID. But pretty shellacked from an economic and artistic standpoint, I really haven't been working. My wife Cara works at the BC Center on Substance Use. And obviously, they're doing, you know, work that is like really urgent and intense and that's continued. And so, she's been working and they're a great employer. So, she's been working from home. And our household has been fortunate in that respect.
Charles Demers 2:16
But yeah, it's been a weird year. I mean, I, I turned 40 This year, which is culturally, an existentially fraught time. And for me, it was kind of especially fraught, because I lost my mom was a kid and she was 39 when she died. And so, 40 was a year for me when I kind of moved into this really kind of theoretical realm of adulthood that I had sort of half wasn't, you know, apprehended my whole life sort of half dreaded, and half hoped I would make it to. And so, this was sort of set to be kind of a big, existentially angsty year regardless, and it's been that in spades for sure. So yeah, I guess I'm all those things that you described. Oh, and I guess there's an element of, I mean, I don't know if this is, like, totally predictable, or if this is something that certainly has caught me off guard, but recently been sort of re-emerged in or reinvested in the religious tradition of my upbringing. And so yeah, I'm currently a student at the Vancouver School of Theology as well.
Am Johal 3:25
Oh, amazing. I remember your 30th birthday, were you living at the Lore Krill Housing Co-op.
Charles Demers 3:31
I wasn't living there. But I my friends lived there. And they hosted So yeah, that was where that party was. It's funny. I, like 20, I had a big party on the deck of the house that we rented when I was a teenager. And at 30, I had that big bash at the Lore Krill. And then 40 was at a taco restaurant in Nelson with my wife and daughter. And it was like, this feels exactly like the sort of tuning down of like, yeah, I had all these plans going into.
Am Johal 4:03
You had just gotten married, then when you turn 30, or you were about to or something.
Charles Demers 4:07
We had been married three years. And we just celebrated our 13th anniversary last week, actually. So I met Cara in 2005 at Thinking Through Action, which was at 丁香园AV, was a conference, a joint conference by 丁香园AV and the Pacific Northwest Labour History Association, and it was celebrating the life and legacy of , who died last year just before COVID Jack, for those who don't know, was really one of the sort of tragically under celebrated heroes of the 20th century left and a major figure in that who were the sort of American equivalent of the in terms of a radical merchant marine union, just like vociferously anti-racist at a time when that wasn't necessarily the norm in the labour movement. Jack was then a member of the Communist Party, before being fairly high up in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and he was, along with Stanley Levison, who was a white communist, Jack was African American, they both and Jack were singled out by the Kennedy brothers, in their conversations with about like, "You got to get rid of these guys there. It's allowing", you know, the idea was, it's allowing the right to paint civil rights as a communist cause, you know, arguably, it was about purging the radical left from racial justice movements in the same way that they were being purged from the labour movement. So, Jack was sort of knocked down a couple of notches within the SCLC leadership. He and King sort of agreed to that mutually. But he lived in Vancouver for the last decades of his life, because his partner, Jane Power, was doing her, I think it was a PhD with William Cleveland, my former professor, the Middle East History professor at 丁香园AV. So yeah, we were lucky to have Jack and Jane in Vancouver. And then Jack had this sort of institutional connection to 丁香园AV, Karen Ferguson, the professor of American history at 丁香园AV, was always great about bringing Jack in and sort of having him sort of in the life of her students. And, yeah, we put on this conference in 2005. And yeah, that's where I met the love of my life and so we've been together since then.
Am Johal 6:33
That's amazing. We had a screening of that was made by just about a year and a half ago, and Jack was there. And he stood up and spoke and you know, in his 90s, just like the clarity of his vision, his voice, the language that he used, even in that room of people, he was organizing in the way that he spoke about movements, just absolutely an astounding force of nature.
Charles Demers 7:02
Totally. And at the very end, this is almost I mean, this is maybe a kind of an intimate thing, but when he was, I mean, like, as you say, he was 96 when he died. And there was a point where there were certain elements of dementia that were sort of entering the picture. And he was having actually, some hallucinations. But they were, they were these totally benign hallucinations, where he was seeing figures from the Civil Rights Movement, like Jane was explaining to me that he would have these like, little sorts of mini conversations with these, like , or like, historical figures of the American Civil Rights Movement, who were like sort of popping back into his field of vision, literally, in the last months of his life. And that's how like, engaged he still was. Those were the defining, like horizons of Jack's life.
Charles Demers 8:01
And, you know, it was very hard for me to put into words, how sacred It is to me to have been in Jack's life and to have had that connection with him. And I've told Josephine, my daughter, you know, that she wouldn't exist if it weren't for Jack because that's where I met her mom and her mom met me and you know, she came and visited Jack in his last days at the hospital, Josephine came with me, and she picked out this card at the Book Warehouse next to VGH. And, you know, we went and saw Jack and, you know, it's, I should, you know, change the subject before I get too emotional to continue with the podcast, but he was a tremendous, tremendous man, his partner Jane as well, who's still with us. The way that he's been kind of forgotten is truly tragic. And my friend, , who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley, Ian and I are old elementary school friends, Ian and in the States, and . They all are historians, were in Jack's personal orbit, and they've been really good about kind of keeping his story alive. And then Rami's documentary with singing and you know that document I think was really, really important.
Am Johal 9:20
Charlie, so more recently, we're in this weird as we're recording this in the weird interregnum from the American Election Day to Inauguration Day. It's been a crazy four years, but as a comedian and a writer, you follow political events closely.
Charles Demers 9:36
Yeah.
Am Johal 9:36
Today, what's your take or some of your observations on the American political scene right now?
Charles Demers 9:43
So, you know, I will say two years ago, I made the only, previously to this, the only, I'm wrong about everything in terms of my predictions of electoral political outcomes. The only thing I've ever successfully predicted was a about three weeks before crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals. I said to my cousin, I mean, I really have, I don't even know what possessed me to say, but I said, "Belinda Stronach is going to join the Liberals." And so, I got this, like, shine on me of like someone with this tremendous insight into and it's the only thing I've ever predicted. Everything else I've ever predicted has been wrong. Until two years ago, January 2019. I predicted and I wrote it down and took a picture of it, posted it but when I was still on social media. I'm not on social media anymore, so I wasn't able to bask in any of my having been proven right.
Charles Demers 10:43
And it's not exactly a thing to be super excited about having been proven right about but in January 2019, I said the Democratic ticket is going to be Biden/Harris. They're going to beat Trump/Pence, but just barely. And then in 2024, the Democrats are going to lose to someone worse than Trump. And then liberal columnists will say, you know, "Say what you will about Trump, but." And so obviously, we're not yet at that last part of that prediction. And I also, I have some reservations about this thing of like, saying that Biden and Harris just barely beat Trump/Pence, because really, they didn't, I mean, this is, you know, they just barely beat them because of the insanely messed up, you know, American electoral system. But like, in any kind of sort of fair accounting, they really absolutely trounced the Trump/Pence ticket, like it was not, it was not a close result. But it's a really hard result to feel much relief from besides just the basic thing of like, oh, maybe I'll get to stop hearing about Donald Trump 15 times a day for the next four years.
Charles Demers 11:47
But I think, you know, a couple of things. I mean, one thing that I was just totally amazed at was that this really just seemed to be this, like, complete Rorschach election, like, everyone lost this election. So, everyone also won this election, like whatever your pet analysis is, everyone has seen these results as their vindication. So, this is the vindication of the identity politics analysis of American electoral math. And it's the repudiation of American identity politics. And it's, you know, it's the proof that the hopes for the Democratic Party are in Liberal technocratic centrism. And it's the proof that liberal technocratic centrists are going to keep losing to Republicans. Like no one has been clearly vindicated enough that that anyone has been able to sort of offer I think, anyway, any kind of super convincing reading of the tea leaves and sort of come away with, you know, the definitive take.
Charles Demers 13:17
The one thing that seems totally clear, is that in both the UK and the US, the liberal center is mopping up the insurrection from the left that and represented over the last few years. That seems to me to be pretty heartbreaking but also pretty unequivocal. Those two projects have been essentially defeated, at least in the realm of the electoral sort of intra party politics that they seemed for a while to be mounting a much more robust challenge than I think any of us could have or would have anticipated them doing a few years ago. And then there's this, you know, this really just bizarre spectacle of what's happening with the election results and this weird grip that Trump has on the Republican Party. There's this weird dance that I think we have to do on the left, which is very hard to pull off, and I don't think many people are successfully pulling it off, which is to, to identify the ways in which Trump is absolutely not unprecedented, while also honoring the ways in which he is.
Am Johal 14:43
It's like Trump lost but Trumpism still exists as a force because the model that he used to make the Republican Party relevant to people who usually wouldn't view it as relevant. They're going to strip it of its parts and repackage it, to bring it anew because in a changing demographics of the states, that model is one that the Republican Party can deploy with maybe a slightly less racist version or a slightly less, but there is a call to working class people to vote Republican. And because the Democrats haven't strongly connected with those communities in some time it did lands down in a way that a lot of people on the left or the center certainly are surprised by.
Charles Demers 15:28
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting to me, I mean, I think Trump and Trumpism just have to be analytically separated for our purposes. And that should be easier for Canadians theoretically, because, you know, really is the precursor. I mean, in so many ways, he was this figure before Trump was in this, you know, I remember the summer ahead of the election, when Rob Ford won the majority in Toronto. I was actually, I was making a cooking show pilot with my mother-in-law, which is a very idiosyncratic way to spend summer, for Omni, the multicultural channel. Anyway, we were making this pilot. It was, it was fun summer. So I was in Toronto, so hearing these like radio news bulletins, and you know, seeing the front pages of newspapers when some new thing that was quote unquote, "bound to end the insanity of the Rob Ford", and, you know, it was exactly what it was in the Republican primary. And then the 2016 general election, where the question wasn't, hey, how do we explain why Trump is winning? The question was, what will be the thing that inevitably ends this freakish anomaly of Donald Trump leading the pack? Because clearly, he's not going to be the candidate. So, what explains what we're seeing?
Charles Demers 17:06
So these stories would come out about you know, Rob Ford got arrested in Florida for you know, I think I forget what it was, it was like possession of marijuana or drunk driving or, you know, spousal abuse, domestic violence calls to the police or whatever these stories that in every other sort of regular politics, people would have, you know, just out of decency, or shame or embarrassment would have said, "Okay, I'm going to pull the plug on my candidacy." Like resigned, just because he didn't want to be impeached, right. And that whole thing of the math of Rob Ford saying the quote unquote, "regular people hate this cultural elite so much and I get none of my votes from this cultural elite, that it doesn't matter." Like, not only does it not matter what they're saying about me, but actually, the more they push against me, the better is for me. So, the more apoplectic the genteel, middle class, progressives are in the cities, about the racist things I do, or the homophobic things I say, or whatever it is, then all the better for me that redounds in my favour. And I still don't know what the answer is, right? Because it's also an abrogation of like, never mind political responsibilities, like just basic moral, to not say something when someone is being this, you know, toxic, noxious, racist, misogynist, homophobe, like, but we also do know now with several years of data, that the more we kick and pull against it, the tighter it ties in with this politics of resentment, and that ultimately kind of fuels this version of right wing populism that people like Ford, and on a much grander scale, Trump, have represented.
Am Johal 19:17
I would say also, you know, I think there's a kind of misreading by the political classes sort of across the political spectrum. You know, maybe 20% of the public follows politics closely. For a lot of other people, their lives are busy. They're getting by, there's affordability challenges. And so, politics is this thing that plays out in the kind of entertainment sphere in public and television in such a way and in a way figures like Trump or Ford are kind of like the heel in professional wrestling. And they do express a kind of resentment towards government that is deeply held by people across the political spectrum. And its sort of like well, when I vote these people in, they don't do what they say they were going to do, and this person saying it like it is or whatever. It's obviously being distorted for other right-wing populist means but you do see working class people supporting both Ford in the suburbs and Trump and I think that's where they've been able to mobilize a group of people that may not have gone to the polls before or may have been part of that political universe. And clearly it gets political results. So, in this sense, where, you know, Trump might have lost the election, but this thing around Trumpism existing is that you can take that model and reapply it, particularly if the Democrats aren't going to go and try to connect with that group in the population.
Charles Demers 20:40
Yeah, we're in a sort of analytical space where we've got like fairly well tested tools on the left for understanding why it is, when particularly white male members of the working class are drawn to a figure like Trump or Ford, like, we're pretty sure we think we understand what's going on in moments like that, and what kind of appeals are being made? What I think was a little bit more disturbing for people on the left, especially with Ford in Canada, and Ford just didn't last long enough for us to really have to face this, but it was like, then you'd hear about the support that he had among like, for instance, in Caribbean immigrant communities in the GTA. And you go, "Wait a minute, didn鈥檛 somebody just post a video of Rob Ford doing like a Patois Jamaican accent while he was drunk at a fast-food place? Like, aren't they enraged by cultural appropriation, like all of the people I went to university with." And I think there was the beginnings of that moment of reckoning with or starting to reckon with something that couldn't just be explained with the old models of being drawn by the toxicity of white Anglo chauvinism among elements of the working class, who were hived off through their relative privilege along other axes of oppression.
Charles Demers 22:08
Whereas I think that like now, even though for instance, like the Trump phenomenon is still overwhelmingly, from an electoral point of view, it's still overwhelmingly a white phenomenon. I think, there is equally overwhelmingly, from what I've seen, it's been this growing trend of his appeal to demographics, who we tend to think of as being, you know, sort of naturally inoculated against this man who we see as this sort of living embodiment of everything that ought to be repellent to any group that's not white men, or maybe by extension, just by like familial extension, white women. But I mean, I was talking to my wife's cousin and his wife yesterday on WhatsApp, we were having just a conversation, just a family check in and, you know, she was mentioning, and she's Korean American, and she was talking about the, the, you know, the Trump supporters in her family. And, you know, for her, it was amazing, just how, how naturally the class analysis came in that instance, where she just said, "You know, well, you know, they're small business owners, and for them, it's just, you know," and so in that case, I think it's pretty easy to figure out, there's no complex psychology to get around. And it's just, yeah, they're petty bourgeois and petty bourgeois and fascism kind of go together in times of crisis. But I think we would love to think that the appeal of right-wing populism is simpler than it is. And I think social media, which just in general, I think is a cancer, I think has really made getting to an honest place of reckoning with just how deep the danger goes that much harder because of its performative quality.
Am Johal 23:52
Charlie, look at us, we've just been talking politics for so long, having gotten into literature, comedy, theology. You just got a book out recently, for those who don't know, many of you will know Charlie as a comedian, but he's published many, many books, but you just released one recently.
Charles Demers 24:08
Yeah, yeah. So, it was supposed to come out last spring. And then mercifully, the publisher decided to hold it, you know, it was supposed to come.
Charles Demers 24:15
In the middle of the pandemic, right.
Charles Demers 24:19
Yeah, exactly.
Am Johal 24:20
You saw the book sales going to go.
Charles Demers 24:23
Mid pandemic, people are reading, like early pandemic, it was like, I don't even remember what people were doing all the various crafts that people were discovering. God, remember when we were young enough to think that this was like, you know, it'll be six weeks and then anyway, that's too depressing to reflect on. Let's go back to Rob Ford and Donald Trump. Yes, it's actually it's a mystery novel. It's called . It came out in September. And what I did was I wrote a mystery novel whose hero, who's a detective in quotes because it's in the genre of the amateur sleuth, the non-professional. So, she's not a private eye or a police officer. She's a civilian investigating a crime. My detective is based on my psychologist and my cognitive behavioral therapist who I had been seeing for a little over a decade and a half. Originally, I saw her for obsessive compulsive disorder. I've seen her for depression and panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder over the years, but she's a doctor with whom I've had this therapeutic relationship for a very long time. And, you know, the hero is obviously her own, like literary creation, but she was inspired by my doctor. And so yeah, it's a detective story. Mystery novel with mental health theme set in Vancouver.
Am Johal 25:45
Nice. Is there going to be a Netflix special? Hopefully?
Charles Demers 25:48
Oh, we could, I hope so. I mean, like, ideally, there'll be some sort of bidding war between Netflix and Amazon Prime. And like, whatever streaming services is going to be like the, like Halliburton, in tank entertainment, you know, for although soon there won't be anybody in the tank. So, it'll be just like entertainment for whoever's operating the drone in some like, internet cafe.
Am Johal 26:14
You've been doing comedy for a long time, Charlie, our listeners would have heard you many times on , but also in comedy clubs and bars and other places. Where are you taking that part of your work?
Charles Demers 26:29
You know, obviously, this year has been pretty close to an extinction event for comedy. I've probably done about 10 shows this year, which is pretty staggering. I usually, in a usual year when I sit down to do my taxes, and this has been kind of eerily consistent from year to year. I'm usually on the road for about 30 to 35 days a year. This year, I traveled for three days for work.
Am Johal 26:54
None of which were super spreader events.
Charles Demers 26:57
None of which, no, no, no. I mean, I hope not one of them. I mean, they were two in Winnipeg. So, they theoretically could have been, although one of the shows had six people at it. So, I don't think that can be a super spreader. I think that could have even happened in someone's living room, and it would have been fine.
Charles Demers 27:14
So, I was in Winnipeg Comedy Festival, which actually went ahead with a taping in, I think it was October, and I did a set of material that I hadn't done at any other time this year, except the night before. For the six people at the gas station theater in downtown Winnipeg. Those six people were wonderful. I literally I closed my set with a joke that I had only told once in my life that night to six people. So, I was really prepared for it to be a really devastatingly awful set and to do something like that in a TV taping is especially bad. And what happened instead was just a magical experience. And so, I'm really excited about that set, for when it'll be on I guess, probably in about a year on a CBC. And it's been really tough.
Charles Demers 28:08
I mean, I'm more and more drawn by that kind of like process philosophy and that relational, that idea that, you know, we are what we do, and you know, that we're defined in our relationships and in our activities. And so, then this year is tough, because I don't really get to see any of the people besides my family who will mean much to me and I and I don't get to do the things that have given my life definition. So, it's hard because you know, being a comedian is an important part of who I am. But, you know, am I one? How do you define yourself? How long do you get to be a comedian in between shows.
Charles Demers 28:48
So, this summer marked 16 years in comedy for me, you know, it's been a really weird one. And I'm really hoping that we get to a place soon where we can safely have audiences, again, safely get back into, because it's not really something that I'm interested in doing. Virtually, or, you know, one of the things about stand up is so beautiful is you get into a room with people, there's that same sort of vitality to it that's in, like, live theater, and I know that you're sort of a guy. So, I feel like the essence of live theater kind of should resonate, but you know, especially in 2020, the idea of something that can't just be done over a screen, or a smartphone is you know, sort of revolutionary in and of itself and I just can't wait to be back in rooms with people doing that.
Am Johal 29:42
You've been doing comedy, like, I don't know, as long as like played hockey or something.
Charles Demers 29:48
Yes, yeah. Two remarkable French Canadians, bringing their passion to the populace, directly to the people.
Am Johal 29:57
Now a part that our listeners might not know about is this studying that you're doing at the Vancouver School of Theology and your connection to theology, wondering if you can talk a little bit about that.
Charles Demers 30:08
Yeah, it's not something that I've really talked all that much about publicly. And it's not really something that I've talked about in the sort of public facing way to people who know me from the left, or for people who know me from comedy. And so, and then this year has been a kind of weird sort of installation of it. So, it's still something that I feel a little bit kind of nervous or awkward about talking to people about. It's sort of a process that, for me, culminated after about 10 years of sort of slowly circling back the idea of a kind of religious life. And so, I was I was raised in the Anglican Church. I was supposed to be raised in a Roman Catholic church, but the priest who was supposed to convert, my dad's Qu茅b茅cois, my mom was West Coast, Scottish English Anglophone. She was going to convert into the Roman Catholic Church. But then the priest, who they met with, who I'm told was the same priest who converted Margaret Trudeau, so that she could marry Pierre, was just so rude and so dismissive to my mom that she was like, "That was awful." And so, my dad just went to the Anglican Church instead, and the priest who baptize me. I've been very on brand with you for 丁香园AV, but was Don Grayston, who is the former head of the Institute for the Humanities at 丁香园AV. He's was in Samir Gandesha's job. Before it was Samir's and taught for many years in the humanities department at 丁香园AV. But Don Greyston, was a priest who married my parents and baptized me and did my mother's memorial service in 1991, and actually performed my secular marriage to Cara, at the Wisehall in 2007.
Charles Demers 31:49
But I was sort of in the Anglican Church until certainly early teens, and then as I got into Anarchism, and Marxism, I just sort of drifted from that. And the other thing was that my religious experience up to that point had been pretty much inextricably entangled with my experience of mental illness. So, I was really bound up with my anxiety life and my obsessive-compulsive disorder, blasphemous thoughts. And religious content is actually one of the major categories of primary obsessions, OCD, which is the subset of OCD that I have. And so anyway, it was just this part of my life that I and I was never a strident atheist, and I was never kind of a, you know, super anti. Although I wrote when I was working as a book reviewer in my twenties, I was reviewing books for the Tyee and I reviewed, when it came out. And I'm getting low battery here. So, I hope that we don't get cut off. So, I wrote a review of The God Delusion that was mostly quite positive, although I knew even back then that like, the history in the book was really, really bad. But all in all, I thought it was a fairly convincing book. And I was really thrown by runs quite critical review of it in the London Review Books. So, Eagleton wrote a piece, I think, was called or something like that. And I was just kind of mystified because Eagleton I knew is this like Marxist critic who I just didn't understand what his problem was with Dawkins鈥� book. But over the years, Eagleton expanded his criticism into a full-length book called , which was published as a book by Yale Press. And just over the years, Eagleton his arguments kind of gave me a permission, I think, from my sort of political and intellectual place to address what was a kind of desire to re-engage with that spiritual life.
Charles Demers 31:59
And it all sort of culminated with Don Grayson's funeral in October 2017, which coincided with an episode of real deep depression in my life. And his funeral was at the cathedral downtown. And you know, I was just sitting in this funeral and speaker after speaker was talking about Don and his love of life and his engagement with existence. And I was looking at the Cathedral, which is just a stunningly beautiful building. And I just I felt absolutely nothing, except that I wanted to feel, I wanted to want what Don had had, and that was sort of enough to kind of draw me into a more sort of active engagement. So, I started attending services at cathedral over the next few months.
Charles Demers 34:59
I guess for me, what it comes down to if I have to explain it to non-religious friends, of whom I still probably my friends, you know, that's the majority. I think what it is for me is that I think there are two views of existence that resonate to me, that feel real, that are, I think plausible, and that line up with my internal experience of it. One is a basically the, we're just life, is a completely contingent accident. There's no purpose, there's no, you know, basically the kind of view, consciousness is an illusion, there's no real objective value in the universe. Some people can accommodate that view, and feel like, you know, the kind of the idea of like, well, then it's our responsibility to kindle the light of meaning and the darkness of mere being, right, it's Jung鈥檚 phrase. And I just can't do that, to me, that view of reality, to me, it's very convincing. I don't think there's any a priori reason not to believe that that's the truth of existence. To me, that goes hand in hand with a kind of despairing nihilism that I personally can't get past.
Charles Demers 36:26
Paradoxically, the other plausible accounting of existence to me is that it is something like a sacred gift that essentially, there is an objective meaning or value to our existence. And that within that context, we will have culturally and linguistically specific ways of naming that. And for me, I mean, the historically and socially contingent way of naming that is in Christ. And I, you know, I think I'd have to be an idiot not to see that if I'd been born in Islamabad, or if I'd been born in, you know, Ho Chi Minh City, I wouldn't be an Anglican, right. Like, I almost wasn't an Anglican, just because some priest was rude, right, like so you know, and I grew up and, you know, the first religious conversation that I can remember is with my friend, Nick, who, you know, was a child of the wave of Ugandan refugees who lived in Burnaby, when I was growing up in the 80s, who, you know, were smiley, and, you know, smiling, he was explaining to me why he didn't eat pork. And we, you know, we had that conversation. So that's my understanding of religious life. So, my sense of meeting the reality of God in Christ is I understand that as a culturally contingent meeting, which to me doesn't diminish that, or the reality of it at all, I see that as kind of like, I see that as the way I'm named, you know.
Am Johal 38:17
So, when you look at your bookshelf in the back, I'm sitting in front of my bookshelf in the rooms, and that we read, philosophy and literature and all of these things. Philosophy is kind of like religion for secular people in a way because through these tributaries, intellectual history, as you find a kind of a way, and an orientation in the world. And in many ways, theology can just be viewed as a different type of intellectual tradition that functions on similar terrains. And so, I find it really interesting that you're doing these courses and find something in it, which is amazing and remarkable. And I think it's a really interesting piece to be able to share as well.
Charles Demers 38:57
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's, it is one of these things, where, you know, there's obviously a certain and I would say, you know, to a certain extent, it's well earned and to a certain extent, sorry, for the change in volume level, my phone was about to die. So, I'm now using the plug space that had the microphone in it to plug the phone in so that we don't, you know, I didn't want anyone to think that I got raptured. If I all of a sudden, like I come and explain the beauty of the Christian vision of the world, and then boom, I'm gone. You know, now, I'm in the left hand of God. No, I mean, I think there's a certain prejudice against any kind of religious thinking on the left and elements of that prejudice are well earned, and they're well placed. And I think, for those of us who come to radical politics of the left, primarily through a frame shaped by the European politics of the last few 100 years, I think there's a bit less anxiety in this regard in some spaces on the global left.
Am Johal 40:09
Well, is a great example of somebody who's spiritual and religious person and also is a leading voice in the left.
Charles Demers 40:17
Yeah, I mean, well, and I think like is, so Latin America was obviously the sort of, you know, I won't even say that, because like, Latin America is where we associate the ideas of progressive Roman Catholicism like Roman Catholic, when we think of the meeting place of Roman Catholic Christianity and politics, we tend to think of sort of quite politically conservative manifestations to that, particularly in the States, although they were a big part of the democratic coalition for many years. But in Latin America, so , who actually wasn't Catholic, pretty sure he was a Methodist, but an Argentinian theologian, he wrote about how in Europe, a lot of the debate started theoretically, and, and proceeded from there. Whereas in Latin America, Christians and Marxists had found themselves in a place where they were, practically speaking, already collaborating on various projects, and then had to find a theoretical explanation for something that was already happening practically.
Charles Demers 41:26
But Bonino pointed to Gramsci and the Italian Communist Party as being essentially the sort of incubator for the possibility for that, because unlike in Russia, and unlike in Western Europe, in Italy, Gramsci was the really the first of that generation of European Communist Party thinkers, who not only was willing to, like, indulge Christianity as like, an unfortunate personal idiosyncrasy that somebody might have, but actually was willing to say like, there's maybe a positive contribution to be made. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the Italian Communist Party was the biggest and most vital and most vibrant in continental Europe for many decades. And then, in North America, I mean, it's funny, because when we think about like Protestants in North American politics, for the last 45 years, that's been , and the white evangelicals, and gay marriage debates, and all that kind of stuff. If you talked about, you know, Protestants in sticking their nose in politics, in the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s, you were talking about and Martin Luther King, like.
Am Johal 42:48
So many leftist philosophers that have written books on .
Charles Demers 42:52
Yeah, yes, totally. Yeah. So, I mean, I also think that there are big differences between Christianity and socialism. And I think that those differences are also useful. So, I, for instance, think the unions always have to be pushing for more for their members. Like that's just, that has to be the position. We can then as human beings with a spiritual dimension and the ethical aesthetic dimension, we can discuss the problems and limitations of imagining our lives as nothing but a steady accumulation of material objects and increasing material comfort. We can discuss all those things in the dimension of, and I don't think that has to happen at a religious level, like you said, that can happen at a philosophical level as well. But that's not an appropriate place for the socialist movement, or social democratic politics, or the labour movement to be engaging. The labour movement and social democracy and socialism, they always have to be demanding more, and then in our private spiritual lives, we can address the question of, is there more to all this than just piling up stuff, which I think yes, there is. But don't tell the boss that.
Am Johal 44:20
Charlie Demers, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. People know you as a comedian, but it's great to be able to have a serious conversation with you because even your comedy is actually quite serious. So, thank you.
Charles Demers 44:33
So great to see you, man. I just want to give you a hug. It's like seeing you and talking to you. It's just reminded me what I miss so much and it's great to see you Am.
Am Johal 44:45
Love you, Charlie. Thank you again.
Charles Demers 44:48
Yeah, love you too.
[theme music]
Paige Smith 44:49
And thank you for listening. Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by 丁香园AV's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. This has been our conversation with author/activist/comedian/East Van dad, Charlie Demers. You can find Charlie's newest book, Primary Obsessions, and his Juno nominated comedy album, Fatherland, at the links in our show notes. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time on Below the Radar.
[theme music fades]