Rex Murphy Doesn’t Speak for Me
As a Newfoundlander, as a Canadian, Rex Murphy doesn’t speak for me. He’s a liar, a champion of corporate greed, an enemy of science, and a traitor to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Rex, who used to work for the CBC, now peddles his vitriol for the National Post, which is the last stop for conservative intellectuals before irrelevance (or extremism). And yes, I recognize that I too am irrelevant, but the difference is that irrelevance is my starting point: it’s Rex’s final destination.
Rex’s most recent piece was about the riots in the US capitol. It was a shameful work of hate. But before I analyze that, you should know that Rex has been embarrassing Newfoundlanders and Canadians for a long, long time.
For as long as climate science has existed, Rex has steadfastly rejected it. Whether it’s rising sea levels, disappearing ice, 11,000 scientists declaring a climate emergency, or a declaration at the UN about the impending collapse of civilization, Rex ignores it all.
What’s so sinful about his rejection is that he does so without presenting a single argument couched even remotely in fact. Instead he uses facetious propaganda. He attempts to portray climate activists and scientists in religious terms as “zealots,” “eco-radicals,” and members of a “doomsday cult.” It’s ironic that such an educated man employs such base tactics to undermine the most important message humanity has ever attempted to give itself.
For Rex, the only thing that matters is the Canadian economy, which to him is synonymous with Alberta oil.
Rex has consistently portrayed the oil industry as a noble, civilization-sustaining endeavour that is under attack in a green war by bug-eyed fanatics screaming about a green economy. To Rex nothing is more important oil and gas, and if saving the planet means putting even one oilsands or agricultural worker out of a job, then to hell with the science. Raze the forests and sell the oil.
Yes, Alberta will always have a champion in Rex Murphy. And in this zealous defence of his adopted Western brethren we find the betrayal of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, the people he abandoned long ago.
Rex resists a rapid transition away from oil and gas because of the effect it would have on the economy and the lives of his beloved Western Canadians. He detests the Paris Agreement for the same reason.
In short, he rejects science for fear of the unemployment line.
And yet, as much as Rex loves to playfully dismiss climate science, he also loves to wax nostalgic about his home province, and nowhere is he more eloquent and verbose than when he’s speaking about the closure of the Newfoundland and Labrador inshore cod fishery. A quick comparison of Rex’s thoughts on climate science and the science behind the collapse of the fishery begs the question:
Why didn’t Rex fight against the closure? And why hasn’t he been screaming bloody murder to bring it back?
Why isn’t he doing for Newfoundland and Labrador what he’s doing for Alberta?
Why isn’t he shaming the federal government? Slamming the influence of Greenpeace and the Sierra club? Calling the science bunk? Why isn’t he saying directly that the Newfoundland inshore cod fishery should never have been closed and should be reopened immediately for the sake of the Newfoundland economy, which was crippled by the closure and never recovered?
I may have missed something while sifting through the detritus of his work over the last thirty years, but I didn’t see any of the passion and fight he deploys for Alberta oil and gas used in defence of the fishery.
Here he says, “The fishery may return, but never as it was.” In this eloquent piece he laments the effect of the moratorium on Newfoundland and Labrador, but nowhere does he call it unjust. A failure of policy. A blockade on Newfoundland’s economic potential. All I’ve seen from him, over and over since July 2, 1992, is acceptance.
Surely it can’t be the science that has Rex convinced about the legitimacy of the closure? Rex has made it very clear that science (nor reality) doesn’t matter where jobs are concerned. And since maintaining the closure of the commercial fishery is based partly on the same climate science he spends every other article at the Post scoffing at, surely Rex should have zero problems with campaigning for its grand reopening?
But no, Rex is okay with the decimation of the Newfoundland economy via the elimination of its most important industry. He, who wields words like Santa and treats every day like Christmas, only has Alberta on the nice list and coal (fittingly enough) for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Of course, in reality the closure was necessary because the lack of fish was tangible. The boats, once weighed down to the gunwales and lined up in the harbour to get to the plants, were coming in nearly empty. I remember myself as a young teenager being nervous at my father’s stoic concern about the lack of fish. But this shouldn’t matter, not to Rex Murphy, who cares only for economic prosperity. I guess the question is, why do facts not matter when it’s oil and gas, but matter when it’s northern cod?
Is it because the fish were almost literally gone when the moratorium was put in place? Is that it? Does Rex need to put his fingers in the wounds of the planet before he’ll accept the science? See the holes in its hands? Does he need a storm so powerful that it literally shakes the island of Newfoundland? Maybe a record snowfall that’s followed by an eight day state of emergency? Wildfires where the smoke spreads across continents and oceans? Species adjusting their behaviour due to global heating?
Or maybe it’s something simpler.
While researching this piece I came across a page that invited me to, “Click here to request Rex Murphy for your event.” Maybe that’s why he abandoned Newfoundland and Labrador, why he won’t reject science and call for the reopening of the fishery.
Because Newfoundland doesn’t pay like Alberta does.
And that brings us to Rex’s most recent foray to the dark side.
His latest essay at the Post was triggered by the pro-Trump riots in the capitol that claimed the lives of four people, including a police officer, and disturbed a nation to its roots.
It’s an ugly, subversive piece. In it he starts by condemning violence in general but then, like any well-paid, conservative gigolo he quickly turns the discussion to the BLM protests and the violence that occurred there. He draws a line — camouflaged in nonsense about the fragility of democracy — between what happened after George Floyd’s murder and the violence at the Capitol Building, subtly implying that the latter was justified by the former (while pretending to condemn both). And through it all not only does he refuse to condemn Trump for inciting the riots or failing to immediately call the National Guard, he doesn’t even mention Trump once.
To clarify: in an article about the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021, he doesn’t say Donald Trump’s name. He certainly doesn’t quote the speech Donald gave to rile up the mob.
But do you know who Rex does quote — extensively — in that article?
Why, Rex Murphy, of course.
Yes, Rex quotes himself twice from previous articles he’s written, and therein we find what Rex Murphy admires most: himself. And what he loves more than anything else in the world: the sound of his own voice.
It’s a joke. A sad, sad joke.
Rex is 73 years old. He won’t see the mass migration of people from the world’s coastal areas. He won’t see the poisoned water and polluted air or the crash of civilization, so he doesn’t care. Like me, he hasn’t encountered unconscious bias or microaggressions or discrimination, so he dismisses it. He ignores science when it inconveniences him, defends Trumpism, and has sold his soul to wealthy oil barons.
He speaks for and represents no one who matters, just himself and the billionaires who profit off the destruction of our future on the backs of the labour of the poor. His homeland, so hard against the sea, is already under assault from rising tides, vicious storms, and shrinking biodiversity and he doesn’t give a shit.
He speaks for money, attention, and greed.
But not for me, nor the millions like me.
