Anybody with a modicum of brain matter should realize by now that Pepe Poilievre isn't just Tory Trump, he's Dweeb DeSantis. He's throwing a grenade into Canadian politics by (literally) shaking hands with white supremacists. So why is the media still — still! — trying to run cover for this guy?
. . .
Over the weekend, I commemorated (mourned, really, but that's another story altogether) my birthday, so I wasn't online a whole lot to check on the latest happenings of the CPC's ongoing shitshow or whatever inanities the ignorant pundits were griping about Justin Trudeau's hair, vacation, or whatever else.
But I did check in a few times, and — by gawd, King, that's Jeremy Mackenzie's music!
Who's Jeremy Mackenzie, you might ask? Welp, to put it succinctly... he's a Nazi.
Pierre Poilievre is ignoring calls to clearly disavow a man identified by a federal counterterrorism organization as a national security threat after Poilievre shook hands with the far-right extremist at a meet-and-greet in Nova Scotia.
During a campaign event in Dartmouth on Saturday, the Conservative leadership candidate was photographed alongside Jeremy Mackenzie, a far-right influencer previously arrested for harassing Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health.Mackenzie is widely identified as the leader of the “Diagolon,” a far-right militia-style accelerationist group that was linked to a plot to murder RCMP officers during last winter’s convoy blockade at Coutts, Alberta.
Broadly speaking, accelerationists seek to destabilize society in order to bring about its collapse.
But of course Pepe wouldn't disavow Jeremy Mackenzie the lyin' king, because Pepe is an accelerationist in his own way too. Which is why all he (or his team of deplorables, which includes Emperor Harpertine) would muster in response was a mealy-mouthed "I don't know anything about David Duke," followed by a lame whataboutism relitigating the tired Aladdingate nontroversy about Justin Trudeau. ("No racist, no racist, you're the racist.")
Whataboutism and bothsidesism also seems to be the default response coming from some of Canada's most insulated, privileged, and, therefore, ignorant stale pale male pundits, like Martin Patriquin in an exchange with Nova Scotia RCMP true-believer Stephen Maher:
Marty later became apopleptic when Gerald Butts (who is much too gracious, though it reflects well upon him considering all he's been through) had the temerity to actually call on him to do journalism, and not just give a right-wing dickhead the benefit of the doubt — like the Americans did:
Then to make matters worse, Paul "DicklessPW" Wells joined the fray and made this tragicomic duo a stooge trifecta, writing a whole-ass piece for his Substack that Pepe was winning on "muh economy" because Chrystia Freeland is invisible (or, more likely, neither he nor his phallocentric colleagues are bothering to pay attention to her) — and the actual honest-to-god white supremacist he buddied up with was merely a "goof." (You know, like how the would-be Oswald at Rideau Cottage was simply a "friendly sausage maker"?)
(And now the Globe & Fail's resident bowtied stuffed shirt John Ibbitson has made it a barbershop quartet, with his latest dreck lauding Pepe's meme-tinged outreach to so-called "normies." Ibbitson, it should be noted, wrote a book with Ipsos/Oopsos pollster Darrell Bricker during the Harper Reich, on why the CPC was destined to become the new "natural governing party" of Canada. Perhaps he's due for a sequel, called The Unbearable Caucasity of Being a Dope.)
You know who is paying a whole lot of attention to Pepe chumming around with Nazis and then issuing non-denial denials just like the Florida Men he emulates? The people who stand to be victimized by them, and who already have been victimized by them and continue to be victimized by them. Most of these people are, unsurprisingly, invisible to the insular and privileged stale pale male Ottawa (and especially, western) "pundit class" who, just like their American counterparts, ranks "muh economy" higher on their list of concerns than "threats to democracy." For most of us down here (and probably a lot of Canadians too, especially those who stand to be victimized), it's the #1 concern.
Fortunately, there are some good eggs out there in #cdnmedia land who are doing due diligence in sounding the alarm about Skippy and his friends (or, "acquaintances") who do pose a threat to democracy and to marginalized people in particular. Like Luke LeBrun of Press Progress and Max Fawcett of the National Observer, whose most recent piece deals specifically with Pepe and his grand wizards from Diagolon Alley.
So why do Conservatives fall back on equivocation and deflection when it comes to people like MacKenzie and his fellow travellers? Maybe it’s because they think they need their votes. The Conservative movement in Canada right now seems consumed with winning back voters who defected to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada in the 2021 election. We see that in Alberta, where the candidates to replace [departing premier Jason] Kenney seem to be engaged in a contest to see who can flirt most aggressively with the province’s separatist movement. We see that in Ottawa, where Poilievre seems determined to transform the Conservative Party of Canada into the Convoy Party of Canada.
Or, more appropriately, the Republican Party of Canada. (Feels bad, man.)
Other participants in the good men project, like the aforementioned Evan Scrimshaw and Gerald Butts, aren't sitting idly by or deflecting to "muh economy" either. It would have been nice had the "in-crowd" of #cdnmedia listened to the civil servant, Michael Wernick, who they rode out on a rail around the same time as they did Butts, for warning that a far bigger scandal than a cabinet minister's public tantrum was the rise of white supremacist violence in Canada and the politicians who enable it. Instead, all we have is Gerry sharing the cries for help from Global News journalist Rachel Gilmore, who is now facing threats at gunpoint from some of Pepe's biggest fans.
As her senior colleagues — like Ibbitson and Wells — write that he is focusing on “bread and butter” issues for the “normies,” the journalist Poilievre attacked is now facing death threats from armed nutbars.
But it's because the leopards aren't biting their faces why most of #cdnmedia personalities have nothing but a tut-tut to offer. Even as they rightfully sent an outpouring of support for now-former CTV anchor Lisa LaFlamme, when she was unceremoniously axed in the most sexist and ageist manner by the network's bratty, Freudian executive Michael Melling, for daring to "go grey" and push back on his abusive micromanaging. But for Rachel, for Erica Ifill, for Supriya Dwivedi, for the Toronto Star's Saba Eitizaz? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Canada is at a crossroads, and it's time to stand up to Pepe Poilievre and his band of GOP goons. Threats to democracy are the highest they've been since the rise of fascism in the 1930s, and "Canada nice" won't cut it anymore. It can't simply be ignored, as most if not all of these "pundits" and insular career columnists seem intent upon doing, in hopes that it will go away, and the Conservatives become "respectable" again. Neither will "sunny ways" be sufficient any longer, though the Liberals have the fortune of about three years of runway to curbstomp the convoy Cons into the dirt before an actual campaign gears up. Ordinary, decent people have to play their part too. Above all, fascism must be treated like the cancer that it is, and excised from the diseased host of the body politic. It's imperative to "flatten the curve."
In short: Canada needs to reject its most toxic of uncontrolled substances: conservatism itself.
School's back in session pretty soon, kids, so remember the most important lesson: Just say no to thugs.
