Off the Deep End

 

Despite some improper attempts to shout down Trudeau at campaign stops, and even a little gravel throwing, I was mildly pleasantly surprised by the relative lack of acrimony in the recent Canadian election, at least compared to recent elections in the US and UK.

But now Maclean’s has sullied its reputation by publishing a late hit piece on the People’s Party of Canada: “The PPC got more than 800,000 votes, and that should worry all of us.”

I’m not sure it should worry the people who voted for the People’s Party, should it? I guess, chillingly, the 800,000 fellow Canadians who voted PPC are now not part of “us.”

Author Pam Palmater refers to the PPC as a “threat to public safety.” This promotes hatred towards a group of fellow citizens.

It would be different if the PPC advocated violence, like Antifa or Black Lives Matter. But the PPC is a political party. As leader Maxime Bernier said when he was arrested in Manitoba, “my only weapons are my words.”

Palmater refers to the PPC as “far right” and “populist,” and is alarmed at how quickly it is growing. 

These concerns are contradictory. If it is indeed growing quickly, it is no longer “far right.” Being “extreme” does not make you wrong; that is the ad populum fallacy. Gandhi, Mandela, Einstein, Socrates, or Jesus were extreme in their milieu. But beyond that, there is no absolute standard of “right” and “left”: positions considered right wing in Canada would be left wing in the US. The standard is how distant a party or faction’s views are from the majority opinion. Since the PPC garnered a larger share of the popular vote than the Greens, you cannot call them far right unless you also refer to the Greens as far left. Nobody does.  It sounds foolish.

In fact, when polled on the issues, the average Canadian’s political views are usually closer to the PPC’s than the other political parties: on immigration, for example. Palmater admits this by calling them “populist.” You cannot be both populist and far right.

Every political party in a democracy of course claims to be populist, to be for the common people. By declaring the PPC populist, Palmater is saying she believes the rest are lying, and is, further, endorsing their right to lie to the public. Of course they do not have the public’s interests at heart. That’s for suckers.

Palmater goes on to lie about the PPC in detail. She says it “includes those who were rejected by the Conservative party,” and cites Derek Sloan—who is not a member of the PPC. She says it harbours those who have “gained some degree of notoriety from racist rhetoric,” and cites Bill Capes. Capes had put up some jokes on his Twitter feed a few years ago that, while they sound merely good-natured, could have offended. He has apologized. Demonstrably, he had gained no notoriety for the tweets―or they would have been turned up in the PPC’s vetting process. 

Palmater point out with concern that hate crimes grew in Canada last year. This is no doubt meant to imply that the PPC has something to do with this. Why is the PPC any more responsible than the Anti-Defamation League? It is the left that is fomenting race hatred in Canada.

Palmater claims that “Canada produces more far-right [sic] online content per web user than any other country.” If true, that shows the need for the PPC: it has a legitimate constituency in Canada, that is otherwise not being represented electorally. Besides having the right to be represented, it is dangerous to the public peace to suppress the views and voice of one’s fellow citizens. Yet that is exactly what Palmater demands.

Palmater cites examples of the PPC’s intolerable far right views: the PPC “promises to maximize freedom of expression …; cut funding to universities if they silence those espousing hateful [i.e. dissident] views; cut funding for CBC; cut funding for foreign aide [sic]; and lower the number of immigrants and stop the flow of refugees into Canada.”

In other words, Palmater is opposed to freedom of speech, wants government control of the media, and wants unrestricted immigration into Canada.

I can see legitimate reasons why many of her fellow citizens might disagree. There is a reason why freedom of speech is guaranteed in our constitution, and in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is a reason why nations have borders. And the PPC nowhere calls for an end to accepting refugees; Palmater only imagines this, or lies.

No doubt aware of how reasonable the PPC platform might sound, Palmater explains that “beneath the surface of these promises are deeply embedded racist views against non-white people.” In other words, she can read minds, and wants to root out and prosecute thought crimes.

She does cite “their plan to repeal multiculturalism laws and cut funding for multiculturalism with a view to forcing integration into Canadian society and culture.” This is “racist” only if you think culture is racially determined and those of other races cannot be expected ever to integrate. That is a profoundly racist claim, although an increasingly common one on the left. No doubt they must be kept in ghettos, and not allowed to vote.

She concludes by warning against “Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups.” This would be more compelling if the Proud Boys were white supremacists, and if they had anything to do with the PPC. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, Palmater and Maclean’s are dangerously insane. There’s a lot of that going around.