Demonization

 

Andrew Coyne is upset at the growing tendency towards “demonizing opponents” in Canadian politics, and lays the blame on the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre.

I used to admire Coyne immensely. Now the most charitable thought I can muster is that he has gone insane.

I remember on a visit to Toronto years ago, when I was still living in the Middle East, a vivid, professionally done mural in Kensington Market showing Rob Ford with fangs and bloodshot eyes—a literal demonization. I remember, longer than that ago, visiting a bookstore in Kamloops—hardly a radical hotbed—and seeing all the souvenirs claiming that men were boorish and oppressive. Har har. We are not even allowed to say that the Indian Residential Schools were not genocidal. Demonizing the Catholic Church is socially obligatory.

Justin Trudeau has loudly called the Freedom Convoy misogynists, racists, Nazis, Islamophobes homophobes, foreign agents, insurrectionists. He has said the same of anyone who would not get the vaccine, and asked whether we should allow them to “take up space.”

Yet the problem is Conservative rhetoric? That is, rhetoric from Pierre Poilievre and Conservative MPs? What exactly has Poilievre said that could compare with this? And if he had, isn’t turnabout fair play?