Wild in the Streets

 

Justin Trudeau is increasingly facing hostile crowds wherever he goes, crowds shouting things like “traitor” and “criminal.” Trudeau seems to lean into this, lingering, smiling and waving—almost as if he is taunting them. 

Brian Lilley warns this is because the crowds make him look good, and make his opposition look immoderate and scary. They play into his hands. They are winning him sympathy and support.

I think Lilley is wrong. He has fallen for the moderate fallacy, which all professional politicos seem to believe, even though it is a formal logical fallacy, and has been disproven repeatedly in political practice. If it were true, after all, that the moderate ticket wins, that most of the votes are in the centre, the Liberal Democrats would be in perpetual power in Britain.

Has the left, effectively in power in Canada and in the US, almost in perpetual power, been conspicuously moderate in recent years? Has Black Lives Matter? Has Extinction Rebellion and the environmentalist movement? Have the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the trans movement? Has Antifa? Has Idle No More and the aboriginal movement, with their church burnings?

This is how it really works: the average person mostly wants peace and quiet and to get along with their lives. They don’t care about right or wrong. If a small group kicks up a fuss, they will want them suppressed. January 6 was suppressed precisely because it looked insignificant, not a real threat to anyone. Or the Freedom Convoy. Unlike, say, Antifa or Black Lives Matter. If this does not work, if the group seems persistent, those in charge, and the general public, will give them whatever they demand to settle them down. This is what the left has been exploiting for many years: the appeasement instinct. 

It would work just as well for the right. Indeed, the right must do it, or lose ground indefinitely. It is necessary to make it more trouble for those in power, or for the big corporations, to appease the left than it is to appease the right. Only then will the right make progress.

We are seeing this now. Disney, for example is trapped between irate leftists demanding no dwarfs appear in Snow White, and rightists no longer watching, no longer going to Disneyland, declaring this a travesty. Bud Light or the LA Dodgers are caught between irate trans people demanding public tribute, and irate Christians and “frat boys” protesting and no longer buying. All these corporations probably wanted was to keep everyone happy and keep peacefully making profits. 

Because until now the right was determined to stay polite and reasonable, the left kept always getting what they want. The squeaking wheel gets the grease.

Now the right is employing the same tactics. It may be distasteful; public protests are anti-democratic by their nature. But there is no alternative, so long as the other side is employing the tactic. And it is working. Contrary to Lilley’s prediction, Poilievre and the Conservatives are rising, not falling, in the polls.