Just like the easy oil wells of old, just like the great bison that once ruled the Great Plains, the piercing insults of pre-pandemic politics are an exhausted resource. No longer is “far-right,” “fascist” and — gasp — “racist” hitting like it did in the pre-pandemic age. That Sharpie, once a favourite of Democratic operatives and Liberal Party social media staff, has run dry.
Their old denigrations against Donald Trump and crew blunted, the Democratic Party has swapped to a lighter calibre with “weird,” a term that presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris has employed, according to some sources, since 2018. Used correctly, it deals a double blow to the opponent by delivering a schoolyard flavour of humiliation to its target while positioning the source as “normal.”
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, notwithstanding their supposed abhorrence of “American-style” politics, have been quick to mimic the tactic.
Trudeau himself deployed it on Thursday, in response to a post by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to promote party memberships by insinuating that the prime minister is a communist sympathizer.
“I think this guy needs to touch grass,” was Trudeau’s retort, insinuating that his opponent had become debased from normalcy. (In French, he said that Poilievre should “prendre l’air,” get some air.)
Poilievre has frequently used the unknown extent of the prime minister’s affection for authoritarian communist regimes as an attack: he’s accused Trudeau and his father of being “Marxists” in at least one door-knocking outing in 2023, and frequently reminds crowds that the prime minister once declared his “admiration” for China’s “basic dictatorship.” Trudeau, whether to maintain an air of mystery or whether to preserve his honesty, rarely engages on the matter, let alone offer any denials. Now, it’s become an opportunity to try to stigmatize conservatism in public.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser employed the tactic more directly. On Thursday, he accused Poilievre of “using incel hashtags to find friends online, begging for the attention of the far-right, and posting weird wood videos.”
The first was a dig at the 2022 controversy in which it was found that Poilievre’s YouTube account had employed the hidden tag “MGTOW,” short for “men going their own way,” a decentralized online men’s movement which, depending on who you ask, can be characterized as an independence-from-women movement or female hatred movement. Regardless, the tags were removed shortly after their discovery, and Poilievre condemned their use.
“Weird wood videos,” on the other hand, was a dig at an advertisement in which Poilievre admires the “posts and beams” of a log cabin he built from reclaimed wood, touching the marks where an axe once struck. His message: Canada, too, can be reclaimed. Well-received by conservatives and the internet in general, Liberals made fun of the Opposition leader’s proximity to and respect for the lumber.
Liberals are certainly taking a swing, but it’s one that will probably miss. Only an unhandy indoorsman would admonish pride for a treasured work of carpentry as “weird,” so the insult in this context says more about its speaker.
Some think this new toy is genius. One American strategic communications professor, who the Associated Press interviewed on recent deployments of “weird,” thought it clever: “it frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses.” A Washington Post writer cautioned against its use, claiming that it understates the threat. The consensus, it seems, is still out.
It marks, however, a couple of important departures: it’s a walk back from Chicken Little cries of doom, and a subtle admission that normalness is back in.
For a long time, progressive media — and millennial culture more broadly — celebrated weirdness. As the 2010s progressed, notions of “normal” were increasingly rejected as artificial, and even discriminatory. Trend-chasing cities increasingly sprouted the “Keep ___ Weird” slogan of Austin and Portland. In 2020, a book entitled “Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World” attained modest popularity as it ran the media circuit. “Weird” was the authentic way of being, and eventually, one of the defining elements of millennial humour at its zenith.
“Weird” even escaped the inclusive paranoia of the 2020s relatively unscathed, though a New York Times columnist fretted over whether its use amounted to an ableist act in 2022.
Conservatives never adapted to this zeitgeist. It wasn’t in their nature. They stood for tradition and consistency; the movement of boring economics at best.
Liberals embraced “weird,” and it did them a lot of good. They were in near-perfect resonance with the millennial undercurrents of the time. They were the party of fun, the party that loved pop protests, the party that inducted queerness into its iconography, the party whose leader could ride a unicycle to demonstrate his relatable randomness. Conservatives couldn’t poke fun; when they tried, they were ridiculed for it.
Now, it’s bad to be “weird,” and the Liberal and Democratic left know it. Contempt for what was once met with relaxed acceptance is growing: the public glorification of sex, drug use, climate hysteria, racial guilt … No, what the people want is normal — suburban, traditional, family-oriented, law-abiding, hardworking, equality-upholding normal — and it’s in the heartland of conservative territory.
National Post