In recent days Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have very obviously received marching orders from the leader’s office with respect to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. The new line is, “he has something to hide.” Liberal House leader Karina Gould posted a whole video about it last week, in addition to levelling the accusation in the House of Commons in recent days — as did MPs Kevin Lamoureux, Mark Gerretsen, and the prime minister himself.
If Poilievre didn’t have “something to hide,” the theory goes, then he would surely seek national-security clearance so he could see the names of parliamentarians implicated in foreign interference in Canadian elections.
Reasonable people can disagree on Poilievre’s approach to this issue. But there’s a perfectly simple strategic explanation for it, which Poilievre himself has offered: The more confidential information he knows and is bound to keep confidential, the less free he’ll be to speak and criticize (and insinuate about) the government on the issue. (Former CSIS director Richard Fadden recently suggested Poilievre could choose to be briefed only on matters pertaining to Conservatives, which strikes me as a very reasonable course of action.)
So far as I’ve seen, no Liberal has yet mustered the nerve to suggest what exactly the Conservative leader might be hiding. But a quick Google search will show you what a lot of wacky people out there think Poilievre is hiding: Basically, anything and everything you can think of. The Liberals are clearly nodding and winking to that crowd.
Dean Blundell, a former radio DJ who now runs online commentary site Crier Media, is perhaps the most high-profile member of TruAnon — a term coined by CNN’s Jake Tapper to describe Justin Trudeau’s most rabid and unhinged defenders (a comparison to the famously nutty conspiracy theorists of QAnon). To be fair, Blundell seems less enamoured of Trudeau than he is utterly consumed with hatred for Poilievre, but that’s the bedrock upon which TruAnon rests. And Blundell traffics in all the TruAnon tropes nonetheless.
He has questioned Poilievre’s parentage: “We know very little about Pierre’s upbringing — rumors of who his biological father is run more than rampant,” he wrote last year. One unfounded theory is that he is actually the son of Calgary lawyer Gerald Chipeur, who represented both the Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper personally. (The mechanics of and reasoning behind this conspiracy theory escape me entirely, I’m afraid.)
Harper is head of the International Democratic Union, Blundell noted, “with members from India, China, Russia, and Hungary. Their goal? To disrupt democracy in progressive countries in the name of Abrahamic/conservative nationalism.”
The ne plus ultra TruAnon account belongs to someone who goes by the name Vicki Campbell on X (formerly Twitter). (Her tagline: “Mother, Grandmother, Wife. Proud Canadian Liberal #WomenAgainstPoilievre. Move Canada forward. #IStandwithTrudeau.”)
“Vicki” is not a nice person, at all. Her greatest hits include suggesting a Muslim woman protesting gender-ideology “indoctrination” by public schools be “sen(t) home so she remembers why she came here in the first place”; calling for Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis to be “deported back to Jamaica where she was born”; and describing Anaida Poilievre a “parasite on our immigration system.” (TruAnon is convinced the wife of the Conservative leader has some kind of nefarious affiliations from her upbringing in Venezuela.)
“He has no heart and he has no soul. He’s an empty, miserable, revolting human being,” “Vicki” has said of Poilievre.
You have likely noticed that Poilievre is constantly accused by the media and the Liberals of winking to vile conspiracy theorists. Railing against the World Economic Forum had been an uncontroversial element of left-wing politics for decades, but when Poilievre set his sights on the Davos set, it suddenly became dangerous.
A beautiful example of that dichotomy landed in The Walrus last month, in an article headlined “Welcome to the Poilievre Conspiracy Theory Vortex.”
“Look, I’m no fan of the WEF,” University of Alberta law professor Timothy Caulfield wrote. “But (Poilievre) is very obviously playing to a base that has embraced the paranoid belief about a secret plot to control the world and take away our basic rights.”
That’s pretty much exactly what Naomi Klein has been arguing for donkeys’ years, without being accused of leading the country toward ruin.
Then there is Diagolon. Poilievre has made very plain his views on this sexist, racist, antisemitic and fanatically anti-Trudeau group of anti-lockdowners that coalesced online during the pandemic. Among de facto leader Jeremy MacKenzie’s greatest hits: encouraging his followers to rape Anaida Poilievre.
“These men are dirtbags,” Poilievre said in a statement. “Frankly, like most Canadians, until about a month ago I had never heard of Diagolon and these losers. They are all odious.”
MacKenzie and his compatriots have nothing good to say about Poilievre either. Why would they? Their views and desires are miles outside the Canadian mainstream.
Yet the Conservative leader is routinely accusedof winking if not outright pandering to Diagolon and other extremist groups. Five Liberal MPs, including Trudeau, accused him of such in a single day’s sitting of the House of Commons in April.
If it’s fair for reporters to question Poilievre about links to Diagolon, despite their mutual antipathy, then it’s surely fair for them to question Trudeau about the odious behaviour of TruAnon, which worships the ground on which he treads and quivers at the very sight of him.
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