Saturday, February 12, 2022

A Trumpified Canada?

Are we being Trumpified? A clear segment of the population has succumbed to the Trump Disease. Susan Delacourt writes:

In late 2018, Steve Bannon, one of the leading strategists behind the rise of Donald Trump, swaggered across a stage in downtown Toronto and spoke portentously about the “great turmoils to come” in the world order.

“Our strength is the ‘deplorables,’ just like in Canada. It’s the little guy. It’s upon their shoulders everything rests and they’re the backbone of the populist movement,” Bannon said in his closing arguments in a public debate with journalist David Frum.

Events in Canada over the past couple of weeks certainly look like Bannon’s turmoil fantasies come to life. A Trump-style rally, minus the ex-president, has escalated into a full-fledged emergency in Canada’s capital and its largest province.

We have our own deplorables:

“I see absolute cross-pollination between that movement there and what’s happening in the United States,” veteran U.S. journalist Alex Wagner told Ben Rhodes, the host of the “Pod Saves the World” podcast and a former national security aide to Barack Obama.

The revealing parallel is not the anger of the crowds, Wagner observed, but the joy. “That’s part of the whole thing, right? That there are people installing hot tubs,” she said. “There’s like a sort of rowdy carnival-like atmosphere, which is something you see at every Trump rally.”

Delacourt puts the question squarely:

Is Canada undergoing a political earthquake — a shifting of the tectonic plates under our democracy — or a large-scale national security incident, a one-off? In the newsroom, we might ask: Do we put our political reporters on this story, or our war correspondents?

The answer may be in a new book, Reclaiming Populism, by Paul Somerville and Eric Portzer:

It’s getting a lot of attention now because of the convoy, but also among some governments because of what the book has to say about keeping governments from falling into populist discontent.

Good news: their research has shown that Canada, unlike the United States or Britain, doesn’t have the required ingredients for a populist movement to take hold in any real way.

“What we’re seeing in Ottawa, in Canada, is not populism,” says Summerville, a former financial executive who has made some forays into politics over the years, including running as an NDP candidate in Toronto. “It’s a natural political event that comes after two years (of the pandemic) that goes against every way we’ve been living. It’s not the same as the long-brewing populist eruptions.”

Protzer and Summerville have closely analyzed what exactly was brewing in countries such as the United States when populism crashed the gates of power. Populism, they found, requires deep, entrenched economic unfairness — a general sense in a large part of the population that people are trapped in their current economic classes. An absence of “social mobility” is how the experts describe it. That is a much more dire situation in the U.S. than it is in Canada, they argue. In social-mobility terms, Canada and the United States are worlds apart.

Protzer, a research fellow at Harvard University, says frustration with COVID-19 restrictions — the spark for the convoy — is very different from the historic frustrations that gave rise to Trump or even Boris Johnson in the U.K. He describes the latter this way: “Two generations of economic unfairness, where people have felt that success is a product of family origins and elite machinations and not as a result of talent and effort.”

There are those who would argue that we have two generations of unfairness in Canada. We will soon see whose analysis is right.

Image:cfr.org 

18 comments:

Rural said...

Those working so hard to destroy our democracy and our access to incoming goods and outgoing trade should perhaps spend a little time in Russia or China before the scream too loud, Owen. I bet the folks in Hong Kong could educate them about what 'freedom' looks like under a different government!

Owen Gray said...

The self-absorbed have a stunted definition of freedom, Rural. Those who live in open prisons really know the meaning of freedom.

Lorne said...

Whether or not this is a one-off does not begin to address the terrible damage these shameless displays do to our reputation and our economy, Owen. We watch as the authorities seem impotent to restore order, and the Americans are likely to be taking real lessons from this when it comes to trade with Canada. Edward Keenan addresses that issue today:

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2022/02/11/border-blockade-is-a-disaster-in-the-making-for-canada-us-trade.html

Owen Gray said...

The Americans are looking for reliable supply chains, Lorne. We don't look very reliable. Thanks for the link.

thwap said...

These sorts of idiots are always around. They're being stirred-up by right-wing grifters and the interminable pandemic that is the result of Canadian federal and provincial governments' (at best) half-assed attempts to deal with it.

Neo-liberals don't know how to deal with the anger they create and "conservative" grifters know how to manipulate that anger.

Owen Gray said...

Your last sentence is spot on, thwap.

lungta said...

Yep
I do believe much like trump with jan 6
there are a few behind the scene boys (and girls)
drooling
and waiting to possibly be installed.

Owen Gray said...

It's clear that there's cross-border involvement here, lungta.

Anonymous said...

10:42 I have spent time in China. In 2007 when it was bit more open than it is now I taught there. I took a break from working in S.Korea at the time Found myself being interrogated by the police there. After several hours they let me go for forgetting to report to the nearest police station upon landing in China within 20 hours. Now,I would not consider going there. The people protesting in Canada do not know what freedom means. They have been free to drive long distance and free to perform their protest. Now, it is time to go home. Anyong

Owen Gray said...

China puts all of this in context, Anyong. These protesters have the kind of freedom the Chinese can only dream of.

John B. said...

Speaking of "conservative" grifters, has anybody mentioned that Mad Max and Randy Hillier are up to their necks in trying to get their sorry asses into this thing?

JB

Owen Gray said...

Max deserves the epithet, John. So does Hillier.

Ben Burd said...

Owen,
Try this one: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/LISCenter/pkrugman/Thinking-about-the-costs-of-the-freedom-convoy.pdf

Northern PoV said...

"Do we put our political reporters on this story, or our war correspondents?"

I hear that the Ukraine could send some help!

ffd said...

Toronto has managed yet again to limit the energies of these unpleasant people while allowing them to have a lawful demonstration. The roads closed on Friday have already mostly been reopened. I was certainly not taking anything for granted though.

It is interesting how little coverage of Toronto's success there has been. It is a good news story after all and they keep saying they want good news stories. Instead they keep repeating the tales of disaster. I know everyone hates Toronto but still.

It is also interesting how often these protesters are presented as heroic freedom fighters, regular hard working simple folk, earnest Christians, in fact so perfect that I doubt they have butt holes. In fact, the opposite of what many of them are. Perhaps the media doth protest too much. But why?

Owen Gray said...

They pose as paragons of virtue, ffd. It should be obvious that they are not who they claim to be.

Owen Gray said...

The world's attention has been shifting to Ukraine,PoV. Perhaps, as the spotlight shifts, and it will be harder to gain fifteen minutes of fame, some of these people will go home.

Owen Gray said...

As, usual, Ben, Krugman is on the mark. Never have so few done so much damage to their country.