As we witness the clown show presently unfolding in Washington, Murray Brewster writes that the same insanity is showing up in Canada:
A U.S.-based research group that specializes in gauging geopolitical risk says Canada is showing signs of the same political contagion and polarization that has afflicted American politics.
The warning is contained in Eurasia Group's annual "Top Risk" report for the new year, released Tuesday.
While Canada does not make the consultancy's "Top 10" in terms of geopolitical or instability risks, the group produced three standalone sub-reports on countries affected by worldwide political turbulence: Canada, Japan and Brazil.
In its analysis, the group sees most of the risk to Canada coming from the political convulsions in the United States — which [Ian] Bremmer described as the "Divided States of America."
He said the toxic political culture in Washington and throughout the U.S. is spilling across the border and it is likely to get worse in the coming year.
"The media environment in Canada, and the social media environment in Canada is increasingly resembling the media and social media environment in the United States," Bremmer said Tuesday.
"It is dysfunctional. It is rife with disinformation. It is deeply polarized. [The online discourse] is a bunch of people that do not reflect the average Canadian, do not reflect the average American in both countries."
Policy issues, especially energy and climate change, are being weaponized in Canada for political gain at the expense of national unity, he added.
Do we really want to join the fools parade?
Image: Walnet
11 comments:
"Policy issues, especially energy and climate change, are being weaponized in Canada for political gain at the expense of national unity." It's all very nice writing in the passive voice, but it misses the key question: "By whom?" We won't get anywhere until the media start calling out Big Oil.
Cap
The realities of the business models of media and social media in both countries move people and empower people that engage with the radical right and left," Bremmer said.
"And so that means people painting Trudeau as a socialist. It means painting the new Conservative leader as MAGA Trump. Neither of those things are accurate."
Why did you leave this quote out Mr Gray? Doesn't fir the narrative?
That divided US sentiment is already here in spades. I remember my relief when the voters ousted Kellie Leitch, who worried me. But the days of feeling like the good guys are in the vast majority - especially the vast majority of voters - feels like it's over. The convoy brought that home. In schools, the hoopla about CRT (critical race theory) all seemed to happen at once across Canada, which points to some sort of organized effort. I think we're officially divided in Ontario, but now where do we move??
That's the problem, Marie. The disease is everywhere.
The point of the article was that we're entering the same wild, conspiracy-driven politics as we see in the United States, Anon. I thought that was clear. But, having said that, it's also clear that one political party has gone bought into the conspiracies more than the others.
Whether in the United States or here, Cap, the real question is "Who is behind all of this?"
No conspiracy here.
The world is awash with advertising driven non news by social media, TV , newspapers and anyone else that desires your income!!
I moved to Canada from the UK in 1974 and was, even then, astounded by the TV news reporting where a news? person would shove a microphone into someones face until the necessary tear was produced.
Just open up the daily disruptive disuniting front page of the National Post to see just how far the 'free market' will go to sell it's product!!
TB
Unfortunately, TB, news has been replaced by "infotainment."
My apologies for the horrible links but I am getting a "Your HTML cannot be accepted: Reference "”https:" is not allowed: A" error message when I try to format a link.
Frank Graves of EKOS seems to be saying we are looking at authoritarian populism also called ordered populism. He, and presumably other researcher in Canada, seem to be calling the Canadian version Northern Populism. It does not sound good.
Here is an interesting interview with Frank discussing it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9wTg7EP-Uk
A more detailed, more academic discussion is available at https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=040088020003014070092069084007112023096031065012091090091115088031084099097082121000002033027047006112028087092117075082095006037094022080065064066093115111113030106025062083007085090078067125080081065098069095069026016107074113120026087075121086112022&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE
Frank mentions a Canadian researcher on Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) This is Bob Altemeyer from the University of Winnipeg who has been researching the topic for decades.
BTW, Right Wing Authoritarianism is a misnomer really. Bob inherited very early work by Theodor W. Adorno and others who named it that because they were studying right-ringers in the USA back in the 1950's. I think by the time he realized it was not solely a "right-wing" phenomenon it was to late to rename it, especially as the research area for years was a fairly minor area of social psychology that has suddenly leapt into prominence in the last few years.
For an interesting, rather fun but also maddening discussion[1] of his research, have a look at https://theauthoritarians.org/ . If you read it see if you can classify Steve Harper.
[1] The pretty much world-wide style manual for psychology, the Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association, very strongly discourages the use of footnotes and endnotes. It looks like Bob, after a lifetime of this restriction has gone endnote mad. I needed two pdf readers to fight my way through the mess.
Adorno did groundbreaking work on authoritarianism, jrk. Unfortunately, that work did not dilute its influence.
@ Owen 10:33
Interestingly enough Bob Altemeyer's research suggests that there are ways to reduce authoritarian tendencies, at least in youth. Things like education and exposure to wider ranges of experience and cultures tend to lower scores on his authoritarian scale. Graves hints at the same type of thing in the interview.
The frightening thing hat Frank Graves reports is a nihilistic type of authoritarianism where the highly authoritarian types no longer even seem to have much faith in their false prophets. How do you deal with someone who trusts no one about anything. At least before, a high RWA type could be disgusted by the behaviour of a leader and reject the ideology —
though they might immediately all for another, a bit like conspiracy theorists.
Fredrick Nietzsche understood the power of nihilistic authoritarianism, jrk. We would do well to consult him on the subject.
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