I think you're right that PP will not pivot like "take Canada back, axe the carbon tax" O'Toole pivoted during his campaign to appeal to moderate voters (and everyone knew he was a fake). PP has taken a big risk and he's got to go all the way now.
No, what I'm seeing is the media beginning to whitewash PP's extremism and suggest the progressive parties, specifically the Liberals, "be less woke". In those words.
Recent examples:
This quote from a lecturer of nationalism deserves a bullshit award.
"Some of his messages are very extreme, to be honest, but in a way that satisfies a certain appetite among the Canadian public about a change and an alternative sort of vision that could take them forward and help them plan a new future." - Tina Park, a lecturer in Canadian nationalism at the University of Toronto
She doesn't elaborate on his "very extreme" messages. Which means she doesn't have to explain how crypto and discrediting vaccines and reducing government to a shell and selling off assets will help Canadians.
Another example is this column citing anonymous Liberal insiders suggesting Trudeau should be "less woke". They call this "moving to the centre", which is a total whitewash of the far right. If bigotry and ignorance is "the centre", that is one fast moving goal post. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-mps-less-woke-1.6566633
Andrew Coyne hints at the same thing in a column at the Globe. With "Yes I went there." Well you shouldn't have Andrew.
The pressure won't be on PP to pivot from being Trump North, it will be on progressives to give far right bigots and ignorance a big old chance. I can tell you if they do, I won't vote for any of them and I'm sure I'm not alone. Expect the MSM to apply vanilla icing to the shit cake the CPC has become, just like they did for Trump in 2016.
I don't see Skippy pivoting as much as baffling people with bullshit. He's quite solid as a bullshit artist, and certainly not beyond holding multiple inherently contradictory positions at the same time, advancing X to one audience and not-X to another, and hoping no one makes the connection.
And it works. Trump isn't a liar as much as completely untethered from truth. He lies as comfortably as most people breathe because he doesn't care what is true and has no filter to check if he's being consistent. When accused of lying, he just pivots to another lie and baffles you with bullshit. This is also why he threatens to sue everyone, but rarely goes to court - discovery and cross-examination are not his friend. His many failed electoral lawsuits were political screeds, not rational arguments in a sane legal system, and even judges he appointed were disappointed with the nonsense.
Skippy's trying the same strategy here - and it worked with the Conservative base who are increasingly detached from a shared intersubjective logic anyway. Rage farming works beautifully on this population, because they're all emotion, all the time.
I only hope that that base isn't big enough or his bullshit convincing enough. It was taking hold a bit while inflation hit everyone hard - but by 2025 that really won't be a thing (and not because of anything Skippy did.) There will be other points of outrage, real or imagined. And it doesn't take a huge crisis for fascist rage farming to take hold. Trump exploited unease well in 2016, and compared to the pandemic years, 2016 was easy times.
Great read. It reminds me of the political reporters in the USA that kept saying Trump had “pivoted” when he actually said something “normal”. Man, were they wrong. Yet they kept doing it. Trump must have been having a good laugh every time.
I think you're right that PP will not pivot like "take Canada back, axe the carbon tax" O'Toole pivoted during his campaign to appeal to moderate voters (and everyone knew he was a fake). PP has taken a big risk and he's got to go all the way now.
No, what I'm seeing is the media beginning to whitewash PP's extremism and suggest the progressive parties, specifically the Liberals, "be less woke". In those words.
Recent examples:
This quote from a lecturer of nationalism deserves a bullshit award.
"Some of his messages are very extreme, to be honest, but in a way that satisfies a certain appetite among the Canadian public about a change and an alternative sort of vision that could take them forward and help them plan a new future." - Tina Park, a lecturer in Canadian nationalism at the University of Toronto
She doesn't elaborate on his "very extreme" messages. Which means she doesn't have to explain how crypto and discrediting vaccines and reducing government to a shell and selling off assets will help Canadians.
And the column containing this quote characterizing 4 youth supporting Poilievre as a trend is a reach to say the least. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pierre-poilievre-bipoc-youth-support-1.6586065
Another example is this column citing anonymous Liberal insiders suggesting Trudeau should be "less woke". They call this "moving to the centre", which is a total whitewash of the far right. If bigotry and ignorance is "the centre", that is one fast moving goal post. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-mps-less-woke-1.6566633
Andrew Coyne hints at the same thing in a column at the Globe. With "Yes I went there." Well you shouldn't have Andrew.
The pressure won't be on PP to pivot from being Trump North, it will be on progressives to give far right bigots and ignorance a big old chance. I can tell you if they do, I won't vote for any of them and I'm sure I'm not alone. Expect the MSM to apply vanilla icing to the shit cake the CPC has become, just like they did for Trump in 2016.
Can you get a TikTok account so I can share on that platform?
I don't see Skippy pivoting as much as baffling people with bullshit. He's quite solid as a bullshit artist, and certainly not beyond holding multiple inherently contradictory positions at the same time, advancing X to one audience and not-X to another, and hoping no one makes the connection.
And it works. Trump isn't a liar as much as completely untethered from truth. He lies as comfortably as most people breathe because he doesn't care what is true and has no filter to check if he's being consistent. When accused of lying, he just pivots to another lie and baffles you with bullshit. This is also why he threatens to sue everyone, but rarely goes to court - discovery and cross-examination are not his friend. His many failed electoral lawsuits were political screeds, not rational arguments in a sane legal system, and even judges he appointed were disappointed with the nonsense.
Skippy's trying the same strategy here - and it worked with the Conservative base who are increasingly detached from a shared intersubjective logic anyway. Rage farming works beautifully on this population, because they're all emotion, all the time.
I only hope that that base isn't big enough or his bullshit convincing enough. It was taking hold a bit while inflation hit everyone hard - but by 2025 that really won't be a thing (and not because of anything Skippy did.) There will be other points of outrage, real or imagined. And it doesn't take a huge crisis for fascist rage farming to take hold. Trump exploited unease well in 2016, and compared to the pandemic years, 2016 was easy times.
Great read. It reminds me of the political reporters in the USA that kept saying Trump had “pivoted” when he actually said something “normal”. Man, were they wrong. Yet they kept doing it. Trump must have been having a good laugh every time.