Poilievre's Dangerous Diagolon Dalliance

On Poilievre's Extremist Pit Stop

What the fuck were they thinking?

Pierre Poilievre was on the East Coast Tuesday night, and decided to visit some people. I’m sure he’d describe them as Regular Canadians that he’s fighting for, but it was less that and a group of Diagolon supporters currently staging some form of protest-encampment in anger at … well, that’s unclear. The Opposition Leader, who seems frankly hammered, met with a group who, amongst other things, is led by a man who talked about wanting to rape Poilievre’s wife.

This thread has all the weird interactions – Poilievre’s disinterest in actually listening to them, his repeated claims that he’ll Axe The Tax but inability to say anything else – but it’s an incredibly weird set of decisions. The thing about Poilievre is that he is frighteningly online, for sure the most online of any world leader. His belief in crypto stemmed from diving deep on YouTube. He tagged all his videos on social media with an incel hashtag. He is convinced Jordan Peterson is more than a glorified moron.

He's also usually smarter than this. When the Convoy rolled through Stittsville, he showed up and brought coffee to some people, but he avoided going to the Hill, which means there’s no videos or pictures of him standing beside or in the frame with the various lowlights of the Nazi and/or Confederate flags that littered Ottawa. That was an intentional decision, and one that has helped him. And now the strategic sense of February 2022 is gone?

I’ve been very cautious to use this platform in recent times for Poilievre-bashing – it’s neither productive nor authentic to turn it up to 11 at every single provocation. If everything is evidence that Poilievre is a far-right extremist people will have their eyes glaze over. But this is actually frightening – and I still can’t believe the Tories are letting themselves get this cocky.

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At some point it doesn’t actually matter what your personal politics are. I’ve written in these pages before that Poilievre has never particularly shown his hand about the things he believes, and he’s been on both sides of both gay marriage and abortion in his time in Parliament. Discerning what is the “real” Poilievre and what is the fake one is a game of guessing. We don’t know what’s his real heart, and we can’t know.

What we do know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the benefit of the doubt cannot be extended. Whataboutism is a dangerous game, but we’ve seen the right play the company you keep card with Trudeau. Tying lunatic protestors to Trudeau is fine, because he’s insufficiently draconian in overstepping all jurisdiction and norms to stop protests that people find abhorrent, but Poilievre deserves the benefit? Fuck no.

Poilievre didn’t even do what you could claim he went there to do, which is to listen. He was point blank asked if he had any questions for them, and his response was a platitude about the carbon tax. He has tied himself to an organization with this appearance that, once again, is led by a man who openly fantasized about raping Poilievre’s wife just to show they can do it. And he just legitimized them.

The front page of the National Post today is a column from Tasha Kheiriddin about how Canada needs to put down these protests because of the content of their beliefs. It goes without repeating but I will again; the people defending Hamas are scum. There is no justification to glorify killing civilians. But to say that the content of one’s speech is relevant to whether it is acceptable is a far cry from the way the alleged free speech guardians on the right handled the odious elements of the Convoy, or this group.

Here, it’s treated with the kid gloves of people being led astray by some form of legitimate grievance and the fact that the originating grievance is legitimate absolves the fact that the people the alternative PM just met with are a dangerous far-right group. If I wanted to, I could make the same case not to condemn pro-Palestinian activists who cross the line, but I don’t because no matter what people are responsible for their own actions.

The most frightening aspect of all of this is the utter contempt the institutional right has for the people whose votes they court. They want the votes of people who believe batshit ideas, who think that Justin Trudeau is a communist, who think that he is in hoc to a global cadre of people who secretly control everything. For all the talk about the left’s antisemitism problem, which parts of the broad left do have, there’s little comparative ink spilled about the right’s obsession with antisemitic conspiracies. In the same way that Zionist is often just a stand-in to say Jew, so is Globalist. But no.

These are the people that Poilievre just assured have broad support. The most valuable asset of a politician is their time. Given that this was an impromptu stop driving from PEI to Nova Scotia, it’s arguably more concerning. Poilievre could have just driven by. This was something he was under no obligation to acknowledge, let alone arguably endorse. He is playing fast and loose with a group of lunatics, and that’s fucking terrifying.

Even if you don’t think this means he will govern as if he is one of them – which, given his platform is not a safe assumption – this is terrifying. The presumptive next Prime Minister is, at the most charitable interpretation, reckless with who he engages with and willing to lie to anybody for their votes. Either he knows exactly who they are and knows they’re the lunatic fringe, or he doesn’t and his claim that the country supports them is just platitudinal nonsense and more empty words. Neither of which is good.

Poilievre is overwhelmingly likely to win the next election. The lack of initial budget bounce in Angus Reid or Ipsos is concerning for the idea the Liberals will be able to hold him to a minority, or even keep him under 200 seats. I am not making any form of prediction about whether this will matter. But it fucking should. Poilievre’s seemingly drunken meeting with the lunatic fringe says a ton about the man Canada is seemingly about to elect. And absolutely none of it is good.