Trumpism in Canada? Erin O’Toole be thy name

[Oscar]

Trumpism in Canada? Erin O’Toole be thy name

[ https://nowtoronto.com/news/trumpism-in ... ready-here ]

While Trumpeteers were laying siege to the Capitol on Wednesday, Conservative Party operatives and supporters in Canuckistan were getting in on the misinformation on social media

By Enzo DiMatteo NOW MagazineNews January 8, 2021 ***NUMEROUS INTERNAL LINKS***

It’s the question on everyone’s lips: Can what happened in Washington DC on Wednesday happen here? Canada, don’t be naive.

While Trumpeteers were laying siege to the Capitol on Wednesday, Conservative Party operatives and supporters in Canuckistan were getting in on the misinformation on social media.

Some were making familiar apologies for the rioters. It wasn’t their fault, they said. After all, the election was “stolen” from Donald Trump. Some downplayed the chaos. Others, including one notable party insider who has since apologized, busied themselves pushing the conspiracy theory that the insurrectionists were actually Antifa.

Then Conservative Party of Canada leader Erin O’Toole weighed in on the chaos stateside.

“The storming of the Capitol Building is an astonishing assault on freedom and democracy. I am deeply saddened to see chaos grip our greatest ally today,” O’Toole posted on Twitter.

The reaction from all sides was swift.

This is the same guy, after all, who borrowed liberally from the Trump playbook to win the party’s leadership with his “Take Back Canada” race-baiting and “Canada First” sloganeering. Sound familiar?

He also coddles toxic Trump wannabes and anti-vaxxers in his caucus (Pierre Poilievre, Derek Sloan, Michelle Rempel-Garner) many of whom are active on Parler, the Nevada-based social networking platform popular with all manner of right-wing extremists. His deputy leader, Candice Bergen, is a proud adherent of the Make America Great Again faction in the party. Now the party is claiming on its website, à la Trump, that Trudeau is already “rigging” the next election.

O’Toole’s connections to Trump-loving groups like Canada Proud and Ontario Proud run deep. His former leadership campaign chair, Jeff Ballingall, is the founder of both groups. And since his election as the leader they’ve been working to remake his “too, short, too fat, too bald” image. O’Toole has gone from “compassionate Conservative,” which is what he used to call himself, to Proud Boy-esque Top Gun, posing in party PR photos in Royal Canadian Air Force gear. O’Toole served in RCAF, but he’s no Tom Cruise. He served on a helicopter in search and rescue. But that’s another story.

It’s no surprise then that political opponents accused O’Toole of being a hypocrite when they saw his condemnation of events in the U.S.

. . . .

While the exponential growth in social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook has allowed extremist sentiment to flourish, the seeds in Canada’s Conservative movement were planted before O’Toole arrived on the scene. Stephen Harper’s fomenting of anti-Muslim sentiment was followed by Andrew Scheer’s dalliance with the Yellow Vest movement out west.

Trumpism can’t happen in Canada? Don’t look now….