I saw a story online the other day that I’ve been thinking about a lot the last few days. A guy’s sitting at a bar when another guy sits down next to him. The bartender tells the other guy to get lost and yells at him. The first guy asks the bartender why. Because he’s a nazi, replies the bartender, and you don’t make them unwelcome, they come with their friends and their friends come with their friends and soon you’ve got a bar full of nazis. And nobody wants that.
This weekend, a convoy of truckers, protestors and other hangers-on arrived in Ottawa. They’re allegedly there to protest a vaccine mandate (never mind a similar one enforced by the US), but it quickly spiralled out of control. People were urinating on war memorials, defacing statues, waving banners that said everything from Fuck Trudeau to Trump Won. It bought out all the usual far-right cranks, and with them, the police, who’ve been seen taking selfies with protestors.
It also brought out the nazis. There’s been sightings of nazi flags, swastikas drawn on the Canadian flag and, in one memorable case, a bizarre combination of the Canadian and nazi flags. This should come as no surprise: these people are attracted to events that generate a lot of publicity and want to co-opt them to spread their filth. But what is a surprise is the welcome they’re getting. I’ve yet to see a single report of anyone from the protests confronting them, making them feel unwelcome or forcefully ejecting them from the protest. In so many words, if they aren’t being welcomed, they’re being tolerated. And this is maddening.
People will talk about how Canada is nice, or at least a better version of the United States and maybe in some contexts it’s even true. Canada did not take part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003; privatised healthcare is not common here. But like our neighbours to the south, Canada is a nation founded on violence and discrimination. There may not have been a reckoning on the scale of the Civil War and perhaps there wasn’t anything codified into law like the Dred Scott decision, but Canada did have it’s long history of violence against Native communities and practised entrenched segregation in places like Africville. Even now, casual racism against Natives is something one doesn’t have to search hard for: remarks calling them lazy, entitled and living off the dole are sadly common.
But when people talk about a good Canada, it’s often less about something that’s actually happened and more about an ideal one can strive for. In his book Reflections of a Siamese Twin, John Ralston Saul wrote eloquently about this ideal and the various ways we’ve come up short. Mainly, I remember his arguments in favour of a three-way separation of power: English, French and Native. Until everyone is fairly represented, nobody is fairly represented. It’s an ideal that may not be here, but it’s one worth working towards.
However, this weekend has brought out a weird reaction from a lot of otherwise reasonable people: how could these protests be happening in my Canada? Despite the evidence provided above, to a surprising number of people, Canada was already an ideal place. In their eyes Canada is a friendly and welcoming country. And maybe in their immediate circle it is. But it’s not like that everywhere.
Where I live, I see those Fuck Trudeau signs on the back of trucks - it’s almost always on a pickup truck - nearly every day. There are many similar stickers and flags for places like the People’s Party of Canada and The Rebel. In the most recent election, there was a large PPC sign on the highway, just south of some anti-Chinese graffiti that keeps reappearing on a highway overpass. In this riding, the PPC pulled in almost 5,000 votes, or nearly eight per cent. That’s nearly half of what the NDP - a far more established and mainstream party - pulled in.
In my day job, I regularly deal with people who refuse to wear masks while shopping. Sometimes I talk with them a little and before long, they get to the real stuff: COVID isn’t real, or if it is, it was released by Hillary Clinton. Sometimes they tell me there’s no science behind wearing a mask and call the vaccine junk. These are the kind of people who are going to protest in Ottawa. They aren’t mad about inflation or there to support people’s right to protest peacefully. They’re there because they’re motivated by bad actors, disinformation and agitprop, and by a series of bilious hates. Like the people who invaded the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they’re there because they want to create a mess and they’re lashing out at a system that disagrees with them.
The other morning, I heard a pundit on CBC Radio suggest that perhaps Justin Trudeau could step down and try to calm the waters a bit. To that I’d say: it’s not specifically Trudeau. True: he is hated in a way no other Prime Minister has been hated in my lifetime. But it’s not about him. If it was someone else - say, Chrystia Freeland - it would suddenly be about them. The Rebel, Postmedia and the rest of the Right-leaning media would start to attack her, much the same way they attacked former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.
To say the protests unfolding in Ottawa aren’t Canada is to miss not only the point, but to overlook the history of Canada (especially in the last few years) itself. These people are out there because they’re whipped up by Facebook, talk radio and spin machines of the far right. They’re a product of our inferiority complex over the United States, one which leads a lot of Canadians to imitate their neighbours to the south of the border while simultaneously thinking they’re somehow better than them. They’re a product of a country that’s been refusing to wrestle with it’s history: everyone acted shocked when gravesites were found at former residential schools in mid 2021, but where was the outrage when over 90 more were found on Jan. 25?
Before long, the events of this weekend will be memory-holed. The nazi flags will be written off as a few extremists, and the more animated, violent aspects of the protest will be overlooked (or, is the case with Jan. 6, implied to be started by violent Leftist agitators). But the passive acceptance of and lack of resistance to these nazis shouldn’t be forgotten. Let this weekend be a warning call: Canada has its fair share of extremists, and they’re a lot closer to the mainstream than a lot of people would like to admit.