Showing posts with label Gilmore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gilmore. Show all posts

Friday, July 08, 2022

Today's News: Looking for their soul

First up, some comment about what has happened to the soul of the Conservative party in Canada: Ottawa journalist Rachel Gilmore had a major article on Global News today - How close is too close to the far-right? Why some experts are worried about Canada’s MPs. 
She is writing about Conservative support for the Convoy, particularly from Poilievre, and how this can legitimize the far-right in Canada. As we see the United States careening toward a fascist white supremacy ditch, it gives me hope to see Canadian media stepping up and taking seriously the risk of white supremacy in Canadian politics.
Gilmore says: 
It’s unclear why Poilievre “felt that he needed to” meet with Topp, said Stephanie Carvin, a former CSIS analyst who now teaches at Carleton University.
“But it definitely was a choice with consequences,” she said — including, potentially, emboldening and legitimizing the more extreme views among the convoy’s supporters. 
...experts are starting to worry about the influence politicians could have in legitimizing extreme ideas.
 “They seem to be playing this culture war knowingly,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, in an interview with Global News. 
For Balgord, what Poilievre chose to do on June 30 “wasn’t a surprise.” 
“He was positioning himself to earn the support of the far-right in his leadership race.” 
Gilmore has been doing an extraordinary job in covering Canada's far right - for example, this tweet:
Finally we see a journalist used the definite description --"zero evidence" -- instead of mealy-mouthed bafflegab. 
She is hitting a nerve, too -- here's Poilievre's hysterical reaction to her article: Scrimshaw notes how incredibly stupid and thin-skinned it was for Poilievre to issue this press release:
But why this press release matters is that the Poilievre team just tipped their hands about a very important point – they can get blown off message incredibly easily. 
A TV interview with Evan Solomon got Poilievre to confirm he’d fire the Governor of the Bank Of Canada, and now an article about Convoy ties to the far right has Poilievre invoking Trudeau’s Blackface (I’ll leave it to your imagination how those two things happened). 
It’s genuinely thin-skinned bullshit, but even more than it being thin-skinned, it’s just not a good trait in a political leader to have the political equivalent of Tourette’s Syndrome, to quote the post-Sorkin West Wing. 
Swinging at every pitch in politics is a disaster, because sometimes the right move is to avoid the trap, and this pattern of behaviour from Poilievre and his team is evidence that he doesn’t have that tool in his arsenal. 
He is as addicted to the news cycle and the Twitter likes and the Facebook views that he has to pump out this shit daily, but the problem is, sometimes you don’t have to make news. Sometimes, it’s better to sit one out, and just leave an unfriendly article alone. 
How many more people do you think saw the Global article at the core of this fight after his press release? Giving oxygen to this story is an insane idea if you’re Poilievre.
Nevertheless, she persisted. Here is a follow-up story tonight:
Undoubtedly, there is additional stuff to come on this story.
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