, 05.29.2019 09:27 AM

My latest: Scheer, Trudeau and racism

When everyone is a Nazi, no one is a Nazi.

When you falsely insinuate your principal opponent is a Klansman – as Justin Trudeau’s party has done, repeatedly and recklessly, with Andrew Scheer – it fosters cynicism and disbelief.

Most of all – and I say this as someone who has researched, opposed and written about organized hate groups for more than three decades, and has received innumerable death threats along the way – likening a partisan adversary to a white supremacist makes it impossible for activists like me to sound the alarm about real white supremacists.

Despite all that, for many months, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal echo chamber have hissed that the Conservative Party leader is a far-Right racist. It has been despicable and dangerous.

The experts agree, too. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is professor of History at Fairfield University, and he’s the author of The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present.

Says Rosenfeld, who knows more about this subject than anyone alive: “Too many hyperbolic comparisons – for example, between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler – dulls the power of historical analogies and risks crying wolf.”

Crying wolf: that is what Trudeau and his party have been doing. So desperate are they to be re-elected, they have been prepared to imply that Scheer is the worst thing that one can say about anyone: that he is a fascist. That he is an adherent of the ideology of murder.

Last night, Scheer – finally, firmly – slammed the door on Trudeau’s slur, and strongly condemned organized hate. It was overdue.

“There is absolutely no room in a peaceful and free country like Canada for intolerance, racism and extremism of any kind. And the Conservative Party of Canada will always make that absolutely clear,” Scheer thundered in a Toronto speech.

“I find the notion that one’s race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation would make anyone in any way superior or inferior to anyone else absolutely repugnant. And if there’s anyone who disagrees with that, there’s the door. You are not welcome here.”

For weeks, Scheer had been dogged by an allegation that he willingly appeared onstage at a February “United We Roll” protest in Ottawa with a notorious white supremacist, Faith Goldy. In fact, Goldy was nowhere near Scheer. She wasn’t even in the permitted area, she wasn’t invited to speak, and she was later condemned by official organizers.

Scheer – who, like Justin Trudeau, has had past media encounters with Goldy, before she went full-blown bigot – should have denounced Goldy’s ilk sooner. But this week’s speech has now left no doubt about his views. Haters have no place in his Conservative Party, he said, in the important speech titled “Unity in Diversity.”

Said Scheer: ”We should be able to have an immigration debate in this country without the government calling its critics racists and bigots,” he said. Trudeau’s willingness to to do so, Scheer added, amounts to “cheap partisanship” and it hurts our collective ability to oppose the very real threats of racism, bigotry and extremism.

If Trudeau wants to denounce real bigotry – and he, and all of us, should – he should train his sights on Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party. Bernier and his cabal have devolved into the porch-light of Canadian politics, attracting all the bugs and the creepy-crawlies. (Which should make it easier to deploy the necessary political insecticide.)

But this dishonest Justin Trudeau campaign against Andrew Scheer? It must stop. It has engendered cynicism and distrust, and that’s the last thing any democracy needs in the Trump era.

Andrew Scheer has told us where he stands on one of the crucial issues of our time.

Will Justin Trudeau finally heed what he says?

22 Comments

  1. Doug Brown says:

    So in the 90’s, was the Reform Party driven by racism? That branding was an important part of the Chretien Liberal’s messaging.

    • Warren says:

      The Blue Book did contain racism.

      • Jim R says:

        Can you be specific? I don’t recall Preston Manning ever saying anything racist.

        • Warren says:

          I’m not your librarian. Do your own research.

          • Jim R says:

            I didn’t make the claim, you did.

            As such, the onus would be on you to provide at least a modicum of substance to it, rather than expect people to take only your word on a fairly serious charge.

    • Steve T says:

      Having been involved with the Reform Party back in the day, I seem to recall the following were targetted by the Libs as allegedly “racist”:

      1. Ending so-called “hyphenated” Canadians, and focusing on integrating immigrants into becoming Canadians first and foremost. One proposal was to end funding that was specifically focused on multiculturalism.

      2. Repeal of the Official Languages Act, and thereby reducing the obligation to use French and English in all government matters.

      3. Discontinuing affirmative action and other preference-based (“reverse discrimination”) hiring practices at the government level.

      There may have been others, but these are the ones that stick out most in my mind.

      • PK says:

        What does being a Canadian mean to you? Privileged, white, connected, radical conservative world view? If that’s Canadian then I’m going back to the Netheralnds – according to conservative doctrine we’re all second class citizens for the first couple of generations anyway. It always disgusted me how the old stock podge around talking big with nothing to say consuming more than they’re worth holding the world back –

        • PK says:

          They are using racism. They’re using immigration fear to tap into traditional racist sentiment as a way to avoid using traditional racist language – – to motivate a base with traditional racist views.

          • PK says:

            Racism, entitlement, innuendo, suspicion, jingoism – conservative society why would you expect their strategy to be anything but – it’s designed to entrench entitlement and hold people back. Conservatives excel at that, it’s their only true expertise –

        • Pedant says:

          Your nutty rhetoric is so outdated. It doesn’t work anymore. Discussing immigration – including numbers – is not racist. You can yell and scream that it is until you’re blue in the face, nobody is listening except for other far-left ideologues in your echo chamber.

          • Scheer had a big immigration speech yesterday where he bent over backwards not to discuss numbers: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5153952

          • Fred from BC says:

            “Discussing immigration – including numbers – is not racist.”

            Exactly. There are a small percentage who are indeed racist and will vote for whatever party they think is closest to their views on immigration, but the vast majority are normal people who are tired of being accused of this crap. Right-wing populists have been elected all over the world because of it, and will continue to thrive if the left doesn’t grow up and change tactics.

            Ditto for “Islamophobia”, “homophobia”, “transphobia” and all the other divisive, politically-motivated nonsense that they continue to blow far out of proportion. “Transphobia” (fear of change? really?) will be the first to fall, as the feminists are up in arms about being told who is a woman and who is not; the women’s sports organizations, faced with the prospect of their complete collapse, have now begun to ban “trans” competitors after a couple of eye-opening incidents.

            There is way more to it than that, but the bottom line is you can’t solve a problem without discussing it, and you can’t discuss it with one side screaming at the other to “SHUT UP!!”

          • PK says:

            Yours is typical Nixon –

  2. Jack B says:

    True Nazism is state backed isn’t it. This a fuzzy definition. Local hate groups could never do what the Nazis did at that scale. There aren’t even lynchings or random racial killings.

    Labels are dangerous things. Trudeaus group would be closer to Marxist socialists than centrists but that doesn’t equate them with the horrors experienced in Russia and China.

  3. All he has to do is run this by the resident geniuses over there…oh yeah, I forgot.

  4. Robin says:

    Trudeau’s smears are in keeping with the tactics of the foreign funded ENGO executives he and Butts placed throughout the Liberal Gov’t, from the PMO to Ministries to Gov’t Dep’ts. Birds of a feather flock together.

  5. the salamander says:

    .. How do you feel towards Donald Trump and the GOP et al.. ? Mitch McConnell, Stephen Miller, Alex Jones ?

    How do you feel about Canada’s CPC embracing their ideology and absence of ethics or morality ?

    Thank you..

  6. CanadianKate says:

    Glad he said it to the Bay Street Elite. Now let’s hear him say it at the Petroleum Club. Wouldn’t want his message to be different to the East and the West.

  7. Pedant says:

    The Liberal strategy in 2000 consisted of disparaging Stockwell Day’s religion and from my recollection the “racist” label was thrown around quite freely by Liberals and their propaganda arm in the media. Trudeau’s current strategy, a generation later (wow time flies!), comes from the same toolkit.

    • Fred from BC says:

      “Trudeau’s current strategy, a generation later (wow time flies!), comes from the same toolkit.”

      And is doomed to failure, as the Conservatives need only remind people that the exact same things were said about Stephen Harper and his “hidden agenda” of banning abortion, gay marriage and other things that the left holds dear.

  8. Sandra says:

    Thanks to Trudeau we now have some immigrants calling us white supremacists, racists, European Imperialists, and making other racist comments.

    He is the one causing all this trouble with racism. I, as thousands of other Canadians judge people on their actions not their race. Before Trudeau showed up I had never seen so much racism from all races in this country.

    Immigrants in this country from the beginning have made lasting friendships, as I have with people of other nations that have come to our country and tried to blend in and get along.

    I am sick to death of what this fool has done to my country, turning races against one another and causing trouble between the male and female population.

    He will continue to do this if he gets in again, and may God help this wonderful country with so much hate being spread around due to a spoiled, almost 50 year old teeny-bopper who knows nothing about anything – except looking in the mirror and telling himself he is irresistible.

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