Annihilation.

Bloodbath. Destruction. Massacre. Decimation. Wipeout.

Use whatever synonym you like, and it’ll apply. The Liberal Party of Canada – at one time, the most-successful political machine in Western democracy – is heading inexorably towards a defeat of truly historic proportions.

Some of us have been warning, for a long time, that this day was coming. Justin Trudeau, we opined, had turned the Liberal Party into a cult – a cult of personality. We said that, when he fell – and he would, because every leader does, if they’re in power too long – he would take the whole party down with him.

We said that the Trudeau Liberals had become tired and old. That they overpromised and under-delivered. That they had become a top-down movement – and were no longer a bottom-up political party. That they had become what they came to Ottawa to change – division, disunity, hyper-partisanship. That they couldn’t stick to a position if their lives depended on it – as with Israel, which they support or don’t support, depending on the weather.

But, even after all that, the latest numbers are just shocking.

They come to us from Nanos, a firm that the Trudeau government itself uses. It’s one of the best. And here’s many seats will change as a result of Nanos’ latest poll.

• Conservatives: projected to win 210 seats, which is 91 more than they have now
• Liberals: projected to win only 53, a drop of 107 seats
• New Democrats: projected to take 39 seats, which is 14 more than they presently have
• Greens: Nine seats, which is a pickup of seven
• Bloc Quebecois: no change

Take another look at that. Pierre Polievre’s Tories are projected to win four times as many seats as Justin Trudeau’s Grits. Four times!

Every party in the House of Commons is likely to pick up seats in the next election, as well – or, in the case of the Bloc, hold what they have. But the Trudeau Liberals, according to this Polling Canada seat model of Nanos’ numbers, are bleeding to everyone else – the Tories, the Dippers, the Greens. They are being crushed on the Left and the Right.

TruAnon winged monkeys will say, and have, that the next vote is a long way off – and that’s true. They will say that the Tories are peaking way too soon – which is arguably true. They will say that Trudeau remains their best asset, because he’s beaten the Tories thrice – and that he’s a great campaigner.

Not true. Not anymore.

If modern politics is a “daily campaign,” and it is, then Trudeau has been losing that, every single day. He and his cabal have been buffeted by too many stories about mistakes, missteps, and malfeasance. It’s impossible to credit them with a single clear win in 2023. There isn’t one. They’ve lost the daily campaign.

Similarly, Justin Trudeau can no longer be regarded as the Liberals’ secret weapon. He in fact is their biggest problem.

Way back when, this writer worked for Jean Chretien. I was pushing Chretien one day to do some press on an issue. Chretien declined. “Young man,” said he, “I don’t want or need to be in the media every single day. If you do that, people will get sick of your face.”

And that, in a Chretienite nutshell, is Trudeau’s biggest problem of all: overexposure. He’s been in our faces too often, too long. When his days were sunny, Trudeau would benefit, with Rolling Stone cover stories, and fawning media profiles. He got all the credit.

No longer. With the economy and the national mood faltering,Trudeau is now taking all the blame. In politics, you have to take the good with the bad, and Trudeau is now experiencing much more of the latter than the former.

Thus, the polls. Thus, the seat projections, which suggest 1984 and 1993-sized upsets are imminent.

For despondent Liberals, what is the only way out? Simple.

Justin, just go. For the love of God, just go.

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The street my parents lived on – and where I was born – was Coolbrook Avenue in Montreal. It was previously home to poorer Irish Catholics, but is now home to many Hasidic Jews, the Lubavitchers. It’s a nice area. Lots of trees, little parks. The Jews and the Irish got along, there.

In the early hours of Monday, someone threw a bomb – a Molotov cocktail – into the entrance area of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, which is just on the other side of the Decarie, at Vezina.

The bomb went off and there was plenty of damage. But, thankfully, no one was injured. Police and fire fighters were there quickly.

The Suburban newspaper reported that security footage showed the bomber “arriving by car, exiting, breaking the front window and throwing the Molotov.” He or she hasn’t been caught.

So, here’s a question, specifically for Montreal police. But it also applies to police forces across Canada, too. Here it is.

What are you doing, if anything, about the explosion in anti-Semitic crime in your city? Because, everywhere, things are very, very bad.

• A Montreal Jewish school has been shot up – with actual bullets – not once, but twice. You can still see the holes on the facade of Yeshiva Gedola, days later. The police haven’t caught the perpetrator(s).
• A Jewish community centre and synagogue in the Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux were both the targets of firebombs in the middle of the night. The police haven’t caught the perpetrator(s).
• An imam appeared at a pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas rally in Montreal, and said the following about Jews in Arabic: “Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them.” The police haven’t arrested him or charged him.

And, now, another bombing of another Jewish institution in Montreal, and no one has been arrested.

That’s the common element in each of those terror attacks: the bad guys haven’t been arrested, let alone detained. They still walk the streets, free as birds.

And, so, there’s been another attack, early on Monday, and right on the Decarie Expressway – which is as busy as the Gardiner in Toronto, or Granville in Vancouver, or the Deefoot in Calgary, or the Queensway in Ottawa.

How can that happen? How can Jews be targeted, over and over and over, in busy neighbourhoods and locations, and no one gets caught? How can that be?

Now, before any of you who live outside Montreal start patting yourselves on the back for doing better? Well, don’t.

On the very same day the Montreal Jewish Community Council was bombed, the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto – on the edge of the University of Toronto, and on one of the busiest and best-lit streets in the city – was targeted, with foot-high graffiti blood libel: ISRAEL FUNDS GENOCIDE.

And, just days before and down the same busy street, a bookstore that happens to be owned by a Jewish woman, Indigo, was similarly attacked. Eleven adults, among them a paralegal and a music teacher, were later arrested for splashing blood-red paint on the bookstore and postering it with more madness about “funding genocide.”

Across the country, there has been an explosion in other anti-Semitic crimes – and anti-Muslim crimes, too. And, with the exception of the attack on the book store owned by a Jew in Toronto, there hasn’t been much in the way of arrests, has there?

That, despite the fact the crimes have often been committed in areas where there are many people around. That, despite the fact – as with the bullets fired at a Jewish school in Montreal – identical attacks had happened just days before.

Police agencies may be doing their best, but it’s clearly not enough. The Jew-haters (and the Muslim-haters) are getting more bold every single day. When they see that they can shoot guns or toss tombs and get away with it? Well, they’re going to keep going.

We repeat: law enforcement in Canada needs to start enforcing the law. They need to prevent more hate crimes.

Because they’re not doing that.

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Hate is everywhere, these days. How to stop it?

Jew hatred is statistically the worst, of course, with anti-Semitic crimes and incidents happening everywhere on a near-daily basis. But the Islamophobia is bad, as well. For every four anti-Semitic incidents, there is roughly one Islamophobic one.

It’s a bad situation that is getting worse. The country doesn’t resemble the one that existed before October 7. So what can governments do?

There’s plenty. I’ve been researching and reporting on hate for nearly four decades. Here’s my top ten suggestions.

1. Create bias crimes units – federally and provincially. Most people are surprised to hear that Canada’s police agencies are a patchwork when it comes to hate. Some areas don’t even have police officers trained to deal with the problem. So, the feds and the provinces need to fill in the gaps – with community-based policing where that works, and an umbrella organization of trained federal RCMP cops for the rest.

2. Fund the bias crimes units that already exist. In those few places where hate-fighting cops work, resources are minimal to nonexistent.  If the Trudeau Liberals and the Premiers are as serious about fighting hate they claim to be, they need to ensure the dollars are there for recruitment, training and deployment.

3. Create dedicated prosecutors and courts for hate prosecutions. Other jurisdictions have done this, and it works. It develops and centers expertise in the justice system, and it speeds up prosecutions of hate crime. We already do it for drug crimes. We clearly need to do it for hate crime, too.

4. Create a law prohibiting willfully promoting terror groups. There are laws against promoting hatred against identifiable groups, promoting anti-Semitism, promoting genocide. Incredibly, Canada does not have a law against promoting listed terrorist organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah. That needs to change, now.

5. Remove the Attorney-General’s approval for hate prosecutions. Police and prosecutors don’t need to get anyone’s permission to charge someone for murder or robbery. But they do for promoting hatred and related crimes. That has resulted in a completely-ridiculous situation where many hate crimes are being treated as simple cases of mischief. That needs to be fixed by the Feds. They have the power to do it.

6. Remove those who promote hate. Canada deports for serious crime, and has done so for decades. Meanwhile, it has become obvious that some who are here on study visas are abusing them – which is also grounds for revocation and deportation. The laws are there. They need to be applied with more rigor.

7. Make mandatory funding and teaching of genocide at the national level.  Ontario and British Columbia have recently announced their intention to expand, and make mandatory, teaching about the Holocaust and related genocides. Other provinces need to do likewise – because nothing breeds hate more than ignorance. And, in those provinces that can’t quickly afford to do so on their own, bring in the likes of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center – which has long maintained a fleet of traveling buses to teach students about hate and genocide – to fill the gaps in the curriculum.

8. Defund universities who permit hate on campus. Academic freedom to say whatever you want, if it ever existed, no longer does. There have always been reasonable limits on what can be said on-campus. In the U.S. Congress, some have recently moved to eliminate federal funding for universities and colleges which permit clear expressions of hatred. Canada needs to do likewise.

9. Call a public inquiry. The Trudeau Liberals, in particular, are fond of reviews and inquiries, but not usually when they are the focus. There needs to be an all-party agreement to establish an inquiry to assess federal laws, regulations and programs – aimed, laser-like, at countering the shocking surge in hate crime and activity across the country.

10. Fund public awareness campaigns. Governments also love to launch advocacy campaigns about everything from the environment to public health. But, as noted, nothing breeds hatred better than ignorance. Canadian governments need to do what they can do better than the private sector: communicate some basic truths. Namely, what hate is, and why it is unwelcome here.

There’s ten concrete things the governments can, and should, do. Tweeting opposition to hate isn’t enough. Toothless resolutions do nothing.

We need to do more, and we need to do it now. Because a bad situation is getting worse every single day.

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If you’re LGBTQ, you’ll be fine in Palestine, right?

I mean, that’s certainly what some folks seem to believe. This week, someone hoisted a banner to that effect at a Canadian university. Here’s what it said, in all caps:

TRANS LIBERATION CAN’T HAPPEN WITHOUT PALESTINIAN LIBERATION

Universities being places of higher learning and all that, it looks like the banner-hoisters maybe forgot the apostrophe in the word “can’t.” So I added it for them.

They must have gotten up on the roof to hang the banner, too, because it’s several stories up. Interesting, that. We’ll come back to that.

Anyway, the banner’s message is clear. If you’re a trans person – if you’re LQBTQ2, too – well, your campaign for liberation is inextricably linked to the liberation of Palestine. Says so, right there on the banner at a place of higher learning.

So, let’s do a fact-check on that one, shall we?

Here’s a short summary of the reality for lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer and two-spirited folks in Palestine, which is mainly run by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. To avoid any accusations of settler-colonial-genocidal-apartheidish bias, we’ll try and rely on non-Israeli sources, okay?

Okay. Here goes.

• The Palestinian criminal code – still in force, says Human Rights Watch and others – says that anyone who “commits an act of sodomy” faces up to a decade in prison, because it’s “acting against the laws of nature.” So, that’s the law in Palestine, apparently. Not very “liberated,” is it?
• The United Nations – which is otherwise pro-Palestine and always anti-Israel – has intervened on behalf of LGBTQ people facing persecution in Gaza and the West Bank. The UN has resettled these people to Canada, Europe and the United States. This would be the same United Nations that has passed 45 resolutions that condemn, you know, Israel.
• Despite that, a UN committee wasn’t prevented from issuing a report on anti-gay hate in Palestine, however. Said the Human Rights Council: “LGBTQ persons living under Palestinian Authority and Hamas control suffer severe persecution and ostracism. Many Palestinian homosexuals end up fleeing to Israel.” And: “Testimonies from gay Palestinians who managed to escape recount harrowing torture by both family and PA/Hamas security forces, often successful attempts to coerce them to inform on others, forced marriages and death threats, among other things.”
• Likewise, the folks at Amnesty International – who are decidedly against the Jewish state, these days – have agreed that the human rights of LGBTQ people are regularly abused in Palestine. Says Amnesty: “Authorities fail to prevent and investigate homophobic and transphobic threats and attacks.” Most recently, they noted, “[Palestinian] security forces stood by and watched as a mob beat youths and children participating in a parade organized by Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah that included rainbow flags. The attack came amid a wave of incitement to violence and hate speech against LGBTI people and feminists that the authorities failed to investigate.”
• A few years back, an actual Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, was executed. His crime? He was gay. Even though he came from a proud family of Hamas terrorists, even though he commanded 1,000 other homicidal maniacs, three bullets were pumped into his chest. Before that, they tortured him for several days – whipping him, hanging him from the ceiling with wires. Not so liberated.
• Another gay man, Ahmad Abu Marhia, was beheaded for being gay. He’d been seeking asylum in Israel, was kidnapped back to the West Bank, and had his head chopped off. They made sure to videotape that. His murder happened a few weeks before he was going to travel to Canada to start a new life.
• Four gay Palestinian men, and one gay Palestinian woman, recently went public with what they experienced there. One had to enter a fake marriage to avoid persecution and execution. Said this man: “Some have been punished, some have been killed. Others killed themselves. One of my best friends was gay. He took his own life.” There are hundreds of other Palestinians in Israel, seeking asylum, because they believe they will killed if they return to Palestine.

Anyway, you get the picture. It’s not a pretty one. If you are a LGBTQ person, and you relocate to a “liberated Palestine,” you’re a goner.

Which brings us back to the banner, affixed to the UBC student union building, some five floors up.

A bit ironic, that. Because, in Hamas-run Palestine, anyone hanging that banner up near the roof?

They’d be tossed off it.

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It’s a deadly virus, one that has killed for millennia. But the virus has mutated.

It’s not actually a coronavirus. It’s anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism – hatred of Jews – is one of the oldest viruses. It pre-dates Christ by Centuries, as far back as Abraham. Before the Common Era (BCE), Hebrews would be persecuted for refusing to conform to the religions or beliefs of regional potentates.

After Jesus Christ, anti-Semitism changed, but it did not go away. Even though Christianity was seen as another Jewish sect – and even though Christ himself was, at all relevant times, a Jew – the Romans sought to destroy the Jewish state. Roman Emperors converted to Christianity, and Jews were again persecuted for refusing to accept Christ as the Messiah. And it all got worse.

Anti-Semitism has been part of Canada for as long as Canada has existed.

Mackenzie King called Hitler “a sweet man” and kept out Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. Social Credit types formed governments in the West and railed against “international Jewish financiers.” And in Quebec, Jew hatred was popular and mainstream, led by the likes of Lionel Groulx (a priest!) and Adrien Arcand.

When this writer first started writing about organized anti-Semitic groups, the Internet wasn’t widespread. So, in those days, haters – the Aryan Nations in Alberta, the Klan in Manitoba, the Heritage Front in Ontario – had a tougher time spreading their hateful gospel.

They were always looking for money: money to print their pamphlets, money to send members out to distribute the pamphlets, money for lawyers if the members got charged.

The Internet changed all of that. They could now reach a global audience, instantaneously, anonymously, for pennies.

The Jew-haters were among the first to embrace the dot-com revolution. For the first time in human history, they could quickly and cheaply promote their vile creed to a mass audience. All they needed was an Internet connection.

So, if you are asking yourself why you are seeing anti-Semitism everywhere these days – if you are wondering why anti-Semites seem more organized and more bold than ever before – the answer is found in your pocket or on your desktop. For the neo-Nazis and the Hitler freaks and the Jew haters, the digital revolution has been a (godless) godsend.

The anti-Semitic groups – from the Proud Boys to Hamas – use the Internet to recruit, fundraise and propagandize.  On all fronts, they have been wildly successful. If you think you are seeing anti-Semitic messages more often, and if you think that the Jew-haters are more numerous and better-organized than before, you’re right. They are.

But it’s not enough to merely say that the Internet has helped them. Those who own and control the biggest online platforms have helped them, too.

Take Elon Musk, for example (please). As the Washington Post revealed this week, in a major report: “Antisemitism was rising online. Then Elon Musk’s X supercharged it.”

Writes the Post’s Elizabeth Dwoskin: “Since Oct. 7, anti-Semitic content has surged more than 900 per cent on X and there have been more than 1,000 incidents of real-world anti-Semitic attacks, vandalism and harassment in America.”

By repeating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Musk has also overseen a “dramatic loosening of standards for what can be posted, and [a] boosting of voices that previously had been banned – all have made anti-Semitism more acceptable on what is still one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.”

So, the hashtag “HitlerWasRight” has been used nearly 50,000 times on X since October 7. Meanwhile, an anti-digital-hate group found 200 wildly anti-Semitic posts on X. Musk allowed 196 of them to remain online, and they went on to accumulate nearly 150 million views.

Anti-Semitism has been a seemingly-unkillable virus for Centuries. But it is a virus that is surging again, and is clearly worse than most of us have seen in our lifetimes.

The anti-Semitic virus, like all viruses, is never completely eliminated. But by letting it rampage online, unopposed, we have let it grow too big, too far, too fast.

And too many are now infected.

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