Trumpism isn't just an American thing
Canadian complacency in face of domestic terror threats is nothing short of dangerous
There were Trump flags everywhere. Hundreds of people were marching down the streets in a tightly packed crowd, wearing no masks, shouting anti-government and anti-media slogans, all in the middle of a pandemic.
I am not describing the attack on the U.S. Capitol last week, but protests that took place in downtown Montreal just last September. Small pro-trump demonstrations also erupted in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver last week, in support of the attempted coup.
Experts have been busy analyzing the makeup of the Capitol mob based on the abundant photo and video footage of the events. One dominant group is the conspiracy theorists, the Qanon fans — who believe that a group of satanic pedophiles is running the world and that Donald Trump is basically our last hope — among others.
Another important segment of the insurrectionists seems to be composed of good old-fashioned neo-nazis and alt-right activists, whatever they want to call themselves. People who'd rather end democracy than let America fall out of white hands.
A third one is comprised of armed militias: Three Percenters and the like. They believe that the government is plotting to take away their freedoms — which include their freedom to bear arms — and devote their spare time to military training, in order to be ready to fight back.
The thing is, all of those ideological movements are present in Quebec and across Canada. And they have been growing.
Many have been discussing the American political crisis, however, as if it was a completely foreign social movement. I suspect there might also be an amnesia virus in circulation.
A study published last June by the U.k.-based think-tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that Canadians were among the most active in the world on farright online platforms — more so than British and American users. The researchers also calculated that the number of hate groups operating in the country had tripled over the last five years, and that on 4chan alone, Canadians were responsible for creating 5.71 per cent of the content worldwide (while our population amounts to 0.48 per cent of humanity).
In Quebec alone, a plethora of far-right groups have emerged in the last five years, including Atalante, Storm Alliance, the Soldiers of Odin and La Meute, as well as a local chapter of the Three Percenters. Several of those groups have been involved in anti-immigration protests in Montreal and near the New York border, opposing the rights of mostly Black asylum seekers.
Many have been heavily active in the debates around Bill 21, not shying away from expressing full-blown Islamophobia and anti- Semitism. They also produce a political discourse that positions Montreal and its linguistic, cultural and ethnic diversity as an existential threat to their own identities. Conservative thought leaders are monitoring what is said there, attempting to propose moderate “compromises.” In that indirect way, the far right already plays a role in shaping our national politics.
We have spent the last week comparing the militarized police response to the American Black Lives Matter protests with the laissez-faire, sympathetic approach of several of the officers present at the Capitol last week. Yet have we compared the heavy riot gear SPVM officers often sport to Montreal's anti-police-brutality protests to their response to anti-immigration rallies?
Should we put side-by-side images of Canadian police officers interacting with elderly Indigenous women standing against pipeline development, and that of the courteous patience they have been showing anti-maskers? Do we not remember the neglectful response of the RCMP as an angry white mob committed arson against Mi'kmaq lobster fishermen in Nova Scotia just last September?
The Proud Boys, who were also heavily present at the Capitol last week, were founded by Canadian Gavin Mcinnes and are also active across our country. This is the lovely neo-fascist group that Donald Trump failed to condemn and asked to “stand by” during the first presidential debate in October. Do we not know that?
We sigh at how Americans have failed to take Trump's anti-democratic movement seriously enough, and we mock their obsession with the imaginary “antifa” organization. Yet I live in a city where far more energy is spent denouncing the (also imaginary) “woke” organization and its supposed attacks on nothing less than democracy and freedom of thought than investigating the very real threats that the far-right poses in terms of domestic terrorism.
There are, of course, very large differences between the Canadian and American media landscape and political institutions that make our situation far more advantageous at the moment. I would not want to switch places with them right now, not for anything in the world.
Yet, I find the signature Canadian complacency to be nothing short of dangerous.
Our political leaders cannot afford to just “feel lucky” and wake up in a couple of years with nothing more to offer than platitudes about how “this is not Canada” and “this is not Quebec” and “this is just not who we are.” The sort of denialist, patriotic nonsense Joe Biden has to resort to now. And what we had to repeat ourselves after the Quebec City mosque shooting in 2017, too.
The reality is that the far right is indeed part of Canadian society and it will not magically go away.
The only question is: What are we willing to do about it?