Singh video publicity rivals PM’s boxing match
The viral Jagmeet Singh heckler video has had 35 million views. That’s about 34.99 million more viewers than the average NDP leadership campaign event.
For a contest that has chloroformed anyone watching, it was a rare moment of drama.
There are some transformative moments in politics — Justin Trudeau’s boxing match; Jean Chrétien’s “Shawinigan Handshake” — that reverberate beyond the Ottawa bubble. This feels like one of them. Academic Elise Maiolino studied the post-fight media coverage of the TrudeauPatrick Brazeau bout and concluded that it transitioned the future prime minister from “precariously masculine” to “sufficiently masculine.” Before the fight, the perception was he was a lightweight pretty boy. Postfight, he was regarded as a courageous leadership contender.
It remains to be seen whether the heckling from a protester who accused him of being “in bed with the Muslim brotherhood” is transformative for Singh.
But — unless you agree with the assessment of website Rise Canada that the protester, Jennifer Bush, is a “heroic, independent activist” who carried “an inclusive message of constructive criticism” — you probably have a more positive view of Singh now than before you saw the video.
It was an impressive display of grace under pressure. Most of us would have found relief in profanity.
But Singh told the protester that everyone in the room supported her and believed in her rights. She tried to assert that he supports intolerance and sharia law; he exploded the claim by extending patience and compassion. Singh emerged with reputation enhanced.
Voters worry less about what their leaders say than how they make them feel — and New Democrats, and perhaps all Canadians, will look at Singh and feel good about themselves.
He is surely correct when he says he didn’t point out he is Sikh, and not Muslim, because to do so would have suggested that such an ad hominem attack would have been justified in that event.
“I didn’t answer the question because my response to Islamophobia has never been: ‘I’m not Muslim.’ It has always been, and will be, that hate is wrong. Once allowed to grow, hate doesn’t pick and choose,” he said in a statement.
The timing could not have been better for Singh, with voting in the leadership race opening next week.
The heckler video is too late to impact membership sales, which are closed, but it may yet sway existing members.
His campaign has the momentum generated by selling what his camp claims is 47,000 new memberships, representing 38 per cent of those eligible to vote. He has recently secured high-profile endorsements from former leadership candidate Peter Julian and Manitoba MLA Wab Kinew, the Indigenous musician and broadcaster who complimented Singh as “relentlessly positive and positively relentless.”
His weakness was that he was not particularly well known outside Ontario and parts of B.C. That has just changed.
A ridiculous article in Macleans suggested the “political class” has been operating from a “racialized” script that urges Singh to return in ignominy to his native Brampton and wait until the country has evolved enough to accept his candidacy.
But no one is saying this. Even in pro-secular Quebec, the informed commentary has pointed out Singh won’t automatically lose on religious grounds.
This country still has work to do integrating its most recent immigrants, and its original inhabitants, into the tossed salad that is Canada.
Singh said as much recently when he pointed out that, while Canada is known for celebrating multiculturalism, “as a kid growing up, it didn’t always feel that way … my turban and beard evoked a reaction in every room I walked into.”
He said fashion became his “social armour … insulating me from the negativity I faced.”
Yet, here he is — the frontrunner to lead one of Canada’s national parties.
He has embraced his Sikh identity and had some fun with it in an attempt to make it cool — who else could get away with a pink turban?
He understands, as did Barack Obama, that race is more a social construct than a biological reality — and that he can shift the culture.
His ethnic background has proven to be a power base from which to launch those ambitions.
I first met Singh in his Brampton riding during the 2015 election, when he helped his friend Harbaljit Singh Kahlon campaign for the federal seat he holds provincially.
He pulled up in a convertible sports car, in matching turban, tie, socks, and proceeded to charm the voters of Brampton East on their doorsteps.
Against the background of a lacklustre national NDP campaign, Kahlon lost, but it was clear that: a) Singh is a charismatic campaigner, and; b) he has built a powerful political machine in the very young, very brown suburbs of Canada’s biggest city.
The Liberals will be disquieted by a capacity to generate publicity that might rival the prime minister.
New Democrats will just be delighted someone, anyone, is paying them a little attention. The net effect of the heckler video is it may convince enough of them Singh has been transformed from “precariously electable” to “sufficiently electable.”