Our politics have become even more polarized
Downtown Peterborough was rocked Sept. 30 by a massive rally that featured more than 1,000 people. Peaceful church groups, energized university students, members of the Indigenous community, anti-fascist fighters and even children gathered.
People drew messages of hope in sidewalk chalk, waved their flags, marched with homemade signs and chanted. The police came to control the crowds and outbursts of violence erupted in the midst of it all. The people had come to counter-protest an antiTrudeau and white nationalist movement but not many nationalists had actually arrived.
So, what triggered such a large turnout in such a quiet community? What sparked such an epic outcry? Ever since the U.S. presidential election, there has been a mass resistance. With politicians standing on either the far-left side or the far-right side, people have suddenly become incredibly strong in their political stance. Politics has turned personal.
Donald Trump’s election in 2016 triggered a mass divide between Republican and Democratic voters in the US. If you sided with Trump, you sided with a misogynist. If you sided with Hillary, you sided with a liar. The election caused not only a divide, but a significant shift in the way people think, act and speak about politics and the attitudes held towards people who are on the “opposing side.” Although we live miles away from the U.S. border, we are still experiencing the shock waves felt by our neighbors as the polarizing, political disruption has found its way to Canada.
So how exactly, is an American issue influencing Canada? It’s because the election, the attention and the media surrounding it has captured the world and people in Canada are now finding the same rhythms in their own country. The stereotypes attached to people who are either left or right leaning, liberal or conservative, has created a toxic atmosphere for open conversations about political and societal issues.
People start committing ad hominem attacks on each other instead of the points they are making. People are disliked if they vote Liberal; people are disliked if they vote Conservative. People should be disliked because of the content of their character, not the political party they stand by.
For the past decade or so, politics has been split directly down the middle. You are either Republican or Democratic. If you do not have a side, that means you automatically side with the “oppressor,” whoever the oppressor people seem to believe is. There is no grey in between. Even with four major political parties in Canada, people tend to divide everyone else into either left or right.
Of course, people frequently tend to associate their party with their personality but the left-only blogs, right-wing papers, and everything in between has created an even stronger division between normal citizens with opposing views.
So on Sept. 30, when hundreds of proud, Trudeau-supporting and anti-white supremacist citizens showed up and filled the streets of downtown Peterborough, it was not just to fight against their oppressors opposing views but to show who they represented. To show that they weren’t “one of them.”
The controversial issue of course, was the causation of the rally but the correlation was that the same kind of fury and fire was still flickering in America. Solidarity and standing together is incredibly important for a functioning community and it is happening all over Canada, but it cannot go without saying that the sudden personalization of politics came straight from our neighbours down south. Elizabeth Sargeant is an Adam Scott student on an internship in The Examiner’s newsroom.