Conservatives will be judged by the company they keep
Would it be wrong for a major Canadian gathering of conservatives to host an American radio host who thinks it’s “idiotic” that he cannot say the N-word? Or that free speech should apply to hate speech, too? Or that Western news media “pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does?” These aren’t rhetorical questions. Next month, the Manning Networking Conference will be taking place in Ottawa. It dubs itself as “the largest national gathering of Canadians in support of limited government, free enterprise, and personal responsibility.”
This year, one of the speakers is Dennis Prager, a syndicated radio host who earlier this month told a caller that “the left has made it impossible to say the N-word any longer. That’s disgusting, it’s a farce. It’s the only word that you can’t say in the English language.”
The radio host is the founder of PragerU. The online platform hosts short videos from a coterie of right-wing commentators. One video, viewed 17 million times, features an internet talk show host claiming “racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and Islamophobia” are “meaningless buzzwords.”
Back to the Manning Centre. Its events typically attract the who’s who of conservative movers and shakers, including federal and provincial party leaders. Considering the party’s various efforts to insist it supports diversity, do Scheer and the candidates vying to succeed him as leader have any qualms about associating themselves with Prager? If so, let’s hear from them.
Besides, hasn’t the Manning Centre itself come to the realization that if this country’s conservative movement is to build any kind of momentum, it must unequivocally distance itself from those peddling in hatred and division?
Especially considering that a December 2019 poll by Abacus Data found that the Conservative brand was often publicly associated as being old, closeminded, racist and bigoted.
One is left to conclude that the party and perhaps the Manning Centre as well, have failed to learn from the past. In 2015, former Conservative leader Stephen Harper did his level best to stir up xenophobia with discriminatory policies around face veils, barbaric cultural practices and relentless stigmatization of Canadian Muslims. And he lost that election.
Post Harper, a Conservative party member and writer Angela Wright argued Scheer would need to “be at the forefront of rebuilding trust between the Conservative Party and racial and religious minorities.” That didn’t happen. Instead, he presided over his party’s toxic efforts to block Motion 103 — a bill to condemn Islamophobia and religious discrimination.
It seems Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are slightly warier of optics. The province’s Attorney General Doug
Downey was advertised as a speaker at an upcoming conference organized by a group calling itself “Canadians for the Rule of Law.”
On the guestlist, longtime anti-Muslim agitator Daniel Pipes, and Christine Douglass-Williams, former board member of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, who was fired by the federal government for her Islamophobic writings.
A spokesperson for the attorney general confirmed in an email last week that Downey will in fact not be speaking and that his office has requested his profile be removed. Both the Manning Centre and the Conservative Party should take note. They don’t have to cut ties with Prager if they don’t want to. But Canadians should know where they stand.