Decision on charges needed quickly

The Yahoos were at it again in Peterborough this week, too small a group to be called a mob but just as threatening and unsettling.

They don’t identify as Yahoos, of course. Their self-descriptor would be something like “freedom fighters” or maybe “defenders of all that is good.”

In fact, they are modern-day Yahoos, the race of near-humans satirist Jonathan Swift brought to life 300 years ago in “Gulliver’s Travels.”

Yahoos were brutes who looked like people but displayed only the worst of human nature: unrelentingly crude, foul and violent.

The term yahoo is now part of the language, dialed down from satire to everyday reality: boorish, unthinking and only somewhat crude, foul and violent.

The crowd that harassed and swore at federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh during a campaign stop here represent the current, small “y” version. They are the same small slice of society Swift was skewering three centuries ago.

As noted in this space Friday, Singh reacted to the harassment in the best possible way.

He was calm and steady walking through the mini-gauntlet of profanity and aggressive behaviour. Afterward, he said people should be passionate about their communities and about politics but protest can happen without intimidation and insults.

We congratulated Singh for his graceful reaction and contrasted it with an increasingly common tendency for national and provincial leaders to stoke yahoo-ism. Insults, half-truths and outright fabrication and incitement to act on them are a political strategy — particularly on the right — that has to end.

That’s the macro response.

Peterborough also has to respond at the micro level. What to do about yahoo-ism and this particular group?

At the political level, the answer is to learn from Singh.

Mayor Diane Therrien’s immediate reaction came across well. She said she has always called out these protesters when they intimidate and always will.

In the past she has often matched, to a lesser degree, their insults and crude language. That’s a mistake. Shouting at a mob just causes them to shout back, louder.

The police are also involved.

A House of Commons committee heard Thursday that the RCMP is looking into it in the context of ongoing public harassment of politicians at campaign events.

It would be surprising if that led to any direct action against Tuesday’s mini-mob.

City police, however, are investigating and could bring charges.

Police have handled past, similar incidents well. When protesters set up outside the King Street public health office and chanted at workers, police were there but did not charge anyone.

When some of the same people went to the home of Dr. Thomas Piggott, Peterborough’s medical officer of health, trespassed on his property and tried to intimidate him, charges were laid.

This incident falls somewhere in the middle. It happened on a downtown public sidewalk, but video shows the tone and level of aggression went beyond what took place at the health office.

Police and the Crown attorney’s office will decide if there is a reasonable expectation charges could be successfully prosecuted.

“I hope you die,” which someone shouted at Singh, is not a death threat but could meet the standard for verbal assault.

A decision on charges should be made as quickly as possible. Civil society’s fabric is fraying; holding those responsible to account is the civil way bind it back together.

Insults, half-truths and outright fabrication and incitement to act on them are a political strategy — particularly on the right — that has to end