Throwing gas on the fire
The forbearance shown by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in the face of gross harassment this week in Peterborough was an example of grace under pressure.
Singh was subjected to appalling verbal attacks outside a campaign event for a local provincial NDP candidate, harassment he called one of the most troubling experiences of his political career.
Protesters approached Singh shouting profanities in his face, then followed him to his vehicle, where they yelled and held up middle fingers outside the passenger side window.
Protesters were shown on videos of the event shouting “You’re a f--king piece of s--t,” “You lying piece of s--t.”
Singh told reporters the next day that “some folks were saying, ‘I hope you die’ and things of that nature.”
The episode should stand as a warning to Canadians that the incendiary rhetoric of ambitious opportunists is not without cost.
Singh said politicians stoking division must take responsibility for growing hostility. He is quite correct. This madness does not come out of a vacuum.
The conspiracy theories, the self-pitying sense of victimization at circumstances, the raging against an alleged elite purportedly responsible for life’s difficulties, are being stoked and nurtured in Canada as elsewhere by political leaders seeking to prosper from what is worse in human nature.
They are stirring and unleashing forces with profoundly damaging consequences.
They licence followers to behave in ways anathema to the healthy functioning of democracy and civil society.
It was distressing, in the first of their debates, to see candidates for the federal Conservative leadership competing with each other for the title of being chief cheerleader for the recent convoy siege of Ottawa and international crossings between Canada and the United States.
The Ottawa occupation was fuelled by rage, showered journalists with filthy abuse and held the city hostage for three weeks with a palpable sub-current of intimidation and imminent violence.
MP Pierre Poilievre, widely seen as the frontrunner, has taken advantage of anxious times to whip up contempt among his supporters for institutions like the Bank of Canada that have purportedly thwarted their ambitions.
He has raised the bogeyman of “gatekeepers” who are somehow responsible for any and all of life’s disappointments.
Though a lifelong politician and former cabinet minister entirely untainted by private-sector toil, he rails against “elites” that are cheating ordinary Canadians of their due.
It is not unreasonable to connect the dots from this kind of incendiary rhetoric to the sort of abuse unleashed on Jagmeet Singh this week.
Or to see a link between the campaign of People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier in the last federal campaign and the throwing of stones by protestors at the country’s prime minister.
Or the incitements of people like former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier (now facing charges flowing from the convoy protest) to make the Ottawa demonstrations “the hill we die on.”
What these politicians are doing is akin to filling jerry cans with gasoline, tossing lit matches around recklessly, then expressing astonishment and innocence when the fires rage.
The latent anger and anxiety combined with conspiracy theories and scapegoating and the apparent increase in extremism adds up to serious problems.
It is past time for all politicians to get a grip, muster a sense of decency, and show something like the restraint that Singh did this week when confronted by Canada’s ugliest side.
The conspiracy theories, the self-pitying sense of victimization at circumstances, the raging against an alleged elite, are being stoked and nurtured in Canada as elsewhere by political leaders seeking to prosper from what is worse in human nature