Since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, commentators in Canada have frequently pointed the finger of blame at Trumpism for objectionable features of our own political discourse.
Is Kellie Leitch seriously considering putting forward a Canadian values test? Trumpism! Will Quebec enact legislation to outlaw the wearing of religious symbols?
Trumpism! Is 2018 the year that Doug Ford will become Premier of Ontario? Trumpism! And, well, I think I’ve made my point.
These interpretations are uninformed and prevent us from looking inside and analysing how our own politicians and the media ecosystem have contributed to the deterioration in the quality of our political dialogue.
In addition to this, it frequently causes us to underestimate our own internal challenges of extremism, such as the problem of white supremacists in the Canadian Armed Forces or the way that we have a tendency to punch above our weight when it comes to producing disinformation influencers.
It would be foolish to believe that what occurs in the United States of America stays in the United States of America without having some kind of effect on the people living in Canada, even though we shouldn’t place all the blame on Americans for our issues.
Canada is going to experience the effects of a resurgence of Trumpism in the United States in the years leading up to 2024.
To begin, it is essential to highlight the fact that Canada is home to its own group of Trump supporters.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Canadians who lean to the right would generally be more supportive of right-leaning politicians in the United States because there is certain to be some overlap between the two populations.
However, it is something that should start to worry us when significant portions of voters for the Conservative Party of Canada start to believe the blatant disinformation that is being peddled by Trump and other Republican politicians.
One example of this is the claim that has been made numerous times, even though it is objectively false, that the presidential election in the United States in 2020 was stolen from Trump.
Jason Kenney’s Frankenstein
In a survey conducted in the late year of 2020 by Angus Reid, the firm found that forty-one per cent of Conservative voters believed that the election in the United States was unjust and that the results should be appealed.
This stands in stark contrast to the opinions of 95% of voters who supported the Liberal Party and 92% of those who supported the New Democratic Party, both of whom believed the election was fair.
When one considers the sources from which conservatives on both sides of the border get their information, it should not come as much of a surprise that many conservative voters buy into the disinformation that is used to justify an armed uprising.
However, the thought that many conservative voters buy into the disinformation does come as a shock.
According to the opinion piece written by @supriyadwivedi, if the major propagator of false information continues to escalate things over the next few years, it won’t only be the American people who will suffer as a result of it for #cdnpolitics.
When a large portion of our legacy political media actively ignores what is being discussed in Canadian conservative media circles, whether it be AM talk radio or online outlets like Rebel and The Post Millennial, it is difficult to have an honest and substantive discussion on how information streams contribute to the demise of our political sphere.
Of course, this makes it difficult to have an honest and substantive discussion on how information streams contribute to the demise of our political sphere.
A key finding from the report on the Canadian Election Misinformation Project by the Media Ecosystem Observatory was that claims of widespread voter fraud were one of the predominant areas of misinformation during the 2021 election:
“Many of the narratives that emerged during and after the 2020 United States presidential election were similar to narratives that emerged during and after the 2021 Canadian election.”
I suppose it is a lot more palatable for our national psyche to pretend that the modern-day conservative movement in Canada consists exclusively of Munk debates and Andrew Coyne columns rather than feeding into conspiracy theories and hashtags accusing Trudeau of treason than it is to actually acknowledge that this is not the case.
According to the findings of the investigation, the outcomes of the election that took place in 2021 were not significantly altered in any way, despite the “widespread misinformation” that occurred during the election.
In addition to this, it highlights how resilient Canada has been in the face of both misinformation and deception. It’s a good thing. However, it is unclear how much longer we will be able to maintain this status quo.
The presence of several preventative measures in Canada has, in general, contributed to the country’s ability to avoid some of the more worrisome parts of what is occurring in the United States.
To begin, in contrast to their counterparts in the United States, Canadian conservatives have, up until quite recently, mostly refrained from publicly pandering to the anti-vaccine movement.
However, once the federal election took place, the Conservative brain trust apparently came to the conclusion that it could no longer politically afford to be unashamedly against disease and death.
As a result, they stopped being ready and willing to give vaccines a full-throated endorsement. A year later, the leading candidate for the party is gleefully shilling to end vaccine mandates, and the go-to talking point is to end “all mandates,” throwing masks into the mix because, I guess, why not? A year later, the leading candidate for the party is happily shilling to end vaccine mandates.
The years of the pandemic have had a significant impact on the level of trust that Canadians have in their government institutions and in the mainstream media. Nevertheless, this trust remains relatively high.
In the meantime, polarization in Canada is growing, along with the anticipated negative results that come with it, such as an increase in hate crimes and threats made against politicians and journalists.
In addition, the report states that Canadians are “increasingly obtaining their political information from a range of untrustworthy sources,” and that because of our “high levels of exposure to U.S.-based information, Canada is vulnerable to the polarisation and misinformation that is circulating in the United States.”
Read more:-
- A Source Claims That Before the Fbi Warrant Was Made Public, Trump Asked Merrick Garland: “What Can I Do to Alleviate the Heat?”
- In a Letter That Was Signed and Sent to the Justice Department, a Lawyer for Trump Claimed That Mar-a-Lago Did Not Include Any Secret Material.
- The Inflation Reduction Act Can Save and Reimburse Consumers $10,000
None of these elements paints a positive picture for the future of Canada. It is important for us not to let our history of resiliency in the face of polarization and deception in the United States make us complacent about our future.
If the person in charge of spreading false information, Donald Trump, continues to ramp things up over the next few years, it won’t just be the people in the United States who will suffer as a result; Canadians will, as well.
