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Pierre Poilievre’s disowning of Christine Anderson is fake, and a gift for Maxime Bernier

Feb 26, 2023

So many political opportunists, so little time.

People have been asking me my opinion on Christine Anderson over the past week. She was a guest on Blackballed last November, and her views appeared to be largely the same as People’s Party of Canada’s leader, Maxime Bernier.

Before we get into the opportunism we are seeing in this country, let us put aside one glaring annoyance I’ve had to deal with over the past few days.

Nazis. I hate them, you hate them. I’ve made an effort over the past few days to contact a handful of Jewish people I know to ask them what their thoughts are on the reflex many people have in labeling people like Anderson a Nazi. Out of the 4  Jewish people I spoke with, 3 of them were adamant; you can’t call someone a Nazi unless certain horrendous benchmarks have been reached. Among those benchmarks is a willingness to broadcast your hatred of specific people in no uncertain terms.

I can already hear critics talk about dog whistling. We’ll get to that.

Another benchmark is the systemic killing of people from specific hated groups. Yes, the Nazis before they took the reigns of power hadn’t murdered lots of people yet, and they were definitely Nazis. But the history of Nazism as we know it today includes within its definition the violence and genocide that came with it.

You can’t just expect everyone to fall in line and label Anderson a Nazi because you find her repugnant. You can’t even look at her policies and call it a Nazi philosophy. She’s basically the Maxime Bernier of Germany. And no, kids, Bernier is also not a Nazi.

Polarization does this to us. If I say that my interview with Anderson was civil, that doesn’t mean I am defending a Nazi or placating, or any of those silly things ideologues like to throw against the wall of stupidity. Anderson is a far right conservative who doesn’t believe in multiculturalism. That could mean a lot of things, but settling on Nazi as the appropriate label is intellectually lazy, and driven by neo-progressivism.

Everybody on the fringe, no matter which fringe, have decided the ends will always justify the means. That’s why the world is so dangerous right now. Nobody will give an inch, and everybody thinks they are pointing and screaming at a boogeyman.

Back to Anderson, and Pierre Poilievre’s faux distancing from her.

First, Poilievre’s statement was made to one reporter. That’s it. He did not post his statement onto his Twitter feed, which means he didn’t want his supporters to know about it. That’s called a red flag, and we should all understand what is really happening here; Poilievre doesn’t actually believe Anderson is ideologically dissimilar from the folks he counts as his base.

Any armchair critics who tell you that she is too far to the right for Poilievre isn’t reading the ether properly. Poilievre is attempting a balancing act right now, attempting to shore up some moderates without losing any of his faithful fringe to Bernier’s party. It’s a dance that is destined to leave Poilievre without a chair when the music stops playing. Moreover, it’s really just a case of damage control because the media lashed out at the MPs who took photos with Anderson during her visit. Poilievre had lost control of his party’s message, mostly because that message was now being written by Anderson and the media that loathes her.

But I suspect there was also some jealousy at play. Anderson was greeted as if she was Germany’s Chancellor. She was moved to tears several times as convoy folks gave her ovation after ovation for the boilerplate, anti-Trudeau rhetoric that made people familiar with her in the first place.

That EU speech made international news, and despite the collection of factual errors contained within that speech (it could have been written by Ezra Levant) it struck the right cord with all the wrong people. When Anderson brought that tone to Canada, at a time when the Emergencies Act inquiry had cleared Trudeau of wrongdoing, she stole the oxygen away from the Conservative Party of Canada, all while members of Poilievre’s caucus were sucking from the tank Anderson had provided.

All of this – ALL of this – is just more political theatre. And here we are, the audience, all cheering or yelling or spitting at the screen as if we are all watching a different movie.

Contributing Writers

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