As we approach the next election, it's quickly becoming clear that the main division that the Liberals and the Conservatives plan to battle one another about is which party is being more divisive than the other.  We've already seen hints from prime minister Justin Trudeau that he plans to make this an issue, as he used the occasion of his "nomination" (acclamation) to say that he plans to highlight "positive politics" while taking jabs at Conservative leader Andrew Scheer for exploiting fear and division.  Scheer, meanwhile, accused Trudeau of smearing anyone who disagrees with him.  And on it goes.

Part of the problem is that the lesson that so many Conservatives took from the last election was that they needed to be conscious of tone something that was echoed in the choice of Scheer as party leader, when he promised to be Stephen Harper with a smile.  But in order to cast himself as the positive one (and he keeps going on about offering a supposed "positive vision" of conservative politics) is that he needs to contrast himself with Trudeau's own brand of positive politics, and to do that, he has to create a narrative that Trudeau is really the divisive one between the two of them.  I'm pretty sure that tone was not the only real issue that brought down the Conservatives in 2015 a tired government that was resorting to snitch lines and nib bans to create wedge issues that they could exploit goes a little beyond just tone and the inability to learn that lesson is partially driving this need to recast the Liberals as the bullies.

Some of this is manifesting itself in the insistence that it's the Liberals who are engaged in identity politics, which is being depicted as the real source of division in our political discourse.  Much of this is hyperbolic nonsense while Maxime Bernier was shitposting about radical multiculturalism and extreme diversity without actually providing examples of what this is, or delivering proof that there is some kind of actual cultural balkanization in Canada (when the opposite is true multiculturalism as a policy has been an extremely effective way of integrating newcomers into Canadian culture and has greatly reduced incidents of extremism), Scheer was essentially nodding along, not disavowing anything Bernier actually said but insisting that he was the one staying out of "identity politics," never mind that he engages in it all the time.

And what kinds of "identity politics" are the Liberals apparently engaged in?  They've worked to address historic wrongs (something the Conservatives also did) but on a more accelerated timeline, so much so that their critics insist that they're apologizing too much and just putting on a show complete with crocodile tears.  They've also worked to address inequality and systemic barriers facing people due to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, and that includes reforming appointment processes in order to achieve greater representation and diversity in Governor-in-Council appointed positions something that their critics insist is just virtue signalling and doesn't have any meaningful impact, or is just the creation of quotas that demean members of those disadvantaged groups.

At the same time, the Conservatives have played their own version of identity politics, which disavowing these Liberal actions intrinsically plays into, precisely because it privileges the straight white male status-quo.  When Bernier's shitposts started winking to white nationalists winking that they picked up on and amplified these were not forcefully rebuffed by Scheer, who simply insisted that the Conservatives have a record of diversity by having a number of ethno-cultural "firsts" in Canadian politics as though a single member of a community achieving office is enough to break down systemic racism, and does not at all call out Bernier's comments for what they were.  And when the birth tourism resolution at the policy convention was passed on the weekend, which is absolutely pandering to a moral panic for the sake of throwing red meat to the xenophobes in the party's base, the Conservatives insist that the public outcry that resulted was just the Liberals being divisive again (though, to be fair, some Liberals did misrepresent what the policy resolution was, falsely saying that this was about stripping existing citizenships when it wasn't), never mind that some of their own MPs raised objections.

But what is probably the biggest example of crying "divisive" was Trudeau's response to the racist heckler at that event just over a week ago.  Despite the fact that the woman was using inflammatory language around "your illegal immigrants," and the fact that Trudeau didn't call out her racism until after she started deploying the racist term "les Québécois de souche" (something the Anglophone media in this country had a hard time depicting the nuance of), Scheer and the Conservatives went to bat for the woman, who is a publicly avowed racist and member of far-right groups, by trying to insist that she was "just trying to ask a question about the budget" (she wasn't) and that Trudeau shuts down criticism by "smearing people."  Indeed, the Conservative social media brigade immediately started deploying memes that said "Vote Liberal or you're a racist" in order to amplify the point.

To recap Trudeau called out the racism of an avowed racist he didn't even actually call her a racist (as Scheer and others have insisted), but said "your racism has no place here."  This, in Scheer's estimation, is a grievous smear that is designed by Trudeau as part of his campaign to be divisive.  This, while Scheer's entire media strategy lies around, misrepresentations, and shitposts is absolutely geared toward using the same kinds of divisive language that he insists that Trudeau is the person who is the only one guilty of doing so.  The fact that he would try to and give succour to racists by diminishing their actions in an attempt to try and cast Trudeau as a bully who will say anything to sow division shows just how amoral he's willing to be in order to score cheap points.  It has this childish air of screaming "I'm not being divisive, you're being divisive," while actively engaging in divisive language and behaviour.  But he's convinced that this is the way to win the next election, and I dread that it's only going to get far worse before the polls open.

Photo Credit: National Observer