In the wake of the invasion of Capitol Hill by a group of cosplaying wannabes hoping for a civil war in Trump's name, we have been treating to some of the usual tut-tutting up here in Canada.  Much of it centres around the fact that we are not immune to the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who made up the ranks of those invaders, and reminders that the founder of the Proud Boys is himself a Canadian.  Some of it has been in the form of a reminder that it was only six months ago that a Friendly Sausage Makerâ„¢ smashed his gun-filled truck into the gates of Rideau Hall and went looking for the prime minister (but only to talk, we were assured at the time by RCMP sources, which was not the case at all).  But what I haven't seen is much discussion about the same kinds of rhetoric that radicalized that crowd that is being used closer to home.

Canadian politics often suffers from American envy, and the steady diet of outrage that spawned in overheated right-wing talk radio certainly found its way to Canada, and populist parties quickly found it an enticing vehicle for their purposes.  This particular tactic of fomenting anger and outrage took particular root in the western provinces, and it is now the dominant discourse of politics in Alberta, and by extension, the federal Conservative party that feels that Alberta is its particular heartland.  Complex issues are reduced to misleading, simplistic binaries, whether it's the tough-on-crime agenda, foreign policy, or the inability to reconcile the environment and the economy.  And while certain amounts of rhetorical excess are not unexpected in politics, things have taken an ugly turn in this country that doesn't get called out nearly enough probably because when put in comparison to the lunacy of the failed state that we neighbour, it doesn't look that bad, and people shrug it off.

One of those rhetorical excesses that has become disturbingly common is the notion that any government that is not the conservative flavour of the jurisdiction in question is somehow illegitimate.  This is the implicit message in Erin O'Toole's leadership campaign slogan of joining the fight to "take back Canada" that Justin Trudeau's Liberal government is some kind of pretender to the throne and must be overthrown.  It was the explicit message that Jason Kenney promulgated in Alberta when he arrived as the conquering hero to slay the great imposter, Rachel Notley.  No way could an NDP government actually exist in that province it was a terrible accident of history that needed to be corrected.

The fact that Notley was considered traitorous, and Kenney's angry mob would often devolve into imported American chants of "lock her up" is disturbing because it was a sign that our democratic norms were being eroded we don't call on our political opponents to be investigated and arrested, and yet, this kind of attack quickly became normalized.  With Trudeau, for whom the enmity in Alberta is the result of an outright indoctrination program because of the largely imagined slights his father inflicted on the province (seriously, the National Energy Program was not really how it has been portrayed after the fact), the appearance of "Trudeau for Treason" signs quickly became commonplace occurrences at rallies, along with signs and t-shirts with pictures of nooses on them, calling for Trudeau to be hanged.  This is not how things should look in a liberal democracy like ours, and yet this quickly became normalized because politicians like Jason Kenney neither adequately denounced it, and he kept feeding the irrational anger.

And because this kind of rhetoric became commonplace, and conservatives both federally and provincially were looking for constant ways to attack Trudeau, they also were quick to turn blind eyes to the alarming rise in white supremacist rhetoric that came with it.  Recall the avowedly racist woman from that Quebec barbecue who attacked Trudeau because he was spending money on refugees and not "Québécois de souche" the Conservatives were quick to offer her succour, and caterwauled that she was just "asking about the budget," and that if Trudeau doesn't like your questions, "he calls you racist" because remember, being called racist is a bigger sin than the actual racism.

There were the convoys by the so-called "yellow vesters," who went from a group that was trying to make a facile imitation of the French protests over increased carbon pricing to quickly being overtaken by white supremacists, and yet Andrew Scheer still felt the need to go out and address them rather than denouncing what they became.  So long as they were attacking Trudeau and could be considered "ordinary, hard-working Canadians," then they would turn a blind eye to the dangerous elements and let the rhetoric go unchecked.  Because they think that irrational anger works for them.

There is also the fact that there has not been any kind of reckoning for those members of their respective parties, federal and provincial, who have formed ties with the Trump campaign whether it's Marilyn Gladu repeating falsehoods about hydroxychloroquine, Candice Bergen in her MAGA hat, or Alberta's agriculture minister, Devin Dreeshan, having been a campaign worker for Trump there has been no actual accountability for what these ties represent to the norms of our democracy, and the fact that Trump was never a normal candidate or president, and that he should not be treated as such, especially in Canada by our own conservatives.

Even in the wake of the invasion of Capitol Hill, Erin O'Toole did not send a message to his followers that denounced the violence, merely expressing sadness at what was transpiring.  It took nearly 24 more hours for Michael Chong to do so, and the last time he ran for leader, the party denounced him as a closet Liberal for supporting market-based carbon pricing.  As a country, we need to take a stand and say that this kind of anger-for-the-sake-of-anger rhetoric is not acceptable, before it poisons our own democracy, and people start taking cues from Trump's mob.