After about a week of news articles, columns and op-eds opining on the fact that Conservatives in Canada need to let go of Trumpism, and essentially imploring Erin O’Toole to seize the opportunity to do so, O’Toole came out with an aggrieved press release on Sunday to complain that he feels like he’s being unfairly tarnished with the far-right brush, and tried to list his and his party’s progressive bona fides, but there are some very curious omissions in there, such as the fact that some of those bona fides on his personal part have been qualified, that the ones for his party were pretty much all from the Progressive Conservative party, which is extinct and not the modern Conservative Party of Canada (indeed, two former PC prime ministers say they no longer have a party), and O’Toole conveniently ignores the ways in which he has been employing the same tactics as Trump and elements of the far-right movement, be it his reliance on lies and shitposts to undermine trust in government, the party’s conveniently looking away from racists and white supremacists when they think they can use them to score goals, and his hiring people like his shitposter in chief, who is one of the minds behind The Post Millennial, which has a large far-right following.
O’Toole also claims that there is “no place for the far-right” in his party, and yet we have yet to see him make any kind of denouncement of his MP Derek Sloan for his blatant Trumpism, including during his leadership campaign, and we certainly haven’t seen any disclaiming of the kinds of things that Leslyn Lewis has been saying, particularly in op-eds in the National Post, which have been unhinged Trumpist screeds – but because she’s a Black woman, O’Toole will keep excusing her because he thinks her inclusion is good for the party. (I would also point out that when O’Toole claims he immediately and forcefully denounced the Capitol Hill attack, he did no such thing – his personal statement spoke about “sadness” that it was happening, and it wasn’t until the next day that Michael Chong actually denounced the attack, and he’s someone that the party has largely marginalized as Liberal-lite™).
The other thing that O’Toole’s whinging press release smacks of is “victim-claiming,” which is a new term that I learned, where the conservative movement in particular frames themselves in a light intended to garner sympathy from non-victims, and portray themselves as vulnerable. We see this a fair amount, particularly online, where they take great pains to portray themselves as the victims of scurrilous attacks against their character, and ignore the attacks they themselves perpetrate or encourage. Michelle Rempel Garner is a favourite user of this tactic – and while she is absolutely on the receiving end of horrific death and rape threats, she is also an instigator of online mobbing (who in turn give death and rape threats to her targets), and when called out on it, she retreats to her own victim status. Nobody is a winner here, but there is a complete lack of self-awareness that is particularly galling, and yet this is where we find the discourse. I don’t think O’Toole deserves a pass until he acknowledges the things he and his party do that fall into the kinds of tactics employed by the far right, but I doubt we’ll get that, because he will fall back to this refrain of “look how progressive I really am,” and keep silent on all of qualifications, the winks and nods, everything else that demonstrates that words and actions don’t necessarily align. You know, the kind of personal responsibility that conservatives like to preach.
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