(Ottawa) “A good old tax revolt”
The conservative politician arrived on day 23 of the occupation of land between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, near a highway connecting the two provinces, last Tuesday. “I heard about you on the news. We saw you, so I told the team to stop,” he says in a video shot by a camper. “Everyone is happy with what you are doing,” added the opposition leader, encouraging the group to hold firm in what he called “a good old Canadian revolt against taxes.”
Especially since “everything that” Justin Trudeau said was “bullshit, from start to finish”, rails Pierre Poilievre before heading towards a trailer, circulating between the “Fuck Trudeau” flags “. As he gets on board, we see a drawing of the flag of the Diagolon group on the door of the vehicle. The logo – a diagonal white line on a black background – is small. But it testifies to the presence of followers of the group, traces of which had been found in an arms cache at the Coutts Dam, in Alberta, during the “freedom convoy” demonstrations.
“A brief impromptu stop”
If Pierre Poilievre made “a brief impromptu stop” along the route, it was “as a fervent opponent of Justin Trudeau’s punitive carbon tax”, maintains his spokesperson Marion-Isabeau Ringuette. We had to insist on knowing whether the Conservative leader supported Diagolon. “No,” she finally decided. This was not the first contact between the Conservative leader and the network with neo-fascist visions. During Pierre Poilievre’s leadership race in August 2022, the organization’s founder, Nova Scotian Jeremy MacKenzie, showed up at one of his rallies.
Pierre Poilievre disavowed it a month later: Jeremy MacKenzie had mentioned the idea of raping his wife, Anaida. “He denounces these groups when he is personally targeted. But these groups are doing this to a lot of people: politicians, women, racialized individuals,” regrets Barbara Perry, director of the Center on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Diagolon is “an accelerationist militia,” whose members believe “that civil war or the collapse of Western governments is inevitable and must be accelerated.”
Coincidences called into question
Big Reset (Great Reset), boycott of the World Economic Forum, allergy to compulsory vaccination against COVID-19: these ideas abound in far-right circles and they have all been promoted by Pierre Poilievre. THE Great Reset also inspired the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to write a book. The same Alex Jones who recently gave the Canadian politician an enthusiastic seal of approval: “I’ve been following this guy for years, and he’s solid (the real deal) ! “, he wrote on X. So far, the conservative leader has not personally distanced himself. “We are not following this individual and we are not listening to what he has to say,” reiterated his spokesperson.
“Pierre Poilievre is not as radical as Alex Jones and Donald Trump, but he rides on it,” notes Charles-Étienne Beaudry, author of the book Radio Trump: How he won the first time. The Canadian Alex Jones – the researcher cites RadioPirate, Rebel News and Jordan Peterson – have a discourse that is “more or less mainstream, but marked with conspiracy”. In the case of Rebel News, a media outlet that had been ostracized by former Conservative leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, it has returned to the good graces of Pierre Poilievre, who admits his representatives to his press conferences. As for polemicist professor Jordan Peterson, he hosted Chef Poilievre on his podcast.
Mr. Beaudry, who is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa, does not believe in the unexpected nature of the meetings between Pierre Poilievre and the segment of the electorate likely to camp on the side of the highway to protest against the carbon tax. “He blows hot and cold because he doesn’t want to alienate them,” he believes. “It is fallacious to speak of chance. Pierre Poilievre knows what he is doing,” adds Barbara Perry.
Ammunition for Justin Trudeau
Justin Trudeau also knows what he is doing. Once again, last Friday, he challenged his opponent to clarify his allegiances. “Here’s what he should say: I categorically reject the endorsement and support of Diagolon and Alex Jones. Because Diagolon is a violent white nationalist organization, and Alex Jones is a scumbag conspiracy theorist. » It is a safe bet that the Prime Minister will seize every opportunity available to him to talk about these connections, while his party is lagging behind in the polls.
reference: www.lapresse.ca