For months I’ve said quitting Twitter was the best move I ever made, and that it’s cesspool of conflict, hate and misinformation that all good people should stay away from.
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Anyway, you can follow me at @damianjpenny.
In the end, I decided I had to have a presence where all the thought leaders are.
Far-right MP Derek Sloan was booted from the Conservative Party caucus last week. Jen Gerson of The Line says this is a good start:
One of the most infamous Conservative MPs was kicked out of that party's caucus this week. Derek Sloan, perhaps best known for insinuating that Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam was somehow being controlled by "The UN, the WHO, and Chinese Communist propaganda" has promised to make trouble on his way out.
Although he was booted when it was revealed that a well-known white supremacist donated to his campaign, leader Erin O'Toole said the departure was thanks to a long history of problematic behaviour. In fact, Sloan himself admits that he was organizing for trouble at the party's upcoming convention and recently said that the Conservatives ousted him because "They were scared."
There is a lesson here.
The insurrection LARPing at the Capitol building in Washington D.C. earlier this month has made it abundantly clear to conservatives — if not the tribal conservative edgelords who populate WhateverChan has yet to be purged by fire — that radicals inside your own movement will grow and eat you. Kill and eat them while they are still small and weak.
[…]
Last week, after the Capitol attack but before Sloan’s deadly donation was reported, O'Toole sent out a lengthy statement disavowing the far-right. "The Conservatives are a moderate, pragmatic, mainstream party — as old as Confederation — that sits squarely in the centre of Canadian politics," O'Toole wrote. "My singular focus is to get Canada's economy back on track as quickly as possible to create jobs and secure a strong future for all Canadians. There is no place for the far right in our party."
It's a good start, but he shouldn't stop there. O’Toole needs to purge the party of the wingnut fringe and use their skulls as paving stones (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) If anyone doesn't like it, welcome them to take the bone-strewn path to the Christian Heritage Party, the People's Party of Canada, or Kekistan as they see fit.
Make it ugly. Make a point of it. Be merciless. And get it all done at once. Now.
There will be the usual reluctance to do this, of course, and I can already hear the objections. "The Progressives are inflating the problem!" some will claim. They'll insist that the left-wing screaming is just the same old opportunistic play to paint all conservatives as Nazis. "They'll call you 'far right' no matter how many statements you put out, or how many you purge. Nothing you do will ever be enough for them, anyway."
To some extent, this is absolutely correct. There is no action and no statement that will make the CPC palatable to those who have a vested interest in encouraging voters to vote for a party that is not the CPC. Such people are always going to try to paint the conservatives as irredeemably racist because O'Toole doesn't want to knock down John A. Macdonald statues; or because he used rhetoric like "Take Canada Back."
They're going to continue to do this because it works. And it works because it speaks to a grain of truth: there is a base of nutters within the ranks of the CPC.
(A side note: if the slogan “Take Canada Back” is irredeemably racist, as many completely non-partisan-and-absolutely-not-Liberal-party-shills on Twitter insist, that really says something about the Mulroney-era anti-free-trade movement..)
Right on cue, several state Republican parties in the US are proving Gerson exactly right. Let the kooks in, and before you know it they’re running the show.
To be fair to the Hawaii Republicans, there’s a bit more context to their controversial Tweets about QAnon followers. They say they don’t think Q is real, and argue that ridiculing supporters of the movement might just make them dig in further.
Well, maybe. But there’s a fine line between trying to understand supporters of a radical movement, and actively making excuses for it. And the past few years have given me no reason to think Republicans at any level can successfully walk that rightrope.
The national Republican Party, of course, is a lost cause:
Conservatives in Canada should be watching what’s happening to right-wingers south of the border, and run as far away as possible. It might hurt in the short term - the popular vote in the last federal election was agonizingly close, and a few thousand votes the other way might have given the Trudeau Liberals another majority - but it’s worth shedding some of the party’s more unhinged followers if it will keep us from turning into an extreme-right nationalist cult.
Let Maxime have ‘em.
Speaking of party splits, Donald Trump is apparently disappointed that the Republican Party is only around 90% behind him instead of completely under his spell. There is no such thing as being a partial Trump supporter, any more than you can be a “casual” Scientologist.
So he’s floating the idea of leaving the GOP and starting a new party:
Former U.S. president Donald Trump has reportedly thought about launching his own political party, after several GOP leaders criticized him for inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol over a democratic election he lost.
The ex-president considered calling it the “Patriot Party,” according to a Wall Street Journal report citing several aides and others close to Trump. The White House declined to comment.
Trump floated the idea in the last days of his presidency following his impeachment over the Jan. 6 riot, according to the Wall Street Journal. He raised the notion amid his anger at several Republicans who criticized him for his role in the violence on Capitol Hill, which left five people dead.
A new party would face a steep uphill climb in the United States’ two-party system, but it would also create a major headache for the Republican Party. The GOP is divided over how to deal with Trump’s impeachment and how to move forward — either with or without him — for the next presidential election in 2024. It’s also grappling with a major loss of power, with Democrats now holding control of the House, Senate and presidency.
It’s hard enough starting a viable new political party in Canada. Ask former MP Maxime Bernier. In the United States, it’s almost impossible. Ask Ross Perot.
If Trump wants to regain the Presidency, starting a “Patriot Party” doesn’t make much sense. If he just wants to hurt a Republican Party that betrayed him by not supporting his coup enthusiastically enough, it makes a lot of sense.
For all the talk about “blue states” and “red states,” most American states are actually quite closely divided between Republicans and Democrats, with each party winning at least 40% of the vote in Presidential and Senate elections. A few thousand votes siphoned from the GOP could make a huge difference in a swing state like North Carolina, or even Florida.
There is actually precedent for a spurned, egomaniacal political leader with a cultish following starting a new party out of pure spite - in Newfoundland, of all places. When Joey Smallwood - the Premier who convinced a narrow majority of Newfoundlanders to join Canada, and then ruled the province for two tumultuous decades - finally had the Liberal Party leadership pried from his hands, he started a “Reform Liberal Party” that was just successful enough to split the Liberal vote in the 1975 election.
Smallwood at his worst still wasn’t as toxic as Trump, but if he was vengeful enough to do something like this, I can definitely see the ex-President - not so much as a man but an animal powered by grudges - giving it a try. No one says “no” to Donald Trump and gets away with it.
The plane that will not die. Last built in 1946, and still in service today:
They might still be flying long after the last A380 is scrapped.