Very online Tories
Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party is going after the right-wing fringe on the internet, regardless of how most voters feel about it.
If you can believe it, Pierre Poilievere insists he had no idea there were hidden tags on his YouTube channel aimed at red-pilled incels or whatever they’re called this week. And if that’s not unbelievable enough, get this: I believe him.
Seriously. Until Thursday afternoon I had no idea “hidden tags” were a thing on YouTube. I’m charitably assuming Poilievere is as baffled trying to run a YouTube channel as I am, and farms that stuff out to the interns.
But that doesn’t mean a cancer isn’t metastasizing within the Conservative Party of Canada, just as I feared when the main right-of-centre party on our southern border went all in on a nationalist carnival barker as its leader.
Pierre Poilievre’s official YouTube videos included a hidden tag appealing to misogynistic online movements that Canada’s intelligence agencies view as a danger.
A Global News analysis of 50 of Poilievre’s most recent YouTube videos showed that they included a tag — hidden from viewers, but not from the videos’ publisher — used by a misogynistic online movement. The tag helps promote Poilievre’s videos among those circles, and signals to YouTube what users might be interested in the Conservative leader’s messaging.
The tag, #mgtow, is an acronym for “Men Going Their Own Way” — a mostly-online movement comprised of anti-feminists who attempt to cut women completely out of their lives. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the movement overlaps with more aggressive forms of “male supremacy.”
[…]
Global News verified the tag was used on the videos using publicly-available software and checked it against the video’s source code.
Within hours of Global News sending a detailed list of questions to Poilievre’s office, the tag disappeared.
Poilievre’s office said the Conservative leader was unaware the embedded tags existed “and therefore was unaware they were used for uploads on his YouTube channel over the last” four and a half years.
“The embedded tags were immediately removed once his office became aware of them. Obviously, Mr. Poilievre condemns misogyny and all forms of online hate,” wrote Sam Lilly, a spokesperson for Poilievre, in a statement to Global.
Poilievre has long been savaged for his alleged ties to far-right nationalists, sometimes based on pretty thin evidence, such as a handshake with an online weirdo who admitted he infiltrated Poilievre’s event with the express intent of embarrassing him.
At other times, though, he knows darned well who’s on his team.
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