Front Burner - ‘F--k Trudeau,’ from fringe to mainstream

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

When Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre visited a convoy camp on the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia last week, he was filmed in front of a “F--k Trudeau” flag.It was another moment of visibility for a slogan that’s encroached on the mainstream, appearing on bumper stickers and flags scattered across the country.So when did this visible hate for the Prime Minister start? What’s the relationship between extremist groups and mainstream anger? And is there any way for Justin Trudeau – or his opposition – to heal the divisions?Journalist Justin Ling has spent many hours listening to groups who profess hatred for Trudeau. He’s the author of Bug-Eyed and Shameless on Substack, and he recently spoke to the Prime Minister about these divisions.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Everyone's happy with what you're doing. Really? That's awesome to hear. Everyone hates the Taps. This is Conservative leader Pierre Pauliev.

On Tuesday, he visited a convoy camping at the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border. Because everyone's been screwed over, right? People believed his lies. Everything he said was bullshit, top to bottom. The group says that they're protesting the carbon tax, but some of them have been protesting there on and off since 2021. Over things like pandemic restrictions, and they've posted online about conspiracies like the World Economic Forum and even chemtrails.

And the sad part is, we got the majority of soy boys sitting all by themselves. We're the soy boys. What is a soy boy? Someone that's not here. As Polyev toured the camp, he appeared in front of the signatures of Freedom Convoy figures scrawled on a trailer. The symbol of a far-right group called Diagonalon and a large flag with a familiar slogan. F. Trudeau. But not the F, the whole word. You know, you get it. That expletive and the prime minister's name are two words you've probably seen a lot in your daily life. On lawns, hung over bridges, on bumper stickers.

But seeing the actual leader of the opposition filmed in front of one of these flags got me thinking. How did hatred and expletives directed at the prime minister become so visible in Canada? hatred and expletives directed at the prime minister become so visible in Canada? And how does this all connect to the more mainstream unpopularity that surrounds Justin Trudeau? Justin Ling is back to discuss. He's the author of Bug-Eyed and Shameless on Substack, and he recently actually spoke to the prime minister about these divisions. Hi, Justin. Always great to have you. Hey, thanks for having me. So before we get started, I think we should put a small disclaimer on this. So we're going to spend time talking today about how Trudeau has become the focal point of some pretty extreme groups' hatred. But I do want to be clear that

that in no way means that extremists are behind all dislike of the prime minister, right? Yeah. Having these conversations can be a bit of a high wire act, right? Because there are people out there who love the prime minister who think that all hatred of him is being controlled by these far right groups. That's not the case. There are people out there on the right who think that every time we talk about this, we're saying that every single conservative and every single person who dislikes the prime minister is a right wing extremist. We're not saying that either. So we're putting that on the table before we begin. So let's try and stay on that high wire. People can tell us when and where we fell off it. I'm sure they will. So let's start at the beginning. When

did you first notice that there was this regular dislike for a politician that was turning into real hate for Justin Trudeau? Yeah, I mean, I think you can see the sort of undercurrents of this coming up over the last decade or so, right? There's always been a dislike for politicians that shouldn't shock anybody. I mean, look back to Trudeau's father. I mean, there's always been animosity towards politicians. But over the last decade or so, you've seen that really focus thanks to the internet, right? Think about the intense hatred that Hillary Clinton got ahead of the 2016 campaign, and certainly was fed by Donald Trump, but a lot of it was bubbling up from places

like 4chan, and in some cases, Twitter and Reddit, and, you know, think of the conspiracy theories about her, you know, eating children, not just dislike, but genuine kind of life affecting hatred. It really became the model for how a lot of these, you know, more conspiracy theory-oriented people, extremists and radicals, start talking about politicians. It started really hitting Trudeau, I think, around 2019. Think back to the United We Roll convoy that went to Ottawa with sharp rhetoric for the prime minister.

You know, you start hearing the word treason come up. And then the pandemic just supercharges everything, right? Trudeau becomes not just public enemy number one for many far-right people in Canada, but becomes an international villain of the anti-vaccine movement, of some far-right movements, of white supremacist movements,

anti-feminist movements. And he becomes this sort of heightened symbol, kind of unrivaled in the Western world, apart from maybe French President Emmanuel Macron. But Justin Trudeau becomes kind of the face of this evil globalism. And it has really just grown since then. Why do you think it's Trudeau and then also Macron? What is it that is making them these targets? Yeah, I mean, part of it is just longevity, right? I mean, Justin Trudeau is the dean of the G7 now. I think he is sort of the dean of this, not just the G7, but of this sort of liberal internationalism that was very much on the march in 2016 or so and then has sort of fallen apart since. There are not many big liberal leaders left in the world and Justin Trudeau sort of sits on the top of the heap, the very small heap. To some degree,

he's public enemy number one, because there's not a lot of other people to hate, right? But here at home, the fact that he was as vocal as he was around COVID-19 vaccines, the fact that he is as sort of moralizing as he is on some issues, whether it's access to abortion rights, whether it's feminism, LGBTQ rights, He not only supports them, but he kind of puts a real moral lens on all of it in a way that riles up some people who don't agree with them on those policy issues, right? And finally, you know, he has this way of speaking sometimes that challenges them directly. So a lot of these people feel like they're playing a sort of back and forth tennis match with him in terms of rhetoric as they kind of amp it up and amp it up

and amp it up. It's interesting. I've seen people shouting F. Trudeau almost like you'd yell, like, make America great again in the States. Like, I saw a guy this weekend wrapped in a Confederate flag and with a Nazi flag, you know, on his wall. He was yelling it. God bless Pierre Paul Viet. And fuck Trudeau. Fuck Trudeau. flag, you know, on his wall, he was yelling it. God bless Pierre Pallaviette. And fuck Trudeau. Fuck Trudeau. Can't forget that one.

Donald Trump. One thing I find interesting, so as with this border camp Pallaviette visited last week, it's been interesting to see some of the same people in groups that support some of these more extreme ideas that were, you know, heavily involved in the Freedom Convoy, also joining the carbon tax movement, right? With Trudeau as this kind of uniting thread. And so to be clear, a lot of people just don't like the carbon tax. But how do some of the factions see the Freedom Convoy and Axe the Tax as connected? I mean, they themselves say pretty openly. I mean,

if you listen to some of the organizers of the anti-carbon tax rallies and these encampments, they say pretty bluntly that there's a direct line between the Freedom Convoy and the anti-carbon tax encampments. But in particular, the folks who came up with the idea of organizing these protests off the side of the highways in Nova Scotia and elsewhere, they say really bluntly that the carbon tax is the thing that is the rallying point these days. It gets the most attention. It gets people active. They even said they considered other issues to protest around, but the carbon tax was one that just worked really well for them. We do. I would like to say there have been a lot of passionate stories that we haven't been able to post on the Facebook page just because there's some spicy topics in there.

And we are trying to keep we have to keep very focused on the carbon tax aspect of it, because that's what this mission's about. We have to emphasize that it is based on the carbon tax, the removal of the carbon tax immediately. And that is it. And then once once that once you can, and for them, you know, the centerpiece is always how do we oppose Trudeau? I don't want to make a direct line between all of these, you know, far-right conspiracy theorists and those who are protesting the carbon tax, but it is worth remembering that a lot of the people who are organizing these protest movements do have kind of broader concerns and broader intentions and objectives beyond just this individual carbon tax thing.

And it's a lot of the same players who go from one protest movement to the next. Yeah. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So look, the convoy camp Holly I visited, it had a symbol for Diagon.

People had posted about conspiracies like the World Economic Forum. But we also shouldn't make it sound like these are the only venues where we see hate for the prime minister, right? Because I see these F. Trudeau flags and stickers at like Costco. So talk to me a little bit about the mainstreaming of this, right? How this slogan and sentiment started appearing more in the mainstream. Yeah. And I mean, this is the really fascinating thing about how a lot of protest movements work these days, especially on the right and the far right. A lot of the language that started to dog Hillary Clinton had sort of been focus grouped and workshopped on 4chan and in other sort of hard right online spaces and then slowly trickled up and entered the sort of mainstream.

And in some cases, you even started to hear Donald Trump echo them and then became sort of dogma of the broader mega movement. I mean, think of something like Pepe the Frog, right, which originally had zero kind of ties to politics, quickly became used by anti-Semites and neo-Nazis, and then wound up as the sort of semi-official logo of Donald Trump's movement, even being used by people in the Trump campaign itself, right? So there's a really interesting ways in which sort of memes and offhanded remarks or little, you know, wink and nudge icons become sort of these mainstream symbols. And I think the, you know, the fuck Trudeau flags are exactly that. And you can point to some other, I mean, Canada First

has sort of reappropriated this one particular kind of far right movement led by yet another kind of anti-Semite has reappropriated the Make America Great Again into a Make Canada Great Again hat

that you occasionally see pop up here and there. So even if it has its origins in sort of radical spaces or amongst radical groups, it ends up becoming adopted in sort of more of a mainstream sense. I mean, I think Diagonal is even maybe a good example, right? Having listened to the guys behind it a lot, I can tell you that these guys think truly abhorrent and radical things despite publicly saying that they're a bunch of moderates or whatever. No, I can tell you that, you know, I was listening just earlier today to an interview that one of the lead

Diagonal guys gave with a literal neo-Nazi fascist organizer in the US. And they're talking about how each movement was so in line and how much they love each other, right? So Diagonal is a deeply radical group. And yet their little symbol has become more taken up by people who share the same sentiment of, you know, fuck Trudeau. You find people who really dislike the prime minister so much that if they find another group who also really, really hates the prime minister, they're going to be really liable to grab that group's symbology or name or reference or whatever. It's sort of, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing. And it happens all too often. And again, that doesn't mean that every

single person who has drawn a little diagonal on flag on their camper, or who waves an F Trudeau flag around is necessarily themselves a dangerous radical. It's not the case. But it is interesting how these small groups that hold truly radical beliefs do wind up having this kind of broader cultural influence on these movements they sort of sit in the middle of. I don't think they realize how much people hate them. So every time, like when Trudeau says Diagon, most people hate Trudeau. So if he says he doesn't like us,

they're probably like, oh, who are these guys? Check out the Google Trends for Diagonal. Yeah. Skyrockets. Everybody's looking at who we are. So the more moderate voters, the way that they talk about hating the prime minister, how is it different than the way the more extremist voters justify kind of waving F. Trudeau flags? Yeah, so I think this is where the rubber hits the road in a real way, right? Because even if the average person has no idea who Diagon is or what they are,

has no idea who Canada First is, right? That's probably the case for most of them. But when you start using the same language, and when you kind of start turning into a broader movement, you tend to see that these radical groups have a surprising ability to shift and change the discourse. You know, the fact that Pierre Polyev starts talking about the World Economic Forum is indicative of how these groups can actually set the agenda. My ministers and my government will be banned from participating in the World Economic Forum. Prior to a couple of years ago, the average conservative

had probably thought positive things about the World Economic Forum if they even knew what it was, right? It's an event that conservatives used to relish going to. And now it's become a villain, right? Like a cartoonish James Bond-style villainous organization for conservatives because the conservative party wanted to appeal to some of those more radical and conspiracy-oriented organizers and influencers. So, you know, I think a lot of the conversation around immigration is definitely taking its cues, not exclusively, but in part from some of these far-right influencers.

So I think even if the average person is not taking their cues from these organizations directly or these influencers or streamers or groups or whatever, I think you can see the ways in which these more radical groups can shift the conversation in their own direction. Right. So you think, you know, it's not like it's two radically different conversations, that there's like through lines from these extremist groups into the mainstream. Yeah. And I mean, this is the consequence of our media culture, right? Like, we no longer have a public discourse where newspapers and TV channels and think tanks are primarily driving the bus. Increasingly, you are seeing kind of anybody with a web camera and even a couple thousand followers can have a significant role to play

in shaping a political discourse and affecting a movement's ideology. So this does have a real consequence. And again, this is not totally unique to the right. The far right is particularly successful at this right now. But there is a point in the future where, and maybe we're already right there right now in terms of other ideologies, where the far left may have tremendous success doing something really similar on a whole bunch of other fronts. I just, what about the argument that someone might make? They're like, look, I have one of these F. Trudeau stickers on my car,

not because I'm influenced by the far right. I don't care about the World Economic Forum or, you know, conspiracies around vaccines. I just really don't like the prime minister. I don't think that he's done enough to nurture our energy sector. I think that he's put this country into crippling debt. I just don't like him. And so this sticker just really kind of speaks to that sentiment for me. And hey, fair enough. I mean, listen, like, I don't like the sentiment of the F Trudeau stickers. Because I think while we can probably over nostalgize civil discourse and politics, I think literally saying, you know, fuck the Prime Minister, no matter who it is,

is probably cheapening the political discourse and making it angry in a way that it doesn't need to be. But listen, there are people out there who will say inflation has run rampant. You know, I think the Prime Minister has lost the plot. We didn't build enough housing. You can go down the list of genuine policy grievances. And no, you're right. Like not everybody who doesn't like him is even being influenced in any way by these movements. And you might see some conservatives or even not conservatives who really hate him and who also hate the conspiracy theories being driven by these far-right groups. Absolutely. I would even say that that camp is probably still the actual silent majority out there. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still sit and follow and study

some of these burgeoning far-right movements. All I'm really saying is we have to be aware of this or else we're not going to see the actual influence these movements have on our politics. You talked earlier about Pierre Polyev's role in talking about the World Economic Forum, kind of bringing that to the forefront and the conspiracy theories around that. What role, if any, do you think he's played in fanning the hatred directed at the prime minister at Trudeau, especially beyond kind of the extremes, right? I think if you pretend that Pierre Pauliev is not both benefiting and encouraging this, then you're being purposefully naive. Pierre Pauliev, from the very kind of beginning of his leadership aspirations, has identified this particular strain. And I'm talking now about,

you know, probably the eight to 10% of the country that is sort of captured by this misinformation or conspiracy theories, the eight to 10% who are radically against the prime minister, who might be susceptible to the idea that he's committed treason, or that he encouraged vaccines that killed scores of people, right, whatever. Pierre Polyam looked at that rump of people and thought to himself, they are going to be very important for me winning the leadership, and for me becoming prime minister. And I genuinely think you can look at a lot of the things he's done over the last couple of years through that lens, and it makes a lot of sense, right? His decision to not just tacitly endorse the convoy,

not just agree with some of their aims, but his decision to go down there and join them, you know, put his fist in the sky and say, I'm, you know, I'm with you. I said at the very outset before they even arrived that I simultaneously stood with the law-abiding and peaceful truckers who are fighting for their livelihoods and liberties while condemning any individual who breaks the law, blocks critical infrastructure, or behaves badly. That is the position I... His decision to use a lot of the language he's used around the World Economic Forum, which he knows full well, is a deranged conspiracy theory. His decision to endorse restrictions on trans health care for youth. Guilty blockers for minors.

Do you agree with that? I think that we should protect children and their ability to make adult decisions when they are adults. His decision to stop by this anti-carbon tax protest. All of this is with an eye to looking at the sort of mobilized and militant group of people who really, really, really hate the prime minister and to try and use them to generate momentum for his own aspirations. I just want to spend some time talking about Trudeau's potential culpability here. And I know that this is something that you recently spoke to him about. And just talk to me more about that. So, I mean, listen, I don't think the prime minister is as culpable in this as Pierre Polyev. I think what Pierre Polyev is doing is incredibly dangerous. And I think these are people in his movement, he has a higher responsibility for the

things they say and do. But the prime minister has been in this game for a long time. He knows this mounting radicalization and hatred that has targeted him. And I think despite what he says, he's no longer trying to win these people over. My responsibility is to all Canadians. And the fact that there are people getting so impacted by deliberate foreign disinformation or just a toxicity in partisan politics where opinion becomes identity in a way that we hadn't seen in a long time, my job is to continue to reach out and I'm not going to give up on anyone. Right. You know, when I put this to him recently, I pointed out that the rhetoric he uses sometimes,

the way in which he talks about, you know, that eight to 10 percent, the way in which he uses them to beat up on the conservative party, it further, you know, does that same entrenchment that either you're with us or against us sort of thing, either you're with the Liberal Party, or you're an anti-Semite, right? Like that sort of line in the sand, it really makes people go a little squirrely, and you can't blame them, right? I've certainly spoken to people who went to the Freedom Convoy, who said, you know, I'm not really anti-vaccine, but the more I watched the Prime Minister kind of attacking these people, the more I started thinking maybe they have a point. And

again, this is our age of polarization. And is this entirely fair to the Prime Minister? Is it entirely fair to Pierre Polyev? No, but their actions have consequences, and these are the consequences. You know, when the prime minister goes on a talk show and says, I think I said, many of the people who were in this anti-vaccine movement, they include misogynists. He said it on French on a late-night talk show, but of course it got clipped and it got translated

and it went viral. But there are also people who are fiercely opposed to vaccination. They're extremists. They don't believe in science. They're often misogynistic, often racist. It's a little... You know, I know we were both spending some time at the Freedom Convoy talking to people.

I cannot tell you how many people brought that example up of that interview. It really kind of reminded you of the Hillary Clinton deplorable moment as well, right? So, I mean, what do you think that the prime minister, given how deep this hatred seems to go, you know, do you think it's possible that if he changed his tone around this, that he still could reach some of the people, you know, waving these flags who feel such animosity towards him? I guess if not for an election, perhaps just for the country's sake. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it too. You know,

I don't think the prime minister is going to win these people over. And frankly, I don't care if he does. What I do care about is, is there a way in which he can change his rhetoric and his political project in such a way that tamps down the intensity here? And I think the answer is yes, right? I mean, every time he tries to paint Polyev as an extremist, but not just him, not just this 8% to 10%, but kind of his movement as extremist. Every time he sort of says voting for Pyotr Polyev is voting for extremism, I think he's put that line in the sand, right? I think he forces people to pick a side. Are they the kind of leader that is going to welcome

the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists? Because that's exactly what Pierre Polyev continues to do, not just when he... Even some of the political projects he's pursued, like the online harms bill, I think there's good stuff in this legislation. I think there's stuff in there that, of course, is going to feed into this movement that the government is clamping down on free speech. I mean, he's setting up a new door for the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to litigate online harm, to open the door for people to start filing challenges against each other. Of course, that's going to be presented as an attack on free speech. I think pursuing that, frankly, questionable policy goal in a time of this

level of misinformation and conspiracy theorizing was always going to be dangerous. And he did it anyway. Did he do that with an eye of knowing that it would provoke this conversation? I think so. I think it's a reasonable assumption to make. There was a time in this prime minister's tenure when distrust of him was rising, but he made a real attempt to go across the country and to meet that distrust head on, right? You might recall he did these big town halls and they were not vetted. People asked, in some cases, ludicrous questions, but the prime minister answered them and actually responded to them and met with them and felt accountable to them. I actually asked the prime

minister about this and he sort of brushed it off and he said, oh, I still do them. I still do them all the time. Like I, I am still out with the public regularly. I do events all the time. We don't do the same kind of large scale town halls, but I have done a number of big events like that. I continue to go. But he doesn't, right? He does these little town halls that are invite only, or that are only people at a specific job site. There's no real kind of randomness to these interactions anymore. Right. Although to be fair,

there are serious security concerns around them now. So this is the thing. And that's actually the prime minister's point. To some degree, he kind of says, you know, there are people out there who don't want me interacting with the public, who don't want me to be accountable, who don't want the public to meet with me.

And it's kind of bizarre because it's a bit of a paranoid statement, right? I mean, it's not entirely wrong. But at the same time, you know, you're the prime minister trying to figure out how to have those real interactions, trying to figure out how to get back to that, I think should be a real priority for him. Whether or not it helps him politically, I don't know. But I do think that actually kind of bridging that divide a bit and making it less of a kind of tribalistic rock throwing exercise, I think would be a really good thing for the country. And I kind of do hope he gets back to it. All right. On that note, Justin, thank you so much for coming by. It's always a pleasure.

Thanks for having me. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.