Canadians aren’t immune to online provocation

Opinion

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This article was published 02/11/2022 (783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There seems to be genuine surprise from some corners that the individual charged with the attack on husband of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is Canadian. It’s as if some feel that Canadians are immune to being radicalized, so emboldened by messages of hate through social media that they seek out violence against political figures.

Yet we’ve just commemorated the eighth anniversary of the shooting of Corp. Nathan Cirillo, a sentry guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa, during a terrorist attack on Parliament Hill.

Testimony is being heard this week from convoy protesters who held downtown Ottawa hostage for weeks last spring before the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act. We heard Tuesday at the Public Order Emergency Commission’s public hearings of an email titled “PREPARE FOR BLOOD AND WAR!!!”, addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s general email account two days after the Emergencies Act was invoked.

The email, whose writer is identified as Larry Jensen, states: “I declare war on all the CANADIAN government for lying about COVID-19. Chrystia Freeland will get a bullet to the head.” He further wrote Freeland “better be hidden and be placed into protection because we know where you live.”

So, yes, the person charged in the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul is Canadian, and as Canadians we should not be so smug.

Doug Heye, the former communications director for the Republican National Committee, wrote this week in The Washington Post about the GOP’s role in fomenting hatred against Pelosi and others. “The original sin begins with us,” Heye wrote, suggesting that because of the heated rhetoric, “People keep getting hurt. We’re very lucky no one has been killed — and I worry I need to emphasize ‘yet.’ ”

Of course, it’s not just the GOP, and in Canada, it’s not just far-right Conservatives. It seems to be the way business is done now in politics. As Heye made clear, the ratcheting up of anger means that “(r)eal solutions, and the politicians who put their heads down to do hard work, get short shrift.”

This week, the Hill Times released the first in a three-part-series on the increasing anger toward modern-day federal politicians. It included interviews with MPs from all parties who have had to deal with the likes of death threats, stalking, being spat at, vandalism, misogynistic and racist comments on social media, hate-filled letters addressed to their offices, threats to their homes and their children, and more. No one party is immune; however, it is clear that persons of colour and women are certainly singled out more regularly.

Former Green party leader Elizabeth May told the Hill Times: “It got worse once Donald Trump got to the White House, because then sexism and misogyny had a big fat billionaire’s face on it.”

The situation will only spin more wildly out of control if the brakes (what little there were) are taken off Twitter at the behest of new owner Elon Musk. There’s much concern about Musk, who has claimed he’s free speech and anti-censorship, and his response to news of the attack on Paul Pelosi was to post a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting there was more to the assault than meets the eye.

Fake news and misinformation, the likes of which are found on Rebel Media and within certain political camps on Twitter, were the mainstays of those in the convoy protests. It’s interesting that when Steeve Charland, representing the Quebec-based anti-COVID-19 mandate group Les Farfadaas, said on Tuesday that everything covered by the media was “s—,” he received applause from supporters who had showed up to watch proceedings in person.

It’s clear that mainstream media no longer are seen as plausible by a segment of Canadian society, and that is troubling.

What can be done? I’ll leave it up to Heye, who in a radio interview offered this suggestion to politicians of all stripes: “Just say less. You don’t need to tweet a joke. And that shouldn’t be your initial thought. You don’t need to tweet anything other than rightful condemnation of that, and calling for us all to do better. You really need to step back and not fill the space with noise that often is ugly.”

Shannon Sampert is the former politics and perspectives editor at the Winnipeg Free Press and a communications consultant.