Clearly Biased PP/Convoy References cuz Fascism

B.J. Dichter, who was listed on the convoy’s official fund-raiser alongside Ms. Lich, has said that “political Islam” is “rotting away at our society like syphilis.”

The organizers are mostly fringe activists, rather than truck drivers, an overwhelming majority of whom are vaccinated.

Pat King, who is listed as an official contact for a regional group involved in the protest and has been a prominent champion of the protests online, has called Covid a “man-made bioweapon” and claimed that international financiers seek to “depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race.” He has said of lockdowns, “The only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets.”

“You did have far-right populism — historically it was there — but it was isolated,” said Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a Canadian political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. Canada’s populist right has lagged, Dr. Kopstein said, in part because the typical drivers of such movements — cultural polarization and white racial resentment — are less prevalent in the country than in other Western nations. The country’s large and politically well-organized immigrant populations mean that both major parties see greater gain in courting immigrants than in cultivating white backlash.

As a result, Canada’s Conservative leaders have neither embraced nor been co-opted by the more extreme elements in their base to the same degree as some other right-wing parties.

Romana Didulo, a Canadian QAnon activist who has called for military executions of doctors who vaccinate children.

Canada’s populist right, though homegrown, is also heavily influenced by its far more numerous and better-resourced American counterparts. This helps provide the movement with energy and direction, though often in ways that hinder its influence in Canada, where Donald J. Trump is deeply unpopular.

But in years since, populist movements across the Western world have continued to rise and to coordinate across borders, helping to aid their Canadian counterparts’ slow but steady growth. In a demonstration of this effect in action, a number of American political and media figures, including Mr. Trump, have forcefully endorsed or promoted the trucker protests. Americans are thought to have provided much of the $8 million raised online for the convoy.

And there is another change: Canada’s Conservative Party, after a difficult year, may be rethinking its longstanding practice of isolating conservative fringes. Party officials recently ousted Erin O’Toole, the party leader, in part, they said, for insufficiently embracing the truck protests. The new interim leader attracted controversy last year when a photo surfaced showing her wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Several Conservative lawmakers have since visited the protests in support. One was photographed alongside Mr. King, the white nationalist and conspiracy theorist, though later issued a statement condemning “any violent rhetoric.” In some ways, support for the protests seems to reflect public opinion oscillations related more to the pandemic than to the far right.

Outsiders might assume this is because Canada is simply more liberal, but they would be wrong. Rather, Canada has resisted the populist wave through a set of strategic decisions, powerful institutional incentives, strong minority coalitions and idiosyncratic circumstances.

In other Western countries, right-wing populism has emerged as a politics of us-versus-them. It pits members of white majorities against immigrants and minorities, driven by a sense that cohesive national identities are under threat. In France, for instance, it is common to hear that immigration dilutes French identity, and that allowing minority groups to keep their own cultures erodes vital elements of Frenchness. Identity works differently in Canada. Both whites and nonwhites see Canadian identity as something that not only can accommodate outsiders, but is enhanced by the inclusion of many different kinds of people.

Canada is a mosaic rather than a melting pot, several people told me — a place that celebrates different backgrounds rather than demanding assimilation.

Jason Kenney, then a Conservative member of Parliament, convinced Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the party should court immigrants, who — thanks to Mr. Trudeau’s efforts — had long backed the Liberal Party. “I said the only way we’d ever build a governing coalition was with the support of new Canadians, given changing demography,” Mr. Kenney said.

The result is a broad political consensus around immigrants’ place in Canada’s national identity. That creates a virtuous cycle. All parties rely on and compete for minority voters, so none has an incentive to cater to anti-immigrant backlash. That, in turn, keeps anti-immigrant sentiment from becoming a point of political conflict, which makes it less important to voters. In Britain, among white voters who say they want less immigration, about 40 percent also say that limiting immigration is the most important issue to them. In the United States, that figure is about 20 percent. In Canada, according to a 2011 study, it was only 0.34 percent.

In Canada, because all parties compete for all ethnic blocs, minorities do not tend to polarize into just one party. That leaves little incentive for tribalism, even as minority groups feel empowered to champion their ethnic or religious identity.

But because Canadian politics accounts for diversity without polarizing across ethnic or religious lines, it is more resilient. Everyone, including whites, becomes less likely to see politics as a game of us versus them.

Rapid changes in demographics tend to spur anti-immigrant sentiment within the dominant group, experts say, bolstering far-right politicians who promise harsh tactics against outsiders. But although Canada’s high immigration rates have transformed the country in just a few decades, the public has mostly been calm and accepting. One reason may be Canada’s unusual immigration policies. A sponsorship system, in which Canadian families host newcomers, allows communities to feel they are a part of the country’s refugee resettlement program. And a points system, which favors migrants who are thought to contribute economically, makes immigration feel like something that benefits everyone.