No one should underestimate the damage that Maxime Bernier can cause with his tour of the Fraser Valley. He is the embodiment of the backlash against political correctness that I have wasted my time warning people about, because no one wants to believe what happened in the United States can happen here.
His immediate threat is to the Conservatives as he will draw votes from the far-right wing of that party. He will force that party’s leader to slow down attempts to move the party of Stephen Harper and Preston Manning closer to the centre of Canadian politics. It’s a given Bernier will attract the white Christian evangelicals and loopy online conspiracy theorists, just as Trump united those groups behind him.
READ MORE: Maxime Bernier’s ‘Mad Max’ tour rolls through Lower Mainland this weekend
But everything, even in politics, has an equal and opposite reaction. The cancel culture of the extreme-left will generate increased interest in the cancel culture of the far-right. Fascism found fertile ground to grow in America and Trump was only the symbol, not the cause of it. Never underestimate how willing people are to follow blindly when they try to make sense of a world that seems to have gone insane.
I’ve lost faith (politically speaking) that the middle ground in Canada has a future anymore, as saner people want to keep their heads down. The fascism of the far-left only encourages the fascism of the far-right, and visa versa.
No surprise to me that Bernier has found a warm reception in the bible belt of the Fraser Valley, just as Trump was a hero to the bible belts across America and sadly still is. Is Bernier a Trump? Only time will tell, but the potential is certainly there?
Bernier is as much a product of the far-right as he is a product of the reaction to the antics of the far-left and the social conformity it demands. Both fringes deserve each other as they are as bad in their own ways as the other.
Robert T. Rock, Mission