Danielle Smith wants a gentler politics. She’s welcome to start

It didn’t take long for the American and Canadian right to weaponize the assassination attempt on Donald Trump against the left. In the United States, Republicans and their supporters immediately pointed their fingers at progressives as the cause of the violence, including Ohio senator JD Vance, who blamed President Joe Biden for the attack.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance posted on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Vance is now Trump’s pick for vice president.

In Canada, Alberta premier Danielle Smith took the occasion as a chance to warn against the rhetoric used by the left, saying some criticisms of conservative politicians, including federal opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, are “unacceptable,” adding that she’s “glad that we're beginning to see that they recognize that things have gone too far.”

Smith focused her concern on the way the left talks about the right. "The way in which conservative politicians have been characterized is outrageous, and I think led to the culture that we've seen in the U.S.,” she said.

She called for progressive politicians to be “careful of their language because they've been talking about conservative politicians in the same way, and they need to dial it down." She also appealed for folks to stick to the issues.

To say the least, that’s a brave card for Smith to play. Writing for CBC, Catherine Tunney reminded readers the Alberta premier herself once told US commentator Tucker Carlson she wished he would "put Steven Guilbeault in your crosshairs."

At PressProgress, Stephen Magusiak listed more than half a dozen times Smith, let’s say, failed to live up to her own purported standards, including the time she compared vaccinated Albertans to Nazis and supporting the Coutts border blockade.

On X, former Alberta NDP legislator and Cabinet minister Shannon Phillips wrote that in 2016 someone called her ministerial office “and told the receptionist he was coming down to shoot us because he didn’t like what he heard on the Danielle Smith radio show about the carbon tax.”

The right in Canada is the leader in routinely employing dangerous rhetoric that has real world consequences driven by their supporters. That’s not to say there’s no such thing as toxicity or violence from the left — there is, indeed, both — but the bulk of the problem is a right-wing affair.

It’s the same in the US. For decades, the rise of toxic polarization and violence in the US has been driven by the right through cable news and, later, the internet. That right-wingers have suddenly decided to turn tail and blame the left for the heated political environment when it suits them is hypocritical stuff that either reflects a conscious and cynical double standard, or an utter lack of self-awareness. Maybe a bit of each.

Not all right-wing politicians agree with Smith’s call to tone down the rhetoric, though. Poilievre says he worries about his family due to security threats, but didn’t call for a de-escalation in the war of words. His conflictual politics is serving his party well — or at least not hampering it — as the Conservatives enjoy a lead in the polls, hovering around 20 points.

In the past, conservative attacks have led to harassment and threats, including against NDP member of Parliament Charlie Angus, who called for Poilievre to “turn down the rhetoric,” after the Conservative leader “led a vicious attack on a medical doctor who is now receiving death threats.” Angus noted that after he criticized Poilievre, he “received online death threats with gun images.”

In 2023, Senator Bernadette Clement faced waves of online abuse and threats after then-Conservative Party leader and current house leader Andrew Scheer tweeted a photo of her resembling a wanted poster with her email address and office phone number attached, and imploring people to “call and ask these Trudeau senators why they shut down debate on giving farmers a carbon tax carveout.”

There has been a rise in political threats in recent years and politicians, particularly women, have required new and greater security measures to keep them safe. Online disinformation and extremist networking are igniting a fire, and right-wing politicians are all too keen to fan the flames. The 2022 convoy occupation of Ottawa — which was supported by Poilievre, Scheer, and the Conservative Party — and its link to extremist groups such as Diagolon is proof positive of the trend.

As I’ve argued before, politics should be conflictual. That includes harsh rhetoric when warranted. But our politics should not be violent, nor should it produce threats. Navigating the fine line between spicy words and violence, which may be incited by those words, is tricky. Fiercely arguing your side while keeping politics within the boundaries of peaceful exchange requires routine vigilance, including knowing when to hold back, lest the wrong word at the wrong time leads to an unintended, but reasonably foreseeable, consequence. The right isn’t walking this line.

If Smith and her side are concerned about the tone and effects of political rhetoric, they can do something about it by toning down their own talk and asking their supporters to renounce the threats and violence to which they’re so prone. Perhaps Alberta’s premier could convince Pierre Poilievre or Andrew Scheer, for instance, to bring things down a notch or two. Smith is more than welcome to set the tone they wish to see, to lead by example and invite their opponents to rise to their standard. But I won’t expect to see them do so any time soon.