Chip Wilson might be a billionaire, but he can’t buy himself a clue when it comes to politics. It’s not for a lack of trying: the Lululemon founder has dabbled in more partisan affairs of late, including throwing $380,000 at something called the “Pacific Prosperity Network” (also known as the Pacific Prosperity Foundation) in 2022 and trying to defeat the “socialists” who were running for Vancouver city council.
Now, as the BC Conservative Party tries to upend the NDP government — and, presumably, lower Wilson’s taxes — he decided it was time to go even further with his red baiting. In the process, he unwittingly made the election’s single biggest in-kind donation to the BC NDP.
It came in the form of a giant sign on his $81 million compound in Point Grey, one that was discovered — and widely mocked — by social media users. “David Eby will tell you the Conservatives are ‘far right’ but neglects saying that the NDP is ‘communist,’” the sign reads. Eby, to his credit, didn’t miss the opportunity Wilson inadvertently created for him here. “We increased the property taxes on his home, as a home over $3 million,” Eby said. “We use that money to do things like breakfast programs for kids, to expand healthcare … we use that to support the rest of British Columbians who are really struggling with affordability.”
Wilson’s sign was such obvious political poison that even John Rustad’s social media team tried to distance their campaign from it. But Rustad himself? Well, he doubled down on Wilson’s political illiteracy. “I don’t disagree with him when he calls David Eby a communist,” he told reporters.
This is becoming a theme for the BC Conservative Party leader, who keeps sounding more like a conspiracy-addled grandpa on Facebook than the potential next premier of British Columbia. But it’s also becoming a theme for Conservatives across the country, who either no longer understand what the term communism actually means or insist on pretending otherwise.
Take Wyatt Claypool, a failed candidate for a federal Conservative nomination in Calgary who is now working on the campaign of Abbotsford-South MLA Bruce Banman. “David Eby is a Communist,” he tweeted on Oct. 4. This wasn’t the only bizarre belief he volunteered on social media. "The NDP is running a fascist candidate in Surrey-Newton,” he said in a recent video unearthed by another social media user. “Trade unionism translated into Italian means fascism."
This raises some pretty obvious questions about what they teach in the political science departments at Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary, where Claypool received his pair of degrees. But it also raises some far more important ones about what’s happening within Canada’s Conservative culture and why its young acolytes are being led to believe these sorts of manifestly (and at times hilariously) incorrect things about their opponents.
As it happens, I have the answer: Pierre Poilievre. He has, for example, repeatedly tried to pretend that the Nazis and fascists were, in fact, actually socialists, all historical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. As he said on social media in 2021, “Woke left goes crazy when people point out the undeniable historical fact that ‘national socialists’ in Germany & Italy were, as the name proves, ‘socialists.’” By this logic, the Democratic Republic of North Korea would be a democracy, not an authoritarian dictatorship. Dictators can enjoy ironic wordplay as much as the rest of us, after all.
Getting fact-checked by a literal Holocaust educator on his nonsensical statement didn’t slow him down, either. Poilievre continues to imply that Justin Trudeau is, at the very least, communism-curious. “Sign here to have a Prime Minister who doesn't admire basic communist dictatorships,” he wrote on social media in July, pointing his followers to yet another email harvesting exercise disguised as a petition.
As David Moscrop wrote for Jacobin, a lefty publication that knows a thing or two about socialism, “Trudeau is the direct descendant of the sort of Liberal that Marx warned about. Trudeau does his party’s name proud. He may be a progressive liberal, but he believes in capitalism and the free market, globalism, and the necessity of private ownership and capital at home and across borders.”
In other words: not a communist, not a Marxist, and not remotely close to either. Neither is David Eby, or any other progressive leader that Conservatives might feel the need to disparage. Do they believe in things like the greater good and the need to protect our shared commons? They do. So did Conservatives in this country once upon a time.
Now? Not so much, it seems. Instead, they’ve bought into the same hyper-partisan rhetorical inflation that’s come to define political discourse in the Trump era. Maybe, just maybe, we can put it behind us if America decides to send him packing (again) in November. But until people start paying a price for practicing this sort of politics, it’s likely to persist no matter what happens in America. Sending the BC Conservatives packing on Oct. 19 would be a good start.
Comments
Thanks for this Max. Poilievre et al.'s strategy appears to be to throw sh*t at their opponents, see what sticks, and then double down on that. Their disregard for honest discourse is disgusting and, as you say, they need to be held accountable. One day in the penalty box in the House of Commons is merely a slap on the wrist. At some point the Justice system needs to intervene.