The folly of us and them
Trevor Hutchinson is a writer, musician and not-for-profit executive. He lives in Lindsay with his wife and three of their children.
Picture a leader that says political opponents should be in jail and that if the police aren’t doing that, they themselves are corrupt. Or a leader who attacks diversity, equity and inclusion policies and subtly creates a sense of otherness by calling supporters ‘good folk.’ Or one that attempts to rouse anger and a sense of victimhood by saying that youth jobs are being stolen by foreign workers or one who takes every opportunity to stoke fear over crime and the failure of the justice system.
Such tactics, and others like appealing to a mythical past (‘everything is broken now’), anti-intellectualism and referencing “gatekeepers” or accusing an opponent of using “big words” are all examples of fascism as brilliantly explained by Jason Stanley in his brilliant book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
It’s what makes Donald Trump and his supporters an existential threat to our very way of life. The above examples sound like Trump but they are just a few examples from the social media of our federal Leader of the Opposition.
To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that Pierre Poilievre is a fascist. According to him that would be calling him a socialist, but I digress.
What I am saying is that his messaging seems to have gone from a negative attack style to one that has many echoes of Donald Trump. And as many commentators noted, a lot of Trump’s communication and indeed actions meet the definition of fascist and authoritarian.
What I am saying is that this style of communication is dangerous. It is sent through the vomit comet of social media and amplified by both extreme groups and malicious state actors who actively seek to have us divided to increase their own strategic position.
What I am saying is that you can’t get a genie back in the bottle. We are witnessing scenes south of the border that seemed impossible just 10 years ago. The loss of democracy in what some might call the birthplace of democracy is suddenly a possibility.
Stoking the fear and frustration of a group and making them feel like victims is the start of textbook totalitarianism. It’s the thin edge of the wedge.
(Trigger warning: offensive content ahead.) You can see this dangerous slide in local online conversations. People are labelled ‘Libtards.’ Entire groups are written off and made ‘other,’ their very existence defined as inconsequential or even dangerous. It starts with people experiencing addiction. But it often extends to residents of public housing. Every criminal act or person released on bail is their fault.
Issues of crime, immigration, and mental health are serious topics and demand a vigorous response from all political parties. But the approach and tone of that response are now crucial.
The stakes are high. We might not survive us versus them.
Thank you for this Trevor. It was as if I had found a way to speak my mind…or like you had read mine. So many of us feel powerless to put thoughts into words so I appreciate you doing just that. I think many of us feel that our vote at the polls has little or no effect on change for the good and that in itself is a real threat to democracy…but hope springs eternal so we must keep up the good fight. Thanks again.
Hmmm, so who won’t survive, Trevor, us or them? And come to think of it, are we us or are we them? It can be hard to tell, at times.
Just to add a little perspective, it is my experience, as a centrist, that I am considered by many and sundry to be both a fascist and a communist, depending on the topic and my stated opinion. I find the othering to be equally vicious on the left towards those perceived to be on the right as towards those perceived to be on the left by those understood to be on the right. And not only othering but also downright demonization to the point where you wonder if you haven’t somehow migrated to an alternate universe where nobody knows your name. But to digress to address your digression, the debate over the meaning of fascist or fascism is confusing, with many calling the Nazis “socialists” due to their name – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Now, no one – or well, none but a few fringe podcasters like the rather too popular American podcaster Tucker Carlson (it’s his laugh that attracts people) – is going to argue the Nazis weren’t fascists but there is that pesky term “socialist” in their name. And it’s true, the party did nationalize just about everything. But I think the fairest comment I can make on the claim the Nazis were socialists is that they pretended to be for the people, to be building a socialist society, but were, in fact, for only a very purist version of “the people”. But they lied very effectively, including in their name. Kinda like how the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is a democracy, wink wink.
I think it is important for all of us to understand and to be able to identify fascism when we see it. Is Trump a fascist? It’s arguable but I doubt it and even if he is, I don’t think Americans will let him succeed. I think Trump is an entertainer who is gleefully exploring and exploiting the lack of the limits to the power of his newest role, like a youngster with a new toy. I also think Trump has done some things right, like standing up for Israel in the face of a global surge of antisemitism the world has not seen since the 1930s. That he jumped the gun by accepting a plane from the al-Thani family rather undercut the virtue of that and likely made certain more attacks on Israel like those of October 7, 2023, so I think the Nobel is safe from his hands for the foreseeable. But we shouldn’t forget he is human.
The threat of fascism today comes from the increasing belief that the jobs, culture, and children of (mostly) working-class members of host countries are threatened by the 304,000 migrants (3.7% of global population) currently displaced across Planet Earth. It would be unfair to ignore the fact that there is some truth to their fears. For a decade, white and Sikh working class British girls were prey to grooming gangs of south Asian migrants and police facilitated the crimes by blaming the child victims because they were afraid of being cancelled by accusations they were racist. Tommy Robinson of Great Britain attracted 150,000 protesters to his anti-immigration march in September 2025 and we recently saw a white supremacist banner displayed in London, Ontario, by Convoy organizer, Jeremy McKenzie’s new group, Second Sons. Our leaders must heed what Poilievre addresses with his flip comments and hyperbole, but he needs to lead too. All our leaders do. Carney and Poilievre should publish joint videos and statements telling Canadians they disapprove of cruelty and extremism regardless of vector.
The attached video is a little dated now but it is still one of the best I’ve seen to illustrate just how seductive the new fascism can be. We need leaders like Poilievre to address the concerns of the disaffected working class and others who feel threatened by what they perceive as a threat to Canadian culture and values because trying to exclude and silence them will just grow the alienation and mobilize the movement. What I want all our leaders to do is to read the madding Canadian crowd the riot act, tell them in no uncertain terms that the sadism we’ve seen indulged in all our communities but much more so in our big cities, is un-Canadian. Canada has a forbidding climate likely to become more forbidding in the near future; Canadians embrace our neighbours and help them; we don’t seek out our most vulnerable community members, like Holocaust survivors in their nursing homes, and chant outside their windows slogans everyone knows will evoke nightmares of genocide in them at the most vulnerable point in their lives and where they can’t escape or seek refuge from the cruelty outside their windows. Our leaders must identify such practices as cruel and as unacceptable, regardless of the political cause and regardless of any personal trauma suffered. Everybody hurts but that is no excuse to indulge sadistic interests in hurting others. At the same time, our leaders must make clear to the wannabe fascists considering emerging from the shadows that supremacism, regardless of ideology, is not on in Canada. We won’t tolerate supremacist religion, racial supremacism, wealth supremacism; any supremacism. Well, at least we aspire to not tolerate it. Our values may not be perfect and we are deeply flawed as a people but Canadians are fair, full stop. https://youtu.be/I3x-ge4w46E?si=-EYWCI5RhVj_gv3s