Baranyai: Poilievre courts conspiracy theorists by stoking baseless anxieties

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There always will be tinfoil-hat eccentrics: people who are deeply concerned about mind control, or who speculate vaccines are an elaborate delivery system for 5G microchipping, or that wildfires are caused by space lasers, probably.

There always will be folks susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. And Pierre Poilievre wants their vote.

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This week, multiple outlets picked up a Canadian Press story detailing how the Conservative leader has been using his considerable platform to tease conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum (WEF) out from the fringes and into the mainstream.

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Recent activities include a summer spent repeating the populist pledge to bar members of his cabinet from attending WEF conferences, and dropping the phrase “globalist Davos elites” into a fundraising email.

Poilievre’s defenders were quick to downplay his remarks, noting the gathering of one-percenters comprising the WEF has earned criticism from all corners, and insisting a wink-and-nod at conspiracy theorists is somehow different from promoting their ideas.

It’s a little like saying you don’t know much about QAnon, but it’s terrific they’re against pedophilia.

Attacks on “globalist elites” – a phrase that still carries the stain of its anti-Semitic roots – centre mainly on wealth and a suspicious allegiance to global ambitions rather than a homeland. It is a favourite refrain of the extreme right, often invoked to pit immigration against isolationism, and decry progressive policies as out of touch with working-class concerns.

Scapegoating the WEF stokes baseless anxieties that a group of well-heeled, self-appointed problem solvers with no political standing has the power to impose its will over sovereign nations. Conspiracists have taken a laudatory post-pandemic vision for building more equitable and sustainable societies, and twisted it into a dystopian socialist order – “the great reset” – opportunistically using lockdowns and vaccine mandates to consolidate power, erode individual freedoms, and take away your hamburgers.

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Of course, Poilievre wants votes that might otherwise bleed to Maxime Bernier’s fringe-right People’s Party of Canada. Poilievre aspires to be prime minister and a vote is a vote. There is a difference, however, between drawing people in from the fringes with big-tent ideas, and putting their catch phrases on the marquee.

He’s been backing this horse for a while now. In 2020, Poilievre launched an injudicious petition to “stop the great reset,” which earned him a timeout as finance critic. “What on Earth is a prominent member of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, doing by giving oxygen to the Great Reset conspiracy theory?” the Toronto Star editorial board asked.

Rather than shifting gears with the responsibility of his growing profile, Poilievre doubled down. “If you want to go to Davos … make it a one-way ticket,” he told supporters of his bid for party leadership, in a video he likes to circulate. “You can’t be part of our government and working for a policy agenda that is against the interests of our people.”

He does not articulate how it’s against Canadian interests to represent our nation at a gathering of business influencers – and not the TikTok kind – but it gets big cheers.

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As long as there are folks susceptible to conspiratorial thinking, there will be others willing to exploit their fears for personal gain. Tucker Carlson, pulling in ratings on a stream of anti-globalist resentment. Alex Jones, selling supplements and survival gear on a tide of fictitious globalist conspiracies. Former Conservative MP Derek Sloan (expelled after accepting donations from a white supremacist), decrying “globalist elites that promote the great reset and digital ID,” as he seeks to build his right-of-right Ontario Party.

A platform is power, and with power comes responsibility. We should be clear whose ideas are being platformed.

write.robin@baranyai.ca

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