Authoritarianism and Aggression, #4
Notes in a time of crisis, March 1 – March 4, 2025
Protesters outside the Russian embassy in Ottawa, after they and Charlie Angus (third from left) put the run on troll disrupters who make it their business to accost Members of Parliament to harass them with right-wing nonsense and pro-Putin talking points. The trolls were actually brought to MP Angus by an Ottawa police officer, introducing them — WTF — as “local journalists.”
This post is one of a series, in each of which I have created a compendium of Substack "notes" that I have written this last month that are on the substantial side. All the notes engage the historical moment in which we find ourselves, thus the general theme of authoritarianism and aggression.
The series is introduced in the emailed post called An Age of Authoritarianism and Aggression: Introducing a Series of Crisis Notes.
Usually, my notes are not free-standing but in reaction to a news item, a Substack post, and so on; you can link to the item to which I am responding by clicking on the sub-heading. I am refraining from adding commentary other than the sub-heading.
I am proceeding reverse chronologically. This post — #4 in the series — starts with March 1 and proceeds to March 4.
March 4: Note commenting on
“Putting the run on trolls”What the hell does the Ottawa police force think it is doing allowing packs of right-wing trolls who pretend they are “local journalists” to wander around accosting MPs — even to the point of leading them to the MP and making introductions before leaving the MP to deal with them?
I’ve luckily had only one encounter with thuggishness on the streets when running for office back in 2012 and it was more farcical than serious, and thankfully none after. But it is an everyday thing now for politicians in Ottawa. In terms of targeting NDP and Liberal MPs, PP-enabled MAGA North have made life for politicians and their families increasingly dangerous.
The police need to get smart and take greater care with their judgment calls when protecting people from street harassment when they are engaging in protest. It is not just a politician like Charlie Angus who can be tracked down to be harassed at a protest but everyday folks engaging in protests (like this one in the video where protesters for Ukraine stand outside the Russian embassy) who get circled like sharks by these tiny men holding up a camera phone and calling themselves journalists. Police, recognize that they are at best counter-protesters and do your job in keeping them separated from the protesters.
And, yes, Charlie used (as he explains) unparliamentary language in seeing them off, but you know what — apart from him not being in Parliament, who can blame him for reacting like this after four years of threats and harassment not just of him but also his family?
A video of the ‘journalists’ being run off:
March 3: Note on “Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada [Justin Trudeau] on unjustified US tariffs against Canada” (There is no link. The previous link is broken, as a result, it seems, of a new PM taking office.)
We can notice how careful a job [the PM’s statement] does to document the efforts to take the US at its word (that the tariff threats were about migration and fentanyl, and of late it seems only fentanyl). Not that Trump and his cronies will ever obey any CUSMA or WTO process or orders, this makes clear enough that Canada was not just kowtowing but crossing the T’s and dotting the i’s to set up an international legal claim that the US is violating its current trade treaty obligations. It was laying a trail for an irrefutable legal claim against the US at some point. This is because Canada has demonstrated there is zero basis for invoking any national security exception within treaty. If there was no serious proof of a fentanyl flow that rose to anywhere close to a national security issue when Trump first raised it as a transparent pretext, Canada’s response and the result now allows Canada to claim there is zero proof and thus no basis that would justify suspending a trade treaty.
Plus, Trump has let slip often enough that this is all about him wanting tariffs for other reasons — a combination of not believing in the trade treaty the US is bound to (and that he signed with Canada and the US in his first term) and wanting to coerce Canada either for annexation or for perverse kicks. Even today at a press conference, he went off script and said that manufacturers would now have to move to the US — a goal that has zero to do with tariffs as an exception due to a national security rationale.
If Canada does launch legal proceedings, of course it will never collect in Trump or Vance’s presidential lifetimes, but the ground is set for the US being bound under international law for huge damages that — one day — could be paid out or forgiven by Canada in return for other consideration (although ‘don’t ever elect another Trump’ is rather hard to structure in an agreement ...).
March 3: Note commenting on article in The Guardian, “‘Like a horror movie’: Ice detaining German tourist in California indefinitely”
A German tourist with a valid visa entered the US from Mexico with a friend and, despite having an onward plane ticket home to Berlin, is detained by some ICE border jockey on grounds of suspicion she will work as a tattoo artist (she had her equipment with her) before flying on. No, they don’t deny her entry based on suspicion. They throw her in a cell in the US where she has been for a month, including a week of solitary confinement.
We may think this is small incident, and maybe an aberration that has no broader significance. But it does have wider significance even beyond the abuse of one individual. It reminds us of how low-level and mid-level officials — when armed with discretionary power to make unchecked decisions — can wield that power like they are building their own little fiefdoms of arbitrariness and abuse. And makes us ask how many others does this happen to who are not from an influential country and/or who are otherwise unable to draw attention to their situation.
And makes us wonder what happens when more and more of those petty decision-makers take it on themselves to zealously exercise discretion in a way that they believe are generally in line with their president’s general will as determined by his signalling.
Unleashing the microfascist urges of even a small percentage of individual agents of the coercive state (immigration officials, police, tax investigators, and so on) is itself a feature of fascist method — and indeed can be the most common way for violence and repression to build within an institutional setting well ahead of top-down directly ordered violence and repression.
March 1: Note commenting on
’s “Pierre Poilievre’s Mixed Signals on Ukraine: Words vs. Actions”Very helpful piece on Poilievre and reminding everyone of the Harper-Orban synergies. Squaring the circle with Harper-Poilievre may add even more reason to worry Poilievre would find ways to align with the Trump-Orban take on “peace” in Ukraine, when push comes to shoves (e g shoves messages not just publicly but through the Con MP who is best buds with JD Vance and likely to be front row and centre in any Con govt).
We can’t get so caught up in the patriotic pushback on Trump in which Stephen Harper has engaged that we forget the following inter-relations:
Poilievre was close to Harper as his attack dog Parliamentary Secretary in the House of Commons.Harper came out of woodwork to give full-throated video of endorsement for Poilievre in the last Con leadership race.
Within the Canadian fed Con family (I mean the hard-right Cons that have taken over), Harper almost single-handedly pumped up the volume on Canadian patriotism in the face of a US threat — and only with that lead did Poilievre suddenly start to pivot from his ax-the-tax and other dumbed-down slogans. Not fully clear whether this is a story of Poilievre having to be shaken awake by a sincere Harper waking him up as an unplanned result of Harper speaking up or whether Harper had dual motives. But Harper almost certainly could see the Con bus and his protege heading for the cliff, so the latter is dual motives hypothesis is almost certainly the case.
Sincerity of patriotism re Canada should not be confused with defence of democracy from illiberalism — which is a polite umbrella term for shades of hard-right values that extends to the proto- or near-fascism of one of Harper’s ideological allies, Viktor Orban of Hungary. Orban is central to the Harper-Poilievre story. Orban is the darling of Trump and Vance — they talked about him frequently. Orban is the beating heart of the global hard-right alliance of which Stephen Harper is the quiet technocratic head — the IDU. In this case, association of Harper and Orban as wider ideological partners sets off alarms. From the hard-right mixed with manipulative populism nature of the agenda for which Harper, Orban and Vance are fellow travellers. To the fact Orban is the embodiment of the perverse hard-right cooptation of antisemitism to come to be weaponized as defence of hard-right visions of Israel wherein Netanyahu treats him as a bosom buddy even as Orban peddles crude antisemitic stereotypes as a feature of his Hungarian electioneering and scapegoating. To the fact Orban is the sole European leader to praise Trump for his disgraceful attack on Zelensky yesterday. Orban is so close to Putin — whether personally or more as authoritarian fellow traveller, or both — and so clearly supportive of Russia getting the spoils of its invasion of Ukraine that he is akin to a Russian asset in the heart of Europe; it is only his strategic knowledge that Hungary could find itself suspended from the EU and its nominal commitment to NATO that has forced him into European consensus on Ukraine but only after delay and extortionate concessions from the EU.
The only — I repeat only — way Poilievre has pushed back on Trump is to articulate a mirror image slogan (he eats and breathes slogans, as we know) of Canada First. This is not patriotism that has anything to do with defence of the fundamental values of Canada such as found in the Pledge for Canada (former Progressive Conservative Kim Campbell signed the Pledge but PP could never): engagement-canada-pledg… It is a statement closer to: you don’t need to annex us because we will ape your policies at every stage; we will be you. Of course, it has a visceral pride component in being Canadian — if it did not, the bottom would completely fall out from under the Cons. But its dominant message is its Canadians-can-be-Trump-fans too flavour (substitute Wayne Gretzky for Conservative Party of Canada an Brutal as that sounds it is what the PO Cons are selling — mirror image domestic politics and economics, and ideological hate-ons for the Great Woke Beast.
Poilievre’s brand of patriotism (Canada) — and likely internationalism (Ukraine) — carries unacceptable risks of quiet kowtow.
March 1: Note commenting on
’s “Gratitude and Freedom”In a particularly sobering post yesterday, Michael Ignatieff has gone from the hopefulness I discussed in an earlier note of mine about an earlier post of his (a hopefulness that American institutions and civil society will win out against Trump) to more of the space I was in when I commented on his earlier post that I can hope but I mostly fear. His post today also ends with a statement of fear and his reasons are something we should all read.
What and why do I fear? I fear the increasingly likely paths down which the Trump epoch will take the US and the world in terms of fascism, aggression and even ‘only’ the civilizational threat represented by Trumpworld revelry in juvenile, crude, thuggish, ignorant forms of conduct as replace serious and moral interaction in the governance of societies. It is a fear that is based on understanding risks from a pretty informed reading of history and from a close following of the elements falling into place in the present.
And it is a fear that identifies complacency as being at the very top of the reasons democracies, humanist values, and self-determining societies die.
Don’t get me wrong. Feeling hope is fully valid — especially as history and present facts do reveal the POSSIBLE pathways by which Trump and Vance and their millions of minions may be thwarted — but hope alone is another word for complacency in times like these. “May” happen does not become “will” happen without active work — a trite but necessary observation to make.
Hope is part of maintaining our morale and finding the energy to move forward when things actually feel hopeless. But hope’s special value is in how it allows us to analyze what reasons we have for hope — what needs to happen for hope to become realized — and then to take action to the extent possible to encourage and work towards achieving that which we hope will happen. Another special value is how it allows us to continue to see good as a general potential in humankind and to figure out ways to appeal to both the intelligence and the better angels of some percentage — however small — of those who have been sucked into Trump’s mindspace.
Hope in no way can replace preparation for bad-case and especially worst-case pathways. Preparation includes full realization that action could very easily mean that future struggles could involve real sacrifice and even hurt. These could become an unavoidable part of what it will mean to defeat the ugly madness of Trumpism and the New American Republicanism that he has created in his image. Preparation also means not just thinking of our own immediately threatened situation but drawing the connections as how we fit in on a global scale and thinking both morally and strategically in terms of solidarity, partnerships and alliances. As Canada’s leadership is so clearly doing on our behalf in London as I write, we must simultaneously be there for the more direct fights taking place elsewhere against the parallel ugly madnesses of Trump’s fellow travellers in a quickly emerging Axis of authoritarian and aggressor leaders — most immediately of course, being there for Ukraine in the face of Putin’s Russia’s last desperate effort to come out with a bloody victory that it feels right now is possible due to the lifeline Brother Trump is trying to throw Brother Putin. It means — as Canada and Europe (outside Orban’s Hungary) are demonstrating they now fully understand — being there for the millions of Ukrainians who have — if we stopped a moment to think more deeply about it — been defending not only their country and themselves but us.*
* And it means understanding that Ukraine is for obvious and necessary reasons the focal point right now, but there is another country going through absolute horror at the hands of a mix of Russian, Chinese and Gulf State (read: indirectly American) proxies. That country is Sudan. But that is another story for another time and, so very unfortunately, not in the cards for attention any time soon.
March 1: Note commenting on Martin McSweeney’s
“Truth Matters (March 1)”Punchy summary of the great pivot underway including the amazing news of the decision by a Norwegian oil company to stop supplying US bases. See here: theaustralian.com.au/wo…
However, the first sentence needs to come with a caution.
Disinviting Trump from the June G7 in Canada is a proposal from Canadian New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh (shown in the TikTok video). It is not currently supported by PM Trudeau who has rejected it out of hand.
But Trudeau acted precipitously. The issue of the US at the G7 is more than just whether the G7 host can decide to disinvite but something that gets bound up in what the others apart from Trump want. (Here, keep in mind the G7 includes Italy — led by a hard right leader who is however supportive of Ukraine — and Japan that is hyper-dependent on the Us militarily and also not given to confrontational diplomacy.)
Precipitous in another sense. It could turn out that Singh saw things clearly earlier — his call started with a speech earlier this week well before the gang assault in Washington on Friday — and that the summit in Europe (sans US) will lead to truly serious isolation strategies. So much has seemingly changed in one day, unless a momentary face-saving climbdown is offered to and taken by the US (chances of that are what? Desirability of it? - I think we are past the point of obsequious bending to Trump.)
The G7 is tied to the Ukraine issue in many ways but especially because of Trump’s renewed insistance that it become again the G8 by re-including Russia. If the other countries see that his sole purpose in coming to the June meeting is to turn it into a shitshow around Russia, and/or to stage it as a pretext for more belligerence on the US’ part, it will need to decide whether it is best to have him come and ruin the meeting (no communique on top of bombast, ire and sabre rattling) or whether it should go ahead sans USA like the summit in Europe right now.
That is pretty unthinkable in terms of how diplomacy works. It is also pretty unthinkable in ordinary times in terms of what is a wise thing to do — pissing off by humiliating a psychotic leader of the most militarily powerful state on earth is not normally advisable. Its normal unthinkability includes takes into account how a criminal conviction — a bar to entry into Canada with an escape hatch of ministerial permission to enter — does not bar state leaders from travelling to other countries or for example go to the UN in New York, unless they are subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. So that is where Trudeau’s quick reaction likely came from — straight the pens of foreign affairs officials.
But that was before Friday.
That was before Zelensky’s hero’s welcome in the UK.
That was before the summit in Europe that is about to begin where a world with a Russia-embracing US is being planned around.
All bets are off about how allies and friends will deal with the Trump regime on a host of fronts and with a host of isolation strategies — including weighing the huge risks from reciprocal or worse responses.
If I had to make a bet, though, it is easy to see Trump disinviting himself from the G7 in June. If he and Vance continue on their trajectory and if they stoke up MAGA nationalism, a bullheaded rush to isolation — with dangerous coercion pathways part of it, especially for Canada and Mexico — could lead to a complete breakdown. Including withdrawal from NATO. Including the US refusing to allow Russia assets in the US to be given to Ukraine as Europe and Canada plan. If such happens, inviting or disinviting Trump to the G7 may sort itself out in ugly ways.
Meanwhile, civil society might want to mount an information campaign along the lines of: “Donald Trump is a freshly convicted criminal. This means he is barred from entering Canada by Canadian law unless special discretion is exercised to let him in. He must therefore apply for authorized entry as a criminal. Under Canadian law, he is welcome to apply. As a matter of Canadians’ moral compass, he is most certainly not welcome to come.”