Canadian national extremists use federal elections to amplify “corrosive” stories around theories of democracy, immigration and conspiracy, suggests a new relationship.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) noted that Canadian extremists capitalize on the deterioration of relations between Canada and the administration of US President Donald Trump to attract people to their movements.
The ISD is an international group of non -profit organizations, created in 2006, which works with governments and communities to counter extremism and polarization. The organization analyzed more than 160,000 publications on social networks of Canadian domestic extremism accounts between March 1 and April 12.
The ISD has a wide view of which counts as “domestic extremists”, including groups that seek to push their program through violent and non -violent methods. This definition captures ethnonationists, white supremacists, anti-Muslim extremists and neonazis, among other movements fueled by grievances.
The main author of the report, Steven Rai, told Global News that even if the scan did not show concrete plans of violence around the elections or following, there is always a concern.
“These extremists, they may not call for violence, it may not be a type of situation on January 6 … Come on the parliament of storms or other, but they take these traditional conversation subjects and manipulate them to collect support,” said Rai in an interview.
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“They say that” the political status quo does not work, there are all these problems, there are these prices which will lead to all this economic misery “, then they essentially choose scapegoats on who to blame.”
Rai said it was surprised to find that the most volume subject for extremist positions during the ISD period examined was the friction between Canada and the United States under Trump.
“(The extremists) are not necessarily also connected to this type of traditional political developments, so see them react in such an disproportionate way for relations with the United States, was really interesting,” said Rai, who said he was surprised
The report indicated that the groups reacted to the major developments in the relationship – largely around Trump’s pricing war – with “a mixture of despair and optimism”.
“Some have capitalized on economic anxieties to push hard line positions on immigration,” said the report.
“However, others have expressed their enthusiasm as to their conviction that these policies would be a precursor to the American government’s takeover of the Canadian Federal Government, which they consider as immoral or corrupt.”
Immigration is a much more frequent subject of conversation for domestic extremist groups, but even it now has a link with the Trump administration.
Rai underlined an incident in Hamilton, Ontario, last November in which masked men dressed in black demonstrated with a banner who said “mass deportations now” – an echo of what Trump at the time promised to do and what his immigration police are now trying to achieve.
The CIO noted that a worrying number of extremist posts around immigration was “influenced with diabolistic hateful rhetoric ethnic minorities in Canada”, including pure and simple speech.
The theories of the conspiracy – another popular subject among extremist groups – were also observed in the SCAN of the ISD, although not directed towards a single party or particular leader. The ISD noted a position of an X user connecting both the conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and the Liberal chief Mark Carney to a “cocvid depopulation program”, and the Canadians suggested that the two men knew the truth.
Ironically, some positions accused Hairy of cooperating with the dark international forces at the expense of regular Canadians – which the conservative chief suggested several times on his political opponents.
Rai said that the most important thing that Canadians can do to protect themselves from the fall in these stories is to be skeptical about everything they see on social media platforms.
“We really find that extremist opinions, disinformation and disinformation are mainly distributed over social networks where there is not necessarily the verification of this news or these opinions,” said Rai.
“Certain platforms are terribly inadequate even to even have policies to fight against things such as disinformation or hatred … So I think there is really a need to educate the public on treatment with huge amounts of skepticism with any type of demand they see on social media.”
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