As Pierre Poilievre crisscrosses Canada, very much the front runner in the Conservative leadership race, he continues to attract large crowds wherever he goes.
His stellar rise is not a surprise to those who have followed Tory politics, but seems to have caught some of the mainstream commentariat off guard.
Trump campaigned, as we all remember, on an anti-immigration message, and Le Pen’s antipathy towards immigration and the rule-based European Union are a far cry from the mainstream issues that Poilievre has focused on.
Perhaps recognizing that the accusation of extremism won’t stick, some critics have grasped for an old chestnut, which is to point out that Poilievre’s rallies largely draw white folk and not so many people of colour.
This is reminiscent of commentary on the Freedom Convoy, which similarly observed that many of those showing up to join the protest were white, implying a lack of diversity in the supporters of the convoy.
The lack of “sufficient” diversity is then used to delegitimize the cause.
This line of argumentation is both pernicious and insidious.
The absurdity of this argument is easy to spot.
While some on the far left actually make this argument, no one sensible could possibly think so.
As for the Freedom Convoy and Poilievre’s rallies, there’s an obvious reason why many of the people there are white: rural and small town Canada is still largely made up of white Canadians.
Imagine playing back this line of reasoning as follows: if a gathering in support of immigrant rights attracts mostly people of colour, and someone on the right were to argue that this makes it racist because it’s non-representative, that person would be laughed at.
Rather than engaging with and critiquing his policy platform, they are busy trying to tar him because of the presumed colour profile of his supporters.
The fact is that people living in rural Canada have been disproportionately hurt by many of the Liberal government’s policies, such as its climate agenda, and Poilievre’s campaign resonates with them.
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