John Ivison: What an ill-advised tweet taught me about our divided politics – National Post

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Late on Saturday evening, after watching a Global News team being swarmed by vaccine mandate protesters in B.C., I made the ill-advised decision to tweet my frustrations.

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“It feels like Canada is splintering into two tribes — the intolerant, authoritarian, woke lunatics on the left and the spittle-flecked, hateful lunatics on the far right. Where are the voices of compassion and common-sense? The silent majority needs to speak up.”

At the time, it seemed as self-evident as the truth that we are created equal and have inalienable rights. But I had reckoned without the Twitter algorithm that amplifies divisive content. The damned thing ended up getting 2.6 million impressions, 2.59 million of which wondered the location of the village now looking for a new idiot.

In hindsight, I would not have used the provocative words “woke”, “spittle-flecked” or “lunatics”, or made what I accept was a false equivalency between the illiberal left and the violent extremism at the core of the far right. As the Ottawa Citizen noted in a story on Tuesday, extremists have been exploiting the pandemic to create civil unrest, according to CSIS documents released under Access to Information legislation. Ideological groups intent on overthrowing the government have been “promoting the panic” over vaccines, the spy agency said.

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Using intemperate language was great for generating hits, which was not my intent, but less effective at urging compassion and understanding, which was the goal.

But the incident was instructive.

For one thing, it made clear to me how contagious and powerful social media content can be if it promotes fear or indignation. Companies like Twitter or Facebook could lower the temperature if they adjusted their algorithms but doing so would also lower user engagement (and revenues).

For another, it revealed how complacent many people, especially on the left, are about the divisions in our society.

“Yes, Canadians are divided — more than 90 per cent (vaccinated) on one side and the rest on the other,” said one respondent.

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I think that is a fundamental misreading of what is happening. The vaccine mandates are a proxy for a broader values war being waged in our society and, if we don’t start to understand it and calm anxieties, the occupation of downtown Ottawa will have been merely a prelude to more chaos.

As a Maru public opinion poll for Postmedia suggested, fully one third of Canadians are prepared to resort to violence to protect what they see as their fundamental values — a figure the poll suggested rises to 45 per cent in Alberta.

Social media is culpable, but so are our politicians.

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Former federal Liberal candidate Adam Pankratz detailed his disillusionment with Justin Trudeau in an article in National Post on the weekend, in which he said the prime minister’s embrace of identity politics has led to an “incredible failure of governance.” Government opponents have been called names in order to discredit them, he said.

“Political opponents are not simply people who hold differing views but people who are fundamentally evil and deserve to be demonized, shunned or shamed.”

On the other side, would-be Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been using the word “freedom” with abandon, in particular in championing the “freedom convoy.” Yet one person’s freedom fighter is another’s insurgent. Encouraging lawlessness and disorder may play well with a faction of the Conservative coalition but it’s less likely to win over the non-aligned. In the Maru poll, two thirds of respondents said they want to extract voter revenge on politicians who contributed to, or supported, the protest in Ottawa.

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Both parties desperately need to start talking the language of solidarity and fairness, if the centre is to hold.

In the debate on the Emergencies Act, Trudeau belatedly recognized the imperative to conciliate, while coming as close as he is ever likely to in acknowledging his part in the downfall of civility. “In the heat of the moment we can all get carried away to win an argument,” he said. “As a country, let’s aim for more decency in our public discourse. Let’s cherish the democracy we have and let’s commit ourselves to working together to make it even better.”

On the Conservative side, Eric Melillo said he is dismayed by the Emergencies Act “but it does not make the prime minister a dictator. He is within his right to invoke it.”

His colleague Scott Aitchison said it’s time for MPs to stop being politicians and start being leaders. “We weren’t sent here to represent only those people who put up our lawn signs. We weren’t sent here to appeal to the lowest common denominator; we were sent here to raise it,” he said.

These are not sentiments that will find reward on platforms that minimize respect, understanding and civility, but Aitchison is right — our country is in dire need of leadership if we are to drag its politics back from the cliff’s edge.

• Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: