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So... at about 9m16s, he admits that it's not just the conservatives that do this sort of thing / have authoritarian undertones. And he's right... but it's a point that's downplayed. Most political parties are marching to an authoritarian drum at this point.
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Well yes, but it's a big spectrum right? Most workplaces are authoritarian so we have habituated. A shitty boss who schedules you badly is not a slave owner. The cons are pro-oligarch, believing that merit is demonstrated by wealth and sometimes breeding. All the parties accept a monarchy even a bit, sorry Bloc, and have a traditional leadership structure so some authoritarian tendencies are everywhere.
Conservative parties throughout history have trended toward either aristocratic stratification and sometimes despotic populism. It's not even close, and disingenuous to both-sides it. Tankies would be the closest comparison.
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Tankies... what utterly moronic slang.
It isn't disingenuous to call out authoritarian practices, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they're on. What's disingenuous is the left/progressive failure to recognise/take action on their own failings in this regard, as failing to do so calls into question the legitimacy of their convictions and the validity of their arguments, and ultimately alienates some moderates. It makes it easier to poke holes and demonstrate that the left isn't serious about the issue being a 'problem', because the left engages in the same behaviour -- just to a lesser extent, or in a different format, arguably. Even in the clip linked by the Op -- it's all "BOO CONS SO BAD FOR THIS!" and then the admission "Yeah, everyone does this", subverts the message. How can people be annoyed at the cons for doing X, if the analysts openly admit (once you're past the click bait), that everyone does X?
In some ways, what the 'left' does is more insidious. They present themselves as the alternative to the republicans, but then people like Pelosi abuse the system to acquire giant fortunes, while maintaining laws and tax systems that benefit themselves / their rich benefactors. They pit the poors against one another by pushing demographic conflicts, to keep the commoners ire away from their bank accounts. Both sides of the political spectrum are moving increasingly towards authoritarian ideals -- turning a blind eye to the faults of the 'left', just because you feel the 'right' is more egregious, doesn't make it any better - it just green lights the moral decay on the left. The heavy-handed/forced tactics of the DNC in the states, would be hard to call anything other than a dangerous "authoritarian" trend, which arguably cost them two recent elections. Excusing that sort of 'trend towards authoritarianism' just because the right-wing is going harder towards the same steaming pile of feces, doesn't make things any better. So yes, I'll "both sides" things all I want in this context. The freedom for an individual to call out bs on both sides is egalitarian at its core, I'd argue: I can hate all politicians equally.
Trying to rail road me into a single, left/progressive approved, narrative... using the tired old cry of "both sidesing!", is a very authoritarian thing to do.
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But it certainly is disingenuous to treat authoritarianism like a boolean property - rather than acknowledging (or far better, quantifying) the difference in degree to which taking or leveraging authority is chosen over other approaches to leadership.
I told an aggressively pushy door-to-door salesman to leave and and shut my door in his face. Am I a dictator now?
And why are your arguments framed entirely around entities that are not left and exist in a foreign political system that has no left at a party level, while drawing no connection to Canadian politics nor the Canadian political parties that are actually under discussion? That's a weird choice for a Canadian who isn't intellectually captured by American media or actually someone/thing of other origin working from a script.
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Again, the OPs posted video literally admits that its an issue on all sides of the political spectrum at present.
As for why I use American politics as a foil, its because people in Canada are clearly aware of what's going on down south. It's an easy reference point. Plus, we have discussion quelling hate speech laws that make even openly questioning certain topics potentially a crime.... a very 'egalitarian' and non authoritarian thing, yes? But people won't care as much if you reference foreign situations.
Like you want some Canadian ones? Sure. Trudeau's many ethics violations, which he was found guilty of and suffered basically no consequences because he's of a privileged class. Trudeau dancing around in brown-face, and everyone excusing it. Rules for thee, but not for me! Catherine McKenna's "If you repeat it, if you say it louder, that is your talking point, people will totally believe it" slip, which exposed the party's approach -- but she got clipped for saying the quiet part loud and on camera. How about the liberal's approach to 'consultations', wherein they invite groups to participate, only to ignore their findings -- causing many experts / climate scientists to quit things like pipeline reviews on moral grounds. They 'consult' for the optics, but still push ahead with authoritarian methods -- its just more insidious how they do it.
Trudeau and the Liberals enacting heavy handed hate speech laws, that result in moderate questioning of certain narratives a potential crime: can't discuss some topics openly, sounds a bit authoritarian. Reports/narratives requiring us to accept them as truth and enact recommendations without question, and without evidence, while being written by biased individuals and encouraging racial segregation / privileged systems. BC's conservatives kicked one of their MLAs out just recently for broaching that subject -- because her tone became increasingly disrespectful to the topic the more she was blasted for simply stating the facts. But to get back to the Liberals, that sort of 'narrative' is also how the Liberals suppressed the potential blow back about Harjit Sajjjan, a Sikh and then Minister of Defense, using Canadian Spec Ops to rescue non-Canadian Sikhs during the pullout from Kabul -- the only group he targeted for rescuing / streamlined immigration to Canada was his own. He defends this action by claiming there was an approved govt policy to help minority groups, though the Sikhs (his own) was the only he directed spec ops to aid. The Liberals effectively shut down further coverage of this, by declaring it Racist to call out a Sikh Minister using Govt resources to singularly help Sikhs -- because "you wouldn't think it an issue if he wasn't a Sikh". Well duh, but so what. That lame ass excuse would also then shield all white supremacists -- its an "acceptable" excuse for one, and not the other, by authoritarian decree. Continuing to report on it risked running afoul of hate speech laws, as our government decreed it racist to call minorities racist when they're acting like racists -- so the story disappeared from the cbc practically overnight. That was one where our intelligence agency had flagged it as a conflict/concern -- but Trudeau, just like Trump down south, 'knew better'.
The CBC also aligns very heavily with govt policy agendas -- there are numerous 'news' stories that are heavily biased, like only interviewing one party in a dispute. For example, there was an alleged anti-trans hate crime at a kids track meet in BC's interior, and the CBC only interviewed the parents of the victim -- parents who had a history of showing up whenever there was a clash on trans rights / are pretty clearly politically driven in their actions, if you dug into them at all. The CBC didn't bother to get any other witness reports from the event... as if there'd be no phone footage or objective third party witnesses, at an event with tons of parents recording their kids. They instead interviewed a bunch of government people, and university profs, who all went on about how trans rights are human rights, and people need to do better etc -- but none of these experts were privy to what had happened, and were just being used to push the govts talking points through a supposedly 'neutral' news agency. Such heavily biased pieces are essentially government policy masquerading as journalism, and is one reason there are calls to defund the CBC. A captured news media is another one of those "hmm, sorta authoritarian, eh?" things.
The NDP treatment of Erin Weir -- especially in comparison to their treatment of someone like Christine Moore (the leader's selective application of 'rules' so that it disadvantages people they don't like, and supports people they do, is pretty authoritarian). The provincial NDP here in BC, sending out letters that have tracking components, so that they can catch/punish leakers (one I saw, had replaced the character for "." with a tiny number). A previous mayor here in BC, Kennedy Stewart, a former federal NDP MP, using the federal NDP's database / private information to help target voters for his mayoral debut -- or more broadly, how all the political parties exempt themselves from having to follow the privacy regulations that the government makes the rest of us abide by. For both NDP and Liberal -- the maintenance of "equity employment group" privileges in almost all areas, despite data showing that white men (the only group that doesn't count as an equity employment group) are doing poorly in many areas (third bottom demo for education, like 30% off from the top groups, for example). Questioning the narrative on that front, is not allowed.... even though the current approach can lead to a severe backlash, as we're seeing in the states with DEI programs. My NDP MP has indicated that broad preferential treatment of women/minorities, must continue until there is equity in all areas, including the boardrooms -- doesn't matter if women've been the majority in the public service since 2000, nor that its now more skewed in women's favour than it was previously in favour of men when the legislation first came in, they still maintain anti-male policies draped in the verbiage of 'pro equity employment'. So they move the goal posts, and continue to maintain discriminatory practices, even if those policies are disproportionately impacting the 'poor/middle class' people in one demographic group, a group shown in stats to be near the bottom by many metrics.
A whole lot of the censorship tools on sites like Reddit, were built for 'left-leaning' censorship; now they're being used for 'right-leaning' censorship, so they're 'bad'. Both like censorship/authoritarian methods, they just disagree on who to target.
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Pelosi=left?! Get rekt.
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#bothSides
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