Canada in the Age of Donald Trump
What it means to be the last country on Earth that believes in multiculturalism
It is early november and in the streets of Toronto, men and women are pinning bright red poppies onto their dark winter coats. They do this in remembrance; they remember the men and women who gave their lives in the two great orgies of violence that defined the twentieth century in order to build a saner and a better world. That world, which the survivors managed to build, came to a sudden end last night. With the election of Donald Trump, the last of the major Western democracies holding out against the tidal onslaught of xenophobia has fallen. Well, not quite the last. There is Canada.
In Europe the power of the far right has been growing steadily and ferociously for decades. The far right may not even be the correct term for the force that is coming to dominate what was formerly called the West. It combines the promise of social cohesion through the welfare state with a racially defined ethnic identity. This power is on the march everywhere and naturally tends towards autocracy. It’s not just Western. It is producing Vladimir Putins across the globe, in Turkey and in the Philippines.
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