People Like Charlie Angus Are Part of the Problem of Toxic Politics. Not the Solution

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I submitted the below to the Toronto Star. They refused to run it, or a letter.

There was a sad irony to NDP MP Charlie Angus’s piece in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star (“Death threats, Jordan Peterson and me: My journey into the world of Pitchfork Politics”) about the increasing toxicity and violent rhetoric in Canada’s political conversation.

No one in Canadian politics has clean hands on this. Charlie Angus certainly doesn’t. Politics is now a toxic wasteland of lies and disinformation where politicians like Charlie Angus perform for social media mobs and election campaigns never end. Truth is often a casualty when nuance and proportion are separated from facts, and facts themselves are made up. In 2014, I wrote a book called Kill the Messengers: Stephen Harper’s Assault on Your Right to Know. I talked about new threats of pseudo-media replacing responsible, fact-driven journalism. Disinformation doesn’t just distort politics, it undermines faith in all the support institutions of democracy. We are now seeing this happening at a sickening speed.

You can find the full article here.