Thread by @MsFuddleDuddle

And so as an American myself who is a great supporter and admirer of Trudeaus père et fils and wants Canada to chart its own path, I urge Canadians to resist the drumbeat of war, the pressure from the Pentagon, and the hawkishness of the dirty pigeon. #cdnpoli

“The U.S. government can no longer tolerate such a threat emanating principally from within Canada's borders,” [an uncorroborated DOJ memo from 1998] states. #cdnpoli 2/

This is Op Canadian Bacon using the drumbeat of war with China as a proxy for fearmongering about, and flexing US muscles against, the beleaguered social-democratic neighbour next door. #cdnpoli 3/

American imperial paranoia about Canada as a commie outpost or haven for the “enemies” isn’t new. It has been 20 years since Chrétien boldly defied the Yankee war machine by refusing to join the excursion into Iraq. Antiwar liberal Yanks praised him as did Canadians. #cdnpoli

But the corporate Canadian media was displeased with Uncle Jean and joined the drumbeat just like they are doing now. #cdnpoli 5/
readpassage.com/20-years-ago-c…

And many of the same characters in the #CdnMediaFailed marching to that beat today, abused their positions in siding with the US war machine that hurt innocent people. Like Bob Fife, in his shameful reportage that saw Maher Arar tortured. #cdnpoli 6/

thewalrus.ca/hear-no-evil-w…

Or Andrew Coyne, who has devolved into a QAnon meltdown on the “China issue,” and was no less fervent in his condemnation of Chrétien as a naive appeaser if not willing accomplice, as he is towards Trudeau fils today. #cdnpoli 7/

But who else penned an angry rebuttal to the Liberals’ hesitancy to join the hawks? None other than Conservative Party malignancy Stephen Harper in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. #cdnpoli 8/

rabble.ca/politics/canad…

It would be just three years after Chrétien made his defiant stand that Harper was installed as prime minister. An inconvenient obstruction swept away, some say, by a covert mission by the US and Canadian alphabet agencies working in concert. #cdnpoli 9/

unpublishedottawa.com/letter/13987/c…

How convenient that a “new book” on the CIA being miffed that Canada does not regard the yellow peril with sufficient alarm to its standards, emerges amid supposed “bombshell revelations” of alleged Chinese meddling and demands that PMJT “do something” *or else*. #cdnpoli 10/

Are the Americans aiming for regime change in Canada towards someone they know will be a controlled puppet willing to expend untold $ on the war machine while bleeding the safety net dry? Does the eagle want a pigeon in its nest because it knows the pigeon is a hawk? #cdnpoli 11/

Now of course, American meddling and commiephobia about Canada goes back well before Chretien and Iraq. LBJ was said to have beat up Mike Pearson because Pearson dared to publicly criticize the American boondoggle in Vietnam. #cdnpoli 12/
quora.com/Is-it-true-tha…

But perhaps no one made the US fear machine go into overdrive like Pierre Trudeau. PET was actually banned from entering the US in the ‘50s for suspected “communist leanings”. When he was elected PM in 1968 the Birchers feared a Soviet outpost on the northern border. #cdnpoli 13/

PET poked everyone in the eye — including Conservatives back home and even some old-guard Liberals — with his normalization of relations with countries the Americans considered pariahs. Like China, for one. And of course, Castro’s Cuba. #cdnpoli 14/

Read this thread: why the Castro birtherism conspiracy theory applied to Justin Trudeau is more than just a lazy copycat of Obama birtherism, and what it says about US-led, fascist attitudes towards social democratic leadership.

#cdnpoli 15/

Nixon was furious with PET for letting US draft resisters in. The assemblage of young counterculturists in Canada only further added to fears south of 49 that Trudeau’s Canada was being cultivated as a Soviet outpost dangerously close to the United States. #cdnpoli 16/

This is from a conspiracy theory website. But it gives some insight into the thinking of the time — which still persists today.

Canada: How the Communists Took Control (April 1971)

#cdnpoli 17/

archive.is/Hogjq

And so as an American myself who is a great supporter and admirer of Trudeaus père et fils and wants Canada to chart its own path, I urge Canadians to resist the drumbeat of war, the pressure from the Pentagon, and the hawkishness of the dirty pigeon Poilievre. #cdnpoli 18/

#cdnpoli 19/

John Lennon once said of Trudeau the first:

“If all leaders were like Mr. Trudeau, the world would have peace.”

That’s true as well of Trudeau the second.

And so I urge Canadians to keep him in office and to keep that peace for many more years to come.

#cdnpoli /end