How close is too close to the far-right? Why some experts are worried about Canada’s MPs

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre made a choice.Wearing a crisp blue shirt and a politician’s smile, he walked up to a group of anti-vaccine mandate protesters and led the pack as it walked down Ottawa’s streets.Beside him marched a man named James Topp, an anti-vaccine figure now set to face a court martial, who had been walking across the country to draw attention to his opposition to vaccine mandates.

Topp, however, had recently joined a podcast run by far-right figurehead Jeremy Mackenzie for over an hour, saying that the podcast and others like it “kept (him) hanging on.” Mackenzie said in January that the “Freedom Convoy,” which gathered in Ottawa in February, could “bring down the government.”“I want to be there.

I want to see this s–-t happen,” Mackenzie said in a YouTube broadcast at the time. Poilievre leads march of convoy protesters beside man with far-right extremist ties It’s unclear why Poilievre “felt that he needed to” meet with Topp, said Stephanie Carvin, a former CSIS analyst who now teaches at Carleton University.“But it definitely was a choice with consequences,” she said — including, potentially, emboldening and legitimizing the more extreme views among the convoy’s supporters.Politicians around the world have increasingly toyed with far-right movements and principles in recent years, from spreading unfounded conspiracies about the World Economic Forum to amplifying populist ideas from the fringes of society for political gain.But as this tactic becomes increasingly popular, experts are starting to worry about the influence politicians could have in legitimizing extreme ideas.“They seem to be playing this culture war knowingly,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the.