Paul Jeffries wrote:

TomTV wrote:

It's always a "highly questionable" source when it's something you disagree with, I'll just say that. But that is what the right-wingers always say isn't it? "Fake news." "Didn't happen. Next question." "You're a liar, you're a bad journalist." "You're a radical lefty." Dismissiveness is part and parcel of that ideology these days 
 

You've basically just summed up the Liberal mindset in a nutshell.
PJ
 

He basically just summed up what happens time after time after time after time .. to deny it is gas-lighting. 

TomTV wrote:

And for the record, the biggest loud mouth I've ever seen in my life shouting like an imbecile is Pierre Poillievre. And there's nothing more ridiculous to see than his party members being required to stand up and give him a standing ovation each time he spouts off some rubbish as if he were speaking the word of God. Even for the smallest little snide comment, he snickers at himself and you can see his party following the script that they have to get up and start clapping like seals. That's the kind of thing you see in dictatorships, where the dear leader must always be cheered on.
 

And for the record, the biggest loud mouths I've ever seen in my life shouting like imbeciles are Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney. And there's nothing more ridiculous to see than their party members being required to stand up and give them a standing ovation each time they spout off some rubbish as if they were speaking the word of God. Even for the smallest little word salad comment, they snicker at themselves (or in Carney's case, smile that "Duper's Delight" grin, knowing that he's duped slightly over half the country and he's delighted about it), and you can see their party following the script that they have to get up and start clapping like seals. That's the kind of thing you see in dictatorships, where the dear leader must always be cheered on.

There. I fixed that for you.


PJ
 

Saul wrote:

I wouldn't call what TomTV is doing here spamming this thread. What's stopping you from posting your own ideas or theories or research about what's going on south of the border, and here in Canada? I don't necessarily agree with all of Tom's analysis, but it's interesting reading and he's putting in the time unlike pretty well all the rest of us.

I have no issue with TomTV, or anyone else for that matter, posting political commentary or articles than run contrary to my views. Unfortunately, I don't think TomTV welcomes the same type of healthy and constructive debate, as anybody that disagrees with him is automatically labelled a "MAGA", "Maple Maga" or any other tired old social media cliche that the left often burps out on command when they're asked to provide receipts. Also, TomTV's comments and name-calling of that sort have managed to leak their way into non-political posts, despite RA's constant requests to keep everything else politics-free. 

Just for the record, I've done a Google search on some of the Twitter/X accounts in his posts and I'm coming up with goose eggs on a lot of them. At the very least, a lot of these accounts point to random wahoos who have an axe to grind with a specific party or candidate, so they'll make up some type of graph or chart to suit their narrative without any real substance to back it up. In my mind, that's very reckless and dangerous, as a lot of people look at stuff like that and accept it as gospel truth, without doing any real digging or using their critical thinking skills (something in short supply these days). Quite frankly, I think that borders on election interference, and when there's a heavy volume of posts coming from one user, it makes me wonder what the real motive is behind that. Call me cynical, but I don't automatically buy the fact that the person is trying to "make the world a better place."

In the future, I think if anybody has anything from an outside source to post on this thread, there should be a link that takes us to said source, just like all the other threads on this board. That way, users can judge the validity of such posts themselves. These constant barrages of screenshotted Twitter/X posts are the equivalent of keeping your caps lock on all the time, and feel like they're being done to bully and discourage users with opposing opinions from speaking their mind.



PJ
 

Last edited by Paul Jeffries (January 7, 2026 2:04 pm)

I have held off commenting on this thread for a long time, my two cents is TomTV is being paid by somebody for all the copying and pasting, or simply just has alot of time on his/her/they hands. 

I am still waiting for an addition to this thread with Twitter posts showing parts of the Epstein Files (that have not been redacted) to reveal what is up with CKTB's transmitter issues.

NW wrote:

I am still waiting for an addition to this thread with Twitter posts showing parts of the Epstein Files (that have not been redacted) to reveal what is up with CKTB's transmitter issues.

I suspect CKTB's transmitter is more than 18 years old, so whatever's happening is all perfectly legal. More to the point, however, what does Juan Epstein have to do with any of this?

Paul Jeffries wrote:

I have no issue with TomTV, or anyone else for that matter, posting political commentary or articles than run contrary to my views. Unfortunately, I don't think TomTV welcomes the same type of healthy and constructive debate, as anybody that disagrees with him is automatically labelled a "MAGA", "Maple Maga" or any other tired old social media cliche that the left often burps out on command when they're asked to provide receipts. Also, TomTV's comments and name-calling of that sort have managed to leak their way into non-political posts, despite RA's constant requests to keep everything else politics-free.

Just for the record, I've done a Google search on some of the Twitter/X accounts in his posts and I'm coming up with goose eggs on a lot of them. At the very least, a lot of these accounts point to random wahoos who have an axe to grind with a specific party or candidate, so they'll make up some type of graph or chart to suit their narrative without any real substance to back it up. In my mind, that's very reckless and dangerous, as a lot of people look at stuff like that and accept it as gospel truth, without doing any real digging or using their critical thinking skills (something in short supply these days). Quite frankly, I think that borders on election interference, and when there's a heavy volume of posts coming from one user, it makes me wonder what the real motive is behind that. Call me cynical, but I don't automatically buy the fact that the person is trying to "make the world a better place."

WARNING: this post only includes ONE screenshot

You know, I don't know if you've read through this entire thread or not, as it is a huge thread, but I have stated my main reasons for posting this. I'm tired of seeing right-wingism turn into something by outside foreign governments (and desperate Reform Party members) to attack immigrants, left-wing politicians, social policies that actually help the poor and needy (reframed by the PCs as a "waste of money" because it doesn't help either them or the rich) and of seeing Russian-paid podcasters churn out misinformation that endangers or ruins people's lives (anti-vax rubbish that has led to the resurgence of measles, anti-Ukraine propaganda, Ruby Freeman being accused of election fraud).

And you are deliberately misconstruing things because I've not called anyone on this board a MAGA idiot; both MAGA and Maple MAGA people ARE idiots though, and I'm not too apologetic about that: they're idiots because they are racists, they hate gay and trans people, they have been conditioned to burn down their own house if it will "own the Libs" (again, SEE: MAGA farmers). Those feelings were always there, underneath the surface, but what they needed was a political leader to come along (Trump) to make it okay for them to speak out and not feel any shame for it.

If the president of the most powerful country in the world can "grab women by the pussy" or mock a disabled TV reporter by simulating his disability for the audience to laugh at, then so can they.  The KGB refer to these people as "useful idiots" because they've been conned into doing exactly what the Russians want them to do and they're too stupid to see it: to cause chaos for no reason (see: the Free-dumb convoyers), to push false information about our leaders (the one about Trudeau getting personal kickback money from COVID vaccine sales), or even go as far as committing violent acts and murder (thankfully this has so far not happened here in Canada, but it has happened in the US with the murder of some Democrats last year by a RW extremist).

If you think you have regrets for voting for JT, I voted for Rob Ford AND Doug Ford (and John Tory, even though I still think he was a good politician, his moral failure (having an affair with his female subordinate) is just hard to stomach as he was the last and only right-wing politician that I could point to and say "This guy is the old school Conservative that I would like to see in charge of the country, not slogan boy apple-muncher."). I've already described my support for the Republicans when I was a younger, immature voter (more on that in a later post) and obviously I would never go anywhere near the big Elephant now.  

And you've accepted PP's talking points without much critical thinking skills either, just judging by your own screenshots. You cited a claim that the Liberals are losing support fast (I've already talked about polls earlier in this thread and why I don't trust them, you'll note that I haven't posted polls here, even when they might favour the Liberals, although just as you saw a poll about Liberal unpopularity, I did happen to see several polls showing PP a far distant choice for PM behind Carney right now, and that poll was aired on all the major Canadian TV networks).

How about this, just think of me as a left-wing podcaster. I get the sense that when folks listen to Joe Rogan, they also completely turn off their critical thinking skills and just accept that "Hey, if Joe's got this guy on his show, then he must be telling me the truth... some dark secret about society that the awful Democrats don't want me to know."  Hey! Maybe I'm doing the same thing -- so treat what you read here with the same level of scrutiny (or lack thereof, if you also don't critique what Joe Rogan is presenting to you). I would say that Joe Rogan and I are both at the same level:  we're ordinary dudes that have something to say and the time to say it (NOTE: Joe Rogan makes millions off his show, I am not and don't have any interest in doing so).

Most of my screenshots are going to fall into these categories:

a) random people, not experts, but they share my opinion about either the state of the government or opposing party or foreign influence. They are not cited as being absolute proof of a point, but that this sentiment isn't mine alone. I'm not pretending to be offering an unbiased assessment of left and right-wing politics here, this is not an unbiased journalistic piece in an official newspaper or the TV news, it's an op-ed. You're free to write about your viewpoint as well and I'm amazed that so few people have contributed their outlook to the state of politics in the US and Canada, as I've gotten the feeling that this is a board dominated mostly by white, older right-wing leaning people, which is in a sense why it's vital I write what I'm writing HERE and not on some pro-Liberal, woke-leftie forum where I can bask in the echo chamber that will inevitably agree with me on every single point. I expect pushback, but not just because it's a right-wing forum but because people don't want their political belief system to be challenged. You can challenge mine as you have, and I will write back as I am right now, probably something you'll regret because you'll have to read 10,000 words on your smartphone...

b) screenshots of videos with some text that sums up what is happening in that video (for the record, I actually watch those videos myself to verify the text matches the action / dialogue in the video; I save the videos to my hard drive most of the time as well, in case SOWNY ever wants to add the ability to show videos in the forum, I can actually add them to my posts).

c) they reflect something that has been reported by the actual news e.g. the user @WW3finalboss, even if he were a spambot, is referring to something that has been reported by the official news organizations. Here's the PBS version:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/well-known-right-wing-influencers-duped-to-work-for-covert-russian-operation-u-s-prosecutors-say

and again, I'm highlighting that right-wing influencers are being paid by Russia as part of a psy-op campaign to push Americans, Canadians, any citizen in a democratic country towards the right-wing. You may ask why the Russians are so desperate to get as many people to move towards a right-wing ideology.  In my opinion, it's because what I've seen is right-wing has been shifted to be increasingly about money and power (authoritarianism).  Left-wing focuses on humanity, individual human rights, personal happiness, compassion for others outside of your own group, compassion for minority groups, and identifying inequality in society (especially financial and racial inequality). Russians (and other foreign countries) have demonstrated time and again that these values mean nothing to them.

When you think about Russia, and now the United States and what it has turned into, you can understand why they want Canadians to go down this route. Money always seems to be the singular focus for the right-wing politicians and voters now: "waste of money", "gravy train", "soaring prices", "cutting woke social programs", "lower taxes", etc. BUT I will say that the positive aspect of it is "creating high-paying jobs", "increased trade with the US" (Mulroney, obviously), etc. However, when a person's mentality is centered around money, money, money... guess what?  You are MUCH easier to bribe and corrupt than the person whose mentality is about helping the poor, making sure that everyone is treated equally, giving people a living wage, providing an excellent universal healthcare system so that no one will ever go bankrupt because they had to spend a month in the hospital... and so on. The Russians, Indians, Chinese, etc. have nothing to bribe the left-wing politician with.

I actually LOVED what right-wingism used to be about (when tied into what capitalism SHOULD be about): the idea that a poor person can work hard, become smarter through good, affordable schooling, and rise up to become either rich or powerful (the president of the US or Prime Minister). That is the meritocracy that right-wingers often cite if a society is running in an ideal fashion. That is their version of utopia, it's the classic American Dream. BUT the reality of course is that there are a lot of things that prevent this from being executed: not everybody is given the same start in life; some people come from privileged and wealthy homes (hi Doug Ford!) while others are born in the ghetto, or born to abusive parents, or born with medical issues that impair their chance for those same chances. Ideally left-wingism is blended into this equation to equalize the chances for the unlucky ones to still get that same shot, but these days it seems to me, that these attempts are labelled as a waste of money and they are cut due to lack of funding. Without that same fair chance, what do the unlucky ones do if they crave that same happy ending is they turn to crime and violence.

ATTACK OF THE FAR LEFT

Left-wingism has also drifted too far to the left as well; I'm very critical of what Hollywood has turned into (mostly in response to Trump being elected in 2016, this triggered an equally strong move to the left to counter Trump). The far-left movement began, in my opinion, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The movie debuted Dec 2015, featuring a cast that I think anyone would agree was "politically correct": strong white female, black male protagonist, and latin(?) male... and of course the big villain was a hetero white male.  That template would basically be used again and again.... and again, for future Hollywood movies: always the minorities depicted as the good guys and infallible and without any serious personality flaws, just to avoid offending any ethnic group. And that left the villain to always be a straight white male.




Back at that time, one of my left-wing American friends (who is non-white), proclaimed how happy he was that finally we were going to see non-white representation in major feature films, it wasn't just going to be the white dude who gets the girl and saves the world. Well, being a writer at heart, my response to him was: "You know what though... if these movies are all written poorly and turn out shit, the audiences will begin to mentally associate non-white characters as being the REASON why the movie sucked so bad."

And you know what? I was right! Because as a writer, I know how fucking hard it is to write a GOOD story. And I mean a story where the audience falls in love with the hero or the supporting cast or even the villain (like Darth Vader). You can't just stick minorities into a major leading role, shove a lazy rehash of the 1977 Star Wars storyline into theatres and expect the audience to somehow walk out and get genuine joy.

As a protagonist, Rey was just lazily written: she's perfect at everything, everybody just loves her right away and wants her to join up with them, and she can summon up new Force powers on demand to solve a dilemma... it was a disaster of a character. She endured no major hardships that made us feel sorry for her, root for her, and had no flaws that she had to evolve and grow out of, so that we would respect her growth as a person.

And years go by, the same type of formula in both TV and movies gets reused again and again (minorities as poorly-written heroes with unrelatable non-universal struggles plus the incompetent heterosexual white guy villain who gets easily defeated) and what that did was fuel the right-wing movement.

I've seen (and liked) probably over 200 Youtube videos from Doomcock, RLM, Midnight's Edge, and so on, where they just rail on Hollywood, celebrate the failure of every "woke" movie and TV franchise (Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who) and they are absolutely correct to do so: because Hollywood turned far-left, they live in their own echo chamber where if you hate one of their pro-left wing values movies, then you must be racist or homophobic or transphobic or whatever -ic they can think of. But a rational person knows that you hate these movies because the writing SUCKS. Because all of the characters don't have anything interesting about them other than their ethnicity or sexual preference or gender and that is it.

If a person is far-left, they can't see past that: e.g. if they are gay, and they see someone being critical of a gay character in a movie, and they don't stop to listen to that criticism (so long as it is being delivered in a clinical, non-hostile, non-offensive manner) but simply shouts out "You are a homophobe!" and blocks them, then they are far-left. Although I will say that when it comes to movies, most audience members aren't going to write a 10-page treatise on the failings of a movie, they're just going to type out "Joe SUCKED" and go back to downloading porn before the wife gets home from work.  

There is a trans person that I follow on Facebook because they regularly produce political cartoons mocking Trump and also cartoons explaining some left-wing topics in easy-to-understand visual language. In one of their posts, there was a comment from an obviously right-wing Facebook user questioning certain aspects of trans people and their lifestyle... it was a bit of a very long post but it was NOT hostile, didn't attack the trans person at all... The reply that they got back was "What a long-winded way to tell me you're a transphobe." and I shook my head. Because that was an opportunity to gracefully win over someone who was probably center-right in their politics or right-wing, but clearly not a far-right person, and it was totally blown.

My point here is that both sides inadvertently create new enemies from where there need be none. The ones who actually deserve our scorn are the far-right (MAGA, Maple MAGA, the right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc. who have very ugly plans for our society's future) and the far-left (primarily Hollywood, but also virtue signallers and opportunists looking to cash in on compassion e.g fake charities, the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax). You stop the far-left movement very easily: don't pay to go see their awful movies. You stop the far-right, unfortunately, by a very long process of education and making them more self-aware of how they are being pushed towards extreme viewpoints by the wrong teachers/influencers.

The animosity that has come about because of what's now called the "culture wars" (left-wing vs right-wing, but really it's far left vs far right) has been exploited and amplified by foreign agencies to create division and hate so that we (and by "we" I mean the everyday person) are distracted by our own internal conflicts while the Russians or China or India, all go about invading other countries to loot them of their resources and completely take them over. It has led to NATO being on the brink of collapse (something which Putin obviously has wanted for a long time), it has put an end to the 1990s belief in a global village of cooperation between nations and different cultures, it has moved the US away from being the world's policeman (which acted as a huge deterrent for Russian and Chinese expansion), and put us all much closer to that Doomsday Clock striking midnight.

I will repeat again that it is through the right-wing channel that these enemy countries get into the mindset of the population. I won't bother with any screenshots, it's simply true. It is NOT through left-wing-ism (if it were, you would have to just believe me that I would be heavily writing about that instead). And they use the same propaganda techniques that the Nazis used to get into political power at the highest level (like... getting their orange useful idiot elected twice to be president).

1) Repetition of the same "truth" over and over again until you believe it.
2) Getting your friends to repeat that same "truth" to you, because you trust them even more than you would a right-wing podcaster.
3) Finding a scapegoat for you to blame (immigrants, Trudeau, Biden, Sesame Street, gays, Jews, palestinians, etc).
4) And finally using AI bots and troll farms originating in India or Pakistan or Russia,  to create tweets and videos and Facebook posts that seem to provide the social credit needed to make you believe that this truth is gaining traction around the world.

It's called a psy-op for a reason, because they know how humans, especially the regular person with no better than a high school education or worse, thinks and how to steer that thinking like they would drive a truck.

SIDE NOTE: I don't think Ontario premier Doug Ford is one of those right-wing agents of Russia or anything, I just think he's a piece of shit who has underfunded Ontario's hospitals to create a "crisis" so that he can later solve it by privatizing as much of it as he can (and then he'll wind up getting a six-figure salary to sit on a private hospital's corporate board once he leaves politics, as a reward by his donors). I toss him in my posts just for that alone, because I've seen how people die broke and homeless in the US due to their huge medical bills and I'm going to oppose anyone who tries to do that here in Canada (especially when I'm old and am going to need those services soon someday so it's a self-serving reference that I totally confess to).

ANYWAY... I was going to post about Trump's death tonight but no one is going to read that after this long one. Tomorrow...

EDIT: oh no, more to read! And a reminder, Elon Musk owns Twitter/X in case anyone forgot that somehow.

Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2102493/meet-the-right-wing-canadian-influencers-accused-of-collaborating-with-an-alleged-russian-propaganda-scheme

Major Russian disinfo site featuring anti-Trudeau articles prompts calls for new focus at public inquiry
Foreign Interference Inquiry must look into Russia after revelations about propaganda aimed at Canada: critics
https://www.cbc.ca/news/investigates/russian-disinformation-1.7323128

Canada warns of AI-driven Russian ’bot farm’ spreading disinformation online
Fake social media accounts created to spread disinformation, officials say
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2087248/canada-russian-bot-farm

This one below is an opinion piece but the author references official sources, including former Canadian diplomat and Russia expert Chris Alexander. It also mentions Elon Musk using his platform and millions of followers to influence support for Poillievre (not exactly unbiased, but then Elon is friend to Putin)
https://www.thewhig.com/opinion/extremists-target-trudeau-and-canada

An analysis about the congressional probes into Russian disinformation from 2018:
Russian troll factory also went after Canadian targets including oil, Justin Trudeau
https://globalnews.ca/news/4090153/russian-troll-factory-canada-oil-justin-trudeau/

The report begins by defining three types of online warfare:

-Propaganda. These are real news stories, selected to advance pro-Russian, anti-Western narratives. The report lists media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik as examples. Russia calls this an unfair slur, describing those outlets as government-owned, like the BBC and CBC. This report rejects that comparison: “They are arms of the Russian state no more independent than Pravda was during the Soviet period.”

-Social-media infiltration. Examples include anonymous accounts that spread 2016 disinformation about a Democrat-run pedophilia ring in a pizzeria, suggested Hillary Clinton was near death and urged minorities not to vote. The U.S. has charged 13 Russians in connection with those campaigns.

-Hacking. Online break-and-enters, where someone’s emails are stolen and distributed. It happened to Democrats in 2016, and to France’s Emmanuel Macron, just before France’s last election. A central question of the U.S. Mueller probe is who did the hacking in 2016, and who co-ordinated the release of stolen emails.

RCMP asks for help handling troubling number of kids radicalizing online
Canadians as young as 12 being drawn to extremist views, Mountie warns
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/youth-radicalization-terrorism-1.7407417
NOTE: this one is not about Russia specifically, only that foreign powers are trying to convert anyone who goes online, especially the young, into doing their bidding and causing chaos.

Other radical groups saw that Russia's disinformation campaign tactics actually work and then adopted them for their own use against our leaders
https://globalnews.ca/video/10315716/russias-disinformation-misinformation-leading-far-right-to-turn-its-back-on-ukraine-trudeau

A 2018 report by the country’s intelligence agency found that Canadians who hold extreme rightwing views – including Islamophobia, anti-immigration and white nationalism – actively use chat forums and social media.

“These individuals leverage online chats and forums in attempt to create an online culture of fear, hatred and mistrust by exploiting real or imagined concerns,” the report found.

“We strongly expect much of this kind of content to be domestic,” said Taylor Owen, director of the Digital Democracy Project, which is monitoring instances of mis- and disinformation ahead of the election. “As in the EU parliamentary elections, domestic groups saw the tools and tactics which worked for Russia in the US election and simply co-opted them.”

From Fortune magazine (it's been around for a while)
Elon Musk reportedly in ‘regular contact’ with Putin  (Oct 2024)
https://fortune.com/2024/10/25/elon-musk-putin/

Elon Musk’s secret talks with Putin ramped up during his Twitter takeover: WSJ report
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/25/elon-musk-and-putin-talks-ramped-up-during-twitter-takeover-wsj.html

This article is from CNN originally (see the credits):
How some of the biggest right-wing social media stars became unwitting mouthpieces of Russian propaganda (Sept 2024)
https://www.kdrv.com/news/national/how-some-of-the-biggest-right-wing-social-media-stars-became-unwitting-mouthpieces-of-russian/article_57de1bf9-91ba-54d7-81c8-29aa289f6626.html

Russia’s long running influence campaigns

The Russian government has a long history of tapping Americans as part of disinformation and influence operations aimed at stoking divisions in the US and promoting Russia’s interests.

In recent years, Russia has successfully leveraged social media and the anonymity provided by the internet to infiltrate American social movements on the right and on the left. Sometimes this was in the form of trolls and bots, but other cases involved real Americans unwittingly doing the bidding of Russian agents.

After the 2016 US presidential election, congressional and federal investigations showed Moscow had successfully co-opted unwitting Americans to stage protests, run social media accounts and host events at its behest. In Soviet Cold War jargon, they’re referred to as “useful idiots” — people who don’t know they are doing Russia’s bidding.

And I would point out that Pierre Poillievre and his PC party are among those useful idiots cited above, because while they are not direct agents of Putin, they had opposed Canada's funding to Ukraine (in 2023) supposedly for domestic reasons, but it doesn't matter to Putin, if you are against helping Ukraine then he will augment your political party using his influencers and troll farms, while tearing down the party that is funding Ukraine's defense with those same tools.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-says-tories-turn-back-on-ukraine-1.7039122

"The real story is the rise of a right-wing, American MAGA-influenced thinking that has made Canadian Conservatives — who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine, I'll admit it — turn their backs on something Ukraine needs in its hour of need," Trudeau said alongside EU Commission President Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen.

An opinion piece but it echos exactly what I've been saying, in case anyone thinks I'm alone in thinking what I do. It is a reflection on Justin Trudeau's forced resignation due to propaganda that even convinced his own Liberal party to push him to leave and talks about how the news media being under the control of very few hands such as Postmedia, allows them to generate a deluge of propaganda that shapes what Postmedia's owners want Canadians to think:
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/01/13/opinion/trudeau-resignation-right-wing-propaganda-coup

To this end, I offer a different take on Trudeau’s resignation, one that shifts attention from the Liberals’ mistakes to the roles of right-wing parties, their corporate allies and the largely corporate-owned media. This bloc created a tsunami of propaganda that demonstrates their control over the existing media system. What we are witnessing is a right-wing coup d’etat led not by military forces, but by the media.

The very fact that centre-left commentators repeat the right’s claim that Trudeau’s policies or political style were “divisive” indicates how successful the far-right has been in blaming Trudeau for the divisions its own actors have worked assiduously to construct. Their intention was to make it impossible for the Liberals to govern.

The concentration of mass media in the hands of a small number of profit-driven and right-leaning corporate owners and the dynamics of social media have played leading roles in political “polarization.” Corporate and conservative political actors have had an enormous advantage in struggles to shape public opinion.

Postmedia, which owns the majority of the largest English-language daily newspapers, as well as tabloids and small papers across the country, has been a reliable purveyor (and financial beneficiary) of the propaganda of conservative parties, right-wing think-tanks, business associations and organizations like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Longtime media analyst Marc Edge describes Postmedia as the chain that replaces local content with “political and oil propaganda.” Its editors and columnists have played a significant part in generating the deluge of anti-Trudeau and anti-Liberal punditry and news coverage. We should not underestimate the effectiveness of the incessant repetition of selected messages across the country and across time in shaping public opinion.


It matters deeply that it is not criticisms of policy failures or proposals for reform that have caused Trudeau’s downfall, but rather a coordinated campaign of misinformation and personal attacks from the right, writes Laurie Adkin

If you want to just learn more about the Russian psyop against Hillary Clinton that helped Trump win in 2016 and the psychology involved:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/friction/201812/why-americans-fell-russian-internet-trolls

One key point though is that Russia will augment any group that serves their purpose (far-right AND far-left) but primarily seem focused on far-right in both Canada and the USA (probably for the reasons I mentioned above, they are easier to bribe with money). The participants, like the influencers mentioned above don't have to understand that they are working for Russia either, just as Trump probably doesn't realize himself that he was groomed to be a Russian useful idiot.
 

Last edited by TomTV (January 9, 2026 2:44 am)

I think you're the one who has his head in the sand and just don't want to even consider anything other than what you've ingrained into your thought process. You have links from the most legitimate sources around, not screenshots, enjoy the read.
 

And this last exchange is precisely why I did not want this thread to go on this long. I have been receiving a slew of complaints - not necessarily about the sentiments expressed, although there have been plenty of those - but that it simply does not belong on a local radio board. 

I tried really hard not to police it, but what I feared has come true - posters of differing opinions verbally going after each other. Again, what is happening in the world is tremendously important. But just like you would not go to say, iPolitics to discuss Toronto radio or find a recipe, why would this become so dominant here?

I appreciate TomTV's passion, if not every point he makes, I really do. But this is costing me posters, who see this and vow to leave the site for good. That's why I have reluctantly but necessarily decided to lock this thread down - at least for now. I would invite all who want continue to discuss this to find a better place to do it, like Reddit or any other open topic non-radio board. 

I'm truly sorry to do it, but this has to stop before it gets even worse. Thanks to TomTV for his hard work on his essays. I hope he can find another spot to continue them. As for me, I'm going back to radio - the topic SOWNY was founded on. If there is a story that concerns broadcasting and politics - like the recent controversy about 60 Minutes or PBS funding - that's fine. If not, it will be deleted. I'm letting this one stand as an archive. But it's done. 

Although I'm a passionate believer in free speech, I have to stop this - so again, any more non-radio or TV threads will be deleted. I'm sorry to do this, but this has to stop. Today is the day it does. 

I'm trying to save the board and what we've all built here. Thanks for your understanding.