Trudeau, Authoritarian Regressions, & Language Games
When Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau announced the imminent sweep of his government’s Emergency Act on February 14, he stood before Parliament — several stone-faced, mask-clad public officials fidgeting behind him and in soft, schoolmarm tones he proceeded to spin webs of language silk to frame a story of unprovoked, groundless attack by a band of mutinous citizens who quick, needed to be stopped!
And the world was jarred a bit by this heavy-brick of centralized reprimand from above. As it was, many began to rationalize his aggressive measures and began, in turn, to subscribe to his creepy othering slant on the mandate protesters.
To Trudeau, the protesters were a blight on civilized society and a noxious flaw in his grand plan. They were not human constituents who deserved an honest listen at all! Their crime was that they had not done as they were told — to preserve the “public peace,” of course. But what Trudeau really means by disturbance of peace is a muddying of his plan.
By the same token, he was able to get away with slapping an Emergency Order on the public because the public had become an increasingly malleable entity, primed for the language games spilling down the hierarchy from experts and political leaders over the past two years.
