Extremism Sells

And it’s strongly outperforming truth & common sense

It isn’t just the nut jobs in the USA. Marjorie Three Names and Bimbo Boebert, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Roger Stone and the newest religious members of SCOTUS. The likes of Alex Jones and Steve Bannon have been able to stay in business because the miserable and the misguided are looking for an answer, a guiding light— and the aforementioned provide one for them.

In Canada, we have Ezra Levant. The founder of Rebel Media and The Western Standard Online. Featuring seedy story-tellers and publishing unsubstantiated, alt-right-wing nonsense. Ezra sold Western Standard Online a few years ago, and eventually, it ended up in the hands of Derek Fildebrandt, an Albertan now representing a libertarian political party disguised as Conservative.

Derek’s got an audience in Alberta and rural Saskatchewan. But, he is so far off the rails that he was banned from the United Conservative Party, Alberta’s current provincial government. Truth be told, most UCP reps should be banned. The party’s leader is a conspiracy theorist who pushed hydroxychloroquine as a cure for C-19. Her top MLAs are heavily into Christian theology, happily shortchanging public education and instead funding private Christian charter schools. They’ve rewritten the curriculum for the public school system à la Ron Desantis. Same playbook — cries of critical race theory, deniers of proven science, creationist theory contradicting evolution, etc.