Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones takes the witness stand to testify at the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn. on Sept. 22, 2022.
Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File
‘He will do anything to win’: Justin Trudeau slams Pierre Poilievre for not denouncing endorsement by infamous American conspiracy theorist
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intensified his criticism of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on Wednesday, when he linked his main challenger for power with an American conspiracy theorist who infamously spread lies about the mass murder of schoolchildren.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones takes the witness stand to testify at the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn. on Sept. 22, 2022.
Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intensified his criticism of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on Wednesday, when he linked his main challenger for power with an American conspiracy theorist who infamously spread lies about the mass murder of schoolchildren.
Trudeau delivered the broadside at a news conference in Oakville, after he was asked about a video circulating online in which Poilievre is shown telling people at an anti-carbon price demonstration — where the symbol of a group that police have linked with ideological extremism is briefly shown on a trailer door — that everything the prime minister says is “bulls—t.”
In his answer, Trudeau alluded to how disgraced American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has endorsed Poilievre as the “real deal” — something the Liberal party seized upon in recent onlineattack ads against Poilievre.
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But Trudeau went further Wednesday in highlighting Jones’s controversial falsehoods — for which he was ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages to victims’ families — about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, when a gunman killed 26 people, most of them young children, at an elementary school in Connecticut. In 2022, Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages to the victims’ families after they sued him for defamation.
“Every politician has to make choices about what kind of leader they want to be,” Trudeau said Wednesday. “Are they the kind of leader that is going to exacerbate divisions, fear and polarization in our country, make personal attacks and welcome the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists? Because that’s exactly what Pierre Poilievre continues to do.”
He added Poilievre “refuses to condemn and reject the endorsement of Alex Jones. Alex Jones is a proven liar and conspiracy theorist who has to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because he lied about the Sandy Hook killing that killed 20 little kids. This is the kind of man who’s saying Pierre Poilievre has the right ideas.”
This shows, “he will do anything to win, anything to torque up negativity and fear,” Trudeau claimed.
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Asked why the Conservative leader has not denounced or rejected Jones’s expression of support, Poilievre’s spokesperson Sebastian Skamski said by email that the Conservatives “do not follow” or listen to Jones, and that the party is only working for the endorsement of “hard-working, everyday Canadians.
“Unlike Justin Trudeau, we’re not paying attention to what some American is saying,” Skamski wrote.
His statement also said that, “if Justin Trudeau is concerned about extremism, he should look at parades on Canadian streets openly celebrating Hamas’s slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7.”
That was an apparent reference to controversial demonstrations over the ongoing war in Gaza, including a recent one on Parliament Hill that sparked a police probe, in which a man on a megaphone was recorded praising the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians that killed more than 1,200 people. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to local health officials.
In his email, Skamski said the video circulating online was made when Poilievre was travelling in Atlantic Canada and “noticed an anti-carbon tax protest” on the side of the highway. The Conservative leader made the “impromptu” decision to stop and speak with the people there, Skamski said.
The video also showed a “F— Trudeau” flag at the demonstration, as well as an image drawn on a trailer door of what appeared to be the Diagolon flag — the symbol of an online group that was also found on body armour and weapons seized at a border blockade in Alberta during the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” crisis.
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The father of one of the accused in an alleged plot to kill police at the blockade told the Star at the time that his son was radicalized online during the pandemic, including through interactions with Diagolon.
During the public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act to quash the 2022 convoy protests against pandemic health measures, documents showed that the Ontario Provincial Police deemed Diagolon to be an “ideological group” that uses rhetoric encouraging “government collapse.”
In September 2022, Poilievre said he had never heard of Diagolon and denounced the group as “odious” after its founder, online provocateur Jeremy MacKenzie, said during an online broadcast that he wanted to sexually assault the Conservative leader’s wife.
MacKenzie has insisted Diagolon is nothing more than a satirical online community.
Alex Ballingall covers federal politics in Ottawa for the Toronto Star.
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