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We can't promote them, but we can't ignore them either

This week's Market Squared talks about what's going on downtown at its namesake, and why we need to be careful about how we talk about it
20210417 Lockdown protesters at Market Square RV
About 25 protesters assembled outside city hall last Saturday to voice their opposition to the provincial stay-at-home order restrictions. GuelphToday file photo

By the time you’re reading this on Saturday afternoon, I will likely be downtown again, hanging out with a small but vocal group of people protesting COVID-19 restrictions. They don’t like to be called anti-maskers because they say they’re not against masks, they’re just against being forced to wear one.

So I’ll give them that. They’re not anti-maskers.

I’ve been a witness over the last year to a wide-ranging discussion about how we in the media should report on people that believe in conspiracy theories, or people who are vaccine hesitant. Should we ignore them? Should we fact check them? Do we risk promoting the misinformation they present?  

These are difficult questions, but for me it comes down to understanding how misinformation evolves. How a comment by the Prime Minister of Canada gets processed by dishonest brokers in right-wing media who need a quote to fill a pre-established narrative like, “COVID restrictions won’t end once everyone is vaccinated.” That bent perspective then gets shared by followers as if it’s the gospel truth.

Understanding how misinformation takes hold is an important first step in understanding how people can become radicalized by it. This acting out can take many forms, it might make people enter public spaces thinking that the wearing of masks is pointless or harmful, or it might make people join an insurrection to stop the appointment of the duly-elected new president of a country.

Because of that extremism, there are many that see it as the responsibility of the rational to stomp out misinformation, and that means stomping out the people that believe it, but calling these people stupid, or gullible, or to write them off as irredeemable, or monstrous, is exactly the reaction they’re expecting.

In their own minds, these people are keepers of special knowledge, and the long sad history of the human race is that the ones who think differently keep getting trampled on.

To the believers of conspiracies, they are on par with the likes of Giordano Bruno or Galileo Galilei, people who were undermined, marginalized and cast off by the power structures of their times for having some “crazy beliefs” of their own.

This sense of purpose, plus the sugar rush of getting likes and shares on social media, create something more akin to addiction than some other malady like delusion. As we are sympathetic to people with a chemical addiction, and suffer the struggle with loved ones trying to overcome their dependence, we need to think of those that traffic in misinformation as similarly afflicted.

Having spent some time with these people in the real world, I don’t think that they’re crazy. Many of them are nice people, caring people, and my biggest regret while interacting with them is that their passion and dedication can not be directed to a public good.

Part of the problem is that not everyone engaging with these protests, in-person or online, are true believers. There are more than a couple of grifters among their ranks, people looking to make money off those true believers, and others looking to advance their own profile as trolls, or worse, as pseudo-journalists who are “just asking questions” when they already know what the real answers are.

I know that small groups of 20, 30 or even 50 protestors gathering in Market Square doesn’t seem like a lot, but last summer it was a dozen people in Riverside Park having a “Celebration of Life.” What happens this time next year? Will we be required to cover these people if they should decide to run for office?

You may be scoffing, but there are two things to keep in mind.

First of all, at least one of the regular organizers of these protests is already obsessed with local politics.

She believes that mayor Cam Guthrie and chief administrative officer Scott Stewart are pawns of “dangerous cabals” like the United Nations and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities respectively and has claimed to have presented evidence to the police that Guthrie and Stewart are part of a sinister agenda.

The evidence, which was aired at a protest last month, is specious at best, but since Guthrie’s name is on the website for the U.N.’s International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives along with other statistical data about Guelph, then he’s obviously in on it. Whatever “it” is.

Second, if any of this is concerning, or more especially if it’s not, I refer you to Vera Bergengruen’s article on Time magazine QAnon Candidates Are Winning Local Elections. Can They Be Stopped? In the U.S., believers in a right-wing conspiracy theory labelled by the FBI as a domestic terror threat are ascending to political office on school boards and city councils.

For Canadian politics, the U.S. is always the proverbial canary in the coalmine. Today’s small gathering in front of Guelph City Hall could result in a person that believes in the existence of a satanic faction of blood-drinking pedophiles getting elected to a school board seat tomorrow.

You might be laughing now but close your eyes and tell me you believe that there’s no chance it can happen.


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Adam A. Donaldson

About the Author: Adam A. Donaldson

In addition to writing his weekly political column for GuelphToday, Adam A. Donaldson writes and manages Guelph Politico, frequently writes for Nerd Bastards and sometimes has to do less cool things for a paycheque.
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