Maxime Bernier’s alt-right problem

Last Halloween, the hosts of a white nationalist podcast called The Ensign Hour discussed how to propel their ideology into the mainstream of Canadian politics. Although they pined for a “European homeland,” the co-hosts were all too aware of just how unappealing their movement remained to the political mainstream.

“We’re not at the stage where we can have a straight up nationalist party and start winning seats,” lamented one of the podcasters, who went by the name “Cracker Jack.”

What the country’s tiny cadre of neo-Nazis and the broader alt-right movement needed was a politician who could bridge the gap between the mainstream and the far-right fringe — someone who was an unabashed supporter of “Western values,” who would clamp down on immigration and multiculturalism.

That person, they decided, was Maxime Bernier.

Last August, after the long-serving Conservative MP denounced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity,” the Ensign Hour hosts perked up. When Bernier declared “the death of political correctness in Canada” to his more than 65,000 Twitter followers, it was heard as a dog whistle.  (more...)

Maxime Bernier’s alt-right problem

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When you have Nazis in your closet: