It Can’t Happen Here?
Canadians Are In Deep Denial Of The American Annexation Operation.
Trump shows Carney a model of the proposed “Independence Arch” in the White House, October, 2025 -- public domain image
By Gabriel Haythornthwaite, The DNA Report
This is only the beginning of the Trump Troubles in Canada.
The Orange Menace has gone trade-war apeshit only weeks before Albertan Governor Danielle Smith holds a far-Right pre-annexation referendum on October 19th.
Canadians are currently enduring our 30th federal administration since the 1867 advent of Confederation. In tribute to the possibility that this may well be close to the last such federal government, The DNA Report will engage the next 30 days of this first open test of Trump-USA politics in Canada. This journal will spend this time taking up the main trends and players in this reordering of imperial power in North America and, in doing so, propose democratic starting points in the struggle against annexation as summed up in the credo, Democracy Not Annexation.
In addition to commentary analysis of the Trump-USA takeover threat, The DNA Report will also look at how federal and provincial governments across establishment brands are using this threat as cynical cover to eliminate public service, bulldoze Indigenous and labour rights as well as trash environmental protections. All of this in the policy service of unprecedented corporate hand-outs, especially in warfare industry outlays, and ramped-up natural resource plunder.
From Trade War To Annexation
President Donald Trump is all talk until he is not.
That’s the basic lesson Canada and other imperial liberal powers are learning at the hands of the ‘Donroe’ strongman as he stomps down the trade warpath against an uppity vassal.
Trump’s economic assault on Canada is part of an unprecedented world trade war he launched with fanfare in 2025. The American record on trade has never been remotely benevolent for anyone but powerful Wall St. interests positioned to take advantage of corporate ‘free trade’ agreements since the 1980s.
The US ‘free trade’ model--first adopted by Canada in 1989, expanded through NAFTA to include Mexico in 1994 and reinforced by WTO accords--has garnered considerable success in getting other countries to remove most industrial protections and supports while maintaining as many American equivalents as possible.
This exploitative reality has not stopped Trump from blubbering a pathetic tale about how the dopey USA is serially ripped off by annual trade deficits with Canada--while only getting paid-for goods in return. The American’s revved-up trade offensive finally triggered a belated Canadian tariff counter-offensive on September 8th though not in the strategic areas of oil, gas, electricity, and potash as noted soon afterwards by former PM Jean Chrétien.
Amidst all of this economic fury, few in Canada seem willing to remember the explicit political link President-elect Trump made at a Jan. 7th 2025 Mar-a-Lego press conference which tied leveraging massive ‘economic force’ to the annexation of Canada as the ‘51st state’. The US is now engaging in open-ended economic force with gusto--are we really to believe that annexation is simply a bluff because it is an insanely extreme trip to lay on a country?
Quite understandably, the rulers and owners of Canada would very much rather not discuss how badly they have been caught out of position by Trump’s deranged takeover threats.
There is clear shock across social divides to find the country suddenly put high up the Empire shit-list, a positioning previously reserved for recalcitrant socialist and anti-colonial nations.
Canada is being singled out for especially harsh trade attacks in conjunction with residing on Herr Trump’s public takeover list along with ‘ice-cube’ Greenland, ‘oil-well’ Venezuela, blockaded socialist Cuba, the strategic Panama Canal and even the besieged shattered Palestinian territory of Gaza. Despite repeated threats against Canada from the Ogre Office, the notion of a Trump-USA takeover is still entirely unreal to a large majority of the Canadian public who impotently pine for the complacent stability of the pre-COVID era.
It Can’t Happen Here
Ironically, there is an American reference which encapsulates the current all-round Canadian denial about a potential Trump-USA takeover.
In 1935, American author and social critic, Sinclair Lewis, warned against widespread denial and complacency in his country about the potential duplication of the 1933-34 Nazi takeover of Germany in his iconic book, It Can’t Happen Here.
In Sinclair’s Cassandra vision of the 1936 election, Senator ‘Buzz’ Windrip knocks off sitting President FDR from the Democratic Party nomination in a convention coup (consider Trump’s steamroller over the GOP in 2016) followed by a general election win with a mandate for renewal via dictatorship.
President Windrip swiftly turned state institutions into fascist agencies aided by ‘Minute Men’ blue-shirts tasked with incarcerating and abusing a full range of political opponents. Sinclair’s classic was inspired by contemporary reports--vigorously denied at the time by the authorities -- of business and military plots to overthrow FDR and his liberal New Deal. The opposition in Lewis’ telling was caught flat-footed as liberals were in our timeline during the 2016 and 2024 elections.
The widespread American denial illustrated in Sinclair’s book is based on two conflicting premises; the first, an optimistic liberal reading of ‘unshakable’ national political institutions and, second, conservative cynicism about the country’s defects which fed indifference if not support for a fascist takeover.
Both these premises should sound very familiar in the current Canadian context. Mainline liberals are complacent that the PMO under Mark Carney and the court system are sufficient bulwarks against annexation (‘Never 51’) while hard-Right conservatives insist that all Canadian political institutions are ‘broken’ and in the hands of the Chinese and/or shadowy globalist cabals. Despite the real animosity between both establishment camps, they both extol ‘open for business’ harmony between corporate exploiters and the exploited working majority.
Trump-USA Juggernaut
Herr Trump’s crass threats, his economy-wrecking trade war and the Albertan pre-annexation referendum should convince Canadians to examine the overall threat level and consider appropriate responses to head this off pronto.
The first examining step should involve absorbing the lessons of the Trump takeover of the USA, noting that this grifter political operation was accompanied by widespread denial and complacency as it unfolded in plain sight. Twice.
All available evidence points to an American ‘liberal’ establishment which has woefully underestimated the will and capacity of Trump 2.0 to swiftly bend state and corporate institutions to despotic far-Right rule. Trump’s first few months focused on dispatching entire federal departments through criminal operations like DOGE while unleashing state agencies, led by ICE, to expand racist brutality against the working poor through shock-and-awe mass deportation campaigns.
The MAGA GOP has also acted decisively to enact 32 voter suppression laws in 17 states during 2025. DEI policy has been unceremoniously ditched at various government levels, a move mirrored to varying degrees by most major corporations under threat of federal ‘reverse-discrimination’ investigations.
America’s allies have likewise stood still while--as one salient example--Trump rapidly rolled his NATO vassals, securing the consent of all but one member to lunatic levels of warfare expenditure. PM Carney is making sure not to get caught out on this Empire marching order and, so, has mandated that warfare largesse from the working class taxpayer must roughly quadruple in Canada by 2035.
Most dramatic of all has been the nation-grab which Trump-USA carried out against Venezuela; first, through regime-change in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and, second, the conclusion of an agreement with the afterlife of the Bolivarian regime to steal that country’s oil. Trump has even managed to work in an albeit far less successful open-ended major war after grabbing the Iranian tiger by the tail on February 28th.
Despite all this, the imperial liberal camp vest considerable hopes in the ability of the American political system (again, consider the Sinclair Lewis example) to check their Nemesis, particularly in the November mid-terms. The establishment even talks aloud about the hope and joy of resuming war-and-plunder normality once Herr Trump dutifully stands down in 2029.
A Very Canadian Political Fantasy
Meanwhile in Canada, we have an active annexation campaign from which establishment and public alike are desperate to hide. Ironically, the ramped-up Trump trade war has provided more cover for his administration’s annexation designs. Mainstream discussion of the current US-Canada conflict is focused solely on the trade war through the prism of affected industries. Our political rulers are eager to have us believe that the Albertan October 19th referendum is an entirely separate matter that is best ignored.
Instead of fighting the introduction of Trump-USA politics in Alberta, Canadians are encouraged to grasp at straws like a passive consumer boycott and (considerably worse) relying on rescue from abroad in the form of the US-dominated NATO war-making alliance or even outlandish nonsense like clubbing with crumbling Fortress Europe (aka the EU).
Canadian innocence about international affairs helps sell such absurd imperial fantasies.
People really do not understand how few real friends Canada has in the world and how this lonely reality is the product of our rulers’ continuing spineless adherence to American forever-war policy, highlighted this year by Carney’s repeated support for US-Israeli sneak attacks on Iran.
The bottom line is that no one; neither the sinking UK ‘mother’ country, nor the austerity-ridden EU, nor the toothless butler agencies of the UN--not even the Eurovision song contest--is coming to save Canada from American Annexation. We are on our own, vulnerable on a host of fronts and, in real terms, deeply divided among ourselves along national, class and political lines.
Democracy Not Annexation
The DNA Report takes aim against the denial, complacency and appeasement promoted by the Canadian establishment as responses to the Trump-USA threat. In 30 days, Trumpian politics will directly come to Canada through a fascist political experiment dressed up as a public plebiscite, i.e., the Smith MAGA ballot on Oct 19th.
This journal is not just motivated by the Trump-USA threat but is also inspired by the democratic past of leftwing nationally-minded politics which was energetically taken up during the late 1960s in Quebec, English Canada and Indigenous nations. From this time into the 1990s, the existential threat of the American Empire to peoples in Canada and around the world preoccupied the most advanced democratic movements and thinkers.
While a student activist in the BC 1990s, and from that point on, I have witnessed the long march of the Right over one democratic concession after another with America as inspiring muse, master conductor and drill instructor all rolled into one.
Labour in English Canada abandoned any useful political role in the country early on. Instead, the unions contract all such matters out to the ‘New Democratic’ Party which has moved sharply Right since the 1988 free trade election during which the party soft-pedaled labour’s opposition to the rightwing Mulroney deal with Reagan-USA. After this point, existential dread of America as the butcher of Vietnam, Latin America and Iraq--as well as the ‘free trade’ heavy--was eventually replaced by progressive liberal acceptance of the US ‘Democratic’ Party’s lead in key economic and geopolitical matters.
I am particularly struck by the irony that, now as Canada is treated to a far-Right American President’s demented takeover threats--the kind of scenario feared for decades by many leftists and progressives--today, what passes for a Left is politically dead to this vulgar malevolent manifestation.
The DNA Report is convinced that an American Annexation operation has a fascist end game in mind. We are in dire need of a new political project which vigorously organizes around the understanding that annexation manifests the concentrated combination of all current regressive trends aimed against remaining democratic concessions, including labour and national rights, public services, environmental protections and civil freedoms.
And what is more, the peoples in Canada are only at the very beginning of our troubles with Trump-USA and their local collaborators. Without a democratic political alternative against both Trump-USA threats and the Canadian establishment’s cynical use of Trump, the certainty of growing economic hardship will only aid the current domestic fascist political movement in their long-range goal of a great orange dystopia.
Political Countdown
Over the next 30 days, The DNA Report will provide commentary analysis on the growing American Annexation threat, most evident in Herr Trump’s deployment of ‘economic force’ and in Governor Smith’s imported MAGA ballot questions. The matter will not be decided on October 19th but the passage of any of Smith’s propositions will embolden the far-Right allies of Trump. This journal will consider Canada’s vulnerability to such political manipulations--the greatest weakness being the absence of a democratic political movement organized to fight this fascist menace.
This journal is not an academic or paid media venture. Readers can expect a tone that is sharp, irreverent and polemical. The democratic hostility that I express towards the USA is against its war-mongering governments and predatory corporate class rather than to Americans in general.
In the 30-day countdown to the Smith MAGA ballot, readers can expect articles and posts which examine the key players behind current anti-democratic initiatives through the following subjects:
1) The Smith MAGA ballot represents the political tip of the far-Right spear to Trump’s economic war-hammer of heavy tariffs. This journal will review the content and ramifications of all ten ballot questions which propose not just ‘separation’ but also attacks on immigrants, public service, voter rights and the Canadian Constitution.
2) The political and economic drivers of Trump Inc. which is the flagship of 21st century global fascism as evidenced by the wide swath cut by energetic Trump-USA interventions and corresponding inspiration for local far-Right auxiliaries.
3) The tale of two collaborator archetypes in the Canadian establishment, drawing on suitable WW2 analogies: the Quislings, who are working from within to grease the wheels of American Annexation, most capably represented by Governor Smith and; the Vichy, exemplified by Canada’s first transatlantic PM Carney who is banking on the renegotiation of the country’s subsidiary status with Washington from a position of clear weakness. At this point, sovereignty tough-talk successfully cloaks Vichy Carney’s eagerness to yield steep concessions to Trump’s cabal with the analysis-wary public; especially in contrast to the deep discredit of the Quislings’ open collaboration with Mar-a-Lego.
4) Democracy Not Annexation; sketching out the starting points of a democratic response to both far-Right Quislings and the Vichy establishment which combines appeasement with dramatically expanded anti-public attacks on behalf of big business under the cover of Trump. In the face of progressive and leftist apathy in regards to American Annexation, this journal recognizes that the necessary democratic response is one that must be built from scratch along updated organizing and rhetorical lines.
5) Prospects and implications; in the last days of the Oct 19th referendum, a rundown will be laid out in the way of a preliminary review of plausible conclusions, scenarios and predictions about what we can expect on the big day and beyond.
The DNA Report will also follow current events to elaborate on the above subjects as well as introduce new political themes as they present themselves. This will include responses to salient feedback and criticism as well as establishment takes ranging from the insightful to clichéd rubbish.
Finally, I intend to cap off the 30 days with a political experiment in the form of an election night broadcast event of commentary and discussion which engages the state media coverage and blather scheduled for the night of October 19th.
Our future is up for grabs and the only hands currently making political plays are those of the establishment and Trumpy Right, both of which are actively hostile to democracy, national rights and larger public interests.
The DNA Report aims to engage this moment by making a public democratic case for the working majority to oppose ruling anti-democratic threats and to organize for their own agenda of a new country of free and equal nations dedicated to co-determination, popular control, labour power, social provision and protection of the natural world.
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Gabriel Haythornthwaite is a former labour-allied school board trustee in BC and currently advises First Nations around political and intergovernmental relations. He is also a leftwing writer and political organizer.
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