In an impossibly stupid moment that set Twitter on fire and that energized the legions of right wing fanatics that have been bred of late, US podcast celebrity Joe Rogan actually claimed that Canada was a "communist" country even while admitting that he does not know how things "work " up here.
Watch for yourself:
Canada is, rather obviously to anyone who is not an idiot, not a communist country. Not remotely. Not at all. That this "opinion" is completely wrong should be self-evident.
Given Canada's subservience to US imperialism, its capitalist economy, neo-liberal political class and wealthy ruling elite it is submoronic to claim Canada is "communist". A kind of performative stupidity.
But, despite of how mind-numbingly dumb it is, Rogan's nonsense is dangerous.
It is dangerous because it reinforces a profoundly anti-democratic and neo-fascist idea that somehow liberal and social democratic politicians are inherently illegitimate and tyrannical.
Anyone who knows anything about The Left Chapter and my writing knows I hold Justin Trudeau and his coalition partner in the NDP in very low esteem. But for rather different reasons than Rogan.
Far from being "communist" the Trudeau government is a bulwark for the interests of Canadian capitalism, the fossil fuel industry, Canadian militarism and US imperialism. This is incredibly easy to prove but I think there is little point. Folks like Rogan don't actually give a shit that what they say is obviously false, they have a different agenda.
Rogan is either really or pretend ill-informed but it does not matter which. He almost certainly knows or could find out easily that Canada is a bourgeois capitalist liberal democracy and that Trudeau was elected and that that is how "the system works" in Canada. But he doesn't care.
Nor do the countless Canadian and US fascists who cry on endlessly about the "Trudeau Dictatorship" and other similar nonsense.
Rogan is another of the now many "friendly" faces of fascism who present a kind of dim-witted "anti-authoritarianism" while actually supporting the authoritarianism of the police and the Republican Party. Rogan, for example, has expressed support for the actually authoritarian governor of Florida Ron DeSantis.
To claim to be anti-authoritarian and support DeSantis requires either immense stupidity or hypocrisy. Likely both.
One could go on and on as to why this is obviously true and Rogan's claims about Canada obviously false but that would be a waste of time.
The far more important point is to understand, as leftists, that as titanically misinformed and actually stupid as Rogan's musings are, they are dangerous because he has a mass audience and there are powerful forces who want to see his imbecilic ideas used to undermine and even destroy what there is of Canadian "democracy".
Long before most people took him seriously I warned that Donald Trump was no sideshow farce. Neither is Joe Rogan and what he represents.
And that is an avowed anti-democratic instinct and a clear support for the rising fascism in North America.
Take Rogan very seriously. One day he may be looked back on as an American Julius Streicher: a propagandist for tremendous evil yet to come.
Think he is a joke all you want, but the punchline is likely to be incredibly dangerous.