Bait and switch – Canadians voted for a Liberal “elbows up” PM in 2025 but got a conservative appeaser instead

Climate change policy rollback, deference to the US, tough on crime legislation, reduced social spending, are all hallmarks of a right wing Conservative government. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

In the 2025 federal election campaign, Canadians were told they were choosing stability. They were told that Mark Carney, the newly minted Liberal leader, would be the steady, progressive hand needed to navigate Donald Trump’s tariff war. They were told that the Liberals remained the sensible alternative to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. They believed Liberal campaign messaging and gave Mark Carney a very strong minority mandate, which he turned into a majority with Conservative floor crossings and by-election wins.

Almost fifteen months later, Canadians must accept a stark and unsettling reality.  The man they elected to lead Canada is not governing as a Liberal at all. Instead, he is steering the country in a distinctly conservative direction—at times even more aggressively than former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. The bait and switch could not be clearer, and the evidence is everywhere.

Carney’s most dramatic right‑turn came with the cancellation of the consumer carbon tax—a key Liberal climate change policy. In March 2025, his government announced that the federal fuel charge would be set to zero as of April 1, 2025, and legislation would follow to permanently repeal the consumer carbon‑pricing framework. The Bank of Canada confirmed that the removal of the carbon tax would lower consumer prices and reduce inflation for a year—an admission that the move was more about inflation optics, rather than meaningful climate policy.

This was not a minor recalibration. It was the dismantling of the central pillar of Canada’s climate architecture, a policy the Liberals had defended all the way to the Supreme Court under the government of Justin Trudeau. In addition to removing the consumer carbon tax, industrial carbon pricing was weakened and stretched out, further reducing Canada’s already modest climate ambition. Progressive nations—Norway, Finland, Denmark—are accelerating climate action. Under Carney, Canada is accelerating emissions.

The same pattern of retreat appears in Carney’s handling of Donald Trump. In trade negotiations, where Canada has given concession after concession, receiving little in return.

The Digital Services Tax (DST), a 3% levy on tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Google, was rescinded in June 2025 specifically “to advance broader trade negotiations with the United States.” Analysts noted that the repeal came under intense US pressure, effectively subordinating Canadian tax sovereignty to American demands.

Then came the rollback of streaming levies. In 2026, Carney intervened to reverse a CRTC decision requiring foreign streaming platforms to devote 15% of Canadian revenues to Canadian and Indigenous content. His government ordered the regulator to retreat, framing the reversal as an affordability measure while signalling a new direction that sharply reduced obligations for US streaming giants.

Next, Carney eliminated almost all retaliatory counter‑tariffs on US goods, while US tariffs on Canadian exports remained firmly in place. This unilateral de‑escalation relieved pressure on American exporters without securing reciprocal relief for Canadians.  Additionally, instead of forcing a resolution on steel and aluminum tariffs, Carney’s government settled into a defensive posture, extending tariff‑rate quotas (TRQs) until the end of June 2027,and normalizing a regime shaped by US Section 232 tariffs of 50%.

The pattern is unmistakable.Trump threatens, Carney retreats and concedes. The “steady hand” has looked more like chronic concession.

Domestically, Carney has pushed the Liberals even further right. His criminal justice agenda looks like it was crafted by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, who have made “tough on crime” a major plank in their election platforms for several elections. The Bail and Sentencing Reform Act (Bill C‑14) introduced over 80 changes to federal law, explicitly making bail stricter and sentencing tougher, in line with Conservative demands. The government proudly declared that “Canada’s new government promised stricter bail laws and tougher sentencing laws. That promise is now law.”

Reverse‑onus provisions, mandatory consecutive sentences, expanded aggravating factors—these are not progressive reforms. They are punitive escalations that mirror Harper‑era ideology. A progressive government would have focused on restorative justice and decarceration, but Carney chose the opposite.

On social policy, the Carney’s rightward drift continued. While the Canadian Dental Care Plan is expanding, with projected benefits funding rising to $3.4 billion in 2026‑27, pharmacare is being quietly starved. The Spring 2026 Economic Update announced bilateral health funding falling from $4.3 billion in 2025‑26 to $3.1 billion in 2027‑28, with no new money for additional pharmacare agreements. Analysts warn that Ottawa appears poised to let existing agreements expire without renewal—effectively halting national pharmacare.

This is textbook austerity where a popular flagship program is preserved while other deeper structural reforms are allowed to wither.

Carney’s rhetoric about “tough decisions” only reinforces the shift. Combined with the removal of the consumer carbon tax—which disproportionately benefits higher‑income households that consume more fossil fuels—the government’s affordability agenda skews toward those already better off.  Under his policies inequality is magnified, not reduced.

Internationally, Canada’s standing is slipping. The 2026 World Happiness Report places Canada 25th, down from 18th the previous year and far below its ranking a decade ago.  When countries like Kosovo, Mexico and Costa Rica (which ranked 4th) rank higher that is a signal that something very wrong. Nordic countries dominate the top of the index, reflecting strong social support, equality, and robust welfare states. Canada’s slide was not inevitable. It is the result of political choices that erode social protections and weaken progressive policy.

On corruption, democracy, and rule‑of‑law indices, Canada now sits in the middle of the advanced‑democracy pack rather than at its leading edge. Carney’s willingness to weaken climate policy, stall pharmacare, and harden criminal justice only accelerates the drift away from the Nordic model Canada once aspired to.

When Carney’s record is placed beside Stephen Harper’s, the similarities are striking. Climate rollback. Deference to Washington. Tough‑on‑crime legislation. Selective social spending. This is not a centrist Liberal government nudged slightly right by circumstance. It is a right‑of‑centre government wearing a red Liberal coat.

Under Carney the Liberal brand has become political misrepresentation—fine‑wine packaging around vinegar‑grade policy. Canadians voted for a progressive alternative to Poilievre. Instead, they got Harperism in red.

For Canadians who still believe in robust climate action, universal pharmacare, civil liberties, and a foreign policy grounded in human rights, the conclusion is unavoidable: the Liberals under Mark Carney are no longer a progressive vehicle. The only national party articulating a coherent left‑of‑centre program is the NDP under Avi Lewis, whose platform aligns far more closely with the Nordic benchmarks of social democracy than anything coming out of Carney’s PMO.

If Canadians truly wanted a Conservative government, they could have voted for Pierre Poilievre. Instead, they voted Liberal—and got a Conservative prime minister. That is the essence of the bait and switch. And unless progressive voters break with the Carney Liberals, Canada’s slide away from justice‑oriented, egalitarian politics will only deepen.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Hindu supremacist leader Mohan Bhagwat must be barred from entering Canada

The activities of the RSS reflect a consistent pattern of violence and persecution of Muslims and other Indian minorities . . . Canada cannot become a place where that violence is whitewashed.
 
By Fareed Khan  
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Canada is facing a critical test of its commitment to human rights and pluralism. Mohan Bhagwat, Chief of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu fascist movement, is expected to visit Toronto on August 31 and September 1, 2026—his first visit to Canada and the first by an RSS leader in more than two decades. His arrival is not a cultural exchange. It is a political operation aimed at sanitizing the global image of an organization whose fascist ideology and violent actions against India’s minorities have long been associated with exclusion, discrimination, and violence.

Canada must deny Mohan Bhagwat entry. Based on Bhagwat’s organization’s long record of racist violence and its ethno‑religious supremacist worldview Canada must deny him entry. His presence is incompatible with Canada’s commitments to diversity, equity and pluralism.

The RSS is not a conservative cultural association. It is an ethno‑religious nationalist movement whose ideology mirrors the logic of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan—except that its hierarchy is built on Hindu majoritarian supremacy rather than white racial dominance. At its core, the RSS advances a fascist vision of society in which Hindus are the rightful rulers of India, and non‑Hindu minorities—Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and tribal communities—must either accept permanent subordination. This ideology, known as Hindutva, is not Hinduism. Like Zionism, it is a political project of exclusion, hierarchy, and domination.

The RSS’s foundations are based on supremacy not culture

Founded in 1925, the RSS has always been explicit about its goals. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—one of the most prominent Hindu nationalists and ideologues who influenced the RSS—praised Nazi Germany’s racial nationalism in his writings and speeches where he argued that minorities in India should be treated the same way Nazi Germany treated Jews under Hitler: as outsiders with no claim to equal citizenship.

This is not a relic of the past. It is the ideological backbone of the RSS today.

The RSS is the parent organization of the Sangh Parivar, a network of Hindu nationalist political, social, educational, charitable, and diaspora groups. Among them is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Canada’s own Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has described the BJP as implementing a Hindu‑nationalist policy agenda that targets India’s minority communities.

Under Modi’s BJP government, Hindutva ideology has moved from the margins to the center of state power, to the detriment of India’s non-Hindu communities.

Hindutva in practice: Discrimination, persecution, violence

The consequences of RSS‑BJP rule are well documented. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has recommended targeted sanctions against the RSS, citing “severe violations of religious freedom.” Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented widespread abuses, including mob violence, lynchings, discriminatory laws, and politically motivated prosecutions.

Reporting by CNN has shown how Hindu extremist groups—many ideologically aligned with or inspired by the RSS—have grown more aggressive and violent. Al Jazeera documented a 2021 religious gathering in Haridwar where Hindu monk Yati Narsinghanand called for genocide against Muslims. Participants openly urged called for the mass murder of Indo Muslims. These events were not fringe but part of a broader ecosystem of hate emboldened by the BJP’s political dominance and the RSS’s ideological influence.

The BJP government has enacted discriminatory laws such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which fast‑tracks citizenship for non‑Muslim migrants while excluding Muslims. It revoked Kashmir’s autonomy, imposed military lockdowns, and detained thousands. Under the Modi government journalists, academics, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders have faced raids, arrests, and intimidation.

This is the political reality the RSS has built under Modi’s government, and this is the reality Bhagwat seeks to whitewash during his international tour.

Canada has already seen the consequences

Canada is not insulated from the RSS‑BJP network. The Foreign Interference Commission has reported that the BJP‑led Indian government engages in transnational repression in Canada, including monitoring diaspora communities, using proxies to intimidate critics, and attempting to suppress lawful advocacy. CSIS has obtained evidence linking Indian government agents to homicides, violent acts, organized crime, clandestine information gathering, and interference in Canadian democratic processes.

Allowing Bhagwat into Canada would legitimize an organization connected to a foreign government already implicated in interference and violence on Canadian soil.

A record of violence and exclusion

The RSS has been linked to major episodes of communal violence, including the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque by a Hindu nationalist mob that included RSS members. That event triggered nationwide riots that killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

The organization’s present‑day activities reflect a consistent pattern of violence and persecution of Muslims and other Indian minorities, including:

• Discriminatory laws and policies targeting religious minorities;
• Inflammatory rhetoric fuelling communal violence;
• Attacks and intimidation against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and tribal communities;
• Politically motivated prosecutions of journalists and human rights defenders who speak out against the RSS; and
• Concerted efforts to suppress critical voices domestically and internationally.

Their actions prove that they are not a cultural organization, but an extremist movement that promotes religious hierarchy in Indian society and undermines democratic norms.

Canada must not become a platform for extremism

Bhagwat’s visit is a calculated attempt to rehabilitate the RSS’s global reputation. His organizers have been explicit: the purpose of the tour is to reshape “international perceptions” of the RSS—a euphemism for damage control.

Canadian institutions must not become instruments in this whitewashing campaign. The effort is disturbingly reminiscent of how Nazi officials in the 1930s sought to reassure Western audiences that they were merely promoting German culture while concealing the violent supremacist ideology driving their movement.

Before any public official, charity, or community organization engages with Bhagwat or those hosting him, Canadians deserve full transparency. Who is financing his visit? Which groups are coordinating it? Are any registered Canadian charities linked to the RSS or the broader Sangh Parivar network, and are they operating in full compliance with Canadian law?

These questions must be answered before Canada allows itself to be used as a stage for extremist image‑management.  Canada has consistently acted against extremist organizations across ideological and religious spectrums. The same standards must apply universally.

This is not about Hindu Canadians

It is essential to state clearly: this is not an attack on Hindu Canadians or Hinduism. Those who follow the teachings of the Hindu faith in Canada enrich this country in countless ways. Hindu scholars and human rights defenders have been among the strongest voices opposing Hindutva majoritarianism.  The issue is not religion. It is extremism.

Supremacist ideologies do not become acceptable simply because they originate from a different cultural or religious context.

In light of the RSS’s ideology, its documented history of violence and fascism, its connection to discriminatory policies under the BJP government, and its involvement in transnational repression, Canada must take decisive action by:

• Barring Mohan Bhagwat from entering Canada;
• Launching a national security review of the RSS and affiliated organizations;
• Reviewing and, where appropriate, revoke charitable status for RSS‑linked groups;
• Assessing whether the RSS meets criteria for terrorist designation; and
• Ensuring full transparency under Canada’s foreign influence laws.

Canada’s diversity and pluralism are its strength, but it is not a loophole. It must never be exploited to advance ideologies that promote religious or ethnic supremacy, or undermine the equal dignity of all communities.

Bhagwat’s visit is not a cultural celebration, it is a test of Canada’s resolve to stand against political extremism and fascism, and Canada must say no.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

American democracy is now a facade, and Canadians should be worried

The gravitational pull of American politics—especially as the US drifts toward oligarchic authoritarianism—has begun reshaping Canada’s political landscape in profound ways. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

American democracy, as many scholars and observers argue, no longer functions as a genuine democracy. What remains is a symbolic shell — a façade masking a political infrastructure that has been hollowed out by decades of hyper‑partisanship, corporate capture, institutional decay, and authoritarian drift. The United States today resembles a late‑stage empire coasting on historical momentum, much like Rome after the Crisis of the Third Century, where imperial institutions still existed but meaningful governance of the Empire had collapsed under the combined pressures of political instability, extreme inflation, foreign wars and foreign invasions, and the plague.

The American decline did not begin with the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. His rise was a symptom of a system already damaged and in freefall. But his open admiration for authoritarian rulers, his willingness to subvert democratic norms, and his consolidation of power among billionaire oligarchs and right wing extremist networks (the MAGA movement) accelerated a process that had been underway for years. And for Canadians, the implications are profound. When the largest democracy in the Western alliance collapses into full‑blown authoritarianism, Canada will not be insulated. It will be engulfed — politically, economically, and culturally.

The long decline of American democracy

Political scientists have documented the erosion of US democratic norms for decades, but particularly in the 21st century. A 2023 study by the Brookings Institution describes the United States as experiencing early‑stage democratic decline, marked by weakened judicial constraints, executive overreach, and partisan sabotage of accountability institutions. This is fuelled by the fact that since 2010, state legislatures instituted laws intended to reduce voters’ access to the ballot, politicize election administration, and foreclose electoral competition via extreme gerrymandering of electoral districts. The United States also saw substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service.

Added to this is the issue of political polarization, which is central to this decline. Pew Research Center reports that partisan animosity in the US has reached historic highs, with majorities in both parties viewing the other as immoral, dishonest, unpatriotic and a threat to the nation. This is not merely cultural hostility—it is structural. When political actors no longer value democracy for its own sake, institutions become weapons to hammer opponents.

The Republican Party’s radicalization is well‑documented. Numerous analyses and studies since the 2020 presidential election have warned that the GOP’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s legitimate election and its abandonment of peaceful power transfer norms pose an “existential threat” to US democracy.

Democrats, meanwhile, have often failed to defend democratic norms with sufficient force. Their technocratic instincts—described in political‑science literature as “managerial liberalism”—have led them to prioritize bureaucratic stability over structural reform. They have not been the “adults in the room” they claim to be. They have been caretakers of a decaying system.

The American Empire’s unraveling: The Iraq War and beyond

The decline of American democracy is inseparable from the decline of American global hegemony.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq exposed the limits of US military power and shattered international trust. The 2008 financial crisis further undermined global confidence in the American economic model, revealing deep structural vulnerabilities and accelerating domestic polarization. Political economists have shown that when institutions fail to deliver shared prosperity, anti‑pluralist movements gain legitimacy. A 2026 review in the Journal of Economic Literature argues that institutional failure and identity‑driven polarization interact to erode democratic guardrails.

After 2010, the collapse accelerated with extreme partisan gerrymandering entrenching minority rule; Citizens United unleashing unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns; and Congressional gridlock becoming permanent.

Freedom House marks 2016 as the beginning of a measurable decline in US political rights and civil liberties.

The fascist drift: Symbols without substance

Today, the United States still displays the outward symbols of democracy — elections, courts, legislatures, and the ceremonial rituals of democratic governance — yet the substance beneath these institutions has been steadily hollowed out. The country increasingly resembles a political system where democratic forms persist but democratic norms have eroded. This erosion is visible in the conduct of its leadership, its security apparatus, its militaristic posture, and the overwhelming influence of corporate oligarchs—patterns that echo the situation in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The most visible and troubling example is the country’s political leadership—Donald Trump.  He has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarian rulers, praising figures such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, and others. This is not a trivial matter of rhetorical excess but a signal that Trump sees democratic constraints as weaknesses rather than safeguards. At the same time, American militarism has become a defining feature of national identity. Since 2001, the United States has engaged in continuous warfare across multiple regions, attacking eight countries in Asia and Africa, projecting force abroad while failing to maintain democratic resilience at home.

Domestically, the internal security apparatus has also drifted toward authoritarian practices. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) has been documented committing hundreds of abuses and human rights violations, including: engaging in abusive detention practices, wrongfully detaining US citizens, and deaths of civilians and detainees, including dozens who have died in ICE detention facilities. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a system where accountability has weakened and state power is increasingly exercised without restraint.

Overlaying all of this is the immense influence of corporate and billionaire oligarchs. Unlimited campaign spending — enabled by decisions such as Citizens United — has allowed billionaires and corporations to shape political outcomes, policy agendas, and legislative priorities in ways that serve elite interests rather than democratic ones. The result is a political system where wealth, not citizenship, determines access to power. These developments are hallmarks of a state drifting toward authoritarianism, even if the democratic façade remains intact.

Canada’s drift toward authoritarianism and its US roots

Canada is not immune to these trends. In fact, Canada’s democratic erosion is increasingly linked to US oligarchic and political influence. The gravitational pull of American politics—especially as the US drifts toward oligarchic authoritarianism—has begun reshaping Canada’s political landscape in profound ways.

The Canadian Conservative Party has adopted strategies and narratives that closely mirror those of the US Republican Party. Culture‑war rhetoric, attacks on independent media, hostility toward climate science, and alignment with US billionaire‑funded think tanks have become increasingly common. Research shows that Canadian conservative messaging now mirrors US Republican narratives, amplified by cross‑border political networks and shared donors. This is not simply ideological convergence, it is a structural importation of American political tactics into Canada’s political culture.

Yet the Liberals are not innocent in this drift. Under Mark Carney—a former global finance executive deeply embedded in elite economic networks—the party has moved toward a technocratic centrism aligned with corporate and billionaire interests. Canadian political scientists have documented the Liberals’ close ties to Bay Street finance, the influence of multinational corporations on policy formation, and a weakening commitment to climate action and human rights. They also note an increasing reliance on private‑sector advisory groups, which further entrenches elite influence over public policy. A campaign launched by Democracy Watch warns that both major parties are increasingly shaped by elite economic actors whose interests diverge from those of the general population.

This bipartisan drift toward elite capture is reinforced by US oligarchic networks that exert direct influence on Canadian politics. American tech billionaires have shaped Canadian digital policy debates; cross‑border fossil‑fuel lobbying has influenced Canadian climate legislation; American political consultants have advised Canadian political campaigns; and US dark‑money networks have funded Canadian advocacy groups. A 2023 investigation by The Narwhal documented US oil‑industry funding of Canadian political organizations opposing climate regulation. These developments are not accidental. They are structural consequences of Canada’s proximity to a superpower undergoing democratic collapse.

Why Canadians should be alarmed

Canada’s fate is tied to the United States in ways that make American democratic decline a direct threat to Canadian stability. Economically, Canada is deeply integrated with the US, and any authoritarian instability south of the border would produce immediate and severe economic shockwaves in Canada, as we have seen with Trump’s tariff war. Politically, US authoritarian narratives spread easily across the border, influencing Canadian discourse and reshaping partisan identities. Corporate capture is also a shared phenomenon, where US oligarchs influence Canadian policy through cross‑border investments and multinational corporate structures.

Security risks are equally significant. A destabilized United States—politically, socially, or institutionally—poses direct threats to Canadian sovereignty, border stability, and national security. And beyond bilateral concerns, the collapse of the United States would destabilize the entire Western democratic alliance. If the US falls, the democratic world loses its keystone.

Canada is drifting toward authoritarianism not only because of domestic political choices, but because it is tethered to a superpower undergoing democratic collapse. The erosion of democracy in the United States is not a distant problem. It is a direct and immediate threat to Canadian political stability, democratic norms, and national sovereignty.

American democracy is no longer a functioning system. It is a veneer—a symbolic shell covering a political infrastructure that has been rotting for decades. Hyper‑partisanship, corporate capture, institutional decay, and authoritarian drift have transformed the United States into a nation where democratic norms are optional.

Canada is drifting in the same direction albeit at a slower pace—not only because of domestic political failures, but because US oligarchic and political networks exert enormous influence over Canadian politics.

If the largest democratic domino falls, Canada will not remain standing. The veneer is cracking, and Canadians must pay attention and prepare before it shatters.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Canada has a racist and Islamophobic foreign policy where Palestinians are concerned

Mark Carney's government forfeits any claim to moral authority, human rights leadership, or rule of law credibility while enabling Israel's genocide in Gaza.

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Canada and its leaders have long promoted a self‑image of this nation as a principled defender of human rights, a champion of the “international rule of law,” and a nation whose foreign policy is guided by moral clarity. But as Israel’s genocide in Gaza approaches the end of its third year, that mythology has collapsed.

The Mark Carney government — like that of Justin Trudeau’s government before it — has revealed that Canada’s commitment to the “rule of law” differs depending on the race and faith of the victims.  Under both their government’s Canada’s actions have demonstrated that when the victims are white and Christian, as in the case of Ukrainians, it responds with urgency, clarity, and moral conviction. But when the victims are brown, Muslim, and Palestinian, Canada is willing to discard its professed values, diminish their suffering, and reduce their humanity to a diplomatic afterthought. In Gaza, Canada has shown that it will cushion genocide with soft language, mask injustice with polite indifference, and choose political comfort over the lives of an entire people.

The contrast between Canada’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its response to Israel’s destruction of Gaza is not merely a “double standard.” It is evidence of a foreign policy architecture built on racism, Islamophobia, and a willingness to abandon international law when the perpetrator is a Western ally. It is also evidence that Canada’s leaders —both Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau — have not been neutral observers but active participants in enabling mass atrocity.

This is not hyperbole. It is a conclusion drawn from Canada’s own actions, its own omissions, and its own refusal to apply the same legal, diplomatic, and humanitarian standards to Palestinians that it has applied to Ukrainians.

Moral clarity for Ukraine, evasion for Gaza

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Canada responded with immediate moral certainty, and within two months the House of Commons unanimously declared Russia’s actions genocide — even though international legal scholars and human rights organizations had not reached a conclusion. Canada did not wait for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), or any global consensus. It acted on principle, or at least on what it claimed was principle.

But when Israel began its systematic destruction of Gaza — a campaign that global human rights organizations, UN experts, the International Federation for Human Rights, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and thousands of jurists ultimately identified as genocide—Canada refused to utter the word. In October 2023 Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal had already labelled Israeli atrocities as genocide. By December 2023 the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention — named for Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” — came to the same conclusion, that Israel was committing the crime of crimes. Even then, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau continued to hide behind neutralized language: “conflict,” “shortages,” “humanitarian crisis,” “tragic loss of life.” By the time Mark Carney became prime minister in March 2025, the global consensus on the Gaza genocide was unequivocal—with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the United Nations and other prominent legal and human rights voices declaring that Israel was committing genocide. Yet Canada still refused to call the crime by its name or acknowledge that Israel was the perpetrator responsible.

This rhetorical sanitization is not accidental, it is a deliberate political choice. It is crafted to shield Israel from accountability and to shield Canada from the legal consequences that would follow from acknowledging that genocide is taking place. Canada’s refusal to admit that Israel is committing genocide is not merely cowardice—it is a breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which requires states to prevent and punish genocide once they know it is occurring. Canada’s leaders have known this for more than two years. They have simply chosen not to act.

Penalties for Russia, protection for Israel

Canada’s material response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was sweeping: sanctions, asset seizures, diplomatic isolation, trade embargoes, and billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Ukraine. Canada used every available tool to punish the aggressor and support the victim.

In Gaza, Canada has done the opposite. It has imposed no meaningful sanctions on Israel. It has not suspended trade. It has not applied Magnitsky sanctions to Israeli officials responsible for war crimes. It continues to sell Israel Canadian made military goods, despite a House of Commons resolution in March 2024 calling for Canada to halt military exports to Israel. Instead, Canada has offered symbolic gestures: conditional statements about Palestinian statehood, calls for “ceasefire,” and diplomatic language crafted to avoid offending Israel. These gestures are meaningless when Canada continues to arm the perpetrator.

Carney’s government even refused to force down flights carrying Benjamin Netanyahu as he passed through Canadian airspace — despite Carney’s public claim that Canada would enforce ICC arrest warrants. This is not neutrality. It is active protection of an indicted war criminal.

Canada’s actions under Carney demonstrate that its foreign policy is not guided by law but by geopolitical loyalty. Russia is an adversary, Israel is an ally. Ukrainians are white, Palestinians are not. The consequences follow accordingly.

Open doors for Ukrainian refugees, closed gates for Palestinians

Canada’s refugee response exposes the racism at the core of its foreign policy.

For Ukrainians, Canada created an uncapped emergency visa program. By April 2024 almost 300,000 Ukrainian refugees were admitted into the country with minimal restrictions. They received open work permits, study permits, and extended temporary status. Canada treated Ukrainian displacement as a humanitarian emergency requiring immediate, large‑scale action.

For Palestinians, Canada created a program that was initially capped at just 1,000 applicants — later nominally increased to 5,000—but with requirements so onerous that fewer than 1,000 have been approved since early 2024, and only a fraction have actually arrived. Applicants must prove family ties in Canada, navigate impossible security checks, and survive a bureaucratic maze designed to reject them.

This is not humanitarian action. It is discrimination, plain and simple. Canada’s refugee policy operates on a political presumption that Palestinians require extraordinary suspicion, extraordinary scrutiny, and extraordinary barriers before they can be granted even the most basic protection. The result is a system that treats Palestinian applicants as security risks to be filtered out rather than human beings fleeing mass atrocity. In contrast, Ukrainians were met with an open‑door policy that assumed urgency, innocence, and the need for immediate refuge. One group was welcomed with broad, accessible pathways; the other was confronted with narrow caps, impossible documentation requirements, and security checks so onerous they functioned as de facto exclusion. The message embedded in Canada’s policy architecture is unmistakable: some lives merit swift protection, while others are forced to prove their worthiness at every step.

Canada’s responses to the two conflicts reveal that the racism at work is not incidental or rhetorical. It is structural—built into the policies, assumptions, and institutional practices that determine whose lives are protected and whose suffering is politically expendable.

News media’s humanization for Ukraine and dehumanization for Gaza

Canadian news media coverage of Russia’s attack on Ukraine expressed unified moral outrage. They humanized Ukrainian victims, highlighted Russian atrocities, and framed the conflict in clear terms—aggressor and victim, lawbreaker and law‑abiding state.

But when it came to coverage of the Gaza genocide, Canada’s mainstream news media largely adopted narratives that sanitize Israeli violence. Independent outlets such as The Breach and The Maple have published extensive data‑driven analyses and investigative reports showing a consistent pro‑Israel bias and an anti‑Palestinian prejudice across establishment newsrooms. Civilian deaths are routinely framed as “collateral damage.” Starvation is reduced to “food shortages.” Bombed hospitals are recast as “hidden Hamas strongholds.” The pattern is not theoretical—it is documented. One major outlet, CTV News, went so far as to forbid its reporters from using the words “Palestinian” or “genocide,” while whistleblowers at CBC revealed how the public broadcaster tolerated discriminatory editorial practices around Palestinian stories and disciplined staff who challenged them. The cumulative effect is unmistakable—a media ecosystem that constrains truth, narrows public understanding, and reinforces a foreign‑policy that erases Palestinian suffering in real time.

This is not accidental. It reflects a longstanding structural bias within Canada’s mainstream news media establishment, where stories that critically examine Israeli state violence are routinely softened, sidelined, or shelved to avoid provoking politically charged—and often unfounded—accusations of “antisemitism.” The result is a media environment in which the boundaries of acceptable discourse are policed not by journalistic principle but by political fear.

Regardless of the facts on the ground, Canada’s major networks and newspapers consistently elevate narratives that minimize or obscure Israeli violations of international law while marginalizing or reframing pro‑Palestinian perspectives. This pattern has persisted for decades, shaping public understanding of the Palestinian reality and narrowing the space for honest reporting. But in the face of the Gaza genocide, the scale of this distortion has become impossible to ignore. The gap between the truth and mainstream media reporting is now so vast that it exposes the media’s role not as a neutral observer, but as an active participant in sustaining a foreign‑policy status quo that privileges Israel’s political comfort over the survival of the Palestinian people.

Canada is a “rule of law” nation in name only

Canada’s leaders claim to uphold the so called “rule of law.” But the rule of law is not a slogan, it is a practice, and Canada’s application of the rule of law, particularly in its foreign policy, is selective.

A rule‑of‑law nation does not:

• Refuse to name genocide when global human rights and legal bodies have already done so;
• Continue exporting weapons to a state committing mass atrocity;
• Shield war criminals from arrest;
• Impose sanctions on one criminal aggressor while protecting another;
• Welcome refugees from one conflict while excluding refugees from another;
• Apply international law only when the victims are white and Christian.

The fact is that Canada’s foreign policy is not principled. It is racist and Islamophobic. Additionally, as a result Canada’s actions relating to the Gaza genocide, Canada as a state and its leaders are criminally complicit in the genocidal crimes committed by Israel.

Mark Carney’s government cannot claim moral authority while enabling mass atrocity. It cannot claim to defend human rights while refusing to act against a state committing genocide. It cannot claim to uphold international law while violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Canada’s response to Gaza is not a failure. It is a choice made by its leaders—a choice to protect Israel, a choice to abandon Palestinians, a choice to prioritize geopolitics over humanity, a choice to uphold racism over justice.

Unlike its claims otherwise Canada is not a rule‑of‑law nation. It is a nation that applies international law selectively, morality conditionally, and humanity hierarchically. And until it confronts its own hypocrisy and criminality, it will remain complicit in one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Zionist racism and Palestinian dehumanization are the foundations of Israel’s moral character

Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, envisioned a racist Jewish state as a “civilizing” outpost of Europe in Palestine —  implicitly superior to the “barbaric” indigenous population.  

  

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

From its earliest formulations in late‑19th‑century Europe, Zionism imagined a political order in historic Palestine built around the supremacy of one ethnonational group—Jews. Over the decades, that vision hardened into a state structure that one Israeli human rights organization—B’Tselem—has described as a “regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Other groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous scholars of genocide and settler colonialism have concluded that Israeli governance across all of historic Palestine constitutes apartheid, and in the eyes of some genocide scholars an unfolding genocidal process.

This is not a claim about Judaism or Jewish identity. It is a claim about state power, ideology, and structures of supremacy. And it is a claim increasingly made by courageous Israelis who defy the powerful interests of a state committing genocide.

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard captured this internal reckoning with painful clarity when he said, “I look at these young people who are poisoned with racism and hatred, and at some of their elders, who are their spiritual mentors and implant in them toxic notions of Jewish supremacy… How did we produce from among us the replicas of our persecutors?”

Sfard’s question is not rhetorical. It is a diagnosis of a society shaped by decades of occupation, settlement, and ethnonational fear—one in which Jewish supremacy and dehumanization of Palestinians has become normalized, even valorized.

Zionism’s racialized and fascist foundations

Zionism emerged in the same intellectual climate that produced European colonialism, racial hierarchy, and the early currents of ethnonationalism that would later culminate in fascist movements. Theodor Herzl, the movement’s founder, envisioned a racist Jewish state in Palestine as a civilizing outpost of Europe. In Der Judenstaat and Altneuland, Herzl described the future Jewish society as modern, rational, and European—implicitly superior to the “backward” native population.

Herzl’s writings repeatedly framed Palestinians not as a people with political rights, but as an obstacle to be managed, displaced, or subordinated to the Zionist agenda. His admiration for European colonial models—particularly British rule in South Africa—reveals a worldview steeped in racial hierarchy.

Critics and scholars have argued that Herzl’s political imagination contained proto‑fascist elements, including: a belief in demographic engineering; a vision of a homogenous ethnonational state; a hierarchical worldview that placed European Jews at the apex; and a willingness to subordinate or remove indigenous populations.

These elements do not make Herzl a fascist. But they place him within the intellectual family of European racial nationalism, a genealogy that later fed into the fascist ideologies that dominated Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. If one removes the Jewish identity component, Herzl’s framework shares structural similarities with other European ethnonationalist movements of his era—movements that came to dominate politics in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal.

This is not an accusation of personal malevolence but a recognition that Herzl’s political imagination was shaped by the dominant ideologies of his time, namely settler colonialism, racialized progress, and ethnonational exclusivity. These ideas later crystallized into policies within the Zionist movement that promoted Jewish demographic dominance and territorial control over Palestinian rights.

The making of a supremacist regime

The Nakba of 1948—marked by mass displacement, village destruction, and the permanent exclusion of over 750,000 Palestinian refugees—was not an aberration but a foundational moment. Laws such as the Absentee Property Law ensured that Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed could never return to their homes, while their land was transferred to Jewish ownership.

After 1967, the occupation entrenched a dual legal system, one where Israeli settlers in the West Bank lived under Israeli civil law, enjoyed full political rights, and received state protection, while Palestinians lived under military law, faced movement restrictions, home demolitions, land seizures, and arbitrary detention. B’Tselem concluded in 2021 that this constitutes “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” effectively making Israel an apartheid state.

Human Rights Watch’s A Threshold Crossed reached the same conclusion, documenting policies designed to maintain Jewish demographic and political dominance through land control, movement restrictions, and discriminatory laws.

Along with a similar report by Amnesty International in 2022, these claims of Israel being an apartheid state are not fringe interpretations. They are the assessments of leading human rights institutions, and are supported by research by human rights scholars.

Dehumanization as policy and culture

Supremacy is sustained not only through laws but through dehumanizing language. Israeli political leaders have long deployed rhetoric that erases Palestinian identity and strips Palestinians of their humanity. They rarely refer to Palestinians as “Palestinians” at all, choosing instead the generic term “Arabs,” a deliberate linguistic move that denies a people their name, their history, and their nationhood. This erasure is reinforced by explicit dehumanization. Senior officials have repeatedly used language that casts Palestinians as subhuman or inherently threatening. Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked notoriously described Palestinian children as “little snakes,” even calling for the killing of Palestinian mothers to prevent future generations. Such rhetoric is not incidental; it is part of the ideological machinery that makes domination thinkable and violence permissible.

Such language is not merely hateful—it is functional. It prepares the public to accept policies of collective punishment, siege, and large‑scale military assault.  Also, settler violence, often carried out with impunity and the support if Israeli authorities, reinforces this logic. Sfard’s comparison of extremist settlers to the Ku Klux Klan is not hyperbole but a reflection of vigilante terror used to enforce ethnic hierarchy.

This dehumanization has intensified during Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza over the years. By mid‑November 2023, Holocaust and genocide scholars—including Marion Kaplan, Omer Bartov, and Barry Trachtenberg—warned that Israel’s actions risked or constituted genocide. Their warnings were grounded in patterns familiar from other cases of forced displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass killing, and rhetoric invoking biblical annihilation narratives.

Holocaust survivors and descendants have echoed these warnings, arguing that the dehumanization of Palestinians mirrors patterns they recognize from their own histories. Their testimony cannot be dismissed as it is rooted in lived experience and scholarly expertise.

For decades, Israel enjoyed near-total impunity in the international legal system. That era is ending. Cases before the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court have forced a global reckoning with the legal and moral implications of prolonged occupation and systemic discrimination. Some Holocaust scholars who initially defended Israel’s actions in Gaza have since gone silent. Their earlier support for state violence—rather than for the universal principles of human rights—reveals a troubling willingness to subordinate anti‑racist commitments to ethnonational loyalty.

As critics have noted, this silence is a betrayal of the very lessons the field of genocide studies was created to uphold.

Parallels between Zionism and white supremacy

We must also confront the fact that Zionism, as practiced by the Israeli state, shares structural parallels with white supremacy. Both are systems of domination built on similar foundations. Each constructs a superior in‑group understood as uniquely entitled to land, sovereignty, and political power. Each justifies the dispossession of an Indigenous or subordinate population through narratives of civilizational advancement or historical destiny. Both rely on demographic engineering to secure permanent control, deploy stories of cultural or racial superiority to legitimize exclusion, and normalize segregation, unequal citizenship, and the systematic denial of rights. These are not incidental similarities. They reflect the underlying architecture of two regimes organized around maintaining the dominance of one group over another.

In the United States, “manifest destiny” justified the displacement of Indigenous peoples. In Israel, the Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews worldwide while denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Academic work in Holy Land Studies and other journals describes Zionism as a racial regime that reproduces whiteness through land control and exclusion of Arabs and non‑European Jews.

A society shaped by ethnosupremacy

Haaretz has documented how Jewish supremacy has fractured Israeli society itself, empowering extremist settlers and far‑right movements that now dominate national politics.  The Oslo era did not moderate these forces, it entrenched them. Settlement expansion accelerated, Palestinian territory fragmented into disconnected enclaves, and the logic of domination became normalized. Jewish self‑determination has been transformed into a system of supremacy that denies Palestinians equivalent rights.

This is not a fringe view. It is increasingly the consensus among scholars of settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnonationalism. Recognizing the supremacist structures embedded in Israeli governance does not diminish Jewish suffering or deny the trauma of antisemitism. It does not delegitimize Jewish collective identity or aspirations for safety. But it does demand a reckoning with the reality that no people can secure their freedom by denying another’s.

Ending the occupation, dismantling apartheid structures, and recognizing Palestinian political and human rights are not acts of hostility toward Jews. They are acts of fidelity to universal principles of justice.

As Sfard asked: How did we produce replicas of our persecutors? The answer lies not in Jewish identity, but in the corrosive power of Zionism, an ideology of ethnonational supremacy. The task now is to build a political order grounded not in domination, but in equality.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.