The video clip of Pierre Poilievre dressing down a hostile ‘journalist’ while munching on an apple is like a political Rorschach test.
Die-hard Liberal supporters see a uniquely arrogant politician being mean to a journalist while avoiding valid questions.
Everyone else sees a partisan Canadian reporter who couldn’t back up his biased and incoherent accusations.
However, the exchange between Poilievre and the reporter is far more significant than merely a satisfying ‘self-own’ for opponents of Trudeau’s Liberals and partisan Canadian journalists.
We see in the journalist a microcosm of the mindset of the contemporary Canadian Left. We get an exquisite exposé of how self-identifying ‘woke’/ ‘progressive’ Liberal and NDP supporters have replaced independent thinking with generic sloganeering, labeling and talking points.
We also get to see Poilievre give a masterclass in the most effective way to debate with group-thinkers: Challenge them to justify their assertions.
At first glance you would think that insisting the other person justify what he is saying is obvious. But it’s not what most people do. Most people take the bait. They start arguing their own, contrary opinion. They defend themselves against the accusations and labels. They respond in kind by throwing partisan labels and insults back at their opponent.
And to be clear, it’s not that the contrary opinion or the defense against the accusations are wrong. They are probably perfectly valid.
It’s that the group-thinker is prepared for that response. He is comfortable with the ‘tennis match’ form of debate in which both sides endlessly lob opinion and claims at each other while proclaiming themselves right and the other person wrong until someone inevitably abandons the game.
This allows the group-thinker to walk away convinced that he ‘won’ the debate, thus reaffirming the enlightened status of the ‘woke’/’progressive’ worldview.
The group-thinker isn’t prepared to be put in the position of having to demonstrate he knows what he’s talking about.
And that is exactly what Poilievre did in the ‘apple’ video.
This isn’t a rhetorical trick or a tactic. It’s simply adhering to the rules of basic logic and reason. That’s why it’s so effective. The approach is grounded in the axiom that intellectual honesty is a prerequisite for credible discussion and debate. No serious person could take issue with simply being asked to substantiate his own assertions. Insisting that your opponent account for his words is an unassailable position.
The problem for the group-thinker is that, by definition, he isn’t representing his own ideas. He is simply a vehicle for generic talking points that have been generated solely for their rhetorical effect.
When the ‘woke’ Left calls someone ‘racist’ or ‘transphobe’ or full of ‘hate’, they are not saying something they personally know to be true. They are simply using these terms to demonize and thus invalidate perspectives that don’t conform to their own.
This isn’t thinking.
When you ask them to justify their claims they are suddenly confronted with their inability to demonstrate that what they’ve just said corresponds to reality.
Making claims which you can’t substantiate is the definition of not knowing what you’re talking about. Attributing self-confirming motivations, traits and beliefs which you are incapable of validating isn’t credible analysis or debate. It’s adolescent self-indulgence and malice.
There is nothing partisan about holding someone to the standards of reason, logic and intellectual honesty. This is the power of it. Identifying someone’s reliance on logical fallacies has nothing to do with opinion. Someone is either relying on logical fallacy or they’re not.
For example, “begging the question” is a form of circular argument in which the person’s conclusion is included in his premise.
Now let’s look at an example of the line of questioning from the journalist confronting Poilievre:
“...why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given … y’know … not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page out of Donald Trump’s book…?”
Can we objectively identify an unsubstantiated conclusion embedded in the journalist’s question?
Of course we can. “The sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page out of Donald Trump’s book” is an ill-defined, partisan value judgement. Yet it is presented as a universally acknowledged fact. Poilievre is expected to simply accept it as a coherent, accurate characterization and account for himself.
The journalist’s question is logically incoherent. One's political or ideological preferences has no bearing on that assessment.
Does Poilievre respond by denying the assertion? Does he try to justify his worldview and his style of politics?
No. He doesn’t allow the journalist to put him in the position of defending himself against idiotic claims. He says this:
“What are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you gimme a page? Gimme the page. You keep saying that …”
This puts the onus where it belongs: on the person making the characterization/accusation to clarify what he means.
No one can argue in good faith that this is unreasonable. Anyone on the receiving end of a similarly vague accusation would respond the same way: “What are you talking about?”
It is also the correct form in terms of logic and proper debate.
Some have suggested that this is simply a matter of an unprepared journalist confronting a politician with poorly thought out questions.
It’s much more than that.
Relying on logical fallacies, parroting partisan clichés about Trump, making accusations he is unable to substantiate… all of this reflects a lack of awareness about the basic standards of logic and reason.
Not only does the reporter not know what he means by “taking a page out of Donald Trump’s book”, he doesn’t know why not knowing what he means matters. Simply making the association between Poilievre and Trump somehow conveys an ultimate truth which the reporter takes to be self-evident. Everyone, including Poilievre, is just expected to affirm it.
This has become the standard form of political discourse of the Canadian Left. Language is used to externalize subjective judgements, not to accurately describe something demonstrably true. The distinction between subjective and objective has become dangerously blurred in the minds of Left wing Canadians.
So what are we to make of other Canadian journalists condemning Poilievre for his effective handling of the situation? What are we to make of their championing of their colleague’s incompetent reasoning?
There can only be one conclusion: Logically fallacious, partisan group-think is so normative in their profession they can’t even see it.
Even more bizarrely, the person being attacked is expected to indulge the incompetent reasoning - otherwise he is being mean to his attacker.
Here are some examples:
Yes, I know I am stretching the application of the term ‘journalist’ when including former Global News junior reporter/Tik Tok thingy Rachel Gilmore in the category.
However, I think she is representative of the mindset of many Millennials who are the product of ideologically captured journalism schools.
Rachel’s inverted, Bizarro World take on the incident is revealing. Poilievre’s logically sophisticated counter to the barrage of fallacious drivel is downgraded to a “debate club style dismissal”.
With this language, Rachel positions herself as Poilievre’s intellectual superior; condescendingly waving off his handling of the interview as laughably amateurish.
At the same time she elevates the reporter’s logical fallacies to perfectly “reasonable questions”.
The selections below are endorsements of the official take from the Globe and Mail on the matter by journalist Shannon Proudfoot. Proudfoot characterized the exchange as Poilievre “kicking a journalist in the shins over and over”.
Andre Picard, Globe and Mail:
Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star:
“Kick-ass piece. Making yourself a far-right hero by crapping on a small-town reporter is petty, and pathetic.”
“The people who jumped on making an overworked local reporter representative of the national press? Pathetic.”
Charles Adler, radio broadcaster:
He was just being himself - cruel.
There’s a crowd of conservatives who thrive on bullying & cruelty.
Many are now seeing the person others have known for yrs.
If Canadians are feeling gloomy enough, and want to lash out, they might be attracted to an authentic jerk.”
Chantal Hebert, Toronto Star/CBC, simply agreeing that this is the same thing as Poilievre “kicking a journalist in the shins over and over”.
