…but first, a word from The Incline

I want to apologize for my seemingly erratic posting schedule these days. I’ve been trying to keep it consistent but hooooo boyyyyy it has been challenging. For a number of reasons.

This edition was actually ready to go last Thursday. I had the post all formatted, stylized, and ready to ship off by mid-afternoon. But, as is sometimes the case, Beehiiv (my new hosting platform) refreshed while I was actively typing.

Mid-word, the browser window went blank for a few seconds. Normally, it’s an annoyance, because the refreshed page always shoots me to the top of my newsletter instead of where I was making edits or inputting text. But this time, when the page returned, every bit of work I had done that day - around 50% of the edition - was entirely gone. I spent about an hour trying to recover it to no avail. It all just…vanished, into the internet’s assorted series of tubes.

I opt to write directly on Beehiiv because the platform is not as kind with reformatting as my old host, Substack, was. You could write a whole 12,000 word essay on Microsoft Word or Google Docs, dump it into Substack, and it would be mostly ready to go. Beehiiv, for all the positives it has, lags far behind in the “ease-of-use” category. It mixes up fonts, changes formatting with little-to-no consistency, and inputting footnotes is massively inconvenient. Without putting my work directly into the platform, the process would take triple the time.

Losing a whole day’s work was demoralizing, to say the least. But it also gave me time to reexamine my argument. After a few hours of reflection, I realized the way I had structured the piece (an updated version of which appears below) and the points I made weren’t as strong as they could have been. So I spent a few days, dug through some new papers, revisited some books, and shifted sections around.

So, in a way, that setback actually helped. I’m much happier with the piece now and I’m glad I had time to reflect on it.

Still, I haven’t been able to write as much because I’m focused on doing as much as I can with my current jobs to ensure I can make ends meet. There are no real jobs for academics anymore (especially now that universities are focusing on poaching high-profile American academics instead of hiring Canadian PhDs) and I have been worrying about my employment more than ever, especially with some of my research contracts winding down with no real indicating they’ll be extended due to how little money is going into post-secondary and research-related institutions.

I always appreciate the support I get from folks through my profile at ko-fi.com and the words of encouragement I hear from everyone in the community. Everything you all do to support this project is so incredibly meaningful to me and keeps me going, even when work is stressful, bills are piling up, and Beehiiv eats all my progress. So apologies for the delay, but I’m doing my best.

Alright, on with the show!

Trolling for votes

If you don’t have anything nice to type

I’m always worried about my tone. As someone who is easily excited about political issues - an excitement that often, especially now, veers into excessive animation - I always worry that I’ll take a critique or a comment too far. I keep trying to remind myself that the goal should always be to convince someone of your perspective, rather than become angry that someone holds a different belief.

It’s important to remember that no one is born with a political belief, but comes to hold a set of values for a host of reasons. Political socialization - defined by the American political scientist Edward Greenberg as “the process by which the individual acquires attitudes, beliefs, and values relating to the political system of which [they are] a member and to [their] own role as citizen within that political system,” - is a complex process resulting from many forces applying pressure on that individual.¹ In order to progress as a society, we have to understand that people came to their positions for a reason and that, in the spirit of democracy, have the capacity to hear an alternative perspective and either be convinced of its merits or argue for their side. A healthy and functioning democracy requires us to navigate our differences and advance our values through discussion, debate, and persuasion.

There are lots of ways to go about that, though. Everyone has a different style, but I like to blend research, storytelling, and humour to advocate for my positions. It’s the humour that worries me the most, as that’s where I run into the possibility that I’ll say something that’s just a step too far or is a general joke that may hurt someone because of their specific circumstances.

Sometimes, political situations arise that make me angry. These are things that light a fire in me, necessitating some kind of action on my part. Like when well-funded anonymous front groups try to whip up outrage through manipulative Spec ads (“Concerned Hamiltonians”) or when wealthy figures in the community with massive platforms spread baseless conspiracy theories (LiUNA’s Joe Mancinelli posting about “bus loads of homeless people” coming into Hamilton) or when community members fixate on local politicians, blaming them for all the city’s problems while less-than-subtly advancing their own political ambitions through a cloud of online incivility and performative outrage (militant anti-encampment activist Andrew Selman’s ongoing and escalating obsession with Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch). Well, all of those are intertwined, but that’s a story for another time.

My responses to these situations can be heated. I despise what I see as bullying, injustice, and manipulation. It can often take a second to make sure I get the right tone. I take a step back, think about the situation, and analyze how I can have the greatest impact. Sometimes, that means not saying anything at all. Sometimes it means buying a domain name and writing a half-dozen articles about Concerned Hamiltonians. It’s a mixed bag!

Not everyone is concerned about their tone. Indeed, it would seem that some strategically use incivility and outrage, incorporating it into their personal political brand. But using all that anger is like using a drug; it might feel good at first, especially when you’re scoring some big wins, but it eventually begins to poison the body politic, and may come to kill democracy as we know it.

Winning The HWAD

And that brings us, once again, to Ward 8 Councillor John-Paul Danko. Shortly after Prime Minister Mark Carney popped on over to Rideau Hall to ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament, triggering a general election, the Liberal Party announced that the West/Central Mountain councillor, just over halfway through his second term, was appointed to be the Liberal candidate in the competitive riding of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas - that I’ve affectionately dubbed The HWAD (pronounced huh-wad).

His candidacy is getting noticed. Leftist meme accounts are posting about it, reminding their followers about Danko’s support for the use of the Notwithstanding Clause to address the housing and homelessness crisis facing Hamilton (5th post, if you want to take a look).

This isn’t to say we didn’t expect him to one day launch a campaign for another seat somewhere. Higher office has always been on the table for Danko. Long before I posted about his very open “secret” affinity for the Liberals back in November, his name came up as a possible future Liberal candidate in the area. Even before the last municipal election, Joey Coleman noted that Danko was kicking the tires of a 2021 Liberal bid on Hamilton Mountain, specifically taking out a party membership for that reason.

Despite the air of ambition circulating around the councillor, there was no indication he was actively pursuing a nomination recently, nor that he was interested in The HWAD, where nomination contestants were already lining up. But his recent comments to The Spec help to explain why his sudden acclamation came as such a surprise, and give us some insight into the Liberals’ thinking around this election.

***

In mid-October of last year, six weeks after the NDP ended the Confidence and Supply Agreement with the Liberals and the governing party was polling between 16 and 22 points behind a seemingly unstoppable Conservative machine, HWAD MP and cabinet minister Filomena Tassi announced she would not seek a fourth term in office. Having held the seat since The HWAD was created in 2015, Tassi had big electoral shoes to fill; the Minister never earned fewer than 27,800 votes, easily dispatching opponents of all political stripes (a disclosure reminder that I was 2021 NDP candidate Roberto Henriquez’s Chief Financial Officer).

It was no wonder that a trio of ambitious aspirants stepped up to contest the party’s nomination after Tassi’s announcement.

There was Salman Abbas, a legislative assistant to Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP Chad Collins and long-time Liberal volunteer in The HWAD, who wrote on his campaign site that he had been involved in every campaign in the riding since 2015, inspired by the “sunny ways” of the party in contrast to the desperation and extremism of the then-governing Conservatives. There was Kevin Whyte, an Ancasterite who, on his page, wrote about his 13 years of volunteer experience and a passion for his community. And there was Victoria Galea. While voters in The HWAD may have known Galea as the Green Party’s candidate in 2019 and 2021, her campaign website said she had been a member of the Liberal Party riding executive in The HWAD from 2022 to 2024 and recently worked as Mountain Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner’s Community Engagement Specialist. Galea had been rumoured to be interested in the Liberal nomination in the riding as far back as 2021, though her campaign website only dropped the Green Party branding a few weeks ago.

With those three candidates, the Liberals would have had an exciting nomination race. All young activists, all with ample experience, all ready to hit the ground running. They brought the exact kind of energy needed to help revitalize democracy. At a time when people’s trust in institutions and political parties is lower than it has ever been, that nomination race had the potential to jumpstart the party’s revival.

So when the Liberal central office announced they had unilaterally appointed Danko as their candidate, it appeared to be another effort by Team Carney to beef up their roster with big names, like they did with Nathalie Provost, Gregor Robertson, and Evan Solomon, at the expense of building a sustainable local party operation.

But, last Tuesday, Danko spoke with the Spec about his decision to run, indicating that, rather than the party identifying him as a possible star candidate, it was him who actually approached the party to inquire about being a candidate.

The political equivalent of sending a “u up ;)” text, if you will.

According to what he told the Spec, his wife - Ward 7 public school trustee and 2025 Ontario Liberal Party candidate for MPP on Hamilton Mountain, Dawn Danko - encouraged him to run after her election loss, saying “he’d have no ‘better opportunity’ than now”. He reached out to the party and, in his words, “it just kind of snowballed from there.”²

The federal Liberal Party wasn’t on-the-ground in Hamilton, scoping out local talent to run. Danko asked, and a path was cleared for him. Fortune, in this case, favours the bold who also have a recognizable name in the community.

***

Say what you will about Danko; he saw his opportunity and he seized on it. This is the best shot he’ll have at making it to Ottawa before 2030.

Prior to Carney’s election as party leader, the Liberals were polling so low, it was almost a certainty they would lose Hamilton Mountain to the NDP. If Trudeau were to stay on, he’d lead the party to near total collapse, allow a new leader to swoop in after the election and work to rebuild the brand as the Tories took a hatchet to public services, national institutions, and the federal government as a whole. The NDP, in opposition, would be easy to portray as ineffective against a Tory majority. Come 2029, Danko could have stepped up as the Liberal candidate on Hamilton Mountain, making the case that the people atop the escarpment would be better served by a “rational centrist” with a shot at being in government than a “radical social democrat” who spent four years sitting on the sidelines and yelling while the Conservatives made life harder. It’s a time-tested Liberal campaign tactic that they trot out no matter where they’re standing in the polls.

Now the equation has changed. Trudeau did the unthinkable and relinquished power of his own accord, Carney (whom Danko backed) dominated the leadership, and the Liberals have regained their mojo. Because of that, Lisa Hepfner has a good shot at holding the Mountain for the Liberals, meaning she might be in office for the foreseeable future. Kinda hard to do “political life planning” when your target seat is held by a member of your own party. Since Canada doesn’t really do “primaries” and the only way an incumbent Liberal MP doesn’t win re-nomination is if they have ties to foreign governments, Danko’s room for movement was limited. But therein lay the opportunity. A popular cabinet minister in a riding adjacent to his target has decided to step aside, so why not slide a little west and make it work there?

Upside-down smiley face

Not that his candidacy isn’t without its vulnerabilities, of course. After 6.25-ish years in office, Danko has accumulated more than his fair share of controversies. As a councillor, he’s been hit with multiple code-of-conduct violation allegations, has alienated former supporters with almost gleeful enthusiasm, and, most concerning, has a penchant for down and dirty online trolling.

One week before being announced as the Liberal candidate in The HWAD (presumably while he was being vetted or shortly after the vetting process ended), Danko was over on far-right social media site Twitter/X, posting about “encampment supporters” using grammar to “force homeless encampments into #HamOnt parks.”

***

Not to get all “liberal arts” on the engineer-turned-councillor-turned-federal candidate, but the shift toward “person experiencing homelessness” from “homeless person” is because of how the English language works. In this instance, we need to examine the “parts of speech” that make up the two phrases.

The term “homeless person” consists of an adjective (“homeless”) and a noun (“person”). An adjective, if we remember our elementary school grammar, modifies or describes a noun. So in this instance, the adjective “homeless” describes the noun “person”, reducing that person to one state of being. Rather than being a person first, they are defined, in their entirety, by their lack of stable housing. Every other attribute flows from this definition, as more specific nouns are still modified by the present adjective. They become a homeless mother, a homeless student, a homeless veteran. Their lack of stable housing is the first descriptor used for that person. This, as one could imagine, carries with it a fair amount of stigma and makes it just that little bit more challenging to break the cycle of poverty.

When we shift from “homeless person” to “person experiencing homelessness”, we get a phrase consisting of a noun (“person”), a verb (“experiencing”), and another noun (“homelessness”). Here, the person is, quite literally, put first. Rather than be defined by a state of being, this phrase acknowledges that they are a human being experiencing a situation. This is a verbal reminder of the humanity of people who, because of their illnesses, struggles, or housing situation, are all-too-often not seen as humans by policy makers and the varied fanatics in our community (mostly Spec commenters, Twitter/X sockpuppets, and future council candidates) who obsess over their continued existence.

This, I’ll add, is why it’s important to make engineers take English classes. It isn’t just to give humanities majors jobs; one day, those engineers might be in Parliament. That’s a place where words really, really, really matter. Because we live in a parliamentary democracy, we have Hansard, a detailed record of everything that you say, etched into history and published for all to see forever. Unless, of course, you retract that statement like Trudeau did in 2011 when he called Conservative MP Peter Kent a “piece of shit”. But, then again, Northumberland-Peterborough South MP Philip Lawrence referenced it, said the full phrase, and then didn’t retract it, so the call-back is in Hansard instead.

***

Let me stop here. I’m being purposefully naïve.

The progressive instinct is to see Danko’s post, get mad about Danko’s post, and challenge Danko’s post very publicly.

That, I’d argue, is the entire goal of Danko’s post. He’s trying to get us to engage in “outrage parroting”. The incredibly skilled political strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio described this to journalist Anand Giridharadas for his book The Persuaders, saying that the political right does this all the time, to great success. The goal is to alienate your opposition to the point where “they would be talking about your idea, repeating it ad nauseam, [and] your phrases would fill the air.” They (the political right) say something outrageous, we engage with it, repeating it over and over again, spending all our energy fighting them, repeating their message, giving them air time. My posting a screenshot of his Tweet and then dissecting the language, while cathartic, is simply in service of his larger goal.

This has been Danko’s political strategy over the past while. He strategically uses incivility and outrage to generate responses that, while seemingly critical, ensure his narrative is the one we’re all following. The instinct when you hear, “Everyone is talking about this outrageous think Danko said,” is to focus on the “outrageous” part. In reality, we really should be focusing on the “everyone is talking about” part.

Tone and practice

Let’s take a second to understand what I mean by “incivility and outrage”.

Political incivility is a huge issue right now. Last April, a multi-partisan, multi-faith, pan-Canadian “Open Letter” was published by the Globe and Mail calling on Canada’s political leaders to “address urgently the rise of incivility, public aggression and overt hatred that are undermining the peace and security of Canadian life.”³ The letter - which called for more research on incivility, more national and local initiatives to bring Canadians together, and laws that penalize harassment, threats, and intimidation, among other requests - was signed by everyone from Mark Carney to John Tory.

But what is incivility? The academic definition of “civil political discourse” is the “fundamental tone and practice of democracy” which includes a “free and respectful exchange of ideas”. Incivility, in contrast, is marked by things like “name calling, aspersion or derision of ideas, vulgarity, pejorative speech” and excessive “outrage”.⁴

Outrage is key here, especially in the context of Danko’s online and in-person rhetorical style. Sobieraj and Berry (2011) observe that outrage, in the context of political incivility, includes:

• insulting language

• name calling (as the authors write: “Affectionate, light-hearted teasing is not included”, but “language is characterized by words and contexts that make the subject look foolish, inept, hypocritical, deceitful, or dangerous” is included)

• emotional displays (all-caps, exclamation marks, etc.)

• emotional language (attempts to evoke negative emotions - fear, anger, sadness, etc.)

• verbal fighting/sparring (jousting between speakers in-person)

• character assassination (deliberate attempts to damage the reputation of a person or group through broad generalizations)

• misrepresentative exaggeration

• mockery (once again: “Affectionate, light-hearted teasing is not included”)

• conflagration (“escalating non-scandals into scandals”)

• ideologically extremizing language

• slippery slope

• belittling

• obscene language.⁵

Let’s look at Danko’s tweet in the context of uncivil outrage. The text is:

I don’t want to use the word “textbook” but…well…

***

Outrage and incivility are causing immense harm to our democracy. The mind-boggling volume of uncivil comments coming at anyone who even dares to express a political opinion online, outside of a carefully-curated circle of close friends and acquaintances, is enough to demoralize even the most otherwise-disengaged people. The Samara Centre for Democracy has published on this extensively, noting that 41% of Canadians believe “online political conversations make them feel ‘angry and discouraged’,” that 47% of Canadians avoid having political conversations online out of feat they’ll be attacked, and that all this “incivility chases some people out of the digital public square, and potentially out of political participation altogether.”

This impacts politicians as well. A full 10% of all politicians elected in the last round of Quebec’s municipal elections resigned before the end of 2024, with many more announcing their retirements because of the toxic work environment caused by incivility. Municipalities in Ontario are having troubling finding qualified people to run for office. Before Ontario’s 2022 provincial and municipal elections, politicians of all stripes were raising alarms about this, especially with regard to the disproportionate levels of hate that racialized, queer, and female politicians get.

At the same time, this kind of incivility and outrage works for some politicians. Going back to Shenker-Osorio’s ideas, they know how to use “generative alienation” to their advantage. That’s the idea that, in politics, there are three groups: your supporters, your opponents, and the undecided. You want a message that speaks to your supporters and wins over the undecided. But, sometimes, making your opponents mad can help with that. That’s where we get to “outrage parroting”. Say something outrageous that turns your supporters on and pisses off your opponents. Get them to repeat that thing again and again and again, even in the context of challenging it. That’s how you dominate the conversation.

Think about one of the most memorable lines from the last US Presidential election: “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats”. Everyone to the left of the current Republican Party ran around for weeks after that, doing everything from interviewing people in the town to calling out the inherent racism attached to the comments. But, through everything they did, they kept bringing it back to the original comment. Every Republican around the president, when questioned, would use it as an opportunity to pivot to their talking points around immigration and border security, which they might not have been able to talk about a) without the original comment, and b) with pesky reporters asking questions about “the cost of living” and “the price of eggs” and all that.

Danko wants this. Look at his posting history since January (once again acknowledging that I’m temporarily feeding into his goal here): In three months, he has posted about the “extreme left…trying to convince Canadians to deny our own history” without explaining who or what he’s talking about. He characterized an organization dedicated to including people of diverse backgrounds in civic affairs as a “special interest group” with “entitlement”. He called community members seeking reforms to how the police budget is structure “#defundthepolice agitators”. He identified those who have tried to help Hamilton’s most vulnerable as “encampment supporters [who] have intimidated residents and businesses”. He accused his fellow elected officials of spreading “antisemitism…without consequence or condemnation.”

Sometimes, the posts are a miss. Don’t see too many people engaging with his comments about an imaginary “extreme left” group of historical revisionists.

Other times, he hits it dead-on. The constant comments about “encampment supporters” and community groups that don’t work with the city “in good-faith” turned into two motions that hit the floor of council and a Spec profile that gave Danko control over the narrative. We aren’t talking about how little progress has been made addressing a deeply complex social issue like homelessness, we aren’t having conversations about where to build supportive housing or who will provide shelter space or when any of that will come to be, and we aren’t talking about what we can do, as a community, to fix the problems we face. We’re throwing around blame, anger, outrage, accusations, and contempt. Our democracy is weaker, but one politician in particular manages to emerge, primed and ready to ask for a promotion.

So what do we do?

The next logical question is: “so what do we do?”

Well, first thing’s first: stop giving the politicians and posters who use outrage and incivility what they want. They want you to repeat what they say, they want you to expend all your energy getting mad, they want you to look like a fool.

It is becoming easier to do ignore them because of how siloed the internet is at this point. Twitter/X is growing more and more right-wing everyday while internet liberals flock to Bluesky. Danko doesn’t really use Bluesky, posting infrequently on that platform and bosting only 69 followers, in sharp contrast to the thousands of followers he has on Twitter/X, a platform on which he posts regularly. It just doesn’t pay to be on a platform that isn’t giving you what you want.

The one time I kinda fed into Danko’s (and the aforementioned activist Andrew Selman’s) goal on Bluesky is a good indication of this. Danko posted some slightly misleading (or, at the very least, selectively presented) stats, Selman responded to back Danko up after he was challenged, and I noted that the figures they were presenting didn’t necessarily show what they intended (my comments were not addressed). Danko and Selman were “ratioed” hard (the term for when there are more angry replies than “likes” on a post). There were very few reposts (meaning the original post didn’t get the circulation intended) and the crowd didn’t seem to be buying what both of them were selling. Indeed, they both get more engagement and a wider reach on Twitter/X, both in the form of validation from politically-aligned supporters and visibility from angry opponents.

Ignoring the outrage is one way to succeed.

The other is to start telling people what you actually believe in. Danko is trying to paint people into a corner by calling them “encampment supporters”. As I, and so many in this community, have said time and time again, nobody wants encampments. So instead of letting them control the narrative, circle around with what you actually want without repeating their fabricated lines.

We want affordable housing for everyone. We want a stronger healthcare system that keeps everyone healthy and safe. We want meaningful job opportunities for people of all skills. We want stronger communities and more chances to socialize with our neighbours and fairness for all.

They’ll come back, like they always do, to try and capture that narrative. When people in the community said they wanted safe and healthy communities for everyone, they came back with “having encampments in parks makes people unsafe and puts them in danger of being harmed”. But sticking with our message and not allowing them to take our positive vision and spin it to suit their needs is essential. It means resisting the urge to fight, to match their anger with your anger, or to dip into the realm of incivility.

This is why I keep beating the drum of the “happy warrior”.

In 2017, Valérie Plante of the progressive urbanist party Projet Montréal won the Montreal mayor’s race over incumbent Denis Coderre. Rather than focus on Coderre’s flaws, the fact he and his party tried to paint Plante as a dangerous radical, and the overwhelming disappointment in the city’s municipal government, Plante ran as an unapologetic happy warrior. In her victory speech, she reminded people why she won: “During the course of this campaign, I had one thing in mind: put Montrealers first. I'm not going to change that…I'm going to get Montrealers moving again. I'm going to build safer roads for pedestrians, seniors and cyclists.”⁶ She focused on what she believed in, made the case that hope was better than despair, and ignored the bait put out by the political right. And the people of Montreal responded so positively that she was elected again to a second term with an even larger majority.

That’s the strategy: ignore the outrage, stick to your values, fight for what you believe in, don’t let them control the narrative.

Incivility and outrage are eating away at the foundations of our democracy. Certain political actors use those as tools to advance their cause at the expense of a healthy, thriving, strong culture of positive civic engagement. If we let them, they’ll keep doing that until there’s nothing left but a political scene populated with high school bullies and strongmen. It is our responsibility, as people who care deeply for democracy, to push back by being the happy warriors we need right now. Sharing our values, making our case, elevating the discussion.

Danko, in his post, asked “When will this nonsense end?”

The answer, it would seem, is when we ignore the outrage and stand for something better. Let them troll for votes. Let’s try something different for a change.

1  _{Edward S. Greenberg. Political Socialization. New York: Routledge (1970), p. 3 - 6.}

2  _{Teviah Moro. “Coun. John-Paul Danko running for Liberals in Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas” Hamilton Spectator, March 25, 2025 (Spec link)}

3  _{“An open letter to Canada’s political leaders – for the sake of the country’s future” Globe and Mail, April 2, 2024 (Globe link)}

4  _{Stryker, Robin, Bethany Anne Conway, and J. Taylor Danielson. 2016. “What Is Political Incivility?” Communication Monographs 83 (4): 535–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2016.1201207.}

5  _{Sobieraj, Sarah, and Jeffrey M Berry. 2011. “From Incivility to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio, and Cable News.” Political Communication 28 (1): 19–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2010.542360.}

6  _{Benjamin Shingler. “Valérie Plante elected mayor of Montreal, beating out Denis Coderre” CBC News Montreal, November 5, 2017 (link)}