Pierre Poilievre, Populist Pitchman

He was eating an apple when he dismissed an increasingly flustered reporter’s questions about whether he’s adopting “populist” tactics from the “Trump” playbook.

“I never really talk about left or right,” said Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, munching away on an Okanagan apple picked during a campaign stop last year. “I don’t really believe in that.”

The exchange was caught on video and, yes, far and away, it was right-wing internet dwellers who loved it, calling it a “smackdown” and a lesson on how to “destroy woke journalists.” Fox News covered the exchange. Even Elon Musk was amused, commenting on the video with a fire emoji.

The recording was a big win for Poilievre’s campaign. Over a million people watched it on his YouTube channel, and the news sites and social media channels that hosted the clip have garnered hundreds of thousands more views.

Poilievre’s claims to be apolitical, says Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, are a perfect example of “very clearly a populist communication strategy.” The video attempts to “position Poilievre as a member of the people, as opposed to the out-of-touch elites that the Liberals represent,” says Prest.

“I think that message is working and working well with younger voters who feel, with some justification, that the system has really left them behind,” he adds.

Poilievre’s team no doubt is aware that younger voters are less likely to find their news in traditional venues like newspapers, TV broadcasts or CBC Radio. By showing measured, apple-munching disdain as he spars with a news reporter, Poilievre paints journalists who press him for answers as adversaries to his populist cause.

Instead, Poilievre makes his own content and relies on the internet to find its audience. Since he opened a YouTube account in 2011, he’s uploaded 2,700 videos.

That’s more than his rivals combined. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has uploaded about 1,000, while federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has 338 on his channel.

The most popular of Poilievre’s videos are the most recent, since he ran for the Conservative leadership and turned his attention to next year’s federal election.

A common narrative runs through Poilievre’s videos: viewers are told how everything in the country is going wrong, and then Poilievre, who has held office as a Conservative politician since he was 25, claims that he’s familiar with the struggles of everyday people. And that he knows how to set things right.

There are also showy, made-for-the-internet moments of Poilievre trolling Trudeau and doing what American conservatives have called “owning the libs.”

While Poilievre’s channel has run-of-the-mill fare like clips of him speaking in the House of Commons and attack ads like those on TV — with titles like “Trudeau Embarrasses Canada” — his videos run a wide range of formats.

There are longer pieces making sweeping claims about one specific issue. Videos titled “Economic Vandalism” and “Housing Hell: How We Got Here and How We Get Out” are both over 15 minutes.

If the prescriptions Poilievre offers trigger emotions by putting forward simple solutions and villainizing politicians who don’t share them, that’s right out of the populist playbook, says David Moscrop, an Ottawa-based political scientist and expert on political communication on social media.

“People are, for the most part, not political experts. They’re not deeply and consistently ideological. They’re just trying to get through the day. Often what we call them is ‘low-information voters.’

“That may seem like it’s meant to denigrate them, but it’s not. It’s just a reflection of the fact that most people make political decisions based on very little information for a variety of reasons. If you have a style and an approach that understands that and capitalizes on that, it produces a big return.”

Another classic approach by populist politicians is to position themselves on the side of economically struggling citizens against the rich and powerful. Poilievre’s fundraising from Bay Street honchos and heads of fossil fuel corporations isn’t part of his pitch. Instead his videos often showcase people he’s said to have encountered on the campaign trail. A range of curated everyday citizens, from farmers to young people concerned about the cost of living, talk about their problems.

The owner of a grocery chain shares how the Liberal government’s carbon tax makes products more expensive in a video titled “Grocer Schools Liberal Reporter,” which garnered more views than the apple exchange. The carbon tax rebate to citizens isn’t mentioned.

Other Poilievre videos are theatrical skits intended to troll, a classic form of online baiting. In “Breakfast with Justin,” Poilievre is in a diner talking directly to the camera as though he is addressing the prime minister.

“I know you’re just back from your vacation in Costa Rica,” he says in the opening. “Have a coffee. You need some. It’s wakey-wakey time.”

As Poilievre digs into his breakfast platter, he holds up each item. “Bread is up 15 per cent. And the butter on the bread, that’s up 17 per cent, Justin!... The average Canadian can’t even dream of going on a vacation right now to Costa Rica. They’re just dreaming about, well, affording food.”

Sometimes Poilievre affects an average Joe persona.

In “Where I’m Coming From,” the Opposition leader walks viewers down the Calgary street on which he grew up. He’s dressed casually in an unbuttoned shirt and rolled-up sleeves while raising concerns that it is more difficult nowadays to “literally do anything in this big open country of ours,” implying that a free market heyday in Canada once existed, and that when he somehow manages to bring it back — the details in these videos are usually slim — he’ll restore hope that “has melted away into worry for a lot of families.”

And then there are the videos that defy categorization but still speak to some of Poilievre’s favourite themes.

There’s one in which a shoeless Poilievre smokes shisha and talks Bitcoin with an advocate, targeting “big-shot experts” who don’t know anything about inflation and how as prime minister he’d give Canadians the “freedom to choose” which cryptocurrency they want to use.

In another titled “Reclaim,” a plaid-wearing Poilievre begins talking about the reclaimed wood he used for his cabin, “probably on a barn for centuries,” before connecting it to the “men and women” who built the country. Then he hammers home one of his familiar themes designed to incite both outrage and action in his base: the “statist big government” wants to “sweep away our history.”

Poilievre’s videos are meant to be provocative, but sometimes they stir up unintended controversy. In 2022, Global News reported that Poilievre’s social media team included the hashtag #mgtow on their videos, referencing a misogynistic movement called Men Going Their Own Way. The tags were removed from the videos after their exposure.

More recently, the fighter jets in a nationalistic Poilievre video titled “Canada, Our Home” were called out for being Russian-made, the images spliced in with many other stock clips actually shot in other countries. The backlash caused Poilievre’s team to take down the content.

What about New Democrat leader Singh’s online videos meant to convey the common touch? In one famous 2020 TikTok, he skateboards while drinking cranberry juice to a soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac.

Enough people enjoyed it to make it viral, explains Carmen Celestini, a lecturer at the University of Waterloo on religion and politics. But Singh’s video tapped a different set of emotions than the free-floating anger that Poilievre tracks and cultivates.

“We all know viral videos and we want to engage with them. But with Poilievre, he’s actually looking at his followers on social media, seeing what they are talking about, what their fears are and what can be capitalized on by hitting that sense of victimization that many of them have.... [He] can tap into [their] fears and say, ‘My party will solve that problem.’

“When we’re looking at somebody skating to Fleetwood Mac and drinking cranberry juice, we giggle. But [it] doesn’t make us emotional. [It doesn’t spark] our fears or ideas of injustice.”

The Tyee interviewed Celestini, Prest and Moscrop for their insights on the use of right-wing populism as a political tool, the role of social media in politics, and the state of political discourse.

And why the upcoming federal election will require us to keep a sharp eye on messaging, how it shapes the public conversation and what it could mean for who gets elected.

Here are some of their additional observations.

On the sheer volume of videos, and what’s to be gained:

David Moscrop: Being able to be compelling on TV, or on the internet, is as old as Kennedy and Nixon. You know the old story about the Kennedy-Nixon debate. If you listened to it on the radio, Nixon won; but if it you watched it on TV, Kennedy won. They said he was the president who met the growing television medium moment.

I think in some ways, Pierre Poilievre is a politician who is meeting the extremely online YouTuber moment. But he also has a slick political machine behind him, with a message that is resonating with people during an affordability crisis, a housing crisis, a health-care crisis. He might be full of it, but he’s a good salesperson.

The medium is important, but it has to meet the moment. It has to reflect a broader underlying political strategy that isn’t just “We’re going to be popular on the internet.”

Jagmeet Singh was very good at popular social media. He was good on TikTok, had lots of viral clips and was texting Rihanna. But it doesn’t matter if you can’t connect that to political mobilization and to a broader program that fits the moment.

Poilievre reflects a populist approach in that it is able to understand the anger, frustration and anxiety of the moment to spread a compelling and accessible message.

Stewart Prest: I try to think of Poilievre through the lens of him having to have two conversations at all times.

He came to the leadership facing the same challenge as Erin O’Toole. There were two very different kinds of Conservative or potential Conservative voters that the party had to win over.

You have these more social-minded, more populist-leaning voters — sometimes it’s far-right, whatever language you want to use — who respond to the kind of culture war, more Trumpian rhetoric that Poilievre is putting out.

But then you also have the more centrist type of voters who really respond to things like economic messaging and are potentially turned off by the populist messaging, but not necessarily so.

When Poilievre came to the party leadership, he seems to have firmly landed himself on more of the populist side. His videos seem to be a part of his conversation with them.

On the relationship between trolling and Conservative populism:

Prest: Poilievre is constantly reinforcing core messaging, even in the one where he’s touching the wood. These videos constantly reinforce images of him as a kind of everyday Canadian doing everyday things. It’s relatable when he’s complaining about the price of bacon when having breakfast.

Carmen Celestini: Influencers have been succeeding at this medium, this type of jokiness as a way of expressing their ideologies and understanding the world.

We see the power of this: a person on TikTok can [play both sides of a conversation] just by changing their bag or changing their clothing.

I think back to Clint Eastwood speaking to the empty chair [which represented Barack Obama] at the RNC [Republican National Convention]. We see politicians looking at what’s online and saying, “This is what moves people.”

Prest: Poilievre and his team have studied American politics and they are drawing on a number of insights that I don’t think are necessarily good for democracy, but are certainly good insights on how you can win support.

Using entertainment is part of the appeal. It is goofing around. It is trollery. It is playing to memes. People like a party, they like somebody who is fun. Younger voters in particular can respond to that.

On the appeal of 15-minute deeper dives:

Celestini: On BitChute and YouTube, there are influencers who read the news and explain what they perceive as lies and injustices. So the news has gone from simply something we watch on CNN to individuals explaining an idea.

News doesn’t come from journalists; it comes from someone, for example, like [political news vlogger] Salty Cracker with a ginormous following. This is how much of the younger generation understands how news is provided. Poilievre is sort of copying this idea, and his base understands it well.

On Poilievre’s portrayal of working-class people and the ‘good old days’:

Celestini: Most of his posts are about workers: steelworkers, truck drivers, farmers. He’s really going for the rural community and ignoring a lot of the cities.

That’s something the Republican party has been doing for decades. He’s not appealing to those who are deemed elitists; he’s not going to teachers, he’s not going to computer programmers.

Prest: I think there are an older group of voters who are perhaps frustrated or confused with certain aspects of modernity.

They may respond to that kind of rose-coloured-glasses view of the past, hearkening to a mythological golden era of Canadian politics when things were better.

The reality, in many ways, is that things were not better in the past, but you can point to things people might love to have in the present day.

The lumping of themes can be potentially quite dangerous for the country if taken to too much of an extreme. [For example,] linking ideas that immigration is linked to unaffordability can erode the relative consensus that Canada has among the population and different parties that immigration is good and vital to the country’s interests.

On name-calling and the piling on that algorithms enable:

Moscrop: There’s a long tradition of this. In the 1970s, David Lewis was calling out the “corporate welfare bums.” That was a big slogan of the NDP.

In the Reagan era, we remember him calling out “welfare queens” who are out to stick it to hard-working folks by trying to suck up all the money.

It reflects a populist style that pits elites against normal folks. It sounds Trumpian because Trump is so much in our mental real estate and the style is particularly vicious.

Prest: It seems we are entering into a new stage of communication here in Canada. Everything that happens in the U.S. seems to happen in Canada five or 10 years later.

We have the name-calling and the heckling in the House that is a long-standing problem in Canadian politics, but I think this takes it to a new level. The danger here is that it can serve to reinforce processes of polarization.

When you get to that space, it becomes very hard to have any kind of political discourse when you talk about the issues facing the country. It becomes increasingly hard to communicate effectively across increasingly barred political lines. You end up with multiple conversations that don’t overlap at all.

At the extreme, that is how the norms of democracy start to break down. We see that effectively playing out in the U.S. today, and that’s the danger of that rhetoric.

Celestini: One of the very most interesting things about his feed — I highly recommend you look at this — are the people who are responding to them.

There are a lot of people mocking him, but there is a preponderance of people... saying “What is their colour?” and “Why we don’t have housing is because of immigration.”

That message is almost as strong as the message he’s putting out there. We need to look at not just what he’s saying, but what his followers are saying — which isn’t being taken away or encountered by his social media people.

On why right-wing populism and meanness in politics is a slippery slope:

Moscrop: I think the videos that are more notable are the long pondering ones where he’s talking about Thatcheristic economics, fanboying for Hayekian economics, or he’s singing the praises of Bitcoin — you have to understand these things in the context of binging and algorithms.

[Let’s say] you end up on one of these pages and are pulled into something compelling that might be missing something but sounds plausible. Before you know it, you’re dragged down the YouTube rabbit hole from Poilievre to Jordan Peterson to Joe Rogan to some Bitcoin hucksters explaining how monetary systems are a tool of government control. They draw you into that universe and they keep you there in the algorithm.

Prest: When people were really tired of Harper, Justin Trudeau seemed to be a breath of fresh air. He’s not that weird guy in the sweater, that dour dad that Harper seemed to effortlessly inhabit.

Trudeau was fun. He was a good time at parties, and people like fun. But being associated with governing for a long period of time, it makes it much harder to appear to be fun.

Poilievre brings a new kind of fun, and it’s a meaner fun. There’s a certain kind of influence to it, poking fun at the one in charge so that he’s punching up.