Conservative MP for Oshawa Jamil Jivani has decided that he wants to fight the American culture wars in Canada over social media, and has spent an inordinate amount of time over the past week targeting Prime Minister Mark Carney’s appearance at Toronto Pride in late June. Jivani has followed this with a series of performative posts about how he’s the one being attacked, including with racist remarks, for his stance. It’s a social media strategy designed to bolster Jivani’s future Conservative Party of Canada leadership ambitions, done with a throwback to the kind of casual homophobia that was particularly endemic in the ’90s, and we need to beware of giving Jivani what he’s looking for.
In response to a Canadian Press photo of Carney shaking hands with someone in puppy play gear at Toronto Pride, Jivani tweeted on June 29, “We should never accept a political culture in which politicians have to answer questions about NOT attending events like this. Those who attend should be the ones answering questions.” The post went viral, eliciting plenty of condemnation of the homophobia on display. This was followed up a day later by Jivani tweeting a video of him in his car, responding to the reaction he provoked, writing “Why is Carney taking pictures with half-naked dudes in pervert costumes while kids are around?” This was posted alongside a link to a petition demanding that Carney explain himself—an opportunity for Jivani to mine the data of these “concerned” Canadians.
If you are, like me, a gay man of a certain age, you are likely having flashbacks to the fights we had in the ’90s and early 2000s about only showcasing the “respectable gays,” while insisting that drag queens and people celebrating kink be banished from the public eye because they were somehow hurting the movement. This was a particularly backward and twisted logic, because it’s often those who are the most visible and “outrageous” who have been pushing the boundaries and forcing change through visibility. Meanwhile, the so-called “sweater queens” or “Stepford gays,” who can get away with passing privilege, don’t want to rock the boat or shake up a corrupted system. These attitudes around “respectability” are coming back in spades.
In mainstream media publications, we’re seeing the “gay not queer” lines trotted out by gay men who are uncomfortable with those who are pushing boundaries, whether with gender or other social norms. In an age where the queer and trans communities are increasingly under attack as America has descended into a fascist state, and the far-right are trying to make breakthroughs elsewhere in the Western world, there is an insistence that the “queer” norm-violators are going to ruin it for everyone. This particular group has deluded themselves into believing that if they stay “respectable” and blend into the wallpaper that their rights will remain intact, even if they have to sacrifice the trans community or anyone who strays outside of the lines in the process. But staying respectable has never saved the gay, lesbian or bisexual communities—our rights are always next on the line once trans people are persecuted.
After invoking Helen Lovejoy “won’t somebody please think of the children?”-style hysteria, Jivani pushed it further in his next tweet a few days later. “Liberals think they get to change this country for the worse without a fight. No. If you’re going to promote Liberal degeneracy, we will call it out. If you’re going to force your values on our kids, we will take a stand. Canada deserves much better than Carney’s managed decline.”
The words “Liberal degeneracy” after his talk about “pervert costumes” and invoking the notion of “forcing values” on children (as though that’s not the very same thing he’s doing) is Jivani laying into the culture war greatest hits. He’s already made a big song-and-dance about trying to rebrand diversity, equity and inclusion as “Liberal racism,” and it’s part of his wannabe Charlie Kirk schtick. Jivani has been touring university campuses across Canada on a so-called “Restore the North” tour, where he insists that straight white men are the real disadvantaged group that needs special dispensation from universities and society at large. The rhetoric is very much tied to the far-right’s victimhood playbook, in which they argue that equal rights for everyone somehow diminishes their rights, that they are somehow owed privilege, and that when they see someone who doesn’t look like them succeeding, then it must be at their expense.
This isn’t to say that we aren’t in the midst of a crisis of masculinity in North America, where young straight men, mostly white, have become so steeped in their online dystopias that they have lost touch with the real world. It’s in part why so many of them have turned to the simplistic solutions that hucksters like Jordan Peterson offer, while others get mired in the toxic, misogynistic incel ideologies that are radicalizing a generation into literal terrorism, as we recently saw in Montreal. Jivani telling them that yes, they are disadvantaged, that yes, they need special treatment, that levelling the playing field for other disadvantaged groups is somehow being “racist” against these young white men is feeding this poisonous mindset. Feeding these youth far-right cues and literal fascist grievances (the term “restore the North” signals that we have become corrupted or broken) while talking about “Liberal degeneracy” or “managed decline” feeds this same dangerous beast. Jivani’s calculation seems to be that it will hopefully one day pay off for him politically.
Jivani has not been making any secret of his ambitions to one day replace Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre, and Poilievre has in turn kept Jivani from having any kind of critic portfolio or responsibilities in the party, perhaps in an effort to deny him any kind of official profile. Jivani, however, has the benefit of being the college roommate of U.S. vice-president JD Vance, and that gives him a certain cachet with the far-right/MAGA crowd in this country in a way that Poilievre has never really been able to manage, despite his desperate attempts. Jivani invokes the culture war because he thinks it’ll be effective, and so far, he’s gotten the very reactions he’s been baiting for over social media. The question becomes whether we give him the persecution points he seeks, or whether we simply ignore his provocations and simply out-organize him in a future political contest. With the attention economy, the only way to win is not to play the game.
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