CBC 'experts' warn against 'far-right' connotations of the word 'freedom'

Trudeau's state broadcaster, the CBC, said in an article released on Sunday that "freedom" has become a rallying cry used commonly among far-right groups.

The article states that freedom is, to many, a "malleable term" and a word that's "open to interpretation."

That's the excuse, anyway, used by Barbara Perry, who has an actual job as the director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at the Oshawa-based Ontario Tech University.

"It is a term that has resonated…. You can define it and understand it and sort of manipulate it in a way that makes sense to you and is useful to you, depending on your perspective," she told the broadcaster.

Perry says that the use of the term could even remind some of events that took place in DC last year, with Perry noting that some individuals may actually want freedom from government overreach. "I think it resonates very much with what we've been seeing — and maybe takes some inspiration from what we've been seeing — in the U.S. over the last year and a half or so, leading up to the last election and events of Jan. 6," she said.

Another expert, Elisabeth Anker, goes on to describe what she called "Violent" freedoms.

Anker works as "an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of Ugly Freedoms, which examines the history of how freedom, as a concept, has been used in American society."

"Freedom is a slippery concept," she says.

"On the far right, [individual freedom] is often translated into somebody who refuses to be bound by norms of equality, treating all people equally or norms to remedy inequality, whether that's trying to remedy racial discrimination or gender discrimination."

The CBC then asserts that far-right groups only began appearing in Canada back in 2015, at the same time that then-candidate Donald Trump came into the spotlight, with Perry saying that rhetoric from the anti-statist groups gaining "more mainstream popularity."

"It's been taking a lot of people by surprise to see people in Canada, who often seem so much more accepting of social interdependence, to start pushing back against it with the language of individual freedom," said Anker.

The article also takes a statement from Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. The network was recently humiliated on Twitter by Quillette Editor Jon Kay, after its chair, Bernie Farber, posted photos falsely attributed to the trucker convoy in Ottawa.