Senior Liberal director promotes conspiracy theory claiming O'Toole using Nazi codes in campaign

Senior Liberal director Brett Thalmann promoted a tweet by a University of Toronto professor that directly implied that the O'Toole Conservatives were using ultra-cryptic white supremacist codes in their campaign branding.

Thalmann, an executive director for the party, led the Liberals' Ontario campaign in 2015, and was one of the architects behind Trudeau's "gender-balanced cabinet," according to his International School profile.

The retweet, by Professor David Fisman, reads: "Wow.  Now they’ve added 'secure the future for your children' and they’ve got the slogan at exactly 14 words.  So creepy."

The professor then linked to the Wikipedia page for "The Fourteen Words," which is a secret code, based on Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. According to Fisman, the fourteen-word slogan was enough to link O'Toole with white supremacist ideologies.

Fisman's tweet gained immediate traction, with many not only pointing out the absurdity of the claim, but also the clearly partisan behavior exhibited by someone who was praised a week ago for being neutral and principled. Writer Jonathan Kay notes this bizarre and worrisome behaviour may "help explain why the claims he made to the media about COVID modelling always seemed dodgy. He said there was a cover-up, but had no evidence, and his colleagues denied it. All the stories about Fisman's Aug 23 decision to quit were sourced to his own vague claims."