A viral meme claimed Canada's incoming Governor General insulted troops, but she was actually describing what recruiting only "white boys who like guns" would do to military culture. The meme came from Canada Proud, linked to a right-wing network that runs political ad campaigns with undisclosed donors.
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Canada's about to get a new Governor General, and you are already being manipulated. Right on time, the memes are here. Here's one of them, which claims that the incoming Governor General described Canadian troops as "white boys who like guns but don't like women." Is the meme true? Let's find out. The first claim is that the quote came from an interview that she did with Maclean's in 2022. That part is true. What she said was that the military should recruit from a wide variety of places, saying If you just recruit white boys who like guns, you'll perpetuate that culture. She wasn't describing Canadian troops as a whole. She was making an argument about recruiting practices. Leaving out the conditional part of that sentence, "if," was a deliberate choice to make you angry. So where did this meme come from? It's a screenshot of a social media post by a group called Canada Proud. If you go to their website, you won't find out much about them, but the mailing address in their terms of service matches one for a right-wing political advocacy network of the same name in Toronto. That group was founded by this guy, Jeff Ballingall, who runs a digital agency called Mobilize Media that claims to have generated more than 2 billion views of their content. The National Observer reported this week that the agency was behind a campaign of social media posts with titles like "Cyclists shoved into traffic" to farm angry users whose eyeballs could later be sold for political purposes. In that case, the Observer says, to get tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The website is also a little weird. It doesn't seem to be aware that Carney has a majority, and when you sign up for their email list, it thinks Trudeau is still Prime Minister. Their site also collects donations, but they don't say where that money goes or what it funds other than a generic statement about getting Carney out of office. But public expense reports filed to Elections Canada show that every dollar of Canada Proud's 2019 campaign spending went to Bellinger's agency, Mobilize Media. And that's not illegal. In fact, as they say, Good business if you can get it. But I'd be interested in knowing what the donors think about where their money is going. As for those donors, who are they? In 2019, The Observer reported that the biggest chunk came from 4 unnamed companies, 2 in Toronto, 2 in Calgary. Most of the money, according to The Observer, was spent on Facebook and Instagram ads. I assume boosts of their social media posts. Other than during elections, any corporate-funded political campaign can call itself a grassroots community and refuse to disclose its funders. If we're going to change things for the better, Maybe we start there. In the meantime, stop sharing political memes, regardless of which side of the fence you're on. They're almost always inaccurate or out of context. They are carefully designed to make you angry and to cause division in this country. There are entire organizations and agencies and structures set up to do this very thing. And if you don't believe me, look south. The share button is something you control. You don't want Canada to end up like the US? Then stop giving lies oxygen.
