As was totally predictable, apologists for Alberta’s United Conservative Party are now clutching their pearls about Danielle Smith’s pancakes being labeled fascist.
“Berta Proud Dad” himself – the pro-separation “independent Alberta commentator” called out along with Ms. Smith by the young woman who famously decried the premier’s “fascist pancakes” last Thursday – joined the fray.
“People keep calling Danielle Smith a fascist, but it’s becoming obvious many don’t actually know what fascism means,” complained Lawrence Magee on the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
“Political disagreement isn’t the same as fascism,” he mansplained. “Words have definitions, and history matters. If you’re going to use a label that serious, at least understand what it means.”
Linking to Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood NDP MLA Janet Irwin’s gentle post on another slightly less-toxic social media site that there would be “no fascist pancakes” served at her neighbourhood K-Days breakfast, another commentator on X grumbled: “Elected officials shouldn’t be throwing labels around to demonize people they disagree with. Their job is to set an example, debate ideas honestly, and work to bring people together, not deepen the divisions.”
Another tweeter, referring to an article on a far-right Internet site obviously aiming to gin up a scandal about Ms. Irwin’s pancake post and another by Edmonton Strathcona NDP MP Heather MacPherson, hilariously huffed: “I think the NDP are trying to eliminate themselves completely from every government in Canada! Why don’t you move to the US where this kind of insane rant is common. It is not welcome in Canada!”
Even former UCP premier Jason Kenney – no slouch when it came to gratuitously insulting anyone he disagreed with – offered his two bits. “New Democrats now casually referring to their political adversaries as ‘fascists’ should take note,” he tweeted piously with a link to a National Post effort to promote a conspiracy theory about the murder of a retired U.K. politician. “The growing tendency of the left to demonize and dehumanize those with whom they disagree can have bloody consequences.”
That’s enough of this self-righteous and hypocritical drivel. There’s plenty more on the Internet if you wish to indulge. But let’s talk about the fascist thing.
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” the 20th Century American writer Sinclair Lewis is said to have warned. Whether or not the author of It Can’t Happen Here actually said it, Donald Trump’s once swaggering and now faltering MAGA movement exhibits all the signs of 21st Century American fascism.
As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman concluded recently in his Substack column: “Make no mistake, MAGA is a fascist movement.”
This American context is important when writing about Alberta, because the far-right base of the United Conservative Party – that is, the people who forced out Mr. Kenney as premier and replaced him with Ms. Smith – is part and parcel of the American MAGA movement. Scratch an Alberta separatist – and that may or may not include Ms. Smith, depending on which day you listen to her – and you’ll find a 51st State MAGA annexationist. The shibboleths of Make America Great Again are the lingua franca of Wild Rose MAGA.
“Fascism celebrates a leader who transcends law and aims to unites the people with their destiny,” the American historian Timothy Snyder wrote of Donald Trump. And to whose side did Ms. Smith rush in January 2025 when other Canadian political leaders were closing ranks against the American president’s tariff war? Mr. Trump’s, of course.
Fascism “denies truth in favor of grand stories of struggle against a chosen enemy. It posits an imaginary golden age,” Dr. Snyder continued. “Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims.”
In Alberta the grand story advanced by the UCP is the fake narrative of persecution of Alberta by the rest of Confederation, and the Trudeau family in particular. The Golden Age? Sometime in the 1950s, when men were men and no one was “woke”. The chosen enemies: The Trudeaus, of course, “Communists,” environmentalists, Quebeckers, immigrants, trans kids, and so on.
These and many other characteristics historically identified as manifestations of fascism are evident in Alberta today – kept in check only by the Canadian Constitution, the rule of law, and the impartial superior courts. These include: Increasingly centralized authoritarian power in the Premier’s Office; violation of democratic norms such as the UCP’s planned Texas-style gerrymandering; scapegoating of sexual, racial and religious minorities; attacks on expertise including scientific and medical research; and demands to take over and politicize the judiciary.
Likewise, we see a cowed UCP caucus in which not a single member dares to speak out against this party’s creep toward authoritarianism, spineless local media that won’t stop playing footsie with fascism, and political identity Christianism deeply entrenched in the party’s base.
Plus, of course, official efforts to suppress dissent – which starts by giving dissidents the bum’s rush from public events, as happened on Thursday, and will grow darker and more violent if unchecked.
Is Ms. Smith a fascist? Is she just someone willing to make a pact with the Devil to hang onto power? Or is she just trying to make the best of a bad situation to save us all? I don’t know. None of us can know what she really thinks.
But does it really matter? If someone walks like a fascist and talks like a fascist, it’s not unreasonable to suggest they are a fascist.
Are Ms. Smith’s actions fascistic enough to meet the definition? We can argue about that, politely, if you like.
But please don’t say that raising a warning flag about a government whose actions show many signs of incipient fascism is beyond the pale, or outside the realm of acceptable political discourse.
Yes, words have definitions and history matters. That’s why no one needs to feel guilty for calling Premier Smith’s pancakes fascist with a turn of phrase that neatly summarizes the entire political moment in Alberta, or warning about what that has led to in the past.
FYFP!
