Say what you want about Olivia Chow, but she is, in fact, the mayor of Toronto. At least she is as of today, Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
Funny how, even prior to taking office, right-wing disrupters will take any chance they can find to sling some crap at anyone they view as an enemy, in this case Chow, who they label a “lefty,” something antithetical to their own identification as “righties.”
Fairness and truth are not part of the right-wing playbook. So that’s why Chow is greeted with the following statements, both on Twitter, that blame Chow for violence on Toronto’s streets, even though she hasn’t even taken up the responsibilities of mayor yet.
“Welcome to Olivia Chow’s Toronto, — where shootings happen in broad daylight.”
“Just an ordinary day in Olivia Chow’s Toronto.”
The first, from user Natasha Biase, with 4000 followers and a blue checkmark denoting that she’s for real, as in a real jerk, and the second from Ezra Levant, the odious poster boy for the equally odious Rebel News, that hotbed of political hatred ingested by so many distorted thinkers who seek distorted “news” as a replacement for mainstream, and somewhat more balanced, media. Biase, as well, is a so-called “journalist” at Rebel News, just for the record.
The first was related to an innocent woman killed in a targeted shooting gone astray, wrong place, wrong time, a stray bullet, an innocent victim of the scourge of gun violence.
The second referred to a subway stabbing last Thursday as the train pulled into the TTC’s Eglington Station. This “tweet” got more than 900 “likes,” the currency of Twitter, and the validation posters seek as they seek to undermine anyone who is fair-minded and balanced.
Personally, I was kind of rooting for Ana Bailao to become mayor. The former deputy mayor, a centrist, a proven voice and actor at Toronto City Hall. Not an-us-versus-them politician, but one willing to collaborate with others to get things done. But it was Chow who won, fair and square despite the squawking of losers, right-wing losers, of course, who contest everything they can’t win because, well, they can’t win. So they follow the Trump election-loss strategy.
There’s no reason to suppose that Chow won’t be an earnest and effective mayor. The right would have us believe that Chow will drastically cut the police budget, something the incoming mayor has never said she was intending to do. Like, honestly, as if.
But that doesn’t stop scumbags like Biase and Levant from using their discredited Twitter accounts, owned by the scumbag-in-chief Elon Musk, to sow fear into the consciousness of Torontonians about the terrible and dangerous ramifications of Olivia Chow as mayor of Canada’s largest city. What is truly horrifying are the number of people who lap this shit up, people who we see everyday, at work, at play, and across the kitchen table from us. People who have been manipulated as a result of their inherent fear of everything unknown, and for their irrational need to point fingers, assign blame, alarm others, and sow discord.
And it’s right-wing acolytes like Biase and Levant who are the purveyors of this hate-filled narrative. And there’s no dealing with them, no accountability assigned to them, so they just keep wracking up the “likes” from like-minded, hate-imbued, fools.
A bit of a shout-out to Global News journalist Ahmar Khan for at least attempting to push some truth out regarding the first tweet, but that audience doesn’t do truth well as it’s too inconvenient to the reckless venom that they spew out on a daily basis. They call the truth “fake news,” something probably more appropriately said when looking in their mirrors.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 