Why George Soros Conspiracy Theories Never Took off in Canada and Why that Might be Changing


Iga Mergler, Wilfrid Laurier University; Neil McLaughlin, McMaster University

The lack of a mass based far-right party in Canada makes us stand out among comparable advanced industrial nations, but we also have not seen the same level of anti-Soros conspiracy theories as one finds in the Poland Hungary and the United States. Soros, a Hungarian American philanthropist, has been at the center of right-wing populist attacks on globalist elites around the world because of his unique combination of wealth, liberal capitalist views, his highly influential Open Society Foundation and his Jewish roots. In Canada, however, these tactics of scapegoating Soros has not really worked, like in Lithuania and Slovenia, among other examples discussed in the literature. This paper will outline the comparative sociological reasons discussed in the Canadian exceptionalism literature and in the scholarship on Soros for why Soros conspiracy theories never really took hold here. We will the discuss how Erza Levant, the Truckers Convoy and the new Canadian right wing internet figures such as Jordan Peterson and Lauren Southern may be changing this, as anti-globalist populist right here allies with American Trumpism and Orban in Hungary to replace liberalism and social democracy with new illiberal forms of democracy that could happen here.

This paper will be presented at the following session: