Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

New York Times: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has long cast himself as a spokesman for the world’s liberals, standing up to President Trump, supporting women’s and Indigenous rights, welcoming immigrants and fighting climate change and racism. But that calibrated image suffered a major blow this week when photos and a video emerged of the prime minister dressing up in blackface and brownface in the early 1990s and in 2001.

With Canadians heading to the polls on Oct. 21, the revelations have rocked Mr. Trudeau’s re-election campaign, reinforcing a narrative that has dogged him throughout his political career: that he isn’t really who he presents himself to be. “Justin Trudeau has carefully crafted an image of what Canadians aspire to: hope, openness to the world and youth,” said Jean-Marc Léger, chief executive of Léger, a leading polling company in Montreal. “The blackface episode shatters that perfect image and casts questions on his authenticity.”

[...] On Thursday, at a campaign appearance in Winnipeg, he said he could not rule out the existence of more examples. “I am wary of, of being definitive about this because the recent pictures that came out I had not remembered,” Mr. Trudeau said. (MORE)

NPR: . . . The first controversial image surfaced late Wednesday, when Time magazine published a photo of a 29-year-old Trudeau wearing a feathered turban and with a darkened face, neck and hands at an "Arabian Nights" costume party in 2001. [...] Reactions from the ranks of Trudeau's Liberal Party seemed to be mixed.

Greg Fergus, a black member of Parliament and fellow Liberal, said told the CBC that black Canadians were confused, offended and hurt, but that he still had confidence in Trudeau. Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, who is Sikh, told the broadcaster that the prime minister's actions were wrong, but that Trudeau has a record of promoting diversity. Other Liberals said they, too, were disappointed and called on Trudeau to own up to his mistakes. (MORE)

Fox News: The Liberal Party leader and son of former Canada Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau also blamed his "place of privilege" for his actions. "I've always acknowledged that I come from a place of privilege but now I need to acknowledge that that comes with a massive blindspot," he said. During his apology, he said he has since known dressing up in blackface was "always unacceptable. I should have understood that then, and I never should have done it," he said. (MORE)

I haven’t notice many people talking about it. People here realize there’s an election coming up and that politics is a dirty game at campaign time. Personally I never voted for Trudeau but the photos don’t make me want to go out and publicly chastise the guy. However I’m more interested in the next instalment, as in what kind of dirt does Trudeau’s camp have on the opposition. To be honest, I don’t remember hearing about the other photos and I really don’t get into politics like some. At least now the election is getting interesting. Wonder what kind of chance one side takes to publicly humiliate the Prime Minister if you figure in the electorate judging the fairness of it.

Anything I’ve heard deals more with 2001 being a different time. We’ll see if this makes a big difference but I think he was going down anyways. Yet you wouldn’t know it, the last two huge public rallies held in Toronto showed massive support for Trudeau if crowd reaction means anything.

From a US perspective it seems strange to call his primary supporters "liberals" and that reflect the actual the name of the party, rather than such being a cliché pejorative. But anyway, despite whatever "going through the motions", decorative outrage some liberals are expressing about this... I don't feel Trudeau's retrospective antics matter one whit to them in the long run. It's akin to Trump's immediate antics mattering little to his supporters, if shifting to the states and a switch of political orientations. Trudeau at least goes through the motions of apologizing and potentially groveling in sackcloth via whatever quantity of venues he must, to help his party colleagues out in their gradual, eventual return to blessing him as the Anointed One.

Just more run of the mill leftist hypocrisy. And "liberal" is no longer a pejorative in the US. People have realized that you're either a classic liberal, libertarian, or not liberal at all, e.g. progressive authoritarian leftist.