Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is leaning into his banking background as his country fights a trade war with the US, but his financial ties have also made him a target for conspiracy theories.
Incorporating tropes familiar to followers of the far-right QAnon movement, conspiratorial social media posts about the Liberal leader have surged ahead of the country’s April 28 election.
Posts range from false claims he recited a “satanic chant” at a campaign event to artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images of him in a pool with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Photo: AP
“He’s the ideal person to be targeted here, for sure, due to his background, as well as his financial work,” said Ahmed al-Rawi, an associate professor of communications at Canada’s Simon Fraser University.
Before serving as governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Carney had a lucrative career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Mentioning a candidate’s affiliation with the global financial elite, and particularly the World Economic Forum, has become a dog whistle for the right.
Canada’s Conservatives have leapt to highlight Carney’s connections to the annual gathering in Davos, with party leader Pierre Poilievre in January describing him as “the voice for the billionaire globalist elite that have been impoverishing the working class around the world.”
Anti-establishment sentiment is present on the left, but people trying to associate Carney with a supposed circle of nefarious elites were “mostly far-right players and provocateurs,” al-Rawi said.
Many posts have zeroed in on a picture from a festival in the UK showing Carney and his wife standing next to Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
This 2013 photo is authentic, but it precipitated the spread of several AI-generated images shared to emphasize a supposed link between Carney and Epstein.
The Canadian Digital Media Research Network found a small number of bot accounts pushed the association by replying to posts from Canadian political figures. Once larger accounts began to engage with the claims, millions of views rolled in.
For conspiracy theorists, a grain of truth mixed with fabricated evidence is enough for a claim to truly take hold, al-Rawi said
A spokesman with the Carney campaign said that the claims being spread were “false and disinformation,” adding that any insinuated connection with Maxwell was incorrect.
“She went to high school with Mark Carney’s wife’s sister,” he said. “Although they may have bumped into each other in public settings, they are not friends.”
Experts said engagement with the claims appears to be somewhat contained to groups already critical of Carney’s Liberal Party.
Polls indicate that Carney’s replacement of Trudeau coincided with a surge in Liberal support.
Anatoliy Gruzd, director of research at the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, said the inauthentic images often qualify as enough evidence for someone already primed to believe in conspiracies built on a belief in sinister control exerted by central banking.
“If there’s a way to connect to something that a particular fringe group already believed in, maybe it’s enough to seed some kind of doubt,” he said.
Repetition of conspiratorial claims, even for people who remain skeptical, can undermine a candidate by creating confusion, he said.
“None of the single theories may be true, but it creates a doubt in the real facts,” he added.
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
A Japanese city would urge all smartphone users to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school under a proposed ordinance that includes no penalties. The limit — which would be recommended for all residents in Toyoake City — would not be binding and there would be no penalties incurred for higher usage, the draft ordinance showed. The proposal aims “to prevent excessive use of devices causing physical and mental health issues... including sleep problems,” Mayor Masafumi Koki said yesterday. The draft urges elementary-school students to avoid smartphones after 9pm, and junior-high students and older are advised not
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
RSS