Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has lost his legitimacy after fleeing from the capital in the face of his own peacefully protesting people who are rallying against his vaccine mandate’s disproportionate effect on the over 10% of Canadian truckers who aren’t inoculated. Those individuals risk losing their livelihoods if they comply with the government’s newest demands. Many others have joined their movement out of solidarity with the people who helped keep their country running all throughout the pandemic. They consider Canada’s coercive vaccination policy to be wrong in all respects.

Whatever anyone’s stance is on vaccination, there’s no denying that Canadians have the right to peacefully protest, which is exactly what they’re presently doing. Nevertheless, their leader has fiercely condemned them as a so-called “fringe minority” who he claims espouse hateful views even though there’s no proof that they do. Their constant honking in the capital has disturbed some Canadians but that’s the consequence of living in place where people are protesting. The truckers and their supporters pose no threat whatsoever to any of their fellow citizens or the constitutional order of the state.

Trudeau nevertheless said that he won’t meet with them under any circumstances. Even though he claims to have conveniently just caught COVID, he could still arrange a Zoom meeting for instance if he really wanted to connect with this truly working-class revolution. Instead, he’s hiding in an undisclosed location after being evacuated from the capital on the pretext that his peacefully protesting citizens supposedly pose a threat to his safety.

What’s actually happening is that he’s scared that his country’s heroes are rising up against his radical mandate that’ll disproportionately affect the more than 10% of those truckers who aren’t vaccinated. By the same standards that the US-led West applies towards the leaders of Global South nations, some could consider that he already de facto abdicated after fleeing his capital. After all, that’s exactly what they’d say if Syrian President Bashar Assad or Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed did the same.

About those two leaders, they proudly stood their ground in their respective capital cities despite terrorists converging on them at certain times. Each of their countries’ militaries successfully repulsed those threats yet the US-led West still considers the Syrian leader to be illegitimate. By contrast, none of that American-led bloc regard Trudeau as illegitimate even though he fled in the face of purely peaceful protesters and not actual terrorists.

Everything is quickly becoming very concerning though after the Ottawa police chief flirted with the idea of requesting military support for dispersing the peaceful protesters. Although Trudeau denied that such a scenario is in the cards, his words shouldn’t be taken at face value after he already lied by falsely disparaging the peaceful protesters as “antisemites, Islamophobes, anti-Black racists, homophobes, and transphobes”. He might literally be contemplating the killing of his own people in the coming future.

That is, after all, how the US-led West would portray a Global South leader’s denial of plotting to send in the military to disperse peaceful protesters even if they’re actually terrorists or largely infiltrated by them. The failure to apply these same standards to Western leaders like Trudeau smacks of actual racism. Curiously, he himself has been accused of being a racist after wearing blackface more times than he even admitted that he can remember.

Objectively speaking, Trudeau should indeed be considered a racist after that scandal and regarded as having abdicated from his premiership after fleeing the capital exactly as Global South leaders would be treated by the US-led West if they did the same. Had he stayed in Ottawa and virtually met with the peaceful protesters (seeing as how he can’t do so in person since he claims to have conveniently just caught COVID), then he’d still be a racist but wouldn’t have lost his legitimacy as Canada’s leader.

It’s about time that Trudeau is held to the same standards as Global South leaders. Just like US-led Western leaders never tire of chanting that “Assad Must Go!”, so too might patriotic and peace-loving Canadians start chanting that “Trudeau Must Go!” until he finally does. It’s of course unlikely that he’ll actually abdicate even though that would be the morally right decision in light of the circumstances and the standards that Global South leaders are held to, but it’s still a promising thought to entertain.