A few weeks into last fall’s Canadian federal election, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals seemed to be in trouble. Having called an early campaign for no particular reason besides it looking politically opportune, a swift spike in the polls for the Conservatives briefly made defeat a genuine possibility.

But then, something happened. Irate crowds, showing up to protest the government’s COVID-19 policies, began to appear at the prime minister’s campaign stops. Soon enough, some in the crowds were tied to the far right and nativist People’s Party of Canada (Parti populaire du Canada, PPC) led by former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. Flailing since the beginning of the campaign, the Liberals suddenly had a narrative.

Denouncing “anti-vaxxer mobs” and linking them to his Conservative opponent, Trudeau also used one French-language interview to make an even stronger statement about anti-vaxxers: a group, he said, that “[didn’t] believe in science/progress” and was “often very misogynistic and racist.” (Trudeau’s comments, as far as I can tell, never properly penetrated the Anglo-Canadian mainstream. Try searching the websites of major newspapers for coverage of the interview and you will mostly come up short. What you will find, however, is a deluge of content related to them from right-wing media outlets in Canada and abroad.)