For International Workers’ Day, a labor organization called Alliance Ouvrière (AO; “Workers’ Alliance” in English) brought a mock guillotine to the big union demonstration in Montreal. Rank-and-file workers bussed in by the major unions laughed and cheered as the guillotine passed by on its rolling platform. It was a funny prop, an over-the-top nod at the popular rage simmering in Quebec after years of rule by the province’s nationalist, austerity-minded Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) party.

At the end of the demonstration, AO members carried out a mock decapitation of a papier-mâché dummy, representing Quebec’s business elites, in front of a laughing crowd. Good family fun for all.

The next day, a reporter from the right-wing outrage outlet Rebel News broke the “story”: union thugs threaten Bolshevik terror at Montreal murder-rally, etc. Within hours, the heads of every political party in the province, plus every major union central, had denounced AO and distanced themselves from the Incident. The leader of the Parti Québécois said that he was shocked and sickened. The leader of Québec Solidaire demanded that AO apologize. Jean Boulet, Quebec’s minister of labor, wiggled and wept as though he had narrowly escaped the Terror.