Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Justin Trudeau is a fool but we should still forgive him

If you live by the sword of wokeness, you might die by it too. Justin Trudeau is about to find this out. The painfully right-on PM of Canada, this undisputed master of the virtue-signal, this morally unassailable possessor of Pride socks and correct opinions on everything, looks set to be cancelled, to use woke parlance. His crime? He’s done brownface and blackface in the past.

Yes, Mr Trudeau committed the gravest crime in the woke lobby’s very substantial statute book. He painted his face brown. Time magazine published the evidence. It was at a party in 2001 at the West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, a posh school where Trudeau was teaching. He doesn’t even have the excuse of having been a dumb teenager — he was 29 at the time. There he is, this son of privilege, dolled up in a turban and a robe with skin-darkening make-up on his face, neck and hands.

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Brendan O’Neill
Written by
Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.

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