Todd Hayden – The Unz Review March 15, 2025
I was at the ballet the other night, yes, the ballet. It was the Canadian Ballet Company’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Before the ballet started, the orchestra struck up a thundering version of Canada’s national anthem, O Canada.
I knew the ballet had not yet started because I was aware that Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece did not begin with a drum roll. This rendition of O Canada most certainly did.
Almost without hesitation, the entire audience stood and broke into song. How riveting. I do not know the words to the national ditty, and even if I did, I doubt if I could have persuaded my lungs to pump them out. In fact, I was more inclined to sit down, but instead, I stood with the rest of them. When in Rome and all that—and better not to start a fight with the Canadian wife.
When it was over, the crowd broke into a cheer that would rival hockey game exuberance. For a moment, I expected the ballet dancers to come out with helmets and sticks rather than tutus and ballet slippers. “What in hell was that all about?” I thought to myself. Ahh, it is time for Canadian nationalistic fervor!
They have, once again (the first time being in 1812), been attacked by their neighbours to the south, and I’ll be danged if they are going to stand for it! The first time, they burned the White House to the ground. Who knows what they will do this time? (Fact Check Alert: I doubt if the White House was burnt to the ground, and it wasn’t even Canadians who did it—Canada as a country was not yet invented. It was the British who set the place ablaze—but try to tell that to a Canadian.)
Ever since Big Bad Orange Man Trump levied tariffs on poor little ol’ Canada, Canadians have been in a feverish uproar. How dare he? That horrible bully! And rather than look to their leaders (in this case, the venerable Justin Trudeau) for possible causes for the tariff, they rally ‘round the maple leaf flag and cry out about American hostility. Down with America! Up with Canada, O Canada, We Stand on Guard for Thee!
That’ll show ‘em!
Only it won’t. Not even close.
Sad, I know. I like Canada, and particularly Canadians. I am a Canadian citizen as well (I know that does not make me a true Canadian), and I have no qualms with Canada (other than its government, for which I have the same qualms as I have with nearly all governments). But unfortunately, Canada is going to lose this fight with the Great Bwana of America. Trump has issues with Canada and the current trade agreements (although he was the one who originally negotiated the USMCA, which replaced NAFTA, in 2020). Trump’s issues are not only of the fairness of trade between the two countries but also include border security and the alleged illegal passage of fentanyl between The True North and the US.
Needless to say, there is a lot of controversy regarding these Trump demands, but rather than try earnestly to sort them out, the attack on Trump commences. I am no fan of tariffs and trade wars, or even sanctions in time of war, but I am also not an expert on international trade, so I plead ignorance to the details, and subsequent support, of Trump’s actions. But come on, hate America is the response? Really? Dear Canada, you can surely do better than that.
And the people of Canada are eating it up like a chocolate-covered Beavertail (that’s a real thing, by the way). At best, it is a distraction removing the true line of sight from Canada’s atrocious Trudeau government to nationalistic anti-American fervor. Who cares if Canada is run by a delinquent, he is now a hero for standing up to Trump! According to them, Trump’s fentanyl complaint is completely fabricated—it simply is not true (yeah, right, so why pump 1.3 billion dollars into making an effort to minimize it?) And Trump himself created the trade agreement currently in place, so why should he be complaining about that?
Canada’s leadership might actually be playing a different game, one where “winning” isn’t about economic health, but political survival. If they can’t outpunch Trump (and they’d be deluded to think they can), maybe the Liberal brain trust sees a scorched-earth strategy as their ticket. Tank the economy, let Canadians feel the squeeze—higher prices, job losses, a battered loonie—and spin it into a heroic saga: “We stood up to the orange Goliath, and though we bleed, we’re still here.” It’s not about prosperity; it’s about power. A broken country that still chants your name beats a thriving one that boots you out.
There’s precedent for this kind of gambit. Leaders have ridden populist waves through hardship before—think wartime rallying cries or economic crises turned into “us vs. them” narratives. Trudeau’s team (and now Carney’s) could be betting that Canadians, riled up by national pride and anti-Trump fervor, will forgive the pain if it’s packaged as noble resistance. Mark Carney’s gravitas as ex-Bank of Canada governor adds polish to the story—he’s the steady hand guiding the ship through the storm, even if it’s sinking. The Liberals stay in power, ruling a wounded but loyal flock, while Trump’s the villain in the history books.
The national anthem incident at the ballet the other night freaked me out. Not so much because I don’t like national anthems played at sporting events (yes, the ballet is definitely an athletic spectacle), but because nationalistic fervor is dangerous. It is a tool used by those in power to coerce people to go bonkers for some fabricated cause. Personally, I remember this in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War in America, although there was little nationalistic fervor at that point in the history of the conflict, the government certainly did not refrain from efforts to conjure it up. It is never a good thing; in times of war, it is used to justify killing fellow humans “in the name of patriotism.” In times of peace, it is used to dehumanize the citizens of another country, so that the country’s actions, and that country’s leadership, become the target of pure hate.
At a little coffee shop two doors down from my office this morning a woman ordered a “Canadacano” because she didn’t want to say “Americano”—if she knew I was an American, she probably would have thrown it in my face.
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Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here
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No, nationalism is fine.
Depends on who and for what. It’s the people doing it that matter. Nationalistic Americans should be giving Trump the upside-down swinging Mussolini treatment for telling them he’d solve their problems… then he picks fights with everybody on earth. What a fool.
I even admire Israeli nationalism — if they’d keep it in their own country and keep their hands out of my pocket, which they don’t and never will.
But details matter. Be specific.
I have not yet seen a proper analysis of the tariffs: Trump said he would be reciprocating, not introducing penalties gratuitously. What does Canada charge to import all the various US products?
the UK government used this and whipped up national fervour and race hate for its 2 world wars
make no mistake hate and t
racism are always government tools
LOL
((Tod)) is being rather economical with his ‘facts’ …perhaps this swizzlers ancestors were still in Odessa when the British stuffed the Yankees in the war of 1812 and then went home after they had burnt down the Whitehouse and set up the BANK…
remember that one?..nah probably not…
Of course the other interesting point omitted is the current and rather obvious con game being played in the North American asylum, and soon to be played on the Canucks, where populism is now having an occupation govern-mente overtly working for ‘jewes’ and ‘jewe’ interest and will require you to be a digitised imbecile plugged into a chump bot..after they’ve stolen everything you own..
..of course even this gives swizzlers like Tod nightmares, swizzlers who still break into a sweat at the thought of whites and nationalism in the same sentence…
The biggest cause of Canadian nationalism is Trump. Like every other western state it lost its democracy so it couldn’t get rid of Justin Trudeau, and now he’s stepped down they’ll have the same problem with the unelected and installed former banker Mark Carney. However, their nationalism could bring about changes which may get rid of Carney much easier, but as it’ll be a reactionary form of cleanout it can bring with it other problems if democracy doesn’t return side by side with the nationalism but is further eroded by it.
This “Canada The Illusion” video accurately explains the legal fiction ensnaring all Canadians.
Watch the video and ponder its mind-blowing conclusion! If Maxime Bernier championed that constitutional reality, he’d join Donald Trump on the world stage!
I have huge reservations about Trump but I have even greater reservations about remaining a vassel of King Charles and his satanic minions. The US Consttution is a well-written contract that is worthy of support here in the frozen north.
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“Nationalist Fervor running rampant in Canada…”
Just as if! In fact, if there’s anyone more deracinated, dumb & docile than THICK Brits, it HAS to be Catatonic Cuntadians!!
😂
Nothing like the idiotic concept of ‘nationalism’ for Jews to divide the white race & get them to hate/fight each other.
jews and commies divide the dumb whites, programming them to hate each other over ‘nationalism’ and ‘class conflict’.
All this over the top nationalism has an unrealistic feel about it, as if that will win the day over the Yanks. Remember, Carney is just another out of touch WEF clown the same as Trudeau. Like Trudeau he’s just another sock puppet. It would hardly be different if the Conservatives win the next election. It’s all scripted.
the morons don’t even realize the same supranational global gang of Jewish bankers/rabbis who govern the US also govern Canada, Russia, UK, et al. Its all a facade for the morons (you’re likely one of them)
Whites in conflict with other whites is the evidence of talmudic communism is alive & well. Nationism has more to do with race than geo/political boundaries.
We’ll have a happy ending…
https://x.com/KatKanada_TM/status/1900712661865898012
: )
Hayden tells us how the orchestra at a concert kicked off nationalist fervor in a Toronto audience by starting it off with a loud Canadian national anthem. However, I see far fewer Canadian flags being waved at this time than with the truckers protest during Covid, which fervor was much more widespread and came spontaneously from the people, and was totally against the corrupt Canadian government, and against all of the schlep mainstream political parties, the lying mainstream media, and the globalist Canadian establishment, now busy trying to “orchestrate” a very controlled sense of Canadian nationalism.
The newly “appointed” Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, was not elected by the people in any Canadian riding. Having done a 13 year stint with Goldman Sachs some 17 years ago, he was made head bankster of the Bank of Canada, and rising very high in globalist circles and the Liberal Party, he was a special mentor to the WEF golden boy, Justin Castro-Trudeau, before more recently moving his thriving hedge-fund bankster business to Wall Street, NYC. We have to remember that the golden-boy lost his laurels and chances to become the first king of the proposed globalist New World Order, by a handful of Canadian populist truckers who shut down for a number of months the capital city of Canada, called Ottawa where all of the corrupt politicians do their trading. The word ‘Ottawa’, by the way, is from the native Algonquin tribe, and means “to trade”.
Justin was more like his real father Fidel than in step with his more Fabian Marxist step-father Pierre. He certainly had no qualms about using the RCMP horse-riding Mounties to trample over the faces of peaceful protesters in the snow during Covid – trying to get them to leave the capital, so that all of the corrupt and inept MP’s could continue with their Covid crimes by pretending there was no real opposition to lockdowns and the forced toxic-vaccine programs. That was his downfall. The truckers shutdown occurred in early 2022 and the golden boy has been unable to face the people and a federal election since. Trump’s threat to annex Canada simply sped up the process of his replacement, but the selection of Carney from the Wall Street financial sewers, was clearly a reaction to the deep-state “selection” of Mr. Trump’s Zionist handlers for the Greater USA Project.
In response to Mr. Trump’s overtures, Canadians will now have the choice between the following options:
– Canada asserting its independence from the US and following Mr. Carney’s and the Liberal Party WEF globalist economic degrowth and nation deconstruction policies, with a goal of leveling all wage-earner incomes to global income levels (i,e., “unipolar” in order to make free trade work protecting joint-venture investments in China using our unprotected markets to make the corporatocracy class of Mr. Carney richer and richer), and in which no one in Canada, except those of that elite class will own anything by 2030. [It is that same Liberal Party in Canada which endorsed the Trudeau view that China is the model nation of the world, and which has created a dying nation where the younger generations own virtually nothing, ‘productivity’ is a bad word, incentive is as dead as democracy, babies are not wanted, and virtually everything is choked by taxes.
– Being annexed by the US to Make Americanism Great Again under a globalist multi-polar order instead of a globalist unipolar one. That appears to be the only real option for Canadians. My own unsolicited observations during the last Canadian federal election in 2021 was that everything was totally rigged, and rigged by the top-down selection of the major issues, the top-down selection of the major candidates, and the top-down selection of the ballots by the Dominion voting machines, which were the same machines used to rigg the voting in the 2020 US election. [It is interesting to note that there was very little or no deep-state vote rigging of the 2024 US election. It was as if the US establishment which really laid the UN globalist eggs and which was behind all of the 2020 vote rigging, wanted Trump for some reason to lose in 2020 but to win in 2024.]
It appears that if the Trump administration is serious then such an annexation could only occur after some relatively severe economic privation with a collapse of Western markets. However, they are being extremely careful about the tariffs so that no real damage is really being caused, much like how the Russians in the war with the Ukraine was extremely careful not to cause too much infrastructure damage, counting on staying and thinking of rebuilding expenses after their invasion, and while also making a fanfare of the alleged Nord Stream II interruption, but still continuing to pipe uninterrupted, their natural gas through the Ukraine war zone to the EU.
For Canada, most likely some deal has already been made and the only obstacle the globalists have are unwilling populations where they have to constantly dupe us with a constant stream of psops and threats. Whether they pretend to be unipolar (“unilateral”) globalists or those of multipolar sort run by the various superpower nations, there appears to be no third choice for the people determining the issues and the course of their nation. In the US they had virtually the same choice – totalitarian communism or totalitarian fascism, and no matter what blend it is really all totalitarianism.
This is the same situation as the Germans faced in the early 1930’s. The major political choices to run their nation was between the totalitarian communists in league with Stalin, and the totalitarian fascists of Hitler. The Christian Democrats came in third in the undecisive 1932 election, and to prevent the communists from winning in the 1933 election they had to throw in with the fascists. The difference in those elections and our elections these days is that back then, despite all of the propaganda and intimidation, the votes of the people were actually counted by real people in a manner in which the representatives each party in each polling could actually scrutineer the voting and count the paper ballots
In Canada it looks like they are shaping things up such that there is no third option. We either have Canada deconstructed and dissolved into central bankster and communist unipolar New World Order run by a corrupt corporatocracy, or deconstructed and dissolved into fascist American multipolar New World Order run by the same corrupt corporatocracy.
What do hoi polloi Canadians really want? There votes will never tell. However, they would most certainly like to decide the future and fate of their own lives and their own nation without all of the hanky-panky and corruption of the the globalists and the US deep state.
@Fred B,
Thanx for your insights.
It does indeed appear that we’re screwed… and that’s what leads us towards this third option.
Revolution would be greatly facilitated if people understood these legal truths.
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If Canada’s red and white flag turns full red like China’s, I’ll laugh my dick off.
Canadians need to go “zombie apocalypse” on every faggot, every commie, every Jew, and every pajeet, for starters. Oh, and don’t forget the Chinese.
Trump says no war, minimal taxes, reciprocal tariffs, and no commies. Seems like he’s on his way. Yes, Israel will get Gaza but it may be too big a meal for that snake. You can figure the rest out for yourselves.