Nathan M. Greenfield is a military historian, author and the North American correspondent for the University World News.
In December, after threatening Canada with crippling 25-per-cent tariffs, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of him bizarrely laying claim to the Canadian Rockies (though the Swiss Alps were pictured) and the Maple Leaf flag. Mr. Trump’s other statements that month left little doubt about the narrative he was spinning. Following a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had gone to Mar-a-Lago to try to head off the tariffs, Mr. Trump seemingly demoted the Prime Minister, calling him the governor “of the Great State of Canada.”
Then, on Jan. 6, after Mr. Trudeau announced he would be stepping down, Mr. Trump’s language became more radical – “Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State” – as if annexation was a fait accompli.
A day later, Mr. Trump called the border set by centuries-old treaties an “artificially drawn line” to be erased, while stating baldly that he would use “economic force” to acquire Canada. He made similar comments at the World Economic Forum last week.
Mr. Trudeau, the opposition in the House of Commons and the premiers have dismissed Mr. Trump’s words, first as a joke and then as a non-starter. But they are missing the most important point. Mr. Trump isn’t just deviating from the bromides about Canada as America’s closest ally and second-largest trading partner. Rather, according to research by the Cassandra Project, founded by University of Tübingen professor of comparative literature Jürgen Wertheimer, Mr. Trump and his acolytes are creating a new “social imaginary,” in much the same way they did in the “Stop the Steal” campaign that led to the Capitol insurrection in 2021.
In this symbolic, totalized world view, Canada is no longer the neighbour on the other side of the “longest undefended border.” Nor is it a perennial “free rider” on America’s military budget. Instead, Canadians, who as Mr. Trudeau had noted define themselves most easily as “not [being] American,” are being redefined for MAGA supporters as an existential insult, an offence against manifest destiny – about which something must be done.
Founded in 2017, the Cassandra Project examines literature writ large as an “early warning system” that predicts both conflict internal to and between countries. It has received funding from the German government and NATO and is affiliated with the Munich Security Conference as well as with Dalhousie University.
In a series of studies, Cassandra’s analysts have shown that prior to ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and civil strife in Algeria in 2019, literature telegraphed the coming breakdown of civil discourse and national comity. In 2013, Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney’s Command Authority predicted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Beginning in 1990, post-Soviet science-fiction novels and video games normalized the idea of invading Ukraine and fighting NATO. Project Cassandra’s analysts are presently developing “conflict maps” for various high-priority areas with the intent that international institutions could intervene before violence breaks out.
The only difference between Mr. Trump’s posts about Canada and the literature Project Cassandra has studied is the speed at which normalization of international aggression, violence or the erasure of borders takes place.
Mr. Trump’s Jan. 7 social media post showed The Star-Spangled Banner imposed over both the U.S. and Canada, and similar to his other posts on the subject, was quickly liked by thousands of his followers.
Perhaps the most vociferous and most influential acolyte working to further Mr. Trump’s narrative against Canada is Fox News host Jesse Watters. The same day Mr. Trump mused about erasing the border, Mr. Watters angrily asked Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who was on Mr. Watters’s prime time show to argue against tariffs: “What’s your problem with the United States absorbing Canada?”
After Mr. Ford said Canada wasn’t for sale, Mr. Watters became belligerent. “You say Americans don’t have a problem with Canadians, and we don’t. But it seems you have a problem with us … I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America,” Mr. Watters said to his almost three million viewers.
The next morning on the Fox News talk show The Five, just as the Cassandra Project could have predicted, Mr. Watters laid bare the political psychology at the heart of the new social imaginary about Canada. With his right arm gesticulating and in an angry voice, he said, “The fact that they don’t want us to take them over, makes me want to invade. I want to quench my imperialist thirst.” Even though Mr. Trump did not mention Canada in his second inaugural address, his pledge to “once again consider” the United States as a “growing nation” that “expands its territory” signals that more serious attempts to erode Canada’s sovereignty can be expected.