Premier Tim Houston’s communications director is in hot water after an op-ed he wrote last year, defending Nazi symbols at the Freedom Convoy protests, resurfaced.
Stephen Moore, who acts as the director of communications for the Office of the Premier and previously held the role during Liberal premier Stephen McNeil’s tenure, wrote an opinion piece for the National Post where he defended the use of Nazi symbolism at the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests by calling it a criticism of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
“It should not have to be said, but it does: Trudeau had zero evidence then, and none today, that the truckers were racists or Nazis,” wrote Moore in the piece, published on Oct 1, 2023. “The swastikas printed on flags at the convoy were intended not as endorsements of hate that symbol represents, but as criticism of the government’s overreach through a comparison of Trudeau’s government to Nazi Germany.”
Moore criticized the accusations of Nazi participation as a “conspiracy theory” and wondered why Trudeau would condemn the protests following questions from Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish.
The op-ed started as a critique of Trudeau’s handling of a situation that occurred in September 2023, where House of Commons speaker Anthony Rota resigned following his invitation of a former Nazi to a speech from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During a statement on the matter, Trudeau warned to watch for Russian disinformation, which Moore found “amusing,” linking the incident to Trudeau’s condemnation of the trucker convoy by calling his denunciations misinformation.
This is despite experts saying the Nazi propaganda on display at the rally was the worst they’d ever seen, with even the president of one of the trucking companies involved stating they needed to ditch the extremist rhetoric as the protests were underway. The Guardian pointed out ties that one of the convoy’s organizers, James Bauder, had with far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon.
In the aftermath of the convoy, many reported the rise of far-right hatred across Canada as the movement galvanized the vaccine-hesitant into extremism. Even if the honest intent of truckers displaying swastikas was to critique Trudeau—Moore’s dubious premise in his National Post piece—the use of the symbols had the opposite effect, according to the reporting: it amplified the movement against vaccine mandates into something the far-right could latch onto.
Calling for an apology
The Moore op-ed isn’t the only example of writing from 2023 resurfacing during this provincial election. Eastern Passage candidate Tammy Jakeman was running for the NDP until two of her old social media posts about Israel and Palestine drew the ire of a pair of Jewish groups. The groups released a joint statement that said Jakeman’s “use of the term ‘genocide’ in reference to Israel” was “deeply offensive,” even though she hadn’t said anything about genocide, and Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservatives chimed in to question NSNDP leader Claudia Chender for endorsing Jakeman “despite a public record of harmful, antisemitic comments.” (Jakeman is now running as an independent in Eastern Passage, and The Coast has a feature story about the controversy if you want a lot more detail.)
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The Halifax chapter of a third group, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, emailed a statement of their own, criticizing the premier for having a double standard—attacking Jakeman over alleged antisemitism, while employing a communications director who has outright defended the use of Nazi imagery and compared the Canadian government to Nazi Germany.
“Will Tim Houston fire Stephen Moore, considering his wildly inappropriate comments that justify the use of swastikas by right-wing protestors in Ottawa?” asked Brook Thorndycraft on behalf of IJV-Halifax. “Does Tim Houston also think Freedom Convoy protestors waving swastikas is OK?”
IJV-Halifax called on Houston to remove Moore from the campaign and offer a public apology; neither have been forthcoming. The Coast tried to reach Houston’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
More than just hate symbols
The op-ed contains more than just a defence of hate symbols. Moore also lets loose with other far-right lingo in the piece that reveals his right-wing ideology as he talks extensively about “wokeism” and “parental rights.”
The former is a catch-all term used in right-wing media spheres to describe anything left of their agenda, from support of gay and trans rights to the renaming of sports organizations. Moore calls Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act a form of wokeism—in this context, a way of repressing freedom of speech.
While the use of the Emergencies Act has faced criticism from both sides and was found to be unconstitutional by the Federal Court—though the government is appealing the ruling—Moore says that Trudeau wants to split the world into good versus bad.
“You either believe in Liberal climate policy or are a climate denier, according to Trudeau. You either mask up and vax up or are putting lives at risk. You either support the radical demands of trans activists or you hate sexual minorities,” writes Moore, who titles this “left-wing authoritarianism.”
In the same piece, Moore condemns Trudeau for “attacking parents” who “believe they should have to consent to whether their children under the age of 16 can change their sexual identity.”
This issue stems from anti-trans rhetoric that saw multiple political figures, including former New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs, facing backlash for not allowing the use of preferred pronouns and names for children under 16 without their parent’s permission. Some advocates and experts say policies such as this could have negative outcomes on trans or gender non-conforming youth. Moore brushes this off as Trudeau demonizing parents and letting “school teachers parent their children”—a potential dog whistle to a conspiracy theory of teachers coercing students into becoming gay or trans.
While Tim Houston has shown support for 2SLGBTQ+ causes, his party has not explicitly shown support for trans individuals. Having a communications director who isn’t aligned with support for trans youth creates a perception of where the party stands.
Between the defence of Nazi symbolism, comparison of Trudeau’s government to Nazi Germany, the use of far-right terminology such as “wokeism” and the subtle defence of anti-trans policy, it’s hard to imagine that Moore was screened before being hired to fill the communications director seat in August 2024. That, or Houston’s administration chose to ignore the red flags that Moore happily hoisted in the air in this National Post piece.
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This article appears in Nov 7-30, 2024.
Thanks for this. I’m amazed that Houston won’t take this seriously. Clearly he cares little for “democracy’ and his comms guy waving the red flag of fascism before the NS electoate doesn’t bother him. I’m in IJV and am furious at what happened to Jakeman
Not a huge surprise to See Steven Moore’s true colours. As the Executive Director for Forest Nova Scotia (the propaganda arm of industrial forestry corporation in NS, he spent most of his time spreading misinformation about how “green,” climate friendly, and ecologically conscious his employers were. Of course nothing could be further from the truth, and indeed, the exact opposite of everything he claimed is much more accurate. Like his boss, Houston, he knows where his bread is buttered and has no problem blowing his dog whistle loudly for all to hear.