Most Canadians know surprisingly little about their candidates for office—especially how they think and act when in private. That’s why The True North Times investigated NDP Candidate Alex Johnstone, to get a better feel for how the NDP candidate for Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas speaks to her friends (and enemies) when the cameras aren’t rolling.
First up, in April 2008, Alex stumbled upon a photo from Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps the most infamous of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. While we here at TNT will crack a dick joke 99% of the time, Alex Johnstone found that other 1% and remarked about how the phallic-shaped electrified posts guarding the camp expressed “how the curve is normal, natural, and healthy right!” She concluded that the photo was taken because it looked like a penis, and not because of its, well, less phallic symbolism.
On the bright side, that’s the only comment we found involving her posting about penises. Regrettably, that’s because she was the dick the rest of the time, like when she remarked that “capitalism is only slightly better than Feudalism,” evidently the last 200 years of human progress notwithstanding. While she did concede that “Capitalism feeds some of us,” apparently feudalism “fed more of the population than today.” Your (presumably peasant) ancestors would be quite miserable if they were around today, what with the scarcity of food and housing and all that. But hey, at least she didn’t need to ask her local Lord permission to speak freely!
Rest assured that Johnstone does not want us to return to feudalism. Instead, she just wants a command economy, similar to the humanitarian utopias of the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Naturally, “it is irrational for production and direction of the market to not be planned” because of all the dust collectors sitting around our homes. It would obviously be better if none of us had any belongings capable of collecting dust, allowing more time to wait in the bread line.
Suffice to say, if you were getting a little spooked by all this talk of Tom Mulcair praising free markets and Margaret Thatcher, rest assured that the division of labour may be overrated, and the command economy is in!
Update (September 22nd, 10:15AM): The comment on Auschwitz was still online at the time of publication, but has since been deleted. If interested, here’s a link to the original Facebook post.
Update (September 22nd, 8:30PM): Soon after our piece published, Alex Johnstone took to Facebook to make a public apology for her remarks.
Update (September 23rd, 4:39PM): Alex Johnstone stressed to the Hamilton Spectator that “there [was] no malice intended,” saying that she “didn’t know what Auschwitz was, or I didn’t up until today.” Given her status as a school board trustee, it was unlikely that she would be the candidate in need of a history lesson.