When Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi called Premier Danielle Smith “dangerous,” I thought he was perhaps being overly partisan. That was before I was fully aware of what went on at a rally earlier this year at the Calgary Convention Centre. The guest of honour was ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

I paid little attention to the event at the time, Carlson being someone whose views I had no interest in. My only reaction was embarrassment that our premier attended and followed up with an interview with Carlson, a man so toxic even Fox washed their hands of him.

I now realize that the event deserves a very great deal of attention. I was enlightened by an article in Alberta Views by Jeff Gailus entitled “The Dark Gospel.” Gailus attended the rally and appears to have been shaken to his roots.

And why should the event merit our close attention? Well, first was Carlson’s message. He in effect delivered the word that the crowd should hate and fear certain fellow Canadians. You must, he insisted, fight to “the maximum extent of your ability” those who would destroy “you and your culture and your beliefs and your children and your future as a country.”

The message was based on egregious lies. For example, Carlson declared that our MAID program was “genocide,” used by the federal government to kill native-born Canadians in order to replace them with immigrants. The BC safe injection site policy was a government attempt to “kill your children.” The great replacement theory Canadian version. Our prime minister, who Carlson insulted at length, was first among our enemies.

Then there was the crowd. This wasn’t a trivial event. Four thousand boisterous Calgarians attended, representing a cross-section of the population. Gailus had to stand in line for an hour and a half to get in. The crowd was fired up—all cheers and standing ovations. “That was the wildest intro I’ve had, ever,” enthused Carlson. Nor were the sponsors of the event nobodies. They included the president of the Bow Valley Credit Union.

And then there was the other special guest, no less than the premier of our province. Danielle Smith not only topped off the rally with an interview with Carlson, her enthusiasm carried over to travelling up to Edmonton to introduce him at an event there.

What is wrong with our premier? Has she forgotten her history? Is she not aware of what this sort of thing led to in the 1930s?

I would give her the benefit of the doubt and assume this is just an unfortunate combination of her contrary thinking and scatter-brained nature, but she has been engaging in this nonsense for a long time. Referring to the talk show she once hosted, fellow Conservative Lee Richardson remarked that it “stoked division, hate and fear in listeners with negative rhetoric, culture wars and conspiracy theories.” Could she actually believe this stuff? Do we have a closet disciple of the great replacement theory?

In any case, this is a deeply disturbing business. Fomenting fear and hatred of citizen against citizen based on lies can, with the right support from reckless or misguided or morally-compromised leaders, tip a society into the abyss. Nenshi’s accusation is justified. Smith is a dangerous leader.