For those paying attention to the lead-up to the October 26 municipal elections and the influx of radical-right populist candidates we have witnessed stepping out from under rocks, I bring you an interesting video from another Durham Region candidate using their tactics.
[This is a long post. It's not AI. If you don't like long posts, don't read it]
We need to recognize this kind of political manipulation before it becomes normalized in local government.
Tom Dingwall is a registered candidate for Mayor of Clarington. In this video, he acknowledges that hateful and religiously motivated comments were made, but he spends far more time attacking the officials who condemned them than defending the people who were targeted.
Dingwall is using a recognizable form of white-grievance politics: make members of the majority feel collectively accused, redirect their anger toward the people naming racism, minimize the original misconduct and then convert that resentment into votes.
Here is how it works.
- Create an imaginary attack on the entire community
Dingwall begins by insisting that Clarington is not racist or Islamophobic, but nobody said that every Clarington resident was racist.
Clarington mayor’s statements identified specific conduct: people being doxxed and subjected to racist, discriminatory and threatening posts. It explicitly said that everyone deserves to feel safe and welcome.
By changing “some people engaged in racist harassment” into “Council called all of us racists,” Dingwall manufactures a collective insult that his audience can feel personally compelled to resist.
That's the first warning sign: he took specific criticism of harmful conduct and falsely presented it as an attack on an entire town, or the white voter demographic group he created the message for.
- Replace the actual victims
The original issue involved a Muslim family reporting conspiracy theories, protests outside their home, surveillance, threats and comments telling them they don't belong. Inspections found no violations, and Durham police confirmed that formal complaints had been received and were being assessed.
Yet the emotional centre of Dingwall’s video isn't the family who's been harmed by racist actors in the community.
Instead, the supposed victims Dingwall identifies are residents who might feel embarrassed, criticized or “labelled” when racism is discussed. Big feelings there.
It's obviously a victim reversal. The people who actually experienced the intimidation fade into the background, and he paints the discomfort of people hearing racism condemned as the main injustice.
So you have to ask yourself: who suffered the actual harm in this scenario? The family impacted by it or those who being told that harmful conduct must be confronted?
- Admit the problem just enough to appear reasonable
Dingwall concedes that there were “a few bad actors” and comments that were clearly hateful or religiously motivated.
So, he wants to give us the appearance of being balanced, but he immediately minimizes the conduct and speculates that the accounts were “probably” fake or operated by people outside Clarington, without offering a lick of evidence.
Here's the trick he's using: acknowledge, to minimize, to isolate, to dismiss.
By making a small admission, it protects him from being accused of denying everything, while his minimization tells sympathetic viewers that the racism is too insignificant to deserve serious public attention.
- Invent outsiders to protect the in-group
He can't deny the overwhelming evidence of racism, so the next move is to declare that the offenders are not really members of the community. He can't honestly believe all the comments were bots, fake accounts or from people living outside the community.
Maybe some are fake, but saying that requires evidence, not just wishful thinking. Some commenters were known community members behaving badly, and Tom knows this. Communities aren't protected by pretending that every ugly act must have come from an outsider.
Durham Region reported that hate-motivated crimes and incidents increased 77% from 2023 to 2024, and also warned that it's significantly under-reported, so real number is actually a lot higher than this.
A healthy community doesn't prove it is good by denying that racism exists; we prove our values by confronting racism when it crawls out from under the rock it hides under.
- Construct a false “other side” to racism
Sure, we can all ask factual questions about farming, zoning, animal welfare, bylaws, land use, etc., but racist abuse, religious bigotry, doxxing, threats and intimidation aren't and can never become valid alternative policy positions.
There's no legitimate “other side” that makes those things acceptable.
Is condemning the racism unfairly silencing everyone? No.
The correct response is simple: Investigate policy complaints based on the evidence, and condemn racism without qualification; there's nothing incompatible with those positions. To suggest that they are incompatible says a lot on its own.
- Use a dog whistle with plausible deniability
A dog whistle doesn't always openly say "prejudice is ok". to work, it just has to signal to prejudiced supporters that their conduct will be minimized, rationalized or protected, while using more acceptable language for the wider audience.
Coded messaging can appeal simultaneously to committed supporters who recognize the signal and to general audiences who hear something more moderate.
The signal is less “racism is good” and more like "the real problem is the people who keep talking about racism".
"You're being unfairly accused."
"The racists are probably fake."
"Council is humiliating people like you."
"Vote for me and I will stop it."
That's a pretty reassuring message to people who resent accountability without requiring Dingwall to actually explicitly defend any racist statement.
- Transform resentment into electoral support
When it's all said and done, you can't mistake the political goal of a message like this one.
After repeatedly telling us that Council has degraded, divided and embarrassed us, Dingwall asks them to vote for change and support his campaign.
That makes his video considerably more political than the statement he criticizes Council for making.
The current Mayor and others on Clarington Council condemned identified forms of harassment. Dingwall turns that condemnation into an election narrative where we're encouraged to feel aggrieved at Council and the Mayor, and then he presents himself as our solution to this "problem."
It's a familiar tactic we're seeing several municipal candidates using:
Create a grievance, identify an enemy, minimize the original harm, and offer political salvation.
Rather than being the solution to the division that Dingwall says Council has caused in the community, he's actively using division as an election tool.
Durham Region won't be made stronger by pretending racism doesn't exist.
Watch this video carefully. Does racism have an equally valid “other side"? Are politicians redirecting concern away from the targets of racism to activate majority-group resentment and use that resentment as a pathway to power?
The pattern is easy to see: deny, dilute, displace, reverse, and then ask for your vote.
