Did the Chinese Communist Party interfere in the past two Canadian elections? A fantastic series of leaks from Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) over the winter of 2022/23 suggests so. The leaks point to a vast CCP campaign of political interference that Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government allegedly covered up. It has been a major scandal: a Liberal MP named Han Dong was forced to resign from his party in the aftermath, and reports suggest that a “network” of two dozen candidates and staffers were affected.
The saga isn’t over yet. David Johnston, a “special rapporteur” appointed by Trudeau to investigate the matter in March 2023, quit just three months later, blaming a “highly partisan atmosphere around my appointment and work”. Yet he was hardly the ideal candidate, coming across as a pal of both Trudeau and the CCP. Social media abounded with pictures of him beaming next to Chinese officials including Xi Jinping, who he’d met more than once while serving as the late Queen’s representative to Canada. Trudeau, meanwhile, described Johnston as a “family friend”.
China’s interference in Canadian politics has allegedly taken many forms. There are accusations of officials bussing in Chinese students to vote in Liberal Party nominations and whispers of covert donations, compromised staffers and the intimidation of political candidates and activists.
Before his resignation in June, Johnston issued a lengthy paper addressing the principal allegations. This included a quietly damning verdict on Han Dong: “Irregularities were observed with Mr Dong’s nomination in 2019, and there is well-grounded suspicion that the irregularities were tied to the PRC Consulate in Toronto, with whom Mr. Dong maintains relationships.” However, Johnston’s paper contained conceptual errors, downplayed certain claims and urged against a public inquiry.
For months afterwards, Trudeau appeared keen to avoid an inquiry, while his opponents pressured him to go ahead. Michael Chong, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, became a prominent voice in favour. For Chong, the issue was personal: in 2021, the CCP had launched a campaign targeting his family in Hong Kong after he had spoken out about ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. Chong claimed that the CSIS withheld information from him about the CCP campaign, and that Trudeau also knew about it but did nothing to help. Trudeau, however, insists that he didn’t find out about it until early 2023 when it was leaked to the press. Neither version of the story is very encouraging.
In September 2023, Trudeau finally announced the “Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions”. Its public hearings began in January 2024, accompanied by classified in camera interviews and disclosures. The focus so far has been on what was known by whom and when, and why information was or was not passed on or otherwise acted upon. Looming over Trudeau is a damning insinuation: that concerns about CCP activity dissipated in a mist of procedure because that activity benefitted the Liberals.
The inquiry has not gone smoothly. In February, two diaspora groups withdrew from the process. One, Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, which claims to have been targeted by the CCP, pulled out to protest the role that three Canadian politicians were to play in the inquiry: Han Dong, former provincial cabinet minister Michael Chan, and a controversial senator, Yuen Pau Woo. The group stated that giving these figures a chance to cross-examine witnesses and access non-public evidence presented a security threat and gave them a platform for propaganda.
It is, indeed, remarkable that Han Dong has been given a privileged role in the inquiry. This is a man accused of benefitting from the CCP “coercing” busloads of private Chinese high-school students into voting for him in 2019. (Liberal nominations do not exclude those who are not Canadian citizens and allow people as young as 14 to vote.) Chan, too, is open about his “close relationships” with Chinese diplomats. Leaked CSIS intel accuses him of meeting with Chinese intelligence and orchestrating Dong’s problematic nomination. In neither case is any criminal behaviour alleged.
This surreal situation raises an important question: whose responsibility is it to prevent foreign interference? To answer it, Canadians need to consider what should count as criminal conduct in a democracy where nearly a quarter of the population was born abroad, and many retain ties with foreign governments.
The case of Kenny Chiu illustrates the delicacy of this question. From 2019 to 2021, Chiu served as MP for Steveston-Richmond East, a swing seat where more than half of the population claim East Asian ancestry. Many were born in China and Hong Kong. In the lead up to and during the 2021 election, Chiu put forward proposals for a foreign influence registry, which if implemented might have forced groups working with the CCP to publicly declare their ties. Chiu’s bill raised hairs in Beijing. On WeChat, a social media network controlled by the Chinese government, Chiu was painted as an “anti-Chinese” fanatic who wanted to force Chinese Canadians to register as foreign agents or else face deportation. His goal, according to CCP propaganda, was to destroy Canada’s relationship with China.
When Chiu first raised concerns about this online crusade against him — alongside the then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole — he was fobbed off by the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) body, which withheld information supporting his case. SITE determined that the propaganda wasn’t significant enough to publicise, nor the evidence it was “state-directed” clear enough. Yet an intelligence document tabled at the inquiry this year came to a different conclusion. It claimed that the timing and language of the campaign, as well as the fact that the outlets involved had partnerships with Chinese state media, “all suggest that these efforts were orchestrated or directed by the PRC”.
If this was the case, why did SITE belittle the issue? Such revelations expose the inadequacy of Canada’s pre-leak anti-interference systems, which operated on the basis that there is an acceptable level of interference that is determined privately in government. The existence of foreign interference campaigns below this level should not be communicated to victim candidates or the opposition, let alone to the public. The decision appears to have been that WeChat should be given the benefit of the doubt and only deemed to be involved in manipulation if very high evidentiary thresholds could be met. But who could realistically expect to receive this sort of evidence? This lies solely in the hands of the China-based CCP members running WeChat, who have vowed to “keep the Party’s secrets” and who face imprisonment should they break their oath. We are not going to get hold of it.
Meanwhile, there is strong experimental evidence that WeChat’s CCP-directed censorship and manipulation systems operate for users abroad. This was ignored or treated as insignificant in Canada, which is peculiar considering that WeChat is used by roughly one million Canadian voters.
The fate of Han Dong is no less bewildering. Sam Cooper, an investigative journalist who covers foreign interference in Canada, points to a series of meetings in 2019 between Canadian spies and Trudeau’s national security advisor. Officials have since told the inquiry that these meetings resulted in reports on Han Dong being repeatedly altered and not shared as widely or as quickly within government as they should have been. CSIS’s head was recalled to the inquiry because of a lack of clarity about the matter. Having led on its reporting and as a direct recipient of CSIS leaks, Cooper is now deep in the weeds of the scandal. He believes there may be a Watergate-scale coverup at play here.
Yet the evolution of CSIS briefings might reflect incompetence more than conspiracy. It could be that Canadian spies simply aren’t up to the task and are either making mistakes or failing to grasp the precise contours of the situation. This would fit patterns seen in other Western countries, where spooks have been struggling to follow the CCP’s influence networks. Britain’s leading spies are not alone in admitting they are playing catch-up in the fight against CCP interference and espionage.
When asked last year whether he was told about the allegations surrounding Han Dong before the 2019 election, Trudeau’s answer smacked of emotional manipulation. “There are 1.7 million Canadians who proudly trace their origin back to China,” he said. “Those Canadians should always be welcomed as full Canadians and encouraged to stand for office and […] We are extraordinarily lucky to have a member of parliament like Han Dong in our midst.” Eventually, he got to his point: “It is not up to unelected security officials to dictate who can or cannot run.”
Trudeau was careful not to make the same mistake when he faced the inquiry this April. Instead, he admitted that he had been told about Dong before the 2019 election, and that he had decided to keep Dong in place, with an eye on revisiting the matter after the election. But he never did. The Initial Report released in May of this year states that, even after interviews with Trudeau and his officials, “the specifics of any follow-up are at this point unclear, and I am not certain what steps were taken”. It is another quietly damning comment.
Throughout this mess, senior Liberals have downplayed the gravity of the CCP’s interference. As well as distracting from serious issues — raised most vociferously by Chinese Canadians — with oblique references to racism, they have been obsessive in underlining that the elections were “free and fair” overall. This seems to be an attempt to conjure up fears about a wave of Trump-style election denialism. But this is to pretend that swathes of the population have decided that CCP puppetry actually swung the election. As all Canadians who have followed this story know, that is not the point.
A second wave of hearings are set to take place in the autumn, but the inquiry will not spell the end of the matter. Earlier this month, a 90-page report by the Canadian parliament’s National Security and Intelligence Committee (NSICOP) accused unnamed Canadian parliamentarians of “witting or semi-witting” participation in foreign interference, including attempts to influence parliamentary business and “wilful blindness” in the acceptance of funds. The report names China and India as the main perpetrators, saying of the former: “the PRC believes that its relationship with some members of Parliament rests on a quid pro quo that any member’s engagement with the PRC will result in the PRC mobilising its network in the member’s favour.” The Conservatives are calling for the names of these MPs to be published, while Canada’s public broadcaster has covered this latest phase of the scandal with reference to potential “treason”. Meanwhile, both NSICOP and the public inquiry’s commissioner continue to complain that Trudeau’s cabinet is withholding information from them — lending some credence to the suspicions of Cooper and others that the Liberal party is engaged in a coverup.
For anyone remotely versed in the CCP’s strategic framework, the idea that it should seek to lay down a bridgehead abroad is nothing new. One CCP handbook that I have been reading was printed 10 years ago. It states quite plainly the CCP’s intent to turn Chinese diasporic groups into a “new force for unifying the ancestor-land and rejuvenating China”. This is a reference to the CCP’s hopes for territorial expansion in Taiwan, the South China Sea and elsewhere, which will require compliance from Western powers. The CCP hopes that ethnic Chinese people in countries such as Canada will help secure that compliance.
Most of the diaspora want nothing to do with Xi’s dictatorship, but the CCP’s financial clout and its use of intimidation, censorship and aggressive espionage mean that Chinese Canadians need proper support from governments and civil society. This is where Canada’s Liberals have clearly failed. Wherever this scandal leads, the CCP’s goals are clear, and it is in this fight for the long haul. Multicultural democracies must be too.
Sam Dunning is a writer and researcher who serves as director of UK-China Transparency, a charity that promotes education about ties between the UK and China.
samdunningo 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI met so many Annie Wilkes characters during the pandemic. They were so righteous and rigid in their beliefs. They had nothing but contempt for those who thought differently and were giddy when these people suffered. I don’t blame them though. The propaganda was overwhelming. I’ve always considered myself well informed and I really struggled with the competing narratives. The world changed for me when public health officials issued a statement approving BLM protests and no one spoke up to oppose it. That’s when I knew we were being lied to.
It was clear we were being lied to form day one. The virus had bee our in the wild since November. Wuhan is an international airport with 14m passengers a year. Had the virus been anywhere near as virulent as they would have had us believe it would have ben round the world and back again 20 times by Christmas and the dead would hve been piling up in the street long before lockdown.
Then there was the issues around masks
I do agree with you about the BLM episode, a real How Many Hats episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veUT2Dvo-Pw.
Also the author makes the insightful observation “When you’re old, and scared, and vulnerable, maybe a government folder with your name on it suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. Someone has to protect you, after all, from all those irresponsible youths who don’t understand that it’s more important to be safe than free” and I think age has a lot to do with it.
My mother used to be a person of very sound judgement, but as she has aged this has become very much less so. Twenty years ago I feel sure that she would have told them to stuff their vaccine and masks, but in 2020/21 she was fully onboard
I’ve noticed my own friends and contemporaries becoming more authoritarian and less inclined to think for themselves as we get older. Most depressing is how rarely any are able to support with evidence the bald assertions they make on topics such as climate change and, particularly, Brexit. I bet had someone asked Stephen Fry why Brexit is ‘an absolute catastrophe’ he would have struggled to answer with anything more profound than ‘queues at the airport’..
I wonder whether we all ultimately go the same way
I dunno. I’m in my 80s and more skeptical of authority than ever.
In the U.S. over a million people died from Covid. Seems to me like the virus was pretty deadly. Then you have the people who survived and are dealing with long Covid, which includes brain damage and organ damage. I’m glad I masked up even if it was not guaranteed protection.
But we’re not concerned with voluntary masking, only compulsory masking. You’re welcome to wear whatever you want.
A doctor friend of ours working at Mt. Sinai in NYC who was on the frontline from day one, described Covid as a ‘vascular disease’ – so if you were overweight or had vascular (heart) issues to begin with, you were vulnerable. Hence, the reason why many elderly died and if younger, the obese. It was as if Covid ‘culled the herd’. Yet, never once, even now, does one hear the government warn people against obesity.
Did a million people really die from Covid or did a million people die with Covid. Were you doing what they did in the UK and including anyone who died within 28 day of a positive Covid test in the statics. Also more than 3m people die each year in the US so how many of those that died were going to do so anyway within a matter of weeks and it was merely a question of what got them first.
As to long Covid, we all knew who was going to get that. Also, is it not now accepted that this was something of a myth. Of course any virus (including cold and flu viruses) can have long term health consequences for a small number of people (as can vaccines) it just rarely gets reported.
As to masks, I do not think anyone still seriously argues that they provided any protection. They were just a comfort blanket for the herd.
You must be one of those scardy boomers
No, they didn’t provide any protection. That’s why doctors use them doing surgeries and why they were already used in contagious contexts. Because they don’t provide any protection. I wore them and didn’t catch Covid (no, I never stopped going out). Maybe I’m the Messiah.
Doctors wear them to prevent spittle falling into open incisions during operations. A somewhat different scenario to people wandering about the shops. I never caught covid either, and I never work a mask. That is purely anecdotal just as is your assertion wearing one stopped you getting it. I don’t think I am the Messiah though..
The virus was deadly no question, but the threat was so spectacularly age and health specific. I got double vaxxed and I would probably do it again, but I’m 58. My healthy son was 22 and lost his job because he refused to get vaxxed. I also wore a mask when I had to, but it was an N95 that I would change maybe every three months. My masking was purely performative.
Am I the only vaccinated Republican out there? Getting vaxed allowed me to get back to traveling the world again in 2021, a year when so many other people still feared going outside.
Rejecting known good science purely as a marker of political identity is no more a good look for us than it was for the No Nukers on the left.
The numbers are misleading. Were they substantial? Yes, but I think they the top line number is misleading.
They combine people who died OF Covid with people who died WITH Covid. Important distinction.
There were, particularly early on, a lot of deaths that were reported as being Covid deaths that were presumed and not validated.
I think the thing that should give you the most pause is that doctors, just a short time after the shutdowns etc, are now treating Covid like a flu. My GP even told me that it is not a big deal, they are not even requiring masks in the office or people who show up with Covid like symptoms to mask up.
The virus did not go from a rampaging killer to just another cold overnight. The probability is that a lot of older people and people with underlying sever health conditions were exposed to virus that their bodies had never seen and we had a massive onslaught of deaths. But, younger people were largely not impacted terribly. The rest of us got it and got over it in a week or two and were back at work. I did. My fiance did. My son and daughter and my stepdaughter all did.
As for Long Covid, I imagine that there are some people who have long term effects as with any disease, particularly a novel one. But the vast majority of people just get Covid, get sick for a few days and then get better and get back to life.
How can you “not blame” those who were “giddy” at the suffering of those who thought differently about the complex questions surrounding Covid and Covid policies?
I sure as heck blame them! To be happy at other’s suffering may be the most telling marker of a person’s moral character. In the panoply of nasty surprises I experienced when seeing the events of the past three years, I was most shocked by just how MANY people were happy to lock their fellow humans into the cage of The Other. How they then justified being uncaring, if not downright giddy, over the fate and the misfortunes of those they had othered. Lost your job because you were pregnant and didn’t want to vax? Too bad, you cow. Died an agonizing death, alone? Too bad, take one for the team. Oh, wait…you were unvaccinated? Well, in that case, I’ll be dancing on your grave. Fully masked, of course.
I was careful not to say I agreed with people who were giddy at the suffering of others. It’s never okay to cheer on the misery of other people. I do understand why it happened though – they were scared witless by an unprecedented propaganda effort and they truly thought unvaxxed people were killing grandma.
“they were scared witless by an unprecedented propaganda effort and they truly thought unvaxxed people were killing grandma.”
To be fair, some people started off from a very low ‘wit’ threshold in the first place and some got to reveal their inner authoritarian…
Fair enough, and I knew you didn’t agree or approve of their conduct. If I read you correctly, when you say that you don’t blame them, it’s because it’s understandable that they were driven in that direction by the Terror Porn we were force-fed like geese being readied for a good foie gras harvest?
My reply stands in that I think that, even given the strongest possible application of propaganda, we still reveal our character by choosing to affirmatively celebrate human misery. And in the case of the Covidians, they were often happy to inflict extra misery.
Deep down I think King and his likeminded sort know what they have become and cannot face the truth. Their reaction is to double down and entrench themsevles further. I mean, they’re the good ones, right? The rebels, the ones on the right side of history, the hero of the story…
This, absolutely. The man who wrote “Sane people don’t sacrifice children on the altar of probability. That’s not science, it’s superstition.” is the same man who believes that men can be women if they only believe it strongly enough.
Yes, I believe it’s an elaborate form of cowardice.
It’s one which celebrities with large followings are particularly susceptible to, by virtue of the fact that they receive plenty of encouragement when expressing these positions, making it easier to continue to go down that road.
What a brilliant book review, and commentary on our times. Thank you Ms Rosenfield.
Indeed. KR hits a huge number of nails on the head, and it made for a rivetting read.
Agreed
I used to love his books but something changed in them years ago. I just stopped looking for his next book.
He has always been an odd bird. But being from MA I tend to find that a lot of people who live in Maine are odd birds. Its a great state for them for some reason. Maybe the isolation? I dunno.
Either way, he stopped being as story teller and became an opinion writer.
Maybe he just thinks that he has become so important that his opinion on things outside of scary stories matters.
That seems to happen to a lot of rich people and famous people.
King has bordered on lunatic in recent years.
Well we call you massholes so there! From a Mainer with Masshole roots.
And you are NOT wrong to call us that either!
There is a certain mentality that spans NJ to Boston that seems to pride itself on just how much of an ahole it can be.
Fortunatley for me? I moved out of New England 30 yrs ago and have lived in the south from Naples, FL to Atlanta to living in central Virginia for the last 15 yrs.
Think it has done my personality a lot of good. LOL
I think Kat is really getting to something here. Has anyone else noticed that some of the most horrible and destructive people in today’s world are also people who want to be seen as “good people” by others? For a good example look at those who are obsessed with “fighting fascism”. They seem to have no trouble with the merger of state and corporate power or suppressing civil liberties and they show little concern over the use of military force. The thing is if you read any of these people, they really believe they are fighting the rise of the Fourth Reich despite all evidence to the contrary. Unless we are talking about The Bulwark in which case they really are that cold blooded. Anti-racism? When you get down to it there is little difference in philosophy between Ibram X. Kendi and David Duke but guilty white liberals shell out money for nothing more than to be told “you are horrible people but you are not as bad as those terrible poor conservative white people”. Funny enough, paying your entry level workers decent wages and benefits would go a lot farther to helping minorities than a BLM hashtag on your Twitter handle. (I refuse to call it X) I probably don’t even need to go into the cognitive dissonance over Covid-19 here. I think this is why we see principled old left journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, get so much vitriol as well as the sheer hatred for groups like anti war protesters, anti globalists, and blue collar workers. They are what this thing calling the Left used to be and the modern version of it cannot change course whatsoever because that would mean they might have got something wrong and then would not be “good people”.
And they would have to give up the money to which they have become so attached
The road to hell?
I think that there are a lot of fearful people or disgusted and sad people who are just frustrated and angry at the world for not complying with their views and think it is justified to use any means, fair or foul, to achieve their ends.
OK, someone’s got to be that guy.
* Sigh*. In fairness it’s probably my turn.
So I’ll just say it: the over reaction to COVID, and the vilification and hatred directed towards ‘anti vaxxers’, ‘anti lockdowners’, ‘anti maskers’ et al, was not about a generational difference, or ‘the science’, or what media you consumed, or the values you claim, or the politics you hold. These are all just accidentals.
It was about moral cowardice: people who allowed their fear of death to crush the angels of their better nature, and mostly without a fight.
What a surprise! Turns out they’re not really tin-pot totalitarians (you need more than a timorous mob mentality for that). They’re just p*ssies.
Personally, I don’t think the rest of us need to be wary of them, other than as the slippery class of people somewhat vaguely present in the driving seat as our civilisation crashes in slow motion. I think we need to be wary of the people who would wrest power from these cowards through violence: because visible weakness has put an enormous target on our backs. BRICS? China? Or just the IRA? Or Al Qaieda? Who knows? What is clear is that the people who hold the reins of power in the West are little more than scared little boys and girls acting tough in gangs. I wouldn’t follow these useless wimps out of a rugby changing room, let alone out of a trench towards the machine guns. I don’t think I’m the only one. And this, I suggest, does not bode well.
We used to be a shining city on a hill. Turns out, as dawn rises in the (Far) East, we’re just a few floors up in a badly built and very undermined tower of Babel.
Apart from an uncanny ability to write compelling prose, King has always been an acute student of his generation. His instincts are infallible when it comes to the Boomers.
His generation is old; they were among the most vulnerable at the height of the pandemic. So now he’s playing to his audience’s fears about the virus and their health in general. If he’s trying also to atone for past literary sins, he will be disappointed. The woke religion permits no forgiveness or redemption.
Or as he has got old he has like the other boomers become more fearful
Kinda sucks to watch people who were once bold and edgy get old and fearful.
God, I hope that does not happen to me.
Every now and again I catch myself. Then I get on my motorcycle and drive fast through the countryside or I go to a Greta Van Fleet concert. LOL
I’m an unvaxxed Trump supporter in my 60s and, to the likely horror of King, never got Covid, nor did my husband, who is ditto. On the other hand, everyone I know who did get the shot(s) has had the virus, many more than once. Several young people in my orbit who submitted to the jabs have developed strange health problems: one is sick with something every other month.
Perhaps, as we discover more and more about the true origins of Covid, the lies government told about it, and the billions the pharmaceutical companies and their paid-for politicians made off the serum forced on whole populations, King will write about that horror story, and it won’t be fictional.
I have no problem with COVID and flu vaccinations. I don’t expect miracles from them. But if anything would have put me off taking them, it was the ostentatious sanctimony of those posting their mask and vaccination status all over social media.
Did they really think that was going to convince anybody? Or was divisiveness their aim all along?
The belief in them as the silver bullet, magic panacea irritated me. I had the first two shots but never supported vaccination mandates, which apparently reaches the threshold to be classed as an anti-vaxxer. Obviously they never attended how to win friends and influence people 101.
Being the secular, irreligious type that I am, I was actually fairly aghast at how a near religious cult had formed up around the vaccination program. It looked as though people needed to believe in them as some form of salvation – at the time I looked upon them as something that was helpful but ultimately unnecessary for ending lockdowns, which were an ill-thought hyperbolic overreaction – anyone not sharing this view was an infidel.
These boomers are the moronic hypocrites that tolerated thousands of street protests and riots as well as the secession of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, an unprecedent event in U.S history which was completely memory holed. The only thing worse than a neutered revolutionary is a hypocritical neutered revolutionary.
I thought that the vaccines’ effect on transmission was negligible and that they didn’t even fully prevent catching the disease, but just minimized its effects? So, I don’t really understand the belief that people who refused vaccinations were failing in some moral obligation to other citizens?
Herd immunity could also be achieved by the virus taking its natural course, and not only via vaccinations.
Am I missing something? Or are people like King just making basic objective errors?
“Billy Summers, published in 2021, features a protagonist whose inner monologue is deeply disdainful of Donald Trump, and King himself has said that The Institute is intended as an allegory for the Trump administration’s border policies.”
I can’t wait for King’s next novel,The Border, which will be an allegory of the Biden administration’s utter neglect of the rampant — and highly profitable — trafficking, rape, and extortion, of migrant families as they desperately flee their failed states, perhaps in response to Biden’s explicit invitation to invade the US: “I would in fact make sure that there is… We immediately surge to the border, all those people who are seeking asylum.” “Surge”… not apply for legal entry, but surge to the border.
And think of the cast of supporting characters! Chinese nationals, terror-listed individuals, known felons, puling Congressional bleeding hearts weeping at the border for the CNN cameras, a Homeland Security Secretary and giggling Vice President avowing that the border is “secure”, a doddering President who scoffs and shakes his head at the Fox News correspondents’ shouted questions, and the mayors of some northern cities denouncing some southern governors’ “stunt” of busing illegals into their northern cities… before begging the federal goverment to save their cities from the unsupportable influx.
Come on, Steve, start tapping that laptop!
“Which brings us back to Holly, and more particularly to its villains. This couple, these cannibals, are terrified of aging, deteriorating, dying; consuming the flesh of younger, fitter people is how they buy themselves more time. It’s a perverse inversion, to sacrifice those at the begin”
So it is actually a Covid allegory
Right on the nose, as usual. Always excited to see a Kat article!
“[King’s characters] would have loved kicking people out of their dying loved one’s hospital room in the name of social distancing protocols” and are an avatar of himself and the rest of his hive-minded group. Brilliant KR.
The casual annihilation of King’s hypocrisy with his own words in the concluding paragraphs is just fantastic. UnHerd has a few writers who consistently justify the subscription.
Superb essay. The author did a masterful job dissecting King and poking holes in his Covid beliefs. I’ve always had mixed feelings about King. He’s clearly a gifted writer, but his books tend to drag on in the middle, with hit and miss endings.
There was a time when I would purchase every new King novel purely as a matter of routine. Oftentimes I wouldn’t even know what the book was about beforehand. Even as the quality dipped, I stuck with him, whether out of blind loyalty or sheer force of habit, I couldn’t say.
But about 5-6 years ago, around the time of Sleeping Beauties, I noticed he was writing less as an author than a polemics, and a creatively impotent one at that.
I’m sure I’ll check out his recent novels at some point but his work no longer holds the allure it once did.
We need to stop conflating being educated with being merely credentialed.
I don’t entirely agree nor disagree with you on Covid (I was against lockdowns, but not against mask mandates nor social distancing), I do get what you’re saying about King. He became woke and cowardish, like when he condemned Rowling. As you say, he probably fears becoming irrelevant more than he fears becoming cancelled.
When authors use their writing as a platform to lecture the rest of us, it’s time to give up on them.
Fiction tends to suffer grievously when politicised. Just as real people do when political fiction is introduced into their lives like the deadly virus that it is. Oddly enough, exceptions in literature exist on the classic left, like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the irony being it has now long applied to the behaviour of the left, whereas when it was written it attacked McCarthyist right. But that’s the hallmark of good art.
Politics is a fiction all of its own.
American liberals are obsessed with vaccinations, face-masks and denying that such an odd disesase could have been created synthetically as a chimera virus.
Conversely, their life’s work is indeed to expose the Evildoers who question all of the above, just like the brave teenagers in S King’s “It” take on an ancient if not eternal Evil.
Naomi Klein appeared on British TV doing much the same thing, then promoting the Democratic Party.
Super interesting read. King morphing into the current political monster of the day has utterly perplexed me. Your analysis is astute and could be extrapolated to include many other famous Boomers who disappoint now.
To me, one of the most interesting points made in this article was how much the actual story of the book seemed to suffer by the stance the author applied to his writing process. It appears that the creative process collapses immediately if a message is forced onto it.
And once more, Iain McGilchrist comes to mind
Wonderful! The Stand was the first adult book I read as a twelve year old. The World According to Garp was the second. I could never put King or Irving’s books down. I wondered if I would read Holly, but I just read Irving’s The Last Chairlift and it was awful. He instructed instead of showed the gender woo! It’s so sad. His In One person came out not too long ago with similar themes, and had none of the preachiness. Although it might be problematic now Roberta in Garp and Dayna in the Stands were standouts and were believable people. It’s so sad.
Good article.
Kat Rosenfield is now my hero.
King is old and rich. Does anything more need to be said?
Pre covid, I met the occasional anti-vaccer. Usually, they were poorly-educated religious nutters.
Nowadays, these half-wits have been joined
by secular conspiracy theorists.
We should all go out and protest, about … vaccines. Down with Jenner, Pasteur et al.
Do you have nothing worse going in your lives to get excited about?
Do you realise how spoilt and pampered you seem?
Take up a hobby, for heaven’s sake. Do a poverty safari and see some real oppression. You’ve all obviously had to much time to brood. You need to get out more.