Challenging Petro-Nationalism: Another Canada Is Possible?

Abstract

Canada’s fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, and affectively powerful forms of petro-nationalism to promote extractivism as a public good and demonize critics as anti-Canadian. This article investigates how industry critics and pipeline opponents have responded to this appropriation and instrumentalization of Canadian national identity. It conducts a multi-modal survey of the Facebook communication strategies of a broad spectrum of progressive English-Canadian civil society groups (political parties, environmental groups, Indigenous organizations, think tanks, labour groups, and alternative media) with a focus upon how Canada is represented. While some groups develop alternative accounts of the nation, they tend to be technocratic and depoliticized. Conversely, more politicized organizations that cultivate left-populist mobilization against extractivism and its state and corporate elites generally avoid framing their communication around ideas of the nation and signifiers of national identity. The article concludes by speculating upon the value and prospects of scaling up left-populist narratives around energy and climate in mounting a stronger challenge to petro-nationalism.