On February 19, 2022, the hashtag #BlackfaceHitler is trending across Social Media platforms such as @instagram & @twitter. The hashtag has been used to primarily promote opposition to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s direction regarding the handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In posting about this trend on my Instagram and Flickr, I chose not to share the images I saw, but I did describe them in detail. But, to help provide a clear context for why I was upset, and for why I posted about this online, I am going to post the two images here.

Justin Trudeau: BlackFace Nazi?

This was the very first image I saw today on Instagram, by an account I actually really like. And when others as well as myself commented about why we didn’t like the image, it was eventually taken down by the account in question. But the FITgirlonFIRE account still has the image on her feed.

The post itself calls on people to “Let’s keep #BlackFaceHitler trending shall we?” Formally, this collage presents two columns of five photos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a block of white text on a black background appearing in the middle of the second column.

In terms of the content of the image, the top two images are unedited photos of a young Justin Trudeau wearing blackface (which Trudeau apologized for and admitted as being real during the 2019 Federal Canadian Election). The bottom three photos are of Trudeau, purportedly wearing 1930s and ‘40s Nazi style uniforms worn by individuals serving the German Government of Adolph Hitler. And the text in the middle of the right hand column of the collage reads: “Trudeau throwing around the word ‘racist’ when he was dressed in ‘Black Face’ and as a Nazi multiple times.”

This was the second image I saw today related to the #BlackFaceHitler hashtag, as found on Twitter. Normally, I would have taken a screenshot of the Tweet in question, and even copied a link to it, but in this case I didn’t.

Nevertheless, this image for me is a bit more problematic than the first one.

Formally, the image is a single shot of Trudeau appearing in the middle of the frame, and looking at the viewer. His uniform appears outrageous, in bright shades of pinks and purples. Behind Trudeau, lies a field of cut grasses, a roadway, more grasses, and further off, a grouping of trees.

In terms of the photo’s content, the most glaring thing about the photo is the ridiculousness of his uniform. The rainbow swastika stands out prominently in the image, as does the male gender symbol ( ♂) which appears in the centre of Trudeau’s hat.

Specifically, these uniform changes seem to want to present Trudeau first and foremost as being both soft and weak. Furthermore, it’s safe to assume that perhaps the creator of this image is trying to attack the Trudeau Liberal’s past support and campaign promises targeting the LGBTQ Community, even though it took almost seven years for Parliament to ban ‘conversion therapy,’ and even conservative publications such as THE National Post have criticized the Trudeau Liberal’s for not walking the talk of their own rhetoric when it comes to delivering on LGBTQ promises.

The above images certainly appear shocking, especially the ones in the first collage - which really do appear as though they could feature Trudeau dressed up as a Nazi on at least three different occasions, similar to the amount of times Trudeau was found to have worn blackface.

Enter, Major Talbot Papineau…

The thing is though, Trudeau has never dressed as a Nazi multiple times. Trudeau did wear a Canadian World War 1 uniform when he played Major Talbot Papineau, a French-Canadian First World War hero, in director Brian McKenna's 2007 film called THE GREAT WAR. Papineau, who had been a lawyer in Quebec, enlisted in August 1914 to fight for allied forces in WW1. He died at the young age of 34 in the Battle of Passchendaele near Ypres in Belgium. You can read more about Papineau in Sandra Gwyn’s book, “Tapestry of War: A Private View of Canadians in the Great War.”

In my photo collage here, you can see a photo of Major Papineau in the upper right hand corner. The other photos are of Trudeau portraying Papineau on the set of THE GREAT WAR. These three images are also the most common images that are being altered using programs like Adobe Photoshop to make Trudeau’s WW1 uniform look like Nazi uniforms.

In summary, specific alterations include:

adding swastikas & other Nazi emblems to the uniform Papineau would have worn;
making the uniform look grey over the olive green that it originally would have been; and
removing more of the moustache Trudeau wore while playing Papineau, to try and make Trudeau look more like German Nazi Chancellor Adolph Hitler.

Ultimately all of these altered images dehumanize not just Trudeau but:

the memory of fallen war hero Major Talbot Papineau;
the memory of those who fought for Canada during World War 1 and 2; as well as
the LGBTQ+ Community.