The Pro Wrestling Era of Politics 

Alberta politics is best explained by professional wrestling.

I am not referring to Naheed Nenshi’s Mean Street Posse-inspired sweater vests, but rather the United Conservative Party’s tendency to ignore substantive issues and instead build loyalty through exaggerated storylines of good guys and bad guys.

It’s a classic wrestling play — pick a side between “babyface” and “heel” and pretend the stakes are existential. The strategy rests in a single word, kayfabe, which essentially means staying in character to convince spectators that the rivalries and gimmicks are real. At its core, kayfabe is all about reality construction — who’s good, who’s bad and who’s willing to believe the narrative. Over the last decade, political scientists have adopted the term to describe the rise of Trumpism — particularly its reliance on grandstanding and “us vs. them” grievances to gain popularity. And as Premier Danielle Smith increasingly borrows from the MAGA playbook to excite the conservative base, it was only a matter of time before “politics of kayfabe” became the norm here, too.

Photo collage sourced from WWE/NXT and Alberta Government/Flickr

We’ve been cruising toward kayfabe politics since 2016. That’s when Jason Kenney — borrowing Jeff Jarrett’s cowboy hat and Stone Cold’s pickup truck — started convincing Albertans that their hardships had nothing to do with 44 straight years of conservative governance, and everything to do with the tag-team heels Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who’d only been on the job for a year.

But the UCP fully committed to the bit under Smith, starting with the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act in 2022 — a logically impossible but narratively perfect setup for a never-ending feud with Ottawa. This has since expanded to include a rotating cast of new heels: vulnerable transgender youth reframed as a province-wide moral crisis; school librarians cast as the face of ideological corruption; and immigrants, once touted as the solution to economic growth, flipped heel when the narrative of system strain needed a villain.

The goal is to generate what wrestling promoters call “heat”: outrage and loyalty that keep the audience invested in the feud. And in kayfabe politics, that heat has a purpose — to keep the story moving, and distract from less convenient realities, like, say, corruption scandals or a $9.3-billion deficit.

It’s tempting, in the face of kayfabe conservatism, to slip on a singlet and head for the ring. But in this era of polarization and misinformation, we don’t need more heels and chair shots. But what we can take from this moment is that people want engaging political commentary that they can actually follow, that has real stakes and, yes, that they can cheer for without being pulled into a manufactured narrative.

Delivered to your inbox every Sunday, each issue of Forward Weekly cuts through the noise with what matters, layering in sharp, sometimes irreverent analysis and spotlighting the cultural and political voices shaping this province. Each week, we will give you the news you need to stay involved and point you toward real ways to take action. In the first few issues you’ll find video essays by comedian Henry Sir and commentator Troy Pavlek, op-eds by authors Kelley Korbin and David Berry, and political cartoons by artists like Raymond Biesinger.

These are voices that can make you think and laugh, even when — especially when — things are heavy.

It's time for progressives to stop getting sucked in by kayfabe and know where the fight really is.

Welcome to Forward Weekly.

Omar Mouallem
Editor
editor@forwardweekly.ca