Today’s extremely Toronto Politics Twitter episode concerns the ongoing #BBQAnon clownshow in town. A barbecue restaurant got a lot of media attention recently when they defiantly refused to cooperate as the province imposed new public health restrictions on indoor dining during a new COVID-19 lockdown: the local right wing press hailed the restauranteur as a “barbecue revolutionary” fighting for “the little guy” but this spectacle wound up giving media oxygen to some of the darkest forces in the city, including the anti-mask/anti-vaccine brigade and the far right.

Guest Daniel Reynolds is a writer and critic who also works for the City of Toronto as a traffic planner: he and host Jesse Hawken discuss this dystopian story of civic paranoia and media gaslighting and frame it within the context of a classic science-fiction parable, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a tale told four times so far by Hollywood, most notably in the masterful 1978 version by Phillip Kaufman, starring Donald Sutherland as a public health inspector!

Plus: Jesse runs an exciting local heritage proposal past Daniel for the redevelopment of the Dufferin & Dupont area that no resident of downtown Toronto will want to miss!

Find out more about what Daniel Reynolds is up to here:

https://www.akareynolds.com/