Is Danielle Smith a Monster?

“The old world is dying, and a new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” - Antonio Gramsci

Danielle Smith is, indeed, a monster.

The headline sounds inflammatory. It isn’t. It is a precise description of the political moment Alberta now inhabits. Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously warned that when an old political order is dying and a new one has not yet been born, “monsters” appear—figures who both emerge from instability and deepen it. Smith is such a monster.

That is where we are. The time between the new and the old, the “interregnum” as Gramsci called it. The post-1945 global order is ruptured, as Prime Minister Mark Carney noted in his controversial Davos speech a few months ago. In fact, it has been rupturing for years, as illustrated by the political emergence of President Donald Trump in 2015. His MAGA populism has reshaped American politics. Years ago, it began drifting across the border into Canada, landing most forcefully in Alberta.

The Alberta premier describes herself as a libertarian populist. Libertarianism and populism are, by their nature, disruptive political forces. Libertarianism seeks to strip back the state—reducing regulation, constraining institutions, and elevating individual autonomy over collective restraint. Populism, by contrast, seeks to bypass or override those same institutions, claiming to speak directly for “the people” against elites, experts, and intermediaries.

One weakens the machinery of governance; the other delegitimizes it. Combined, they do not balance each other. They compound. The result is a politics that treats institutional guardrails not as essential features of democracy, but as obstacles to be removed or ignored. Political scientists call this form of politics authoritarian libertarianism.

It sounds contradictory. It isn’t. It is a governing style that shrinks institutional constraint while concentrating political power. The state is weakened where it regulates markets, enforces standards, or constrains economic actors. It is strengthened where it can override rights, pressure institutions, and act decisively in the name of “the people.” What disappears is not power, but restraint.

That is why Danielle Smith is a Gramscian monster. She is not simply navigating the interregnum. She is governing in a way that accelerates it—loosening the guardrails of democracy while normalizing a more discretionary, more personalized use of executive authority.

This argument rests on evidence, not rhetoric. Three examples illustrate how that dynamic is already reshaping Alberta’s political system.

Eroding Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law

Smith’s approach to the judiciary goes beyond criticism into active political conditioning. Legal experts warn that her rhetoric misrepresents how Canada’s courts function, framing judges as partisan actors and elevating elected officials above constitutional constraint. That is not a neutral argument. It invites the public to distrust the very institution designed to check executive power.

This is how authoritarian libertarianism operates. It does not dismantle courts. It delegitimizes them. By attacking judicial credibility and blurring constitutional roles, it weakens a core democratic safeguard.

“Our justice system relies on public confidence to work. If the public stops believing that the justice system is a place that they can get justice, then we risk people not going to the courts for justice, but looking for it through other mechanisms—which can be a very dangerous situation,” Canadian criminal lawyer Michael Spratt told Energi Media.

The danger is not a single statement. It is the steady erosion of public confidence in the rule of law.

The Notwithstanding Clause

The notwithstanding clause is constitutional. Its routine use is not.

Smith’s government has moved to deploy it preemptively, shielding legislation from judicial review before courts can assess its legality. That bypass matters. Courts force governments to justify their actions with evidence and legal argument. The clause removes that discipline.

As one legal expert put it: “When you normalize the use of the notwithstanding clause, it reduces the protections afforded to Canadians… those are core to the Canadian identity. And the notwithstanding clause allows governments to get around those protections.”

This is how authoritarian libertarianism works. Not by breaking rules, but by corrupting them. Making exceptions routine. Targeting vulnerable groups like transgender youth through legislation such as the Health Statutes Amendment Act and related laws restricting gender-affirming care, education, and sports participation—measures the government later shielded from court challenge using the notwithstanding clause.

Smith’s government also invoked the notwithstanding clause to end the 2025 teachers’ strike, pre-emptively insulating its back-to-work legislation from Charter challenge. The dispute was politically inconvenient—disruptive classrooms, mounting public pressure—but not constitutionally extraordinary. Rather than justify the law in court, the government chose to bypass that scrutiny altogether.

That decision matters. It signals that rights protections can be set aside when they conflict with political timelines. What should be an exceptional measure becomes an instrument of convenience. And once that precedent is established, future governments inherit it, ready to be used again when expediency outweighs restraint.

Separatist Leverage

Smith does not openly campaign for separation. She does something more effective.

As one political scientist put it, she is “Schrödinger’s separatist”—simultaneously denying and enabling the project, depending on the audience. She operates within normal institutions while creating space for others to advance a more radical agenda. Referendum rules are loosened. Separatist rhetoric is legitimized. The conversation moves from the fringe into the centre of provincial politics.

That shift matters.

Historically, Alberta premiers confronted Ottawa but did not encourage secessionist movements. That boundary has been crossed. The result is not formal separation policy, but something more ambiguous and more powerful: a persistent, credible threat.

The evidence suggests this is not driven primarily by concrete grievances. The desire for a different political order often comes first, with grievances assembled afterward to justify it. That makes the movement flexible, adaptive, and difficult to resolve.

This is how authoritarian libertarianism leverages instability.

The threat is never meant to be settled—only maintained. It pressures institutions, reframes political conflict as existential, and conditions the public to accept more radical outcomes.

In that environment, the question is no longer whether separation will happen.

It is how long it can be used as a weapon.

Donald Trump is a Monster

Donald Trump is the clearest contemporary example of a Gramscian monster. He did not simply emerge from the breakdown of the post-1945 order—he has accelerated it. As political scientist Stewart Prest argues, Trump has systematically weakened the institutional constraints that define liberal democracy, from sidelining Congress to reshaping the judiciary into a body that “no longer operates as an effective check.” (thewalrus.ca)

This is what interregnum looks like in practice. Power does not need to abolish institutions to dominate them. It only needs to neutralize their ability to constrain. Under Trump, democratic structures remain intact in form but are increasingly compromised in function. Elections occur. Courts sit. Legislatures meet. But the balance between them shifts toward executive discretion.

Trump’s populism provides the justification. He claims direct authority from “the people,” positioning institutional limits as illegitimate obstacles rather than essential safeguards. That framing licenses escalation. Each breach of convention becomes easier to defend. Each constraint becomes easier to ignore.

Trump is not a historical outlier. He is a prototype—demonstrating how democratic systems can be hollowed out from within during a period of systemic instability. That is what makes him a Gramscian monster.

This is the model now diffusing outward. And it’s not hard to draw parallels between Smith and Trump, a man she has openly admired.

So, Is Danielle Smith a Monster?

Unquestionably. This is not a partisan critique. It is a structural diagnosis. Danielle Smith governs within constitutional boundaries. She wins elections. The system, formally, remains intact.

That is precisely the point.

Gramscian monsters do not arrive after collapse. They emerge while the system still functions, while institutions exist but their authority is thinning.

In Alberta, the incentives are now clear. Identity fuses with industry. Grievance becomes governance. Exceptional powers become routine. Institutional friction is reframed as illegitimacy.

This is how democratic systems are corrupted. Not through rupture, but through repetition. Each decision is defensible. Each escalation is incremental. But together, they shift the operating assumptions of the system. What once required justification becomes normal. What once constrained power becomes negotiable.

This is interregnum in motion. The question is no longer whether Alberta has crossed the threshold.

The real question is, Who will leash the monster before it destroys Alberta and, perhaps, Canada?