Smith 2.0, Authoritarian Libertarianism, and Breaking Bad in Alberta

It's not just MAGA politics. Premier Danielle Smith has also adopted the underlying ideology of Donald Trump's movement

There’s an unfamiliar phrase creeping into our politics: “authoritarian libertarianism.” At first glance, it reads like a contradiction. How can someone champion liberty while consolidating power? How can a government praise freedom while limiting rights, dissent, institutions, and oversight?

Once you learn how authoritarian libertarianism — a term coined by American rhetoric scholar Patricia Roberts-Miller — works, the answer becomes unnervingly clear. The contradiction dissolves. And a great deal of Alberta politics suddenly snaps into place.

The essence of authoritarian libertarianism is simple: freedom for me, obedience from you. The basic idea is nicely summed up by Henry Ford’s famous aphorism: “You can have your car in any colour you like as long as it’s black.” In the case of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her American ideological doppelgänger Donald Trump, it’s “You can have as much freedom as you like as long as we approve. If we don’t approve, we’ll happily use the power of the state to coerce you into behaving appropriately.”

It is the freedom of a favoured in-group to act without constraint, paired with the willingness — even eagerness — to use the coercive power of the state against out-groups, critics, experts, minorities, and institutions. It is libertarian in rhetoric, authoritarian in execution, and grievance-driven at every turn.

This political technology is central to the American MAGA movement. Trump has used it to warp U.S. politics and begin deconstructing the federal administrative state. But authoritarian libertarianism is not a recent invention. As Roberts-Miller explained in a 2024 Energi Talks podcast interview, its history stretches back four centuries in North America, surfacing repeatedly during moments of disruption, anger, and identity threat.

What’s new is how effectively it is being imported into Canada — and how aggressively it is being adapted to Alberta.

This is the core argument of this essay: Danielle Smith has brought authoritarian libertarianism into Alberta politics, adjusted it to fit the province’s grievance-rich political culture, and is now pursuing goals that closely resemble Trump’s — breaking the administrative state, expanding private health and education, shielding incumbent industries, and implementing the evangelical Christian social agenda.

She is not building a conservative government. She is building an authoritarian-libertarian movement, Alberta is her laboratory and Albertans are her lab rats.

The Mechanics of Authoritarian Libertarianism

To understand Smith’s project, we must understand the mechanics of the ideology she is using. Authoritarian libertarianism rests on three mutually reinforcing foundations.

First, certainty without evidence. The in-group (“real Albertans,” “ordinary people,” “true conservatives”) is imagined as having direct access to truth. Evidence that contradicts these truths is dismissed as bias or corruption. Disagreement is not pluralism; it is betrayal.

Second, victimhood as moral license. The in-group is perpetually under siege — by Ottawa, by “the woke mob,” by environmentalists, by international institutions, by academics, by courts, by journalists, by activists. If the threat is existential, then any action taken in response becomes legitimate, even the erosion of democratic norms. As Roberts-Miller puts it, “If we’re victims, then there are no holds barred.”

Third, conformity over pluralism. Loyalty becomes a moral obligation; dissent becomes a sin. Institutions that check power are treated as enemies. Experts who provide unwelcome evidence are dismissed as ideological. Public servants, teachers, and scientists must align with the in-group or be vilified as threats.

This combination creates a politics that is libertarian in rhetoric, authoritarian in practice. It is a worldview that claims to cherish freedom while using the machinery of government to punish those who deviate from the in-group’s beliefs.

Why Alberta Is Fertile Ground

Some provinces shrug off grievance politics. Alberta absorbs it.

It is a province shaped by boom-bust cycles, resource dependency, battles with Ottawa, and the mythology of rugged individualism. In recent decades, Alberta’s political identity has fused with oil and gas to an extraordinary degree. Half or more of Albertans identify so closely with the industry that criticism of oil and gas is experienced not as policy disagreement but as a personal attack.

Roberts-Miller calls this identity “fusion,” an ideal environment for demagogic politics. When an industry becomes an identity, any change to that industry can be framed as an assault on the people themselves.

Add to this:

• the rise of talk-radio populism, coupled with “news media” sites like Rebel Media and the Western Standard that are nothing more than propaganda mills,

• the pandemic backlash, which unleashed the radical Yellow Vests, Freedom Convoy, anti-vax hysteria, and deep conspiracy theory rabbit holes,

• the oil and gas industry’s thwarted ambitions for rapid expansion and the infrastructure, primarily westward, needed to support it,

• a long history of what has been called “Western alienation,”

and Alberta begins to resemble the early conditions that powered the MAGA movement.

This is not accidental. Alberta has become a magnet and amplifier for the same political forces animating the American right: distrust of institutions, resentment of demographic and cultural change, and a yearning for simple answers in complex times.

Danielle Smith understood this instinctively. Before she was premier, she spent nearly a decade as a talk-radio host, a medium perfectly aligned with authoritarian-libertarian rhetoric. Talk radio often rewards outrage, oversimplification, enemy construction, and loyalty signalling. It is where libertarian authoritarianism thrives.

Smith 1.0: Importing the American Playbook

When Smith returned to politics in 2022, she rebranded herself as a “libertarian populist.” But what she was really importing was a political technology that had proven wildly effective in the United States.

The American version of authoritarian libertarianism includes:

• hostility to the administrative state and the public service,

• suspicion and suppression of experts,

• attacks on independent institutions (courts, universities, public-health agencies),

• privatization of public systems,

• unwavering support for incumbent industries (coal, oil and gas),

• heavy engagement with evangelical social conservatives,

• and grievance-driven mobilization through constant claims of persecution.

Smith replicated all of these features, with adjustments for the Canadian context.

Where Trump rails against “the deep state,” Smith attacks Alberta’s “unelected bureaucrats.” Where Trump champions fossil fuels as a cultural identity, Smith turns oil and gas into the beating heart of Alberta nationalism. Where Trump courts white evangelicals, Smith courts Alberta’s Christian nationalists. Where Trump screams about liberal elites, Smith rails against Ottawa and “federal overreach.”

The vocabulary is different. The method is identical.

Smith 2.0: Governing Like an Authoritarian Libertarian

There is an important difference between Trump and Smith.

Trump 1.0 tested constitutional and political guardrails, but also surrounded himself with some advisors and cabinet secretaries who were competent and committed to the idea of the United States of America as described in the Constitution. He discovered that “draining the swamp” isn’t easy. The U.S. federal bureaucracy is massive, complex, and structurally resistant to radical overhaul. Trump 2.0 is a different animal altogether. He and his team, led by Steve Miller and Steve Bannon, appointed unqualified sycophants whose only virtue was loyalty to Trump. And his campaign to blow up, jackhammer, and throw sand into the gears of America’s machinery government is well advanced.

Smith, by contrast, governs a Canadian province, a jurisdiction where the premier has more direct control over most of the machinery of daily governance: health care, education, natural resources, regulators, and municipalities.

Where Trump fought institutions, Smith can simply restructure them. Where Trump battled the courts, Smith can invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to suspend constitutional rights and strip courts of oversight. Where Trump struggled to replace civil servants, Smith can hire, fire, reorganize, and politicize the public service at will.

This is why Smith has moved far more quickly than Trump ever could.

Across her first three-plus years, she has:

• “re-organized” Alberta Health Services,

• shifted the health system toward private delivery,

• attacked teachers’ unions and expanded taxpayer-support for private schools,

• politicized university governance,

• vociferously attacked federal climate policy using “sovereignty” rhetoric,

• and promoted COVID conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine activists.

Every one of these moves aligns with the authoritarian-libertarian strategy:
weaken institutions, centralize power, reward loyalists, punish opponents.

This is how an American political technology becomes a Canadian governing strategy.

The Grievance Machine

Authoritarian libertarianism runs on grievance. It requires a constant supply of enemies to justify its actions. Smith’s political talent lies in her ability to generate, amplify, and weaponize grievance on demand.

Sometimes Ottawa is the villain. Sometimes the courts. Sometimes teachers. Sometimes doctors. Sometimes municipalities. Sometimes universities. Sometimes the media. Sometimes environmentalists. Sometimes transgender Albertans. Sometimes the “woke mob.” Sometimes unnamed global conspirators.

The target changes, but the narrative remains the same: “They are attacking us. Only I will defend you.”

Smith’s construction of Alberta as a perpetual victim serves several strategic purposes.

It energizes the base; delegitimizes critics; justifies extraordinary measures; binds supporters to her through identity, not policy; and it distracts from policy failures by shifting the battlefield to culture war terrain.

This is grievance as governance.

The Role of Separatism

Separatism fits neatly into this project, but not in the way many assume.

Smith is not a separatist. She is a grievance entrepreneur.

Separatism is simply one political tool in her arsenal — a way to intensify anger, mobilize activists, discipline moderates, and frame Ottawa as an existential threat.

The Alberta Sovereignty Act, for example, is not a step toward leaving Canada. It is a method of consolidating provincial power, undermining federal authority, and asserting unilateral executive prerogative.

Separatism is the smoke; authoritarian libertarianism is the fire.

What Comes Next

Roberts-Miller is clear: authoritarian libertarianism has a long history, and it rarely ends well. It drives societies toward polarization, institutional decay, and democratic erosion. It incentivizes bad decision-making and punishes compromise. It corrodes pluralism from within.

Alberta is now a test case.

If Smith’s project succeeds — if she normalizes the use of the Notwithstanding Clause, if she pushes health and education toward two tiers, if she hands over the integrity of regulators to the regulated, if she entrenches grievance politics at the centre of governance — then versions of this movement will spread. Saskatchewan will follow. Manitoba may follow. Parts of Ontario, BC, and Atlantic Canada could follow.

If Smith’s project fails, it will likely fail in the classic way: in conflict, chaos, and institutional wreckage.

But authoritarian-libertarian movements do not collapse neatly. They collapse suddenly. And rarely gently.

The Antidote: Pluralism, Evidence, and Democratic Literacy

The cure, Roberts-Miller argues, is not simply “talking to each other” or holding more town halls. It is rebuilding the habits of democratic pluralism: the acceptance of disagreement, the discipline of evidence, the willingness to engage in fair argument, the humility to admit uncertainty, and the courage to defend institutions even when they frustrate us.

It also means rejecting the seductive simplicity of “with us or against us.” We can support oil and gas workers without denying the energy transition. We can criticize Ottawa without fantasizing about exit. We can demand a competent provincial government without accepting a politics built on fear.

Authoritarian libertarianism tells us that complexity is the enemy and freedom lies in submission. Pluralism reminds us that democracy is difficult — but necessary.

And that our freedom depends not on the power of a single leader, but on the strength of the institutions we build together.

If we care about the future of Alberta, and the future of Canada, then we cannot afford to ignore the political technology that is reshaping our politics. We must understand it. We must expose it. And we must resist the temptation to trade pluralism for grievance, or freedom for certainty.

The stakes could not be higher.