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Photo by Mary Altaffer/AP

You can’t fault the #MeToo phenomenon if some adopt its mottos while practicing the very behaviours it condemns. But the example of the wretched Schneiderman should cue some people that not everyone on that train is the passenger he (or she) claims and poses to be. Further, it should serve as a deep caution that when any movement or cause receives feverish support, the eager and near unanimous applause of Hollywood, the press and the political world, it is all the more time to be scrupulously vigilant that it neither proceeds to excess, nor is being manipulated with obnoxious or malicious intent.

The case of Erin Weir, the NDP MP for Regina-Lewvan, currently “convicted” of harassment, based on (originally) anonymous complaints to his leader, Jagmeet Singh, is instructive. As is the norm in such matters, Weir was named from the very beginning. Right away he was out in the storm. And in the atmospherics of #MeToo, at least in the public as opposed to the legal domain, to be accused is to be (almost always) deemed at fault.

In the atmospherics of #MeToo, to be accused is to be (almost always) deemed at fault

I do not see why, when an accusation is levelled against a peer, especially within an institution such as a political party where rivalries are endemic, a name or names shouldn’t be attached to accusers as well. After the accusations were lodged, Mr. Singh quickly went public with an egregiously sanctimonious declaration that “he believe(d) the survivor.” On another occasion, it was “important to always believe the survivors.”