The federal election is still more than 10 months away, but there are growing indications it is going to be a bitter campaign based on the ugliness currently out there.

The disturbing rancor on social media will bleed into the campaign. It is being pushed by fringe elements of the political right.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become the main target of a particularly vicious kind of attack. Aspects of the political right have taken their rhetoric beyond criticism of government policies to an almost alt-right kind of intolerance.

A Facebook group calling itself the “Yellow Vest Canada” boasts 100,000 members and some of them have been posting death threats against Trudeau.

“Shoot the mother already,” read one post. “Trudeau needs to be shot,” read another.

The Yellow Vests appear to be loosely associated groups of people who are united in their anger at Trudeau and issues such as what they consider “illegal” levels of immigration.

Some yellow vest-clad protesters showed up at Trudeau’s visit to Kamloops last week. Expect to see them take on a larger presence as the actual campaign gets closer.

But the venom goes beyond Trudeau. I got a taste of some of it when I tweeted that I was impressed with Trudeau’s willingness to hold town hall meetings and face the inevitable heckling.

The reaction that tweet received was revealing. It made an astonishing 150,000 Twitter “impressions” and was commented on by almost 6,500 people.

I checked many of the comments and while a lot were supportive of Trudeau, there was a torrent of venom that had little to do with public policies and were more focused on the PM in a personal way.

In fact, a comparison could be made to the mocking, negative attacks the U.S. Republican party relentlessly aimed at Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. Something similar is developing here.

The fact that so many people weighed in to attack a particular politician (I’ve had some fairly big responses to my tweets, but nothing approaching this) suggests there is an organized effort mounting to ensure that Trudeau is associated with relentless negativity and be seen as being on the defensive as much as possible to defend his reputation.

Throw in potentially divisive issues such as immigration, multiculturalism and climate change and the stage is being set for an election campaign that will be poisonous to say the least.

The federal NDP, beset by fundraising problems and lackluster leadership, seems to be sinking below the waves and a chunk of its voting base will likely stay home or turn to the federal Liberals.

This will panic the federal Conservatives, who will likely push further to the right.

In many ways, the federal election campaign has already begun. There are times you may want to avert your eyes.

Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC.