Is ‘Paw Patrol’ capitalist propaganda? This professor on the CBC thinks so.

I put it on for a few hours a day to distract my toddler while I try to get something – anything – done around the house. But while I thought that she was learning about teamwork, friendship, and helping her community, lo and behold, she was learning to support the capitalist patriarchy. Or so says a professor interviewed by the CBC’s Rebecca Zandbergen.

In an interview with criminology professor Liam Kennedy, he lays out – much to my surprise – how the repetitive children’s show is turning our tikes into tiny-tea-partiers and miniature minarchists.

“He [my son] has now internalized my feelings about the series and knows that we don’t in fact watch Paw Patrol in our house,” said the professor on the CBC’s London Mornings show.

The professor didn’t just stop his own son from watching the capitalist cartoon. He published an entire report on it: ‘Crime, Conservation and Corporatization in Paw Patrol’. In it, he lays out just how this pack of pups is brainwashing Canada’s children.

“I’ll start with the depiction of the state. Mayor Humdinger and Mayor Goodway — kind of the representatives of the state or the government – are portrayed negatively. Mayor Humdinger is portrayed as unethical or corrupt. Mayor Goodway as hysterical, bumbling, incompetent.”

Ostensibly, the professor believes that any portrayal of government officials as anything other than ethical, calm, collected and competent, is dangerous.

“She immediately calls the Paw Patrol…and so I would argue that the Paw Patrol – as a private corporation – is used to help provide basic social services in the Adventure Bay community…That’s problematic in that the Paw Patrol creators are sending this message that we can’t depend on the state to provide these services. That private corporations – private enterprise – can provide these services to the community.”

Kennedy also felt that the fictional children’s cartoon was not overly realistic in its portrayal of Chase, the German Shepherd police dog.

“It was a show, kind of emphasizing the benevolence of police officers, and, that struck a chord with me. You know, I felt that that wouldn’t speak to a lot of radicalized and marginalized communities, families and children.“

With two German Shepherds in our home, it’s not surprising that Chase was my two-year-old’s favourite character. She even calls their collars “Pup Tags” now. But our dogs have not yet engaged in any racist brutalization of the minorities living in our neighbourhood. To help our toddler see Chase for the capitalist pig that he is, we will consider starting a “Poodle Lives Matter” campaign the next time we’re at the dog park.

To be fair to the CBC’s Rebecca Zandbergen, she didn’t appear to buy the theory hook-line-and-sinker.

“So even if what you’re saying is true…how susceptible might a three, a two, a four-year-old be to these underlying messages that you say exist?”

The professor seems to think very susceptible.

“Some children may internalize messages about mistrust of the state. Or, this show puts a lot of responsibility on individuals to go out and recycle, to protect the environment. It places a lot of faith in private corporations…”

What a libertarian hellscape, where individuals are expected to take responsibility for their impact on the world, and not rely on the government to do everything for them.

Zandbergen thought this line of argument a bit much even for a CBC audience.

“There are some good messages, in encouraging people to recycle, right?“

Professor Kennedy wasn’t having any of it.

“I mean I think everybody should recycle, but I think we should also depend on the state to facilitate that recycling process…”

Zandbergen to her credit pressed on, asking if there was “anything redeeming about the show?” What about, “No job is too big, no pup is too small?”

“To me that’s an individualist message. Pull up your boot straps. You can do it if you just try hard enough. That kind of message ignores structural barriers in our society and not everyone can do it.”

Zandbergen’s interview has been widely shared in Canadian conservative and libertarian online circles, possibly because the CBC’s headline, “Does Paw Patrol encourage our kids to embrace capitalism?” appears to be an implicit endorsement of the professor’s thesis. At most news outlets, headlines are written by editors, and not authors, and this appears to be most likely the case here. In fact, Zandbergen appears to be politely holding back her laughter during the on-air interview.

But if Zandbergen wasn’t particularly convinced by the professor’s post-modernist intersectionalism, someone at the CBC appears to have been.

But maybe the professor does have a point. Paw Patrol – much as it annoys me as it plays in the background – is teaching our children something: mistrust of state, individual responsibility, and voluntary community mindedness.

So I’ll keep on a little longer today. With any luck, my daughter won’t grow up to be a professor writing intersectional nonsense on the government dime.

You can watch the full CBC interview HERE.

Derek Fildebrandt is Publisher of the Western Standard, and President & CEO of Wildrose Media Corp.