‘Eulogy for globalist hypocrisy’: Netizens react to Canada PM’s speech on end of ‘rules-based order’

A speech by Canada’s prime minister at the World Economic Forum in Davos warning about the collapse of the US-led “rules-based order” has sparked a wave of reactions on X, with many users pointing to Western hypocrisy and years of selective morality.

Addressing political and financial elites in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Mark Carney delivered a stark message just one day before US President Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance at the forum.

His remarks openly recognized what many critics have long warned that is the fracturing of the global order championed by Washington and its allies.

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said. He acknowledged that Canada had benefited from the previous international system, including “American hegemony,” but warned that this arrangement has morphed into something far more volatile and coercive.

“Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion,” he said, describing a world in which trade and markets are used as weapons rather than shared tools.

For middle powers like Canada, Carney framed the dilemma as unavoidable. The issue, he said, is not whether to respond, but how. His proposed path lay between isolation behind fortified borders and collective action that goes beyond narrow national defenses.

“Middle powers must act together, because if we are not at the table, we are on the menu,” Carney said.

He contrasted this vulnerability with the latitude enjoyed by major powers. “Great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.”

Following the speech, journalists, activists, and commentators flooded X, with many using Carney’s remarks as an opening to condemn what they described as decades of Western double standards under US dominance.

International human rights activist Ajamu Baraka highlighted the selective outrage that defines Western responses to power. “As a result of the crude barbarism of the U.S. rogue state, the mask has been lifted revealing the rotting corpse of Western civilization,” he wrote.

Political scientist Yousef Munayyer questioned the very premise of a “rules-based order,” saying it never existed in any meaningful sense. “This buries the lead. ‘This fiction was useful’ about the rules based international order is now being openly acknowledged by those who so often pretended. So then what next? Chaos? Or actual rules based system where the rules actually apply to all? Choosing time.”

Russian media editor Margarita Simonyan dismissed the Davos address as empty posturing. “Ah yes, a banker-turned-politician delivering a tearful eulogy for globalist hypocrisy in front of Davos backdrop,” she said.

Political analyst Pascal Lottaz echoed the sentiment, noting that Western powers had long sustained the illusion of a rules-based system because it served their interests. Now, with US pressure increasingly directed at its own allies, that illusion is becoming harder to maintain. “They knew all along that the ‘Rules Based Order’ was BS but they went along because it was useful. Now multipolarity is changing the game and the coercion of the US is being directed against Western nations. So they are not happy with it anymore… is reality finally seeping in?”

Canadian political author Yves Engler focused on the gap between Carney’s rhetoric and his record. “Mark Carney just accepted a seat on Trump’s Gaza colonial board, backed kidnapping Maduro & continues Canada’s unprecedented military ties to US. Still many are praising the PM for standing up to US & defending sovereignty during today’s speech to World Economic Forum,” he wrote.

Journalist Heidi Moore pointed to Western complicity in Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians, noting that moral concern surfaced only when US coercion reached its allies. “Carney was happy to tear down the rules-based order to help Israel slaughter Palestinians. He's taking exception because NATO nations thought they were immune from being treated like Palestine.”

X user Arnaud Bertrand expressed surprise that such blunt language came from Ottawa, given Canada’s close alignment with Washington. “If you told anyone 5 years ago that Canada, of all countries, would deliver the obituary of American hegemony and exhort others to stop ‘living within the lie’ of the rules-based order, you would have been laughed out of the room.”

Journalist Barry Malone described the speech as an unusually frank admission from within the Western establishment. “One of the most remarkable things about Carney's speech is that he openly admitted that the ‘rules-based international order’ was nothing but a convenient fiction. Things truly are coming apart.”

Assal Rad said that Western discomfort stems not from principle, but from self-interest.“To be clear, ‘this bargain no longer works’ because it’s targeting them. They had no problem with a false international order that targeted and subjugated brown people.”

Journalist Dimitri Lascaris was even more direct, dismissing Carney’s words as hollow without concrete action. “Mark Carney just agreed to sit on Trump's fraudulent 'Board of Peace,' which is nothing but a cover for Israel's ongoing genocide. Carney has supported Trump's regime change operations in Venezuela and Iran. Carney agreed to raise Canada's military spending to the ruinous level of 5% of GDP, just because Trump ordered his NATO vassals to do so. Unless and until Carney's actions match his lofty Davos rhetoric, I'm not buying any of what Carney is selling.”

Carney was not alone among Western leaders voicing discomfort with Washington’s latest moves. French President Emmanuel Macron also denounced Trump’s posture on Greenland and the imposition of new tariffs on European countries, urging collective counter-measures.

Still, the dominant response online focused less on Trump himself and more on Western leaders who, for years, aligned themselves with US power when it devastated non-Western societies, only to recoil now that the same coercive methods are being turned inward.

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