It’s always gratifying when real life actors conspire to validate claims that an author makes in the abstract realm. Thus did I experience a blush of pundit’s pride upon observing the protestors who assembled in downtown Toronto in advance of Steve Bannon’s Munk Debate with David Frum on Friday night. Just days before, I had noted progressives’ now-epidemic habit of labeling everyone they dislike as a—real, not figurative—Nazi. And now, just days later, here I was, in a security line outside Roy Thomson Hall, surrounded by hundreds of protestors declaring Bannon to be a Nazi, and we audience members to be on moral par with Hitler’s followers. Some of the placards betrayed signs of haste—including signs held up by a couple that read, “Fuck You Nazis,” and “Nazis, Get Fucked,” on matching sides of a grease-stained pizza box. But the sentiment came through loud and clear: It’s 1933. Which side are you on?

Fortunately, the scene inside the debate hall—where 2,800 audience members had assembled to see Frum and Bannon debate the resolution, “The future of western politics is populist not liberal”—did not quite align with the Nazi Party Congress. The Nazis took a decidedly uncharitable view toward dissidents and hecklers. But when two protestors interrupted the debate by unfurling banners from balconies and (in one case) loudly denouncing us as racists, they received polite applause for their moxie. Indeed, moderator Rudyard Griffiths informed the first that she was welcome to stay, banner and all, if she would simply stop yelling. It was only when she kept on jabbering that two officers escorted her out with all the gentleness of an elderly relative being walked to her pew at a wedding. Clearly, these officers would never have cut it as brownshirts.

Had these interlopers stuck around, they’d have seen a good debate (entirely free of Nazi propaganda). While Frum and Bannon debated each other to a draw, they managed to shine considerable light on the nature of modern populism. And in so doing, they said many things about the state of North American society that, I dare say, the protestors themselves would have found surprisingly persuasive.