Anne Coulter, Tom Tancredo and Controlled Controversy

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In April of 2009 U.S. Republican Tom Tancredo was supposed to speak at the University of North Carolina.

According to the Raleigh News and Observer

Before the event, campus security removed two women who delayed Tancredo's speech by stretching a 12-foot banner across the front of the classroom. It read, “No dialogue with hate.”

Police escorted the women into the hallway, amid more than 30 protesters who clashed with the officers trying to keep them out of the overcrowded classroom. After police released pepper spray and threatened the crowd with a Taser, the protesters gathered outside Bingham Hall.

Police spokesman Randy Young said the pepper spray was “broadcast” to clear the hallway. He said officers' use of force was under investigation by the department. But campus visitors and some faculty members in the capacity crowd of 150 urged the students to let Tancredo speak.

The protesters relented, and Tancredo began to speak, describing failed state and federal legislation aimed at providing in-state tuition benefits for undocumented immigrants. Two women stretched out another banner, first along one of the aisles and then right in front of Tancredo. Tancredo grabbed the middle of the banner and tried to pull it away from one of the girls. “You don't want to hear what I have to say because you don't agree with me,” he said.

The sound of breaking glass from behind a window shade interrupted the tug-of-war. Tancredo was escorted from the room by campus police. (1)

Tancredo was a controversial Republican candidate for the presidency. He is strongly anti-immigration and once suggested bombing mosques in the Middle East as a deterrent for another attack on the U.S.

He is also the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization, a group financed through the Leadership Institute of Morton Blackwell. According to YWC there were about 300 protesters at UNC that night, and even the professors were encouraging the students. They also claimed that they threw rocks through windows smashing them. But according to the news report one window to the classroom where Tancreno was speaking, was broken when an over zealous protester pounded on the glass.

He later apologized and was dealt with.

However, given the expected volatile nature of his visit, why did they have him speak in such a small classroom? Why not one of the halls? The university did not try to prevent him from appearing.

It's called controlled controversy and it's one of the techniques taught in the Campus Leadership Training program at the Leadership Institute.

Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell, this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans," says CLP director Dan Flynn. (2)

The Youth for Western Civilization, which has been cited as a hate group, for their pro-white messages, hosted Trancedo because they knew he would rile the student groups. They advertised heavily and deliberately made sure that the venue would not house everyone wanting to attend. Most of the people in the audience were "silent protesters".

When he spoke, they turned their chairs around, so he would be speaking to their backs. Tancredo himself, was the first to make a move when he grabbed the banner the girls were holding up. This angered those outside the classroom and the police had to quiet them with the 'threat' of a tasar which they shot into the air creating an arch.

I saw the video and it was a heated exchange, but not a violent exchange. I believe the only people hurt were the man who accidentally put his fist through the glass and Tancredo when an officer stepped on his toe.

And despite the fact they claimed that the university professors were involved, they were actually trying to quiet the students down and told them to "let him speak."

But it worked beautifully. Because despite the fact that Tancredo's message was against multiculturalism, the news the next day was about the "extreme left wing groups," their violent protests and their attempt to silence free speech. The university publicly apologized and the YWC snickered and high-fived, as they had carefully engineered themselves into becoming the 'victims'.

Anne Coulter and a Little Controlled Controversy

Ann Coulter is the controversial American comedian, in the Howard Stern vein. Her shtick is gay and Muslim baiting.

Popular during the Bush administration , it would appear that she was past her prime. That stuff is only funny to those who find it funny, for a while, and then it just gets tired and old.

But then a group calling themselves the International Free Press Society in conjunction with the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, sponsored her visit to three Canadian Universities: Western, Ottawa and Calgary.

Before the Ottawa event, a $250.00 a plate dinner was held for Conservative supporters, sponsored by the Ottawa Campus Conservatives and arranged by Ashley Scorpio, who is listed in the government's electronic directory, as a "... staffer working in the office of Conservative MP Gerald Keddy. She has also worked for Ontario Conservative MP Patrick Brown and was once an administrative assistant in the Harper PMO". (3)

Because of her books and columns, bashing anyone not a neoconservative, the Provost of the University of Ottawa sent Coulter a letter with a gentle reminder that Canada had tougher hate speech laws than the United States, so she should be mindful of that.

Just what her team had hoped for. Ezra Levant went nuts and turned the whole thing into a three-ring circus. According to him there were 2000 violent protesters all after her head. So threatening were they, that poor Ms. Coulter had to cancel the event because the Ottawa police warned her that they could not offer her protection.

Apparently her new shtick is making stuff up, and her side shtick Ezra Levant, played the bumbling clown.

First, contrary to what Coulter seems to suggest in a brief phone interview with Macleans.ca scribe Colby Cosh, it was not the police who "shut it down." I spoke with Ottawa Police Services media relations officer Alain Boucher this morning, and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was her security team that made the decision to call off the event. "We gave her options" -- including, he said, to "find a bigger venue" -- but "they opted to cancel ... It's not up to the Ottawa police to make that decision." (4)

It was clearly nothing more than a publicity stunt and a bit of controlled controversy, because the debate became about "freedom of speech, " and not hate-mongering, which was far more damaging, because we are now asked to decide whether or not we think it's OK to bash Muslims.

Because if it had been about free speech, there would have been no trouble with George Galloway visiting. And since we now know that Jason Kenney was directly behind it, the Conservatives and their supporters don't get to play that card.

But what I would like to know is who these people are who arranged her visit, and what they have to do with the Conservative Party of Canada.

The International Free Press Society

Despite the fact that it was determined that Coulter cancelled the event herself, and the biggest threat was that someone jokingly commented that they would like to pie her, the website of the International Free Press Society had this to say:

It is interesting to see the aftermath of Canada’s Ottawa University after an unruly crowd of leftist and Islamic protesters through threats vandalism and intimidation, shut down a planned speech by Ann Coulter.

You can visit their site here if you want to learn more about Ezra Levant. And here. They are definitely fans.

But who are they? Three words: Islamic hate group.

Their founder, the Danish Lars Hedegaard has stated that: "The modern Islamism, which nearly all Danish imams advocates call themselves a religion, but is first and foremost a political ideology in line with communism and Nazism."

You can buy copies of the Danish cartoons from them for $ 250.00 a pop, and presently they are raising funds for the Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

The fiercely anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been traveling through the U.S. this week on a highly-publicised trip to meet with politicians, promote his controversial film ‘Fitna’, and raise money for his legal defence back home.

Although Wilders’s stated goal has been to campaign for free speech, his trip has been sponsored and promoted by an unlikely coalition of groups united primarily by their hostility towards Islam. His backers include neoconservative and right-wing Jewish groups on the one hand and figures with ties to the European far right on the other.

On Friday, he capped his busy week with an appearance at the National Press Club. At the event, he reiterated his calls for a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and pronounced, to raucous applause from the audience, that "our Western culture based on Christianity, Judaism, and humanism is in every aspect better than Islamic culture".

Wilders is also known for campaigning to ban the Koran, Islamic attire, and Islamic schools from the Netherlands, and for proclaiming that "moderate Islam does not exist."

... An event he held at a Boston-area synagogue was sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential group whose board members include casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, and neoconservative writer David Frum, who attended Wilders’s Friday event in Washington. (5)

Well there you go. David Frum and Ari Fleischer. Both Bush administration alumni and Harper insiders. Frum is a good friend of Jason Kenney, Stockwell Day and Ezra Levant, and his sister Linda, was one of Harper's patronage senate appointments. And we all know Ari Fleischer, who has been given untendered contracts by our government, to help fend off accusations of alleged war crimes.

And the Clare Booth Luce Institute is just kind of a silly Conservative women's group who publish a calendar every year of "Hot Conservative Women".

Boy is the Conservative brand ever in the gutter. Hatred and exploiting women. And they claim to do it all for Jesus. No wonder so many people are turning to atheism.

Continued: Stirring it up at the University of Manitoba

Sources:

1. Protest Stops Tancredo Speech, By Jesse James DeConto, Staff Writer, Raleigh News and Observer, April 15, 2009

2. My Right-wing Degree, By Horwitz, May 24, 2005

3. Ann Coulter and Canada's Conservatives, By: David Akin, Canada.com, March 23, 2010

4. Sorry Ann Coulter, Canada's Just Not That Into You, By Michael Rowe, Huffington Post, March 25, 2010

5. Dutch Foe of Islam Ignores US Allies' Far Right Ties, By Daniel Luban and Eli Clifton, IPS, February 28, 2009

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: Controlling the Masses

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

He who controls the medium controls the message. He who controls the message controls the masses.
Joseph Goebbels

The notion of mob mentality is nothing new. Perhaps the best example is mustering armies for war. Soldiers become indoctrinated into not only hating their enemies but more importantly fearing them.

And while on the battlefield it becomes kill or be killed, to get men and women onto the battlefield, and with the acceptance of the public, there also has to be the fear that if you don't kill the enemy they will come after everything and everyone you love. So it now becomes noble. And if you can vest it with a "holy" purpose (and religious fervour), all the better.

But I'm getting into the "big lie" and "total war" later. I just wanted to briefly discuss one of the most powerful tools of the Neoconservative movement: Controlling the masses.

Leo Strauss considered this to be essential for success. He referred to us as the "ignorant masses", Friedrich Von Hayek called us "the wandering herd". To Goebbels we were simply "the masses".

But none of their theories were really ground breaking. In fact, many originated with a man by the name of Gustave Le Bon (in photo), a French social psychologist, sociologist and author of A Study of the Popular Mind.

Joseph Goebbels used his book religiously and Mussolini kept a copy of it beside his bed.

Le Bon discusses how varied individuals in a crowd are, and yet when they have a common goal or purpose, they become a single entity.

"... there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average struck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry certain elements, when brought into contact ... combine to form a new body possessing properties quite different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.

It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal individuals of a race in much the same degree—it is precisely these qualities, I say, that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. (1) (all emphasis mine)

Hence crowd mentality is based on the intellect of the lowest members, and the real genius is in reducing the intellectuals to that lowest level. In that way, you are then superior to them all.

Goebbels understood that. Mussolini understood that. And Guy Giorno understands that.

"He Who Controls the Message, Controls the Masses"

In 2000, Ryerson Press published a lengthy article about former Ontario Premier Mike Harris and his unprecedented control of the media:

TV newsmakers need vivid images to illustrate their stories. Harris's Tories, easily the most communications-savvy provincial government this country has ever seen, are delighted to oblige — on their terms. They dodge negative coverage at every chance and will go to ridiculous lengths — giving preferential treatment to friendly reporters, shutting out critical ones and staging elaborate, unrelated events — to avoid it. Because they know the demands of getting on the news are a lot like the demands of the Miss Universe pageant: you've gotta be sexy, you've gotta have charm and you've better have something interesting (but not too complicated) to say.

With expectations so superficial, many television journalists are losing the incentive and initiative to go out and chase stories beyond the pre-packaged photo ops offered up by government communications staff. Even if they want to go beyond these prefab items, with shrinking political reporting staff and dwindling resources, they can only pursue one or two stories a day. Government PR people know this and are prepared to make it easy for journalists to get their precious pictures, provided the coverage doesn't end up being too hard on them. The result is political coverage that serves no purpose other than promoting a government that's already very good at promoting itself. (2) (all emphasis mine)

A message that is not too complicated with the right images to sell it to the "ignorant masses".

And the man behind this unprecedented control was Guy Giorno.

Governing for the Camera

That Stephen Harper has become the king of the photo-op is no longer debatable, but I think a good example of how he governs for the camera, is the handling of the Haiti crisis, which also leans toward the deception category.

Journalist Mia Rabsan wrote a column for the Winnipeg Free Press: Stop the photo op already, in which she says:

Late last night we got a photo from the prime minister's office of Stephen Harper on the telephone, presumably with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, discussing the situation in Haiti. Today Defence Minister Peter Mackay is posing in Halifax as the HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Halifax leave for Haiti. At about the same time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife, Laureen, were staging a photo op making a donation to the Canadian Red Cross.

Enough already. Stop posing for photo ops and just get on with the business of helping Haiti. Canadians want to know the ships are on their way and what we're
sending so we know Canada is doing what it can to help. A photo op of a minister can do little but delay the voyage.

The Canadian response to Haiti thus far has been prompt and thorough. Let's stop the photo ops and just keep the aid flowing. (3)

At the time Rabsan, like most Canadians, allowed the photos to tell the story. However, what we learned later, was that the whole thing was fabricated for political gain. The ships in the photo with MacKay did not have the much needed medical supplies, food and water that Harper assured us had been loaded. In fact they arrived almost empty.

OTTAWA — When HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Halifax were ordered to sail on a humanitarian mission to Haiti on Jan. 13, they worked through the night, passing boxes hand to hand, loading stores aboard the ships — everything they would need for the humanitarian mission.

But sailors didn’t take aboard much in the way of relief aid — food packages, medical supplies or shelters — for distribution to Haitians. During the voyage, some sailors wondered if the ships might have been better off staying in port a little longer — say 12 hours — to take on more relief supplies, food aid and medical equipment before sailing for Haiti. (4)

And two months after Rabsan wrote her story, the promised funds had not been delivered. Not one single penny. We might ask ourselves how that could be. We saw Stephen Harper handing over a cheque.

I called the agency yesterday with questions about the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. You probably remember this. It’s where the Canadian government promises to match funds Canadians donate to Haiti to help with, among other things, “early recovery” and reconstruction. I had heard from a contact who does relief work in Haiti that no one who has applied for money from this fund had heard back from CIDA. Seemed a little strange. It’s been two months since the quake and one month since the donation window closed on February 12.

... I asked how much of the money raised through the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund has been spent. CIDA’s response included a paragraph about where Canada has spent money that doesn’t come from the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, before adding the line: “Funds from the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund will be disbursed in the near future.” (5)

You see it wasn't about handling the Haiti crisis, but the appearance of handling the Haiti crisis. And the man behind this unprecedented media control is Guy Giorno. (6)

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: Higher Learning

Sources:

1. A Study of the Popular Mind, By: Gutave Le Bon, Book One: The Mind of Crowds

2. How Mike Harris and his minions manipulate TV news, Ryerson Press, Summer 2000

3. Stop the photo op already By: Mia Rabson, Winnipeg Free Press, January 14, 2010

4. Chronicle Herald

5. CIDA’s Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund: millions raised, nothing spent.
by Michael Petrou, Macleans, March 10, 2010

6. Ex-aide to Mike Harris to run PM's office: The aide embroiled in 'NAFTA-gate' is out; to be replaced by former Harris chief of staff, By: Richard Brennan and Susan Delacourt, Toronto Star, May 22, 2008

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: All Quiet on the Western Front

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Before Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany in 1933, there was a concerted effort to protect and glorify Germany's military prowess.

In the aftermath of The Great War, some in the literary world began to contradict the notion of 'heroes' and suggest that the millions of young men who lost their lives did so for an unjust cause.

The first to create controversy, was Bertolt Brecht's poem, Legend of the Dead Soldier. In it he tells the story of a soldier who, having already died a 'hero's death', is exhumed, declared 'fit for duty' and sent back to the front." Brecht's poem was a brutal and carefully aimed attack on militaristic language and the glorification of war. (1)

Brecht would become one of the people on the Nazi hit list, who they planned to destroy once they gained power, and Brecht's books were some of the first to be thrown into the fire when Goebbels ordered all 'anti-German' literature to be burned.

The legend of Langemarck

During the early stages of the first world war, Germany was suffering heavy losses and fearing that the German public would begin to lose favour with the war, a myth was created of a stunning victory at Langemarck, where a large group of students advanced on the enemy "... during a bayonet charge singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles'. This myth is an exaggeration of what actually happened and its importance." (2)

Actually fighting in the area resulted in the loss of 25,000 German soldiers, one of the highest rates of loss in the war, and it's highly unlikely they were singing anything as they advanced. No doubt Houston Stewart Chamberlain played a role in creating this myth, as chief propagandist for Kaiser Wilhelm II.

But the Weimar government used the battle of Langemarck as "a shining example of patriotic heroism." Eventually 'Lange­marck Day' would be celebrated in Germany every November 11, to counter Armistice Day in the United States, as a symbol of German military strength.

What's interesting is that the notion of these 'days' was inspired by the novels of Edward Bellamy, in particular Looking Backward: 2000-1887. In his futuristic novel he calls it Decoration Day:

It was one of the annual holidays of the nation in the latter third of the nineteenth century, being set apart under the name of Decoration Day, for doing honor to the memory of the soldiers of the North who took part in the war for the preservation of the union of the States. The survivors of the war, escorted by military and civic processions and bands of music, were wont on this occasion to visit the cemeteries and lay wreaths of flowers upon the graves of their dead comrades, the ceremony being a very solemn and touching one. The eldest brother of Edith Bartlett had fallen in the war, and on Decoration Day the family was in the habit of making a visit to Mount Auburn, where he lay. (3)

This novel was published in 1887, and translated into 20 different languages, decades before The Great War.

It's also interesting that William Aberhart was a fan of Bellamy's writings and made several decisions based on his novels. He was inspired by the fact that Bellamy predicted that sermons could be delivered to people's homes over a 'musical telephone', and of course Aberhart was a popular radio preacher: Bible Bill. This is definite proof of the impact of literature on culture.

Mice and Snakes and Hitlerites

Nothing had a greater impact on the Right-Wing in Germany, than the sensational book by Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front. Released in January of 1929, it became an instant best seller. Within three weeks it had sold 200,000 copies, and by the end of 1929 nearly one million copies were purchased in Germany alone.

Later made into a film, it premiered in Germany in December of 1930, but not everyone was thrilled:

Scuttling beasties and things that went flop in the night helped the brown shirted followers of thundering Adolf Hitler last week win what some correspondents called "their most notable political victory since 107 of them were elected to the Reichstag": official suppression of the made-in-U. S. film All Quiet on the Western Front.

Long before the film reached Germany, German opinion on its worth was neatly divided into two groups, Socialists (pacifists) who not having seen the film were sure that All Quiet was the finest, most graphic war film ever produced; Nationalists and National Socialists (Fascists) who not having seen the film were equally sure that it was a slander on German courage and an insult to Germany's War dead. The Berlin premiere fortnight ago changed few opinions, but Herr Hitler's faithful Nazis took drastic means of expressing their disapproval. Not content with shouting denunciations at the screen, rioting in front of the theatre, they threw stink bombs over the balcony rail, loosed hopfrogs and white mice among the ladies in the orchestra.

Night after night, while protests against the film piled up in the office of the Reich Film Censorship Board, the Nazi menagerie made its appearance in the theatre, amplified last week by the presence of a number of garden snakes that slithered over the feet of the audience, coiled under orchestra chairs. Socialist Prussian cabinet members and officials did their best to express approval of the film by going to the theatre in a body one night, applauding loudly. Said Prussian Prime Minister Dr. Adolf Braun:

Last week Film Censor Dr. Seeger officially banned All Quiet's exhibition in Germany. Despite denials from the Censor's office, correspondents immediately jumped to the conclusion that mice and snakes, and Hitlerite riots were responsible. So did most Germans. Said Heinrich Mann, brother of Nobel Prizeman Thomas Mann: "In countries accustomed to a strong, confident government there cannot be the faintest comprehension of this shameful capitulation by the highest German officials before a horde of half-grown brats." (4)

Canadians For George Bush

When then Prime Minister Jean Chretien made the decision not to join George Bush in Iraq, neoconservative politicians and their supporters went crazy.

Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day co-wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal, denouncing the government's decision:

Today, the world is at war. A coalition of countries under the leadership of the U.K. and the U.S. is leading a military intervention to disarm Saddam Hussein. Yet Prime Minister Jean Chretien has left Canada outside this multilateral coalition of nations.

This is a serious mistake. For the first time in history, the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need. The Canadian Alliance -- the official opposition in parliament -- supports the American and British position because we share their concerns, their worries about the future if Iraq is left unattended to, and their fundamental vision of civilization and human values. ... we will not be with the Canadian government.

Modern Canada was forged in large part by war -- not because it was easy but because it was right .... Messrs. Harper and Day are the leader and shadow foreign minister, respectively, of the Canadian Alliance. (5)

In Niagara Falls a group calling themselves Canadians for George Bush held rallies trying to drum up support (6). Organized by Tristan Emmanuel of the religious Right group Christians for the Public-Square, guest speakers included Jim Flaherty, Tim Hudak and Stockwell Day. (7) Emmanuel told the Washington Times that American President George W. Bush had "impressed [him] as a man" and that many Canadians were "looking to him for leadership."

And in Calgary, Alliance Party members also rallied support for the war.

Close to 1,000 Calgarians rallied at the U of C in support of ongoing military action in Iraq on Sun., Mar. 30. Speakers and participants, including veterans and families of armed forces personnel in the war, demanded that Prime Minister Jean Chretien support the Anglosphere nations (the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Australia).

"My wife and I were listening to commentators, not too long before the Iraq event began, and the words that were being spouted were about how everyone in Canada was against the war," said MP for Wild Rose Myron Thompson, whose 29-year-old son is serving with U.S. forces in Kuwait. "We looked at each other with tears in our eyes, wondering 'are we in this alone?' Looking at the audience today, we know now we are not alone."

Over 50 volunteers were on hand at the event entitled I Am Canadian, I Am A Friend of the U.S., organized by Calgary lawyer and U of C Commerce graduate Ezra Levant. Volunteer Brent Waddell was disappointed with the lack of students at the rally, who numbered a couple dozen. "The students should not be against the war in Iraq," he said. "They're for world peace, but before we get there, we must get rid of the world's dictators."

Calgary Southeast MP Jason Kenney echoed his Canadian Alliance party's view that Canada should do more to support its Anglosphere allies." In the last couple of weeks, for the first time I was not proud to be a Canadian... not proud of what Jean Chretien did to undo 130 years of Canadian history [he forgot about Vietnam* obviously] ," he said. "Jean Chretien, has no right to undermine the history, the tradition of our country. We have to let our allies know that even though Ottawa doesn't support them, we as citizens do. (8)

When polls showed that most Canadians supported Mr. Chretien's decision, the Alliance party and their affiliates toned down the rhetoric and bided their time. If they could get control of government they'd change Canada's mind about going to war.

Canadians For Afghanistan

From the moment that the Reform-Conservatives took power in 2006, they began an aggressive campaign to change public opinion when it came to going to war. I'm going to provide much more on this in a later chapter called 'Total War', where they borrowed many ides from Joseph Goebbels, directly or indirectly through Leo Strauss. But for this interlude I am just trying to show a few parallels.

One group that was established was Canadians for Afghanistan, which described itself as a coalition of students and young people. However, the Ottawa Citizen reported that one of the key operatives behind the recently-unveiled group was Josh McJannet.

While others did the talking, as the group introduced itself to parliamentary media, McJannet sat out of sight, a few metres away in a briefing room. He later admitted to being on the group's "steering committee" but declined to answer questions about his role.

Until last September, McJannet was a Conservative staff member in the office of Conservative Whip Jay Hill. Before that he worked for Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer. When he left the hill, he became a lobbyist with Summa Strategies, a firm that counts defence contractors such as the Boeing aerospace giant among its clients. (9)

At one of their rallies on Parliament Hill a lone NDP member carried a sign reading 'Support the troops. Bring them Home'. He was knocked to the ground and his sign broken in two. But Harper was on hand to whip them into a frenzy with his words 'Canada does not start fights but we finish them'. It was pretty clear that 'peace' would not be on their agenda, but convincing Canadians to abandon any such notion would be.

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: Controlling the Masses

Footnotes:

* Jason Kenney had Canada's military history rewritten to remove the fact that Canada harboured draft dodgers during the Vietnam War: Text on how both draft dodgers and resisters of the Vietnam War were ultimately allowed to stay in Canada suddenly vanished from the Citizenship and Immigration site earlier this year. (10)

Sources:

1. Germany After the First World War, By: Richard Bessel, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993, ISBN: 0-19-821938-5, Pg. 266

2. Langemarck: the Battle and the Myth, By: Peter J. Palmer, The Western Front Association, September 13, 2009

3. Looking Backward: 2000-1887, By: Edward Bellamy, Boston and New York, Ticknor and Company, 18873.

4.Nazi Beasties, Time magazine, December 22, 1930

5. Canadians Stand With You, By: By STEPHEN HARPER and STOCKWELL DAY, Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2003

6. Canadians for Bush, By: Greg Pierce, Washington Times, April 8, 2003

7. "Two Tory cabinet ministers plan to take part in a pro-American rally this weekend near Niagara Falls", Broadcast News, April 11, 2003

8. Calgarians show support for war effort, By: Ben Li, University of Calgary Gauntlet, April 03, 2003

9. Phony grassroots groups peddle Conservative propaganda, The Harper Index, February 8, 2008

10. Gov. website changes undermine war resisters: critics, The Canadian Press, July 4, 2009

Chapter Twenty-Three Continued: At a Crossroads

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In October of 1931, German President Paul Von Hindenburg invited Adolf Hitler to a private meeting to discuss a solution to the impasse the Nazi Party was creating.

Joseph Goebbels was already proving to be a great agitator and the brown shirts were raising systematic havoc.

Rheumy old Paul von Hindenburg moves slowly but with exceeding thoroughness. Last week he did what the head of almost any other state would have done months ago. He had a personal interview with the Leader of the Opposition. All the years that the Austrian-born opportunist Adolf Hitler has been gaining political power in Germany, President von Hindenburg had never even seen him. Last week Hitler was summoned to the Presidential Palace on the Wilhelmstrasse. Tactfully changing his brown shirt for a long dark overcoat and a derby hat, Fascist Adolf arrived, his smudge of a mustache twitching like a rabbit's nose with excitement.

For once untroubled by the police, Hitlerites gathered in the street, shouting "Heil! Heil! Germany Awake!" as their leader appeared. No sooner had Herr Hitler disappeared through the doors than Dr. Josef Goebbels who had nothing whatever to do with the interview beyond the fact that he is one of the leaders of the Hitlerites in the Reichstag (when the Reichstag is sitting) drove up & down the street in an open car bowing right and left to the crowds. (1)

Hitler had marched out of the Reichstag in protest eight months before, and had since that action, increased party support tremendously.

The following year a presidential election was held with Hindenburg netting 18,600,000 votes and Hitler 11,300,000. Goebbels was frantic and telephoned his boss suggesting that they take control of the country by force, but Hitler declined. (2)

However, the Nazis continued their acts of violence that had come to mark the movement.

Nazi terrorism was attaining unprecedented proportions. Shootings, bombings, and killings were especially numerous in East Prussia. On August 3 [1932] the Socialist headquarters in Konigsberg were bombed, an oil station owned by a Socialist was fired, and a Communist leader was murdered. The Cabinet warned that disorders must cease within eighteen hours or special measures would be resorted to.

The disorders continued ... On the 8th the local Reichsbanner leader in Lotzen was murdered by Nazis, who blamed the Communists. The Cabinet hesitated. But on August 10 Hindenburg at last signed a decree approved by the Cabinet. It extended the "political truce" to the end of August, forbade all political demonstrations, provided the death penalty for political murder and arson, and set up special tribunals to try offenders. In the early morning hours of the same day five of Heines's storm troopers, after drinking heavily, forced their way into the house of a Communist workman in Potempa, one Pietrzuch, shot him in bed, and then kicked him to death in the presence of his mother, crushing his throat beneath their heavy boots. Reluctantly the local police arrested the "patriotic" culprits. (2)

In an attempt to end the violence, Hitler was again summoned to a meeting with Hindenburg and three of his officials, where he would be offered a cabinet post in the government of Franz Von Papen, whom the President had named as chancellor. According to one of the men in the room at the time:

Hitler attempted to bow, fumbled awkwardly with the doorknob, blushed, and stumbled over the rug. He began a public speech, but was silenced by Hindenburg. The President asked him whether he was willing to enter the Papen Cabinet. He refused and insisted on the Chancellorship "with the same powers as Mussolini was given after his victorious march on Rome" Hindenburg asserted that, in view of Nazi terrorism, he could not deliver the State into the hands of the brown shirts. (3)

Hitler was devastated. He had expected victory and his followers had expected victory, but instead he got a tongue lashing from the elderly president. So he returned to his mountain hideaway to lick his wounds. Some at the time were questioning his sanity. Then the news came that the men who had been responsible for the political assassinations in Silesia, had been sentenced to death. Everything Goebbels had done up to that time had come down to this defining moment, and many believed it could be the end of Hitler's political career. He had been bested by a senile old man.

Up & down Germany the question flashed last week: Had Adolf Hitler at last gone crazy? Had his nerves given way? Was he really in a straitjacket, jittering in a Bavarian asylum? He was not. Handsome Adolf was actually high in the Bavarian Alps with a few intimate friends, slowly flailing the chalky waters of mountain streams for speckled brown trout which his quiet sister boiled till blue and served on lettuce leaves for the Hitler supper. Even so the lunacy legend kept the chief Nazi pressagent, a former Manhattan print dealer named Ernst Franz Hanfstaengl, busy for two days issuing angry denials. The story was inspired apparently by two bad-tempered and most inopportune messages which the bristle-lipped leader issued immediately after live Nazis were sentenced to death at Beuthen ...

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, a gnomelike little man with a tart tongue and a club foot, who appeared from nowhere about two years ago, rapidly rose to be Fascist deputy, editor of the party organ and one of the right-hand men of Adolf Hitler. Writing of the Beuthen death sentences he said:

"Never forget it, comrades, and repeat it a hundred times so you will say it in your dreams—THE JEWS ARE TO BLAME! They will never escape the tribunals they deserve." (4)

It was now open warfare and finally on the morning of January 30, 1933, in Hindenburg's office, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany and Joseph Paul Goebbels was named his Minister of Propaganda. He could not have chosen a better man for the job.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Reductio ad Hitlerum and Propaganda

Sources:

1. Old Paul & young Adolf, Time Magazine, October 19, 1931

2. Der Fhehrer, Hitler's Rise to Power, By: Konrad Heiden, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944, Pg. 481

3. Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship: A Study in Social Pathology and the Politics of Fascism, By: Frederick L. Schuman, PhD, Robert Hale & Company, 1936

4. Brown Trout & Bitterness, Time Magazine, September 05, 1932

Chapter Twenty-Four: Reductio ad Hitlerum and Propaganda

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Though Leo Strauss would eventually be forced into exile, finding safe harbour in the United States, he would not simply denounce Nazism out of hand. Not that he supported the Holocaust, but he did hold some admiration for the regime.

In fact he would later state that he tried to join the Nazi Party when he was younger, but was turned away because he was Jewish.

Strauss would develop a philosophical argument which he called Reductio ad Hitlerum.

What he suggested was that not everything Adolf Hitler did was bad, and using examples like Hitler was anti-smoking, loved dogs and was a vegetarian, we can't automatically think of those things as bad, just because they were associated with Hitler.

I'm going to get into this in another chapter, but I wanted to point out that Leo Strauss and the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, both supported and even encouraged deception. For Strauss it was the "Noble Lie", for Goebbels, the "Big Lie". And whether he realized it or not, Strauss had been deceived here.

Hitler was not a vegetarian (1), but loved wild game, sausages and caviar. However, the image of a vegetarian was created as part of his public persona. The same goes for his love of dogs. He often had a dog, but there are several stories about how he would brutally beat them. Robert Waite mentions one in his book; The Psychopathic God:

Heinrich Hoffmann’s daughter, for example, remembered clearly that when she was a 15-year-old in pigtails and flannel nightgown, Hitler, who was visiting their home, asked for a good-night kiss. When she refused, he beat his hand viciously with his whip. In 1926, apparently in order to impress Mimi Reiter, a 16-year-old girl, he whipped his dog so savagely that she was shocked by his brutality. (2)

However, I wanted to use this argument to discuss propaganda. Leo Strauss would write in Natural Right and History:

In following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler. Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler. (3)

The problem with trying to draw parallels between Adolf Hitler and George Bush or Adolf Hitler and Stephen Harper, is that people will go right to the Holocaust, and you're accused of hyperbole. But while Hitler will definitely "darken the scene", we need to look at the propaganda techniques used by the Neoconservative movement, which was founded by Leo Strauss and adhered to by both George Bush and Stephen Harper.

They are pure Joseph Goebbels, and the new masterminds are people like Ari Fleischer and Guy Giorno.

I'm going to present arguments to support my theories, but when I accuse Fliescher and Giorno of following Goebbels, it's not a "slippery slope" and I am not playing the Hitler card. it was brilliant strategy so why wouldn't it be copied?

William Aberhart would fashion his control of the media from that of Adolf Hitler, but it was never as finely crafted as it has been with the Neoconservatives. And William Aberhart never had a sinister agenda.

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: Language Guidance

Sources:

1. Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover, By: Ryn Barry, Pythagorean Books, 2004

2. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, By: Robert G.L. Waite, Basic Books, 1977, ISBN-10: 0306805146

3. Natural Right and History, By: Leo Strauss, University Of Chicago Press, 1999, ISBN-10: 0226776948