The Politics of Obscurantism: Embracing Fanaticism

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

Jan Brown was a Reform MP when Preston Manning was the party leader. She was smart, urban and moderate, best remembered for putting a rose on the empty chair of Lucien Bouchard when he was recovering from "flesh-eating disease", that resulted in his losing a leg.

She was a refreshing contradiction to a party well known for it's racist and sexist views.

So when Reform MP Rob Ringma suggested that business owners should be allowed to demand that gays and ethnics move to the back of the store, if it meant that they could lose business otherwise; she spoke up. And when at about the same time, Reform MP Dave Chatters suggested that schools should be allowed to fire gay teachers, she again protested. But when Reform MP Art Hanger planned a trip to Singapore to investigate 'caning' as a form of youth punishment, she'd had enough, and went public, speaking out against the rampant racism of the party's 'God squad'. (1)

At the next caucus meeting, while Ringma got a standing ovation, Brown was ostracized and suspended. She quit. And Manning allowed her to quit, because he would gain far more political leverage from the 'God Squad', than he would from what Stephen Harper would call a "pink Liberal" or Margaret Thatcher a "wet". Moderates were welcome but radicals were courted.

Scott Brison

When Stephen Harper's Alliance Party swallowed up the few remaining Progressive Conservatives, he had a meeting with PCer Scott Brison. He told him that he was impressed with his economic skills and wanted him to play a prominent role in the new party. But Brison, who had already been ridiculed by the Alliance gang because of his sexual orientation, asked Harper where he would fit. He was told that a large part of their base was social conservative, and he would not change that. Brison got the message and crossed the floor to the Liberals. (2)

Instead we got stuck with Jim Flaherty as finance minister, a man who was deemed too right-wing to head up the Ontario PC party.

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht

On August 24, 1935; the Canadian Press ran a story of internal conflict that was threatening the Nazi Party.

The smoldering conflict between Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, minister of national economy, and Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda, appeared today to have attained a crisis in the Nazi hierarchy. Dr. Schacht's Koenigsberg speech, which was censored drastically by the propaganda minister, suddenly
appeared today throughout the Reich in important places in its full version, sent out personally by its author.

The minister of economy and president of the Reichsbank Bank seemed to be in open conflict with the extremists of the Nazi party, whose anti-Jewish anti-Catholic violence, the Reichsbank director said last Sunday, is gradually forcing trade away from Germany to the point where the Reich is insolvent, if not bankrupt. (3)

And despite the fact that he was a brilliant economist, Schacht was eventually forced out of the party, because they needed the radicals more. Although, I think it's telling that seeing as how Schacht was Jewish, he wasn't exterminated. But then according to Social Creditor Réal Caouette*, 'Hitler exterminated only "useless Jews."' (4)

Why is it then when any of us liberals or progressives remind people that neoconservatism is fascism, we're dismissed as alarmists? And yet the right-wing paints all of us with a communist/socialist brush. I'm not a communist or a socialist, nor are most Canadians.

If we support social programs, we're dismissed as left-wing fringe groups, and yet the success of the Reform movement was due in a large part by their embracing right-wing fringe groups. The Alliance for the Preservation of English, the Northern Foundation, C-Far, the National Firearms Associations, the pro-white South Africa crowd, and of course the Religious Right. (6 and 7)

All brought something necessary for the success of this movement: passion based on dogma. And while Leo Strauss, the father of neoconservatism, promotes the exploitation of religious fervour, not all dogma is religious.

Dogmatism's Bark

Judy Johnson, professor of psychology at Mount Royal University in Calgary, wrote a piece for the Edmonton Journal recently: Much to gain from tempering dogmatism's bark. She says 'There's a lot wrong with being absolutely right,' especially in politics.

Quoting Winston Churchill describing people who believe in absolutes, absolutely: "They won't change their minds and they won't change the topic."

Zealous political ideologues, religious fundamentalists who would merge the secular with the sacred, and bigots who vent their views on talk shows and the Internet all undermine social stability. There is, however, a greater, unspoken peril. Altering the best intentions of politics, science, economics and religion, it endangers the course of history, yet seldom makes media headlines, not even during political elections, when we should be most vigilant of its presence. Perhaps that's because up until 2009, no social scientist had developed a comprehensive theory of its nature and manifestations. (8)

Dogma does not have to be based on ancient religious texts. It can also include the views of free marketeers, libertarians, pro-lifers, et al. All those who lack the ability to see the grey. There is no in between.

Former Harper insider, Tom Flanagan, in his book Waiting for the Wave, describes Stephen Harper as an ideologue. His ideology is based on a fear of socialism and communism, and the passion for top down commercialism (9), where the corporate sector calls the shots.

And of course the social conservatives, who Harper admits make up the largest part of his base, view the world through the belief in the infallibility of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. This is especially evident with people like Jason Kenney, Stockwell Day and Maurice Vellacott, though they are certainly not alone.

It's why they don't allow fact to cloud their issues, and as Johnson reminds us, this is dangerous.

But what's even more dangerous is the policy of Obscurantism, that not only rejects facts, but distorts them, using rhetoric and slick "words that work". What Lawrence Martin once called "a bumper sticker mentality".

In a lecture at the University of Toronto in 1998, Michael Ignatieff stated of neoconservatism: "Nothing has done the electoral and moral credibility of liberalism more harm than the failure to take this attack seriously" (10)

And as Judy Johnson reminds us, we must be more vigilant. We need to get our heads out the sand, and stop being so skiddish about discussing the destructive Religious Right. It does not make us anti-Christian, only pro-Canadian. And we have to recognize that neoconservatism is fascism, and if we want an understanding of how it works in a modern context, read anything you can find on pre-war, pre-Holocaust, Nazism. It's familiarity is uncanny.

Footnotes:

*Social Credit formed the basis of the Reform Party ... Preston Manning being the son of Social Credit premier Ernest Manning. According to Janine Stingle they were the only party [SC] based on the notion of a Jewish conspiracy. (4)

In 1962, Social Credit entered into a coalition with the Quebec nationalist party, the Ralliement des créditistes, led by David Réal Caouette. "In the 1962 federal election, Caouette linked his Ralliement des Creditistes with the national Social Credit party and, by invoking Social Credit's traditional bogeys of an anti-Christian conspiracy and the plot of the "moneyed interests," helped twenty-six Quebec Social Credit MPs (out of a national total of thirty) get elected." [only four from outside Quebec](4)

In an interview with MacLeans magazine, Caouette was quoted as saying:

"Who are your political heroes in history?" he was asked. Caouette's brisk rejoinder: "Mussolini and Hitler." The storm broke, and it wasn't helped any by what Caouette had gone on to say in the magazine: "I admire Mussolini's qualities as a leader and I regret that he was a fascist. I admire in Hitler his economic reforms and I consider that he brought his people out of misery. I regret that he employed for war instead of for peace the ideas which he had." (5)

To his surprise, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht sent him a letter lauding his brave remarks.

"I am very pleased to read in our press about your courageous statements and laudable opinion about the ideas of Adolf Hitler. I was happy to have served under his leadership in one of the key positions in our economy before the war and owing to that I had an opportunity to become acquainted with his greatness." (4)

Schacht did not see Hitler as anti-semitic despite the Holocaust, only as a free market economist, who allowed Capitalism free rein.

Previous:

The Politics of Obscurantism: First You Obstruct

The Politics of Obscurantism: Next You Control the Message

The Politics of Obscurantism: Then You Control the Press

The Politics of Obscurantism: Anti-Intellectualism

Sources:

1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 318-320

2. Harperland: The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 2

3. Nazi Hierarchy Splits Wide Open as Dr. Schacht Defies Order Banning His Speech, The Canadian Press, August 24, 1935

4. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

5. Canada: Hitler, Mussolini & Caouette, Time Magazine, August 31, 1962

6. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6 3

7. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7

8. Much to gain from tempering dogmatism's bark: 'There's a lot wrong with being absolutely right,' especially in politics, By Judy Johnson, Edmonton Journal, September 23, 2010

9. Slumming it at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution, Gordon Laird, 1998, Douglas & McIntyre, ISBN: 1-55054 627-9

10. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of neo-Conservatism in Canada, by: Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 443

The Politics of Obscurantism: Then You Control the Press

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

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” - Joseph Goebbels

Stephen Harper's manipulation of the Press is legendary, and I've posted on it often.

But when viewed through the lens of Obscurantism, something a friend suggested I examine, everything becomes much clearer.

It ties Leo Strauss, neoconservatism and the Harper government together quite nicely.

Obscurantism is the art of obscuring the facts. It's deliberate and reaches to the emotions of the populace, rather than their intellect.

A normal political tool, but under Harper it has become an art form.

And to achieve this state, all messaging had to be controlled. But not to worry. They say it's for our own good.

A Crime to Practice Journalism

He held in his thin, knob-knuckled hands last week a new National Press Law making it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a licensed member of a nationwide closed shop. The law covers "all persons who take a share in forming the mental contents of any newspaper or political periodical through the written word or pictures." (1)

Harper's silencing of the press was not done with a National Press Law, but through a steady erosion of access. It started with the practice of not announcing cabinet meetings to avoid media scrums.

Harper never liked the tradition of holding media scrums after cabinet meetings. He started concealing the times of those meetings to keep his ministers away from the microphones. Cabinet and caucus members, with few exceptions, were instructed to avoid talking to the media without prior approval. At press conferences, Harper's office also wanted to control who asked questions. The press conferences were limited to specific issues as Harper did away with the wide-open meetings with the media, which had been a long-time custom ... (2)

Time magazine covered these "secret" cabinet meetings, and while legally the government had to announce them, Harper would wait until the meeting was well underway before meeting his legal obligations. And in describing one of those announcements:

...the veiled wording of the advisory--"There will be a Government media availability, today in the foyer of the House of Commons"--was almost Soviet in its stiff obfuscation ... Canadians should be worried when they see the government trying to exert such an unprecedented level of control." (3)

They also quoted Alasdair Roberts, a Syracuse University public-policy professor, who asked, "How can the average Canadian make a judgment about whether their government is being well run if they don't have access to the information?" (3)

Setting an Example

Walter Schwertfeger was a well-known Berlin journalist. When Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, announced the new rules to the German media, Schwertfeger went public, venting with the foreign press.

For this he was charged with treason against the State and given a life sentence.

The case.. has been something of a sensation both in German and foreign newspaper circles, as well as diplomatic quarters in Berlin, because Walter Schwertfeger was understood to have been arrested for supplying foreign correspondents and diplomats with some confidential instructions isued to the German press by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda ... Schwertfeger's sentence is the seventh passed thus far on Germans charged with the crime of supplying foreigners with any kind of information.

It is in line with the steady extension of the treason laws and practice of the People's Tribunal, designed to make the whole German nation a "community of oath-bound men" tightly shut off from prying 'foreign eyes, not only in respect to military affairs, but to all others as well. Particularly it may be assumed to represent a warning to all Germans not to give foreigners any kind of information, in order to shut off foreign observers here from their independent sources of information and restrict them to their official propaganda agencies. (4)

Stephen Harper began with warnings and then became more aggressive with the media if they dared to challenge him. When two journalists were held hostage on a plane (5), one of them David Aken, justified it by saying:

Harper's detractors may think we should just give the metaphorical finger to such directives from the PMO but, at one photo opp while we were here, a reporter who did just that and asked a question at a photo opp, despite warnings not to, was immediately warned that, if she continued, reporters would no longer be allowed to attend such photo opps. That would not be good for our access would be curtailed even further.

PMO staff also made veiled threats that that individual's organization might suffer further sanction -- all because of the impertinence of asking a question. If you are a media organization in Ottawa, these are no small consequences. (6)

And then there's those large RCMP bodyguards who make sure that reporters do as they're told. This video used to show Bob Fife being knocked to the ground, but was later edited, removing that part. More obstruction.



During the G-20, the media was targeted, beaten and arrested. Even Steve Paikin, one of the more conservative in the media was shocked. And he was not alone.

Reporters covering the G20 summit in Toronto say they were the target of police violence overnight, as riots blamed on anarchist groups left four police cars burning in the financial district and resulted in the arrests of some 150 people. "A newspaper photographer was shot with a plastic bullet in the backside, while another had an officer point a gun in his face despite identifying himself as a member of the media," reported the Canadian Press news agency. The agency did not say if it was its own reporters who were targeted.

The Huffington Post showed Brandon Jourdan being thrown to the ground and beaten by police while shooting video, and female journalists were threatened with rape.

And despite all this, the message was that Harper and his riot squad did a good job. The burning police cars were evidence that the one billion for security was money well spent. This even after the police admitted that they were told to stand down, and let the vandals do their job. Other video shows the police walking away from the carnage.

Who made the decision for police to stand down despite the fact the city was under attack? And why? Was it a police decision or political? These should be the cornerstone questions of an external review surrounding the chaos of the G20. After all, police officers were trained to stop the Black Bloc anarchists, were appropriately equipped and massively manned.

As downtown Toronto witnessed burning police cars and a small group of thugs on a rampage, a police source tells me the only thing that stopped the officers from doing that was an order telling them not to. They tell me they could have rounded up all, or most of them, in no time. I have had several frontline police officers tell me they were told not to get involved. But even before that decision was made, says one insider, there was mass confusion and indecision. (7)

All part of Obscurantism. Twisting the message by manipulating and then distorting the facts, while putting the media in it's place.

And Stephen Harper has not made one single statement to explain himself.

But then, he doesn't have to. We are the commoners who are "unworthy of knowing the facts".

Previous:

The Politics of Obscurantism: First You Obstruct

The Politics of Obscurantism: Next You Control the Message

Sources:

1. Foreign News: Consecrated Press, Time Magazine, October 16, 1933

2. Harperland: The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 63-65

3. Controlling The Message, By Steven Frank, Time Magazine, April 03, 2006

4. REICH JOURNALIST GETS A LIFE TERM: Walter Schwertfeger Accused of Revealing Confidential Press Orders to Foreigners. Sentence Seen as Move to Bar Correspondents' Independent Sources of Information,
The New York Times, July 22, 1936.

5. Media have no flight plan on PM's plane, By James Fitz-Morris, January 29, 2010

6. Harper and the press gallery hit the road: 3 nights, 3 1/2 questions, By David Akin , January 29, 2010

7. Cops had hands 'cuffed, By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun, June 30, 2010

Chapter Thirty-Eight Continued: The Poisonous Mushroom

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

Next to Joseph Goebbels, the best Nazi propagandist was a man named Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element for Nazi messaging .

A devout anti-communist, he joined the German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation, a group formed in response to the failed German communist revolution of 1918.

And like many Germans at the time, be believed that the Jewish people were working with the Bolsheviks. However, his resulting anti-Semitism did not fit well with the group and he was asked to leave.

Then in 1921, he went to Munich to hear a man speak, who was gaining a reputation as a powerful voice for change.

I had never seen the man before. And there I sat, an unknown among unknowns. I saw this man shortly before midnight, after he had spoken for three hours, drenched in perspiration, radiant. My neighbour said he thought he saw a halo around his head, and I experienced something which transcended the commonplace. (1)

That man was Adolf Hitler, and from that day on, Julias was a devout follower. He marched with Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch and two years later, started his newspaper, with the purpose of promulgating anti-Semitic propaganda. “We will be slaves of the Jew, therefore he must go." Hitler declared that Der Stürmer was his favourite newspaper, and saw to it that each weekly issue was posted for public reading in special glassed-in display cases known as Stürmerkasten".

As a reward for his dedication, when the Nazi party was re-organized in 1925 Streicher was appointed as head of the Bavarian region of Franconia, which included his home town of Nuremberg. His favourite hang out was a local pub called Cafe Blattnersberg, owned by a man named Werner Droege. Streicher and Droege became friends and when war broke out Droege's son Walter, joined the Lutwaffe, fighting for the Third Reich.

The "Education" of Children

While Streicher's newspaper incited hatred against the Jews, another project was more despicable. He published children's books, with an attempt to embed intolerance in young minds. The most popular of these was Der Giftpilz, or the Poisonous Mushroom.

“Look, Franz, human beings in this world are like the mushrooms in the forest. There are good mushrooms and there are good people. There are poisonous, bad mushrooms and there are bad people. And we have to be on our guard against bad people just as we have to be on guard against poisonous mushrooms. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, mother,” Franz replies. “I understand that in dealing with bad people trouble may arise, just as when one eats a poisonous mushroom. One may even die!”

“And do you know, too, who these bad men are, these poisonous mushrooms of mankind?” the mother continued. Franz slaps his chest in pride: “Of course I know, mother! They are the Jews! "

Julias Streicher was tried at Nuremberg after the war and executed on October 1, 1946, but his legacy lived on in the family of his friend Werner Droege. Droege's son would marry a woman named Margot and they had a son named Wolfgang or "Wolfie", born in 1949 in Forchheim, Bavaria.

At the age of eight, he went to live with his grandfather Werner:

Wolfie was entranced by the exploits of Hitler and Streicher. At the age of eight, he resolved that he, too, like his father and like his grandfather, would grow to be a Nazi. (2)

In 1963, after his parents divorce, he arrived in Canada with his mother and younger brother Werner, and in time would get his wish, becoming one of the most powerful neo-Nazi leaders Canada has ever known. And he would also create quite a stir when it was discovered that he was the Ontario policy chair for the newly created Reform Party.

Continued: Wolfgang Droege and "Militant Conservative Activism"

Sources:

1. Testimony of Julius Streicher, Nuremberg Trials, April 26, 1946

2. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg 205

Stephen Harper Claims That "It is the Absolute Right of the State to Supervise the Formation of Public Opinion"

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

"Why should you have the slightest difficulty in adjusting the trend of what you write to the interests of the State? It is possible that the Government may sometimes be mistaken—as to individual measures—but it is absurd to suggest that anything superior to the Government might take its place. What is the use therefore of editorial skepticism? It only makes people uneasy." Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment, Nazi Germany(1)

It would appear, dare I hope, that the Canadian media is finally waking up, and fighting back against Harper's attempt to not only silence the press but manipulate public opinion.

A few weeks ago, many journalists nodded knowingly at this Tweet by Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn. "My Friday giggle... a spokesperson who emails me 'on background' and then says: I can't answer your question." It's a bit of gallows humour about a problem that began as a minor annoyance for reporters working on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and has grown into a genuine and widespread threat to the public's right to know. (2)

From Time Magazine 1933 concerning Joseph Goebbels: He held in his thin, knob-knuckled hands last week a new National Press Law making it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a licensed member of a nationwide closed shop. The law covers "all persons who take a share in forming the mental contents of any newspaper or political periodical through the written word or pictures." (1)

From the Ottawa Press Gallery:

Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the flow of information out of Ottawa has slowed to a trickle. Cabinet ministers and civil servants are muzzled. Access to Information requests are stalled and stymied by political interference. Genuine transparency is replaced by slick propaganda and spin designed to manipulate public opinion. The result is a citizenry with limited insight into the workings of their government and a diminished ability to hold it accountable. As journalists, we fear this will mean more government waste, more misuse of taxpayer dollars, more scandals Canadians won't know about until it's too late.

It's been four years since Harper muzzled his cabinet ministers and forced reporters to put their names on a list during rare press conferences in hopes of being selected to ask the prime minster a question. It's not uncommon for reporters to be blackballed, barred from posing questions on behalf of Canadians. More recently, information control has reached new heights. Access to public events is now restricted. (2)

From Time Magazine 1936:

Because Adolf Hitler's speeches may be used to prove almost anything, the Nazi Commission of Inspection of Nazi Literature announced that Hitler's speeches may not be quoted in print hereafter without the Commission's express permission. Hearing that the rebellious pastors of the German Evangelical [Lutheran] Church plan to print and circulate privately their unanswered protest to the Reichsführer against practically everything going on in Nazi Germany, the Gestapo (secret police) raided Confessional Synod offices, lugged off typewriters, mimeograph and printing machines. (3)

We are now one "lugged off typewriter" away from the Gestapo:

Photographers and videographers have been replaced by hand-out photos and footage shot by the prime minister's press office and blitzed out to newsrooms across Canada. It's getting tougher to find an independent eye recording history, a witness seeing things how they really happened -- not how politicians wish they'd happened. .. Those hand-out shots are, unfortunately, widely used by media outlets, often without the caveat that they are not real journalism. In the end, that means Canadians only get a sanitized and staged version of history -- not the real history. (2)

From 1934 Time Magazine:

Perhaps Germany's Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, compelled the publication of a report in Berlin newspapers last week that a Nazi anatomist had discovered the precise cause of cancer. At least that is what scientists who respect Wilhelm von Bremer of Berlin's State Biological Institute would like to believe ... When he read the Berlin news, Professor Francis Carter Wood, director of Columbia University's Institute for Cancer Research and editor of the American Journal of Cancer sneered: "This is all rot. There's nothing to it. Plenty of this sort of stuff is coming out of Germany just now." (4)

From the Ottawa Press Gallery:

Meanwhile, the quality of factual information provided to the public has declined steadily. Civil servants -- scientists, doctors, regulators, auditors and policy experts, those who draft public policy and can explain it best to the population -- cannot speak to the media. Instead, reporters have to deal with an armada of press officers who know very little or nothing at all about a reporter's topic and who answer tough questions with vague talking points vetted by layers of political staff and delivered by email only. (2)

The point is that Canadians really have no idea who or what this government is. We have no idea what they are really doing and we have no idea who Stephen Harper is:

Adolf Hitler in repose can look as flaccid as a circus fat lady, but so far as the German people know he never rests from his heroic labors, dashes constantly up and down the Fatherland in multi-motored planes, never smokes and subsists wholly on fruit, vegetables, nuts, and dairy products... In unlacing this straitjacket of a national inferiority complex no Nazi has helped Adolf Hitler so much as the taut, vivid, sometimes hysterical, little man whom all Germany knows as "The Doctor," famed Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, now Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. To an amazing degree Herr Hitler and Dr. Goebbels possess in common the trick of talking to grown Germans as if they were children ... (5)

We are not children and Stephen Harper is certainly not our father. We need to see him in repose .. in a natural light that will allow us to pass judgement based on information, not manipulation and spin. Because for the record, Adolf Hitler was NOT a vegetarian (6). He hate mounds of sausages and the only time he went off them was when his doctor would say "Adolf you are eating too many mounds of sausages". But Germans never knew that. "Journalists aren't looking to judge the policies of the Conservative government. Rather, we want to ensure the public has enough information to judge for themselves." (2)

One time girlfriend of Leo Strauss (who is deemed to be the father of the neoconservative movement), Hannah Arendt, herself a respected political philosopher, once questioned whether Nazi Germany was in fact a full totalitarian dictatorship, since it depended so heavily on a "certain societal consensus". Their success depended on directing and exploiting public opinion, and they did it masterfully. (7)

So is Harper a dictator or simply a master of directing and exploiting public opinion?

But not everything is based on Goebbel's brilliance. There is another master of manipulation that we are all familiar with.

The Bush White House's media operation was top flight. His handlers often arranged for him to strike heroic-looking poses. The trip to the USS Lincoln was one of their well-plotted attempts at image enhancement. When Bush delivered a speech at Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant lights and floated them in the New York Harbor, so the Statue of Liberty, appearing behind Bush, would be illuminated just right. When tornadoes struck the Midwest in May 2003, Bush stood stoically in the Missouri rain—without an umbrella—and expressed his concern. With water running down his face, he also defiantly vowed to bring to justice the terrorists that had recently blown up several compounds for Westerners in Saudi Arabia and killed eight Americans. "They understand the visual as well as anybody ever has," Michael Deaver, Ronald Reagan's chief image man, told the New York Times. (8)

I'm not sure who's worse.

Sources:

1. Foreign News: Consecrated Press, Time Magazine, October 16, 1933

2. How to Lift the PM's Muzzle: Under Stephen Harper citizens' right to know has been smothered. Journalists must take a stand. By Helene Buzzetti and Press gallery colleagues, The Tyee, June 11, 2010

3. GERMANY: Tyranny, Time Magazine, August 03, 1936

4. Medicine: Cancer Rot, Time Magazine, September 17, 1934

5. GERMANY: WE DEMAND!, Time Magazine, July 10, 1933

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

7. The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, By: David Welch, Routledge, 1993, ISBN 0-203-93014-2.

8. The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, By David Corn, Crown Publishers, 2003, ISBN: 1-4000-5066-9, Pg. 313

Chapter Twenty-Six Continued: Law, Justice and the Reichstag Fire

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

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels

One element of neoconservatism, as preached by Leo Strauss, is deception, or the "Noble Lie". Joseph Goebbels called it the "Big Lie".

For conspiracy theorists, the Reichstag Fire that occurred on February 27, 1933, can be compared to 9/11 in that it gave way to the suspension of civil liberties in the United States, under The Patriot Act. The Patriot Act, I might add that was drafted by one of the Harper government's friends in the White House; Jim Sensenbrenner.

However, I'm not ready to believe that the Bush administration orchestrated the attack on the World Trade Center, but I don't accept the official story either. Far too many holes.

So was the Reichstag Fire a false flag war? Many historians believe it was.

President Von Hindenberg had named Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany weeks before but with limited powers. The fire changed all that. The Nazi Party used it as justification to get rid of the Communists from government, since they blamed them for the inferno, and implement Draconian laws suppressing basic human rights, including dissent.

And they used their propaganda to convince the German people that it was for their own good.

The Trial

The trial of the five men accused of setting the fire, brought out some very interesting details, not the least of which was that it was probably not a "Communist plot."

Time magazine covered the story and give it a bit of perspective.

"The Reichstag fire is the most shameful crime in all history," declared Prussian Premier Hermann Wilhelm Göring two days before the Supreme Court's verdict was expected. "The prisoners who sit in the dock at Leipzig are far worse than ordinary criminals!" That clinched the death sentences in the minds of simple Storm Troopers. Few of them knew or cared that State Prosecutor Karl Werner, after hurling philippics for weeks at the five Reds, had ended by admitting that the State had no case against three of them. (1)

The others had to be acquitted because there was simply no evidence. They were only arrested in the first place because they were known leaders of the Communist Party who had enjoyed electoral success and were a threat to the Nazi movement.

Just before 9 a. m. one day last week Judge Wilhelm Bünger and his five red-robed colleagues marched into the Supreme Court's dingy chamber to make known their verdict. They gave the Nazi salute. Court attendants and the audience returned it ... Judge Bünger read the Supreme Court's verdict slowly. Much of it was a denunciation of what he called "those senseless legends" ... the legend that Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, now Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment, conceived the idea of firing the Reichstag, blaming Communists for the deed and using it as the excuse for Chancellor Hitler's suppression of the Communist, Socialist and other German parties; the legend that Nazi firebugs escaped down the underground passage connecting the Reichstag with the official residence of General Göring, leaving Van der Lubbe to wave his burning shirt in the Reichstag and be arrested.

Turning from these legends. Judge Bünger said: "The Communist Party in Germany had been working for a long time to gain power and awaited only a favorable constellation. The court takes the view that Van der Lubbe [a mentally disturbed young man and the only person executed for the deed] was a Communist and still is a Communist. Decidedly, this Reichstag fire was no act of individual terror but an act of mass terror which was designed to be the overture to a general strike and a revolutionary movement." (1)

And the National Socialist German Worker's Party capitalized on the sentiment:

Finally, to Storm Troopers and to the Nazi rank & file, nothing was more shockingly apparent than that the Supreme Court had proved itself unworthy of Nazidom.

"Downright Judicial Blunder!" screamed a bulletin from the Nazi Party official news bureau. "We demand a fundamental reform of our judicial system. To avert another such decision German Justice must be purged of outworn, alien and liberal conceptions." (1)

Benefits of the Fire and Trial

As mentioned the ones to gain the most from this was the Nazi Party, as it not only substantially increased their powers and limited the Communists, but planted the seed that the "Communists" had gotten away with this act of terror because of "Liberal Judges".

In April 1933, Hitler passed one of the earliest antisemitic laws, purging Jewish and also Socialist judges, lawyers, and other court officers from their professions. Further, the Academy of German Law and Nazi legal theorists, such as Carl Schmitt*, advocated the nazification of German law, cleansing it of "Jewish influence." Judges were enjoined to let "healthy folk sentiment" (gesundes Volksempfinden) guide them in their decisions.

Hitler determined to increase the political reliability of the courts. In 1933 he established special courts throughout Germany to try politically sensitive cases. Dissatisfied with the 'not guilty' verdicts rendered by the Supreme Court (Reichsgericht) in the Reichstag Fire Trial, Hitler ordered the creation of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin in 1934 to try treason and other important "political cases." Under Roland Freisler, the People's Court became part of the Nazi system of terror, condemning tens of thousands of people as "Volk Vermin" and thousands more to death for "Volk Treason." (2)

The notion of Liberal Judges is a classic neoconservative battle cry. George Bush used the argument to stack the judiciary with 'Conservative' appointees.

In a previous study that was released in August 2004, Carp and his team of researchers predicted that if Bush was re-elected that year, the federal judiciary could take on an even sharper conservative slant. At the time, Bush's judicial appointees delivered liberal decisions 27.9 percent of the time in cases involving civil liberties and rights. For this latest study, researchers analyzed more data, and the figure has dropped to 27.2 percent.

"Our findings are significant because the general consensus is that President Reagan is the most modern conservative president on record, and yet the judges appointed by George W. Bush are even more conservative than the Reagan judges," said Carp, the study's lead investigator. (3)

Stephen Harper has often accused "Liberal Judges" of being too soft on crime and for pursuing a liberal agenda:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said Canada’s court system is influenced by Liberal-appointed justices who pursue a social activist agenda, in a statement to reporters yesterday. Asked whether there are activist judges with a social agenda, he said: "Some are and some aren't."

"I am merely pointing out a fact that courts, for the most part, have been appointed by another political party. But courts are supposed to be independent regardless of who appoints them and they are an independent check and balance,” Harper said. Harper said he would want to see particular qualities when choosing judicial appointees. "What we will be looking for is what I call the judicial temperament," he told reporters. "And that is the ability to competently and shrewdly and wisely apply the laws that are passed by the Parliament of Canada."
(4)

So like George Bush he stacked the judiciary

Less than a week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper railed against "left-wing ideologues" in Canada's court system, he appointed five judges with ties to the Conservative Party of Canada, Canwest News Service has learned.

In early September, in a partisan speech in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Harper said the Liberals, had they won the government last fall, would be putting "left-wing ideologues . . . in the courts, federal institutions, agencies, and the Senate."

But just a few days later, on Sept. 9, Harper and his cabinet signed off on five judicial appointments, one of whom was a Mulroney-era cabinet minister, and four others who contributed thousands of dollars to the Conservatives since 2004. (5)

Some things never change.

Footnotes:

*Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss had an intellectual relationship, and it was Schmitt who got Strauss out of Germany before the Holocaust, by securing for him a scholarship to study in Paris.

Sources:

1. Death To A Dutchman, Time Magazine, January 01, 1934

2. Law and Justice in the Third Reich, The Holocaust Museum

3. Bush-appointed judges most conservative on record, new UH study finds, By: J. Headley, Science Blog, February 7, 2006

4. Courts Stacked With Liberal Judges says Conservative Leader Harper, By Gudrun Schultz, Life Site News, January 19, 2006

5. Stephen Harper appoints 5 judges with Tory links, By David Akin, Canwest News Service, October 7, 2009

Chapter Twenty-Six Continued: Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment

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

Before club-footed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler's Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, he used to say that nothing was so good for a hostile editor as "one litre of castor oil." Lately Minister Goebbels' methods have grown less rudimentary. Last autumn, he "consecrated"' the German Press to Nazi service with a law that made it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a member of a nation-wide closed shop. (1)

The fact that Joseph Goebbels took complete control of the media in Germany should have been alarming to all German citizens. So why wasn't it?

Good Propaganda.

Good propaganda about the need for propaganda to be exact.

So much of the success of the neoconservative movement comes from deception, hidden meanings and yes even "doublespeak". And one common deceptive strategy is creating a persecution complex.

'Goebbels did not take over the media to control information. He did it because everyone else was against him'. But these claims wouldn't mean much coming from him so they had someone else come to his "defense". Enter Hans Fritzsche.

Hans George Fritzsche

"Nothing is more fatal to a people than the mania for great reforms, however excellent these reforms may appear theoretically." Gustave Le Bons

Han Fritzsche (1900-1953) was a Nazi propagandist working in the department of Joseph Goebbels, heading up the radio division. The image to the left was during his arrest but he was later acquitted because he had not taken part in the atrocities against Jewish citizens.

In fact, he tried to put a stop to their anti-Semitic publications. His interest was solely the movement and doing what he could to promote it and the German nation.

In 1934 Fritzsche wrote a piece defending Goebbel's ultimate control of the media, suggesting that his actions were necessary to counter liberal bias. Now he does blame the Jewish people to a certain extent, at least for their impact on the media.

But thanks to publications like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; communism, liberalism and Judaism were all twisted to mean the same thing.

Dr. Goebbels and his Ministry
by Hans Fritzsche

It is but five minutes from the dark and smoky business office of 1926, which had the mocking name opium den, to the Leopold Palace. The road took Dr. Joseph Goebbels through a sea of poison and hate and lies. Each old follower of Adolf Hitler, each old National Socialist, had to withstand battles that no young party member will have to endure, no matter how long he lives. But no one had to face as much hate as Dr. Goebbels.

It was almost open season on Dr. Goebbels during the six-and-a-half year battle for Berlin. At first he was called the "Chief Crook of Berlin" by the Communists — a title he accepted without embarrassment and made a title of honor. Soon the middle class newspapers and speakers declared open season on him too. He is a man of sharp phrases and pitiless language. The danger he represented had long been recognized. The entire artillery of the political battle, for which any means is justified, was turned on him. (2)

"That took Goebbels through a sea of poison and hate and lies"?

In today's neoconservative propaganda it's called Liberal Media Bias and it's a myth now, just as much as it was a myth then. And yet it's used constantly .

Eric Alterman wrote a piece for Nation Magazine entitled What Liberal Media?, and even the neoconservatives he interviewed agreed that it was part of the "big lie"

Republicans of all stripes have done quite well for themselves during the past five decades fulminating about the liberal cabal/ progressive thought police who spin, supplant and sometimes suppress the news we all consume ... But while some conservatives actually believe their own grumbles, the smart ones don't. They know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across-or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs. On occasion, honest conservatives admit this.

... That the media were biased against the Reagan Administration is an article of faith among Republicans. Yet James Baker, perhaps the most media-savvy of them, owned up to the fact that any such complaint was decidedly misplaced. "There were days and times and events we might have had some complaints [but] on balance I don't think we had anything to complain about" ... Patrick Buchanan, among the most conservative pundits and presidential candidates in Republican history, found that he could not identify any allegedly liberal bias against him during his presidential candidacies. "I've gotten balanced coverage, and broad coverage-all we could have asked.

And even William Kristol, without a doubt the most influential Republican/neoconservative publicist in America today, has come clean on this issue. "I admit it," he told a reporter. "The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." (3)

Ari Fleisher defended George Bush's decision to only answer pre-scripted questions as necessary to combat Liberal media bias. Liberal media bias that doesn't exist.

And when Stephen Harper shut out the National Press gallery he stated:

“Unfortunately, the press gallery has taken the view they are going to be the opposition to the government,” Harper told a London TV station. “They don't ask questions at my press conferences now. We'll just get the message out on the road. There's lots of media in the country who do want to ask me questions and hear what the government is doing.” (4)

Despite the fact that even foreign newspapers were writing about the unprecedented control of the government's message under Stephen Harper, he turned it around to play the victim.

Fritzsche continues:

The results of the unprecedentedly bitter battle the organs of the Weimar [Liberal] state and the parties were different than they had expected: He [Goebbels] hardened his weapons in the fire of this battle, and the masses his enemies attempted to mobilize against him instead joined him. It is not surprising that those who feared the oncoming National Socialism attacked with poison and gall.

It is surprising that this man, mocked, ridiculed and insulted as no one else, did not fall into deep despair and spiritual misery after those years of struggle. (2)

It was and is a war of their own creation, and yet they play the victim masterfully.

So, what's with all the whining? It's all about preventing the media from doing their job. If reporters are allowed to ask questions and rebut spin, then the Conservatives' disinformation campaign is much less likely to succeed.

And, by planting the seed of the notion that there is a media bias against his government, Harper has already achieved two related objectives. First, he is making the media more likely to be over-cautious about any appearance of bias, which will lead to more favourable coverage. Likewise, when the media does get around to reporting on his government's failures, voters may well dismiss the reports as one more example of the media conspiracy against the Conservatives. (4)

Chapter Twenty-Six Continued: Law, Justice and the Reichstag Fire

Sources:

1. Nazi Merger, Time Magazine, December 11, 1933

2. Hans Fritzsche, "Dr. Goebbels und sein Ministerium," Munich: Verlag Max Steinebach, 1934, pg. 330-342.

3. What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman, The Nation magazine, February 24, 2003

4. The media conspiracy against Stephen Harper, By Scott Piatkowski, June 1, 2006

Chapter Twenty-Six: Joseph Goebbels and Manipulating the Masses

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

"What do close advisers to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have in common? They reflect the disturbing teachings of Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish émigré who spawned the neoconservative movement." Donald Gutstein (1)

Those words are certainly true but I would also ask another question. What does Leo Strauss and the advisers to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have in common? They reflect the disturbing philosophy of Joseph Goebbels. And most of Joseph Goebbels brilliance as a propagandist came from reading Gustave Le Bon, and exploiting his study of mass mentality.

Gustave points out that individuals in a crowd may range in intellect, but when presented as a mass to a common cause they become homogenized: 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 ... In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. (2)

Hence the notion of not just the "masses" but the "ignorant masses", reduced to ignorance by a common agitator.

Leo Strauss would develop a philosophical argument which he called Reductio ad Hitlerum which included playing the Hitler card. But Strauss also contends that not everything Adolf Hitler did was bad, so it would be wrong to conclude that something is bad just because Hitler did it. Actions can become "darkened by the shadow of Hitler" he warned.

So when neoconservative philosophy is attributed to Strauss, it's OK. He taught at American universities, and no matter what he taught it is legitimized. But as soon as you compare neoconservative principles to Joesph Goebbels, they cry foul, despite the fact that much of what Strauss taught is pure Nazi propaganda, that has been "darkened by the shadow of Hitler". And of course also darkened by the shadow of the Holocaust.

I'm not going to deny that Leo Strauss was a brilliant man, but I believe that in many ways he was simply the conduit for Goebbels, which is why so many legitimate followers of Strauss will question much of what has been attributed to him, especially when it comes to the actions of the Bush administration.

In chapter twenty four I drew several comparisons to Goebbels and the Neocons, but in this chapter I'm going to remove the shadow of Hitler and the Holocaust and outline the techniques used by the ultimate propagandist, Joseph Paul Goebbels. The similarities between him and the advisers of most neoconservative politicians are simply too vast to ignore.

Phenomena of a Hypnotic Order

The difference between Leo Strauss and Joseph Goebbels, is that Strauss's theories were philosophic, while Goebbels were scientific. Strauss was inspired by other philosophers while Goebbels was inspired by a scientist, Gustave Le Bons.

As Le Bons himself states: I have endeavoured to examine the difficult problem presented by crowds in a purely scientific manner—that is, by making an effort to proceed with method, and without being influenced by opinions, theories, and doctrines. (2)

So scientifically speaking, when discussing crowd mentality,he suggests that individuals in the crowd are rendered unconscious, and it is this unconsciousness that becomes their collective strength. They are now devoid of reason and this is the best state for a skillful orator to do their work. Le Bons refers to this as the 'phenomena of hypnotic order'.

So ideally when trying to stir up the masses, you need to get them into an hypnotic state, and one way of doing this is with hand gestures. In the "mesmerizing trade" it's referred to as Covert Hypnotism. Goebbels mastered it. Look at his rhythmic hand gestures. Very unusual.

Of course Goebbels would say that the power comes from the "harmony of word, facial expressions and gestures", but at this particular rally he speaks of the mass as being in a state of "total spiritual mobilization". Aka: hypnotized.



Now watch Adolf Hitler, doing the same thing. He starts out in a humble stance and then builds up the momentum. But again watch his hands (Not too closely though. I wouldn't want you to start clucking like a chicken or anything)



The gravelly voice was the result of mustard gas during the war and Hitler's first handler, Dietrich Eckart taught him how to use it to his advantage. But every now and then he has to stop to cough. Eckart was a playwright and stage director, so gave him a flair for the dramatic.

Now just as kind of a funny aside, following is a video of Stephen Harper. I don't really know what his oratory style is because he rarely speaks to us, and certainly would not speak to us in this manner if he thought we were listening. This video was shot on the QT. But watch his hands and yes I am LMAO.



Chapter Twenty-Six Continued: Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment

Sources:

1. Harper, Bush Share Roots in Controversial Philosophy. The Tyee, Donald Gutstein, November 29, 2009

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

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: Higher Learning

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

Emil J. Gumbel (1891-1966) was a German intellectual, pacifist, socialist, and scholar who spent most of his adult life fighting to promote democracy in his country.

He had entered the war in 1914, but never saw duty due to ill health. However, he lost a cousin and brother to the cause, so became outspoken against German militarism and the rise of fascism. (1)

The Nazis were able to have him removed from his teaching post at the University of Heidelberg, where he was a Professor of Mathematical Statistics; had him named an enemy of the German people and hounded him into exile, where he continued to sound the alarm.

The Nazis had one victory for the week. After weeks of angry protest, Fascist students at Heidelberg succeeded in having tall, stoop-shouldered Professor Emil J. Gumbel dropped from the faculty. His crime according to the Nazis was that he had announced in a lecture: "A turnip is better than a war memorial, than a statue adorned by scantily clad ladies.'' Professor Gumbel heard the news at Cornell last week where he was attending the International Congress of Genetics. He was not surprised.

"One doesn't become popular," said he. "by saying that a popular policy will lead a country to catastrophe, especially if events have shown it to be true. There is no question that I am a pacifist. The War made me that. And I am an antiFascist. I am in favor of the republic and peace and the welfare of the working class." (2)

However, Gumbel would not be the only university professor attacked during the Nazi purge of intellectuals, who were mostly Jewish, or with a Liberal bent.

Between 1938 and 1945 more than 173 professors and consultants were dismissed from the faculty of medicine at the University of Vienna, alone, as part of a broader effort to place Nazi professors in all areas of higher learning, so that students would be taught the "right things".

Igniting the Flame

"Where one burns books, one will soon burn people." --Heinrich Heine

Gumbel was not only a pacifist and left leaning professor, but he was also the author of several books exposing political assassinations that were classified as "unsolved". And since many of these assassinations had been carried out by the Thule Society, the very society that had created the enigma of Adolf Hitler, he became a dangerous man to the Nazis and his books were among those thrown into the fire under the direction of Joseph Goebbels:

Undampered by a chilly drizzle, some 40,000 Germans jammed the square between Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Opera House looking at a black mass of criss-crossed logs, insulated from the pavement by sand. A thumping band blared out old military marches. Toward midnight a procession entered the square, headed by officers of the University's student dueling corps in their dress uniforms: blue tunics, white breeches, plush tam o'shanters and spurred patent leather jack boots.

Behind them came other students and a line of motor trucks piled high with books. More students clung to the trucks, waving flaring torches that they hurled through the air at the log pile. Blue flames of gasoline shot up, the pyre blazed. One squad of students formed a chain from the pyre to the trucks. Then came the books, passed from hand to hand while a leather-lunged student roared out the names of the authors:

"Erich Maria Remarque [wild cheering]—for degrading the German language and the highest patriotic ideal!"

"Emil Ludwig—burned for literary rascality and high treason against Germany."

"Sigmund Freud—for falsifying our history and degrading its great figures. . . ."

On he went, calling out the names of practically every modern German author with whom the outside world is familiar: Karl Marx, Jakob Wassermann, Albert Einstein, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger. Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Walther Rathenau.

... While the flames flared highest, up to a little flag-draped rostrum stumped clubfooted, wild-eyed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in the Nazi Cabinet, organizer of the great midnight bibliocaust. "Jewish intellectualism is dead!" cried he. "National Socialism has hewn the way. The German folk soul can again express itself!

"These flames do not only illuminate the final end of the old etra, they also light up the new. Never before have the young men had so good a right to clean up the debris of the past. . . . The old goes up in flames, the new shall be fashioned from the flame in our hearts. ... As you had the right to destroy the books, you had the
duty to support the government. The fire signals to the entire world that the November revolutionaries have sunk to earth and a new spirit has arisen!" All over Germany similar pyres blazed with similar books. (3)

And just as Gustave Le Bon observed: "In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated." Many people in that crowd, if outside the crowd, would know that what was happening was not right. But as part of the mass they had been reduced to the level of the most ignorant among them.

When Goebbels added cinema to his propaganda tools, he told would be filmmakers not to bring him political footage, but entertainment films. Horrendous acts can be made less horrible if accompanied by dancing girls or a "thumping band" blaring out old military marches and student dueling corps in their dress uniforms: blue tunics, white breeches and plush tam o'shanters ..

Exposing a New Flame

In 2009, a notice began to appear across university campuses advertising training seminars for student activists. Fortunately one of those attending decided to tape the proceedings, prompting the Ryerson Press to cover the story.

Audio recordings, photographs and documents that were leaked from a recent Conservative Party student workshop in Waterloo expose a partisan attempt to take over student unions and undermine Ontario Public Interest Research groups (OPIRGs) on campuses across Ontario.

At a session held in early February by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, campus Conservatives, party campaigners, and a Member of Parliament discussed strategies to gain funding from student unions for the Conservative Party and ways to run for—and win—positions within student unions.

The leaked materials were posted on WikiLeaks.org over the weekend and add to the growing body of evidence that the Conservative Party has a strategy for interfering in campus student unions. In early 2002, the campus press first learned of a secret Millennium Leadership Fund that the party’s campus wing used to fund candidates in student union elections. Now it appears that strategy has evolved into a campaign to falsely obtain student union funding and destabilize student clubs with a social justice mandate.

Among those present at the workshop were Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo, Peter Braid and his campaign manager, Aaron Lee-Wudrick. Lee-Wudrick is heard on the recordings providing advice on how to siphon money from students’ unions through “front organizations” that would work to further the goals of the Conservative Party. (4) (all emphasis mine)

When this was exposed the Canadian Federation of Students demanded some answers from the government, since this involved both federal and provincial levels.

At the February 7, 2009 Conservative training session for students in Waterloo, a workshop called "Campaign Strategies and Tactics for Keeping the CFS off Campus" was presented by Aaron Lee-Wudrick, Campaign Manager for Member of Parliament Peter Braid, and Ryan O'Connor, Ninth Vice-President of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. Braid and other Conservative politicians participated in training workshops in Waterloo and elsewhere in the country. Other presenters included those from the Conservative Campaign University and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

"Students' unions provide an independent democratic voice for students and it is alarming that the Conservative Party of Canada is devoting resources to undermine that voice," said Shelley Melanson, Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario. "Students have a right to hear directly from Stephen Harper and John Tory about whether it is official party policy to interfere with democratic student unions." (5)

And these incidents were not isolated, but are part of an attempt to discredit not only left thinking students but also professors. In fact Facebook groups were launched in an attempt to petition for the removal of what they called "Liberal Professors".

And federal Conservative MP Steven Fletcher went after students at the University of Manitoba:

Minister Fletcher, on several occasions, went into rants where he referred to UMSU and the Canadian Federation of Students, my representatives, as a bunch of left-wing crazies, the “loony left,” and “loony tunes.” The minister further went into rants about the free press and independent students’ newspapers referring to the Manitoban as a socialist rag. He then began encouraging young Conservative members to take over students’ unions to promote the Conservative ideology.

At several points in his talk, incoming UMSU president-elect Sid Rashid, who was also in the audience, challenged Fletcher on his clearly biased statements regarding current UMSU policies and procedures. What is the government doing meddling in the affairs of independent and democratic student unions? This is not only offensive but completely inappropriate. (6)

Conservative MP Peter Kent and MPP Peter Sherman tried to interfere in the elections at York University:

In this latest fracas, the York Federation of Students is accusing two Conservative politicians – federal MP Peter Kent and provincial MPP Peter Shurman – of interfering with York's turbulent student politics.

Through a Freedom of Information request, the student federation obtained 50 pages of email exchanges in which assistants for the two politicians, who represent student-heavy ridings north of the campus, repeatedly question university executives about the results of a student council vote this spring. (7)

And one of Stephen Harper's senators Mike Duffy verbally attacked the Journalism school at King's College:

Senator Mike Duffy has attacked the University of King’s College and other Canadian journalism schools for exposing students to Noam Chomsky and critical thinking. In a speech Saturday to Conservative party members in Amherst, Duffy reportedly slammed journalism programs for churning out leftist graduates. (8)

There is more than one way to burn books and destroy knowledge.

Chapter Twenty-Four Continued: Shoe Stores and Accurate News

Footnotes:

1. The Emil J. Gumbel Collection, Political Papers of an Anti-Nazi Scholar in Weimar and Exile,
1914-1966, From the Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York University Publications

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

3. Bibliocaust, Time Magazine, May 22, 1933

4. Conservative Party strategy to take over student unions exposed, By Rebecca Granovsky-Larsen, Editor-in-Chief and Nora Loreto, News Editor, Ryerson Free Press, March 16, 2009

5. Students call on Harper and Tory to disclose how much party funding was used to undermine students' unions, Canadian Federation of Students, March 18, 2009

6. The True Hidden Agenda, University of Manitoba, The Manitoban, April 5, 2009

7. Stop meddling, students tell Tories: By: Louise Brown, Toronto Star, July 6, 2009

8. Mike Duffy slams journalism schools for thinking critically, By: Paul Mcleod, Metro Halifax, March 16, 2010

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