Take a Fucking Chill Pill, Buddy

Murray Dobbin doth protest far too much

In a recent column published on the ideologically parochial Rabble.ca, Murray Dobbin decries the "Republicanization of Canadian politics".

He claims that recent efforts by the Conservative Party to minimalize the increasingly-suspect testimony of Richard Colvin and recent mailings by the Conservative Party accusing the Liberal party as anti-Semitic are the signs of an unprecedented level of nastiness in Canadian politics:

"Watching the sickening performances of the Harperites in the House of Commons this week -- out right lying, bullying, slander, contempt for the public and parliament, and a stunning disregard for the public good -- brings home a hard reality: we are witnessing the Republicanization of our political culture. And it's not just the torture issue -- it's the Conservative labeling of Liberals as anti-Semitic -- a kind of shit-house rat politics virtually unknown in Canadian political history. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Karl Rove is on the PMO's payroll; his disciples certainly are."

But the truth is that Dobbin, like any good ideological fundamentalist, doth protest way too fucking much.

The truth is that there's far more afoot on either one of these issues than Dobbin would like to let on. Just like any good ideological fundamentalist, he's more than happy to omit any little facts or details that don't support his worldview.

Most obvious about Dobbin's rantings is the absurdity of opposition parties trying to tar the Conservative Party with torture allegations in the first place. Individuals like Dobbin expect Canadians to conveniently forget that it was the Liberal Party who had negotiated the prisoner transfer agreement under which these abuses were allegedly taking place. ("Allegedly" being the key word.)

Dobbin is much closer to a justifiable argument on the anti-Semitism issue. Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae are both known as good international friends of Israel. Irwin Cotler's efforts in support of Israel, as well as in support of the effort to bring Nazi War Criminals hiding in Canada to justice, are well-known and well-documented. To accuse the Liberal Party of being institutionally anti-Semitic simply stretches credulity.

But, then again, many of Dobbin's contemporaries have delighted in accusing the Reform Party -- one of the predecessors of the modern Conservative Party -- of being instituionally racist. They did this despite the fact that the Reform Party consistently presented the most racially-diverse caucus in the House of Commons, and did so without any kind of nomination quotas.

This particular fact didn't stop Gordon Laird, one of Dobbin's premier contemporaries, of fictionalizing racist incidents in his book Slumming It at the Rodeo.

In fact, accusations of racism have often proven to be very effective bread-and-butter issues for critics and opponents of the Conservative Party. To date, Dobbin's objection to this have been slim and none.

Perhaps Dobbin considers anti-Semitism to be a special and privileged breed of racism, of which no one may be accused if those accusations cannot be justified. Or perhaps he's simply content to smile wistfully to himself while similar accusations -- which are similarly unjustified -- are flung at his ideological rivals.

One of the leading purveyors of racial outrage for political benefit has been Warren Kinsella. Kinsella has specialized in an "even if they can show they aren't racist we can still peddle innuendo" argument.

Furthermore, Kinsella has written not one, but two books -- Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics and The War Room -- bragging about his role in bringing US-style attack politics to Canada.

Kinsella was also willing to dabble in a form of bigotry that Dobbin himself was extremely eager to engage in -- anti-religious bigotry.

For Kinsella, the target was Stockwell Day. For Dobbin, it was Preston Manning.

To pretend that the Conservative Party has never indulged in attack politics current Conservative Senator and former Party President Doug Finley is perfectly willing to admit to this.

"We built our brand while trying to damage theirs," Finley recently said. "Stephane Dion was a candidate from heaven. I would say our brand has gone from 17% (core support) to 30%. In other words, that percentage of voters will wake up in the morning and say they will vote Conservative. The Liberal brand has fallen from the mid-30s (core support) to about the mid-20s. As you can see, we have successfully branded Michael Ignatieff as out of touch and in it for himself. We have stopped him right in his tracks. And he hasn't helped himself with some of the gaffes he has made. He's a typical academic. He puts his nose up and talks without really thinking of the consequences of his words. I don't think they did due diligence on this guy."

But considering the depths to which Dobbin and his contemporaries on Canada's far left -- and among the campaign teams of Canada's mainstream left -- are willing to stoop, it's impossible to take him seriously.

After all, it's definitely wrong to baselessly accuse one's political opponents of being anti-Semitic. But it's also wrong to baselessly accuse one's political opponents of plotting to transform Canada into a military police state.

Dobbin's response to that? Again, slim and none.

Fortunately, the ad proved to be the death knell for the 2006 Liberal campaign. But previously, Canadians had swallowed this particular bit of fear mongering.

These facts made Gerard Kennedy's accusations that the Conservative party was campaigning based on fear purely laughable. And they make the next portion of Dobbin's rant seem even more so:

"There is no obvious way to deal with overt and unapologetic political thuggery. Fighting back in the same manner actually plays into the thugs' hands because part of their broader objective is to poison the well of public discourse. The ferocious partisanship of the Harper Conservatives -- who should really be called the Libertarian Party as there is nothing conservative about them -- is designed to drive ordinary citizens away from politics. I can barely stand to watch and listen to the vitriol and lies and I have spent my whole life observing and analyzing politics. I try to imagine what people who have very limited for it must think when they see this performance. But there is no question that it partly explains the fact that 42% of Canadians didn't vote in 2008 -- a huge advantage for the Libertarians."

It takes a special kind of demagogue to pass off that kind of incoherent nonsense as high-minded commentary. Not to mention the fact that Dobbin has to omit huge swaths of recent Canadian political history in order to make that argument.

The truth is that the political thuggery that often characterizes Canadian politics already has been emulated by its former victims -- its former victims being the Conservative Party, both prior to and after the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance.

Certainly, that doesn't excuse the Conservative Party from following the same path. But, then again, there's a big difference between pointing out the lack of leadership skills of a Party leader (Stephane Dion) and impugning the citizenship of another (Michael Ignatieff). The latter is certainly far worse than the former.

But, by the same token, there's a bigger difference still between impugning the citizenship of a political leader and insinuating that one is planning to implement a military police state. Whether or not the latter is worse is a matter of some debate.