How low Tories go

To protect their image, Defence Minister Peter MacKay led an all-out assault on the reputation of career diplomat Richard Colvin even as he was conceding the 2007 reversal on Afghan detainee transfers happened in part because of Colvin's warnings about torture.

And they exploited anti-Semitism without regard for the pain and distress raising this spectre inflicts on the Canadian Jewish community.

The Conservatives targeted five opposition ridings containing large numbers of Jewish voters with political flyers using classic propaganda tools of half-truths and innuendo to smear Liberals as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.

As Jews and Zionists, whose daughter served in the Israeli Army, Irwin and Ariela Cotler are uniquely qualified to articulate the mixture of outrage and alarm this kind of wedge politics causes in its victims. Irwin Cotler is a former Liberal justice minister who attended the 2001 United Nations anti-racism conference mentioned in the Conservative flyer. Ariela Cotler briefly quit the Liberal Party in 2006 after then-leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff called Israel's bombing of a Lebanese village a war crime. She returned to the party after Ignatieff apologized and withdrew his statement.

Speaking on a motion of privilege on Nov. 19, Cotler denounced as "false, misleading, prejudicial and pernicious slander" Conservative claims that Liberals willingly participated in the UN conference that became a platform for anti-Israeli sentiment.

Pointing out that Israel had asked Canada to remain at Durban to "bear witness" and report the conference's anti-Semitic overtones, Cotler continued: "The Government of Israel publicly commended Canada for Canada's condemnation of anti-Semitism at Durban 1. Does that mean the Government of Israel, by supporting the Government of Canada, was also identifying with anti-Semitism? What kind of absurdity is that coming out of the members of the Conservative government. This is as absurd as it is false."

Cotler had equally strong words for the Conservative accusation the Liberals opposed de-funding Hamas and asked for Hezbollah to be delisted as a terrorist organization. It was the Liberal government that listed both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations in 2002. "For shame," Cotler continued. Funding both "was illegal under Canadian law from 2002 onward...How can they take credit that after 2006 they de-funded Hamas? My God, there has to be some respect for truth and some respect for honesty."

In a letter published in the National Post Nov. 21, Ariela Cotler countered every half-truth in the flyer with the offsetting fact it ignored. Then she went to the heart of what is so destructive and dangerous about wedge politics:

"It is presumptuous enough to presume that Canadian Jews only vote on these issues -- regardless of concerns over health care, the environment, social justice, poverty -- and that they vote as a bloc.

"In fact, so far as I know, no other religious community in our riding has been so targeted. But even on the 'Jewish values' issue, the flyer is a series of false and arguably slanderous statements...I condemn the Conservative party for its disinformation."

NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre) calls the flyers "boiler-plate wedge politics...It poisons the well of our political culture."

Retired University of Manitoba historian D.N. Sprague has described such tactics as "the paranoid style of politics." Paranoid or status politics play in the incendiary arena of the self-images of individuals and groups and their power relationships with each other. Status politics easily drown out the interest politics of rational debate on bread and butter realities like jobs and the economy.

Because status politics "stimulate the exposed nerve"' of rivalry based on race, colour, religion, language, class or region, they can unleash antagonisms that have no limit, Sprague says. They are most prevalent during periods of social and economic stress. People who are insecure search for scapegoats, fellow citizens who are different, for example, in language, religion or region, and who are perceived to be better off in some way, prospering at their expense and somehow conspiring to block their opportunity for power, financial success or recognition. Status politics are especially perilous for their perennial target, minorities.

If this is how low the Conservatives go when they are riding high in the polls, imagine what they will stoop to if their grip on power is actually threatened.

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg author and political commentator.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 25, 2009 A15