There's No Demagoguery Quite Like Fantasy-/Fear-based Demagoguery...

...and David Climenhaga specializes in both

Sometimes the best way to to tell what really stings a far-left ideologue is what they pretend to dismiss.

And the reason it stings is because it's so true. And they know it.

That seemed to be the case recently when Rabble.ca cartoon character David Climenhaga made a wry reference to a Bad Company blogpost pointing out his fearmongering demagoguery related to the long gun registry.

I'm sure readers remember, but just in case you don't, a reminder: Climenhaga dropped a suggestion that abolishing the handgun registry is next on the Harper government's agenda. His evidence? Well, he has no evidence.

For good reason. It's hard to have evidence that something is on the agenda when it's unequivocally not on the agenda.

In reality, Climenhaga knows what he's doing. The left has exploited guns as their favourite wedge issue for decades in Canada, and he's doing what he can to try to keep that wedge issue alive. He does it badly, but he does his best. Which is sad when you think about it.

Today, on the one-year anniversary of the shooting of US Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Climenhaga is back at it again. And like any other cartoon character, he's predictable. He's once again peddling the far-left myth that the lunatic who took aim at Giffords was set off by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

It's fiction. Anyone who isn't viewing the tragedy through the lens of a desperate need to blame it on their political adversaries knows that. Climenhaga himself might even know it... but don't hold your breath.

"Mr Loughner was known to hold extreme negative views on such topics as the right of women to have an abortion or to hold public office, as well believing that the US government was practicing mind control, faking spaceflights, and had backed the 911 attacks," Climenhaga writes. "But such beliefs, while they are associated with the Tea Party right, are of necessity completely legal in a democracy."

In terms of beliefs popular with the Tea Party, one of these things is not like the others. Oddly enough, it's the one idea that does find traction amongst the Tea Party: opposition to abortion. The other things are entirely inventions necessary to advance Climenhaga's fantasy-based demagoguery.

That becomes crystal clear when you consider that Climenhaga attempts to attribute 9/11 trutherism to the Tea Party. That's a belief far more at home among the Occupy movement. Don't worry, I'm getting to the occupiers.

Climenhaga's attempt to paint Loughner as an ideological compatriot of Palin and the Tea Party by linking only a single belief prevalent amongst the Tea Party, and known to be held by Palin, is extremely thin gruel. It's actually slightly more substantive than his past offerings, but that's actually saying next to nothing.

Climenhaga also overlooks reports by those who knew Loughner -- and went to high school with him -- that Loughner, in his younger days, was actually a far-leftist whose beliefs gravitated much closer to the Occupy movement than anything even resembling the Tea Party.

Which brings me to the Occupy movement, and just how self-serving the far-left is in politicizing these sorts of violent acts.

Some may remember what happened in November when Oscar Ortega-Hernandez opened fire on the White House. It was a very big story for a few weeks. Some may even remember that Ortega-Hernandez had been spotting hanging out at the Occupy DC encampment. They later honoured him with a moment of silence.

These are the same people who pushed an elderly woman down a flight of stairs, so don't be shocked.

Predictably, Climenhaga isn't doing handstands trying to associate Ortega-Hernandez with the Occupy movement. I don't think the reasons why need to be explained.

Although the pro-Occupy shills of the far-left did handstands trying to dispute the connection. Like Climenhaga, they did it badly, but they did their best. Which, again, is just sad.

But this is all just background. What Climenhaga really wants to do is plant the idea of of imminent political gun violence in Canada -- although we've already seen that Climenhaga will settle for the act of a demented, confused gunman that he himself can politicize.

Once again, Climenhaga offers no evidence. He alludes to the allegedly-threatening tone of pro-gun advocates on Twitter. Which is funny when you think about it.

But, in the end, it just comes back to the common political currency of Climenhaga: demagoguery.

Seeing as how Climenhaga doesn't seem to understand demagoguery. So it seems useful to conclude with a definition: "A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace".

Fits the bill nicely, even if David Climenhaga himself can't bring himself to admit it... to himself.

David Climenhaga's Desperation is the Anti-gun Lobby's Desperation

Desperation.


That's literally the only explanation for a recent blogpost by far-left demagogue David Climenhaga. It appears both on Climenhaga's Alberta Diary blog and on Rabble.ca.


The latter is a dead giveaway into the true nature of the post. When writing for Rabble.ca not only is basis in fact or sound logic not a prerequisite, it frequently seems like it's discouraged.


It's not surprising: this particular blogpost very clearly has no basis in either of these things. It's merely an exercise in desperation, and a tacit admission that the debate over the long gun registry isn't about the long registry at all -- not for the left.


Rather, they want to make it about everything but the long gun registry.


In Climenhaga's case, he wants to make it about the shooting rampage perpetrated by Derek Jensen, killing three and wounding one other.


It's only natural Climenhaga would want to draw the conclusion; the story has everything that LGR proponents favour. It's tragic. It's sensational. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with the long gun registry, but that doesn't matter. Climenhaga practically practically says as much himself, without ever realizing it.


Derek Jensen opened fire on a car carrying the four victims, one of whom was his ex-girlfriend, not with a long gun, but with a handgun... the kind of weapon that will be entirely unaffected by the legislation that is about to formally abolish the long gun registry.


But to Climenhaga, none of this matters. Not a whit.


Rather, Climenhaga forecasts that the Harper government will also move to abolish the handgun registry... even though no one has even flirted with such an idea. If he bothered to attempt a search for remarks by Conservative MPs talking about abolishing the handgun registry, he very clearly came up empty; his blogpost features not a single one.


Simply put, Climenhaga is openly spreading panic about something he's concocted entirely out of his own imagination.


But in his desperate bid to try to make the long-gun registry about more than just the LGR, he's unwittingly played a dastardly trick on himself: he's just written every pro-gun rights activist in Canada a license to make the LGR about more than just the registration of long guns... about things such as mass gun seizure.


Pro-LGR activists have insisted that mass gun seizure has never been on their agenda. We've been expected to take them at their word.


Ironically, there's a great deal more justification for being concerned about mass gun seizures -- stories abound about Toronto Police, in particular, seizing long guns mere hours after owners have mistakenly allowed the registration to expire.


Meanwhile, with no evidence whatsoever to justify the prediction, Climenhaga infers that abolition of the handgun registry is next.


The only trace of evidence Climenhaga offers is a remark about wedge politics, suggesting that the handgun registry is the next, ideal, wedge issue for the Conservatives.


It's beyond comical. It ignores the fact that it's been the Liberal Party, NDP and Bloc Quebecois who have been exploiting the LGR as their wedge issue. It also ignores the fact that one of the priorities of the Conservative government has been gun crime. Not gun ownership, but gun crime.


Of course that the facts so neatly lineup against his handgun registry strawman argument is a detail that seems to have evaded Climenhaga in his desperate frenzy to erect a strawman that will distract from now the facts also so neatly lineup against the long gun registry.


In the end, there are only two things about David Climenhaga's blogpost that are remarkable: the first is the extent of its self-edification. The second is the desperation.


But mostly the desperation.

There is Something Deeply, Deeply Wrong With These People

Previously on Bad Company, I told you all about Twitterthug and varmint-at-large @ConBGone and her campaign of intimidation against opponents of the Long Gun Registry.

For a time, it seemed like this individual had, gratefully, excused herself from Twitter.

Sadly, no. @ConBGone has, unfortunately, resurfaced on Twitter, and hasn't learned a damn thing from her experience. Rather, instead of attempting to excuse her foul behaviour at all, she's resorted to pointing the finger at other people:

It's the typical response of a shoolyard bully: @ConBGone is trying to pretend her behaviour isn't what's wrong, what's wrong is that someone would draw attention to it. Just like every schoolyard bully who blames their victim for telling a teacher, rather than accept responsibility for their own actions. Which tells you everything you need to know about @ConBGone's progress through the process of growing up.

She's not alone in this regard by any means.

Scuttlebut has it that @ConBGone has even established a stalking horse Twitter account, @GunNutz. Speculation holds that @ConBGone established the account to try to make the anti-LGR lobby look bad... but who would put any stock in @ConBGone's Twitter activities when she's already revealed herself to be nothing more than a petty thug?

More Facts the Pro-Long Gun Registry Lobby Refuse to Acknowledge

As debate over the long gun registry continues despite the inevitability of its demise, the debate, from the side of its proponents, is as much about the information they won't acknowledge as it is about the information they will.

Anything they can present as supporting their arguments they'll happily acknowledge, even if they must twist that fact beyond anything even remotely resembling the truth. Any information that doesn't support them they simply refuse to acknowledge. They pretend it doesn't exist.

Even in the week following a political rally passed off as a L'Ecole Polytechnique memorial rally -- without so much as a dress-up -- more and more information is being presented that shows pro-LGR arguments to be the uninformed and ignorant tripe it really is. Previously, it was the Globe and Mail that was off the pro-LGR reservation. Now it's the Montreal Gazette.

In a pair of charts presenting the facts regarding crime in Canada, two things become crystal clear: first off, the weapons of crime in Canada overwhelmingly are not guns.

As it turns out, the lion's share of crime in Canada is committed not with firearms of any time, but with bare hands -- described as "physical force" in these charts. It's kind of hard to register bare hands. So we'll register guns instead, right?

Right?

After all, at that point when someone does use a gun to commit a crime, we'll be able to use the registry to catch them easily, right?

Right?

Well, as it turns out the vast majority of guns used to commit crimes in Canada are not known to be registered. This is either because they were never registered in the first place, or because serial numbers and other identifying information have been removed from the weapon.

More staggering for pro-LGR activists -- so staggering they will pretend this fact doesn't exist -- is the detail that the vast minority of guns used to commit murder in Canada are long guns. The gun of choice for murder in Canada -- not the weapon of choice, but the gun in choice -- is a handgun.

Handguns have been required to be registered in Canada since before the second world war.

So of all the weapons that LGR proponents could be singling out, the long gun is precisely the wrong one. If LGR proponents really want to focus on reducing gun violence in Canada, they should focus on the guns most overhwelmingly used to commit gun violence in Canada: hand guns.

Of course, there are far fewer hand guns in Canada. This provides them with far fewer targets to pursue, and when the goal is not really to reduce gun violence but rather to rebuild Canadian culture around their favoured brand of hegemony, it's better to have far more targets -- even if those targets are law-abiding -- to pursue.

How the Left Intends to Wage War for the Long-Gun Registry

Since the very beginning, proponents of the long gun registry have relied overwhelmingly on three things to win what they view as a war to save this demagogic and symbolic institution.

They rely on emotional blackmail: they accuse those who want to dismantle the long gun registry of being indifferent to the suffering of the victims of L'Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson College. They accuse them of being indifferent to domestic abuse.

They rely on fear-mongering: they insist that the long gun registry is the first step in dismantling all measures of gun control in Canada.

They rely on distorting the facts: they note that the registry was logged into thousands of times a day, although the onboard computers police have in their cruisers automatically access the LGR when they make any kind of inquiry.

Now, they have another tactic: intimidating their opponents.

This tale revolves around the activities of @ConBGone, a far-left Twitter troll who despises conservatives to her very core. Like almost all of these far-left trolls, she apparently believes that no rules of any kind apply to her. So when she had the opportunity to post the name and address of a long gun registry opponent, she did so with glee.

As with virtually all of these zaelots, @ConBGone wasn't particularly responsive to criticism of her targeting of this individual. In fact, she set out to make it seem as if those who objected were the ones with a problem:

Moreover, when called out by several Twitter users for this blatant thuggery, @ConBGone made it clear that her intention was to intimidate opponents of the LGR into silence:

Fortunately, the precise offending Tweet has been deleted. Concerned bystanders immediately reported @ConBGone's activity to Twitter, and she hasn't Tweeted since. Speculation holds that Twitter has frozen her account prior to deleting it.

Fortunately, not all LGR proponents have gone quite as far off the deep end in their actions. But @ConBGone's actions are a reminder of just how far many of them are willing to go.

Unfortunately, actions like @ConBGone's have been taken before. Consistently, those who commit these kinds of acts have consistently refused to take any responsibility for them. Some have gone to remarkable lengths to escape the implications of their behaviour.

Fortunately, those witnessing these acts of bullying and intimidation aren't staying silent about them any longer.

It's Not a Memorial... It's Political Emotional Blackmail

Every December 6, the entire nation stops to engage in a few sombre hours of navel-gazing, wondering just how what took place on December 6, 1989 could have happened.

Some people have wondered how what took place when Marc Lepine -- also known as Gamil Gharbi -- burst into L'Ecole Polytechnique, divided the men from the women and murdered the women, could be prevented. Others have pretended, but done nothing more. They've only pretended.

Sadly, some of those who were victimized in 1989 are among the latter, and not the former. They've participated in the politicization of the L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre, and they've taken it beyond being merely ideological, and made it partisan.

Today, Tory MPs were excluded from a L'Ecole Polytechnique memorial. The idea was to punish Conservative MPs for daring to abolish the Long Gun Registry, that government program that has had magical violence-abating qualities ascribed to it even though no evidence has ever supported that notion.

More on this shortly.

But the organizers of the "memorial" -- among them Suzanne Laplante Edward whose daughter was sadly killed at L'Ecole Polytechnique, Coalition for Gun Control President Wendy Cukier, and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union -- have made it clear that the purpose of the "memorial" is not actually to memorialize the victims of Lepine/Gharbi, or the victims of gun violence, but simply a political rally. Nothing more.

They can deny it all they want, and they will. But they're just not telling the truth.

A memorial for the victims of gun violence would require only mutual revulsion at what took place on December 6, 1989. Disagreement with whether or not a specific programme has had any effect on gun violence -- involving long guns or otherwise -- would be tolerated. But not by Laplante, Cukier, or the CEP. The decision to exclude those who don't agree with them about the Long Gun Registry is, to that end, predictable. Such people have never tolerated disagreement, regardless of what the facts actually indicate.

In the end, the only thing remarkable thing about the move is that Laplante, Cukier and company declined the opportunity to emotionally blackmail Conservative MPs in person. Because that's all these things have been about.

It certainly isn't about what the facts state. If it were, getting Long Gun Registry advocates to acknowledge the information contained in this graph, originally published by the Globe and Mail, wouldn't be like pulling teeth.

Compiled using data on gun crime from Stats Canada, the graph clearly shows that violence involving long guns had been declining Canada since 1982 -- seven years before L'Ecole Polytechnique, and 12 years before the long gun registry was established.

It's staggering and undeniable evidence that the LGR just hasn't been the miracle cure that its advocates insist it has been. The LGR is a mere cosmetic gun control measure, designed to give the illusion that something different has been done, while in fact it does nothing.

The Long Gun Registry would be bad enough if it were merely ideological. But it's far worse than that. The steadfast and ongoing tantrums of the LGR's advocates, even in the face of all the available information -- actual information, as opposed to merely the assertions of its supporters -- demonstrates that the LGR is in fact demagogic in nature.

It merely appeals to the prejudices, emotions (particularly fears) and vanity of Canada's left-wing, and is merely being allowed to stand as a symbol not of Canada's opposition to gun violence -- actually violence-combatting measures alone would do that -- but of the left-wing's success in rebuilding Canada in its own image.

That a Conservative majority government could exist at all is deeply threatening to that notion. That they would dare destroy one of the left-wing's sacred cows is yet even more threatening. That's all they really care about.

These memorials, whom the politically-motivated self-appointed gun violence martyrs demand that Conservatives stay away from -- have finally succeeded in trampling the memories of those actually killed December 6, 1989, and holding up their bloody carcasses as political strawwomen.

It's emotional blackmail, and it's their intention that the fix is in. The Tories should show not an ounce of quarter. Abolish the long gun registry, destroy the data, and let the demagogues weep over it.