A Tiny, Perfect, Piece of Orwellian Propaganda

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Not so long ago I wrote something about the new firearms regulations being brought in by the federal government. Since then I’ve come across what I think is probably the most concise bit of Orwellian rhetoric I’ve ever seen. It’s a three and one half minute YouTube video by Pierre Poilievre and I think readers could benefit from a deconstruction in order to understand how incredibly manipulative this little worm man really is, and how potentially dangerous he is to our society.

First, what does the word ‘Orwellian’ mean? It comes from the author Eric Blair, who most people know through his pen name, George Orwell. Orwell was a journalist, author, and, political activist who became deeply concerned about the effect that totalitarian ideologies were having on the human condition. In particular, as a writer he was really concerned about the effect that newly emergent, sophisticated forms of propaganda were having on human discourse

George Orwell. Public Domain image c/o the Wikimedia Commons.

While he wrote about these issues in other venues, most people know about them from his novel 1984. In this dystopian world, a totalitarian government has taken over Britain and manipulates the populace through:

• routinely changing the historical record to erase inconvenient facts

• simplifying the English language in order to limit the ability of people to communicate subtle or complicated ideas

• encouraging the expression of extreme negative emotions towards carefully chosen ‘enemies of the state’ to channel frustrations away from the leadership

Now that I’ve raised the idea of ‘Orwellian language’, I’d like readers to take the time to look at this short video that the YouTube algorithm put into my ‘in box’ a couple weeks ago.

When I first saw this video I was struck by how ‘vague’ it is. Ask yourself, ‘did anyone actually specify what particular weapons were being affected by the new rules?’. The only words they used were ‘hunting rifles’ and ‘a gun’—which are used by ‘hunters’ and ‘recreational and professional sports shooters’.

The problem for Poilievre is that the Liberal rule changes aren’t going to ban all guns, just some specific types—center-fire, semi-automatic, rifles with a receiver that can accept high-capacity (ie: over 5 rounds), quickly-changed box magazines. (There are also new restrictions around pistols and air-guns, but that’s not important to what this article is about.) If the general public realizes that this is such a limited restriction, then any sympathy he may gain from his campaign is limited.

In effect, he’s really talking about two classes of weapons: assault and battle rifles. These are military rifles that have been been modified to disallow full-auto fire, but which are pretty much the same as soldiers have used since WWII to today. The legislation has no interest in banning any of the traditional bolt-action, lever action, single-shot, muzzle-loader, or, semi-auto guns with a magazine that you have to load one round at a time. These are the guns that the vast majority of hunters use. (They are also the weapons that the traditional gun sports of target shooting use.)

Whomever wrote this carefully-scripted piece of political theater has to have realized that there would be very little support for people who complain about their army-surplus modified assault rifles being taken away from them—because these guns are clearly not designed for either hunting (over-kill) or target shooting (not accurate enough).

Another thing that struck me when I first saw this was the total lack of reference to the sort of multiple-homicide, ‘spree killing’ events that most people associate with the type of guns the Liberals want to ban. Instead, he focuses exclusively on ‘street crime’ in ‘big cities’. But if you asked the general pro-regulation public why they are freaked-out about the guns people have, they generally reference some sort of ideologically-motivated massacre—and which have nothing to do with street crime. Consider the following list of the top three mass-shootings that immediately came to my mind when I think about this stuff, and, the actual type of weapon used:

1. The Moncton shooting of 2014 —an army surplus M14 battle rifle.

2. The Ecole Polytechnique Massacre of 1989 —a Ruger ‘mini’, which is a weapon originally built to be an inexpensive assault rifle (ie: intermediate cartridge) based on the M14 battle rifle for sale to the military. The manufacturer had trouble finding military contracts, so it sold it on the civilian market instead.

3. The 2020 Nova Scotia attacks—which used both an AR-15 (the rifle currently used by both the Canadian and US militaries) and another Ruger ‘mini’.

There have been lots of others, but those were the ones that stuck in my memory. Funny how Polievere seems to have totally forgotten about them and only remembers ‘urban street crime’.

Another odd thing was Poilievre’s reference to violent crime. Indeed, he says that this has gone up “32% since Trudeau was elected”. Let’s look at that figure. Trudeau became Prime Minister in 2015. According to Statistics Canada, the violent crime rate per 100,00 was then 755 and in 2020 it was 843. According to my math, that comes out as an increase of a little under 12% (which seems to be about par for the statistical ‘churn’ of the graph we see below). Since there are no references, I don’t really know where the esteemed leader of the Official Opposition got his numbers—but they seem totally bogus.

This is what Statistics Canada says about all crimes for the past 55 years.

From this ‘wealth of evidence’ Poilievre has made the inference that banning assault and battle rifles will actually increase violent crime rates: “These types of policies will only lead to higher crime rates—’as we’ve seen’”. (?????!!!) (In philosophy, this is what is called a ‘non sequitur’ from the Latin ‘it doesn’t follow’. In rhetoric, it might be called ‘confusing the rubes’.)

&&&&

Actually, the really important stuff in this video comes from where Poilievre starts ascribing motivations to the Liberals and NDP. As I see it, this comes down to:

• sucking up to a false “Hollywood” vision of the world

• divide and conquer political strategy

• making everyone depend on the government to control rural people

I find the first two ideas risible. First because the one time that Poilievre actually cites a solid statistic, it was obviously false (ie: the increase in violent crime). What this says to me is that while I agree that Hollywood routinely confuses voters with its depiction of life, Poilievre is just as bad for throwing sand in the eyes of people. Indeed, one of the worst things Hollywood gets wrong is saying that violent crime is out of control.

The idea that the Liberals have built their brand on ‘divide and conquer’ is similarly laughable when it comes from a politician who has spent years blaming Justin Trudeau for everything short of the crucifixion of Christ. It’s even more rich in a video that suggests that the evil ‘socialists’ are trying to make everyone serfs of the state in order to be able to totally control them.

Let’s just savour the words that ooze out at the end of this thing.

—for the NDP-Liberal ideology, someone who goes out and lives off the land, hunts, takes care of their family, has a sense of independence and self-reliance separate from the government. And that’s exactly the opposite of the socialist ideology that Trudeau and the NDP so embrace. They can’t stand the thought of that. And so they’re against the rural way of life. It’s contrary to their ideology. And they want everyone to be dependent on the state for everything because that makes them more powerful.

Poilievre repeats the word ‘ideology’ three times because he wants listeners to be reminded that people like Justin Trudeau don’t do things because they believe that they are the right thing to do. Instead, they are following an artificial game plan based on an alien worldview called ‘socialism’. Instead, Conservatives are in favour of things that are honest, decent, and, traditional: ‘family’, ‘independence’, ‘self-reliance’.

Of course, all that gushing nonsense about independence and self-reliance is just as ideological as any propaganda from the now-defunct Soviet Union. We live in an over-populated, complex, booming world and the idea that we can live like our old pioneer ancestors is not much more than Moonshine and Softsoap. I grew up in the countryside and people there want and need the government just as much as anyone else. They need government pensions, medical coverage, public schools, law and order, roads, etc. And if they are foolish enough to believe that they can have all of that without taxes, environmental regulations, rules, and, a legal system—well, then I guess Poilievre just reeled in some more suckers.

It’s easy to dismiss Poilievre as just another slick politician who tells people nonsense to get elected. He might actually be stupid enough to believe what he’s saying. (I honestly think that that might be possible.) But whatever motivates him, I think he’s dangerous. Not necessarily because I think he has a hidden agenda he wants to follow if he gets into power. Instead, I see him as yet another step away from an open democratic society and towards populist demogogery based on the decay of honest political discourse.

I think Eric Blair would be concerned—.

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!