Friday, May 28, 2021

Erin O'Toole's Sinister New Propaganda Weapon


It's hard to believe that Erin O'Toole doesn't think he's getting his message out, and that he's going to have to bombard Canadians with even more attack ads.  

When as everybody knows he fires off at least five grubby attack ads a day, seven days a week.

And it's almost impossible to avoid the sights and sounds of O'Toole spreading Trudeau hate on the Con media.

But still he's not happy.


And of course neither are O'Toole's foreign advisors, the ones who helped Boris Johnson win his bloody majority.

And they're making plans for Erin.

The Conservative party is planning “groundbreaking” strategies to hyper-target its campaign messaging directly to Canadian voters, the Star has learned. 

A fundraising document obtained by the Star shows the Conservatives want to build an ambitious “voter-facing” communications campaign to fight “fire with fire” against progressive third-party groups. 

Trying to make it sound like the big bad Liberals are the bullies not the Cons.

The Liberals will do and say anything to stop Erin O’Toole from winning. And they’re supported by far-left allies who are already running negative ads against Erin O’Toole.

“We need to fight fire with fire — in the news media, over the airwaves, online and in mailboxes.”

When in fact nobody runs more negative ads than O'Toole in his never ending attempts to smear Justin Trudeau.


Which makes this column by Susan Delacourt seem somewhat absurd.

This may have not been the perfect week for Canada’s Conservatives to reveal that they’re looking to Boris Johnson’s strategists for political advice.

But something about Johnson’s politics obviously has sent Canadian Conservatives knocking on the doors of people who helped him move into 10 Downing St. As my Star colleagues Stephanie Levitz and Alex Boutilier have reported, O’Toole’s team has hired not one, but two consultancy firms with ties to Johnson’s victories: Topham Guerin for social media and Stack Data Strategies for political analytics.

We can divine two conclusions from these contracts: the Conservatives are serious about the looming data war with the Liberals and they don’t intend to play nice.

For the Cons have NEVER played nice.


Yesterday they were channelling xenophobia, tomorrow it will be China, China, China.

And with Sean Topham and Ben Guerin running their digital campaign it could become even dirtier. 


One of the tactics that Topham Guerin has become especially known for are ‘shitposts’ — a meme of obvious and usually ironic bad quality to troll its reader,according to an interview with the firm’s founders, which appeared last year in an online New Zealand magazine called The Spinoff. 
 

The firm itself obviously enjoys its rakish infamy, advertising its reputationon its website with testimonials such as this: “A social media firehose of attention-grabbing, emotion-manipulating, behaviour-nudging messaging designed to corral the faithful and convert the fence-sitters.”

Here’s Ben Guerin himself in that Spinoff interview: “Instead of having a big bonfire in a campaign, you have lots of little fires.”
 

It's a disgusting approach to campaigning, even if it is tailor made for our filthy Johnson Cons and their desperate leader.


But at least they recognize that their main enemies are those of us who use social media to fight them.

And just like we used the humble weapons at our disposal to defeat Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer, we will use them again to destroy the treasonous Erin O'Toole and his foreign media masters...


P.S. I now have almost six-thousand followers on Twitter so please join Twitter and add to that total.

And together we will help give O'Toole and his Johnson Cons a lesson they'll never forget...

16 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:49 PM

    “Instead of having a big bonfire in a campaign, you have lots of little fires.” Steve Bannon said it better when he called it "flooding the zone with shit." The idea is throw out so many lies it's impossible to fact check them all. In the end, truth becomes irrelevant. We've spent 5 years watching this in the US and now it's here. Buckle up!

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  2. Decades ago there was some political science scholarship that looked at a new phenomenon called the attack ad. The conclusion of that scholarship was they are effective and they went into great detail of why, when and how they were effective.

    Political operatives and the media, being intellectually lazy by nature, took the conclusions, without the rest, and ran with them. Over the decades some attack ads have been effective while others have not.

    Examples of successful attack ads are those the Harper Conservatives directed at Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Examples of ones that did not work are those that the Harper Conservatives directed at Justin Trudeau.

    Whenever an attack ad or a line of attack does not work the political operatives always fail to do a deep analysis of why. Invariably they conclude that the failure was a flaw in their messaging and if they had only crafted a better message they would have been successful.

    Of course that is wrong. Those who have actually studied the impacts of attack ads have indicated that there are several criteria for their effectiveness.

    - You have to use them strategically. Carpet bombing the electorate with nothing but negativity about your opponent will desensitize your target audience to your messaging, possibly causing the exact opposite effect from what you desire. Eventually, you will only be speaking to the converted.

    - Your attacks have to be at least plausible. Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff were relative unknowns so when the Harper Conservatives made efforts to "define" them they were effective, particularly since the Liberals made very little effort to counter their attacks.

    - Your message has to be well crafted. Just throwing manure at the wall and hoping it will stick will not work. You actually have to take the time and put in the effort to craft an effective message.

    - Your target audience has to be open to the line of attack. Non-aligned Canadians were open to the Conservative attacks on Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff because there was probably some misgivings about both that the Conservatives were able to tap into. The exact same attacks on Mr. Trudeau were not as effective because the same misgivings did not exist among non-aligned voters.

    - You need to show that you have an answer for addressing the negative aspect of your opponent that you are pointing out in your line of attack. In other words you do have to show why you are "better" than your opponent.

    The CPC has been attacking Justin Trudeau and the Liberals since 2013. It failed them completely in 2015 and it failed them completely again in 2019. I will remind you that it was the Bloc that prevented the Liberals from winning a majority government not the Conservatives. Without the Bloc resurgence the Liberals would have won over 180 seats in 2019.

    So, as usual, instead of doing a deep dive into why it has failed them twice they have concluded that there must be some flaws in their messaging so they will hire some people to "improve" that messaging. I am reminded of that old definition of insanity.

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  3. To make matters worse: Bannon is lurking. Get ready to "Rumble"

    https://www.canadaland.com/rumble-the-canadian-company-hosting-the-far-right/

    I think C-10 may die on the order paper next month unfortunately, but I do hope the Liberals get a majority next go-around so that they don't have to deal with the McConnell-esque obstruction of attempts to plug all the orifices where the Big Lie is coming from. Speaking of big lies, I'm not sure if you recall an argument recently on these boards with a drive-by troll who hinted at the possibility of floating a phony sex scandal come June. Well, it's here, courtesy of Conman Black's yellow-journalism rag. I won't link to the article, but it's an obvious guilt-by-association hit piece. The lawsuit has nothing whatsoever to do with Trudeau, but just the name, the mention of the mysterious "Clinton Foundation" (Trudeau Foundation) north and the words "sexual misconduct," "mentor," and "NDA" are enough to set the mouthbreathers and sausage handlers into a frothing rage.

    This might be it, or it might be a trial bomb set for a slow burn into something else. Scheer failed to capitalize on the Aladdingate kerfuffle, and Thinskinna never gained any traction with the Kokanee smear, so it's entirely within the realm of possibility that the tool and his band of shitposters aim to go for the next obvious false outrage: inventing a blue dress where none otherwise exists.

    As for where these wankers hail from and who they've worked for, BloJo the clown isn't having such a good go of it lately with the Cummings report, as Delacourt points out. I suspect Rosie will read him for filth when he acts the fool on her show this weekend. G-7 should be interesting, I'm sure he's sad that the Turnip won't be there to make him look like only the second dumbest peroxide-haired covidiot in the room. The tool better find himself a wig or a soiled mop to plunk on that skinhead of his if he really hopes to compete. Just not ready, no hair though.

    Now, I'm not saying to be complacent in the least, since after all what happens in Vegas -- er, south of 49 and across the pond -- rarely if ever stays there, and a cornered animal is most dangerous when desperate. The firehose of bullshit is gearing up for its bigliest and yugest operation ever. Stand on guard Canada and don't drink the orange Kool-Aid, because it's only a matter of time before the Q train starts rolling in, and all pretext of sanity is completely thrown out!

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  4. Anonymous10:36 PM

    I'll say it again, Canadians are seeing the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel and the last thing they want to hear or see is more of the same bullshit the Con's have been spewing from the start. They have proven that they are the party of absolute uselessness, capable only of barking like rabid hyenas in search of a morsel they can exploit. I believe this doubling down on their attacks will backfire immensely and deservedly, culminating with a massive Liberal majority that resoundingly tells the Con's to collectively STFU!
    JD

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous4:00 AM

      It’s cute you believe that, but with what is coming; what Justin knew and when. Well, his own party might toss him out.

      Don’t you think leaks are so much fun? Some reporters sure think so.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:25 AM

      With senior CAF leaders falling like dominos, O'Toole should be worried about his own skeletons coming to light. The '90s and '00s weren't exactly enlightened times in the RCAF as Russell Williams would be happy to explain.

      Delete
  5. The liberals have to go on the offensive. Canadians are humans as well and easily manipulated by the puppet masters. If Canada does not want to become the feudal fortress that has been assembled in the USA and UK, it must defend the adrenaline.

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  6. Hi anon@5:49 PM...Inspired by Donald Trump the Cons have already been playing Bannon's game for years. They lie all the time and can be sure their bought media won't bother to fact check them before they move on to the next. The Johnson Boys can only make matters worse, and with an election coming we need to be able to fight fire with fire...

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  7. Hi Ottlib....I think you summed up very well why the Cons rely so heavily on attack ads, and why although they worked once they don't work so well now. In fact I would argue that relying so heavily on them has done the Cons more damage than it has the Liberals. And this is so true:

    ...as usual, instead of doing a deep dive into why it has failed them twice they have concluded that there must be some flaws in their messaging so they will hire some people to "improve" that messaging. I am reminded of that old definition of insanity.

    Having said that, I must also say the Topham Guerin is very good at what it does, and deploys extremely sophisticated data mining techniques to frame its attack ads. So the Liberals and their supporters on social media will have to be ready to strike back with ruthless efficiency, or find themselves struggling to emerge from under a mountain of manure...

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  8. Hi Jackie...I read Rumble for the first time yesterday and was surprised by its look, a look I would describe as neither flesh nor fowl. There is far right material embedded all over it but it doesn't jump out at you, so I question how effective it will be as a Trumpling tool. As for the phone sex scandal that some troll was hinting darkly about recently, I am not surprised that it's all smoke and no fire. The Cons are desperate and are crawling on all fours still looking for anything to try to smear Trudeau. So I'm afraid they are going to be really shocked to discover that two can play that game, and that we have some real dirt saved up for the election campaign. So that we can prove once again that when it comes to the Cons the fish rots from the head down. It's a nasty business but somebody has to do it...

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  9. Hi JD....As usual you are right. After the horror of the pandemic that last thing Canadians need is the sight of the desperate Cons splashing around in their own excrement. After what happened to Harper and Scheer you'd think they'd know better, but they never learn. They can't seem to understand that the more they try to smear others, the grubbier and more diseased they look. And I agree, only a strong Liberal majority can cure the Con disease, and make this country clean and safe again....

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  10. Hi anon@4:00am...Goodness, isn't this amazing? We were just talking about you, and here you are again. And still hinting darkly about scandals that in all probability exist only in your diseased mind. Believe it or not I feel sorry for you, for I understand how desperate you must feel, with a useless loser like O'Toole as your leader. Life is so short, your life cycle is drawing to a close, and all you can look forward to is four more years of Trudeau. Sad. Please spread your buggy wings and get a life, before it's too late...

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  11. Hi anon@8:25 AM....I don't want to say too much, because we don't want to deprive the Cons of any unpleasant surprises. But yes, Captain Outhouse and as many as three of his scurvy crew, are in for a very unpleasant election campaign. But of course, they will deserve it. Those who spend their lives swimming in their own excrement will sooner or later be drowned in it....

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  12. Hi Steve...I can understand your impatience. I sometimes feel a little frustrated by the Liberals failure to strike back at the Cons. But allowing the Harperites, or should I say Johnsonites, to soil themselves with impunity is a good strategy. It makes them look even more filthy, and sets them up for a devastating counter attack. When the time is right, the Cons will go down like the Hindenburg. And it will be a beautiful sight....

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  13. Anonymous11:03 PM

    Negative news sells so it is only natural for the Cons to hitch their wagon to that type of media mule. Fortunately conning people to act against their own best interests is not easy as democracy would be long dead. One of the main problems Cons come up against is human diversity. People have a wide range of emotional triggers, different trigger levels, response and retention levels.
    The Conservative Cons have discovered that their past efforts have been amateurish and want to up their game. The initial trap is that they overplayed the emotional stimulus which sent a percentage of the emotionally challenged audience over the top. This in turn drove other potential targets away. To correct this they pushed them into subgroups where they are less visible but can be called up on a moments notice. Q'anon and "great reveal" prophesies at some future date help control this crowd. The message is although Trudeau is Satan, don't go over the top today (and scare people away) wait until all is revealed on Aug 21 ( the date is flexible)!
    So now that the emotionally challenged are under control whats next? Seems to be the data driven manipulators where groups are specifically targeted and messaging is altered based on measured response. Media pieces such as "Trudeau catfished the millennials now its the Tools turn to step up to the plate" is the new norm... target/evaluate/modify/repeat. There is no doubt they can influence people but because of individual diversity things get complicated fast and there doesn't seem to be a cohesive glue that will send everyone screaming to the voting booth when they shout the equivalent of fire such as Trudeau has betrayed us and the heathens are at the gate.
    Historical success such as Brexit used the urgent mass appeal story that in addition to being overrun by refugees they were about to be inundated by millions of Turks when Turkey joined the EU. Hither seized the preexisting meme that Germany was winning WW1 but were tricked/sabotaged into surrender by certain elements in their own country, primarily the Jewish community. To date the Cons have dabbled with the old stock meme that the country has been taken from us (presumably by Liberals pandering to immigrants?) and its time to take it back but it just does not seem to resonate. Perhaps they don't need a common meme and the data wizards can manage a dozen memes that will generate enough targeted emotional energy to win the day but without a strong cohesive meme its unlikely. Somehow it would be a lot simpler if they just published a detailed platform on how they plan on improving Canada's future and let the voters decide. The only problem is if they did that they would no longer be Cons!

    RT

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  14. Hi RT....Interesting comment. And I agree with you when you say this:

    There is no doubt they can influence people but because of individual diversity things get complicated fast and there doesn't seem to be a cohesive glue that will send everyone screaming to the voting booth when they shout the equivalent of fire such as Trudeau has betrayed us and the heathens are at the gate.

    But I've been taking a closer look at what Topham Guerin did for Boris Johnson, and from what I have seen rather than spend all the time demonizing his opponents they focused on making him look more human. They are doing the same for O'Toole now, and unless progressives stop this fake makeover in its tracks it could cause trouble later on....

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