I don’t know about you, reader, but by far my favourite thing about Canadian elections are the attack ads. That passive-aggressive “niceness” and mock-civility that defines how Canadians relate to each other — all that “Mister Speaker” and “my esteemed colleague” nonsense — falls away, replaced by mudslinging and laboured puns. Some commentators grumble at these sorts of ads, which are often called “U.S.-style attack ads.” But not me. There’s a certain honesty in this plain-speaking vindictiveness.

Of particular interest are all the websites set up to disgrace political parties. Take, for example, MeetTheNDP.ca, a new site that features “damning” quotes from NDP MPs and other party brass. In tiny font, at the bottom of the page, the site notes that it’s registered by the Conservative Party of Canada. It’s so small, in fact, that I totally missed it at first glance, and ran a rudimentary check on the site’s IP address to find out that it was registered by the Conservatives.

The Meet the NDP website is a hilarious example of party miscalculation. In its attempt to smear the New Democrats, the Conservatives only end up bolstering their support among certain demographics. Many of the would-be embarrassing quotes come across (to my eyes, at least) as self-evident and even insightful. Friends of mine have been sharing the link on the Internet as a way of saying, “Look at all the cool stuff these NDP MPs have said!”

Take former NDP candidate Morgan Wheeldon’s claim that the state of Israel may be guilty of war crimes against neighbouring Palestinians. Indeed, seemingly half of the indictments republished on this website have to do with NDP politicians expressing even a tentative sympathy for Palestinian people. It’s as if you can’t even suggest a criticism of the state of Israel anymore without it seeming incriminatory and wrong-headed. This even appears to be true within the NDP itself. Montreal-area NDP MP Sana Hassania recently left the party, citing disagreements with leader Thomas Mulcair’s support of Israel.

Elsewhere on MeetTheNDP.ca, we’re meant to be shocked that Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie MP Alexandre Boulerice would be even slightly dismissive of the First World War, a conflict that broke out over 100 whole years ago. Boulerice called WWI “a war between the bourgeois who wanted to make more money. A purely capitalist war on the backs of workers and peasants.” Which, well, yes, is at least very close to the truth.

The Great War was fought to resolve far-off conflicts between Germany and France (in Alsace) and Russia and Austria (in the Balkans). In both Germany and France the war was calculated as a way of drumming up nationalist sentiment in order to squash mounting socialist sympathies, and fortify the power of the ruling classes. Calling it a “capitalist war” may scan as offensive to those Canadians whose great-great-uncles fought in the trenches — that is, pretty much all of us. But it’s simply a statement of fact, and a necessary reminder of the times Canada was drawn into far-off conflicts with the dubious justification of protecting our own interests.

Now, of course, a website like this likely isn’t meant for people who take these sorts of things for granted, who proudly share these quotes as a way of expressing support for the ever-surging Orange Wave. It’s meant to win over the hard-won soft-c conservatives who are either totally ambivalent about voting at all, or who increasingly see the New Democrats as a viable neo-liberal alternative to the Conservative Party of Canada. Certainly, the “modernization” of the NDP that began under Jack Layton, and continues under the leadership of Mulcair, sees the party moving closer to the centre. In 2013 the party endorsed the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement (CETA), which further empowers corporations in Canada and the EU, all under the auspices of developing deeper ties with Europe’s social democracies.

If the Conservatives really wanted to defame the NDP in the eyes of their supporters, they’d be pointing to this kind of shift toward watery, neo-liberal capitalist centrism. It’d certainly be a lot more meaningfully damning to the party’s image than mentioning the one time a New Democrat MP had the utter gall to question the legitimacy of a century-old war waged between a Tzar and a Kaiser.

John Semley is a freelance writer.

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