How to Wage Political Guerrilla Warfare

The Trudeau Empire Has Fallen and it Can’t Get up.

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That’s the title of my “political manifesto”. Ok so it’s not really a manifesto; it’s a study I wrote for the Democracy Institute. It’s meant to be handbook to help Canadian conservatives win the “war of ideas”. More specifically, it’s advice on how conservatives can best get their message out using the PR tricks and tactics I picked up during my 22 years with the National Citizens Coalition. The NCC’s agenda was to promote “more freedom through less government” and my job was to come up with creative ways to do that on the limited budget of a non-profit corporation which depended entirely on voluntary contributions. It was quite a challenge. To ensure NCC campaigns attracted as much media attention as possible, and just as importantly that they swayed public opinion, I had to learn how to get the biggest bang for our buck. What we lacked in resources, I had to make up for with moxie, imagination and plenty of attitude. In other words, to do my job required that I be more than just a public relations expert; I also had to become the political equivalent of Che Guevara and master what you might call guerrilla warfare. And my manifesto includes a ten-step guide on ways to wage this sort of guerilla warfare. For instance step one is to “Seek the Weak”. That means conservatives should focus on attacking those points of the socialist agenda which are the hardest for left wingers to defend. For instance, at the NCC we made a specialty of going after outrageous and undefendable examples of government waste through our “Tales from the Tax Trough” booklets. These booklets exposed things like how the government spent $15,000 to fund the "Continuous Garbage Project;" or how it spent $20,000 for a two-act play entitled “The Extasy of Bedridden Riding Hood”. When Canadians read stuff like this it made them angry. And angry people are easier to mobilize. In fact, emotion is an extremely important weapon for the guerrilla warrior. As I say in my manifesto, “you don’t want to target people’s intellects. You want to target their emotions.” In other words, you don’t want people to think – you want them to react. And the reason for that is simple. It’s a lot easier to make people react than it is to make them think. Pushing emotional hot buttons is the quickest, most effective way to rally people, whether that means convincing them to donate to your cause or to contact an MP. What are the most important emotions in politics? Well in Step 4 of my guide I make the case for hate and fear. I know that sounds bad, but it’s true. Politicians target these hot button emotions all the time, in so-called “negative” or “attack” ads. Think back to the Liberal ads in the 2004 federal election. Those were classic attack ads designed to make people fear Stephen Harper. Anyone watching those ads might have thought Stephen Harper had plans to build nuclear aircraft carriers so he could bomb abortion clinics as part of his plan to send cute kittens to Iraq. Were those ads over the top? Were they in poor taste? Were they insulting to our intelligence? Yes, yes and yes. But they worked. To learn more about political guerrilla warfare visit my website - www.gerrynicholls.com – where you will find a link to my manifesto. Or I would be happy to send out a PDF version to anyone who wants it. Just email your request to me at gerry@gerrynicholls.com (Gerry Nicholls is a political consultant and writer. [url=http://www.gerrynicholls.com]http://www.gerrynicholls.com[/url])

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