How to Win a Propaganda War

Lots of folks criticize PM Justin Trudeau about being more about style than substance (see his Vogue pics), but the style can be substance.  How Canada has welcomed the first batch of refugees could be seen as a photo op.



25,000 can be seen as too little.  However, it can also be seen as a vital effort in the war against ISIS/ISL/IS/Daesch.  The video and pics counter the messaging by our adversary that the West will not welcome Muslims into their country, that the West is hostile, and all that.  And the pics are going viral.

I doubt that this one set of videos and photos can counter the damage that Trump is doing to the war effort, but more stuff like this is definitely a good thing.  Even if the first batch might have been cleared by Harper, this new PM is putting his face and his stamp on welcoming these people to Canada and is part of a larger commitment to bring more refugees to the country.

So, count this as a win not just for PMJT and not just for Canada, but for the larger campaign.  It is a long war, one of ideas and images and not just bombs.  Our adversary is waging a campaign of pictures and videos, so it is high time that we do the same.  So, is this a photo op or a sincere effort to do something meaningful for these people?  The answer is yes.

Discussing Post-Paris in Toronto: Ye Olde Students Rock

I went to Toronto yesterday to be part of a panel on the events in Paris and the reactions to it.  Most of my reactions to this event have to do with my old students:

• Within five seconds of arriving in the room, I got to talk to a former research assistant from my McGill days.  She was part of a large team that coded diaspora data, and it was great not just to see her but hear a bit about her internship at the Canada's Embassy to Libya, currently located in Tunisia.
• The next student up was one from my last big Intro class, who is now finishing her MA at Munk.  She had nice things to say about how my class set her on this path, which was really nice to hear even though I know that IR is simply inherently interesting.
• My wife informed me that whenever she bumped into a student from my Intro to IR class (the joy of having a distinctive last name meant that the students would be pretty certain she was Mrs. Spew/Mrs. Prof of Intro to IR), they all cited the same lecture--apples and oranges.  My question, of course, is: do they remember the point of that lecture?  Hmmm.

• The next student was, of course, Aisha Ahmad, a former Phd student of mine, who now teaches at U of Toronto.  She wrote a terrific piece for the Globe and Mail (web now, print maybe this weekend or Monday), arguing that the refugees play an important role in this battle with ISIS, and the smart way to fight ISIS is to accept these refugees.  It would undermine their ideology, their recruitment base, and their financing.  Just a sharp argument articulately made.  And then, of course, she was the one with the best line of the night:

Ahmad: take away #ISIS territory and it "starts to look like every other crappy #jihadi org." in the world #MunkTalks

— CERES at Munk School (@CERESMunk) November 21, 2015

The other panelists--Randall Henson of U of T Poli Sci, Paul Cohen of U of T History, Lorne Dawson of U of Waterloo Sociology, and Stephen Toope, Director of Munk--all had stuff to say that was incisive and made me think seriously about the past week's events and where to go from here.

One other thing: I loved, loved, loved the organization of the event.  The key pieces were:

• Nice array of people: an IR guy (as the NATO guy, I thought I would not have much to say but then I realized I was an IR/Canadian defence guy), a Europeanist, a Islamist politics expert, a sociologist who works on radicalization, an historian, and an international law prof.  We didn't repeat each other much, contradicted each other only sometimes but provided many different angles on the issue.
• We each spoke for only five minutes so that max time could be dedicated to answering question.  We probably could have gone on for another half hour as there were plenty of questions we could have still addressed.
• The various assistants collected questions from the audience on cards they were given, and tweets were also transcribed onto these cards.  Toope then organized the cards and would use a few to ask a thematic question that some of us could address briefly.  This was so smart because:
• It avoided the speechifying problem where folks make long-winded statements that are more comments than questions.
• It avoided the audience just asking one or two panelists questions.
• It integrated the tweets well.
• It keep things moving.

I will definitely be stealing this idea.

Anyhow, always great to see former students, always great to have a dynamic interchange of ideas, and always confused about the next steps ahead.

Oh, and I had the chance to hang out with a friend of mine who went to the same grad school as me but about 15 years later.  Good beer, very good poutine, and great company.

Stooping as Low as We Can Get

Yesterday was about as awful as US politics can get.  I tweeted thusly:

Never had such a visceral sense of contempt in my life in reaction to anything political until this week. Utter contempt for refuge-deniers

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 20, 2015

 While my facebook page is a bit of an echo chamber and my twitter feed is not as representative of the political spectrum as it could be (the right wing types on my feed are just as appalled), I was still glad to see that no one I know and respect was hoping on the "replay 1939" bandwagon.

I found the House vote more problematic than Trump's call for monitoring Muslims (we all made the same yellow crescent badge joke) because the folks in the house, including more than 40 Democrats, are actually elected and thus supposed to be responsible.  We expect Trump to be abhorrent, and he has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.  But unless he wins next fall, all he can to is inspire violence, um, not unlike ISIS.

The House of Representatives has a far more consequential impact--even if the Senate does not pass the bill or Obama is able to veto and not get overridden.  Why?  Tis in the name: House of Representatives.  These folks represent Americans ... poorly.  Whatever public opinion is, these politicians have demonstrated quite clearly that they are cowards, that they want to over-react and give ISIS what it wants.

I have two other relevant tweets over the past few days that remain quite applicable:

I have been saying all week and it remains so very true, unfortunately: events like this reveal character, for good or bad.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 20, 2015

Step 1 of counter terrorism: figure out what they want us to do Step 2: don't do it. So about that refugee stuff, don't give into fear.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 16, 2015

I don't think many politicians could be any dumber, craven or counter-productive in this.  But then we shall see what the new day provides.