Anyone who watched the Bush administrations fear mongering of the American public in the lead up to the 2004 election understands what Harper is trying to do to Canadians

So what’s terrorism? Whatever Harper says it is.

Steve the terror-monger has a lot of reasons to call an early election — not least the fact that the popularity of his security bill, which proposes to turn Canada into a police-state, is likely to be short-lived.

Having managed to convince the public (and apparently Justin Trudeau), that C-51 is going to save us from the beheading hordes, the temptation to take political advantage must be great. An Angus Reid poll reports that 82 per cent of Canadians have been seduced by this crazed legislation; support is even higher in Quebec, at 87 per cent.

As Stalin and Martin Bormann both observed, fear resonates with everyone — even the very intelligent — because its force is emotional, not rational. Harper is very, very good at the business-end of terror politics. He has learned from the best: Republican pollsters and spindoctors like Arthur Finkelstein and Finkelstein’s protege, Frank Luntz, who was instrumental in expanding the Reform base in Canada.

Luntz taught Harper and the Conservatives that a political message had to be linked to the day-to-day lives of the average voter. Images and visuals are important — and images don’t get more powerful than a beheading. Warplanes dropping bombs that kill distant civilians are just video games by comparison. Images of Christians and aid workers decapitated on camera drum up domestic trauma in a way that coffins in far-away battlefields can’t match.

READ MORE: http://www.ipolitics.ca/2015/02/26/so-whats-terrorism-whatever-harper-says-it-is/