Angry in the Great White North

There is a problem when you demonize your opponent. When they become the enemy, instead of merely the opposition, then you invite a major escalation in the level of violence.

Consider how the left in France are becoming more desperate to stop Nicolas Sarkozy from winning the French presidential election:

Segolène Royal intensified a desperate final effort yesterday to tar Nicolas Sarkozy, her presidential opponent, as a dangerous tyrant whose election would threaten the peace of France.

Ms Royal, the left-wing candidate who is about four points behind the conservative Mr Sarkozy in polls, denounced her opponent for the “great violence” and “brutality” of a campaign that she maintained was frightening away voters.

She will use a critical television debate with her opponent tomorrow to contrast her “France at peace with itself” with Mr Sarkozy’s “France of the hard Right”.

Pro-Royal campaigners have called him a “French Berlusconi”, a new Bonaparte and a “French George W. Bush”.

The Socialists set out to demonise Mr Sarkozy months ago, according to Eric Besson, a senior campaign official who defected after falling out with Ms Royal. “Since we had a weak candidate, it was the best path to take,” he said.

Marianne, a low-circulation magazine, has sold out 300,000 copies of a cover story on “The True Sarkozy”. This called him insane. “His is the kind of madness that has stoked a fair number of apprentice dictators in the past,” it said.

That demonization leads to violence anywhere Sarkozy's presence is felt -- including Canada:

Quebec supporters of French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy are asking for police protection leading up to this weekend's vote.

The right-wing politician's Montreal campaign headquarters were vandalized Sunday night. Graffiti and expletives were spray-painted on the office's windows and printed posters were glued across the building's front facade.

Sarkozy's Quebec campaign manager said it's not the first time the office has been threatened. "I received calls: one was insulting, the other threatening me on this," Hradija DuKalli said Tuesday.

DuKalli has asked police to increase surveillance around the office leading up to Saturday's vote.

But if Sarkozy is really insane, and a budding dictator likes those of Europe's past, then isn't violence justified? Isn't this an example of the classic time travel ethics question of what to do if you found yourself face-to-face with a young Adolf Hitler before he became der Fuehrer?

Either Sarkozy is the new Hitler, or he is not. If Royal and her supporters truly believe he is, then history will judge them harshly for not doing whatever it took, no matter the cost, to stop him.

So when Green Party leader Elizabath May put Stephen Harper in the company as those who were in league with Nazis, doesn't that mean that she would support any action required to stop Harper?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried Tuesday to draw Liberal Leader Stephane Dion into the controversy over Green party Leader Elizabeth May's comments comparing the government's approach to climate change to Britain's appeasement of the Nazis.

May, who has been studying to become an Anglican minister, told an Ontario church congregation on the weekend that addressing climate change is a "moral obligation" and that Harper's stand on the issue was "a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis."

So when Liberal Party candidate Farhan Chak says Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are motivated by a philosophy of racial superiority coupled with war-mongering, a corrupt judiciary and coercive cultural homogenization, a description of Nazi policy if ever I heard one, doesn't that mean Farhan Chak would welcome any act, however violent, that would end Stephen Harper's tenure as prime minister?

The road being paved by the Conservative party is for those that oppose the basic Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ridicule our multicultural heritage and believe in coercive homogenization. This wayward way refuses to acknowledge climate change, is attempting to eradicate judicial independence, wishes to alter Canadian peacekeeping with war-mongering and is upholding the failed Bush administration's neo-conservative agenda as a model. It is a dreary road, pockmarked with intellectual pot-holes, exclusiveness, racial superiority, injustice and arrogance.

The silver lining to this is that few people listen to either Elizabeth May or Farhan Chak. But then it only takes one person at the right place at the right time...

Of course, the vandalization of Sarkozy's office will be denounced by Royal's people as wrong. But Royal, May, Chak, and others have to remember that there are those out there who will take their words as calls to action. It is not the case of a few unbalanced people misinterpreting their words. There is no misinterpretation here. The reason the violence is not more widespread is that the vast majority understand exactly what people like Royal, May, and Chak are saying, but have enough common sense to ignore it completely. And that's the only reason Royal, May, and Chak get away with it.

Of course, when those few people understand exactly what people like Royal, May, and Chak are saying, but decide instead to put their words into action, it is always someone else who gets hurt.