Contemporary Authors

• Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network HarperCollins (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994
• The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs, and Anyone Who Wants to Win Dundurn (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2007
• Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics Random House Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2011
• Fight the Right Random House Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2012

1. Web of hate : inside Canada's far right network LCCN 94156649 Type of material Book Personal name Kinsella, Warren, 1960- Main title Web of hate : inside Canada's far right network / Warren Kinsella. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created Toronto : HarperCollins, c1994. Description ix, 386 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm. ISBN 0002550741 : CALL NUMBER F1035.A1 K49 1994 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Kicking ass in Canadian politics LCCN 2002491108 Type of material Book Personal name Kinsella, Warren, 1960- Main title Kicking ass in Canadian politics / Warren Kinsella. Published/Created Toronto : Random House Canada, c2001. Description 245 p. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0679310851 Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/random054/2002491108.html Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/random052/2002491108.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/random053/2002491108.html Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2002491108-t.html CALL NUMBER F1034.2 .K56 2001 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 3. The war room : political strategies for business, NGOs, and anyone who wants to win LCCN 2007531639 Type of material Book Personal name Kinsella, Warren, 1960- Main title The war room : political strategies for business, NGOs, and anyone who wants to win / Warren Kinsella ; foreword by Jean Chrétien. Published/Created Toronto : Dundurn, c2007. Description 304 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN 9781550027464 (pbk.) 1550027468 (pbk.) Links Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0905/2007531639.html Shelf Location FLM2016 175231 CALL NUMBER JL193 .K55 2007 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 4. Fight the right LCCN 2012518571 Type of material Book Personal name Kinsella, Warren, 1960- Main title Fight the right / Warren Kinsella. Published/Created Toronto : Random House Canada, c2012. Description 277 p. ; 21 cm. ISBN 9780307361653 (pbk.) Shelf Location FLS2016 121330 CALL NUMBER JC573.2.C2 K56 2012 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLS2)

• Unholy Alliances - 1992 Lester, Winnipeg
• Party Favours - 1997 HarperCollins, New York
• Fury's Hour: A (sort-of) Punk-Rock Manifesto - 2005 Random House, New York
• Recipe for Hate - 2017 Dundurn, Toronto

• Warren Kinsella - http://warrenkinsella.com/about/

  WARREN KINSELLA

  Warren Kinsella is a raconteur, bon vivant, and – occasionally – a Toronto-based lawyer, author and consultant. He is not profound, but it is said that he can be useful in a stick-swinging, bench-clearing brawl. He once wanted to be a Jesuit priest, but failed the entrance exam. Born in Montreal in August 1960, Warren has lived all over the place, but most often regards Calgary as home. Calgary is happy that he resides in latté-sipping, Volvo-driving, secular humanist Central Canada, with the rest of his smart aleck socialist pals. Warren has four sons and two daughters, most of whom love Bad Religion. (He adores them.) His wife is the beautiful and brilliant Lisa Kinsella, who in a previous incarnation dated Brad Pitt. (He adores Lisa, too, the shocking Brad Pitt underwear incident notwithstanding.)

  Warren’s heroes are Malcolm X, Christ, Raoul Wallenberg, Joe Strummer, and his father. He’s also pretty sweet on his Mom, who calls him twice a day, because she worries about him.

  In May 2006, Warren set up a firm called the Daisy Consulting Group; his son liked the name, and that was good enough for Warren. Previously, he was a special assistant to the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, and chief of staff in a pile of federal ministries. Stephen Harper has said that “I really think that Warren guy is on to something.” Bob Rae calls him “a stupid blogger.” Peter C. Newman, meanwhile, has said: “Warren Kinsella can have an effect on as many Canadians as The New York Times.” We cannot publish what the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, red-necked blogosweird say about him.

  Warren has written seven books: one on international terrorism, called Unholy Alliances (Lester, 1992); a national bestseller about organized racism, titled Web of Hate (HarperCollins, 1994, and republished in 1996 and 2001); a best-selling novel, Party Favours (HarperCollins, 1997); a book about political communications, called Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (Random House, 2001); and Fury’s Hour: A Sort-of Punk Manifesto (Random House, 2005), about the punk movement. It contains exclusive interviews with Strummer, Joey Ramone, Sham 69, Eddie Vedder, the Buzzcocks, Joey Shithead, Blink 182, Stiff Little Fingers, Ian MacKaye, Bad Religion, Pennywise, and many, many swear words. If you buy more than five copies, Warren will come to your house and wash your car. The National Post called Fury’s Hour one of the best books of 2005, which was uncharacteristically nice of them. His book on strategic communications and stuff like that, is called The War Room (Dundurn, 2007). The Toronto Sun calls it a “must read.” Nice.

  His latest, Fight The Right, was published in North America in 2012 by Random House. The Hill Times called “one of the best books of the year.” The Huffington Post said it is “absolutely on the money” and “well worth picking up.” Former Stephen Harper campaign manager Tom Flanagan said: “Get the book.” So get yours here!

  Among other things, Warren has been a newspaper and magazine columnist. Recently, he was a political pundit and the House Bolshevik at the Sun News Network, which was interesting. Presently, he writes about rock’n’roll for various folks, politics for The Hill Times, Troy Media and Post City – and he is a regular with Charles Adler on SiriusXM’s Canada Talks, which you can listen to right here, and where you can find past shows here.

  Warren’s also been a member of the executive of the Ontario Bar Association, and the Canadian Bar Association’s Communications Committee. His favourite colour is black, even though black isn’t actually a colour.

  Currently, Warren plays bass and hollers in a geriatric punk rock group called SFH. You can buy their latest fabbo waxing here. The Toronto Star said this about it: “an enjoyably prickly and authentic throwback to London circa 1977, not to mention occasionally the Hamilton that gave us Teenage Head at around the same time.”

  Previously, he played in The Social Blemishes, The Hot Nasties, Chicken Realistic and the Fabulous Kevins, S, The Trial Continues, The Mesleys, plus Sick Dick and the Volkswagens. We are not making this up, as much as we wish that we were.

  This web site was established, quite a few years back, to counter attacks on Warren by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. After that, it became a place where some people would go to read some of the things Warren has written, or to allow them to contact him directly. Recently, however, it has become a bizarre farrago of political commentary, music reviews, and musings about the nature of human existence. It is also a website to which a lot of folks are inexplicably referred by Google, which is an Internet thing.

  If you are looking for Warren’s “blog” – and the statistics strongly suggest that you are – you can read it over on the “Musings” page.

  If, however, you want to advertise with on this website, email Warren at wkinsella@hotmail.com. Advertisers, take note: www.warrenkinsella.com receives three million visitors a year!”

• Revolvy - https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Warren%20Kinsella&item_type=topic

  Warren Kinsella

  Save
  Warren Kinsella is a Canadian lawyer, author, musician, political consultant, and commentator, based in Toronto, Ontario.[1] Kinsella has written commentary in most of Canada's major newspapers and several magazines, including The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Sun Ottawa Citizen, the National Post and The Walrus. He appeared regularly on the Sun News Network. Kinsella bills himself as the "Prince of Darkness" of Canadian politics.

  Personal life
  He is the son of physician and medical ethicist Douglas Kinsella, founder of the National Council on Ethics in Human Research (NCEHR).[2] Kinsella holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Carleton University and a bachelor of laws degree from the University of Calgary.

  Kinsella is the founder of the Daisy Consulting Group, a Toronto-based firm that engages in paid political campaign strategy work, lobbying and communications crisis management, along with his wife Lisa.[3]

  Politics
  Federal Liberals
  Kinsella served as a strategist in the Canadian federal Liberal Party's 1993 election campaign "task force", and worked as a staffer in opposition leader Jean Chrétien's office. After the Liberals won the election, Kinsella became chief of staff to federal Public Works minister David Dingwall for a short time.

  Kinsella ran as a Liberal candidate in the 1997 federal election in the riding of North Vancouver but was defeated by Reform incumbent Ted White.

  During his last stint as a national campaign headquarters worker during the 2000 Canadian federal election, he appeared on CTV's Canada AM brandishing a purple Barney dinosaur doll to mock what he claimed were Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day's creationist beliefs.[4]

  After the 2000 federal election, Kinsella was a vocal supporter of Chretien during the intra-party struggle that resulted in Chretien being replaced by Paul Martin, and he would work on Liberal leadership campaigns for Allan Rock and Sheila Copps in opposition to Martin.

  Starting in November 2008, Kinsella worked briefly for Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff.[5] One long-time senior Liberal questioned the hiring of Kinsella, calling him a "human shrapnel machine."[6] Later that month Kinsella apologized for a post in his video blog that jokingly mentioned that his regular Chinese restaurant sold "cat meat."[7] [8] Kinsella resigned from Ignatieff's campaign in May 2009, citing treatment of fired colleagues.[9]

  Kinsella publicly considered seeking the Liberal nomination for the 2015 Federal election in Toronto—Danforth, but ultimately demurred after believing he would not be approved as a nominee.[10]

  Provincial Liberals
  Kinsella was a long time supporter of Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, and was a fixture in Ontario Liberal Party election campaigns while McGuinty was leader. He would apologize for a blog post during the campaign suggesting that Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod would rather bake cookies than be seen with farm activist Randy Hillier; MacLeod would later use the remark as the humorous title for a cookbook.[11]

  Kinsella supported Sandra Pupatello in the 2013 Liberal Party of Ontario leadership convention that chose a successor to McGuinty.[12] The leadership was won by Kathleen Wynne. Kinsella was sharply critical of Wynne's campaign during the 2014 Ontario election.[13]

  Municipal Politics
  Kinsella advised John Tory in the 2003 Toronto mayoral election.

  In 2014 mayoral election, Kinsella assisted Olivia Chow's campaign. On August 20, 2014, Kinsella tweeted "Is John Tory’s SmartTrack, you know, Segregationist Track?", and posted a photo featuring Tory and an edited speech bubble stating that Jane/Finch and Rexdale were intentionally excluded from the plan.[14] Kinsella apologized for the incident. Daisy Consulting later announced that they had fired Chow as a client due to remarks regarding Kinsella.[15]

  Gomery Inquiry
  During the Gomery Commission's inquiry into the Sponsorship scandal, Justice John Gomery was told that Kinsella, while chief of staff to Minister of Public Works David Dingwall, wrote a letter to the department's Deputy Minister, Ran Quail in 1994 requesting Chuck Guité be appointed to review the government's advertising and communications strategy.[16] Quail said he viewed the letter as political interference into civil service affairs, while Dingwall and Kinsella characterized the letter as a request rather than a directive. No finding of any fault was found in Gomery's report relating to Kinsella's conduct.[17]

  Writing
  In 1997, Kinsella published the novel Party Favours, a thinly veiled roman à clef about the Chrétien government similar to the 1996 American novel Primary Colors.[18] The novel was initially credited to "Jean Doe",[19] with Kinsella only later revealing himself as the real author.

  Kinsella runs an online journal that resembles a weblog, though he prefers to call it a website. The blog is famous in Canadian political circles for Kinsella's on-and-off feuds with other bloggers, including one with columnist Ezra Levant that prompted Kinsella to initiate a defamation suit claiming $5,000,000 in damages.[6]

  Writing
  Unholy Alliances (Lester, 1992)
  Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network ISBN 0-00-638051-4 (HarperCollins, 1997)
  Party Favours (HarperCollins, 1997)
  Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (Random House, 2001)
  Fury's Hour: A (sort-of) Punk-Rock Manifesto (Random House, 2005)
  The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs, and Anyone Who Wants to Win (Dundurn Press, 2007)
  Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse (Random House, Oct 2 2012)
  Recipe for Hate (Dundurn, 2017) (fiction)

• Toronto Sun - http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-recipe-for-hate-now-includes-a-kinder-gentler-face

  OPINION: Recipe for hate now includes 'a kinder, gentler face'
  Special to Postmedia Network
  Published:
  November 4, 2017

  Updated:
  November 4, 2017 1:41 PM EST

  Filed Under:

  Toronto SUN Opinion Columnists
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  In this photo taken Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, multiple white nationalist groups march with torches through the UVA campus in Charlottesville, Va. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. Mykal McEldowney/The Indianapolis Star via AP

  BY WARREN KINSELLA

  Life imitates fiction, sometimes, and not in ways that you’d expect.

  This week, for example, I published a book called Recipe For Hate. It’s a novel.

  Without giving away the plot, I can reveal that Recipe For Hate is about fanatics insinuating themselves into positions of power and influence. It’s about radicals clashing in the streets. And it’s about some people believing that extremism can be a virtue.

  Sound familiar?

  As I was writing the book, I would love to say that I foresaw Brexit, President Donald Trump, and the rise of extremism on the Left and the Right – extremism that resulted in murder in places like Charlottesville. But I didn’t.

  Last week, when touring to promote Recipe For Hate, I ran into my friend Adrienne Batra, editor-in-chief of the Toronto Sun. She suggested I write a column about how, nowadays, life is indeed imitating art.

  There are three reasons for the political and social upheaval we are seeing across the Americas and Western Europe. Three reasons for why our assumptions about politics have been upended.

  One, the racist Right – whose leaders this newspaper has long been at the forefront of exposing, by the way – have gotten smarter. Starting with Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, far Right haters have dispensed with the Klansmen’s robes and the cross burnings. They have changed their public image. Now, they march in polo shirts and carry Tiki torches – and they offer slogans that are “pro white” and not “anti” minorities.

  These racist leaders have studied, and copied, the proven PR techniques of mainstream political parties. They have presented a kinder, gentler face to the media and the voting public, and it has paid off (see Trump, Brexit, above).

  Two, their timing has been impeccable. In the Seventies, the extremists railed against fluoridation and the metric system. In the Eighties, it was abortion and gay rights. In the nineties and beyond, however, the racist Right have targeted immigrants and refugees. And it’s paid dividends, in a big, big way.

  It isn’t racist, of course, to oppose higher levels of immigration. It isn’t intolerant to want to debate how many refugees a country wishes to welcome.

  But a variety of factors – Middle Eastern wars, Islamic extremism, severe climate change – have resulted in millions of immigrants and refugees looking for better places to live. Many North Americans and Western Europeans have grown uneasy about the immigrant wave. And that, more than any other factor, has resulted in stunning political change – from Brexit in the U.K., to the National Front in France, to Trump in the U.S.

  Thirdly and finally, the fanatics at the fringes know that solutions, these days, are pretty hard to come by. In 2017, the challenges we all face are complex, as are the solutions. So, the “alt-Rightists” and the “white nationalists” offer simple and seductive promises. They push emotional buttons, not moral ones.

  And that’s why the haters are on the march, everywhere.

  I wish I had foreseen all of that when I wrote Recipe For Hate, but I didn’t.

  Now that Western society is being shaken to its foundations, however, all of us will be affected, in one way or another.

  And that’s not fiction.

  Warren Kinsella is the author of Recipe For Hate, published across North America and Europe by Dundurn Press.

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Kinsella

  Warren Kinsella
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  For the Canadian author, see W. P. Kinsella.
  Warren Kinsella
  Born August 1960
  Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  Alma mater University of Calgary
  Carleton University
  Spouse(s) Suzanne Amos (divorced)
  Lisa Kinsella (2015–present)
  Relatives Douglas Kinsella (father)
  Website http://warrenkinsella.com/
  Warren Kinsella is a Canadian lawyer, author, musician, political consultant, and commentator, based in Toronto, Ontario.[1] Kinsella has written commentary in most of Canada's major newspapers and several magazines, including The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Sun Ottawa Citizen, the National Post and The Walrus. He appeared regularly on the Sun News Network. Kinsella bills himself as the "Prince of Darkness" of Canadian politics.

  Contents
  1 Personal life
  2 Politics
  2.1 Federal Liberals
  2.2 Provincial Liberals
  2.3 Municipal Politics
  3 Gomery Inquiry
  4 Writing
  5 Writing
  6 References
  7 External links
  Personal life
  He is the son of physician and medical ethicist Douglas Kinsella, founder of the National Council on Ethics in Human Research (NCEHR).[2] Kinsella holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Carleton University and a bachelor of laws degree from the University of Calgary.

  Kinsella is the founder of the Daisy Consulting Group, a Toronto-based firm that engages in paid political campaign strategy work, lobbying and communications crisis management, along with his wife Lisa.[3]

  Politics
  Federal Liberals
  Kinsella served as a strategist in the Canadian federal Liberal Party's 1993 election campaign "task force", and worked as a staffer in opposition leader Jean Chrétien's office. After the Liberals won the election, Kinsella became chief of staff to federal Public Works minister David Dingwall for a short time.

  Kinsella ran as a Liberal candidate in the 1997 federal election in the riding of North Vancouver but was defeated by Reform incumbent Ted White.

  During his last stint as a national campaign headquarters worker during the 2000 Canadian federal election, he appeared on CTV's Canada AM brandishing a purple Barney dinosaur doll to mock what he claimed were Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day's creationist beliefs.[4]

  After the 2000 federal election, Kinsella was a vocal supporter of Chretien during the intra-party struggle that resulted in Chretien being replaced by Paul Martin, and he would work on Liberal leadership campaigns for Allan Rock and Sheila Copps in opposition to Martin.

  Starting in November 2008, Kinsella worked briefly for Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff.[5] One long-time senior Liberal questioned the hiring of Kinsella, calling him a "human shrapnel machine."[6] Later that month Kinsella apologized for a post in his video blog that jokingly mentioned that his regular Chinese restaurant sold "cat meat."[7][8] Kinsella resigned from Ignatieff's campaign in May 2009, citing treatment of fired colleagues.[9]

  Kinsella publicly considered seeking the Liberal nomination for the 2015 Federal election in Toronto—Danforth, but ultimately demurred after believing he would not be approved as a nominee.[10]

  Provincial Liberals
  Kinsella was a long time supporter of Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, and was a fixture in Ontario Liberal Party election campaigns while McGuinty was leader. He would apologize for a blog post during the campaign suggesting that Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod would rather bake cookies than be seen with farm activist Randy Hillier; MacLeod would later use the remark as the humorous title for a cookbook.[11]

  Kinsella supported Sandra Pupatello in the 2013 Liberal Party of Ontario leadership convention that chose a successor to McGuinty.[12] The leadership was won by Kathleen Wynne. Kinsella was sharply critical of Wynne's campaign during the 2014 Ontario election.[13]

  Municipal Politics
  Kinsella advised John Tory in the 2003 Toronto mayoral election.

  In 2014 mayoral election, Kinsella assisted Olivia Chow's campaign. On August 20, 2014, Kinsella tweeted "Is John Tory’s SmartTrack, you know, Segregationist Track?", and posted a photo featuring Tory and an edited speech bubble stating that Jane/Finch and Rexdale were intentionally excluded from the plan.[14] Kinsella apologized for the incident. Daisy Consulting later announced that they had fired Chow as a client due to remarks regarding Kinsella.[15]

  Gomery Inquiry
  During the Gomery Commission's inquiry into the Sponsorship scandal, Justice John Gomery was told that Kinsella, while chief of staff to Minister of Public Works David Dingwall, wrote a letter to the department's Deputy Minister, Ran Quail in 1994 requesting Chuck Guité be appointed to review the government's advertising and communications strategy.[16] Quail said he viewed the letter as political interference into civil service affairs, while Dingwall and Kinsella characterized the letter as a request rather than a directive. No finding of any fault was found in Gomery's report relating to Kinsella's conduct.[17]

  Writing
  In 1997, Kinsella published the novel Party Favours, a thinly veiled roman à clef about the Chrétien government similar to the 1996 American novel Primary Colors.[18] The novel was initially credited to "Jean Doe",[19] with Kinsella only later revealing himself as the real author.

  Kinsella runs an online journal that resembles a weblog, though he prefers to call it a website. The blog is famous in Canadian political circles for Kinsella's on-and-off feuds with other bloggers, including one with columnist Ezra Levant that prompted Kinsella to initiate a defamation suit claiming $5,000,000 in damages.[6]

  Writing
  Unholy Alliances (Lester, 1992)
  Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network ISBN 0-00-638051-4 (HarperCollins, 1997)
  Party Favours (HarperCollins, 1997)
  Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (Random House, 2001)
  Fury's Hour: A (sort-of) Punk-Rock Manifesto (Random House, 2005)
  The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs, and Anyone Who Wants to Win (Dundurn Press, 2007)
  Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse (Random House, Oct 2 2012)
  Recipe for Hate (Dundurn, 2017) (fiction)
  References

• Western Cycles - https://westerncycles.site/warren-kinsella-interview-experts/

  Warren Kinsella – Interview with the Experts
  Posted on January 6, 2018 by alpuerto
  Share now:
  Facebook0TwitterEmailShare
  Today we interview Warren Kinsella. He is an authentic expert on politics as you will see. He has published seven books with very good reviews. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter. He even has a Wikipedia page! Let’s know him.

  – You wrote Unholy Alliances about global terrorism in 1992, long before the War on Terrorism began. Now with the Islamic State practically destroyed in Iraq and Syria, do you think the days of terrorism are numbered?

  No. Unfortunately, there will always be those who use undemocratic – and violent – means to effect political change.

  -You mention Malcolm X as a personal hero and in 1994 your book Web of Hate about organized racism was published. Do you think there have been advances in interracial relationships in recent times?

  I do, Trump and Brexit notwithstanding. In my experience, there many more people who are fair and decent than there are those who are not.

  -Although you obviously specialize in writing nonfiction books, you have also written the novel Party Favors and recently Recipe for Hate. Tell us about this book.

  Recipe For Hate is about how organized racists insinuate themselves into positions of power – something that, in the Trump era, we have all seen happen in a dramatic and depressing way. Recipe For Hate is a cautionary tale, one that urges people – young people in particular – to resist racists with all their might.

  -You were a special assistant to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and your book Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics is about political communications. Did you address personal experiences in your writing?

  I did. I learned a great deal about effective communications from working for Mr. Chretien. It was an honour and privilege. I learned to put a human face on my story – and that stories sell, while facts only tell. Making your political point “real” and relevant is what persuades people to come to your side of the argument.

  -Also the book The War Room is about strategic communications and The Toronto Sun called it “a must read”. What ​do you think about this order? How deep is this book?

  The book is still available, and still sells many copies (I am told). It is about using the lessons I learned in politics, and applying them to the non-political world. And there are three main points I offer – use simplicity, repetition and volume. That is how you get people to pay attention to what you have to say.

  -In the same way, your book Fight the Right was very well received by the media and personalities. The Hill Times called it “one of the best books of the year” and Tom Flanagan (former Stephen Harper campaign manager) said: “Get the book”. Describe us this book.

  It is about how conservatives win, consistently, by doing two things: they use words and values better than progressives like me. They use simple, accessible language – and they talk about values. Values are hopes and dreams and fears – and conservatives are very good at talking about them, and exploiting them. That is how Trump won.

  -At present you play bass in the SFH group. How do you characterize your experience in this band and how much it influences your life?

  I’ve been in punk bands for four decades, now. I should probably stop, but I love it too much. And our new album, SFH Kinda Suck, is getting great reviews!

  – Share a couple of articles published by you that you recommend to users of westerncycles.site

  Check out my web site at www.warrenkinsella.com!

  -As you know, I have published Western Cycles: United Kingdom and Western Cycles: Canada independently. What do you think about the future of literature in the world of self-publishing?

  That IS the future. The Internet has given everyone their own printing press. They should use it! I did, and I now have nearly four million visitors to my web site annually.

  -As some people know, I live in Cuba. Have you ever visited this country? Would you be interested? It would be an additional experience in a life as full of diversities as yours.

  I haven’t been – I love Jamaica, particularly for the music. But Cuba Is on my list!

  And the interview is finished. If you liked it, please share it on Facebook and Twitter.

  Remember that if you are a writer, a journalist or a blogger and you have some knowledge on economics, politics or history you can be interviewed by Western Cycles!

• Calgary Herald - http://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/books/warren-kinsella-investigates-punk-neo-nazis-and-murder-in-first-work-of-fiction

  Warren Kinsella investigates punk, neo-Nazis and murder in first work of fiction
  Eric VolmersERIC VOLMERS
  More from Eric Volmers
  Published on: November 17, 2017 | Last Updated: November 20, 2017 6:58 PM MST

  Warren Kinsella. CALGARY HERALD

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  “The names have been changed to protect the guilty.”

  Warren Kinsella mentions this more than once when discussing his first novel, Recipe for Hate, revealing its existence in a strange literary zone between fact and fiction.

  Based in Portland, Maine, during the late 1970s, the YA murder-mystery tells the story of a group of young punk rockers who find themselves at risk after two friends are brutally murdered. It exposes a ring of neo-Nazis and the early rumblings of a hate movement that began to appear in fledging punk scenes across North America during that period.

  So, yes, it’s fiction. But there’s plenty of truth running throughout. Kinsella, a Toronto-based lawyer, musician and political commentator once known as the “Prince of Darkness” for his days as an aggressive strategist in Liberal war rooms, has also carved out a reputation in the past few decades as one of Canada’s foremost experts on Canada’s far-right hate groups.

  He was also a punk rocker in the late 1970s, having played in the pioneering Calgary punk band The Hot Nasties in a music scene that was very reminiscent of the Portland backdrop he has created for Recipe for Hate.

  And finally, he was a summer student at the Calgary Herald in the mid-1980s, which is where he came across the inspiration for a shadowy figure who becomes central to Recipe for Hate.

  Kinsella doesn’t reveal much more about this real-life character, only to say that he was not able to write about him for various reasons while a summer student. To reveal much more would be a spoiler for his novel.

  “It stuck in my craw for the succeeding 30 years and it became the centre of Recipe for Hate,” says Kinsella, in an interview from his office in Toronto. “Recipe for Hate really got it start in the Herald newsroom.”

  The author is a little more specific when it comes to other real-life events or characters that inspired the novel. Kinsella’s 1994 national bestseller, Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network, was a wake-up call for Canadians that charted a growing and highly organized hate movement in this country. It was based, at least partially, on work that Kinsella began as a young reporter at the Herald and, later, the Ottawa Citizen.

  In Recipe for Hate, there are acts of violence based on real events Kinsella researched for his non-fiction work. The killing of a talk-show host is based on the 1984 murder of Alan Berg, who was assassinated by members of the white nationalist group The Order in Denver. Another passage in Recipe for Hate was based on a 1990 incident in Edmonton involving members of the Aryan Nation attacking broadcaster Keith Rutherford on his front lawn.

  “There’s a whole series of events within the book that was based upon things that really happened,” he says.

  That includes details about Calgary’s punk scene, even if they are transported to Portland. He even uses the names of actual bands from Cowtown’s early punk scene, including The Social Blemishes and Hot Nasties, two bands that Kinsella played in back in the 1970s.

  A passage where protagonist Kurt Blank meets the Clash’s Joe Strummer also came from a real-life meeting between the legendary punk-rocker and Kinsella in Vancouver. Gary’s, an old biker bar that is central to the book’s plot, is based on the early punk-rock bar The Calgarian; while the high school in the novel is based on Calgary’s Bishop Carroll.

  Also key to Recipe for Hate is a period in the history of punk when some of the racist attitudes being embraced in Britain began to infiltrate scenes in smaller cities. Before that, the punk scene, at least in Calgary, “really was the United Nations,” Kinsella says.

  “We had Rasta guys, we had skinheads who were into reggae culture, we had gay kids, overweight kids, socialist kids, art students from (Alberta College of Art,)” he says. “Everybody got along. There were no fights. It was wonderful. It was around ’78 and ’79, just after they went to the dark side in Britain with the British movement and the National Front that the skinheads we knew in Calgary, who had previously been these great guys and had black friends, the vast majority of them became neo-Nazis. That’s why the Hot Nasties packed it in. We just got sick of the fights. It was ridiculous.”

  Still, Kinsella said he wanted to move the action to Portland for the same reason he wanted to try fiction writing in the first place: to write something unlike anything he had written before.

  “I had done Web of Hate on racism on the right; I had done Unholy Alliances about extremism on the left. I had written books about politics. I did a book on punk rock,” Kinsella says. “I had these filaments, these threads that I wanted to stitch together in a single book. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to see if I could do this.”

  Recipe for Hate is now in stores.

QUOTE:
Tension
starts high and stays there in this unflinching page-turner, which offers a fascinating glimpse into the early
punk scene and a moving testament to the power of friendship.

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Print Marked Items
Recipe for Hate
Publishers Weekly.
264.41 (Oct. 9, 2017): p69.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Recipe for Hate
Warren Kinsella. Dundurn, $14.99 trade paper
(304p) ISBN 978-1-4597-3906-2
Adult author Kinsella (Fight the Right) sets this riveting murder mystery in Portland, Maine, in the late
1970s. After the gruesome slaying of two of their friends, teenage punk musicians called the X gang are
targeted by an unknown enemy and by "anti-punk hysteria" in their community. The group is named after its
enigmatic leader, X, best friend to Kurt Lank, who narrates Kinsella's novel with a hard edge that befits its
overall brutality ("For me, punk rock opened up this fucking huge range of creative possibilities--for my art,
for my photography, for my music--and it did not give one shit, not one, if I was gay"). Compelled to
defend their underground culture and frustrated by the police's inability to solve the murders, the X gang
begins its own investigations, uncovering a neo-Nazi religious movement seeking to destroy punks and
other undesirables; simultaneously, Kurt and the others try to discern which adults they can trust. Tension
starts high and stays there in this unflinching page-turner, which offers a fascinating glimpse into the early
punk scene and a moving testament to the power of friendship. Ages 14-up. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Recipe for Hate." Publishers Weekly, 9 Oct. 2017, p. 69. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511293405/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0cbb62f6.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A511293405
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QUOTE:
this edgy and gritty book might be a good pick for
reluctant readers who like music and murder

Kinsella, Warren. Recipe for Hate: The X
Gang, Book 1
Sean Rapacki
Voice of Youth Advocates.
40.5 (Dec. 2017): p57.
COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
Kinsella, Warren. Recipe for Hate: The X Gang, Book 1. Dundurn, December 2017. 304p. $14.99 Trade pb.
978-1-4597-3906-2.
4Q * 3P * S * R
The backdrop of this novel is the nascent punk rock scene in Portland, Maine, in the late 1970s, but author
Kinsella has actually transported most of the details, down to the name of the band, the Hot Nasties, directly
from his own experiences in the Canadian punk scene of the same time. In the fictional version of the story,
however, the short-lived punk band is at the center of a murder story surrounded by the prejudice fueled by
neo-nazis who prey upon the punks as rejects and deviants. The story is part murder mystery--figuring out
who is killing the punks--and part underdog story as the punks group together to stand up against hate. Both
parts of the story focus on the de facto leader of the punks, X, as seen through the eyes of his best friend,
closeted-punk Kurt Blank.
Because they are based on Kinsella's own experiences in a band, the parts of the novel that deal with music
and the punk counterculture all come off as authentic. Some of the serial killer aspects of the plot will
require more than a little suspension of belief, but this edgy and gritty book might be a good pick for
reluctant readers who like music and murder.--Sean Rapacki.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Rapacki, Sean. "Kinsella, Warren. Recipe for Hate: The X Gang, Book 1." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec.
2017, p. 57. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522759416/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=80b96a9e. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522759416
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QUOTE:
politics comes off looking better than expected in Kicking Ass

Fare for political junkies: Recent titles
can fill the holiday-season gap
JOHN GEDDES
Maclean's.
114 (Dec. 24, 2001): p75.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Rogers Publishing Ltd.
http://www2.macleans.ca/
Full Text:
The floor is littered with wrapping paper, the kids are transfixed by their new GameCube, and the political
junkie, dozy with eggnog, turns to the TV for a little diversion. Endless loops of Miracle on 34th Street
(bah!) and It's a Wonderful Life (humbug!). No use searching through yesterday's papers again, with
parliaments and legislatures depressingly silent. But wait -- wasn't there a book about politics, politicians or
policy? A quick rummage under the socks, the odd-scented toiletries, the bottle of someone else's brand of
scotch, and -- ho, ho, ho! -- our enthusiast is set. The long, dark, political-news-free holiday just got a little
brighter.
For those hunting down the right book for that pitiable someone who can't let politics alone, here are a few
recent Canadian offerings.
The most unabashedly pro-politicians book of the year is The Life: The Seductive Call of Politics (Viking,
$35) by Steve Paikin. As host of TVOntario's Studio 2, the first-time author is steeped in the Ontario scene,
but this collection of political portraits ranges across Canada. Paikin sets the tone in his introduction,
declaring that he likes the "vast majority" of the politicians he has met. He's not kidding. Early on, he tells
us he is "constantly struck" by the modesty of Bill Davis and Peter Lougheed, two former premiers not
universally known for downplaying their own accomplishments. And it's not just that Paikin has a soft spot
for elder statesmen. He lauds Tony Clement, the Ontario Tory cabinet minister now vying to replace Mike
Harris, as that rare politician "who's seriously thought through some of the truly big issues" and as "the
closest thing to a boy scout you'll find in public life."
Like fruitcake, too much of this old-fashioned stuff is hard to digest. Even the acidity of electoral disaster
doesn't cut Paikin's sweetness. Sure, Audrey McLaughlin led the NDP to near-oblivion in the 1993 federal
campaign, but Paikin looks to her plucky response: "She rolled up her sleeves and tried to remember why
the voters of the Yukon sent her to Ottawa." If The Life is naive, though, it can also be charming, even
surprising. Paikin's enthusiasm for just about every sort of political impulse seems to get his subjects
talking. But he is so resolutely nonjudgmental that some revelations are all but passed over. In one passage,
Lyn McLeod, the Ontario Liberal leader defeated by Harris's Conservatives in the 1995 election, thinks
back on some tough Tory TV ads aired late in that campaign, and says, "They were winning by then. Why
did they need to rub it in?" It's a bizarre complaint for any partisan campaigner, but Paikin simply lets it
stand.
For a tougher take on campaign life, Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (Random House, $34.95) by Warren
Kinsella holds promise. The author, a Liberal war-room operative, reports with undisguised pride that he
has been called "the Prince of Darkness" for his tactics. He states early on that "negative and nastiness
works." But then something unexpected happens: his book inadvertently teaches quite the opposite lesson.
Kinsella starts off by taking a close look at the notorious 1993 Tory TV ad that mocked Jean Chretien's
appearance -- and demonstrates how that nasty bit of work badly backfired. (He suggests the Tories might
have been better off sticking with the ad rather than pulling it, but that argument is hardly persuasive.)
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Kinsella seems to admire a more amusingly negative Tory ad from last year -- a spot that parodied rapid-fire
"K-tel" ads while listing alleged Liberal "lies." But that one didn't pay off either.
If his adversaries don't get far by "going neg," what about the campaigns Kinsella worked on? He does offer
a revealing firsthand account of how the Liberals came up with their own TV advertising in last fall's
election. Some tough scripts attacking Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day's positions on health care,
tax relief and gun control were drafted, but they never aired. The Liberals won handily with milder material.
Even when Kinsella trolls history, he comes up mostly with examples that refute his thesis. He recounts
how pioneering negative radio ads by R. B. Bennett's Conservatives failed to put a dent in Mackenzie
King's Liberals in 1935. It's as if Kinsella just can't help but undercut his nice-guys-finish-last thesis.
If politics comes off looking better than expected in Kicking Ass, it's the voting public that comes in for
praise in Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset (Doubleday, $35.95). Co-authors
Darrell Bricker, a veteran pollster with Ipsos-Reid, and Edward Greenspon, political editor and columnist
with The Globe and Mail, set out to discover what Canadians are like in these days of globalization, the
Internet and business-casual attire. The answer: wonderful. "A barn raising represents a good metaphor for
the Canadian way," they gush. "We are good neighbours, but we like strong fences as well. Self- reliance
and mutual responsibility make up the twin leitmotifs of the Canadian mindset." If the extolling of Canada's
virtues is laid on a little thick, the analysis gets more convincing where it is more precise. There are deft
observations about why Tim Hortons survived while T. Eaton Co. Ltd. went down. The chapter on how
universal health care became the bedrock of Canadians' "search for certainty" hits on something essential.
A people as fine as the Canadians Bricker and Greenspon describe surely deserve a fully functioning
democracy. But The Friendly Dictatorship (McClelland & Stewart, $32.99) by Jeffrey Simpson bemoans
our lack of options in this era of federal Liberal hegemony. The Globe and Mail's veteran national affairs
columnist draws on his deep understanding of how Ottawa works to examine the discouraging reality of
politics without a viable government-in-waiting on the opposition benches. Simpson writes with unmatched
authority on how patronage underpins the Prime Minister's almost unchecked power. He takes the decline in
voter turnout seriously -- and leaves the reader wondering why this disturbing trend is so little discussed.
And he offers solutions, including a new way of electing MPs. Simpson's style is not spritely, but he never
talks down to the reader. A momentum builds as he marshals his facts. Read through the holidays, this book
will leave the true political addict looking forward to the return of Parliament if only to revel more
knowledgeably in its dysfunction.
GEDDES, JOHN
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
GEDDES, JOHN. "Fare for political junkies: Recent titles can fill the holiday-season gap." Maclean's, 24
Dec. 2001, p. 75. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A80903865/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=72e289bc. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A80903865
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Canadian made: punk music was built for
here
Mark Teo
This Magazine.
46.3 (November-December 2012): p40.
COPYRIGHT 2012 Red Maple Foundation
http://www.thismagazine.ca/
Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
PERFECT YOUTH: THE BIRTH OF CANADIAN PUNK
By Sam Sutherland
ECW Press $22.85
SAM SUTHERLAND'S DEBUT BOOK, Perfect Youth, argues that punk rock is a quintessentially
Canadian art form. But Sutherland--best known for his work with Aux.tv and Exclaim!--qualifies such
heady claims with sturdy journalism: Toronto's once-mighty Queen West arts strip, he notes, found its roots
in the city's early queer-punk scene. The country's diverse city-scenes produced characters who'd eventually
dominate the Canadian cultural conversation, from the ruthlessly intelligent (Calgary Liberal spin doctor
Warren Kinsella), to the art-damaged (Toronto's Nazi Dog), to the household names (Vancouver and
Metallica producer Bob Rock). And the modern DIY touring roadmap--not only in Canada, but south of the
49, too--was developed by Vancouver's DOA, who, in response to their hometown's isolation, hand-built a
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network winding through the continent. Indeed, punk was, as Sutherland writes, "built for a place like
Canada."
Yet Perfect Youth shouldn't be considered an exercise in genre archeology. Sutherland, who approaches his
research with the vigour of an eBay vinyl collector, divides the book's chapter-essays into themes: First, by
cities, then by formative bands, then by female acts, then by queer acts--and it goes on. But before the book
sags beneath endless lists of band names--The Diodes! The Dishes! The Dishrags!--Perfect Youth develops
a cohesive narrative of struggle: whether socially or geographically, every Canadian punk understood
authentic isolation. That aloneness--and the be-the-change, DIY ethos it produced--is the era's parting gift.
Sutherland successfully bottles the period's magic, and while it's hardly comprehensive, Perfect Youth is
brimming with wide-eyed, ambitious writing. Here, a genuine love letter to the form and, by association,
contemporary Canadian culture.--MARK TEO
Teo, Mark
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Teo, Mark. "Canadian made: punk music was built for here." This Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 2012, p. 40.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A311718653/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3b8d8fd5. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A311718653
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Perfect Youth: The Birth of Canadian
Punk
Michael Barclay
Maclean's.
125.43 (Nov. 5, 2012): p77+.
COPYRIGHT 2012 Rogers Publishing Ltd.
http://www2.macleans.ca/
Full Text:
PERFECT YOUTH: THE BIRTH OF CANADIAN PUNK
Sam Sutherland
The world does not need another book about punk rock, full of self-righteous mythmaking, railing against
mainstream culture and grossly exaggerating the importance of a three-chord song played with youthful
fury in 1977. What the world does need, however, is this particular book. Canadian music of any genre
rarely gets mythologized; rarer still is it done as well as it is here. Sam Sutherland strikes the balance
between an enthusiastic fanboy, a meticulous researcher and a masterful magazine writer; each of his
chapters conveys maximum information in minimum time--with plenty of vomit, violence, electrocution
and decidedly dangerous characters to fuel the narrative--and dispels the myth of a conformist Canada
drowning in dreadfully dull culture.
Sutherland also does what so many Canadian cultural histories fail to do: document scenes in every
province without coming across as tokenistic. You think it was hard to be a punk in Toronto, Montreal or
Vancouver in the '70s? Try Edmonton or Fredericton or Meat Cove, N.S.; those stories are often more
entertaining for their sheer absurdity. The country's biggest punk names (D.O.A., Pointed Sticks, Teenage
Head, Viletones) all get their due, but they're never the whole story; Sutherland also points readers toward
other essential books to flesh out the narrative, such as Liz Worth's Treat Me Like Dirt. Now-unlikely
players like k.d. lang's manager, Larry Wanagas, and Liberal party attack dog Warren Kinsella are also paid
respect.
Far too many rock books cop out with oral histories; Suthedand plays up his strength as a storyteller without
ever seeming desperate to impress with academic analogies. Even if you're a reader who will never track
down the music discussed here, even if you're tired of hearing 50-year-old rounders at the bar waxing
nostalgic about their punk-rock past, Perfect Youth is still a fascinating read about making something out of
absolutely nothing. It's a crucial contribution to our cultural history.
----------
Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Barclay, Michael. "Perfect Youth: The Birth of Canadian Punk." Maclean's, 5 Nov. 2012, p. 77+. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A307270349/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1d303b73. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A307270349
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"Recipe for Hate." Publishers Weekly, 9 Oct. 2017, p. 69. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511293405/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. Rapacki, Sean. "Kinsella, Warren. Recipe for Hate: The X Gang, Book 1." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2017, p. 57. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522759416/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. GEDDES, JOHN. "Fare for political junkies: Recent titles can fill the holiday-season gap." Maclean's, 24 Dec. 2001, p. 75. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A80903865/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. Teo, Mark. "Canadian made: punk music was built for here." This Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 2012, p. 40. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A311718653/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. Barclay, Michael. "Perfect Youth: The Birth of Canadian Punk." Maclean's, 5 Nov. 2012, p. 77+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A307270349/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.

• Medium
  https://medium.com/@zachary_houle/a-review-of-warren-kinsellas-recipe-for-hate-926962bc8a57
  Word count: 1098

  Zachary Houle
  Book critic, Fiction author, Poet, Writer, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @zachary_houle.
  Nov 30, 2017

  Warren Kinsella
  A Review of Warren Kinsella’s “Recipe for Hate”
  Smash Yer Head on the Punk Rock

  “Recipe for Hate” Book COver
  Ah, memories. I never really was a true punk fan, but I listened to my share of the genre in the ’90s and early 2000s. I was into Hüsker Dü, and, for a period, I was involved in zine culture. I read Alternative Press religiously, too. So Warren Kinsella‘s new book for older young adults, titled Recipe for Hate after a Bad Religion song/album, certainly took me back. The book is set in Portland, Maine’s fledgling punk scene during1978 and ’79. A time when punk bands ruled the local biker bar, punks made newspapers, and punks got to see the Clash perform live in Boston. The book is the stuff of good memories for a first-wave punk, so I suspect this book will resonate with adults, too.

  However, there is a deeper and darker edge to this story. Amid the glory of making the NME and getting signed to Stiff Records is a murder mystery. Skinheads are suspected to be behind the deaths of two young punks, friends of a punk mysteriously known as Christopher X — or just “X” as those in his circle call him. Seeing that punks kind of disdain the local police force, and that’s when the police seems to know what its doing, it’s up to X and his buddies to solve the murders and a series of attempted murders.

  While Kinsella adequately conveys to younger readers the schism between neo-Nazis and punks — and there’s no doubt that this type of story is needed in today’s post-Trump environment — it is, sadly, the book’s weakest link. It paints most of the adults of the story as addle-brained peons who don’t know what’s going on or why, rendering them rather one-dimensional and useless. Where Recipe for Hate comes alive is in the simple things, such as the joys of hanging out in a dark, dungy basement with friends to crack open a beer (or a cola, if you were proto-straight edge).

  In fact, it’s exhilarating to see that even a small city music scene like Portland’s could garner international attention, however small that attention that might be. The joy is in being seen and appreciated — a human desire that all people, not just punks, need. There’s a buoyant camaraderie between X and his friends that is a pleasure to eyeball. The book would have worked just as well, maybe better, as simply a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story without the grisly murders.

  One has to wonder how much of the book is fictional and how much of it is personal, since the author, despite being nearly 60 years old, still plays in a punk band. (He is also a noted editorial writer, an author and a lawyer, the latter of which comes in handy for the book’s trial proceedings against three skinheads who are possibly wrongly accused of the murders.) What is enjoyable about the book is that while neo-Nazism isn’t celebrated here, the book seeks to understand the influence of this type of behaviour. So young readers will get a little bit of a political history lesson of sorts when they read this. After all, as one character says, you have to understand your enemy.

  Essentially, the three-dimensional characters tend to be the punk youths as they go about their lives (amid tragedy) in Small City America. Kinsella relates how tough it was to put on a punk show at a time when everyone from the police right down to teachers and parents distrusted the punk movement, forcing young punks to be ever resourceful and independent. In fact, and at the risk of repeating myself, this is the aspect of the book that works best: the nostalgia that is invoked in the early punk scene, and how political it all was. (This is something that is probably sorely lacking in today’s pop-punk or “ponk” culture.) However, at some point, the murder mystery angle takes over, sending the characters — who are described by another adult character as the “punk rock Hardy Boys” — into a climatic shootout that doesn’t seem to fit really well with the book’s tone.

  In the end, I mostly enjoyed Recipe for Hate and found it to be an exhilarating thrill ride through punk’s earliest years. This is a book about what it meant to be a punk in the late ’70s and is a counterpoint of sorts to what the culture eventually evolved into, which has become, admittedly, a bit of a parody. This book will likely appeal to counter-cultural youth as well as their parents, who may have grown up in the scene that this book so lovingly recreates.

  Is Recipe for Hate a flawed book? Yes, it is, particularly in the transitions between scenes that sometimes shifts awkwardly between character viewpoints. However, it is also a barrel of fun, and it will go far to explain to interested youth of today what it was like to be a part of this scene and why it mattered. Maybe it’ll set off a powder keg of a cultural revolution like what we saw in the late ’70s. Ultimately, Recipe for Hate is a roller-coaster, and you’ll be saddened when the ride stops. Memories can be such a powerful thing, so it would be interesting to know what a 17-year-old of today would think about this book when they don’t have the cultural references to draw upon. If that’s you, let me know what you thought. This book is for you, after all, so I’m curious to know if it has any sort of impact towards those who were not born when the details of this book went down. Otherwise, if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool punk, this one is for you, too. It certainly will take you back. It did, kind of, for me. And perhaps that’s all that really needs to be said.

  Warren Kinsella’s Recipe for Hate will be published by Dundurn on December 5, 2017.

  Of course, if you like what you see, please recommend this piece (click on the clapping hands icon below) and share it with your followers.

• The Canadian Review of Materials
  http://umanitoba.ca/cm/vol24/no22/recipeforhate.html
  Word count: 1132

  QUOTE:
  complex, multilayered mystery that highlights the energy and passion of youth while pointing a finger at issues like police misconduct, irresponsible journalism and the rise of the alt Right.

  CM . . . . Volume XXIV Number 22. . . . February 9, 2018

  cover
  Recipe for Hate.

  Warren Kinsella.
  Toronto, ON: Dundurn, 2017.
  299 pp., trade pbk., pdf & epub, $14.99 (pbk.), $14.99 (pdf), $8.99 (epub).
  ISBN 978-1-4597-3906-2 (pbk.), ISBN 978-1-4597-3907-9 (pdf), ISBN 978-1-4597-3908-6 (epub).

  Grades 8 and up / Ages 13 and up.

  Review by Charlotte Duggan.

  ***1/2 /4

  Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.

  excerpt:

  Other media pulled the same kind of crap. None of the reporters and editors appeared to notice, or care, that it was punks that had been the actual victims. It didn’t matter to them. At both PAHS and PHS, more gloom descended, and members of the X Gang, Room 531, and the NCNA were targeted with lots of bullshit new rules, including ones that prohibited wearing or displaying anything to do with the punk movement. To ensure there was no confusion about the administration's new rules, the door to Room 531 was filled with discarded chairs and locked up to keep us from congregating there. The administration wanted the punk sub culture to wither and die. Us, too, we suspected.

  Recipe for Hate opens with a grizzly, crucifixion style murder outside a seedy bar in Portland, Maine. The murder victim is Jimmy Cleary, a teen aged punk rocker whose band has just finished its set in the bar. This shocking act catapults Jimmy’s friends, led by narrator Kurt Blank, into a violent mystery that gives readers front row seats on the punk rock scene of the late 1970s and stretches into the ugly, hate filled world of white supremacy.

  Punk rock culture is almost a character, itself, in this novel. As one murder turns into two and then Kurt’s best friend X is attacked, it becomes clear that this new youth subculture is the real target. But who are its enemies?

  Well, almost everyone it seems. At school Kurt and his friends are known as the X Gang. They are isolated by both staff and students, but that’s just fine for this group of misfits who feel disdain for everyone else anyway. Kurt tells readers, “To the high school’s ruling classes, we were ‘fags’, ‘geeks’, and losers…They’re lemmings…It’s a single brain they all share so that they all do, and say, and believe, the same things, always.”

  The group’s leader and philosophical guru is Christopher X, a brilliant but inscrutable young man whom Kurt deeply admires. Kinsella devotes a chapter to detailing X’s history and philosophy, a kind of manifesto of his version of the punk rock movement. Readers get insight into X’s personality via anecdotes like this where X explains to the track coach that, despite his talent, he doesn’t want to be on the team because they don’t do javelin. X tells him, “Animals can run faster than us, and jump higher than us…I want to do something an animal can’t do”.

  Kurt, himself, is a very dark character. He is a closeted homosexual whose angry, troubled upbringing has left him depressed and alienated. Kurt’s description of his hometown is typical of the novel’s narrative tone: “As Portland grew…it attracted more yuppie douchebags.” A lot of Kurt’s narration is focused on the history of Portland as it relates to the punk rock movement. Kurt wants to be a writer, and this novel, it turns out, is his account of the clash between the punk rockers of the Left and the neo Nazis of the alt Right.

  Kurt has found community, inspiration, and also respect for his music in this tight circle of punk loving teens. The X Gang includes a couple of other punk rock bands, like Patti and Betty Upchuck, members of a feminist band called the Punk Rock Virgins. Only Kurt knows that Patti is a sexual assault survivor.

  Both X and Kurt write and contribute to an unofficial school newspaper that explores and discusses punk rock values, history, and influences. Along with Kurt’s long interior monologues, the newspaper and other narrative devices allow author Warren Kinsella to showcase his extensive knowledge and passion for punk rock. However, these long passages often slip into an expository style that may only appeal to readers with a special interest in punk rock.

  With the murder of a second member of the X Gang comes the wrath of parents, and special attention by the school, local media and, of course, the police. The gang’s punk rock persona links them to the wild antics of British bands like The Sex Pistols and Kurt’s personal favourite, The Clash. Soon, the gang is barred from playing, even in their beloved Gary’s, “the temple of filth”. This spurs the gang to organize a festival of punk rock bands to raise money for a reward to “catch the bastards that killed Jimmy and Marky”. The gig is massively successful, galvanizing punk rockers from as far away as Montreal and Boston. Kinsella spares no detail in describing the concert, which again may interest the keen music lover but does compromise the story’s momentum.

  During the concert, X is seriously assaulted, and the police are forced to shift their theory. Clearly X and his friends are victims, not perpetrators. An arrest is finally made, and an alt Right connection to the murders emerges thanks to X’s sharp thinking and observation. While X’s ability to connect the dots as the police bungle the case does strain readers’ sense of the credible, the pace of the novel picks up. Readers are rushed from the inside of a courtroom to a Clash concert, to an anti racism rally, to a final violent confrontation with Neo Nazis in rural New England, and a pretty satisfying conclusion.

  It is not surprising to learn from the “Dear Reader” letter at the beginning of the book that Canadian author Warren Kinsella has a personal connection to the events that form the context of the novel. Readers who sustain interest through the long narrative sections based on Kinsella’s insider knowledge will be rewarded with a complex, multilayered mystery that highlights the energy and passion of youth while pointing a finger at issues like police misconduct, irresponsible journalism and the rise of the alt Right.

  Highly Recommended.

  Charlotte Duggan is a teacher librarian in Winnipeg, MB.

• The Story Sanctuary
  http://thestorysanctuary.com/review-recipe-hate-warren-kinsella/
  Word count: 745

  Review: Recipe for Hate by Warren Kinsella
  By Kasey Giard | December 8, 2017 | Book Review and Content, New Adult Fiction, Young Adult/Teen Fiction
  Recipe for Hate by Warren KinsellaRecipe for Hate
  Warren Kinsella
  Dundurn Press
  Published on October 21, 2017
  Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
  About Recipe for Hate
  The X Gang is a group of punks led by the scarred, silent, and mostly unreadable Christopher X. His best friend, Kurt Blank, is a hulking and talented punk guitarist living in the closet. Sisters Patti and Betty Upchuck form the core of the feminist Punk Rock Virgins band, and are the closest to X and Kurt. Assorted hangers-on and young upstarts fill out the X Gang’s orbit: the Hot Nasties, the Social Blemishes, and even the legendary Joe Strummer of the Clash. Together, they’ve all but taken over Gary’s, an old biker bar. Then over one dark weekend, a bloody crime nearly brings it all to an end.

  Based on real events, Warren Kinsella tells the story of the X Gang’s punk lives — the community hall gigs, the antiracism rallies, the fanzines and poetry and art, and what happened after the brutal murders of two of their friends.

  My Review
  I kind of can’t resist books featuring punk kids or the late 70s era punk scene, and this book is both. It’s raw and gritty and soaked in the passion for personal freedom, disdain for authority, and commitment to indie music which the punk scene is so known for. Reading it felt, to me, much like watching the movie SLC Punk.

  While I loved the setting and all the punk culture, the style of the writing was hard to follow at times. The narrator, Kurt, would digress from the present into memories and backstory—all of which were interesting and added some flavor to the story, but made it a little confusing to keep the timeline straight.

  Scenes jumped around from one perspective to another, revealing details the narrator, Kurt, wasn’t present to witness. Sometimes he would explain he’d learned the details later. Especially toward the end of the book, as things begin to happen quickly, I found the narrative choppier. Sometimes the story would shift to a different scene or time within the same paragraph. I think it would have helped to have a hard break before each shift to make it easier to follow what’s happening visually.

  In terms of plot, Recipe for Hate had some really surprising moments which I didn’t see coming. (I won’t give anything away.) More than once the story took a turn I didn’t expect—in a good way. The plot made sense but wasn’t predictable.

  The story contains a lot of profanity and some graphic descriptions of violence, so that may be a barrier to sensitive readers. See the content section for more specifics. If you like murder mystery with a sort of stream-of-consciousness style narration, you will want to check out Recipe for Hate.

  Recipe for Hate on AmazonRecommended for Ages 16 up.

  Cultural Elements
  Kurt mentions that he’s gay. Some of their friends are Jewish or lesbian. Several members of radical racist groups say really inflammatory things. There’s a general disdain for police in the punk scene.

  Profanity/Crude Language Content
  Extreme profanity used frequently. Racial slurs used (by racist characters) infrequently.

  Romance/Sexual Content
  Brief kissing between a boy and girl. Kurt briefly recalls a friend telling him about two men who raped her. At one point, the boys find a girl whose clothes are roughed up, and she tells them a man planned to rape her but was interrupted.

  Spiritual Content
  The racist extremists have some devotion to a sort of twisted Christian doctrine. The first two boys found murdered have obvious connections to rituals celebrated by this group. (One boy is found in the position of a crucifixion for instance.)

  Violent Content
  The description of the murder scenes, while brief, is pretty brutal. Extremists beat up a young man and woman.

  Drug Content
  Some references to drinking alcohol.

  Recipe for Hate on GoodreadsNote: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

• Quill and Quire
  https://quillandquire.com/review/recipe-for-hate/
  Word count: 426

  QUOTE:
  Kinsella skilfully blends convincing depictions of both the punk scene and the racist underground with the hoary trope of a band of kids setting out to solve a mystery. The novel is a suspenseful page-turner that also gives considerable food for thought, anchored in realistically drawn characters and an eye for significant detail.

  Recipe for Hate
  by Warren Kinsella

  While Recipe for Hate is the first young adult novel from Toronto polymath Warren Kinsella (whose resumé includes lawyer, writer, musician, consultant, and commentator), it reads like a culmination of certain aspects of his life and work. The novel draws together Kinsella’s experience as a punk in the late 1970s (the subject of his 2005 book, Fury’s Hour) and his research into the organized racism of the far right (contained in his bestselling Web of Hate) to create a resonant novel of teen punks in crisis in the winter of 1978–79.

  At the centre of the novel is the X Gang, a loose collective of disaffected youth who orbit around X, an oddly low-key yet charismatic schoolmate, whose editing of a controversial zine is the most visible aspect of his importance to the group. His best friend, Blank, narrates the novel (from some undetermined point in the future), chronicling the events that take place after one of the gang is murdered behind the seedy biker bar where they hang out.

  Not just murdered. Crucified.

  In the face of bureaucratic failure and social ostracism (both of which increase when other attacks follow), X, Blank, and the other members of the group begin to investigate the violence themselves, stumbling across growing racism in the skinhead community, fuelled by tenets of Christian Identity and the Aryan Nation.

  Kinsella skilfully blends convincing depictions of both the punk scene and the racist underground with the hoary trope of a band of kids setting out to solve a mystery. The novel is a suspenseful page-turner that also gives considerable food for thought, anchored in realistically drawn characters and an eye for significant detail. While it’s definitely a period piece (it’s only a shade too soon to refer to a novel set in the 1970s as “historical”), its significance to contemporary life and social schisms is powerful, and impossible to ignore. The days of punk might seem like a quaint anachronism now, subverted by commerce and marketing, but Kinsella captures the political underpinnings of the movement – a surprising reminder of hope in these dark days.

• Quill and Quire
  https://quillandquire.com/review/the-war-room-political-strategies-for-business-ngos-and-anyone-who-wants-to-win/
  Word count: 532

  QUOTE:
  Kinsella’s greatest moments in politics
  Worst of all, Kinsella’s book will reinforce the negative feelings that most people have about politics. The War Room seems to elevate the importance of backroom advisers.
  REVIEWS
  « BACK TO
  BOOK REVIEWS

  The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs, and Anyone Who Wants to Win
  by Warren Kinsella

  The War Room, the latest book by longtime political operative Warren Kinsella, purports to be a guide of sorts, but a more accurate subtitle would have been “You Just Paid Nearly 30 Bucks to Have Warren Kinsella Explain Why He Is a Political Genius.” This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Kinsella’s largely self-aggrandizing oeuvre, particularly as a blogger, a pundit on countless TV and radio programs, and a media critic for the National Post.

  Most of the book is composed of Kinsella’s greatest moments in politics masquerading as advice for, um, “anyone who wants to win.” For example, Kinsella’s infamous appearance on Canada AM during the 2000 federal election, when he brandished a Barney doll to make a trenchant point about Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day’s belief in creationism, is cited as an example of how to be creative.

  Alongside the self-centred anecdotes, Kinsella mixes in a few history lessons and some communications theory that should be familiar to anyone who has ever taken an entry-level undergraduate class in the subject. Kinsella’s writing is also quite uneven, occasionally employing awkward asides to the reader and suddenly veering into unnecessary and unprovoked profanity.

  Even if The War Room doesn’t work as an advice book, it should at least work as a kind of memoir. However, though Kinsella has been a witness to some key moments and decisions in recent Canadian political history, and despite his carefully cultivated image as a straight shooter, there is little in the book that casts him, or anyone he has ever worked for, in a negative light. When he does write about one of his recent gaffes (specifically, writing on his blog that a female Tory MPP wished she was home “baking cookies”), Kinsella suggests that he intentionally prolonged the controversy to deflect attention from another scandal facing the Ontario Liberals, for whom he worked in the recent provincial election. Kinsella, a Chretien loyalist, also uses the book to revisit the feud with Paul Martin and his team of advisers.

  Worst of all, Kinsella’s book will reinforce the negative feelings that most people have about politics. The War Room seems to elevate the importance of backroom advisers. At one point, Kinsella actually writes that Clinton strategist James Carville “used a smart plan to change history and to elect his candidate to the post of president of the United States.” For now, at least, the American people still elect their president, and the advisers simply help with the campaign. Perhaps it is just a poorly worded sentence, but it exposes the deep cynicism that lurks behind the endless campaign platitudes about working families or whatever meaningless phrases that happen to be testing well.

• Huffington Post
  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/matt-price/warren-kinsella_b_1997918.html
  Word count: 974

  QUOTE:
  deserves credit for writing this book, period.
  He runs through the political truths that progressive parties and candidates often run afoul of -- be authentic, keep it simple, and speak to the heart. He also calls for aggressively pushing out a renewed progressive narrative, or fall victim to being defined by our opponents.
  Matt Price
  THE BLOG
  What Warren Kinsella Can Teach the Conversatives
  10/22/2012 12:25 EDT | Updated 12/22/2012 05:12 EST
  In his new book Fight the Right, Warren Kinsella gets some big things correct while leaving some big things out.

  First, he deserves credit for writing this book, period. There are lots of kitchen table and bar-room conversations underway about how progressives can rebuild and undo much of the damage that the Conservatives are doing to our country and planet. But, we need more. We need to air ideas and strategies, to nominate, debate, discard and to choose. And, we'll not get there without more public efforts like Kinsella's.

  Second, he is absolutely on the money regarding the need for the Liberals and the NDP to embrace math and to realize that as long as they divide the progressive vote, the Conservatives will build a dynasty. I say this as one who doesn't have a home party, but for a true Grit like Kinsella to say it gives you a sense that it's really just common sense. Every time Mulcair or Trudeau disavows inter-party cooperation, Harper does a happy dance because he's been there, fixed that, and knows it's why he's PM.

  Finally, Kinsella's book is at its best when it does what he does best -- giving specific election advice. He runs through the political truths that progressive parties and candidates often run afoul of -- be authentic, keep it simple, and speak to the heart. He also calls for aggressively pushing out a renewed progressive narrative, or fall victim to being defined by our opponents. While he doesn't fully flesh out such a narrative, he looks to the Occupy message of inequality, the one per cent vs. the 99 per cent, as showing the way. (The Broadbent Institute seems to agree).

  There's much more, including a lengthy detour through attempting to understand the conservative mind and the conservative message, with interviews with thought leaders like George Lakoff on this, and for those interested in that topic, the book is well worth picking up.

  There are some big things, though, that Fight the Right leaves out.

  The saying that "to a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" would seem to apply. As a master of the war room, Kinsella gravitates to the rough and tumble of everyday political messaging, but says almost nothing about the long term infrastructure building that underpins it. He briefly acknowledges that his own Liberal party has lost many of its organizers, while the Conservative party is not only united behind Harper but has one of the most advanced databases about Canadians in the country.

  Much more can be said about the political infrastructure the Right has built in Canada, or you can just read what the Manning Centre says about it, since it broadcasts it loud and proud. There is nothing that comes close on the progressive side, no solid foundation from which to project power.

  Kinsella also begins to expose a key progressive conundrum, without calling it out so we can grapple with it properly. He correctly notes that youth don't vote at the same rates as older Canadians, and that if they did we'd likely have more progressive governments. At the same time, he's unapologetic about the kind of negative political campaigning that turns so many youth off from politics. Some go even further on this point, arguing that negative campaigning by its very nature reinforces conservative political framing (eg. cynicism). Yet, it's a conundrum, since at the same time we cannot simply cede the field and let others walk all over us.

  I do think there's a common answer to both this conundrum and to the infrastructure deficit, but it's not an easy one. While the right will always have big money on its side, progressives can and should have people power on their side, but this doesn't happen by itself. People need to be given pathways for political engagement on terms that work for them, and for the vast majority this will not be through a political party.

  Kinsella notes that the Occupy movement, while directly engaging a segment of the public, has so far shunned electoral politics. Labour has traditionally been a vehicle for engaging its members in progressive politics, although with a declining share of the population being unionized, it may need to innovate by giving non-members pathways for engagement, as some unions in the U.S. have been doing successfully. NGOs can provide another engagement pathway, as groups like Lead Now are now doing. Much more is needed.

  By directly engaging citizens, this kind of progressive infrastructure building can itself be an antidote to the cynicism of day-to-day Ottawa (and provincial capitals), while also providing direct channels of communication with ever greater numbers of Canadians that don't rely on the conflict-driven traditional media.

  It's not a shortcut, but I don't think there is one. Yes, progressive politicians should take Kinsella's advice about authenticity, simplicity and speaking to the heart. Yes, we need a new progressive narrative as a counterweight to the one that is currently trashing our country and our planet. But, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that we don't have a lot of hard work to do, a lot of one-on-one relationships to build, and a lot of alliances to forge if we are to succeed.

• Literary Review of Canada
  https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2008/01/pages-from-the-liberal-handbook/
  Word count: 1310

  QUOTE:
  must-read for anyone interested in political campaigning in Canada.

  Pages from the Liberal Handbook
  Conservative strategist critiques a Grit’s modus operandi.
  TOM FLANAGAN
  The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs and Anyone Who Wants to Win
  Warren Kinsella
  Dundurn
  240 pages, softcover
  ISBN 9781550027464

  Share This Review
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  January–February 2008

  Warren Kinsella’s new book, The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs and Anyone Who Wants to Win, is a must-read for anyone interested in political campaigning in Canada. And not just political campaigning. Kinsella is a leader among those now applying the techniques of political campaigning to the causes pursued by corporations, charitable organizations and all sorts of social movements—hence the subtitle of his book.

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  W.P. Kinsella’s posthumous book reveals a writer more cynical than his famous baseball novel might suggest
  Warren is a wordsmith, so The War Room is an easy, breezy read, although his sporadic descents into punk-rock vulgarity can become tiresome. But then, as Warren might put it, “What the fuck does Flanagan know?”

  I wish I’d had the chance to read The War Room before I became Stephen Harper’s campaign manager; it might have saved me from many mistakes and months of painful learning on the job. It is too late for that, of course, but I will definitely put the book on the list of assigned readings for a course on campaigning that I will teach next term (there are only 20 students, so the author should not plan to dine out more than once on the royalties).

  What will students learn from The War Room? To mention only a few highlights, they will read how the American Democratic consultant James Carville originated the war room, or “quick response,” concept in 1992, and how Kinsella brought it to Canada for the 1993 election. They’ll also learn a great deal about political advertising—how television advertising began in the 1950s; how the Democrats ran the “Daisy” ad, perhaps the most successful television ad of all time, against Barry Goldwater in 1964; how the Liberals designed their advertising in 1993 and how the Conservatives blew it that year with ads focusing on Jean Chrétien’s face; and how to structure a media buy for a national campaign. And, of course, they will learn how Kinsella derailed the Canadian Alliance campaign in 2000, lampooning Stockwell Day’s alleged creationist belief’s with a purple Barney dinosaur and the inspired line, “I just want to remind Mr. Day that The Flintstones was not a documentary.”

  And it’s not all ancient history from five or ten years ago. There is a lot of up-to-the minute stuff about how Kinsella used his blog to conduct his own campaign defending his hero Chrétien against the Gomery inquiry, and how the anti-globalization crowd has used the internet to organize their protests in Seattle and elsewhere. Campaigning is an ever-evolving art, and Kinsella, perhaps more than anyone else in Canada, is always right up to the minute (see his YouTube parodies of John Tory in the 2007 Ontario provincial election).

  No doubt about it—Warren Kinsella is a state-of-the-art scrapper. We belong to different parties, but there is no one I would rather have watching my back in a political street fight. Although, to be honest, I’m not much a of a street fighter; my role in the Conservative organization was to recruit street fighters, make sure they got paid and hold their coats while they beat up opponents.

  But let me be a little more serious. Warren deserves it, for he is actually a very serious person. He is a living, breathing exemplar of that most fundamental of political virtues—loyalty. He is almost limitlessly loyal to political parties (provincial and federal Liberals), people (Jean Chrétien) and causes (anti-smoking). So let’s look at how political loyalty, which in itself is a good thing, can work at cross-purposes with rational thought.

  Kinsella is now the president of the Daisy Consulting Group. The company takes its name from the “Daisy” ad that Warren describes so lovingly in The War Room. A little girl is counting the petals on a daisy. When she gets to nine, a loud male voice suddenly starts a reverse countdown. A mushroom cloud fills the screen, and Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic candidate for president, says: “These are the stakes—to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must love each other, or we must die.”

  “Daisy” was the biggest advertising bargain of all time. The Democrats ran it only once, but the subsequent media coverage was enough to pin the warmonger label on Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. Game, set, match. Kinsella, as a good Liberal, roots for the Democrats in American politics, and he obviously reveres the memory of the way this ad destroyed the Republicans’ chances in 1964. He wrote about it in an earlier book, Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics, he wrote about it in this book and he named his company after it.

  But there are some inconvenient truths (as another famous Democrat might say). Throughout the 20th century, at least until the time of Bush père et fils, the Democrats were the party of war in American politics. Woodrow Wilson brought the United States into World War One, Franklin Roosevelt entered World War Two and Harry Truman fought the Korean War. At the time of the Daisy ad, the Kennedy-Johnson administration, which Johnson had inherited, had already begun to ratchet up the American intervention in Vietnam.

  Within a year of the 1964 election, Johnson had undertaken a full-scale war in Vietnam, ultimately committing more than half a million troops. Granted, it was not a nuclear war, but the 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese who died were no less dead because they died from TNT and napalm rather than nuclear explosions and radiation. The Vietnam war destroyed Johnson’s presidency, leaving the despised Republican Richard Nixon to make peace, just as the Republican Dwight Eisenhower had made peace to end Truman’s war in Korea. Presenting the Democrats as the peace party in 1964 was an inspired fraud. The Daisy ad was a great ad, but it was also an essential part of the hoax.

  I am not trying to claim any moral high ground here. Anyone who participates enthusiastically in politics for any length of time gets involved in his own share of frauds. De te fabula narrator. Loyalty to the party, the leader and the cause can easily override rational analysis. This is not a problem with a solution; it is the situation in which all campaigners ply their craft. The self-reflective may agonize over it, but what about those who are not predisposed to questioning themselves?

  Fortunately, a democratic election, like a common-law trial, is an adversarial process. One side immediately pounces on the misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies of the other. You can’t get away with very much for very long (about ten minutes in the age of the quotes database and the BlackBerry) before being challenged by your opponents. Competition is not always edifying, but it is the preservation of democracy.

• Alberta Law Review
  https://albertalawreview.com/index.php/ALR/article/viewFile/1162/1152
  Word count: 3361

  QUOTE:
  Kinsella's message in Web of Hate'- is that racism is alive, well, and
  growing in Canada. Kinsella focuses on white men who hate. It is difficult to define
  those whom they hate: they hate all who are not like them; they hate people of colour
  and people who do not share their language or traditions; but, most of all, they hate the
  Jewish community. Anti-semiti~m seems to be the symbol of their racism, the banner
  under which they march.
  While Web of Hate should interest the general reader, it is, in many ways, a book
  for lawyers.

  BOOK REVIEWS 835
  WEB OF HATE: INSIDE CANADA'S FAR RIGHT NETWORK, by Warren
  Kinsella (Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994)
  [The antiscmite] is a man who is afraid ... of himself, of his conscience, his freedom, of his instincts,
  of his responsibilities, of solitude, of change, of society and the world ... Antisemitism, in a word, is
  fear of man's fate. The antisemite is the man who wants to be pitiless stone, furious torrent, devastating
  lightning: in short, everything but a man. 1
  Warren Kinsella's message in Web of Hate'- is that racism is alive, well, and
  growing in Canada. Kinsella focuses on white men who hate. It is difficult to define
  those whom they hate: they hate all who are not like them; they hate people of colour
  and people who do not share their language or traditions; but, most of all, they hate the
  Jewish community. Anti-semiti~m seems to be the symbol of their racism, the banner
  under which they march.
  While Web of Hate should interest the general reader, it is, in many ways, a book
  for lawyers. Lawyers both historical 3 and contemporary 4 populate its pages. The book
  relates technical evidential issues that arose in hate crime trials, including a "present
  memory refreshed" issue in the trial of a Manitoba Klan leader; the qualification of an
  "expert" in the Keegstra trial; and a false distinction Doug Christie sought to draw in
  the Finta trial respecting the weight of testimony taken on oath and on affirmation. 5
  Kinsella also poses the problem of adapting existing hate legislation and its
  enforcement to new computer technology, particularly to the transmission of hate
  literature by electronic mail from the United States to Canada. 6
  Despite its legal appeal, Web of Hate is primarily a work of journalism. Its
  journalistic nature is the source of its weaknesses. The book takes the form of a
  collection of anecdotes, a series of newspaper articles bound between hard covers. It
  follows no analytical progression.7 Web of Hate is not a work of empirical analysis.
  It does not investigate the actual numbers of racists in Canada or their demographics.
  J.~P. Sartre, "Portrait of the Antisemite" in W. Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoevsky to
  Sartre (Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library, 1975) 329 at 345.
  Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1994).
  Such as Thomas M. Jones, a founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and Bernard Comparet, a pro-Nazi
  lawyer prominent in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States.
  Such as Dean Tim Christian of the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, chair of the Alberta
  Human Rights Commission Board of Inquiry into the Aryan Nations rally at Provost, Alberta, on
  September 8, 1990, supra note 2 at I 88f; and Tom Engel of the firm Molstad Gilbert, who acted
  as counsel for Keith Rutherford in his civil suit against the skinheads who beat and blinded him,
  supra note 2 at 271f.
  Ibid. at 46, 82, 85.
  Ibid. at 42, 56, 130.
  The style of the book is frequently distracting. Kinsella displays an irritating elitism with his
  slighting references to various figures' "polyester" clothing, ibid. at 62, 137, 190; cf. 89. He offers
  unflattering descriptions of personal appearances, see e.g., ibid. at SI, 62, 257. Kinsella is, I think,
  attempting to avoid fawning accounts of racists; he wants to show them for the small-souled
  people they are, so he ridicules them. While ridicule may be an appropriate rhetorical technique
  in advocacy journalism, it has little place in serious work.
  836 ALBERTA LAW REVIEW [VOL. XXXII, NO. 4 1994]
  It does not examine the relation of racism to social, cultural, or economic conditions.
  It does not attempt to provide a psychological portrait of the racist, or to provide some
  insight into why racists think as they do. The book is not a work of conceptual
  analysis. It does not sharpen our analytical tools for understanding racism; it does not
  provide new perspectives on racism; it does not explore issues of what racism means
  in Canada - whether it is an aberration or deviation or vile symptom of some deeper
  social structure; it does not explore the significance of racism as a peculiar - and
  revolting - fonn of human existence. Although Kinsella is a lawyer, the book contains
  only legal reportage, not legal analysis.
  Nevertheless, although Web of Hate fails to live up to what it might have been, the
  book is valuable for what it is: a set of reminders of the presence and the nature of the
  racists among us. The two issues for lawyers posed most starkly by the book are the
  contextuali7.ation of hate crime legislation, and the relationship between client and
  counsel.
  Contextualizing racism in Canada is important. The facts of racism should make a
  difference to legislative and judicial approaches to hate crime. If it could be shown that
  racism in Canada is the preserve of impotent, isolated misfits, the shape of our law
  concerning racial hate might well be different than if it could be shown that racism in
  Canada is a virulent, spreading danger. From another perspective, contextuali7.ation may
  show the actual relations and activities protected and fostered by a law that speaks of
  individual flourishing, but does not protect from racist violence.
  Kinsella attempts to alert us to the "evidence of a growing violent far right
  movement. 118 He names and draws connections. Web of Hate is a useful "Who's Who"
  of Canadian racism. Kinsella's efforts, however, are somewhat blunted by his
  exposition. He gives much attention to what one might call "traditional" racist
  organi7.ations - groups of, generally, middle-aged and elderly white men, structured
  as ordinary organi7.ations (with elected executives and more-or-less regular meetings),
  engaging in the production and dissemination of anti-Semitic and other racist literatures,
  with aspirations to legitimate political status. Despite his rhetoric, Kinsella does not
  succeed in showing that traditional racist organi7.ations, by themselves, fonn a potent
  political force in Canada. A reader could easily come away thinking that these people
  and groups do not so much fonn a "web of hate", as a sad small tangle of people
  consumed by hatred of others, locked in mutual admiration.
  One group of nodes in the web of hate described by Kinsella is the Ku Klux Klan.
  The Klan was distressingly powerful in pre-World War II Western Canada. 9 By
  Kinsella's own account, the modem Klan lacks its predecessor's profile. Kinsella tells
  us of the Alberta branch of the Klan, which was fonned in 1972 with five members,
  Ibid at 360.
  Ibid at 11-19.
  BOOK REVIEWS 837
  grew to about twenty-five members in the 1980s, but was disbanded in 1989.10 The
  Manitoba branch had about thirty members in the early 1990s. 11 The Klan has not,
  Kinsella tells us, "been successful, lately, in attracting new recruits in Canada's western
  provinces."12 The Klan is active in Quebec but is riven along nationalist/federalist
  lines. Kinsella gives us no indication of the numbers of persons involved with the
  Quebec Klan.
  Other nodes in the web of hate seem to be numerically small. Kinsella suggests that
  the Aryan Nations organization, headquartered in Alberta, has nearly 200 members. 13
  Only thirty to forty members, however, attended the infamous rally at Provost, Alberta,
  on September 8, 1990.14 Kinsella refers to racist organizations in British Columbia,
  such as the "Freedom Coalition", which has seven members,15 and the "Council of
  Public Affairs", which appears to be a husband and wife team. 16 More significant is
  the Heritage Front, headquartered in Ontario, which has about 2,000 members across
  Canada.17
  One might conclude from a review of Kinsella's account of traditional racist
  organizations that individuals, rather than groups or institutions, are the most significant
  elements of the web of hate. Kinsella provides good descriptions of the activities of Jim
  Keegstra, Terry Long, Camey Nerland, Malcom Ross, Wolfgang Droege (leader of the
  Heritage Front), and, to a lesser degree, Ernst Zundel. Kinsella shows that these figures
  do form a cross-Canada network. They cover the country: Keegstra and Long operate
  out of Alberta;. Nerland out of Saskatchewan; Zundel and Droege out of Ontario; and
  Ross out of New Brunswick. They have contacts and have made appearances outside
  of their home provinces. Long, Keegstra, and Ross appear to have had some overt
  personal contact. They have personally, and through their organizations, rendered one
  another financial and moral support. A one-man network between various racist figures
  has been constituted by Doug Christie, who has acted as counsel for, most notably,
  Keegstra, Zundel, Ross, Bill Harcus of the Manitoba Klan, and Imre Finta (whose
  acquittal on war crimes charges was recently affirmed by the Supreme Court of
  Canada).18
  An over-emphasis on these individuals, however, would minimize both the depth and
  complexity of the web of hate, and the concrete danger posed by racists in Canada. One
  might even say that for all their visibility, individuals like Keegstra, Ross, and Zundel
  are not the most important elements in Canadian racism. The more important elements
  are more faceless, more inarticulate, and more deadly. The more important elements
  10
  II
  11
  13
  14
  IS
  16
  17
  18
  Ibid. at 20, 25, 31.
  Ibid. at 38.
  Ibid. at 48.
  Ibid. at 149.
  Ibid. at 168.
  Ibid. at 50.
  Ibid. at 59.
  Ibid. at 238.
  R. v. Finta (1994), 88 C.C.C. (3d) 417 (S.C.C.).
  838 ALBERTA LAW REVIEW [VOL. XXXII, NO. 4 1994]
  manifest with greater clarity the essence of racism - its murderous criminality. Sartre
  says this of the anti-Semite:
  With destruction his function, the antisemite - a sadist pure of heart - is in the depths of his soul
  a criminal. What he desires and prepares is the death of the Jew ... it is to anger, hate, pillage, murder
  and all forms of violence that the antisemite accords respect and enthusiasm; and at the very moment
  he is drunk with evil, he feels the lightness of heart and the peace afforded by a clear conscience and
  the satisfaction of duty well done. 19
  The function of the anti-Semite is accurately reflected in two groups described by
  Kinsella, the skinheads and the underground white supremacist terrorists.
  The skinheads represent the racism of the mob, their individuality erased by shaven
  heads, similar clothing, similar tattoos. They represent hate and anger, without
  articulation by either words or sophisticated tactics. They represent violence pure and
  simple. Kinsella reminds us of the blinding of Keith Rutherford by skinheads connected
  with the Aryan Nations. 20 He reminds us of skinheads desecrating synagogues, firing
  weapons into homes, beating helpless victims, and rioting.21 He refers to the B'nai
  Brith League for Human Rights estimate that there are over 1,000 skinheads active in
  Canada, and to the United States Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai Brith report that
  skinheads were responsible for twenty-two murders in the United States between 1990
  and 1993, and that the skinheads are "the most violent of all white supremacy
  groups."22
  More dangerous than the skinheads are the members of underground white
  supremacist terrorist organizations. Members of these organizations are older and more
  skilled than the skinheads. They are tactically more astute. Their violence is more
  thoughtful, and all the more dangerous for that. Kinsella describes the activities of the
  Silent Brotherhood, or 11the Order", which operated in the United States in the early
  1980s and was associated with a United States branch of the Aryan Nations. Members
  of the Order were involved in two murders (including the murder of talk-radio host
  Alan Berg), at least four armed robberies, counterfeiting, the manufacture of bombs,
  and the bombing oft synagogue. 23 Kinsella claims that in the opinion of the F.B.I.
  and prosecutors, the Order was "the most effective domestic terrorist threat the United
  States had ever seen."24 Two Canadians were members of the Order, although they
  appear not to have been involved in its serious criminal activity. Another Canadian,
  Wolfgang Droege, was involved in a white supremacist conspiracy to take over the
  island of Dominica and establish a neo-Nazi haven. The conspirators were captured in
  the United States with some thirty-three guns and rifles, twenty sticks of dynamite,
  thirty blasting caps, and 5,000 rounds of ammunition.25 Droege was convicted and
  19 Supra note 1 at 343. 20 Supra note 2 at 1 SOf. 21 Ibid. at 168, 250, 262. 12 Ibid. at 281. 2) Ibid. at 106f. 24 Ibid. at 117. 2J Ibid. at 204, 220.
  BOOK REVIEWS 839
  served his time for his role in this conspiracy. Fortunately, Canada seems not to have
  produced a domestic white supremacist terrorist threat on the scale of the Order.
  Nevertheless, the potential exists for Canadian racists, perhaps those with links to
  violent organizations in the United States, to emulate the deeds of their comrades. We
  should bear in mind that neither skinheads nor domestic terrorists need be present in
  large numbers to pose a significant threat to the Jewish community and to other targets
  of racist violence. A resolute few have the capacity to do fearful damage.
  Kinsella's key observation is that the skinheads and the domestic terrorists do not
  operate alone. They have become joined to traditional racist organizations.26 For
  example, Kinsella points out that the Aryan Nations organization in Alberta embraces
  Edmonton's Final Solution skinheads, and former Order member Edgar Foth.27 The
  real web of hate is constituted by the union of traditional racists, skinheads, and
  domestic terrorists.
  The point of drawing attention to this linkage is to show that the hate crime debate
  is not lodged only on the level of freedom of speech. Racism is not only words. On a
  concrete, institutional level, racism in Canada extrudes the ignorant violence that lies
  at its heart. The chief virtue of Web of Hate is that it puts the context of racism in
  Canada before us. Kinsella does not offer legislative reforms; he leaves reform up to
  us, in our heightened awareness of the realities of racial hatred in Canada.
  II
  Douglas Hewson Christie, Jr., "counsel for the damned", 28 is a troubling figure. His
  choice of clients should not, by itself, cause concern. Other counsel represent antiSemites
  and various unsavoury malefactors. Lawyers have a duty, after all, to represent
  the unpopular.29 Christie is an aggressive advocate. Kinsella describes Christie's rough
  handling of witnesses in cross-examination in the Keegstra and Ross cases.30 Mere
  aggressive advocacy should not, by itself, cause concern: having taken on his clients,
  Christie owed to them the duty "fearlessly to raise every issue, advance every argument,
  and ask every question, however distasteful," which he thought would promote his
  clients' cases, and to endeavour "to obtain for his [clients] the benefit of any and every
  remedy and defence which is authorized by law."31 Nonetheless, the advocate's duty
  "must always be discharged by fair and honourable means ... and in a manner consistent
  with the lawyer's duty to treat the court with candour, fairness, courtesy and
  respect."32 Christie has, on occasion, exceeded the ethical limits of advocacy. In the
  26
  27
  2B
  29
  30
  31
  32
  Ibid. at 260.
  Ibid at 152, 200.
  P. Kulig, "Doug Christie: Counsel for the Damned" {1990) 14:8 Can. Law. 14.
  Properly speaking, a lawyer has the right to decline any employment, but he or she "should not
  exercise the right merely because a person seeking his [or her] services or that person's cause is
  unpopular or notorious .... " The Canadian Bar Association Code of Professional Conduct, c. XIII,
  commentary 9.
  Supra note 2 at 78, 329.
  Supra note 29, c. VIII, commentary I [footnotes omitted].
  Ibid.
  840 ALBERTA LAW REVIEW [VOL. XXXII, NO. 4 1994]
  Finta case, for example, Cory J. referred to certain statements made by Christie in his
  address to the jury as "inappropriate", "unfortunate", and "unprofessional and
  prejudicial." 33 Christie's crossing the line of permissible advocacy, however, is not a
  source of excessive lawyerly unease. Cory J ., we notice, mitigated his criticism of
  Christie by attributing Christie's conduct to the heat of battle: "The trial of this matter
  was long and complex. It raised issues of a highly emotional and deeply troubling
  nature. In this context it is perhaps understandable that both defence and Crown counsel
  made inappropriate remarks to the jury." 34 Perhaps what is truly troubling about
  Christie is the evidence that he has, in the words of the Discipline Committee of the
  Law Society of Upper Canada, made "common cause" with anti-Semites. 35
  The issue of whether Christie has, in fact, made common cause with his clients is
  troubling enough in itself; Christie also raises the issue of the relation of lawyers to
  clients generally. Part of the model of the practising barrister, more-or-less shared and
  more-or-less conscious, is a notion of independence from the client. This independence
  is cultivated in various practical ways: for example, young counsel are recommended
  to meet their clients on the court house steps and to minimize social contact with
  clients; at the court house, barristers may maintain a lounge without public access, away
  from clients. Independence from the client allows the barrister to be objective, to tell
  the client not what he or she wants to hear, but what the law and experience make
  feasible. Independence from the client keeps the barrister from being the mere
  mouthpiece of or hired gun for the client Legal independence is founded on the
  lawyer's status as an officer of the court. The lawyer is conceived to owe duties not
  merely to the client, but to the system of rules and procedures that constitutes the
  administration of justice. The presupposition of legal independence, then, is that there
  is some "system of rules and procedures," not equivalent to clients' interests, which
  attracts the lawyer's allegiance. If there is no such system, if the "rules" are only
  temporary State-enforced dominations, if all that exists is struggle between the State,
  complainants, and accuseds, there seems to be no basis for legal independence.
  Litigation is only politics by other means. In this politics, a lawyer would be either for
  his or her client, or not; and if the latter, he or she should not act. A lawyer's making
  common cause with his or her clients may be an individual act, but it is an act that
  seems to recognize a deep and thorough politicization of the law. The implications of
  Christie's personal beliefs, I suggest, are what make him a troubling figure.
  A lawyer can find much for reflection between the covers of Web of Hate.
  33
  :u
  JS
  Supra note 18 at 525.
  Ibid. at 523.
  Quoted in supra note 2 at 86.
  Wayne N. Renke
  Assistant Professor
  Faculty of Law
  University of Alberta

• Literary Review of Canada
  http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/01/how-did-it-come-to-this/
  Word count: 2250

  QUOTE:
  offers a prescription for dispirited progressives. With its hyperbolic subtitle, it offers an analysis of the problems facing liberal and leftist politicos, and suggestions for how to overcome them.
  Kinsella is to be commended for delivering a cogent analysis of progressives’ problems, but in Canada, it is not clear that they will a) listen to him or b) be able to change course without compromising who they are.
  Fight the Right makes for a thought-provoking, entertaining and engaging read—no matter what side of the political fence you are on.
  How Did It Come to This?
  For progressives facing conservative victories, the question looms large
  TASHA KHEIRIDDIN
  Fight the Right:  Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse
  Warren Kinsella
  Random House
  277 pages, softcover
  ISBN 9780307361653

  Share This Review
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  More from This Issue
  LRCv21n1Jan-Feb2013cover
  January–February 2013

  If you are a Canadian conservative, these are good times to be in federal politics. Stephen Harper’s Tories have been in power for six years and three elections, and are now well into the second year of their long-coveted majority government. The Bloc Québécois has been obliterated, thanks to a 101-seat NDP opposition that draws over half its base from Quebec. The NDP’s ascent also decimated the Liberals, Canada’s erstwhile Natural Governing Party, which has been reduced to 35 seats and third-party status, and is looking for its fourth leader in nine years.

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  A Conservative Lament
  Joe Clark charts Canada’s shift from foreign aid to foreign trade
  For Canadian “progressives,” the loose term that encapsulates anyone who is not a conservative these days, life is not that much fun. The last decade has seen the gradual erosion not only of their power position, but of their dominance in the realm of ideas. The centrist Liberals are grasping for a raison d’être, squeezed by a growing left-right political polarization. And while the left-wing NDP can see government from where they are sitting, on their own they do not have the numbers to get there.

  Enter Warren Kinsella, one-time Liberal strategist and spinner, present-day columnist, lobbyist and political provocateur. The author of Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (written in 2001, when things were going far better for his party) has penned a new opus, Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse, which offers a prescription for dispirited progressives. With its hyperbolic subtitle, it offers an analysis of the problems facing liberal and leftist politicos, and suggestions for how to overcome them.

  Kinsella concludes that progressives lost power when they lost control of the word “values” and what it represents.
  Kinsella’s most important piece of analysis and advice involves language, specifically the term “values.” The author interviews many of the masters of conservative political communication, including American Frank Luntz, and concludes that progressives lost power when they lost control of that word, and what it represents. In Chapter 3, “How Conservatives Stole Values,” Kinsella sets out his central argument:

  The challenges facing progressives extend to more than mere linguistics. Values are the ineffable, keenly felt issues that hit folks at a primordial level. Not the stuff we think about—the stuff we feel. The stuff that attracts the attention of hearts, not heads. Values: in political terms, that means morals.

  The values/morals of conservatives are easy to sum up: faith, family and free enterprise. As Kinsella notes, these values pepper the speeches of politicians such as Harper and former U.S. president George W. Bush. From them flow policy positions: conservatives are generally pro–traditional family, anti–gay marriage, anti-abortion, pro–small government, pro-capitalism, anti–big bureaucracy.

  Kinsella traces back the right’s usurpation of the values discourse to 1960s America. He claims that conservatives, guided by communications experts like Luntz and politicians such as Ronald Reagan—the Great Communicator—made it appear that not only were their values superior to those of progressives, but that progressives did not have values to begin with. “Values, morals. In short, conservatives have them, and progressives don’t—or at least, that’s what an increasing number of voters believe.”

  Kinsella’s argument does ring true—conservatives have become obsessed with marketing, communications and language—but does it tell the whole story? Did conservatives “steal” the notion of values from progressives or, rather, have progressive “values” simply fallen out of favour because they, well, failed? And is it perhaps true that progressives do not have as many convictions because one of their main tenets—relativism—naturally leads to a less absolute view of the world?

  Back in the 1960s, values—at least those which were popular—were largely the purview of the left. The anti-war movement worked for world peace, environmentalists toiled for a greener planet, civil rights advocates sought equality for all regardless of colour or gender. These relativist, egalitarian, anti-corporate values resonated with a younger, hipper (and hippy) generation, as well as groups who did not share the middle class North American dream, such as minorities. The left also drew on fear of global annihilation: Kinsella cites the infamous “Daisy” ad in which a young girl plucks the petals off a daisy, until her reverie is interrupted by the explosion of an atomic bomb.

  But for the average white middle class voter—the lynchpin of political victory in American and Canadian elections—close to two decades of progressive politicians left a legacy more negative than positive. By the 1980s this voter was sick of stagflation, unemployment and the perception of a growing communist threat. Witness the election of conservatives across the Anglosphere: Reagan in the United States, Brian Mulroney in Canada and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain.

  The policies of these three leaders boosted job growth, facilitated the collapse of the Iron Curtain and primed their countries’ economies for prosperity—which ironically was not fully realized until their progressive successors, Bill Clinton, Jean Chrétien and Tony Blair, took the reins as the political pendulum swung once again. Those leaders implemented many policies traditionally championed by the right (balanced budgets, free trade, welfare reform), but with a “friendlier,” centre-left veneer—confirming the old saying that only Nixon could go to China.

  These leaders were then followed by another crop of conservatives: Bush, Harper and Britain’s David Cameron. And while the United States is led, once again, by Democratic president Barack Obama, it is worth noting that the U.S. Congress was under Republican control from 1995 to 2007, and that the House of Representatives returned to the Republicans in 2011.

  In short, the pendulum swings, and if progressives are to catch the next lurch, they do not need just to talk about values; they need to get some, likely by borrowing them again from conservatives. That reality has not escaped progressive hopefuls like Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau, who mentioned the word “values” eleven times in his recent campaign launch speech, casting himself as a champion of modern conservative voter bastions: families, Main Street and the middle class.

  Will it work? If Kinsella is right, it is the only way to succeed. But as he notes, it is not enough to talk the values talk: you have to walk it as well, or at least appear to, which brings us to Fight the Right’s next important observation: the HOAG theory.

  HOAG stands for Hell Of A Guy, the type of person voters could picture themselves having a beer with, whom they can relate to and who, while he or she may be smart, educated and/or intellectual, hides it very well. HOAGs span both sides of the political spectrum: American presidents Clinton and Bush are both HOAGs, as are Canadians prime ministers Chrétien and Harper. Politicians who fail the HOAG test include Democratic American presidential candidate John Kerry and Canadian Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. They come across as too patrician, too highbrow, too remote. They are to HOAGs as Starbucks is to Tim Horton’s, which, as Kinsella notes, has become the staging ground for countless Canadian Conservative photo ops.

  Kinsella correctly observes that the nature of modern conservative political discourse—anti-intellectual, traditionalist, Main Street—means that conservatives have “cornered the market” on HOAGs. Their leaders may be Yalies or economics wonks, but come across as good ol’ boys and hockey dads. In the words of James Carville, who appropriated Kinsella’s HOAG term after hearing it at a speech he delivered in Toronto, “these country-club elitists have won over the country-music crowd.”

  Neither Trudeau nor Mulcair can play as well as Harper to the sub- and ex-urban demographic that has elected three Tory governments in the last six years.
  While Kinsella’s analysis is again correct, it leaves Canadian progressives in a quandary. The Liberals look poised to elect Trudeau, who is about as HOAG as his father was, while the NDP boasts the savvy—but unHOAGy—Thomas Mulcair. Trudeau Sr. was successful in a different—read, progressive—era and, as Kinsella notes, was seen as courageous, which compensated for his unHOAGiness. But neither Trudeau Jr. nor Mulcair can play as well as Harper, or the image Conservatives have created for him, to the sub- and ex-urban demographic that has elected three Tory governments in the last six years.

  Kinsella’s third important observation and recommendation comes far earlier in the book, in the introduction, but I am saving it for last because in Canada, it provides the most concrete solution for dispirited progressives, if they were only to take him up on it. It again borrows a page from the conservative playbook: united, you win; divided, you lose.

  Kinsella recounts a meeting with U.S. environmentalist and law professor Bobby Kennedy Jr. in New York, at which they discussed the issue facing Canadian progressives:

  “So,” [Kennedy] said, “the New Democrats are off on their own, and you Liberals are off on your own, right?” I nodded … “Doesn’t that just mean that the Conservatives are going to win again?” he asked, rhetorically. “For sure,” I said … Bobby Kennedy Jr. shook his head, marvelling. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.

  A merger would, statistically, be the ticket for progressives to return to power in Canada. But could it happen? On the Liberal side, after musing on the idea before running for leader, Trudeau has now discounted it. Of course, leadership promises mean little: consider the about-face done by former Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay, who pledged no merger with the Canadian Alliance during the race, only to facilitate it after winning.

  As for the NDP, they naturally are not interested since they think they could perhaps go the distance themselves. But should their stock fall in the next election—or should it even remain in a holding pattern—they will face the same questions that the Alliance did ten years ago—and the same realization that strength lies in numbers.

  A Liberal-NDP merger would be far different than the Alliance-PC merger of 2003, however, which many conservatives saw not as a union, but a reunion of estranged family members. As Robin Sears pointed out in his LRC review of Paul Adams’s Power Trap: How Fear and Loathing Between New Democrats and Liberals Keep Stephen Harper in Power—and What Can Be Done About It, which treated the subject in great detail, the Liberals and NDP have vastly different histories and power bases; the shared goal of power may not be enough to bridge those distances. But then again, hatred of a common enemy can unite strange bedfellows, and unless one of them manages to squelch the other, the mantra of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” may become increasingly attractive.

  These are the main—but not the only—points, of Fight the Right. Kinsella is to be commended for delivering a cogent analysis of progressives’ problems, but in Canada, it is not clear that they will a) listen to him or b) be able to change course without compromising who they are. While the book goes predictably heavy on conservative bashing (conservatives are black-hearted at best, racist at worst) and liberal cheering (“stable governance, fiscal reforms: it’s the Canadian liberal way”—um, unless you count the Trudeau years), Fight the Right makes for a thought-provoking, entertaining and engaging read—no matter what side of the political fence you are on.

  Want to share your thoughts?
  We welcome letters, which we reserve the right to publish after editing for length, clarity and accuracy.

  Tasha Kheiriddin writes weekly columns for the National Post and ipolitics.ca and comments on politics in English for CTV Newschannel and in French for Radio Canada and RDI. She is co-author with Adam Daifallah of Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution (Wiley and Sons, 2005).

• Washington Times
  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/8/how-the-left-fights-the-right/
  Word count: 1486

  BOOK REVIEW: ‘Fight the Right’
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  By - The Washington Times - Tuesday, January 8, 2013
  ANALYSIS/OPINION:

  FIGHT THE RIGHT: A MANUAL FOR SURVIVING THE COMING CONSERVATIVE APOCALYPSE

  By Warren Kinsella

  Random House Canada, $22.95, 277 pages

  Reviewed by Michael Taube

  When it comes to modern politics, the left and right know less about each other now than ever before. That’s a huge tactical error. As Sun Tzu wrote in “The Art of War,” “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

  Hence, it’s important to learn how the members of an opposing political ideology think, act and strategize. It will provide some insight in advising candidates, conducting efficient campaigns — and, with hard work and good fortune, winning elections. It will also ensure that good electoral strategies and solid ground games are in place to combat different political parties and candidates.

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  That’s why Warren Kinsella’s book, “Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse,” is of vital importance for American conservatives and other right-leaning individuals to read, learn and understand.

  Mr. Kinsella is a liberal political consultant, political pundit, author and Toronto Sun columnist based in Canada. He’s well known in my country, but isn’t a household name in the United States. His political consulting firm, Daisy Group, probably doesn’t ring a bell with most strategists.

  So, what does he add to the debate? Plenty.

  Mr. Kinsella may be a Canadian, but his political style is perfectly suited to the rough-and-tumble world of U.S. politics. He’s an intelligent and talented individual with a vast understanding of Canadian and American politics. He believes in fighting his opponents tooth and nail, and has no fear to go for the jugular. He recognizes that the political arena can either be a genteel environment, or resemble something more akin to a blood sport. He will do what he has to do to achieve victory.

  Full disclosure: I’ve known Mr. Kinsella for years, and we get along very well. Our association has puzzled more than a few observers, because we think so differently on so many issues. That’s true: I’m right, and he’s wrong — rather, left. Like many other pundits and columnists, we share a mutual interest in areas like politics, history, strategy and communications. Hence, we’ve always been able to find things to talk about rather than wasting time to find things to fight over.

  When it comes to conservatives, there’s no question Mr. Kinsella has strong opinions about his rivals. He’s had conservative friends, colleagues, employees — and even married one. He feels conservatives are “fine, as dinner companions or even life companions,” and doesn’t believe they are all “evil,” but they “cannot be trusted with power.” He even vigorously points out significant differences between conservatives and liberals on issues like abortion, the economy, education, gun control, global warming and the war on terror.

  All of these political descriptions are fine in love, war and politics. It’s part of the way information and misinformation are funneled to the general public. Alas, Mr. Kinsella often falls into the trap of believing myths about conservatism’s true meaning — and has acquired a skewed vision.

  For instance, he feels conservatives are good at “masking their intentions … it’s hard to pin them down; it’s hard to see who they truly are.” He subscribes to George Lakoff’s controversial thesis in “The Political Mind”: “In conservative thought, people are born bad — greedy and unscrupulous. To maximize their self-interest, they need to learn discipline, to follow the rules and obey laws. [The system] rewards those who acquire such discipline and punishes those who do not.” While President Obama “may call himself a Democrat,” he has “shown the instincts of a Republican, a conservative.”

  Yet the author has learned lessons from conservatives, including Canada’s Conservative government. He respects their success in winning over the electorate “by being smart,” even if the results drive him nuts. In Mr. Kinsella’s view, “conservatives have quite literally burglarized the liberal homestead, and made off with populist values and symbol-laden language. Because, make no mistake: While liberals and progressives slept, conservatives did indeed break in and swipe the recipe to the political secret sauce.”

  Hence, Mr. Kinsella wants to “Fight the Right” and bring progressives back to their former glory. He speaks fondly of the days of former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and President Bill Clinton, when progressives ruled the roost. He examines successful strategies run by a diverse group of conservatives, including Canadian political consultant Patrick Muttart and U.S. pollster Frank Luntz. He details personal conversations with James Carville, Mike McCurry and even President Gerald Ford to analyze the left-right divide. He has crafted a strategy to revitalize the left.

  Will it work? That remains to be seen. However, if Mr. Kinsella’s call to arms in “Fight the Right” succeeds, there will once again be a need to fight the left for the hearts and minds of voters.

  Michael Taube is a former speechwriter for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a columnist with The Washington Times.

  Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

• Quill and Quire
  https://quillandquire.com/review/fury-s-hour-a-sort-of-punk-manifesto/
  Word count: 384

  QUOTE:
  Kinsella’s tone of innocence betrayed might have worked better had he a sense of humour, some modesty, and a willingness to explore his own prejudices and idealistic expectations. Unfortunately, he comes across like a humourless windbag lecturing a hall of bored undergraduates.

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  Fury’s Hour: A (Sort-of) Punk Manifesto
  by Warren Kinsella

  The upside of music is its unique power to frame essential moments of a life. The downside, of course, is that these moments – unlike the capsulated eternities of music itself – cannot survive well the effacing friction of time. In Fury’s Hour, Warren Kinsella (lawyer, political consultant, and columnist) concedes from the outset the improbability of a balding, conventionally successful father in his mid-forties with a nice house in a pleasant neighborhood and a mortgage, playing the role of advocate and historian to the fledgling British and North American punk scene of the late 1970s.

  The reader may wish that Kinsella had heeded his own counsel. He begins promisingly, with a hilarious chronicle of his own experience as a fan and player in a punk band in Alberta. It was a heady time. The energy! The rawness! The snarling outrage! The stiff middle finger aimed at … well … everything! “It isn’t about being young. It’s about the spirit of rebellion,” he writes breathlessly.

  In fact, as Kinsella sourly points out, bands routinely disassociated themselves from the idea that there was any serious political rebellion involved. Punk was all about “Doing It Yourself!” Except that seminal punk bands like the Ramones and the Clash signed huge record deals with major corporate labels in a heartbeat. (Apparently the DIY philosophy likewise does not extend to Kinsella’s association with publishing giant Random House.)

  Kinsella’s tone of innocence betrayed might have worked better had he a sense of humour, some modesty, and a willingness to explore his own prejudices and idealistic expectations. Unfortunately, he comes across like a humourless windbag lecturing a hall of bored undergraduates. “THE WORLD NEEDS CHANGING,” he hectors in a closing line. “AND YOU CAN CHANGE IT!” The only changing readers of this book are likely to be doing is the baby’s diapers.

• The Georgia Straight
  https://www.straight.com/article/furys-hour-lacks-punk-cred-by-warren-kinsella
  Word count: 564

  QUOTE:
  Fury's Hour is a great reference tool for gaining an overview of the major turning points of punk culture

  Fury's Hour lacks punk cred / By Warren Kinsella
  by Emily Kendy on February 23rd, 2006 at 9:00 AM
  0
  Fury's Hour
  By Warren Kinsella, Random House, 304 pp. $27, softcover.

  This brief history of punk sadly has about as much street cred as Simple Plan. Warren Kinsella, a 40-something lawyer and political consultant, interviews many key people who've been involved in the punk movement over the years, including CBGB's owner Hilly Kristal, Dee Dee Ramone, straight-edge Fugazi founder Ian MacKaye, and Joe Strummer, encountered backstage after a Clash gig at Vancouver's PNE Gardens, in 1979. A onetime North Vancouver Liberal candidate and former aide to ex-prime minister Jean Chrétien, the author has been interviewing punk musicians for over two decades. Those interviews, along with background information and firsthand experiences, form Fury's Hour: A (Sort-of) Punk Manifesto, a book in which Kinsella's humour and palpable enthusiasm help create a mildly entertaining read.

  Once the bassist for Calgary band the Hot Nasties in the 1980s, Kinsella opens with the early days of punk and doesn't attempt to gloss over the skinheads and hatecore ranters who initially gave the scene a negative image; included are interviews with infamous singer George Burdi of Canadian white-supremacist band RaHoWa (Racial Holy War). From there, one of the most engaging things about Fury's Hour is the way it looks at not just where various punk musicians came from, but where they are now. Singer Ari Up of prototypical all-female punk band the Slits, for example, is interviewed on the phone from her New York home while her kid is at school. As with the rest of the book, Kinsella's stale questions (i.e., "Is punk dead?") aren't nearly as interesting as what these revolutionaries have to say as they look back.

  The heart of Fury's Hour beats in its endorsement of the DIY aesthetic and in the chapters on punk and politics. Highlights include the inclusion of the first all-black hardcore band, Bad Brains; the ruminations on the influence of the Clash and the Sex Pistols; and an examination of riot-grrrl pioneers Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill) and Jen Smith (Bratmobile). Unfortunately, Kinsella's trustworthiness is called into question when he interviews the members of Good Charlotte; by talking to pop bands with tattoos and faux-hawks, he makes one seriously wonder how well his punk bullshit detector is working. One also has to wonder if the author can name a single underground band from his hometown and why he didn't include in the book younger musicians on independent labels.

  Fury's Hour is a great reference tool for gaining an overview of the major turning points of punk culture, but it fades into a rambling monologue on the genre's decline, completely ignoring the thousands of bands still playing raw music in pubs and community halls worldwide. If the book lives up to its billing as a sort-of manifesto, it's only as one for baby boomers who want to read about six months in 1977 that, according to Johnny Rotten, was all that punk ever was. But Rotten is old now and has retired from the stage to the university-lecture circuit. Like Kinsella, he's obviously never been to the Asbalt on a Saturday night.

• Now Toronto
  https://nowtoronto.com/art-and-books/books/punk-sort-of/
  Word count: 340

  QUOTE:
  As an overview of some of the most prominent bands of late 70s punk, Fury's Hour is certainly not the worst you could do; Kinsella's writing is clear, enthusiastic and engaging.

  Punk, sort of
  BY JULIE FOURNIER SEPTEMBER 15, 2005 12:00 AM
  Fury's Hour: A (Sort-of) Punk Manifesto by Warren Kinsella (Random House Canada), 250 pages, $27 paper. Rating: NNN Rating: NNN

  cover
  buy this at amazon.ca!
  Fury's Hour is the newest citizen of an already well-populated province of books documenting and analyzing the early years of the punk movement. Using interviews examined through the lens of his experiences as a Calgary punk in the 1970s, author Warren Kinsella tells the story of notable pioneers like the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols, the Clash and DOA. Kinsella's nostalgia for his younger years is obvious, and he talks about his idols with fanboy fervour with the exception of Sex Pistols singer Johnny "Rotten" Lydon, whom Kinsella decries as a sellout after being denied an interview in 2003.

  In addition to its compelling chapter on punk extremism, hate and terrorism, one of the most interesting things about this book is who wrote it. Kinsella is a well-known federal Liberal party adviser, a Chretien aide and a top campaign strategist for conservative John Tory in the last municipal election here in T.O.

  How someone with this resume can consider himself punk, and how he qualifies to call Johnny Rotten a sellout, is a complicated matter. DOA frontman Joey Shithead Keithley brings up the relationship between punk and capitalism and the right wing in an interview, but Kinsella chooses not to explore the potentially meaty subject further than that. As an overview of some of the most prominent bands of late 70s punk, Fury's Hour is certainly not the worst you could do; Kinsella's writing is clear, enthusiastic and engaging.

  But if you want a broad perspective on the era, don't let this personal account be your only guidebook

• Canuckistan Music
  http://www.canuckistanmusic.com/index.php?maid=289
  Word count: 513

  QUOTE:
  Fury's Hour does contain two excellent chapters that make it essential reading
  My eyes actually welled up reading this one.
  Warren Kinsella

  Warren Kinsella - Fury's Hour - A (Sort-of) Punk Manifesto

  Fury's Hour - A (Sort-of) Punk Manifesto
  Random House - 2005

  Michael Panontin
  Though not without merit, Warren Kinsella's Fury's Hour is a frustrating book on a number of levels. The Toronto-based lawyer, ex-Liberal staffer and occasional scribe for the right-wing Toronto Sun newspaper, initially starts things off with what seem like the autobiographical renderings of an ex-punk's mid-life crisis. Indeed, Kinsella injects a healthy dose of self-deprecation in the first chapter when he refers to himself as "a boring old fart of the type that I used to malign back when I wrote songs for the punk outfit calling itself the Hot Nasties. Yes," he adds, 'I have become that which I once sought to destroy."

  That story - an introspective look at the invariably poignant and ultimately pathetic futility of an aging hipster - would have been a welcome addition to the overcrowded shelves of books on punk. (What crusty old ex-punk hasn't tried to boost their street cred with tales of some long-ago show only to be shot down with that blank stare that the youngsters do so well?) But unfortunately Fury's Hour quickly changes tack, setting off on a different, totally unnecessary course through punk's back pages, from Sniffin' Glue's Mark Perry to John Lydon...basically anyone Kinsella could track down to interview, really. For this sort of stuff, we can consult Wikipedia.

  And if that weren't enough to cause an editor to demur, Kinsella wastes reams of space on that most risible of canards, the true punk. Surely anyone who lived through those days of parsing guitar solos or sizing up haircuts to determine who was new wave and who was punk would realize the utter silliness of it all. At forty-five years of age, the otherwise perceptive Kinsella ought to have known better. And speaking of poseurs, this mostly well-written book is sullied with his frequent and gratuitous use of profanity, specifically the use of "fucking" as an intensifier.

  All that said, Fury's Hour does contain two excellent chapters that make it essential reading (especially since it has been heavily remaindered and can probably be picked up pretty cheap). The first deals with punk's more extreme elements, both right and left, where Kinsella picks through the brains of RaHoWa founder and former white supremacist George Burdi and ex-Subhuman and direct actionist Gerry Hannah. And the second is a positively charming account of how a teenaged Kinsella and pals hiked from Edmonton to Vancouver to see the Clash on their 1979 tour, only to end up serendipitously partying with their heroes backstage. If there were any doubts as to who was the coolest punk ever, the lads' brief moment with the late Joe Strummer will lay those to rest forever. My eyes actually welled up reading this one.

• The Globe and Mail
  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/carl-wilson/article20425589/
  Word count: 1051

  Carl Wilson
  PUBLISHED AUGUST 27, 2005
  UPDATED MARCH 28, 2017
  The most intriguing aspect of Warren Kinsella's new book, Fury's Hour: A (Sort-Of) Punk Manifesto, barely makes an appearance between its covers. Which is both rather punk and very self-serving, if that's not the same thing.

  It's a lively goulash of potted music history, analysis, semi-memoir and motivational speech. But the people who buy this book don't really need his mini-bio of the Ramones.

  They want an account of how this prominent late-1970s Calgary punk, a member of The Hot Nasties and proprietor of Blemish Records, ended up a notorious strategist in the Liberal regime of Jean Chrétien. Does he credit punk for the "attack dog" tactics that made him the Karl Rove of the Canadian middle of the road?

  Kinsella isn't dim enough to imagine he can dodge the issue completely. Instead, he flips us off: " Yes, I have become that which I once sought to destroy. Piss off, as a punk might say, if you don't approve."

  (All very bold, except that Kinsella later rips ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon a new one for having "become the embodiment of all that punk sought to change or, failing that, hoped to destroy." And all because Lydon wouldn't give him an interview.)

  Kinsella needn't be so conflicted. He's now a member of another group that also could be called the Hot Nasties - the North American power elite.

  When Kinsella quotes Lydon barking, "If you get in my way, you're going to have a serious bad time," Canadian readers might recall the author's ex-boss's near-identical statement after manhandling a protester. (The throttling itself was more punk than the rationalization.) Even after leaving office, the Chrétien punks continued to show their middle fingers to the public at the Gomery inquiry.

  If that seems a stretch, it's because most people, including Kinsella, tend to think of punk as a progressive youth movement. But really, punk is an ink blot - you see in it what you want. From drunk racist frat boys to anarcho-feminist straight-edge vegan art geeks, all sorts of characters have claimed the mohawk and leather jacket (or vinyl jacket for the vegans) for their own.

  Kinsella's shock over this, as in a well-reported chapter about Canadian punks' entanglements in both neo-Nazism and radical leftist bombings, seems risible coming from someone who's just spent 100 pages extolling punk's basis in generalized adolescent rage.

  His own high-school crowd took up the cause after reading about the Pistols' supposed antics - "throwing up on old ladies in airport waiting rooms sounded pretty good to us." Hmm, how could that life-affirming impulse possibly go awry?

  Kinsella misunderstands two things. The first is art. Specifically, punk as a late-late modernist art movement. When he responds to the Sex Pistols slogan "no future" by tut-tutting that there really is a future and punks should try to make it brighter (and vote Liberal?), he displays his tin ear for punk's Dadaist paradoxes.

  He sneers at artist Andy Warhol's "hippie" (huh?) influence on the New York scene and on the Pistols' despised manager, Malcolm McLaren. Kinsella reviles the Warholian cynical hyper-boredom of early punk, but that attitude was what made it more than just sloppy heavy metal or folk singing on overdrive - its grand negation, flattening every sign and symbol into an interchangeable flux of disdain.

  Deep down, the core of punk is the howl of the Freudian death drive, the gestural suicide of an exhausted youth culture - a thrilling annihilation that's repeated till its very emptiness is emptied. This inherent death wish is why the question "is punk dead?" is perpetual and unanswerable. As songwriter David Berman of the Silver Jews encapsulated it: "Punk rock died when the first punk said/ 'Punk's not dead, punk's not dead.'"

  Of course, after that initial liberating shock, converts have to figure out what to do with life-after-punk-death. And that's where the contradictions come in.

  Kinsella realizes punk was a purgative convulsion against the perceived decadence of the 1970s, but overlooks how closely that origin binds it to the neoconservative backlash that brought putative punk (and Liberal) foes Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney to power. It's Kinsella's second big blind spot.

  He enthuses over punk's do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic, for instance. But call it an entrepreneurial work ethic and you've got a neo-con sacred cow. (Vancouver punk Joey Shithead points this out, but Kinsella shrugs it off.) Punk also partook of Cold War apocalyptic fantasies parallel to those that would soon drive the mass revival of Christian fundamentalism - "no future" meets the Rapture down on Death Drive.

  Neo-cons hated the sixties, and punks hated hippies. In many ways punk anticipated the knee-jerk, know-nothing disdain for collective input and consequence that would become standard-issue conservative politics and culture - extreme individualism and atomized democracy.

  How great a leap is it from barfing on old ladies to cutting their pension cheques?

  Rush Limbaugh is punk, the Oxycontin-snoring, neo-con version of Henry Rollins. The blithely rude Paris Hilton is punk, kid sister to Courtney Love; much punk music now echoes her entitled, self-involved whine.

  Punk-in-chief George W. Bush metaphorically gobs on the dead soldier's mother as he blasts past her in his motorcade. And Chrétien figuratively pelts Mr. Justice John Gomery with golf balls in a Kinsella-conceived bit of punk theatre.

  Ashton Kutcher, MTV's idiot king of random cruelty, the pope of "can't you take a joke?", gives it its proper name: Our culture has been royally punked.

  I'm not denying punk's salutary effects on many lives, including my own. But it's been too loyal an opposition, too close to emerging dominant values, for its own good.

  The DIY model remains useful, but it just restates what countercultures always have done. And today, with far broader information within easier reach, white outsider culture is finally superseding punk. By these fresher standards, Kinsella's "manifesto" is merely the nostalgia trip of a punk dinosaur and, oh yeah, total sellout.

  cwilson@globeandmail.ca

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