FIGHTING THE FASCISTS. Canadians At Home.

Written by Robin Mathews



FIGHTING THE FASCISTS.  Canadians At Home. 


From the start … let’s say it clearly.  And face it.

The Hard Right, The Dirty Harper Fighters, The One Per Cent, The Bilderbergers, Big Oil, (Give the name you use for the government-swallowing corporate mafia taking over). They want a fascist world.

That means those forces want a world in which “representative government” is representative of big wealth, of big corporations only … where legislators are hand-picked. That means those wealthy forces always want huge private corporations to swallow governments, opposition parties, ordinary people asking questions, unions, independent media, and more. But it only happens sometimes in history.  It’s happening now – in Canada, in the U.S.A., in Europe ….

That means private wealth is taking over public legislatures, and the world is being gutted to make the rich richer. 

“Oh”, you say.  “That’s not fascism.”

“Oh”, I answer, “yes it is.”  Fascism is the integration of government and private corporations – what is called the corporatization of government. When that happens, all public resistance, criticism, information gathering, observation of fair practice, regulation of private corporate action is strangled.  That’s the start – called neo-fascism. Stephen Harper’s neo-fascists have been strangling all that before your eyes.  Look!

“’Neo-fascist” is the wrong word,” you say. “Where are the uniforms and the jackboots, and the concentration camps that we know are the signs of fascism?”

You don’t see them first.  You see them when it’s too late to stop what’s happening.  When government – with the private corporations - has bribed, coerced, or wed the Opposition Parties (as now, in Canada, the U.S., and much of Europe – which is why new Parties are starting up), then government starts cutting off the public from public information … starts handing the environment (literally) to the corporations. Then it starts using tougher and tougher means to quell real, public demands for social justice, for information, for fairness to the environment, for fairness to the vulnerable, for, especially, the right to protest publicly as a way to highlight corporate/government criminality. You don’t see the fascists yet.  But you can see the neo-fascists right before your eyes.  Look!  First the neo-fascists … and then the fascists.

That’s why new parties are springing up in Europe.  Because governments in power are working for the corporations.  UKIP, the new United Kingdom Independence Party, is threatening both Labour and the Conservatives in that country.  Strange, but UKIP wants the people of the U.K. to make the laws for the U.K.

If the Harperians and the big corporate pirates hadn’t bribed, coerced, or wed the Opposition Parties, the main fight in Canada, now, would be over the neo-fascist issue - every day. The Opposition Parties would combine to organize rallies on Parliament Hill with banners saying “End Neo-Fascism in Canada, Now. Stop The Fascists”. They’d be using that language daily in Question Period.  They would explain it and explain it to the public. They would force it into the mainstream press and media. They would twitter it, facebook it, letters-to-the-editor it. 

Instead the Opposition Parties want to take over “government” (as it is now), get it into their own hands ... as the new representatives of the big corporations.  Which one of them has said it will – when it gains power - erase every neo-fascist action of the neo-fascist Harperians?  Which one?  None.  Wake up Canadians.  (Even the bold, articulate Elizabeth May avoids the “f –word”.)

The degree to which the Opposition Parties have accepted the destruction of Statistics Canada and environmental protection agencies, the attack upon publicly reporting scientists and independent Non Governmental Agencies tells everything anyone needs to know about the tragic sell-out of Opposition politics in Canada.

That means it’s time for the people to start using insistent, public, open, (where possible, constitutional) force.  And new parties. That’s why – even the best analysts – won’t use the words: “neo-fascism”and “fascism”.  Because few want to face the implications of those words: public action in the public sphere; real force against the lies and fraudulent institutions of neo-fascism (like the National Energy Board, an instrument of neo-fascist, Harperian policy, wrecking public faith in “independent” boards and tribunals.  It should be stopped, by public insistence - and action - from continuing operation). 

“The best analysts?”  Read about Stephen Harper and his circle in the excellent book by Michael Harris, Party Of One.  Read the excellent book by Donald Gutstein, Harperism….  That one should be a “must read” for every Canadian who votes. Those wanting a longer historical take, (not on the “best analysts” list), could even read my  modest free ebook called Canada: the Road to Fascism.  From 1945 to Stephen Harper.

A little joke, now. A little event in the argument - which is growing sharper and nastier - has just occurred.  In his excellent book, Donald Gutstein spends some time talking about the elaborate structures built by and in relation to what I call the neo-fascist edifice.  That edifice (my words) hides behind fabulously wealthy owners.  They use it to create and push forward ideas  - through their richly funded “think tanks” and “research” centres - which feed misinformation to Mainstream Press and Media, using pliable journalists of a sympathetic nature to carefully push the Far Right propaganda line. Truly an edifice.

Writing of Andrew Coyne, Donald Gutstein records him taking Far Right positions again and again. Gutstein remarks that Coyne “occupies the interface between think tank and media, crucial territory in the neoliberal war of ideas”. (p. 68)
(“Neoliberal” is a HUGE word that can describe a befuddled Right-wing economics professor or an active proponent of union destruction, medicare destruction, NGO destruction, and dangerous police empowerment: in fact, often, a neo-fascist.)

Andrew Coyne, is a person I have always taken for a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a proponent of most Harperian moves, who, to my mind, makes – indeed – an interface between the Right think-tanks and the media.  He was angered at Gutstein’s words, at Gutstein “blowing his cover”.  And his reply – to my mind – was vintage, certified, Stephen Harper attack language.  Coyne didn’t say something like: “I think Gutstein’s statements are unfair. I try to balance the rights and needs of Canadians with the needs of the economy.”

No.  This is what he wrote: “This is wonderfully insane in the classic bearded-lefty paranoid vein, not least for the attention it wastes on me.”  What’s this “classic bearded-lefty paranoid” stuff???

That makes me think of (to use Coyne’s way of putting it) the classic, hard-Right, paranoid neo-fascist vein.  Looking into my files just a little, I see that in the great fight over Free Trade in Canada in the 1980s, Andrew Coyne signed the petition of the Artists and Writers for Free Trade.  He was on the petition with such devoted Far Right names as Thomas Flanagan, David Frum, and Linda Frum.  Do “birds of a feather flock together?” If they do, Donald Gutstein’s comments are totally appropriate, and Andrew Coyne is not only a neoliberal “interface”, he is also a Far-Right operator “in the closet”.

I don’t want to seem biased.  But whenever I watch Andrew Coyne on panel discussions (or read his columns), I’m always aware he’s a certified journalist-commentator from the Right at work.  Because of the success of the “edifice” named above – no Left representative is ever present on the panel he inhabits … ever.  The panel presents a fake middle with a disguised Right and no Left.  AND, of course, Andrew Coyne appears, when that happens, on the CBC – the Colonial Broadcasting Corporation, which has been so hammered by the neoliberals, by Fraser Institute propaganda, by the Far Right, that the CBC is terrified of presenting the real range of political ideas in Canada ... and so doesn’t … ever.

 That’s where we are.  And that’s why the words neo-fascism and fascism are the correct words to use today.  Failure to use them is a sign we’ve been co-opted by the neo-fascist Right, or it’s a sign we’ve (consciously or unconsciously) joined it.

 
Written by Robin Mathews


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I know exactly what time it is, to steal a line from contributor Mr. Jon Ghun....

"It`s time to throw down and fight these bastards"


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