“For his own political reasons, the Canadian PM will continue his apparently unconditional embrace of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s unelected government. But in private, we must hope, he will tell Yatsenyuk that it is intolerable and unacceptable that his government contains seven ministers connected to the radical right, including members of the extremist Svoboda Party as deputy prime minister and ministers of defence, agriculture and ecology. ” (Globe and Mail, Toronto, March 21, 2014)
The new and unelected Ukrainian government relies deeply on appointments, traditions, and a nationalism which history identifies as extreme right wing or neo-Nazi. In Canada the Harper government’s immediate and enthusiastic support for the fascist takeover of a people’s bid for democracy is treated by the press as normal, with both Canada’s opposition parties supporting the overt commitment to neo-fascism. I don’t think it is disloyal to Canada to point out that large portions of the world don’t like fascists, particularly fascists oriented to white power with a history of murdering Jews, Roma and other minorities.
Canada’s support is a continuation of its historical support for Ukrainian war criminals guilty of genocide at the end of WWII, but unprosecuted to further their uses to anti-Soviet policies. The Harper government is championing a political structure with its roots in Babi-Yar. Babi Yar is not an example of fascism, it’s an example of the extremes of Nazism and an inhumanity Europe has been teaching the New World for half a millenium.
Harper’s swift support of a neo-Nazi beachhead far more advanced than the inroads Golden Dawn has made in Greece, or Jobbik in Hungary, may suggest to Canadians that there is something very abnormal about Canada’s current political norm.
Even in France the far-right is having to struggle for votes, claiming as an excuse for fascism the threat of Islamic immigration, the protection of Christian French culture, the social burden of Roma people whom the French government again continues to ethnically “cleanse” despite advances in the country’s awareness of laws against genocide. There is the inevitable rise in anti-Semitism which accompanies corporate populism as a society divests itself of its vulnerable for cheap votes.
The rise of national socialism in Germany of the 1930’s and in Mussolini’s Italy was accompanied by programs for the national infrastructure and the people. As Canada is moved toward fascism there is no pretext of care for the people. Social services for the people are being cut. The medical care system is being dehumanized. Veterans are disenfranchised, neglected, denied their rights and pensions. State resources are being privatized. Information is suppressed. A Supreme Court ruling was required to stop the Prime Minister from illegally packing the high court. The press is at the service of economic policy. Neo-conservative action teams warp democracy to the self service of a few. The constant is: interests of the people are sacrificed to the economic interests of private corporations. The government is ruling for an economic elite. As with the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany, the opposition parties are fundamentally cooperative with the right wing agressor as if all are paid by the same master.
So the perception management toward fascism seems entirely normal. Canadian neo-fascism is somewhat in advance of Europe’s extremist right wing xenophobic and Islambophobic political parties. The mechanisms of control in Canada have always been unswervingly at the service of wealth and a single race with a basic simplicity European fascists only dream of.
As Canada crosses the boundary from errant “democracy” into overt intentional fascism, the Harper government can call for support from Europe’s far right political parties. Extremist Dutch MP Geert Wilders was welcomed in Canada by the neo-conservatives to spread his gospel of Islamophobia, and was untouched by Canadian police despite Wilders’ commission of hate speech crimes.
Homegrown Canadian fascism is restrained from overt Nazism by the use of a smile in place of the well worn phrases. The cutting edge of hatred or ignorance or both, isn’t clear right away, sometimes not for generations. The injustice, lack of recourse, and prejudice associated with extreme fascism is gloved by the institutions that insist on the norm – courts, police, intelligence networks, controls which are thorough but take effect slowly. For example. A U.S. instigated “war on terror” called into play sets of laws and law enforcement tactics to control Canadians by mechanisms of fear and injustice. Of five Muslims arrested on Canadian Security Certificates, imprisoned without trial, often in solitary confinement, not one was found to have committed any crime against Canada.
Of those Muslims tortured by foreign agencies, among them Maher Arar, Omar Khadr, Abousfian Abdelrazik, not one of them was found to have committed a crime against Canada. These men were tortured with full complicity of the Canadian government. Control by overt injustice and fear is a working pivot of fascism. Laws under the Nazi’s Third Reich gradually tightened the screw, gradually excluding the Jews from journalism, the professions, business ownership – mechanisms which are accomplished currently covertly by training that requires allegiance to corporate controlled education, excluding anti-fascists.
Canadians are also protected from self recognition by the government’s acquiescence to U.S. policies which are war crimes. The Canadian legal community’s lack of challenge and countering the government’s crimes and deprivations of justice to citizen, shares the blame. While Canadian agencies are complicit in the war crime of torturing Canadian citizens, no Canadian government employee has been charged with a crime. Intelligence agency operatives have not been charged with crimes. The RCMP and Canadian Border Services have failed to honour Canadian law in prohibiting entry to Canada of known torturers. The law has been consistently broken by and for the interests of a white European ingroup of privilege.
The Government’s refusal to counter the ongoing genocide of First Nations People, moves a consideration of fascism to its inevitable effects. By representing the interests of mining company policies and corporate interests, by refusing to police and limit Canadian corporate actions, Canada’s government becomes responsible for the genocides of indigenous peoples throughout the world. Harper’s alliance with the Ukraine may simply express a need for self-protection.
So one does not have to point out parallels to between the Third Reich’s dismemberment of Unions and the Conservative government’s attempts to undermine Unionism, or the government’s attempts to undermine the democractic process by limiting Elections Canada ‘s safeguarding of the electoral process, or other attempts to undermine democracy such as the Prime Minister’s recent illegal attempt to pack the Supreme Court. These have become expectable tactics of the right wing which has terrorized the people out of the simple recognition that people are once again, up against the Nazis.
