On the evening of Feb. 20, 1939, the marquee of New York’s Madison Square Garden was lit up with the evening’s main event: a “Pro American Rally.” The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington’s birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America’s first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.
Historian Robert Paxton argues that fascism is best understood, not as a coherent political ideology, by rather as a series of political and social techniques for exploiting weaknesses in existing political power structures and subverting them to acquire and wield political power. Fascist movements go through 5 stages of development, which outlines, the tracing of which is more helpful in understanding fascism than the search for any ‘fascist minimum.’
In short, there is no plan. Conservatives parties in Canada are morally and intellectually bankrupt. The only driving interest and policy of the CPC and UPC is lobbying the fossil fuel industry. They also join the CP Party of Ontario in promoting deregulation and austerity programs. Traditional conservatism has been dead in Canada and the rest of the world for some time now. Many point out that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher killed and buried it. The right-wing conservative party leaders of Canada include Erin O’Toole, Doug Ford, and Jason Kenney. They display fascist traits subconsciously and consciously and. Canadians recognize it and are not buying their BS anymore.
Noam Chomsky, in an interview with Richard Wolff, stated that the current capitalistic system is broken. Historical evidence suggests two ways out, fascism or social democracy. The working class and disenfranchised on the left, center, and the right feel disillusioned and cheated by government and opposition parties and representatives. The status quo is coming to an end as it has no solutions, just the same old repeated rhetoric that favours the rich and the elite.
Globalization and political discourse are complex. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The future presents many challenges. Inequality and climate change are existential threats to civilization. The time has come for all good people to educate themselves in fascism and social democracy. History teaches apathy and ignorance favour the fascist, so choose wisely, fascism or socialism.
The rise and popularity of right-wing nationalism, extremism and religious fundamentalism in the United States, Brazil, India, Europe, and Canada are very troubling. The last one hundred years reveal the danger of tipping the scales too far right leads to fascism. The word fascism conjures up all kinds of emotions when spoken in public, invoking Mussolini and Hitler and dictators and death camps. Italian fascism began with Italian nationalism and a policy based on three principles order, discipline, and hierarchy.
The fascists’ goal is power for the sake of power at all costs. The means to power is divide and conquer, accurately stated divide and rule (Latin: divide et impera). The right-wing has become very proficient at dividing Canadiens by providence, religion, race and immigration, women rights, abortion rights, gun rights, and gay rights, are just a few. Many on the right have embraced extreme groups like the Proud Boys and QAnon conspiracies.
The enemy of fascism is truth, and fascist propaganda becomes the tool of choice to destroy it. As truth crumbles to the wayside, the fascist leader fills the vacuum with empty words, promises and ultimately lies. Policies are shallow, and much hinges on personality. Personality litmus tests include celebrity status and the likeability to have a beer. It was no accident that Ontario Premier Doug Ford campaigned on a buck a beer.
Fascists destroy. The Canadian right-wing historically comes from the conservative movement. The movement died as conservatives stop conserving. Conservatives, a shell of the past, have dismantled and weakened more than maintained and strengthen our many great Canadian institutions. In short, they are destroyers, not creators. They destroy by selling off Canadian assets and resources to private corporations. For-profit destruction for the benefit of the top of the hierarchy is the cornerstone of Canadian fascism.
The placement of a Canadian’s value within the pyramid is dependent on a benefit-cost ratio. Benefit-cost are measured by order and discipline and valued by the daily contribution of labour and skillsets and devalued by the inability to work for whatever reason. Fascists have no empathy for those who are not staunch to the state.
Fascists are anti-intellectual. The right-wing funded by the fossil fuel industry continues to deny climate change and the future consequences to the planet. Many fascists deny science because they are intellectually bankrupt and do not have the necessary mental processing capabilities for the complexities needed for creating solutions and diplomacy. The Covid-19 pandemic displays the ineptitude of Provincial Premiers Doug Ford of Ontario and Jason Kenney of Alberta. Both are dropouts with no formal completed education. A research study will show that many right-wing elected officials have a degree only in political science.
Fascists have a hatred of socialism or what they call socialism. In an interview on Democracy at Work hosted by Richard Wolff in January 2021, Noam Chomsky states that the current broken capitalistic system has two ways out, fascism or social democracy.
In conclusion, the fascist end game is power, and we should heed Lord Acton’s assertion, Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The conspiracy of the mainstream media of the last five years, in particular, is the deflection and dismal reporting on fascism and fascist. The very mention of the words fascism and fascist seems to be taboo other than when used in a hyperbole tone.
This week at the CPAC had its annual convention, and with years of corruption, the GOP has broadcast their true colours. The GOP is officially the Fascist Party of America.
Now is time to educate and inform yourself that fascism is alive and well.
One of the greatest thinkers on fascism, the Italian Primo Levi writer of novels and short stories, a man who had been to the hell of a Nazi death camp and lived to come home, once noted, “Every age has its own Fascism.” As a professional chemist, he set out the elements neatly. There are at least three key elements that remain virtually the same:
1) An obsession with The Decline of the West, the terminal dying of the white race, the exchange of populations from savage counties. This is framed as an existential, historical and national threat.
2) An organised lying or what might be called radical or cynical pragmatism which sees truth as something that can be bent and adjusted to serve the purpose of digital fascism.
3) By doing all this, digital fascism is still serving a mass-based political movement seeking to influence politics inside parliaments, e.g. Germany’s AfD, UKIP in Britain, Fidesz in Hungary, Modi’s BJP, Chrysi Avgi, and potentially some sections of the GOP in America.
Then, COVID-19 changed everything. The global economy was on its knees, and Canada had already squandered its opportunity to be prepared and mitigate the crisis. While the federal Liberal Government was slow to respond, provincial governments of all stripes stepped up to fill the leadership void. Thanks to the leadership of our Premiers and the heroic work of our healthcare and personal support workers, Canada is managing the health risks.
Page Six of the CPC policy handbook vilifies Prime Minister Justin Trudeau five times while never mentioning Erin O’Toole. The fascist playbook incorporates the propaganda of attacking and vilifying your opponent and sowing the seeds of fear and despair. The purpose is to drag the opponent through the swamp in the hope that they will meet them in the swamp. Politicians with cause and calling know this is a losing proposition as their adversaries live and thrive in the swamp. At the bottom of the page is a message of fear and despair portrayed by mother and child.
Rebuttal
In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world were ill-prepared. Governments struggled and learned that the current capitalistic system it subjected itself to under globalization had failed.
Richard Wolff, Professor Emeritus of Economics, states the failure to the early response rest with capitalism. He said that trust in the private sector is foolish and unwarranted. There is no profit for corporations to stock and store PPE equipment for years on end, even though natural disasters and pandemics are predictable. This statement of fact would be additionally catastrophic with a conservative government. The CPC looks to the private sector for all of its solutions and plans to weaken the Canadian universal health care system with privatization policies.
Richard Wolff, ProfessorEmeritus
The Leadership of our Premiers
A poll published on December 29, 2020, by The Canadian Press and posted on the CBC website contradicts Erin O’Toole. The poll from Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies found 30 percent of Alberta respondents were satisfied with the job Premier Jason Kenney was doing with the pandemic — the lowest level of satisfaction for Canada’s ten provincial leaders. Meanwhile, just over half of Ontario respondents approved of the job that Premier Doug Ford was doing. In neighbouring Quebec, 55 percent of respondents in that province felt the same about François Legault.
Canadian Premiers
On November 29, 2020, the Global News website reported an Ipsos Poll. It stated Coronavirus cases are soaring, but Trudeau’s approval ratings hold steady. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approval rating continues to hold-strong among Canadians, despite soaring coronavirus numbers from coast to coast — although a key test lies ahead.
According to the poll, 60 percent of respondents approved of Trudeau’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, while 40 percent disapproved. Trudeau’s approval went up one percentage point since last month.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
American Vacuum
On February 24, 2021, the National Post published a hardball report.Canada warned the Trump administration of repercussions when they cut shipments of masks and ventilators. Trump’s initial refusal to ship the masks was just one of many fires Canadian officials had to put out to keep PPE flowing into Canada in April and March of 2020.
The primary factor of mistakes made early in the pandemic by world governments rests with the United States. The American absence of leadership on the world stage was untimely. A right-wing government under the absolute control of a fascist criminal, the president vacated the role of global leadership established after World War II. He was a hindrance and a danger with his denial of the pandemic and science and his America first policy. Also, he promoted racism by calling it the China virus and discounted the wearing of masks. His narcissism echoed over the planet as the desperate drank bleach due to his touting it as a cure. The CPC persevere in silence with his antics and shenanigans during his candidacy, presidency, and post-presidency.
Dr. Fauci in Disgust of Donald Trump
Connaught BioSciences Inc
Connaught BioSciences Inc. of Toronto was world-class research, production and distribution center of vaccines for 75 years.
On December 25, 1989, Ann Walmsley of Macleans reported on Connaught’s foreign sale. The political criticism was swift and rising over the sale of Canada’s famous vaccine-maker to France’s Institut Merieux. For many Canadians, the sale amounted to a devastating attack on Canada’s struggling high-technology sector Connaught Laboratories.
The Sale of Connaught BioSciences Inc. was one of the most contentious episodes in Canadian takeover history. The sale of the company was under the watch of conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Declared Liberal industry critic James Peterson in a heated Commons debate, What Canadian industries is [Prime Minister Brian Mulroney] not prepared to sacrifice? Mulroney replied that protectionism puts a Wall of China around Canada.
When Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, he had a choice of strategically funding research of interest to various sectors. Pharmaceuticals could be one; transportation another. No one has a working crystal ball, but some sectors seem like pretty sure bets for economic development.
The Harper government, however, drastically cut funding to research councils. Which inturned gave out fewer and smaller grants to support graduate students and post-graduate fellows with heads full of knowledge and a drive to discover.
So some gave up on a career in research. Some went elsewhere. And where funds for labs and smart people were available, and as new knowledge was published, companies set up their shops nearby.
I VOTE
Healthcare Workers
Canadians all agree and give thanks to the heroic work of our healthcare and personal support workers. Canadians know the humiliation of care workers, support staff, PSWs, and nurses is a dirty secret in the health care industry. Missing from the conservative lexicon is the universal dignity, not spoken in right-wing circles but always in the Canadian collective subconscious.
Dignity requires treating those who work the front and back lines in LTC with respect. Healthcare workers and support staff bring the gifts of knowledge, compassion and empathy to each shift and should be rewarded financially with the cost of living wages, full-time work and benefits for their efforts.
The cost of dignity in Canadian LTC relates to how much you can afford per diem. At a minimum of $100 per day, escalating to $250 to $500 depending on services required and dignity bestowed.
I have been a registered pharmacy technician since 2013, working at a health care centre in the northwest corner of Toronto. Several of our units treat Covid-19 patients, which means that I was among the fortunate few to get vaccinated back in January.
I am grateful to be a full-time essential worker with a decent salary, but that means I do not qualify for government funds. I make $32 per hour, about $5,250 a month, $63,000 a year. On paper, that is more than the average Torontonian makes. But after deductions, taxes, union dues and child support (which amount to roughly $1,200 a month), I take home (to my minivan) $2,000 a month. That is just over $500 a week. From that, I subtract my living expenses. And what is leftover is just not enough to make rent. With no savings, I can not even afford a deposit.
Something is very wrong. Any proposed tax cut is not going to solve this registered pharmacy technician problem.
How can Canadians trust Erin O’Toole as Prime Minister when he gaslights, turns truth upside down in the hope of an emotional response from his base. These moves come right out of the fascist playbook because he is a fascist camouflaged in the Canada flag. Thinking and compassionate Canadiens are not buying O’Toole’s brand of BS.
The rise and popularity of right-wing nationalism, extremism and religious fundamentalism in the United States, Brazil, India, Europe, and Canada are very troubling. The last one hundred years reveal the danger of tipping the scales too far right leads to fascism. The word fascism conjures up all kinds of emotions when spoken in public, invoking Mussolini and Hitler and dictators and death camps. Italian fascism began with Italian nationalism and a policy based on three principles order, discipline, and hierarchy.
The conglomerates who own mass media are reluctant to use the word fascism or fascist. They have no interest in educating, alarming and exposing the public to the reality that we live under fascist conditions by degrees of academic and scholarly reference. Like the branding of beer, fascism comes under the labels light, regular and full strength.
Fascism and fascist are loaded symbols (words or nouns) that are blurted out in an emotional attempt to express a referent (thing or person or noun) without real or agreed-upon reference (dictionary, historical, or academic and scholarly reference).
Universal Model
The 1993 two-volume New Shorten Oxford English Dictionary defines fascism and fascist as
Fascism: The principles and organization of the Italian fascist, the Italian fascist movement; a similar nationalistic and authoritarian movement in another country; loosely right-wing authoritarianism.
Fascist:An. A member of a body of Italian nationalist, which was organized in 1919 to oppose communism in Italy and control the country from 1922 to 1943; a member of any similar nationalistic and authoritarian organization in another country, loosely any person with right-wing authoritarian political views. Badj Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of fascism or fascist.
In memory of my mentor Michael Hargest
Theodor W. Adorno, a prominent German philosopher and social critic, gave a lecture in 1967 on the far right. He stated that right-wing extremism isn’t a psychological and ideological problem but a political one.
Madeleine Albright suggests in her book Fascism: A Warning, fascism should perhaps be viewed less as a political ideology than as a means for seizing and holding power.
Yale philosopher Jason Stanley writes How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. He states that fascist politics are running rampant in America today—and spreading around the world. He identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics and charts their horrifying rise and deep history.
Italian Primo Levi, one of the greatest thinkers on fascism, a man who had been to the hell of a Nazi death camp and lived to come home, once noted, “Every age has its own Fascism.” As a professional chemist, he set out the elements neatly. There are at least three key elements that remain virtually the same:
1) An obsession with The Decline of the West,
2) An organized lying or what might be called radical or cynical pragmatism which sees truth as something that can be bent and adjusted to serve its purpose
3) Fascists seek relevance by serving a mass-based political movement seeking to influence politics inside parliaments, e.g. Germany’s AfD, UKIP in Britain, Fidesz in Hungary, Modi’s BJP, Chrysi Avgi, the GOP in America and the various Conservative parties across Canada.
In an article on CounterPunch, Thomas Klikauer writes on Umberto Eco and Germany’s New Fascism, and the rise of Germany’s new right-wing populist party, the Alternative for Germany or AFD [mocked as “A F**** Disgrace”], and the heated debate that is taking place. The article highlights Umberto Eco’s fourteen elements that make up fascism. The cult of tradition is the first item on Eco’s 14-point list. They include;
The AFD fancies The Cult of Germanic-Mythical Traditions (1) glorifying Germany’s Nazi past in particular. The party wants to return to traditions such as a racially purified and a deeply Anti-Semitic society – the so-called Volksgemeinschaft.
Secondly, the AFD rejects modernism (2) hating modern liberal society, its art and culture, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, feminism, trade unions, post-1789 democracy, progressive political parties, and most, if not all, international institutions and global NGOs.
The AFD’s Cult of Action for Action’s Sake (3) is expressed in many ways. All too often the AFD is “action-guided” rather than “thinking-guided”. Favouring actions overthinking often come with a rejection of intellectual discourse and rationality.
The Encyclopedia Britannica summarises, Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in the natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.
In short, fascism has competing ideologies, but foremost it is a political tactic to grab and hold on to power for the sake of power. Fascists are dependant on the Illiterate and self-serving who drink the Kool-Aid and become self-sacrificing proletarians. The proles buy into the propaganda with full emotional confidence that their prejudices of racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia are justified. In private, party members savour the riches and benefits as they ridicule and humiliate the proles.
In closing, the anecdote of the duck comes to mind. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and for extra measure, swims and flies like a duck, it must be a duck. Therefore if a fascist speaks like a fascist, behaves like a fascist, lies and gaslights like a fascist, it must be a fascist.
The rise of fascism in Canada can no longer be kept silent. Rhetoric and ad-hominem on social media are not helpful to describe the actions of Canadian right-wing politicians and supporters. We must stop expressing ourselves with ad-hominem and call out the right-wing for what they are. They are fascist by definition. The fascists include the Conservative Party of Canada under Erin O’Toole, the Alberta United Conservative Party under Jason Keddy and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario under Doug Ford. Canadians must stand on guard against fascism and call it out for what it is.
Stop Fascism 