Two essays on Trump, populism and fascism

— 10.06.2018 09:37 AM

These two essays landed in my mailbox on the same cold and dark Fall morning. Both are lengthy, but worth your time. They mirror my mood.

Former Prime Minister Harper’s is the more optimistic take. He acknowledges that Trump’s rise has been “disruptive and dysfunctional,” but he calls it all “benign and constructive,” which is absolutely ridiculous. He suggests we need to proffer policy which mollifies and manages populism. Personally, I think that is highly naïve. You don’t offer sugar cubes to a rampaging bull: you kill it. My book New Dark Ages, out in a few days, certainly takes that position.

Here’s a bit of Harper’s essay:

The manifestation of this unease is a series of new and unorthodox political movements in most of the democratic world. From Brexit to Donald Trump and the “populist” parties of Europe, their success has hit establishment institutions with successive surprises that are provoking reactions leading from confusion to alarm and to outrage.

…These trends represent real costs to real people. Why should we be surprised when, ignored by traditional conservatives and derided by traditional liberals, these citizens start seeking alternative political choices? If policy does not seem to be working out for the public, in a democracy, you are supposed to fix the policy, not denounce the public. But, if you listen to some leaders and much of the media, you would not know it.

Their response is wrong, frustrating and dangerous. Wrong, because most of today’s political upheaval has readily identifiable causes. Frustrating, because it stands in the way of credible, pragmatic solutions that do exist. Dangerous, because the current populist upheaval is actually benign and constructive compared with what will follow if it is not addressed.

He’s a traditional conservative, standing on a shrinking patch of political real estate, and he’s responding to the crisis like traditional conservatives do: by suggesting that the likes of Trump can somehow be accommodated and managed. If the past two years have shown us anything, they’ve shown us how profoundly wrong that view is.

Closer to reality, and closer to my view, is this deeply disturbing essay in The New York Review of Books by Christopher R. Browning. Unlike Harper, Browning does not suggest that Trump and his ilk can be appeased and assuaged. They can’t be.

His view, and mine, is that conservative populism – the polished twin brother of fascism – is fully upon us, destroying every democratic and societal norm we took for granted in the post-WW2 period. His essay is worth your time.

I’ll conclude with this passage from it, which is depressing on a depressing day, but is also no less true for that.

Today, President Trump seems intent on withdrawing the US from the entire post–World War II structure of interlocking diplomatic, military, and economic agreements and organizations that have preserved peace, stability, and prosperity since 1945. His preference for bilateral relations, conceived as zero-sum rivalries in which he is the dominant player and “wins,” overlaps with the ideological preference of Steve Bannon and the so-called alt-right for the unfettered self-assertion of autonomous, xenophobic nation-states—in short, the pre-1914 international system. That “international anarchy” produced World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, the fascist dictatorships, World War II, and the Holocaust, precisely the sort of disasters that the post–World War II international system has for seven decades remarkably avoided.

In threatening trade wars with allies and adversaries alike, Trump justifies increased tariffs on our allies on the specious pretext that countries like Canada are a threat to our national security. He combines his constant disparagement of our democratic allies with open admiration of authoritarians. His naive and narcissistic confidence in his own powers of personal diplomacy and his faith in a handshake with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un recall the hapless Neville Chamberlain (a man in every other regard different from Trump). Fortunately the US is so embedded in the international order it created after 1945, and the Republican Party and its business supporters are sufficiently alarmed over the threat to free trade, that Trump has not yet completed his agenda of withdrawal, though he has made astounding progress in a very short time.


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Premier Hypocrite

— 10.04.2018 09:05 AM

From next week’s Hill Times:

During one of the more-recent debates, last Fall – when controversy was raging about “Liberal” government’s bill that would force women to remove veils when getting on a city bus, or going to see their doctor – Francois Legault, the leader of the CAQ, was asked about the decidedly-unsecular symbol hanging above his head in his workplace.  Legault shrugged.  He said the crucifix should stay. “We have a Christian heritage in Quebec and we cannot decide tomorrow that we can change our past,” said the leader whose very party name is about Quebec’s future.  “I don’t seen any problem keeping it.”

“A Christian heritage.”

Therein lies a problem, of course.  Legault is no longer a mere member of the opposition in the provincial legislature.  In a few days’ time, he will be Premier of Quebec, presiding over a massive majority in the National Assembly.

At his very first press conference after the election, then, Legault dispensed with any notion that he would be the Premier of all Quebecois.  To the Muslims (with their headscarves), and the Jews (with their kippahs), and the Mennonites and the Amish (with their traditional styles of dress), and the Hindus (with their tilaka markings on their faces), Legault’s message was plain: I don’t represent you.  I don’t care about you.  You are second-class citizens – or worse.

Here’s what he said, at that first press encounter: “The vast majority of Quebeckers would like to have a framework where people in authority positions must not wear religious signs.”  And then, knowing what he wants is wholly contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and every human rights code extant, he went even further: “If we have to use the notwithstanding clause to apply what we want, the majority of Quebeckers will agree.”

From the man who said he would march newcomers to the border who lack the ability to properly conjugate verbs, and expel them – to…where? Cornwall? Vermont? Newfoundland and Labrador? – we shouldn’t be surprised, one supposes.  Francois Legault has already revealed himself to be another petty, pitiful aspirant to Maurice Duplessis’ throne. 

He’s a hypocrite.


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You’d think the “chief planner” would know something like this

— 10.04.2018 06:46 AM

Ouch.

“Self-described affordable housing champion Jennifer Keesmaat did not appear to know that private condos in the province are now covered by rent control…Ontario’s former Liberal government extended rent control to all private rental units across the province in May 2017 — a move that responded to complaints of skyrocketing rents but which critics say came at the cost of more rental construction. Keesmaat did not seem familiar with this legislation, Whelan said.”


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A candidates’ debate should be as diverse as the city those candidates hope to lead (updated)

— 10.03.2018 12:03 PM

…this is so basic, and so fundamental, I can’t believe it actually needs to be said.  But apparently it does.

This was released weeks ago.  It bears repeating.

UPDATE: And here’s what one of those candidates had to say about this “controversy.”

 


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Look up, Mr. Premier-elect

— 10.03.2018 07:03 AM

One of the first things François Legault said, after he won the Quebec election, was this:

François Legault, the premier-designate of Quebec, says he will invoke the notwithstanding clause to work around the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so that his government can ban people in positions of authority in the province from wearing religious symbols.

The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Leader said on Tuesday the plan would prevent public servants, including teachers, police officers and judges, from wearing religious garments such as the Muslim hijab and Jewish kippa while performing their public functions. He would also amend Quebec’s charter of rights to impose the ban, which is long-standing party policy, but barely came up on the campaign trail.

I’ve written a lot on this subject, some of which you can see here and here. Basically, my view (as a church-going Catholic, no less) is that the secular State should never interfere with the peaceful, divine Church (and synagogue, temple and mosque).  Nor the reverse.  Neither should be dictating to the other.

But the worst thing about Legault’s bigoted, unconstitutional declaration – in these ugly and brutish times – is this, of course: his rank hypocrisy.

This guy wants to ban “religious symbols” where Quebec public servants can be found, and use the notwithstanding clause to ram through his law, does he?  Except, what about this, found on the big wall where he works, and where he does his work as a public servant?

 Pictured: law-breaking in Quebec.


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Column: the She-wolf of the Clueless

— 10.02.2018 08:31 AM

The first indication that the far Right was back was right there, right in front. Right outside the glass doors of the Corus studios in Toronto.

I stepped outside of the building, past a worried-looking pair of security guards. There they were: the ones who are neo-Nazi, white supremacist, Holocaust-denying Hitlerian InfoWars freaks. And the ones who have been “shadowbanned” on Twitter. And the birthers, the truthers, the losers. And the ones who love guns and hate people with darker skin.

The Faith Goldy herd. More than a hundred of them, at least.

They were there to protest the absence of their She-Wolf of the Clueless,Fräulein Faith, from the Global TV Toronto mayoral debate. I was there because I am helping Toronto Mayor John Tory in his re-election campaign.

When I stepped onto the sidewalk, the Goldy mob erupted in screeches and booing. They don’t like me much, apparently. A couple Toronto police officers approached as some of Faith’s flock started to follow.

“We think we should escort you to your car,” one of the cops said, and the Goldy goons peeled away. I told the cop I didn’t think that was necessary.

“We think it is,” he said. “We will escort you to your car.”

Welcome to Toronto’s 2018 mayoral campaign, folks. It’s been something.

Everywhere you look, Faith Goldy can be seen, like some foul, unkillable virus you can’t remove from your computer. There she is, slithering onto the stage at the Arts debate, her rightist goons chanting for “free speech” for them (but not for anyone else), and then calling everyone present “communists.” Goldy got led out by the police at that one. But she also got what she wanted most: the bulk of the news coverage that night.

There she is at Ford Fest – and not for the first time, either – posing for that now-infamous photo with Ontario’s Premier. Only after being pressured by the Opposition and anti-hate groups does Doug Ford tweet out his condemnation of bigotry – and, sort of, Faith Goldy.

Goldy is undeterred. She cheerily tweets back at him: “Proud to stand up for all Canadians alongside ya, Doug!”

There she is at the transit debate – or her goons, at least – doing their utmost to disrupt the proceedings. Shouting at those who are present.

I’ve been writing about the racist Right – and the anti-Semites and women-haters and the National Socialist types – for three decades. What Faith Goldy has on offer isn’t particularly new.

It’s all been done before: the plan to restrict immigration to white Europeans (as she does). The promotion of a book calling for “the elimination” of Jews (as she did). The willingness to suggest that the Nazis had “robust ideas” (as she did, too). The recitation of “the fourteen words” – the neo-Nazi pledge that was pioneered by a founder of The Order, after he helped murder a Jewish talk show host.

All of Faith Goldy’s hate and bigotry has been done before. It isn’t new. What’s different, what’s new, is what she is doing down here in Toronto – and how she is doing it.

Goldy, you see, is following in the footsteps of former Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke – who retweets Faith’s stuff, by the by – and presenting a kinder, gentler face of hate. You’ll never catch her, then, at a cross-burning or in a Klansman’s robes. She’s too clever for that.

Goldy does what Duke did – and what Donald Trump’s acolytes do. She spews hatred and division, sure. But she does so in pithy soundbites, using code words, and the practiced smile of a telegenic panellist on Fox news. She’s good at it.

The results can’t be disputed: she’s running third in the mayoralty race, she’s raising money, she’s got plenty of followers, and she’s even doing robocalls and TV ads. Debates or not, she is making her loathsome presence felt.

Anyway. I got to my car, and I drove slowly away, a few haters hollering at me as I did.

The beast of hate is awake, folks, and he is slouching our way, too. Not just in the States, not just here and there in Europe. Here.

Faith Goldy isn’t going to win the Toronto mayor’s race. She never expected to. She had her sights set on something else.

Watching her mob in my rear view mirror, I reckon she’s already got it.


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