Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Two (2 of 4) - New Fanaticism like Communism!
Donald L Ferrt
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Two (2 of 4)
Monday, March 22 2004 @ 12:00 PM MST
Contributed by: Robin Mathews
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Two
by Robin Mathews
This column will be offensive to some because it will be bluntly
stated. So here goes.
The sun shines. Birds sing. First flowers are breaking from Spring
earth. "A maid and her wight go whispering by" as Thomas Hardy wrote
nearly a hundred years ago. So what's different? What's the fuss?
The fact is that Right Politics is taking over the world, now, and
here. And Right Politics is criminal politics. That's a blunt
statement. Right Politics, moreover, is based on crack-pot philosophy.
Like most crack-pot philosophies this one describes all human identity
by one factor only. For Right Politics the basic motivating human fact
is greed. More about that later. To satisfy the greed of a physically
powerful elite, Right Politics closes down (and must close down)
democracy. As that happens, groups unable to employ democratic means
of dissent resist, increasingly, with the only instrument left to
them: violence.
Simple. Offensive. The public face of Right Politics in Canada is the
"liberation" of private enterprise, "freeing" of the individual,
cutting government size (which means all aspects of public service),
privatization, and making police power (not trust) the basis of social
peace. The private face of Right politics is the drive to
totalitarianism -- rule by corporations and military force. Right
Politics is not conservative, but uses the word "conservative" to
cloak an ugly totalitarian philosophy alien to historical
conservatism.
Right Politics is happening in Canada, in B.C. Relentless
disinformation is undertaken by Right monopoly media saying that
neo-liberalism, privatization, and globalization (the same things) are
all necessary and correct and the way to assure a happy future. All
are lies.
Those three terms simply stand for ways obscene wealth is placed in
fewer and fewer criminal hands. Neo-liberalism is the process by which
all human activities are undertaken for profit only. Privatization is
the process of seizing everything national populations own -- forests,
water, energy, health care, education, parks -- seizing them by
government working with the obscenely wealthy, privatizing them, and
turning them into "profit engines". Globalization is placing the
profit engines in the hands of more and more U.S. criminals or
criminal people with whom the U.S. has made deals.
The reasons Right Politics is prevailing in our time are two only. The
first is the gigantic power of the U.S., centre of Right Politics. The
second is more painful because disguised. Right Politics has no
conscience, employs a "free" press and "democratic" processes in order
to destroy both. Right Politics only values human life as a
profit-generating source. If more profit can be made by torturing or
oppressing or destroying human life than fostering it, Right Politics
will assent to torture, oppression, and the destruction of human life.
Opposition forces are weak against Right Politics because they attempt
to oppose with the means provided by decent practice, fair-mindedness,
conventions of trust, traditions of just behaviour -- none of which
are employed by those who operate Right Politics. Right Politics
intends a totalitarian regime and works toward it -- even though many
who support Right Politics are unaware of the totalitarian goal. We
need only think of the brazen fraudulence of Peter McKay (former
Progressive Conservative leader) signing a paper to assure David
Orchard's support for his leadership without the slightest intention
of honouring the agreement to which he put his signature.
In a not-so-bland suggestion of the worst of those things, the Gordon
Campbell government in B.C. refused the two-person NDP Opposition
party status. That denied the two the funds to do thorough research
and review of government activity. Campbell did not win the last
election in order to operate democratic government, but to snuff it
out as far as he is able to do so.
For that reason none of his cabinet will attend public events that may
contain criticism of cabinet actions. In mid-February B.C. Citizens
for Public Power held a public forum, leaving (empty) chairs for the
premier, for the minister of energy and mines, and for the
constituency MLA. None would attend, though the minister of energy and
mines as well as 23 other Campbell MLAs have publicly (and in the
legislature) attacked the B.C. Citizens for Public Power. TheGordon
Campbell government, moreover, like Peter Mckay, has made a joke of
contract and honourable agreement, breaking them as a general mode of
procedure.
Right Politics is the story of Iraq. Criminally invaded by the U.S.,
it has been devastated to privatize everything possible into U.S.
hands, to corner oil resources, to coerce Iran, to build a cordon
around China.
Right Politics closes democracy down, I have said. In Spain, in early
March, a major guerilla attack was made in Madrid. The Spanish
government blamed ETA (an internal Basque independence movement). The
Spanish government was lying. All evidence points to the Al Qaeda
network. Why the attack? Why Spain?
Iraq is about democracy closed down. A completely fraudulent war --
vicious and hugely destructive -- is being conducted by the U.S.
government (and its obscenely wealthy corporations) on the basis of a
tower of lies. Democracy is closed down when leaders use the trust
placed in them by the electorate to defraud that electorate. Democracy
is closed down by what is, in effect, legalized criminality, by
grossly immoral acts claimed to be "legally" permissible.
The U.S. government wanted allies in the crime of invading Iraq. The
Spanish people -- in a huge majority -- did not want Spain an
accessory to the U.S. crime. But carrots and sticks were offered to
Spanish leaders by the U.S. Flagrantly defrauding the Spanish people
of democratic participation in the policy of Spain, Spanish leaders
took Spain to war in Iraq. And when a few Spaniards were killed in
Iraq a little while ago, Spanish leaders declared their determination
to go on supporting U.S. crime.
Then Spain had an election, an expression of democratic will. The
Spanish people removed the lying government. Right Politics is
seriously challenged where democratic process still has life.
On As It Happens, on March 16, CBC's Chief Advocate for the Far Right
in Canada, Mary Lou Findlay, negatively interviewed a representative
of the new Spanish government. Negatively, because his government
disapproves of the U.S. criminal war in Iraq. To balance her negative
interview with the Spaniard, Ms. Findlay interviewed the publisher of
the revived Ted Byfield, rancid, Right, Western/Alberta Report. In a
country overweight with monopoly Right press and media, Ms. Findlay
gave the publisher what was plainly extended free advertising time,
leading him to name his politically verminous contributors as well as
other information. Pretending to be objective, she carried on her part
in Right Politics.
The victory in Spain is important to democracy. But that shouldn't
blind us, as Ms. Findlay makes clear to the general drift. Consider
the following quotation.
"In 700 days of power what a record! Retreat on pension rights.
Tightening of repressive laws. [When the Social State retreats; the
Penal State advances.] Lowering of unemployment benefits; higher
exemption for large income earners; reduction in care benefits;
cutting research credits in education; "reform" of Social Security to
fit all those changes; dismantling of labour codes. The brutality of
those decisions makes us remember that one of the characteristics of
the elite is contempt for ordinary citizens".[While all that was
happening] In the 40 largest enterprises, between 2000 and 2002, the
managers were granted salary increases of 84%.
Canada? British Columbia? No. The France of Jacques Chirac, today. [Le
monde diplomatique, March, 2004, 3]
That is a France following the recommendations of the European Union
bureaucracy and the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development) to which Canada also belongs and receives the same
recommendations to slash salaries, benefits, pensions, health care,
education, unemployment insurance, etc.
The recommendations are not made for the overall health of the
society. They are necessary only to increase the wealth of the already
obscenely wealthy, to strip ordinary people of secure livelihoods and
make their lives savagely precarious. They are necessary to create the
triumph of U.S. capitalist imperialism anchored in a police state.
We must come back to the word "criminal", and we must realize -- we
must repeat over and over -- OECD, the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, for instance, are
criminal organizations. Stop. Think. Jacques Chirac is avoiding legal
cases against him for serious wrong-doing only because he is
"protected" while president of the French Republic. Exactly the same
with Italy's Berlusconi. George Bush is a war criminal only protected
by the biggest military machine in the world. Tony Blair is not
blocking legal trials against him, but he is floating on a sea of
falsehoods, having used legalized criminality to join the U.S. in the
war against Iraq.
Paul Martin's "team" has almost certainly been engaged in criminal
fraud in Party membership acquisition, a huge attack on the integrity
of democratic process. The fact is talked about openly. Nothing is
done. A complaint by people from ten B.C. communities requesting an
Elections Canada investigation into repeated allegations of criminal
fraud in membership gathering in B.C. has gone unreported in press and
media, their monopoly owners apparently dedicated to the criminal
oppression of ordinary Canadians on behalf of the obscenely wealthy.
The case of Haiti would be comic if it wasn't so heart-wrenching. The
U.S. became dissatisfied with Jean Bertrand Aristide's progressivism
(more schools operating than ever before in Haitian history, etc.).
And so the U.S. kidnapped Aristide, took him to Africa where he
insisted he was kidnapped. He continues to say that though he is back
in the West Indies in "sanctuary".
Meanwhile France, the U.S., and Canada are shipping troops to Haiti to
"pacify" the people. For the most part, the Canadian press and media
report the U.S. overthrow of the elected leader of Haiti as a fine
"democratic" move. In Haiti, once again, the people, unable to employ
democratic means of dissent, are being taught to employ the only
instrument of resistance left to them: violence.
Right Politics means the death of democracy -- everywhere. We are
watching the battle being fought out before our eyes. It is being won
by the Right now, despite a few victories like the one in Spain,
because the Right owns the OECD, the World bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. The Right is winning,
too, because it owns most of the major press and media in theWest. It
is winning, however, principally because the population of the West
believes in the democratically representative nature of those
organizations, and of Right Politics. The war will trun decisively the
other way on the day the population of the West really knows all those
organizations are criminal organizations and that Right Politics is,
at base, the politics of criminal takeover.
[The next column, Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Three,
will focus on Canada and the criminal institutions destroying Canadian
democracy.]
Other articles in this series:
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part One
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Three
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Four
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Robin Mathews publishes on culture, politics, the arts, and Canadian
Intellectual history. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, a potter.
His column appears regularly on Vive le Canada.