I’m well aware that there are some conversation stoppers. Mention God or the Bible in mixed company and prepare for the apocalypse. And then there’s the law that states, as an Internet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. I read here, about Yann Martel’s site and for me, this discussion has gone on long enough. Really, when the Reform Party Government is handing out huge monetary amounts to Quebec, all that’s left is the charge of power for power’s sake.
In their introduction to First Drafts J.L.Granatstein and Norman Hillmer end the first paragraph with the words of journalist Matthew Halton, “Watch out for the first signs of fascism in your own country and operate on them quickly, because in spite of their seductive exterior virility, they are signs of decay, they are signs that we are despairing of reason, despairing of our fine dreams of a sane world.” Halton was writing in 1933 and the introduction was written in Canada July 1, 2002.
But what are the signs of fascism?
Also I just finished reading Critique of Cynical Reason, (Volume 40 of the University of Minnesota Press’ Theory and History of Literature series (I only mention this because, while this is completely political, it’s also pure literature!)) Sloterdijk writes in the conclusion,
Hence, if in modernity, worldly and self-experience converge in spite of all sundering, they do so under the condition that the struggles of self-preservation of privatized subjective reason inwardly as well as outwardly, psychologically as well as technologically, in the intimate domain as well as in political spheres, have generated the same iciness, the same polemical, strategic subjectivisms, and the same quick-footed denial of high-cultural ethical ideals.
On page 544, in the conclusion, this sentence is packed with meaning, but you can read the modernity in this sentence as the same that spawned Hitler’s rise to power.
So is Harper on the road to Hitler? Those are some pretty big boots to fill. If you are on Harper’s side, the absence of gas chambers is proof enough that your man isn’t evil incarnate. The charge borders on ridiculous. Have you seen Bush’s name written on walls with a swastika where the “s” should be? And if you were in Ontario during the 90s, Harris (another conservative leader) was often shouted down as “just like …”. Harris did a good job of messing things up. I’d blame his policy on welfare for the increase in homelessness across Canada. Harris will take Conservative policy further if he gets the chance. Harper does model himself on Bush, who has become a mass murderer. The military, law and order, and ethics are Harper’s trilogy. Maybe it’d be more fair to compare him to Mussolini?
Either way he’s propped up by voters who believe that the Bible is “the history of the world as we know it, and how we will know it.” These are people who want authority. They want to be led. In Escape From Freedom the character type is describe convincingly by Erich Fromm, who himself fled Nazi Germany. (Fromm also heavily influenced Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason.)
Any dog knows to get nervous when the master starts rolling up a newspaper. And when I see Harper calculating to consolidate power I get anxious. Fascism is a spectre haunting all the people of the world, and whenever power gets mean people start screaming. The Harper Reform/Conservative government is mean. Cutting money from women’s groups, while giving tax cuts to families is calculated meanness. Refusing to apologize for residential schools while spending money on Quebec is calculated meanness. If this government wins a majority, the calculation is gone. There will be meanness in broad daylight.
Please vote for anyone but the Conservatives in the next election. (That’s all I’ve got.)