Stephen Harper has drawn frequent comparisons to Hitler—including in this publication, in the Chronicle-Herald, by a Liberal candidate and as part of that YouTube blank-as-Hitler meme. Hitler’s the most infamous, but the playbook could be borrowed from any dictator: Stalin, Suharto, Amin. And while Harper isn’t directly massacring humans en masse, when you consider how Harper plays the game of politics, the similarities are there.
He was first elected to lead a minority government and has since used a bag of dirty tricks—twice proroguing parliament, thumbing his nose at the Charter and the Supreme Court—to hold power and eventually grab a majority. Now that he has it, his actions are based solely on ideology, rather than evidence.
Witness the crime omnibus bill and his Orwellian obstruction of effective international action on climate change. He’s convinced he’s right and the facts ain’t gonna get in the way.
Best to sweep them under the rug: clamp shut the mouths of federal civil servants, who must now speak through paid PR staff who are experts in saying nothing. Fire the Environment Canada scientists. Gut the census.
So, while Harper’s henchpeople aren’t murdering people in the streets, his ideology is incalculably destructive. It denies climate change and even the importance of the environment for human survival— let alone its intrinsic value. It ignores the value of research—or humility—and using rigorous methods of understanding the world. It is based on greed, an obsession with growing GDP at all costs and an inability to imagine a society that takes care of everyone.
For progressive Canadians, these are increasingly desperate times, which makes me believe we need to merge this country’s left and centre-left parties.
I used to believe there was great value in the diversity that the multiparty system offered Canada. But we’ve got the wrong electoral system for that. A multi-party system would work great if we had proportional representation and were able to elect a coalition government that represented the majority of voters.
But instead we have First Past the Post, where Harper is able to get a majority government with 40 percent of the vote, splitting the votes of those of us who oppose him. Before the right-wing parties united, the Chrétien Liberals did the same thing.
Previously Harper won minority governments with 36 and 38 percent of the vote. For Harper to lose, two-thirds of the approximately 60 percent of Canadians who vote left or centre-left have to agree on a party, either the NDP, Liberals, Greens or Bloc (which is not an option for most of the country).
It’s unlikely. We’re stuck with an anti-environment, anti-woman, anti-queer, anti-poor, anti-First Nations, pro-war control freak generating big profits for the few at the expense of the many for a very long time. We can either change the electoral system, which would require Harper’s approval so it ain’t gonna happen, or those in the left and centre-left parties can swallow their pride and merge.
It might piss people off, but they’d still win a landslide election with close to 60 percent of the vote. Although there are vast differences between the beliefs and policies of the four parties they are actually closer to each other than to Harper.
The risk is creating a polarized society like the US, where even a well-intentioned Obama healthcare bill gets ripped to shreds by the political posturing inherent to an imminently adversarial two-party system. But we’re already seeing that here, largely driven by the Harper’s bullying, manifested most clearly in his nasty and misleading attack ads.
And with the NDP in opposition, we are already a nation polarized. We are a nation with a small population, but also part of the G7 and one with significant influence on international treaties and actions. We punch above our weight. There is too much at stake, globally, to keep losing to a planet-hater.
It would be nice to have a functional multiparty, proportional-representation electoral system (like in Germany, ironically) where citizens can vote with their hearts. Perhaps after its election the new centre-left party could implement electoral reform and dissolve back into separate entities. At this point, it’s any means necessary to stop the planet-destroyers.
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2012.
What rot. Per usual, this publication takes a decent argument that contains a kernel of truth and whittles it down to nothing through the same inflammatory, irresponsible and outright dangerous comparisons, which would be shockingly inappropriate if they weren’t so unimaginative. This is disgraceful and disrespectful editorial writing, no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on. Salvage your remaining credibility as a progressive voice and sack this guy.
By it’s very nature The Left is fractious, dangerously awash in self-righteousness, and utterly convinced that only they know what is best for “us”. The only politician to successfully “unite” The Left was old Joe Stalin in 1938. He united The Left in the basements of Lubyanka, the gold pits of Kolyma and ultimately in great big bloody mass graves.
And, no matter how you try to rationalize it, the Harper as Hitler meme continues to be puerile, historically and factually untenable, and downright offensive to anyone with any knowledge or personal experience of life under a despot. But rationalization is what The Left does best. In that, at least, you are as one.
I think The Coast should tell this to the victims of Fascism (the real one not the fake one) and even the Victims of National Socialist Germany that Steven Harper is Hitler. If he really was Hitler then The Coast offices would be closed and their staff including Chris Benjamin would be thrown in jail if not killed. Steven Harper was really Hitler or in some kind of Fascist regime that would happen. Also what Progressives do not realize is Fascism is a copy of the Socialist system.
Also in Socialist and communist societies such as Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela,or Hamas ruled Gaza ( these are societies the Progressives left loves these days and their leadership) if you called the leaders of these nations ‘Hitler’ you would be jail or even killed for that.
To “The Coast” tell your crap about Steven Harper being a fascist or Hitler to the real victims of Fascism. What happened to you Journalistic ethics? you are not in a Fascist society or just go Cuba, North Korea Iran, Syria, Venezuela, or Hamas ruled Gaza that most progressives and leftists love these days and call their leadership a fascist or Hitler we all know what will happen.
Also if the RCMP does not knock down your doors(They Won’t sadly your world view is protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms sadly so is my comment so please DO NOT Delete).
Also please if you really hate our Democracy and the fact the left just lost a election of May 2011(do not like a elected Conservative Majority by the people do we?) then please move to Cuba, North Korea Iran, Syria, Venezuela, or Hamas ruled Gaza. You can say how much Steven Harper is Fascist all you want even when he is clearly not and see what real fascism and even real dictatorships really are.
Wow, pure garbage. The fact that you are able to have a slanderous article like this published without recourse disproves any Hitler/Harper comparisons.
Does Chris Benjamin work at CBC Halifax ?
Can you write an article that isn’t a biased piece of shit?
Ugh. A column criticizing polarization which inaccurately compares Harper to Hitler (I hate the guy, but Hitler he ain’t) and inaccurately calls the Liberals and Greens “left” is not just feeding the polarization and oversimplification that got us in this mess in the first place. It’s a stretch to refer to even the NDP and Bloc as being on the left. A united, anti-capitalist left would be wonderful but if it ever happens in Canada it isn’t going to include the pro-capital, pro-war Liberals or the anti-women’s rights Elizabeth-May-Vanity-Project.
Would it be an overreaction to boycott this clown’s writing until further notice?
Orkut – it’s like a particularly purulent scab. You know that if you pick it , it’ll never heal, but you just can’t stop…
Absolute trash.
Harper isn’t denying Climate Change, he’s denying the garbage that’s called Kyoto as unrealistic. Big difference. Then everyone bitches about crime and when something is done, they bitch about that.
Now they’re trying to blame Harper for same sex divorce. First of all he wasn’t responsile for implementing it. He is not responsible because the previous government didn’t think things out. Divorce is the responsibility of the jurisdiction of where the couple are pemanent residents. It is the responsibilty of the couple to live where their marriage is legal. For example, Canada does not recognize Polygamy marriages and as such does not grant divorces of such marriages nor grant wives number two, three, etc any benefits.
The other problems are which jurisdiction (province or territory) would such a divorce take place (as they all have different divorce laws) and that any ruling a court here makes would not be enforceable in jurisdictions where same sex marriages are not recognized.
The only military personnel who are armed and on the street are Military Police and personnel tasked on certain escorts. Further you are not asked for your papers on every street corner.
This “writer” wouldn’t know a dicatorship from a good butt stroke to the head.
This article is nothing but tripe.
Bruce Wank, Tim (Arse)Biscuit and Priss Whingeman have been riding this cotton pony for years. As with so many things, Python did it first and better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzRbC7lQ-EQ
You might say the missing ingredients are humour and intelligence.
Wow, this article is bad. Stephen Harper is like Hitler? Stephen Harper is a “planet hater”? Canada is a “fascist state”? Hyperbole much?
Perhaps Chris Benjamin believes if Hitler had fathered children, he too would have preferred a cold handshake in place of a warm embrace on their first day of school. Regardless, his comparing of Harper and Hitler is dubious and not worthy of publication.
Instead of providing insight into the Prime Minister’s governing, it made evident Benjamin’s own shortcomings in constructing a simple argument.
When Harper’s lack of vision is clear to many, one wonders why so many on the (ideology-free?) “left” continue to make rash and ill-conceived arguments to discredit him. Harper’s faults – though costly to the country – are ordinary and banal.
Am I the only one that reads the leaked “Climategate” emails. Emails from the IPCC and the top scientists who construct the science behind global warming, leaked to the internet in 2009 and 2011. Remember Al Gore’s embarrassing movie, he shows a temp graph that looks like a hockey stick, the blade shooting upward representing the large scale start of using hydrocarbons. Al Gore even stands on a ladder to highlight the end of the graph going upward. This is known as the “hockey stick” graph and it is the backbone of the whole global warming movement. The author’s name is Mike Mann. He used the tree ring data from 12 tree’s to make it. Here’s a email exchange…..Notice the part of Toms sons science project…
“…At 10:03 PM 6/5/2003 -0600, Tom Wigley wrote:Mike, Well put! By chance SB03 [Soon and Baliunas] may have got some of these precip things right, but we don’t want to give them any way to claim credit. Also, stationarity is the key. Let me tell you a story. A few years back, my son Eirik did a tree ring science fair project using trees behind NCAR. He found that widths correlated with both temp and precip. However, temp and precip also correlate. There is much other evidence that it is precip that is the driver, and that the temp/width correlation arises via the temp/precip correlation. Interestingly, the temp correlations are much more ephemeral, so the complexities conspire to make this linkage nonstationary. I have not seen any papers in the literature demonstrating this — but, as you point out Mike, it is a crucial issue. Tom..”
It is astonishing to read this conversation between idiots who are claiming temperature accuracy in tenths of a degree.
Chris Benjamin has got to start doing some real Journalism. In fact, most of the media should.
Here’s a good leaked email. This does not sound like “settled science”
Email 248
On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote:
Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!..”
..not only should Harper shut this fraud down, since it uses tax payer money, legal action should be taken.
Why is it so important to have a proportional-representation electoral system now after Harper is elected? The last time a majority Government had a majority of the popular vote was in 1958. If the Liberals or NDP had won the election with their less than 50% of the popular vote, I doubt they would be much call for change to the election process…
There are good things and bad things about The Coast, this is one of them.
This is embarrassingly bad, even for the Coast. All it needs is a Graham Pilsworth caricature of Harper dressed as Hitler with his dick sticking out of his pants.
How much time do we have to spend on this left vs right bullshit before we realize that it is in fact the very crap that is holding us back?
I cannot believe there are “dislikes” to my posts of released, internal emails from the leading climate scientists in the world. Maybe they are confused and are hitting “dislike” because they agree they have been duped? Here’s a good one. This guy was a major contributor and official in the IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC produces the climate policy that politicians, the media, schools look to. When the UN asks for $100 billion a year from the west to fix climate change, its based on the IPCC. Look at this guys resume. He was part of the IPCC group that shared the Nobel Peace prize with Al Gore. I like this…”unpublished, but also un reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions”…..otherwards I could be submitting scientific papers and as long as it supported “the cause”…its good enough. lol
From: GIORGI FILIPPO To: Chapter 10 LAs — Congbin Fu , GIORGI FILIPPO , Bruce Hewitson , Mike Hulme , Jens Christensen , Linda Mearns , Richard Jones , Hans von Storch , Peter Whetton Subject: On “what to do?” Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 16:58:02 +0200 ???(MET DST)
…First let me say that in general, as my own opinion, I feel rather unconfortable about using not only unpublished but also un reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions (or any conclusions). I realize that chapter 9 is including SRES stuff, and thus we can and need to do that too, but the fact is that in doing so the rules of IPCC have been softened to the point that in this way the IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science (which is its proclaimed goal) but production of results. The softened condition that the models themself have to be published does not even apply because the Japanese model for example is very different from the published one which gave results not even close to the actual outlier version (in the old dataset the CCC model was the outlier). Essentially, I feel that at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes. I think this will set a dangerous precedent which might mine the IPCC credibility, and I am a bit unconfortable that now nearly everybody seems to think that it is just ok to do this. Anyways, this is only my opinion for what it is worth.
ICTP – Filippo Giorgi
Filippo Giorgi obtained a Laurea in Physics from the University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy in 1982 and a Ph.D. from the School of Geophysical Sciences of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA in 1986. From 1986 to 1998 he was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Since 1998 he is at ICTP, where he is the head of the Earth System Physics (ESP) section.
Giorgi is an international expert in climate modeling and climate change research. He authored or co-authored over 200 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is included in the list of most highly cited scientists in the geosciences (which places him in the top 0.5% of this category). He has been PI or co-PI of over 25 research grants in Europe and the U.S. From 2002 to 2008 Giorgi was one of the vice chairs of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He contributed to all five IPCC Assessment Reports to date.
STOP HARPER
To the writer: I really hope that this piece was a cynical and shameless grab for attention, because the alternative is worse. In either case, you cheapen the memory of the victims of mass murder when you make these juvenile comparisons of Stephen Harper to Adolf Hitler. There is nothing “progressive” in what you say when you use this language and imagery. You should hang your head in shame, then follow this up with reading some meaty history and political theory (Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, etc. don’t count) to gain a bit of perspective on these totalitarian regimes you mention. I would also recommend some reading on social and cognitive psychology, until you realize that conservatives and libertarians aren’t genocidal monsters who want the planet to burn, but merely have a different vision of what a “better world” would look like. Here’s a hint: equality and personal freedom are often in conflict.