The Politics of Authoritarianism: "I've Never Seen Anything Like It"

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"In a democracy, a wannabe tyrant is just a comical figure on a soapbox unless a huge wave of supporters lifts him to high office." - Bob Altemeyer

When accusations arise that Stephen Harper is too controlling, his supporters will attempt to compare him to people like R.B. Bennett, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien. All of these men took a disciplined approach to governing.

However, the most common remark heard from supporters and critics alike is that they have never seen anything like this before. Not in Canada. Not in a democracy.

Two years into his governance, the man who brought in the Accountability Act was already hearing complaints that he was one of the most unaccountable prime ministers ever. A couple of other words were being used more often to describe Stephen Harper: autocratic and authoritarian. (1)

Pierre Trudeau certainly expanded the size and power of his office, and Jean Chretien kept an iron grip on his caucus, but Harper surpassed even Chretien.

Chretien had nothing like the extraordinary vetting system put in place by the Conservatives. Advisers Eddie Goldenberg and the late Jean Pelletier did wield enormous power--especially in the later years, when Chretien faced an internal uprising from Paul Martin's supporters—but at least caucus members and civil servants felt free to talk to the media without prior approval. (1)

And over the past five years Stephen Harper has continued to wield enormous control, while refusing to be accountable for any of his actions.

We know why the corporate media let him off the hook, "corporate" being the operative word, but why do his followers?

You see it constantly as they come to his aid, leaving their comments at the end of articles, even when they expose corruption.

It's part of what Bob Altemeyer calls Authoritarian Submission.

Everybody submits to authority to some degree. Imagine a world in which people ignored traffic laws and sped through red lights. The cost of auto insurance would shoot through the roof (although the line-ups to buy it would become much shorter). But some people go way beyond the norm and submit to authority even when it is dishonest, corrupt, unfair and evil. We would expect authoritarian followers especially to submit to corrupt authorities in their lives: to believe them when there is little reason to do so, to trust them when huge grounds for suspicion exist, and to hold them blameless when they do something wrong. (2)

But what of the roughly 2/3 of the population who didn't vote for Stephen Harper?

They also appear to be submitting to his authority, questioning very little. Those are the one that frighten me more than the Harper devotees.

Is it just that it's become the new norm? According to Allan Gregg discussing Lawrence Martin's book Harperland:

Even though it has become a cliché to refer to Stephen Harper as a control freak, the power of Martin’s argument hits you like a jackhammer. Those of us who follow these things quite closely remember a number of occasions when the Conservatives have found themselves in hot water because of allegations of abuse of power, but we tend to forget just how frequently this has occurred and the myriad forms this malfeasance has taken over the last four and a half years. (3)

Maybe that's why it's working. We're shell shocked.

He was going to be a different prime minister and indeed he was. And though he was operating more like a monarch than an elected Member of Parliament, his people still defended him.

[They] were content to explain away the abuse of power with the rationale that other PMs had done it and therefore so could Harper. The line of reasoning hardly served to enhance the state of democracy. The system, said [Donald] Savoie*, had devolved into a "court government," with the leader and a few select courtiers, most of them unelected, exercising power with kingly presumption. Savoie had hoped that Harper would move away from such a model once he'd settled in to office. But in fact, he was going the other way. (1)

We've never seen anything like it.

Footnotes:

* Academic and specialist in governance and public administration

Sources:

1. Harperland: The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 120-122

2. The Authoritarians, By Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, 2006

3. Negative Statesmanship: Stephen Harper may end up being known for what he does not do more than for what he does, By Allan Gregg, Literary Review of Canada

The Politics of Exploitation: The Haiti Crisis Revisited

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

There is an interesting summary of Stephen Harper's response to the Haiti earthquake, in Lawrence Martin's book Harperland. He first describes how Harper was in trouble over the prorogation and how the resulting anger dominated the news.

The Haiti crisis then provided him an opportunity to change the channel and present himself as a take charge kind of guy.

A national day of protest as planned, belying the notion that Canadians were apathetic, that they didn't care about the functioning of their democracy. The momentum kept building, and then in an instant it was gone. A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck near the capital of Haiti, sending tens of thousands to their deaths. It was one of the worst natural catastrophes in a century. Images from Port-au-Prince cast a pall over everything. Suddenly, arguments over the propriety of shutting down Parliament, or any other issue of public policy, seemed a trifling comparison.

The priority became a massive aid campaign, and the prime minister set about it in a blaze of activity. No one could accuse him of sitting idle now. Among the many fortunate breaks Harper had received in his career, the timing of this tragedy ranked high.

There was a month go before the Vancouver Olympics, and until the earthquake, he was destined to be on the defensive that entire month. The opposition parties had the wind in their sails, and the national protest day was promising to be a dramatic event. But Haiti totally consumed the airwaves for two weeks running, knocking prorogation and the planned protest to the back pages.

Harper hardly had the image of a great humanitarian or friend of & United Nations. But given the opportunity to change the political channel and lead a humanitarian effort, he did so with great aplomb, winning applause from all quarters. He dispatched the military in a timely fashion; made good use of his cabinet, most notably Peter MacKay and Lawrence Cannon; was more than generous with financial aid; played host to a quickly assembled international conference on the crisis, and shared the spotlight with a shaken Michaelle Jean, the Haitian-born governor general.

The epic catastrophe also allowed Harper to showcase the rebuilt armed forces. Canada's once sluggish and ill-equipped peacetime military was now well tuned and ready to respond to a crisis. When the 2004 tsunami struck, Canadian medics and engineers had to wait days to hitch a ride, as it was put, to get there. But this time, Canada's big new military aircraft were doing the job. (1)

Aside from the obvious, exploiting a crisis, there are many statements in the above that show either a deliberate attempt to gloss over the situation, or a misunderstanding based on the popular media reports of the day.

However, I suppose Martin is only tackling the story from the political perspective, and he's right. It was a gift. Just not for the victims of the quake, who received very little.

He Dispatched the Military in a Timely Fashion

Aside from my knee jerk reaction to the statement, "Among the many fortunate breaks Harper had received in his career, the timing of this tragedy ranked high", which was to resort to language I couldn't use here, let's break down this great humanitarian effort.

He did indeed show off our hardware and the planes took off with great thrust and enthusiasm. The people in Haiti needn't worry. Help was on it's way.

Harper's dispatch of troops matched a similar response from the United States. The military must first restore order we were told. But before saving lives?

It seems that the military was given landing preference over medical supplies and health personnel.

A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins SanscFrontières (MSF) cargo plane carrying 12 tons of medical equipment, including drugs, surgical supplies and two dialysis machines, was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night despite repeated assurances of its ability to land there. This 12-ton cargo was part of the contents of an earlier plane carrying a total of 40 tons of supplies that was blocked from landing on Sunday morning. Since January 14, MSF has had five planes diverted from the original destination of Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic. These planes carried a total of 85 tons of medical and relief supplies. (2)

And the Navy ships that Harper dispatched with "great aplomb"? According to the Chronicle Herald:

OTTAWA — When HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Halifax were ordered to sail on a humanitarian mission to Haiti on Jan. 13, they worked through the night, passing boxes hand to hand, loading stores aboard the ships — everything they would need for the humanitarian mission. But sailors didn’t take aboard much in the way of relief aid — food packages, medical supplies or shelters — for distribution to Haitians.

In the House of Commons on Thursday, during his response to the speech from the throne, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said otherwise. "Ships of the Atlantic fleet were immediately ordered to Haiti from Halifax, loaded with relief supplies," he said as he recapped the government’s efforts to help Haiti recover from the earthquake.

... During the voyage, some sailors wondered if the ships might have been better off staying in port a little longer — say 12 hours — to take on more relief supplies, food aid and medical equipment before sailing for Haiti. (3)

They could have used a little less "aplomb" and a few more necessities. And they could have done it with just 12 more hours.

And we also learn that 10 months after the crisis, only 35% of the promised money (matching Canadian citizen's donations) has been delivered by our government.

The Canadian International Development Agency says only $65.15 million has been paid out so far. The $65 million that has been delivered has been to large agencies only, among them ones identified by many observers as the least able to deliver timely aid directly to victims. (4)

1.3 million Haitians are still living in tent cities and a cholera epidemic is threatening more lives.

So pardon me if I don't get all warm and fuzzy over our country's response to this crisis. These people have been exploited for years, which is why they were so poor in the first place. And sadly, our prime minister saw an opportunity to exploit them some more for his own political career.

And he wonders why we lost the UN Security bid.

This is who we are now, and life in Harperland is just peachy keen.

Continuation:

The Haiti Crisis Revisited: Canada's Military Response

Sources:

1. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 241-242

2. Doctors Without Borders Plane with Lifesaving Medical Supplies Diverted Again from Landing in Haiti Patients in Dire Need of Emergency Care Dying from Delays in Arrival of Medical Supplies, January 19, 2010

3. The Halifax Chronicle Herald, March 12, 2010

4. Aid doesn't help Haiti much if it never gets there, By pogge, Peace, Order and Good Government, November 5, 2010

The Politics of Conceit: "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In September of 2009, journalist and author, Murray Dobbin, wrote for the Tyee:

It seems irrefutable to me after 20 years of analyzing the career of Stephen Harper that he is incapable of providing democratic governance. Harper arguably shows some traits of what psychologists refer to as malignant narcissism, a dangerously heightened sense of self importance. Otto Kernberg, a leader in the study of personality disorders, describes malignant narcissism as "extreme self-absorption and insensitivity that often result in a trail of victims -- emotional wreckage left in the narcissist's wake." The victims Kernberg refers to are, of course, individuals, but in our case the principal victim is the Canadian nation -- its humanist accomplishments, its art and culture, the foundation of its science, its international standing and its democratic governance. (1)

At the time I agreed with his analysis, but only superficially. Harper's arrogance was revealed in everything he did, but I didn't really view it as a possible illness.

Then I came across a piece by Green Party leader Elizabeth May, that showed Harper's love of self in a different light. She had been acting as Speaker of the House for the Queens University Model Parliament, and had an opportunity to visit the Government Lobby.

The Government Lobby was a frequent work space when I was Senior Policy Advisor to the federal Minister of Environment back in the mid-1980s ... [but] it did not strike me until I walked into the Government Lobby to await my turn as Speaker that I had not been in there since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister. It used to have some paintings on the wall. Past prime ministers, certainly a formal portrait of the Queen. Landscapes. I know there was the occasional photo of current Prime Ministers, but when I walked in this time, I felt chilled to the bone.

Every available wall space had a large colour photo of Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper at Alert. Stephen Harper in fire fighter gear. Stephen Harper at his desk. Stephen Harper meeting the Dalai Lama. Even the photo of the Queen showed her in the company of Stephen Harper. None were great photos. None were more than enlarged snapshots in colour. They didn’t feel like art. The student with me said it was the same in Langevin Block, the Prime ministers Office. Photos of Stephen Harper everywhere. I will advance no theories as to what this means. ... The one thing I know is that it means something. (2)

This was later confirmed in the Ottawa Citizen. (3)

I bring this up often, because it kinda' freaks me out. I'm a fan of shows like CSI and Criminal Minds, and it reminds of a stalker's lair. Only he's stalking himself. Creepy.

I just finished chapter two of Lawrence Martin's new book, Harperland, and while he is doing a very good job at keeping balance, there are some revelations that help to unravel the complexities of Stephen Harper.

And what's interesting is that the most compelling statements come from insiders. People left in the "emotional wreckage [of] the narcissist's wake", but remain for the most part supportive.

Martin says that Stephen Harper has tried to emulate Pierre Trudeau, not politically, but by replicating the things he used to stay in power for so long. He fails to understand that we liked Trudeau in spite of those things, because he was moving us in the right direction. His legacy is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But even with those whose politics he agrees with, Stephen Harper has always been more concerned with how they achieved and held onto power. In William Johnson's book Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, he speaks of Harper's fondness for Margaret Thatcher.

And yet the story was not "let's study her policies and adopt them". But instead he and his friend John Weissenberger, read all of her election speeches looking for the right phrases to "win". (4)

But there is something else that goes back to the notion of Stephen Harper being the clinical definition of a malignant narcissist.

His friends and colleagues when speaking to Lawrence Martin, used terms like "cold", "He doesn't have human warmth", "sunless", "an emotionless robot". A former classmate called him "aloof" and said that "If there was a social event going on, he'd be the guy in the corner; pen and paper in pocket, looking at us in a kind of condescending way." (5)

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines narcissism as a:

Mental disorder characterized by extreme self-absorption, an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and a need for attention and admiration from others ... narcissism is characterized by an unusual coolness and composure, which is shaken only when the narcissistic confidence is threatened, and by the tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them.

Stephen Harper is his happiest when he's at a photo-op. You can see it. He's not acting, so his robotic nature is gone. He's in his element. All of these people focused on "him". All dedicated to making "him" look good. All paying "attention" and filled with "admiration" for "him". His "unusual coolness and composure" are gone, even if only for that brief moment in time.

And we've seen him "shaken" when his confidence was threatened. Look at how he acted in the House of Commons during the coalition threat. Or when Michael Ignatieff was challenging him and he suggested that he had been pouring over old tapes. His confidence was gone and it was visible. What we witnessed was panic.

And there's no argument that he has a "tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them". A common complaint from insiders. Look at how easily he can exploit religion, or the immigrant population for political gain. A man who is not religious and has referred to multiculturalism as a "weak nation strategy", can turn himself into a supporter so easily. He's like a Chameleon, changing colours to suit the situation.

So while he learned the art of the attack ad from Arthur Finklestein, and was indoctrinated by the anti-liberalism, anti-communist crowd; his real passion is power. The ultimate aphrodisiac for the malignant narcissist.

And with that I've come to realize something else. While he does follow the neoconservative principles adhered to by people like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Roger Douglas, I also sense a bit of contempt.

While all three of those people did a great deal of damage, and widened the gap between rich and poor irrevocably, they also had something else in common. They all failed to finish the job they started.

I think that Stephen Harper believes in his condescending, narcissistic way, that he will win. That he will be the first to reach the ultimate goal. He will no longer be a "follower" of Thatcherism, Reaganomics or Rogernomics. Future neocons will follow him, and "Harperism" will be their battle cry.

He may be delusional, but no one has ever accused him of being sane.

And who knows. Maybe if he can hold onto power long enough ....

Previous:

The Politics of Contempt: The Nixon-Harper Ticket

The Politics of Hate: Where Will it Lead?

Sources:

1. Stephen Harper, Unfit to Govern: Few are thrilled to have another election, but we must put it to good use, By Murray Dobbin, The Tyee, September 10, 2009

2. Model Parliament, By Elizabeth May, Green Party, January 26, 2008

3. Harper gallery leaves MPs speechless: Citizens who really want a national portrait gallery in Ottawa can rest easy. The government already has one, By The Ottawa Citizen, January 29, 2008

4. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3, Pg. 49

5. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 8