The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Conservative Party of Canada

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Stockwell Day won the leadership of the Reform-Alliance Party in 2000, with the help of Canada's Christian Right.  However, by April of 2001, he found himself in the middle of a caucus revolt, led by Reform MP Chuck Strahl. 

13 dissidents forced a split in the party, when they sat with Joe Clark's Tories.

Knowing they were in trouble, they called in the Executive Vice-President of the American Leadership Institute, Lou Barnett, to see if he could get them back on track.

The Leadership Institute was founded in 1979 by conservative activist Morton Blackwell, formerly a member of Youth for [Barry] Goldwater.  He was the youngest delegate at the 1964 Republican convention that named Goldwater as their presidential candidate.  The seventeen-year-old Blackwell, spent much of his time coyly spreading rumours about the other candidates.

In 2001,  infighting was threatening to destroy the Reform-Alliance.  Day had proven himself to be an incompetent leader, banishing anyone who opposed his decisions.  Before Barnett arrived in Canada, they were in the process of deciding who among the dissidents should be allowed back in.  A vote was taken on former MP Gary Lunn*, and according to then party president, Neil Reynolds, it was a squeaker.

When asked if he was happy with the caucus vote, Alberta MP Myron Thompson curtly responded, "No, I'm not" and brushed past reporters.  Thompson, a staunch Day supporter, said he would abide by the party decision and refused to elaborate.  B.C. MP Darrel Stinson offered a gruff "no comment", when asked how he felt about Lunn's return. (1)

Barnett was able to take the fractured party and breath a bit of maturity into its caucus, but he may have also felt that with Day at the helm, the problems would continue.  So as part of the reunion, Day agreed to step down and allow another leadership race.

Some party members then went to the National Citizens Coalition to talk their president, Stephen Harper, into running for the job.  He agreed, won, and went on to engineer the takeover of Canada's Tories.

To this day, Harper refuses to reveal who paid for his expensive leadership run.  We only know that top Republican pollster, John McLaughlin handled it (2), so would it be a stretch to suggest that some of the donors may not have been Canadian citizens?  He also refuses to reveal who paid off Peter MacKay's $500,000 debt (3), the bribe used to get MacKay on board with the hostile takeover.

Too many secrets.

Lou Barnett and the American Legislative Exchange Council

In 1973, Lou Barnett, Henry Hyde and Paul Weyrich, created the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that would influence legislative decisions at the state level .  98% of their funding comes from corporations, who benefit from ALEC's enormous influence.  Their top benefactors include Reynolds American Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Koch Industries and the pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer Inc. (4)

ALEC holds three conferences a year where state legislators and some of the biggest corporations in the country, mix and mingle, and draft state policy.

The organization also provides a template for a mass deregulation system.  One of the buyers of this template is Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, hence the sign carried by a Wisconsin protester.

They also drafted Arizona's controversial new immigration law, that requires police to arrest anyone who cannot prove they entered the country legally when asked.  Will curfews and marks on foreheads be next?

There is a corporation benefiting from this law, Corrections Corporation of America (5), a company linked to Stephen Harper, and believed to be behind his new law and order agenda.  If he builds them, they will come.  He just has to promise to keep them filled.

ALEC is also behind legislation to loosen gun control; promote private, corporate run, schools; stop all farm subsidies and agricultural programs, lower corporate taxes, limit environmental controls, by "cutting red tape" and dispensing with worker and consumer rights.

In short, they are driving the neoconservative agenda.  

So if you wonder why Lou Barnett would agree to mediate in the petty squabbles of Canada's Reform-Alliance, now the Conservative Party of Canada, wonder no more.  The mostly American corporate sector, now has a free hand in shaping Canadian law, to maximize their profits.

So where does this leave us?  Do you really need to ask?

Stephen Harper hired Pfizer's VP, Bernard Prigent, to head up  the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes about a billion dollars annually for health research.  He's building a taxpayer funded pipeline for the Koch Bros. and at least one super prison for the the Corrections Corporation of America.

And he's just getting started.

Footnotes:

In 2011, Gary Lunn was beat out by Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Sources:

1. Lunn is Back In, By Louse Elliot, Canadian Press, January 23, 2002

2. Announcement, Catholic Citizen, February 10, 2004

3. MacKay's financial secret safe with Harper: No conflict, party leader says, by Stephen Maher, The Halifax Herald Limited, May 13, 2004

4. Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny, By Laura Sullivan, NPR News, October 29, 2010

5. Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law, By Laura Sullivan, NPR News, October 28, 2010

6. Bernard Prigent, Pfizer’s inside man: PM Harper's appointment of drug company's VP to Canadian Institutes of Health Research is also a registered lobbyist… to CIHR, By Tim Bousquet, The Coast Halifax, February 4, 2010

Chapter Twelve: Everyone Wants Someone to be a Hitler Youth

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The term 'Hitler Youth' has become a popular accusation against any group of young people deemed to be radical, and used by both the left and the right.

Glenn Beck called the victims of Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik, Hitler Youth because they were at a camp sponsored by Norway's Labour Party. "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing." (1).

And yet Beck himself helps to run youth indoctrination camps, though he prefers to call them "schools".

The Louisville, Kentucky Courier Journal ran a story about the Vacation Liberty School in Danville, Ky., the latest of an expanding roster of "volunteer-run programs for children mostly aged 10-15 that resemble a mix between vacation Bible school, U.S. history and tea party-style conservative ideas that supporters say aren’t taught in public schools." The schools, the story added, are run by Glenn Beck’s Tea Party-friendly 9/12 Project. (2)

And to show that they have not changed their attitudes since the Conservative Movement began, at another in Tampa, Florida: "Children win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the 'banker' will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value." (3) Of course you could also conclude that the gold standard will rot your teeth.

Faytene Grasseschi (Krystow) shocked people recently when she claimed that she wanted her youth movement to be like the Hitler Youth, only this time for good not evil. It might surprise her to know that those German youth also fought against what they saw as moral deprivation, including abortion.

At the time, any woman wanting to terminate a pregnancy, could obtain a pill from a chemical plant (probably Bayer) for 50 marks, so abortions were on the increase. (4)

Even Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who had such a huge impact on Jason Kenney, and is now Pope Benedict XVI, was a former member of the Hitler Youth. (5)

The image to the left is from a front page of the Nazi publication, Der Stuermer.

The headline reads, "Declaration of the Higher Clergy/So spoke Jesus Christ: You hypocrites who do not see the beam in your own eyes. (See Matthew 7:3-5)"

The cartoon depicts a group of Hitler Youth marching forth to drive the forces of evil from the land. The caption under the cartoon reads, "We youth step happily forward facing the sun... With our faith we drive the devil from the land."

Indoctrination of children, is indoctrination of children.

If it Was Good Enough for Baden-Powell

In November of 1922, a Mr. K. Friedrich visited Harvard University to speak to their Liberal Club about post-war Germany.  He gave an animated account of a new phenomenon: the "Youth Movement" or "Gugenelbewegung."

"'The Youth Movement' expresses the new spirit in Germany. It feels that the old life was cold, hard and unprofitable, stifling all the better instincts of the young people of the nation. The old militaristic system could not be called culture.

"It was merely a mechanical perfection, wholly lacking in spontaneity. The 'Youth Movement' is embracing a different theory of values in the educational standard. The tendency is constantly towards a more liberal ideal. Its studies are more and more in the realm of Philosophy, Literature and Religion. The old shackles are being cast off by a new and spontaneous enthusiasm." (6)

When we think of a German Youth Movement, we automatically think of the Hitler Youth, and the disturbing images of indoctrinated children proudly giving the infamous salute.  However, the youth movement actually began before the War, as a vehicle for young people to commune with nature and escape the oppressive regime of Wilhelm II. Their hikes were intellectual and cultural endeavours, as they shared poetry; discussed and debated philosophy, current events and politics. And while many groups had uniforms, more common would be musical instruments and books.

During the war, the movement gained momentum, when shortages in essentials, resulted in many schools being closed; so for children and young adults, these hikes provided their education.  After the war, the groups began to organize and many became more political in nature; some even sponsored by political parties.

The German Zionist Youth Movement

Leo Strauss, the German emigre who inspired the neoconservative movement,  would become an active participant in the Zionist Youth Blau-Weiss, then led by Walter Moses.  And while the group enjoyed the typical hikes in the mountains, they were also very militaristic. Strauss would refer to it as pagan-fascism, and indeed Moses liked to imitate Mussolini, who had come to power in 1922.

It was here that Strauss claimed to have nurtured his authoritarianism, and the concept of a "clique", led by a dictatorial style leader. As early as 1923 he spoke of a preference for a quasi-totalitarianism, and detested “bourgeois” or “liberals” seeking to preserve their lives and comfort.

He would actually try to join the Nazi Party but was turned away because he was Jewish.  Said Strauss of Hitler, his “political theology” was hostile toward “me and my kind”. (7)

You Don't Have to be German to be a Hitler Youth

When civil rights activist, Tom Hayden, (formerly married to Jane Fonda) was a student at the University of Michigan, he became the editor of the Michigan Daily, and one of the founders of  Students for a Democratic Society.  SDS was in direct contrast to Young Americans for Freedom, and the two groups often clashed.

In one article of Hayden's in the Daily, he compared YAF to the Hitler Youth.  They were certainly cult-like, in their attempts to dress and act like William Buckley Jr., and accepted no opposition to any of their arguments, which they like Buckley, were always well prepared for.

YAF responded to Hayden's article in their own newsletter.  "Next to the Twist and barely knee-length skirts, the most fashionable thing of the season is the rousing , vitriolic attack on the so-called 'Extreme-Right'".

Buckley approved of the counter-attack, but privately he worried that  Hayden was right.  The John Birch Society, that was providing funding and moral support to the conservative youth group, had suggested in one of their reports, that if Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 nomination,  they would assemble forces in his [Goldwater's] fascist army. (8)

Leo Strauss would develop a philosophical argument which he called Reductio ad Hitlerum.  What he suggested was that not everything Adolf Hitler did was bad, and using examples like Hitler was anti-smoking, loved dogs and was a vegetarian, we can't automatically think of those things as bad, just because they were associated with Hitler.

Of course Hitler was not a vegetarian, but loved wild game, sausages and caviar, (9) and in 1926, apparently in order to impress Mimi Reiter, a 16-year-old girl, he whipped his dog so savagely that it terrified her. (10)

This does speak to another aspect of neoconservatism. The power to deceive, in order to create a public persona that the masses can get behind.

Strauss is right however, to suggest that not everything Hitler did was bad and in fact the political strategies that the neoconservatives adopted, were like time delayed synchronized swimming.  They followed his path to power, almost to the letter.  I'll be getting into that in more detail, later.

However, Hayden was not off the mark.

Two Burning Images

Undampered by a chilly drizzle, some 40,000 Germans jammed the square between Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Opera House looking at a black mass of criss-crossed logs, insulated from the pavement by sand. A thumping band blared out old military marches. Toward midnight a procession entered the square, headed by officers of the University's student dueling corps in their dress uniforms: blue tunics, white breeches, plush tam o'shanters and spurred patent leather jack boots.

Behind them came other students and a line of motor trucks piled high with books. More students clung to the trucks, waving flaring torches that they hurled through the air at the log pile. Blue flames of gasoline shot up, the pyre blazed. One squad of students formed a chain from the pyre to the trucks. Then came the books, passed from hand to hand while a leather-lunged student roared out the names of the authors:

"Erich Maria Remarque [wild cheering]—for degrading the German language and the highest patriotic ideal!" (Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front, against WWI)

"Emil Ludwig—burned for literary rascality and high treason against Germany."

"Sigmund Freud—for falsifying our history and degrading its great figures. . . ."

On he went, calling out the names of practically every modern German author with whom the outside world is familiar: Karl Marx, Jakob Wassermann, Albert Einstein, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger. Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Walther Rathenau.

... While the flames flared highest, up to a little flag-draped rostrum stumped clubfooted, wild-eyed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in the Nazi Cabinet, organizer of the great midnight bibliocaust. "Jewish intellectualism is dead!" cried he. "National Socialism has hewn the way. The German folk soul can again express itself!

"These flames do not only illuminate the final end of the old etra, they also light up the new. Never before have the young men had so good a right to clean up the debris of the past. . . . The old goes up in flames, the new shall be fashioned from the flame in our hearts. ... As you had the right to destroy the books, you had the duty to support the government. The fire signals to the entire world that the November revolutionaries [German Revolution that overthrew the Kaiser] have sunk to earth and a new spirit has arisen!" All over Germany similar pyres blazed with similar books. (11)

The Nazi youth were driven by anti-communism and anti-liberalism.  The anti-Semitism came about because of the popular belief that the Jews were working with the Communists to take control of Germany.

The conservative youth in the early days, were also fuelled by anti-communism and and anti-liberalism, but while they didn't resort to book burning, an  Indiana chapter of YAF, did make a very public display of burning baskets, alleged to have been manufactured behind the Iron Curtain.

However, there is more than one way to burn a book, or even a basket.  An affiliate of YAF, the Intercollegiate Society Institute, formerly the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, a paleonconservative think tank created by William Buckley Jr., publishes a list of the 50 worst and the 50 best books.

When describing the 50 worst, they use similar language to that of the young Nazis feeding the flames.

Alfred Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male -  "A pervert's attempt to demonstrate that perversion is "statistically" normal."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958) - "Made Americans dissatisfied with the ineradicable fact of poverty. Led to foolish public policies that produced the hell that was the 1960s."

Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) - "[The Church] should therefore strengthen the existing communistic institutions and aid the evolution of society from the present temporary stage of individualism to a higher form of communism." Eek!

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971) - "The hollow soul of liberalism elaborated with a technical apparatus that would have made a medieval Schoolman blush." (12)

And the list goes on.  Can't you just picture them being thrown into the fire?

Even those they don't metaphorically burn, they still use to take jabs at liberal tradition. From their Best list:

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947) - "... reveals the true intent of liberalism"

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) - " ... her account of the peculiarly modern phenomenon of "totalitarianism" forced many liberals to consider the sins of communism in the same category as those of fascism, and that is no small achievement."

Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) - Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography." (13)

Sources:

1. Glenn Beck On Norway Killings: Children Like 'Hitler Youth', Huffington Post, July 27, 2011

2. Glenn Beck Group Bills Youth Propaganda Camps as Schools, by Arthur Goldwag, August 9, 2011

3. Glenn Beck hits 'new low'; compares Norway victims to Hitler Youth, The Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2011

4. Germany After the First World War, By: Richard Bessel, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993, ISBN: 0-19-821938-5, p. 248

5. Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth

6. MR. FRIEDRICH TELLS OF "YOUTH MOVEMENT" IN GERMANY, the Harvard Crimson, November 22, 1922, London Times, April 18, 2005

7. Enmity and Tyranny, By: Alan Gilbert, March 5, 2010

8. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, By Rick Perlstein, Nation Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-8090-2858-1, p. 154

9.  Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover, By: Ryn Barry, Pythagorean Books, 2004

10. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, By: Robert G.L. Waite, Basic Books, 1977, ISBN-10: 0306805146

11. Bibliocaust, Time Magazine, May 22, 1933

12. The Fifty WORST Books of the Century, Intercollegiate Society Institute

13. The Fifty BEST Books of the Century, Intercollegiate Society Institute

Youth For Western Civilization

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The group, Youth for Western Civilization, is a spin-off of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists; both spin-offs of Young Americans for Freedom, and all connected to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  In fact, YFC is financed by the Institute through their Campus Leadership Program. The financing must be substantial, since when they made their debut at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), they were actually one of the major donors of that year’s event.

YWC was created to perform stunts that the seemingly more respectable Republican youth groups might shy away from.  Or as they say at the institute:  "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans ..."  (1)

For instance, they  held a muffin sale at several campuses, where the price of the muffin was determined by your race.  Whites paid $2.00, Asians: $1.50, Latinos: $1.00, Black/ African American: $0.75, Native American: $0.25 and Illegal Immigrants FREE.  Obviously this an attempt to incite, as whites are penalized just for being white and illegal immigrants get a free ride, while everyone else is subsidized. 

However, many of the actions of WYC are more dangerous, as they go after what they call "liberal" professors.  One who had been targeted by the group, was being harassed to the point where he emailed a friend stating that he had a gun and knew how to use it.  YFC hacked into his email account, took the message to the public and the professor was fired.  He shouldn't have said what he did and the university was right to let him go, but these are the kinds of activities that the group engages in.

Retired university professor Michael Yates says he's glad to no longer be in academia.  "At least I did not have to face the nasty right-wing students who spy on their professors and do the bidding of the professional witch hunters who spew hatred on radio talk shows, and television programs."  Others are not so lucky.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

When the South Park cartoon depicted the prophet Muhammad as a bear, or at least as someone dressed up in a bear costume, the show's producers began to receive death threats.  This prompted Seattle artist Molly Norris, to establish an Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, in protest of censorship.

The Muslim religion does not allow depictions of the prophet, anymore than Christians would tolerate Jesus drawn in a disparaging fashion, or Jews, Abraham.  It's blasphemy.

To Youth for Western Civilization, this was a perfect opportunity to stir up a bit trouble, so they promoted the artistic endeavour on several U.S. campuses.  It was petty and mean, but that's what defines them.

The Marcus Epstein Affair

Thomas Tancredo is a former Republican congressman and now the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization.  In his younger days, he was a member of Young Americans for Freedom, and was rewarded with a job in the Reagan administration.  Tancredo ran for President in 2008, under the new Constitution Party banner, on an anti-immigration platform.  An outspoken critic of immigration and multiculturalism, he has earned a reputation as a bigot. 

Marcus Epstein is the executive director of Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC, an immigration panel at CPAC, financed by YWC, discussing the imminent demise of the white race.  “No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization. (2)  Stephen Harper, in a 2003 speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy, claimed that "multiculturalism" was "a weak nation strategy", and to ensure that Canada is "never again" perceived as a potential source of threats, he called for a "long-overdue" reform of our refugee programs. (3)

Epstein also runs Pat and Bay Buchanan's The American Cause, another group established to end non-white immigration.  Says Buchanan:  "The central objection to the present flood of illegals is they are not English-speaking white people from Western Europe; they are Spanish-speaking brown and black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean." (4)

Founder of the National Citizens Coalition, where Harper has been a member for more than three decades and once acted as its President, Colin Brown, when asked why letting in Hungarians fleeing communism after the Soviet crackdown was justified, but letting in Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism was not. “I think the Hungarians have made marvelous citizens, but the bloodlines run the same way. We all come from Europe so they fit in. You wouldn’t know if the people next door to you are Hungarian or not. They don’t all go and gather in a ghetto.”

All those involved in the conservative movement, on both sides of the border, sing from the same hymnal.

Back to Epstein. 

Not exactly white himself, but Korean-American, he writes for Human Events, The American Conservative, The Washington Examiner, the anti-Semitic Taki's Mag, and racist/anti-immigrant site VDARE.  He also claims that he is not a racist, and yet according to the Washington Independant:

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.” ... He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine. He’s under a restraining order to stay away from the couple involved, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund. (5)

A Circle of Hate

According to the Anti-Defamation league, YWC has many ties with White Supremacists. 

Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) may have standing in the mainstream conservative world but from its inception, white supremacists have enthusiastically embraced the group.  In April 2011, YWC received direct help from white supremacist Jared Taylor,who runs the racist magazine American Renaissance. Taylor and YWC joined forces that month to create a fund-raising packet that Taylor mailed to his supporters on YWC's behalf. Taylor is a strong supporter of YWC because of his own racist convictions. He introduced race as a crucial issue in his fund-raising letter for YWC by writing, "Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society—language, religion, class, ideology—it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the western world faces in the 21^st century." (6)

ADL is also concerned with YWC's founder, Kevin DeAnna, who Taylor says  "knows how important our cultural identity is" and "has agreed to continue our struggle on college campuses throughout the nation and dedicated himself to reaching our children and grandchildren."

DeAnna is also linked to Richard Spencer, who runs a site called Alternative Right.  Spencer writes articles for Taylor's American Renaissance and The Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic and racist publication, and is the executive director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank. Spencer once remarked, "I'm very lucky to be friends with Kevin DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization. I think this group is extremely important for our side." (6)

The H.L. Mencken Club for Mice

H. L. Menken (1880-1956) was an American author best known for his satirical essays on the famous Scopes Trials (evolution), which he referred to as the "monkey trials".  Though not really a racist, he was an elitists, who scorned a democratic system that allowed lesser men to rule their superiors.  He was also critical of Roosevelt's New Deal.

The H. L. Mencken Club came into existence in 2008, and according to their website is "an organization for independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right."  The Club hosts an annual conference that attracts speakers and guests from around the world, including paleoconservative Peter Brimelow, Pat Buchanan of The American Cause, YWC's Kevin DeAnna and his friend Richard Spencer.

If these people represent intellectuals and academics of the Right, then the Right is in serious trouble.

Peter Brimelow has a Canadian connection through the Reform Party, now called the Conservative Party of Canada.  He is an author and former right-wing journalist for Conrad Black's Financial Post and William Buckley's National Review.  In his book The Patriot Game, he attacks Quebec, bilingualism, the Canadian flag and the Canadian national anthem, which he sees as pandering to Quebec.

According to a college friend, after Stephen Harper read the Patriot Game, he became so enthused that he went out and bought ten copies to give to friends. (7)  I've read the book and in many ways, it formed the basis for much of Harper's and the Reform Party's philosophy.

Brimelow was an acquaintance of Canada's Paul Fromm, who founded the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), which opposes foreign aid to Third World countries.  Fromm was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at a Reform Party assembly, in exchanging for getting Peter Brimelow to speak.

Brimelow, along with other speakers at the H.L. Menken conference, Paul E. Gottfried and Steve Sailer, operate V-Dare, an anti-immigration, pro-white hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Centre covered the inaugural event in 2008, where much of the talk was about "how the GOP could regain power by more fervently courting the white vote."

[Said Brimelow]  “The way to win is to get white votes. If [Republicans] did that, even without actually cutting off immigration, they could continue to win national elections for quite a long time.”  Look at Alabama ... with whites only comprising 65 percent of the electorate, they’re in worse shape than American whites generally. Yet McCain easily won that state, in large part because of support from 88 percent of white voters  ...  It seems like an implicit thing that everybody in the South understands how things are and they all vote Republican."

Brimelow even suggested that McCain should have said that Obama was the affirmative action candidate. “It would have been so easy. All he had to do is get up and say it.”

Fortunately, I think McCain had a bit more class.

Most of these groups who use terms like "Western", really mean "White".  When you trace their funding, they all dip from the same pool, promote each others think tanks, and organizations, and deliver the same message.

This was the message that the Reform Party presented and it did not disappear when they bought out the rights to the Tories.  It's still there under the surface.  The media just no longer covers it.

Sources:

1. My Right-Wing Degree, By Jeff Horwitz, May 24, 2005

2. CPAC Immigration Panel: Readying the Fight to Save the GOP and White America, By Brian Tashman, Right-Wing Watch, February 11, 2011

3. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, p. 19-24

4. Into the Mainstream, By Chip Berlet, Southern Poverty Law Centre

5. Tancredo, Buchanan Bruised by Racist ‘Karate Chop’, By David Weigel, The Washington Independant, June 2, 2009

6. Youth for Western Civilization:  Ties with White Supremacists, Anti-Defamation League, May 23, 2011 

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

Controlled Controversy at Dalhousie With Jared Taylor

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole my Country

                             ***************** Still to Edit******************



There is a growing trend in this country to challenge our hate crime laws, by inviting some of the most controversial speakers to our universities in the hopes that there will be protests.

And when the inevitable protest happens, the news becomes about that, rather than the message that is being delivered, that got people so riled up in the first place.

Most recently it was Ann Coulter and the "controlled controversy" surrounding her visit became the debate, ignoring the question of whether or not it was OK to Muslim-bait.

What we should have also questioned was why a Danish hate group was sponsoring her visit, and why a member of Stephen Harper's staff was arranging the pre-show party.

Forget that Ezra Levant and David Frum had their fingers it, both bosom buddies of Jason Kenney and Stockwell Day.

These 'free speech' gurus love it when the hateful messages are not directed at them or their beliefs, but when they are they scream bloody murder. George Galloway is an excellent example of that.

However, before Coulter's visit there was another 'controlled controversy" on a University campus, when Jared Taylor, a notorious white supremacist was invited to debate a professor of black studies. Why they purposely chose Dalhousie, I don't know, perhaps it's because there is rather large black community in Halifax.

The organizer, Brian Boothe, claimed that he had hoped that the Dalhousie professor David Devine would win the debate, thereby proving that racism is wrong. Divine was under the impression that Taylor was a legitimate expert, and wasn't prepared to debate a devoted racist, who had honed his skill, by simply not listening to a thing anyone had to say that would contradict his already firmly entrenched opinions.

When word of the debate circulated around Halifax, the public outcry forced the professor to cancel the debate, but Taylor showed up anyway, garnering a lot of media attention, especially when after handing out hate literature on the street corners, he was attacked by a group who clearly wanted him out of town.

In its reaction to Mr. Taylor's brief visit last week, Halifax failed on almost every measure. Prof. Divine did not check his background before agreeing to debate him as an intellectual peer, an omission that later forced him to publicly refuse to debate. The media courted Mr. Taylor, then shunned him, then courted him again, turning a non-story into a near-scandal; and citizens stooped to mob violence and an anonymous e-mail that read: "Next time he comes, we're going to cut off his head." "Must be Muslims," Mr. Taylor said.

Literally overnight, this coincidence of failures transformed a harmless kook handing out fliers in a Maritime snowstorm into the hottest interview in Halifax. He is now hailed on the Internet among like-minded American "paleoconservatives" as a martyr for free speech in the face of aggressive Canadian political correctness. Even the local papers that refused his ads turned around and defended his right to get his message out.

"I felt very sad that someone of the calibre of Prof. Divine, with all the best of intentions, fell into that trap," said Dr. Mock, a psychologist who was once dubbed the "hate hunter" for her expert testimony on neo-Nazi tattoos. "It's an old Klan trick.... They can't be refuted because their lies are propaganda and the arguments are circular and conspiratorial." (1)

See how easily the story shifted from being about a white supremacist visiting Canada and handing out hate literature, to being about the actions of those who protested his racist messages, and Canada's arbitrary laws against freedom of speech.

The situation was handled all wrong and Jared Taylor was made a hero.

The anti-defamation League has actually covered similar situations involving Taylor and the company he keeps. Mobs follow him everywhere, and he knows just the right bombastic comments to fuel their ire. You can listen to the Taylor in the following video.



Jared Taylor and the Leadership Institute

Taylor has been linked with the Youth for Western Civilization movement, funded by Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute. He regularly gives them a plug in his American Renaissance newsletter.

However, he was also supposed to speak at a conference they were holding at the Institute on race and conservatism:
We have to be vigilant here, because freedom of speech is one thing, but speech promoting hatred is something altogether different. Someone argued with me once that that our soldiers had fought and died for our freedom, so that we could speak our minds. But I'm pretty sure they didn't enter battle so that we could call each other names. It was hatred that put them on those battlefields in the first place.

The forum was titled "Race and Conservatism" and was sponsored by the Robert A. Taft Club, a paleoconservative organization that was run by fellow Leadership Institute member Marcus Epstein. It was held at a satellite building for the Georgetown University Law School in Claredon, Va., having been moved at the last minute from its original location at the Leadership Institute building after calls from the Southern Poverty Law Center and One People's Project gave reason for concern. The panel included Jared Taylor, the editor of the white supremacist American Renaissance newsletter who is planning a conference of white supremacists in the Washington DC area next month, and John Derbyshire of the conservative periodical National Review.
According to a post on the white supremacist website Stormfront* at the time when it was still planned to be held at the Leadership Institute, it was just going to be Taylor and Derbyshire discussing the role of race in policy decisions and the racial future of the Republican party. After the controversy that prompted the Leadership Institute to close its doors to the forum, Kevin Martin of the black conservative organization Project 21 became a last-minute addition to the panel. Approximately 40 persons attended this forum, the majority of whom, among them a longtime associate of Taylor's, Professor Michael Hart, were well-known in white supremacist circles. Other Leadership Institute members were also in attendance. (2)

Jared Taylor was told that the debate had been cancelled, but came to Canada anyway, with the intent of stirring up trouble. Then when trouble did find him, the media glorified him as a martyr for free speech. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.

Footnotes:


*Stormfront has a hate forum and a radio show that is a favourite with white nationalists.

Sources:

1. How not to handle a genteel racist. Fussing over his last-minute travel plans, David Divine, James R. Johnston chair of Black Canadian studies at Dalhousie University, seems a worldly fellow, not at all the poster child for naivete on racism, By National Post, January 27, 2007

2. HEY JAMES O'KEEFE, ABOUT THAT WHITE RACIST FORUM YOU ATTENDED IN 2006... By Dan Smeriglio, New Rogue's Gallery, January 30, 2010

Roots of Reform: NCC, Racism and Ethnic Indigestion

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole my Country
"I spotted a lot of movement about 30 feet away to the left of the stage [at a punk rock concert]. I squinted through the maze of sweaty bodies and saw what appeared to be a group of men making salutes. Fascist salutes.

"... I pushed my way through the crowd ... As I got closer, I could not, as the saying goes, believe my eyes. A group of large, muscular young men were, in fact, making Nazi salutes in the general direction of the stage. One of them, a stocky fellow with cropped blonde hair, was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words: "DROWN THE BOAT PEOPLE" (1)

That incident took place in 1980, but those words on the t-shirt, which might sound strange today, packed a wallop back then.

The term "Boat People" was in reference to a decision made by the Government of Canada to take in 50,000 Asian refugees, who were sent adrift as a result of the Vietnam War. However, it became a hot button issue when the National Citizens Coalition launched a series of ads suggesting that this was akin to an invasion, that would threaten our nationality. They used flawed logic and fabricated figures, but eventually, under pressure, the government had to turn them away.

In this recorded interview from the CBC archives, with then president of the NCC, David Somerville*, you will hear him try to justify this racist campaign. One cleric even referred to their impending arrival as 'ethnic indigestion'.

During the campaign, National Citizens Coalition founder, Colin M. Brown, attempted to explain why letting in Hungarians fleeing communism after the Soviet crackdown was justified and why letting in Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism was not. “I think the Hungarians have made marvelous citizens,” Brown declared, “but the bloodlines run the same way. We all come from Europe so they fit in. You wouldn’t know if the people next door to you are Hungarian or not. They don’t all go and gather in a ghetto.”

And then there's Harper's famous quote: "You have to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada; people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian society." (2)

In 2000, Alliance candidate Betty Granger caught national attention with her comments about Asian immigrants, and an 'Asian Invasion'. When it was later discovered that she was a riding president, Harper stated: "Betty Granger is a riding president, a member in good standing. She’s somebody that other members I’ve talked to think very highly of, and quite frankly, she was the victim of an unfair slur story in the last election campaign." (3)

During the 2008 election campaign, Conservative MP Lee Richardson suggested that most crime in Canada is committed by immigrants, a statement that the police and others who know, quickly refuted. Yet Richardson said: “Talk to the police. Look at who’s committing these crimes,” he added. “They’re not the kid that grew up next door.” (4)

According to Paul Fromm, after it was discovered that several neo-Nazis were operating within the Reform Party: " The attraction of Reform for [Al] Overfield and like-minded persons, he said was that it was strictly white bread, 100 percent white Canadians, really anti-immigration; there was really no difference between those people and them."

Stephen Harper claimed that he joined the National Citizens when Pierre Trudeau implemented the National Energy Program. That would have been in 1980, just about the time of the 'Boat People' controversy. He claimed that he liked what the NCC stood for. Within the decade, he would be inspired by author Peter Brimelow and William Gairner's book, The Trouble With Canada, became "the de facto manifesto for Preston Manning's Reform Party". A few years later Stephen Harper would be running the National Citizens Coalition.

In another CBC archive from a radio station call-in show, discussing the NCC campaign of hate, you will hear future Reform Party member, Doug Collins, author of the book; Immigration and the Destruction of English Canada, trying to defend their position.

I mentioned Collins in another post, regarding Stephen Harper's Northern Foundation and their pro-Apartheid activities. "Doug Collins is a member of Canadian Friends of South Africa ... and has written numerous sympathetic articles ... Collins is also a member of CFAR ... an extremist right-wing group founded by Paul Fromm." (6)

Just because the National Citizens Coalition was a 'legitimate' agency, and just because men like Peter Brimelow, William Gairdner and Doug Collins, were 'legitimate' authors, does not make them any less racist.

Their views fueled the fires, 'legitimizing' many hate groups and resulting in "A group of large, muscular young men ... making Nazi salutes ... and one of them ... wearing a T-shirt bearing the words: "DROWN THE BOAT PEOPLE"

Footnotes:

*David Somerville was the president when Stephen Harper was named vice-president of the National Citizens Coaliton. Harper then took over from Somerville to become their president.

Sources:

1. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By: Warren Kinsella, Harper Collins, 1994 ISBN 0-00-255074-1 Pg. 3

2. Stephen Harper, in Report Newsmagazine, 2001, when he was president of the NCC

3. Stephen Harper, Calgary Herald, January 15, 2002.

4. Calgary Tory offers no apology for immigrant-crime comment: Local Conservative incumbent Lee Richardson expressed regret Thursday - but offered no apology or resignation - for controversial comments he made suggesting immigrants are to blame for much of the crime in Canada, By Calgary Herald, September 25, 2008

5. Preston Manning and the Reform Party. By: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 218-219

6. Dobbin, 1992

Paleoconservatives and the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

(The above photo shows Ronald Reagan at an ISI Alumni Meeting in 1977, building support for his presidential run.  The group played an important role in Barry Goldwater's 1964 victory at the Republican National Convention, but were unable to propel him to the White House.  They had better luck with Reagan)

In the 1960s, college and university campuses, known for their apathy, began to erupt into political activism.  Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to move to the back of the bus, inspired many to stand up, or perhaps more appropriately, "sit-in", for racial equality.  Her actions had sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr., who led the boycott, wrote a book: Stride Toward Freedom. 

Motivated by King's words, on February 1st, 1960; four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical School, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil, sat down at a "whites-only" Woolworth's lunch counter and ordered coffee.  Following store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve them.

The next day, 27 young people appeared at that lunch counter to protest the store's actions, and engaged in a "sit-in".  The third day there were 60, and the fourth, more than 300.  Their actions ignited a wave of student sit-ins and protests across the South, and despite beatings, arrests and the sting of fire hoses, the protests continued to grow.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned on the need for a strengthened Civil Rights Act.  This caused a great deal of alarm to movement conservatives, so they began to launch a counter-attack, hoping to halt the growing Civil Rights Movement.

So while hordes of youth led JFK to the White House, a different horde rallied around the Republicans, with a contrary message.  By 1961, Time magazine was reporting on the new "involvementism"  trend, saying that the most startling part of it was a sharp turn to the political right. (1)

Nonetheless, Kennedy presented his Civil Rights bill in 1963, passed soon after this death, which made discrimination in public places illegal and required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. 

Intercollegiate Society of Individualists

The America First Committee, established to protest interventionism and limit the powers of the president, had started a small publication called Human Events, and in the summer, sponsored a journalism school for young right-wing thinkers, in an attempt to tap into the fervour of youth.

Two young men who attended the school in 1957, David Franke and Douglas Caddy, would become key figures in the conservative movement.  Taking what they learned at Human Events, they looked for the necessary wave of discontent to launch a campaign, and found it in the space race.

The Soviets were winning in 1957, prompting the U.S. government to create the National Defense Education Act, designed to enrich math, science and engineering at colleges and universities, where they could draw from a talent pool, for their own space exploration.

However, at the time, anyone working on government projects of a sensitive nature, were forced to take a loyalty oath, swearing that they did not belong to, nor would they join, "any organization that believes in or teaches the overthrow of the United States government ..."  So soon after McCarthyism, the oath did not sit well with many people and in 1960, Senator Robert Kennedy, drafted a bill to drop it.

This was just what Franke and Caddy were looking for.  McCarthy supporters and William Buckley Jr. clones, they sprang into action.  Working through the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, formed by Buckley and company in 1953, they rallied the masses against the abolishment of the oath.

With petitions from 30 college campuses, including Harvard, (though the first two signatories at the Ivy league school were Atilla the Hun and Adolf Hitler (2)), Congress had to take them seriously.  But not seriously enough, given that 153 schools supported dropping the oath, and they prevailed.

Caddy and Franke would go on to create Young Americans for Freedom, with Caddy acting as their first president, and both would be active in Youth for Goldwater. 

In 1962, Young American for Freedom, bestowed its “Freedom Award” on arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond. This is because in the conservative/libertarian orthodoxy prevailing in the 1960s, freedom meant white people’s freedom from federal efforts to interfere with racial discrimination, not black people’s freedom from racism. When Kennedy's landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Congress, the vast majority of congressional Republicans supported it, but Barry Goldwater did not, and he, with strong backing from YAF and other conservative movement organizations,  captured the ’64 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Paleoconservatives

The Intercollegiate Society of Individualists is still in operation, though they've since changed their name to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc.  They are part of the Paleoconservative or "traditional" conservative thinker movement,  attempting to uphold their European, Judeo-Christian heritage.  The organization also fights what it perceives as political correctness and liberal bias, that they believe is destroying their "freedom".

In a 1989 speech to the Heritage Foundation, the ISI President, T. Kenenth Cribb Jr. stated:

We must...provide resources and guidance to an elite which can take up anew the task of enculturation. Through its journals, lectures, seminars, books and fellowships, this is what ISI has done successfully for 36 years. The coming of age of such elites has provided the current leadership of the conservative revival. But we should add a major new component to our strategy: the conservative movement is now mature enough to sustain a counteroffensive on that last Leftist redoubt, the college campus...We are now strong enough to establish a contemporary presence for conservatism on campus, and contest the Left on its own turf. We plan to do this by greatly expanding the ISI field effort, its network of campus-based programming. (3)

Morton Blackwell of the Leadership Institute, on which Preston Manning's centre for destroying democracy was based, shares those views (Blackwell was also a member of ISI in his youth and the youngest delegate at the Republican convention that won the leadership for Goldwater).  He called universities the last bastion  of the Left.

But what exactly is a Paleoconservative?  The prefix suggests something ancient like the study of dinosaurs.  They only claim to have a "sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture—an identity that is both collective and personal." 

However, given the religious element in the group, this is probably Biblical, relating to the "curse of Ham", son of Noah.   Noah, upset over an indiscretion of  Ham, who was supposed to be black, cursed all the descendants of Ham's son Canaan. They were to be slaves for eternity and were to serve the other six-sevenths of the population.  Canaan's descendants were said to have populated Africa, meaning that it was the divine decree of God that gave the black people the liability of being enslaved by white people and justified the degradation of the entire race.
 
Andre Horn, a 13th century Chamberlain of London, said, "Yet 'serfage' in the case of a black man is a subjugation issuing from so high an antiquity that no free stock can be found within human memory." And for the Judeo part of the heritage espoused by Paleoconservatives,  the Babylonian Talmud states that "negroes were the children of Ham, who was cursed with blackness."
 
The Religious Right movement, was created to oppose desegregation, and the Conservative Movement was very much the revenge of the white man, which is why arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond, was given a "freedom" award.
 
In 1996, a member of Stephen Harper's  Reform Party,  Bob Ringma, stated in a newspaper interview that store owners should be free to move gays and "ethnics" "to the back of the shop", or even to fire them, if the presence of that individual offended a customer.
 
Reform was very much an "Anglo" party, which is why they always took such a tough stand against Quebec and immigration. 

"... the notion that some Reform members may have strong Anglo-Saxon nativist inclinations is supported by more than merely the background profiles of its leaders, members and supporters. It is supported also by the words of many of its ideological mentors who depict Canada as not only historically an Anglo-Saxon country but also part of a wider Anglo-Saxon culture that is in need of recognizing and re-establishing its heritage."  (4)

When it was discovered by the media that Neo-Nazis had "infiltrated" the Party, the biggest surprise came from the infiltrators, who were shocked that they were being expelled.  White supremicist Al Overfield,  insisted that he told the Reform Party leadership, and was assured that they had no problem with it.  Overfield stated that Reform Party member Harry Robertson admitted him to the Party and that Stephen Harper was well aware of Overfield’s past involvement in far right groups. (5)

Another group angry over their expulsion was the Heritage Front, led by former KKK boss Wolfgang Droege.

"The expulsion enraged the Heritage Front, which saw the Reform Party's policies as very similar to, if not indistinguishable from, its own. How could a party that went on record opposing immigration policies that "radically alter" Canada's ethnic make-up turn around and shun a group like the Heritage Front, Droege asked, when the Heritage Front supports the very same approach? Privately, spokesmen for B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress admitted that Droege had a good point."  (6)

It would not be a stretch to refer to the present Conservative Party of Canada, as Paleoconservatives.  They too seek to uphold their European, Judeo-Christian heritage.

 Sources:

1. Education: Campus Conservatives, Time Magazine, February 10, 1961

2. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, By Rick Perlstein, Nation Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-8090-2858-1, p. 69-70

3. Kenneth Cribb: Conservatism and the American Academy: Prospects for the 1990 's, Heritage lectures #226, December 7, 1989.

4. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, p. 170

5. Report to the Solicitor General of Canada Security Intelligence Review Committee, December 9, 1994

6. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, ISBN: 978-0002550741, p243-44

The Message Control of Ari Fleischer

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the attack on the World Trade Center, the Jewish Policy Center hosted a special event in New York City: 9/11 a Decade Later: Lessons Learned and Future Challenges.  Featured speakers were former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and George W. Bush’s press spokesman Ari Fleischer.

The Jewish Policy Centre is a Republican think tank, tied to the Republican Jewish Coalition, who oppose any kind of peace settlements in the Middle East.  Their fellows have included neoconservative leader, Irving Kristol, and Canada's David Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush.

The speeches that night were not unlike those heard as justification for the War on Iraq.   "They hate our democracy” ...  “war on terror” ... " radical, fundamentalists".  Questions had to be written on index cards and then vetted by the Center.  "Ushers" made sure that there were no "liberal" thinkers in the crowd, and if you even hinted that the Bush Administration was wrong, you were promptly ejected.

One police officer who was ordered to remove a young woman who stood up in protest at the way the event was being handled, was heard to say “I just don’t understand how you could have sat there for as long as you did!” (1)

Clearly the Republicans have learned nothing from their disastrous foreign policy, and neither has Stephen Harper, who said in an interview that 'Islamicism' was the biggest threat to Canada. (2)  Not radical Islamists, but the actual religion.  It may have been a Freudian slip, or more speaking in code, but Islamophobia is alive and well and living in the Harper government.

The Jewish Policy Centre posted a glowing piece on Harper and his devotion to Israel.

Is Canada replacing the United States' role as Israel's number one supporter? It might be. During last week's G8 summit in France, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper blocked a G8 statement that would specifically call for Israeli-Palestinian talks to begin with negotiations based on an Israeli return to its 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps.

Since the White House appears content to follow its allies, Washington should follow Canada's lead under Prime Minister Harper. Aside from Harper's ability to stand strong against pressure when it comes to Israel, his decision to refrain from pledging more money to the "Arab Spring" countries is fiscally wise. (3)

Most Canadians support the "Arab Springs".

You Going to Believe What You See or What I Tell You?

Ari Fleischer  first made headlines in 1999, when he was working on Bush's presidential campaign.  On October 9, Bush had been interviewed by the Council for National Policy,  a pro-military religious organization, whose members* include; conservative political operatives, elected officials, military leaders, conservative broadcasters, corporate executives and financiers.  The brains and bucks of the New Right.

Said Jerry Falwell, who is a member: "Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, senators and cabinet members—you name it, almost anyone of consequence has been to speak before the Council ... It is a group of four or five hundred of the biggest conservative guns in the country. It is the group that draws the battle lines."(4)

Extraordinary precautions had been taken to ensure that Bush's speech did not leak to the press.  His team had copies of it on tape, but according to Morton Blackwell, executive director of the CNP, "the Bush campaign declined to release them". Ari Fleischer also declined to even characterize the speech.  He told the New York Times "When we go to meetings that are private, they remain private"

He had proven his loyalty and when Bush won the election, he named Fleischer his Press Secretary, and it was he who had to sell the American people on going to war in Iraq.  He handled it beautifully.

Before resigning his position in the summer of 2003, Fleischer would be involved in another controversy.

Joseph Wilson, a former United States diplomat, was sent to Niger in 2002, to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium.  The British were the first to make the claim, and in Bush's State of the Union address, he said  "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." They even had documentation, though the documents would turn out to be forgeries.

When Joe Wilson returned from his fact finding mission, he filed his report and then wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times: What I Didn't Find in Africa.

Since this contradicted the message that the Bush administration was presenting to the American public, a meeting was held with Dick Cheney, his advisor, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Newt Gingrich and other senior Republicans, to produce a workup on Wilson to discredit him.

With the help of Fleischer, Karl Rove and others, columnist Robert Novak was given a tip that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative.  Novak "outed" her in the Washington Post, which was devastating to Plame, given that her family and friends had no idea.  It also cost her, her job.  They couldn't get anything on Wilson, but according to what Rove told Novak  "Wilson's wife is fair game."

Only Libby was ever convicted.

Freedom's Watch

By 2007, George Bush's popularity was at an all time low, and Americans had lost the taste for war.  Sensing that the Republications could take a huge hit in the upcoming election, a group of high-profile conservatives decided to do something about it.  So they created an AstroTurf group called Freedom's Watch, which began running ads on television stations, focusing on the sacrifices of soldiers and their families.

Ari Fleisher was on their board of directors.

Freedom's Watch worked in conjunction with the Republican Jewish Coalition and their partner, the Jewish Policy Center, where Fleisher spoke on the anniversary of 9/11.  They also worked closely with the American Enterprise Institute.

According to American Counter Punch:

While Americans and Iraqis suffer ... a new conservative organization has appeared on the scene. Called, ironically, 'Freedom's Watch,' with former White House press secretary Ari Fleisher as spokesman, this group is spending 15,000,000 on advertising to urge members of Congress to support the war. Said Mr. Fleisher: "We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: Don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective." (5)

Their messages were misleading since they linked Iraq to the attacks on the World Trade Center, which we know is false.  The group would also run ads during the 2008 election, in support of several Republican candidates, before disbanding.

Passports Required for Witch Hunts

According to Ari Fleischer's personal bio, he is among other things, "an international media consultant to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper".  When the story of his hire made the news in Canada, in 2009,  MacLean's Scott Feschuk quipped:  "I guess if there’s an upside, it’s that members of our own press gallery now understand what it takes to get a question answered by our Prime Minister – an American passport and Ari Fleischer’s cell number." (6)

In January of 2010, the Canadian Press revealed:

Follow-up information on the original G20 contract, provided by Fleischer in his filings to the Justice Department, sheds new light on his activities on behalf of Canada's prime minister.  Canadian news consumers, who this week are seeing their first limited interviews with Harper about his Christmas holiday decision to suspend Parliament, might aspire to the access provided for conservative American opinion-leaders - eight of whom enjoyed dinner with Harper in Washington last Mar. 29 at the invitation of Fleischer. The guest list included newspaper columnists Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Anne Applebaum, senior editors Fred Barnes and William Kristol, and conservative syndicated talk-radio host Laura Ingraham. (7)

It would appear that Fleischer may have assisted in Canada getting its Fox News North (Sun TV) station.

However, as a media consultant, he may have played an even more important role for the Canadian Conservatives.  When President Obama first announced that he would be releasing the Bush memos, the American neocons went into a spin.

Liz and Dick Cheney, Bill Bennett, Ari Fleischer, and countless other commentators have saturated the public airwaves of late ever since the Obama Administration decided to make public the Bush torture memos. "I think the decision is disgusting," Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's first press secretary, told the Huffington Post. "It's amazing to me that the people who kept us safe may now become the people our government prosecutes. There are plenty of real criminals out there -- it would be nice if the Justice Department went after them ... this is a witch hunt."  (8)

Feeling that it was quite OK to attack a diplomat if he contradicted the government's line, or lies, Harper and crew attacked Richard Colvin with a vengeance, after he exposed the abuse of Afghan Detainees.  But read Peter MacKay's response:

“I am very proud of the fact that we have dedicated soldiers, civil servants, individuals who are working closely with the government of Afghanistan, as challenging as that is, to see that we improve its capacity. We will continue to do so. That is the real work that is being done. This is a witch hunt.” (9)

It's hard not to imagine that Fleischer had  a hand in choreographing the way that the Harper government handled Afghan Detainee abuse allegations.  He's earning his $25,000 a pop fee.

Footnotes:

* Best selling author, Craig Unger, was able to obtain a partial list of CNP members in 1996. They included Richard V. Allen, former national security adviser under Reagan; Gary Bauer, former Republican presidential candidate and head of the Family Research Council; Morton Blackwell, president of The Leadership Institute; Richard Bott, of the Bott Broadcasting Company; Brent Bozell, chairman of the Media Research Institute; Larry Burkett of the Campus Crusade for Christ and Christian Financial Concepts; Congressman Dan Burton (R-Ind.); Holland Coors and Jeffrey Coors, of the Colorado beer family; Congressman William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.); James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family; Congressman Robert Dornan (R-Calif.); Jerry Falwell, Liberty University; Edwin Feulner Jr., the Heritage Foundation; George Gilder, supply-side economist; Donald Hodel, former secretary of energy and secretary of the interior; Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt; Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media; Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University; David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Congressman Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.); Dr. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church; Congressman Alan Keyes (R-Md.); Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.); Beverly LaHaye; Tim LaHaye; Marlin Maddoux, president, USA Radio Network; Ed McAteer, president, The Religious Roundtable; former attorney general Ed Meese; conservative activist Grover Norquist; Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, North American Enterprises; Howard Phillips, chairman, The Conservative Caucus; Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition; Pat Robertson, Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University; Phyllis Schlafly, president, Eagle Forum; Richard Viguerie, conservative political strategist; Doug Wead; Paul Weyrich; and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. (4)

Sources:

1. Bird-Dogging Torturers in NYC, Consortium News, September 9, 2011

2. Harper says 'Islamicism' biggest threat to Canada, CBC News, September 6, 2011

3. Canada Takes a Stand at G8 Summit, by Samara Greenberg, Jewish Policy Center blog, June 1, 2011

4. The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seied the Executive branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future, By Craig Unger, Scribner, 2007, ISBN: 13: 978-0-7432-8075-4, p. 171-172

5. Ari Fleischer, Freedom's Watch and the Pro-War Lobbyists, American Counter Punch, August 2007

6. Harper hires Americans to help him "brand" Canada, presumably as a nation incapable of branding itself, by Scott Feschuk, MacLeans, April 16, 2009

7. Canadian Press, January 6, 2010

8. Torture:  "It's perfectly Leagal -- But We Don't Do It",  By Joseph A. Palermo Associate Professor, American History, California State University, Sacramento, Huffington Post, April 25, 2009

9. The Commons: Eighteen attempts to explain the same story, By Aaron Wherry, MacLeans, November 19, 2009

The Invisible Hand of the Council for National Policy

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Their banner reads "Seek God ... Trust God ... Love God."  Rolling Stone magazine calls them "a secretive group of wealthy donors that has funneled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists", and ABC says "Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of". 

Their executive director once boasted  "we control everything in the world" and a former secretary suggests that they not only support globalization but are globalization.

Who are they?

They are the Council for National Policy, and in 1997, at their Montreal conference, they invited the president of the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper, to speak to them, on the state of Canadian politics. 

To understand the enormity of this invitation, guests may only attend meetings with the unanimous consent of the Executive Committee.  If one person didn't trust him, he would not have been allowed to attend.  They all trusted him.  Since then, documentary film maker, Josh Reeves, who was able to secure a membership list, claims that our prime minister's name is on that list.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Antichrist pacing to and fro. Laughs exultantly.

ANTICHRIST: What more could I wish for? It’s only a matter of time now and not long at that. The whole world will soon be at my feet. What fools those Jews were to agree to assist me to this throne of Russia. I do not need their support any longer. Tomorrow I will break my covenant with them. Their religious ceremonies must cease. I will not tolerate such stuff in my realm.

Enter false Prophet. Salutes Antichrist.

ANTICHRIST: What brings you here to me, sir?

FALSE PROPHET: I come to make you a proposition. You already know something of my origin and my purpose in being in this world. There is a work that we can best accomplish by working together.

ANTICHRIST: You interest me. What is your proposition?

FALSE PROPHET: It is this. You well know, my Lord, that the day is fast coming when you will be the supreme ruler of this world. Already you have more power than all the governments of Europe and Asia, together. Your word is law. The kings of this earth tremble at your smallest command. Their thrones will soon be yours. But there is one thing that will always hinder your progress as long as it is allowed to exist. That thing is true religion. As long as people retain even the thought of God, their allegiance will be divided between yourself and Him.

ANTICHRIST: I realize that well enough. That is why I propose to banish religion from the earth. I will not allow the name of God to be mentioned under penalty of death. Just give me a little longer. Tomorrow I intend to break my covenant with those Jews and cancel all their religious rights. Once they are exterminated, what religion there will be left in this world will not be difficult to eradicate.

FALSE PROPHET: My Lord, I highly commend your actions, but why not go a step further still? I suggest not only the annihilation of all worship of God but propose to introduce a new form of worship in which you yourself will take the place of God. In that way man’s natural tendency to worship will be gratified and you will be exalted to a position never before held by a man. I have full control over the apostate religions that at present are worshipping our adviser, Diabolos, and a multitude of his demons. I propose turning all apostate religions into one great channel with yourself as the object of worship.

ANTICHRIST: I like well your proposition. We have all the power of the Devil behind us. We can accomplish our ends without difficulty. Militarism will be the order of the day. Deception shall be our weapon where force is unwise, until we get complete control. Let us proceed with care and the whole world will soon be out our feet.

FALSE PROPHET: One thing we have to consider. Some will refuse to worship you. How can we prevent them from evading us?

ANTICHRIST: That will not be hard. We will soon have full control of the trade and commerce of the world. We will then make the people swear their allegiance to us and bow down and worship before they will be allowed to buy or sell. When they do, we will brand them like cattle, and no one will be allowed to buy or sell unless they have our mark upon them. We will do away with any who refuse.

FALSE PROPHET: Then our last difficulty is solved. The future is open before us my Lord. Woe to him who opposes or dares to cross our path. Now let us launch our great campaign. You complete your world conquest and cease not until the last king has thrown his crown at your feet. I will see that apostate religion keeps pace with your advancements. Meanwhile we will complete all details of our plan and when we meet again it will be to make dreams come true.

Image, False Prophet, Antichrist, Guards and so forth. Long blast on cornet.

FALSE PROPHET: Here ye all this proclamation and decree hereby issued by the command of the Antichrist, the supreme ruler of this world. (Reads decree concerning worship of image, receiving of mark, etc.) At the sounding of the trumpet this decree shall immediately become law, and woe to any who refuses to worship the image of the greatest man this world has ever seen. (1)

The above is an excerpt from a play written by Ernest Manning and William Aberhart in 1931. Using students from the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, they performed it at high schools and church halls, and it is said, scared people half to death.

Based on the popular novel by Sydney Watson: Mark of the Beast, Manning and Aberhart clearly wanted to scare their audiences into accepting Christ, then and there. In one scene a young girl claims that she goes to church and reads the Bible, but was told that wasn't good enough, and the Antichrist did away with her entire family.

This play was not written for entertainment but was a form of fear mongering.  Just going to church and reading the Bible was clearly not enough.  You had to be saved.

The play also put the Jews in line with the Devil.

Aberhart and Manning were former Social Credit premiers of Alberta, and according to Janine Stingel, SC was the only party based solely on the notion of a Jewish conspiracy.  Manning would later "purge" the party of the anti-Semites, but it was mainly for political expediency, since they were starting to demand that he adhere to social credit principles. Anti-Semitism would continue to define his party for many years. (2)

James Keegstra,  the Alberta school teacher who for 15 years taught his students that the Holocaust was a Hoax, attended the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, and his parents were devout Social creditors.  Ron Gostick, whose mother was a Social Credit MLA, was one of the largest distributors of hate literature in North America.  Stockwell Day's religious fanaticism, may have also come from his parents, who were not only members of Social Credit, but his father once ran for the party against Tommy Douglas.

The Bible broadcasts of Aberhart and Manning played for decades, to a wide audience. To suggest that they didn't have an impact would be naive. And the brand of Christianity they taught often bordered on the occult.

In Stephen Harper's 1997 speech to the CNP he said that "The predecessor of the Reform Party, [was] the Social Credit party, and in fact many of the early Reform members, were previously with the Socreds.

The Council for National Policy was the brainchild of Tim LeHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic fiction series: Left behind.  It so happens, that LeHaye was also inspired by Sydney Watson's: Mark of the Beast, and his books deliver the same anti-Communist, "you must be saved" philosophies.

The idea of creating the CNP was to act as an umbrella group for all the Christian Right organizations, that were created or rejuvenated, after the election of Ronald Reagan.  They wanted to make sure that their hold on power would continue even after he was out of office.

Using the idea of a "voting block", they could bribe and even blackmail conservative candidates.

In 1999,  George W. Bush spoke before a closed-press CNP session in San Antonio.  His speech was recorded on audio tape.  Apparently he promised to appoint only anti-abortion-rights judges to the Supreme Court and to take a tough stance against gays and lesbians, though since they refused to release the tape to the public, no one knows for sure.  Soon after, they declared that Bush was fit for the mantle of Republican leadership. (3)

I wonder what Stephen Harper's closed door meeting was like, given the enormous support he received from CNP members James Dobson and Paul Weyrich.  Dobson placed ads on 130 Canadian radio stations, denouncing same-sex marriage, while Harper used it as a campaign strategy (4); and Paul Weyrich forbid his people to talk to the Canadian press, fearing they might say too much, and risk Harper's losing the election (5).

Cross Border Hoppers

When Stephen Harper cut a deal with Peter Mackay to purchase the rights to the Progressive Conservatives, he changed the name to the Conservative Party of Canada.  Actually, the first name given was Conservative Reform Alliance Party, but they didn't like the acronym.

However, many people weren't fooled into believing that Harper and his Alliance members were now Tories.  Even before the takeover became official, the Edmonton Journal commented on the prospects of a new Conservative Party: “The [social conservative] bogeymen won't go away just because they'll be hidden from the public inside a new Conservative Party.  They'll still be there, under the bed, waiting for a chance to spring up and spout their offensive anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigration, pro-gun, pro-death penalty views.”

In 2005, the Vancouver Sun estimated that “roughly half the current 98 members” of the Conservative caucus “are religious social conservatives,” which is “well over double the national average.”

What has also been discovered, is that many members of Harper's caucus, then and now, actually belong to several Christian Right organizations that fall under the umbrella of the Council for National Policy.  Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association (yes, God loves guns), Campus Crusade for Christ, the Promise Keepers, and many more.

Over 800 Canadian conservative activists, including Conservative MP Rob Anders, have been trained at the Executive Director of CNP, Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  (6)  In 1998,  Anders' former legislative assistant, Trevor Cazemier, was a guest at the CNP annual conference, sponsored by Republican strategist, Mark Montini. (7) His slogan: “If Mark doesn’t light your fire, your wood is wet.”

Montini then ran a firm called Complete Communication Strategies, and was a trainer at the Leadership Institute, running what he called the "human resources department for the conservative movement."   According to his bio "Mark Montini has also consulted in Greece, Canada and Chile, offering a taste of American-style political communication skills."

And that taste of "American-style political communication skills" has left an aftertaste, though it explains why Republicans and Canadian conservatives, sound so much alike. 

Their wood is always dry.

Sources:

1. Aberhart of Alberta, By L.P.V. Johnson and Ola MacNutt, Institute of Applied Arts Ltd., 1970

2. Beyond the purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

3. Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of, By Marc J. Ambinder, ABC News, May 2, 2005

4. EQUAL MARRIAGE GROUP CALLS ON HARPER TO PUBLICLY ‘DRAW THE LINE’, Canadians For Equal Marriage, January 27, 2005

5. Harper's U.S. neocon booster changes his story, By Beth Gorham, Canadian Press, January 27, 2006

6. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3, p. 104-105

7.  Tysons Corner meeting, CNP, Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, McLean, Virginia, May 1-2, 1998