Chapter Six: Charles Manion and Political Realignment

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Many political scientists use the term "political realignment" to describe a single election with a major upset.

However, in the context of a political movement, it is something much bigger.  The term means a calculated attempt to realign political parties, to change the ethos of an entire nation.

In the case of the United States, the idea was that instead of moderate Republicans and right-wing Democrats, all moderates would belong to the "liberal" class and all right-wing would be "conservative".

There would be no middle, only two clear choices: right or left.

But to accomplish  this would take time and a lot of political turmoil.

To Party or Not to Party

Clarence E. Manion was one of the men committed to reshaping American politics, to fight FDR's New Deal and what he saw as a communist threat.  Originally a Democrat from Kentucky, he worried that FDR was establishing such a large government, with so many tenets, that it would be easily taken over by the Soviets, with all the necessary offices already in place.

While still a Democrat, he campaigned for Dwight D. Eisenhower, bringing many fellow Democrats into the Eisenhower camp.  He expected to be rewarded with a major cabinet position, but instead was named chairman of President Eisenhower's Commission on Intergovernmental (federal-state) Relations, a job he took very seriously.

During the war he had been a leader of the America First Committee that had agitated against U.S. involvement in the conflict.  " You didn't pay your taxes so that Washington could fight England's quarrels" (1).  Now in his position as an authority in federal-state relations, he would be the prime advocate for the Bricker Amendment (John Bricker R-Ohio), that sought to limit the powers of the President.

Manion believed in the proposed amendment in its purest form, with the requirement of a referendum in all forty-eight states before any treaty could go into effect.  Of concern was the United Nations' Genocide Convention, which conservatives feared "would allow Communist countries to punish the United States for segregation, or the pending treaty to establish a UN World Court, which they feared the Communists would use to shut down every line of resistance against them" (2).

Eisenhower would say that the Bricker Amendment was the biggest threat he faced during his presidency, and with Manion boasting "that he has spoken for the Bricker amendment in all the 48 states" (3), on his return he was promptly fired.  Something many felt that Eisenhower should have done long before.

But Manion supporters saw things differently.  The Fort Wayne Sentinel suggested that: "President Eisenhower finally yielded to the insistent clamor of a vicious internationalist cabal, spearheaded by the New York Times and the Henry Luce Time-Life smear brigade ... "   In a television interview immediately after, Manion said: "Some of the left-wing Communists, who have had an unfortunate effectiveness in this administration,  served notice on me that I would be fired because of my advocacy of the Bricker Amendment." (2)

However, he saw this not as the end but as the beginning.  Without the constraints of the establishment he could now work "to break the Wall Street boys' hammerlock on the Democrats and the Republicans once and for all".

He decided that what was needed was a new party, and came up with a plan.  First he created yet another group:  "For America" which was co-chaired by himself and and another arch anti-communist, General Robert E. Wood.  Its manifesto promised to fight for an "enlightened nationalism" to replace "our costly, imperialistic foreign policy of tragic super-interventionism and policing this world single-handed with American blood and treasure." (4)

They met with several senators, including John Bricker and Barry Goldwater, and even solicited the support of Vice President Nixon, hoping to establish a "conclave of  25 to 50 leading Republicans and Democrats to discuss the whole idea of realignment off the record." (5)

In the meantime, Manion laid the groundwork with a weekly radio broadcast, The Manion Forum, where he warned.  "The leftwing, please remember, is strong, well-organized and well-financed. Many gigantic fortunes, built by virtue of private enterprise under the Constitution, have fallen under the direction of Internationalists, One-Worlders, Socialists and Communists. Much of this vast horde of money is being used to 'socialize' the United States."

Manion also came up with an idea for launching a new party of like-minded "conservatives", before the next election.  For America would present a controversial leader at both the Republican and Democrat national conventions, ones he was sure that the delegates would reject.  He could then convince supporters of both, to choose one, and that candidate would run for the new party.

As a Republican he chose Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, who is best remembered for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of Little Rock public schools during the infamous Little Rock Crisis.  Challenging for the nod from the Democrats, would be General Wood himself.

The idea never got off the ground.  The most that For America could raise was $1,667, not nearly enough for their grandiose plan.

Clarence "Pat" Manion never gave up.  He became a member of the John Birch Society, who helped to select Barry Goldwater as a presidential candidate, was on the advisory board of the American Enterprise Institute and was instrumental in the creation of Young Americans for Freedom.

Meanwhile North of the Border

Canada was not immune to the anti-communist sentiment, and at the same time that Manion was trying to realign American politics, there was a similar movement afoot here.  According to Alberta's long-serving Social Credit MPP, Alf Hooke.

On at least two occasions Mr. Manning told me in his office that he had been approached by several very influential and wealthy Canadians and that they wanted him to head up a party of the right with a view to preventing the onslaught of socialism these men could see developing in Canada. They had apparently indicated to him that money was no object and they were prepared to spend any amount of money to stop the socialistic tide ... Mr. Manning indicated to me also that he was working on a book which he would hope to publish ... in which he would endeavour to outline the views these men represented and recommendations he would make in keeping with their views. (6)

It would appear that most of the money would come from the oil patch, not unlike the money that went into Movement Conservatism in the U.S. 

The book that Mr. Hooke alluded was Political Realignment.  In it Manning laments that the lines had been erased that once separated Conservatives and Liberals, in much the same way that Manion bemoaned the "moderate Republicans" and "right-wing Democrats".

Manning called for a realignment, similar to the one proposed by his American counterpart, nixing the idea of another federal party. 

In the case of Canada's two traditional parties, a number of factors have caused the policies and actions of both to become increasingly divorced from philosophical foundations. The distinctions between the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties are rapidly being reduced to the superficial distinctions of party image, party labels, and party personalities. Many Canadians are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that "there is no real difference between them". The citizen who wishes to cast his ballot on the basis of principles clearly defined and embodied in practical policy finds himself virtually disenfranchised. The fact that voters are thus denied the opportunity to choose between meaningful alternatives relative to the management of their public affairs, represents a serious restriction on the effective exercise of political freedom. (7)

When John Diefenbaker was in office, he was approached by Social Credit, with an interest in a merger.  Diefenbaker toyed with the idea until a member of his caucus, Jim MacDonnell, whose father was a friend of Sir John A.'s; exclaimed that MacDonald  "would now turn over in his grave!" (9)

Manning tried again in 1967 at the PC leadership convention, but Robert Stanfield, a Red Tory, won, and again he was rebuffed.  Instead he had his SC colleague Robert N. Thompson run for the PCs, hoping he could exact some change from within, but while Thompson won his seat, he did little else for the cause.

Manning would have to wait it out.

A Realignment of Another Sort

One issue pressing Ernest Manning was the rise of the CCF under the capable leadership of Tommy Douglas.  Douglas embodied everything that movement conservatives feared, but worse, Douglas was not a "Godless communist" but an evangelical socialist.

And the CCF was going through their own realignment.  Pairing up with the Canadian Labour Congress, they formed the New Democrat Party (NDP), with their own agenda.  According to Nelson Wiseman, the sentiment for a new political alignment was common among those on the fringe of the CCF, but was now more realistic.

Suddenly there was a great deal of enthusiasm for a "formal political realignment".

...the aftermath of the federal Conservative victory of 1958 was an opportunity for Canada's socialists to achieve major party status. A social democratic party, in this view, would gain at the expense of one of the older parties, as had occurred earlier in the century in Britain. "If there is any logic in Canadian affairs ... now is the time when there should be a good chance for a third party to slip in and take the place formerly occupied by the Liberals against the older Conservatives." (9)

After the results of the most recent federal election were announced, Paul Wells reminded Canadians of a piece he had written soon after Stephen Harper was named prime minister, in 2006.  "  ... the contours of the emerging parliamentary battlefield became clearer. It quickly became almost as interesting to watch the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois as to watch the two larger parties. Something big is afoot." (10)

He suspected then that Harper and Jack Layton had teamed up to destroy the Liberals.  Later it was revealed that they had actually formed a coalition in 2004, to take down Paul Martin at the throne speech, as confirmed by a letter released to the public by Gilles Duceppe, who was part of the team. (11)

This should not have been a surprise to anyone, since it was the realization of  two plans, set in motion a half century ago.

What we need now is re-realignment, because this one clearly isn't working.  As promised, when Harper bought out the rights to the federal PC party, he purged the moderates.

"Red Tories must be jettisoned from the party", he said, "and alliances forged with ethnic and immigrant communities who currently vote Liberal but espouse traditional family values. This was the successful strategy counselled by the neocons under Ronald Reagan to pull conservative Democrats into the Republican tent."13)

Just as the middle class is being erased, so to is a place for centrists like myself.  I don't want to choose right or left.  It makes for polarized politics.  We need to pull in all moderates from both the NDP and Liberals, to present a challenge to Harper's American style conservatism.

Whether that's a new party or just a new direction for existing parties, I don't care.  We need to rebuild the middle, which was not "mushy" but served our country well.  A party that can work with big business, not against it, but demand that they play by our rules.

And we need to do it soon.

Sources:

1. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, By Rick Perlstein, Nation Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-8090-2858-1, p. 4

2. Perlstein, 2001, p. 9-10

3. National Affairs: The Gold-Bricker, Time Magazine, February 08, 1954

4. Perlstein, 2001, p. 11

5. ibid

6. 30+5 I know, I was There, A first-hand account of the workings and history of the Social Credit Government in Alberta, Canada 1935-68, by Alfred J Hooke, Douglas Social Credit Secretariat, Chapter 19

7. Political Realignment: Challenge to Thoughtful Canadians, By Ernest Manning, McLelland and Stewart, 1967, 226195, p. 11

8. One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, 1956 to 1962, By John G' Diefenbaker, the MacMillan Company of Canada, ISBN: 0-7705-1443-X, p. 3-4

9. Social democracy in Manitoba: a history of the CCF-NDP, By Nelson Wiseman, University of Manitoba Press, 1985, ISBN: 978-0-8875-5615-9, p. 90

10. From the archive: The secret plot to destroy the Liberals, By Paul Wells, Macleans, May 5, 2011

11. Harper's coalition attacks come back to haunt him, By: Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star, March 27, 2011

12. Harper, Bush Share Roots in Controversial Philosophy:  Close advisers schooled in 'the noble lie' and 'regime change.', By Donald Gutstein, The Tyee, November 29, 2005

Happy Shoppers and True Nazis

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

In July of 1941, Latvia became a part of Nazi Germany as German troops moved in to occupy the country. (Photo above captures scene at Riga)

Anyone who opposed the German occupation , as well as those who had cooperated with the previous Soviet Union, were killed or sent to concentration camps.

But the Jewish and Gypsy population was also exterminated by Latvian Nazi collaborators.

The Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, between 1941 and 1943, murdered most of Latvia’s 70'000 Jews and thousands more who had been deported from other parts of Europe. (1)

The most predominant group the Arājs Commando, alone killed about 26,000 Jews.

According to Wikipedia, the extermination included:

About 66,000 Latvian Jews, 19,000 German, Austrian and Czech Jews, unknown numbers of Lithuanian and Hungarian Jews; unknown but substantial number of Gypsies, Communists, and mentally-disabled persons; unknown number of non-Jewish Latvians shot or imprisoned in reprisals and so-called "anti-partisan" activities. (2)

Into this atmosphere, Armand Siksna was born.

Born in 1944 in Riga, Latvia, Siksna was raised by parents he described as "anti-communist conservatives". His father owned two turpentine refineries and supplied the Germans during the war; Siksna's uncle had a stake in two banks and belonged "to a right-wing fascist-inclined organization"... (3)

Was this organization the Arājs Commando?

A True Nazi

In the year of Armand's birth, the Soviets would once again occupy Latvia, after driving out the Germans, and most resistance groups were forced underground. After the war a massive influx of labourers, administrators, military personnel and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics began. The ethnic Latvian population felt threatened as a programme to impose bilingualism was initiated.

Many fled the country, including Armand's family, who arrived in Canada in 1957. To a thirteen-year-old boy, whose opinions were already formed, not even Canada was safe from Soviet expansion.

When an adult, calling himself a "true Nazi", he joined the Edmund Burke Society and later the Western Guard, where he would influence, and be influenced by people like Alex McQuirter, Wolfgang Droege and Don Andrews.

A confirmed anti-communist, he joined the Progressive Conservative party but soon found it "was not really right-wing enough for me." He eventually joined the Edmund Burke Society and then the Guard when he "started to realize the importance of racism — the preservation of our race." Siksna recalls: "I had come to the conclusion that I am a true Nazi — and that is the most beautiful and the most noble philosophy of all the political philosophies that have ever existed on this earth."- Siksna was on the executive of the Western Guard and he ran in several municipal and provincial elections. His main contribution seemed to be constant run-ins with the law. As a Guard member, he faced charges for the defacement of property by affixing hate posters. He was accused of the theft of a typewriter when he worked as a security guard at a warehouse, and when police raided his apartment for evidence he was charged with violating the propaganda law because Nazi and Klan material was found there. (3)

The cache included: "swastika flags, boxes of KKK propaganda and several copies of Mein Kampf." (4)

Siksna would spend a great deal of time behind bars for a variety of crimes, including the plot to kill a fellow Klansman, but his most comical, if we can find anything humorous about his activities, took place in 1980, when he was convicted of the fraudulent misuse of a credit card. Apparently he found the credit card on the floor of a store and attempted to use it. Unfortunately for him the card was a demo made out to "Mrs. Happy Shopper". (3)

On February 22, the Toronto Sun reported that Armand Siksna had joined the Reform Party. As always, Preston Manning revoked the membership, but only after media exposure. However, though not following the violence of the Klan and other hate groups, Manning's Reform Party ideology was not unlike theirs. Pro-Anglo, anti-immigration, anti-gay, anti-feminism, the list goes on. The only difference was that they were legitimate.

Aftermath

According to Michael Faulkner in Letters from the UK, the British Tory Party, is becoming friendly with the old Latvian anti-Communist movement, now headed by Roberts Zile.

More alarming is the alliance the Tories have struck in the EU with some of Europe’s most unsavory people – Polish and Latvian ultra-nationalist parties with strong anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi associations. And perhaps most alarming of all is the fact that the Tories and many others seem to find this quite acceptable. Where one might have expected outrage, instead there have been indignant attacks on critics of the ultra-nationalists, who are accused of maligning honorable men and repeating “Soviet era” slanders against them. At the centre of this controversy are two parties belonging to the new right-wing grouping, the European Conservatives and Reformists, with which the Tories have chosen to ally themselves. They are The Polish Law and Justice Party and the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom party. (1)

And in Canada there is some concern with Jason Kenney's plan to build a monument to the victims of communism:

According to an Oct. 14 commentary by Efraim Zuroff in The Guardian newspaper, "if anyone needed additional proof of the unsuitability of the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom party as a partner for the British Conservatives, their response to a ceremony held yesterday in Riga to honour the Soviet soldiers who liberated the city in 1944 should be a stark reminder of the lack of shared values between the two parties." For Fatherland and Freedom condemned Riga mayor Nils Usakovs for placing a wreath at the Victory Monument which commemorates the liberation of Riga from Nazi occupation, and for taking part in a rally to mark the event. The party called Usakovs' presence at these events "an insult to the victims of Communist terror and a glorification of the Soviet troops." However, For Fatherland and Freedom is well known for honouring Latvia's Waffen-SS veterans who fought for Third Reich and Nazi domination of Europe. As Usakovs stated, "had Riga not been liberated from the Nazis in 1944, there would be no independent Latvia today [and therefore] it is our duty to thank those who fought against the Nazis." In Zuroff's view, the positions taken by the Fatherland and Freedom leader Roberts Zile and other ultra-right politicians "are hardly exceptional in their home countries...

... By joining forces with Fatherland and Freedom and Poland's Law and Justice, says Zuroff, "the Conservatives are granting important legitimacy to a false narrative that seeks to whitewash war crimes and erase the heroic victory of those who saved the world from Hitler and the Nazis." The UK-Latvia link is not an isolated phenomenon in Europe, where right-wing forces in many countries are pressing for bans against Communist political activity.

Here in Canada, the federal Conservatives have hitched their wagon to a similar attempt to falsify history. Stephen Harper and Tory cabinet minister Jason Kenney have both encouraged the groups which initiated the proposal for a "monument to the victims of communism" on the grounds of the National Capital Commission. (5)

We have got to start paying attention.

Continued: Odonists and the Western Guard

Sources:

1. ULTRA-NATIONALISTS AND ANTI-SEMITES: The Tories’ Latvian and Polish Friends,
By Michael Faulkner, TPJ Magazine, November 08, 2009

2. The Holocaust in Latvia, Wikipedia

3. White Hoods, By Julian Sher, New Star Books, 1983, ISBN 0-919573-13-4, Pg. 83-84

4. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg. 215

5. UK TORIES LINKED TO LATVIAN FASCISTS, The People's Voice, November 2009

Odonists and the Western Guard

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

In Bryan Palmer's latest book; Canadas 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era*, he discusses the rise of the "New Left" that brought about social change, engineered primarily by Canada's youth.

This youth surge of course was fuelled as the post-War baby boomers poured into the workforce, universities, and even swelled the ranks of the unemployed.

The predominant issues at the time were Nuclear Disarmament, Peace, which included an end to the Vietnam War; and Canadian nationalism, with a desire to break away from what was deemed too much American influence. One group of young intelligentsia even started the Waffle Movement within the NDP, in an attempt to move the party further left.

Another movement that was not created in the 60's, but found renewed strength was Feminism, with demands for daycare, equal pay for work of equal value, equality in the workplace and other institutions, education around birth control and a campaign against the antiquated abortion laws. This organized women’s movement won some of their demands and influenced many institutions. They were also strong in the Waffle Movement of the NDP, and greatly influenced the party as a whole.

The election of the Liberal Pierre Trudeau, (which became a catalyst to the right) was seen as a positive sign to the left, as he represented social change, and indeed changed the country's social structure tremendously. But we have to remember, that is what the majority of Canadians then demanded.

And just as there was a "New Left" demanding social change, there was also a "New Right" challenging these changes.

The Extremes

Though most on the left and right were moderate, both sides had their radical branches, with some on the left promoting Communism and some on the right, Fascism; the old struggles that helped to create war in Europe.

Indeed Adolf Hitler's Fascist Brown Shirts were created to counter what Hitler and other radicals at the time, deemed to be a rise in socialism and communism, which like the Neo-Nazi groups of later years, they blamed on the Jews and Liberalism.

Two of the most extreme movements in Canada at the time were the Maoists on the left and the Odonists on the right. The first of course were followers of the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, but the Odonists were white supremacists who followed the belief in a true Nordic race, similar to the Aryans of the Thule Society. They followed the Pagan god Odon, and would eventually culminate into a branch of the Canadian KKK.

But one evening in downtown Toronto, in the 1960's, the leader of the Odonists, a tall Norwegian named Paul Hartmann, was walking with his girlfriend and another female, when a group of Maoists, carrying lead pipes wrapped in newspapers for concealment, crossed the street and confronted Paul and the women. They first hit the girlfriend, then pushed the other female acquaintance through a large plate glass window. When Paul tried to defend the women, he was surrounded and hit on the head, rendering him unconscious.

The original story was that the Maoists were defending themselves, but an amateur photographer captured the scene and got a clear image of Paul being hit and the girls being attacked. In the court case that followed, the lawyer for the Maoists argued that since Paul was an Odinist and Odinists believe in "always attacking superior numbers of foes", to explain how he was outnumbered, his clients should be let off. And in fact they were.

However, this was probably part of a bigger picture. On the day this happened there was a Maoist parade on Yonge Street, and perhaps seeing the future leader of the Toronto KKK approaching, they sensed trouble, so went on the offensive.

Neither side was right, but assault is assault, and I'm sure the court's decision only inflamed the group even more.

White nationalist and fellow Odonist, Eric Thomson wrote a story for Paul, called The Awakening, about a young Jewish man who is offered as sacrifice to the pagan god.

The Western Guard and the KKK

Paul Hartmann would go on to join the Western Guard, along with men like Donald Andrews, Alex McQuirter, Armand Siksna and Wolfgang Droege. Originally the Edmund Burke Society, they had changed their name in February of 1972, and expanded their list of enemies from Communists and Liberals, to include Jews and non-whites.

They were also virulently anti-feminist, including opposition to abortion (that would result in a decline of the white race) and anti-homosexual.

When Don Andrews, then head of the Western Guard, was arrested for plotting to launch a terrorist bomb attack on the Israeli soccer team during an exhibition match at Varsity Stadium, Droege and McQuirter did not sit idle. The group had already become interested in the American KKK movement, under it's charismatic leader, David Duke, and after attending a rally and cross burning outside New Orleans, where Duke led his troops in chants "White Power", they approached Duke and told him that they would like to be his men in Canada.

Duke, in turn, provided McQuirter and Droege with the names and addresses of a few dozen Canadians who had contacted him to seek information about the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Rejuvenated, Droege and McQuirter returned to Canada. During the days, McQuirter busied himself with the Canadian militia, while Droege continued his work as a printer; in evenings and on weekends, however, the pair organized on behalf of David Duke. They contacted the men and women on Duke's lists, and held small, secretive meetings at homes around Toronto. In April 1977, the Canadian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan secured some media coverage when Droege persuaded Duke, who was then visiting a group of Klansmen in Buffalo, New York, to tour through Toronto. As expected, the resulting news coverage attracted more recruits. (1)

They were becoming a formidable force and even enjoying a level of legitimacy.

In January 1978, a teacher at Cardinal Newman Roman Catholic High School, in Toronto's suburbs, invited the Klan to speak to his American Civil War class. Recalls Droege: "At that point, we had done a little bit of literature distribution, we had set up a post office box, we had done a few things that had gotten attention behind the scenes. But when we were invited to go to the Catholic high school, it attracted a lot of attention. When we got there, of course, the invitation had been cancelled on us. So we held a demonstration." Among those who participated in the demonstration was Toronto Klansman Paul Hartmann. (1)

Rita Anne Kelly

Paul Hartmann would meet and marry a young woman named Rita Anne Kelly, a University of Toronto Law student, who became a member of the Upper Canada Law Society in 1975. Her brother was also a lawyer and partner in the firm Walton Brigham Kelly**.

Paul, who went from Odonist to Western Guard to the KKK, no doubt had acquired enemies, and died in 1986 "under mysterious circumstances" in the hallway of his Toronto home. His wife, Rita Anne would move to Ottawa the following year, and go on to dabble in far right causes.

The Hartmann family lived in a huge home at 25 Delaware Avenue, in the well-to-do Golden Triangle neighborhood. From there, Hartmann maintained connections with neo-Nazi groups across North America. In March 1990, for example, she wrote to the ultra-violent Confederate Hammerskins of Tulsa, Oklahoma, using an alias she favors, Eleanor Cameron. Out of the same address, Ann Hartmann busied herself with REAL WOMEN OF CANADA. Hartmann, who has a law degree from the University of Toronto, provides legal advice to REAL WOMEN. In April 1989, for example, she gave an anti-abortion speech to a Real women conference at the Radisson Hotel in Ottawa. (2)

Enter the Reform Party

The Reform Party adopted a motion at it's inception, to allow right-wing fringe groups to join them, including Doug Christie's Western Canada Concept***, a separatist party. "In short the party leadership was trying to broaden it's right-wing support while not entirely surrendering it's attraction to fringe elements, at least some of whom were present at the Winnipeg Convention." (3)

This included groups like the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada**** and REAL Women. (Rita) Anne Hartmann joined the Reform Party seeing them as a good right-wing option, but she would also become a founding member of another more notorious group.

The Northern Foundation

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper [now prime minister of Canada]." (4)

According to Kinsella:

The Northern Foundation's president was Ann Hartmann, widow of former Western Guard activist Paul Hartmann. Hartmann had moved to Ottawa in 1987 with her six children, two of whom were skinheads who would go on to recruit on behalf of the Heritage Front in the national capital. (2)

The NF was to be a vanguard for the extreme right, and the Heritage Front was a group co-founded by Wolfgang Droege, that fell under their umbrella:

"Back home, Droege held low-key meetings with his new group in his apartment. They discussed their plans for their new group, and they discussed a name: the Heritage Front. One man, James Scott Dawson, registered the name; another Gerry Lincoln, designed a logo and some letterhead. Then, in November 1989, the Heritage Front went public. Droege, Lincoln and a few others travelled to Ottawa for the founding conference of the Northern Foundation. Droege had chosen a good place for his coming-out party." (5)

As Kinsella notes "not all of the Northern Foundation's members were neo-Nazis", including Harper, but members of the Heritage front would go on to join the Reform Party. In fact, Wolfgang Droege would become the Ontario Policy chair.

The next month, on June 12, 1991, the Reform Party of Canada held a massive rally in Mississauga, Ontario. The event, which drew some 6,000 people to hear Preston Manning, marked the first high profile event for the security group directed by Droege's employer, Alan Overfield. ... On June 13, 1991, several Heritage Front members attended a meeting of Paul Fromm's Canadians for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR) where Overfield from the Reform Party set up a table to sign people up for the Party. The dates on the membership forms for Droege, Polinuk, Dawson and Mitrevski, however, show that they had joined the Party before that meeting. (6)

Preston Manning would eventually expel them all, including Anne Hartmann.

"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." (7 )

Rita Anne Hartmann would eventually move to Eugene Oregon, and now runs a chain of successful holistic clinics. She seems to have turned her life around and it wouldn't be fair to assume that she still shares these beliefs. However, when her past was discovered in Eugene it did create a stir:

Rita "Ann" Hartmann (alias Elinor Cameron), owner of Rejuvenation Spa in Eugene is the president of the Northern Foundation and the director of Real Women of Canada. Her husband, Paul Hartmann was a member of Cornerstone Alliance (he is now deceased). Her son, Eric Hartmann, is a member of the Heritage Front. All of the above named groups are nazi, white supremacy groups. In 1974, Paul was treasurer of the openly neo-Nazi Western Guard. In those years Paul was known as the "High Priest" of the Revolutionary Odinist Movement, which he described as an "Aryan" religion and a "New Order for our White People". He is also reported to have worked with the Ku Klux Klan at that time.

Rejuvenation Spa, at the very least, should be boycotted. Eric Hartmann is a well known and respected herbalist (maybe not anymore!) in the community. I was shocked to find all this out, but unfortunately it is true. Seeing his name and his mothers name in the neo-right directory (see below) was enough to convince me to stay far far away from Rejuvenation Spa and make sure everyone I know does too. It's crazy that this business, supposedly a welcoming, healthy and healing environment, is run by nazi's. (8)

Rita responded with "I was active in a movement to impeach a former Canadian Prime Minister. The Canadian Government smeared me, my late husband, and even my children - and many other people in the impeachment movement - and continues to do so. End of story. Rita Anne Hartmann." (8)

If they were indeed involved in trying to impeach a prime minister it would have been Brian Mulroney. But they were also involved in trying to protect apartheid in South Africa.

Continued: Ann Farmer and Going Legit


Footnotes:

*Canadas 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era, By Bryan D. Palmer, University of Toronto Press, 2009, ISBN: 13-9780802096593

**Rita Anne Hartmann would recently be in trouble with the Law Society over a trust account of her brother's firm.

***Stockwell Day's father was also a member of the WCC

****One of Stephen Harper's latest patronage senate appointments, Bob Runciman, was then a member of APEC.

Sources:

1. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, Harper Collins, 1994, Pg. 214-215

2. Kinsella, 1994, Pg. 224

3. 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 3, Pg. 115-116

4. Harrison, 1995, Pg. 121

5. Kinsella, 1994, pg 263-264

6. The Heritage Front Affair Report to the Solicitor General of Canada Security Intelligence Review Committee December 9, 1994

7. Kinsella, 1994, Pg. 243-44

8. Eugene business, Rejuvenation Spa, operated by White Supremacists, Portland Independent Media Centre, September 2, 2002

The Invisible Hand of the American Enterprise Institute

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

On April 3, 1939, Lewis H. Brown, President of  Johns-Manville Corp., made the cover of Time magazine, as the "outstanding public relations success of 1938".

When Brown had taken his job in 1927, things were much simpler for industry.  Business executives were only accountable to their stockholders, and so long as they could make a profit, they were pretty much left alone.

But with the Depression, when government realized that they would have to intervene in the nation's economy, all that changed.  Not only would business have to answer to government, but also now to labour and the  public.

 And they were getting a bad rap.

So they began to hire "consulting" firms to handle PR.  If Ivy Lee, the man known as the "founder of public relations", could turn the most hated man in America, John D. Rockefeller, into the  "great benefactor", anything was possible.

Brown stood out as a leader of corporate PR, not as an adman, but as a corporate executive with a soul, and maybe even a heart.  He promoted the idea of a business selling itself to the public, by developing leaders whose comprehension of public relations was "as mature as their knowledge of their particular trades." (1)

To do this many added public relations experts to their staff, but Lewis Brown handled the task himself.

When he first landed the job as president, he discovered that the company, which produced asbestos insulation, was very unpopular  in most of the 17 towns where it had factories and mines.  So he started a pictorial news sheet for employees, issued a series of booklets such as "This is our policy on the closed shop," and hired Cartoonist Don Herold to do a set of down-to-earth advertisements for local newspapers. Under his direction, J-M plants, were getting known as "good neighbors".

Since much of the insulation went into homes, in 1934 Lewis Brown started the National Housing Guild, to educate local lumber dealers in all the phases of house-building (including insulation) so that a prospective builder could get all his information and all his work at one spot.

When President Brown went to speak at his factory in Asbestos, Quebec, he memorized his entire speech in French (1).  With such attention to detail, Brown not only won over the public, but became the chief spokesman for all Big Business.

Of course there was another side to Brown that the public didn't see.

While befriending his employees in public, in private their welfare was not as important.  In 1984, decades  after Brown's death, Johns-Manville was taken to court for endangering the health and safety of their workers.

In his testimony, Charles H. Roemer, a former employee, described a meeting between Lewis H. Brown and their attorney in the early 1940s, "I’ll never forget, I turned to Mr. Brown, [after he implied that the J-M firm in question, Unarco, "were a bunch of fools for notifying employees who had asbestosis), and I said, ‘Mr. Brown, do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?’ He said, ‘Yes. We save a lot of money that way.'" (2) 

As Lewis Brown became one of the leaders of the Conservative Movement, his goal among other things, was to remove health and safety regulations that would make industry responsible for the safety of their workers or the public.  A goal that continues today.

Lewis Brown and the American Enterprise Association

As a business leader, Brown was often invited to provide input into public policy.  Even FDR sought his counsel.  But all that changed on April 8, 1943, when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9328, which was implemented in an effort to control wartime inflation. 

The order froze prices nationwide on anything that could affect the cost of living, which was pretty much everything, and while prohibiting wage increases, it also outlawed layoffs, except in special circumstances.

In short, it allowed the federal government to control the price of everything you buy, where you worked, and how much you made.

And while corporate America was outraged, the general public was compliant, choosing national security over loyalty to their employers.

So Lewis Brown decided to use the same kind of public relations and education schemes that had made Johns-Manville such a success, on a larger scale, and created one of the movement's first think tanks:  The American Enterprise Association.

He hired a dozen of the country’s top conservatives to staff it, who were charged with the task of putting as many like-minded  people into powerful positions, to meet Roosevelt on his own turf.  Their main goals were to kill the New Deal (including 9328),  promote free enterprise and a strong national defense, and eliminate all personal and corporate income taxes.

Not restrained by the need to play nice, AEA could denounce FDR as a communist, or at best a socialist, and even call for his impeachment, without the business leaders who provided the funding, losing their own "nice guy" reputations.

Becoming Political

Lewis H. Brown died in 1951, and William Baroody took over AEA, giving it a new direction and a new name, the American Enterprise Institute, implying an educational rather than a political organization.  He applied for tax-exempt status and got it, allowing him to actively fund raise among the moneyed elite.

Baroody was an aggressive, take-no-prisoners, conservative political activist, with the single-minded goal of placing as many far-right conservatives into the U.S. government as possible.  He himself would become a policy advisor to both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, before his death in 1980.

However, his biggest contribution was in  elevating the status of Barry Goldwater and engineering his nomination as the Republican presidential candidate.  Beginning in 1960, he solicited funds from wealthy conservatives, and the first to open his wallet, was Ernest Manning's friend J. Howard Pew,  founder of Sunoco and then the principle owner of the Alberta tar sands.

Pew wrote out a cheque for $100,000 to AEI, no small sum in 1962, and would continue to promote the institute and their campaigns.  In fact, the Pew Foundation remains one of their prime benefactors.

Infiltration of Government

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, AEI had five centers of study: Center for the Study of Government Regulation; Economic Policy; Political and Social Processes; Legal Policy; and Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy.

They helped to draft Reagan's foreign policy, through a forum on "War Powers and the Constitution".  They supported the invasion of Grenada, the dispatch of Marines to Lebanon and the Nicaraguan contra policies, that could have had Reagan impeached.

AEI member Christopher DeMuth,  who had served as a staff assistant to President Nixon, became the "deregulation czar", under Reagan, in his new position as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. 

James Miller III went from AEI to the Reagan administration as Federal Trade Commission chairman and than administrator of the Office of Management and Budget. 

Michael Novak was appointed by President Reagan to act as chief of the U. S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Novak was also on the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a neoconservative religious activist group working to undermine progressive movements within the religious community, and has helped to export anti-gay culture.

The board of AEI has included many corporate executives as well as neoconservative leaders including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard M. Perle, Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol.

George W. Bush pulled 20 staffers from AEI, including Canadian David Frum [now an American citizen], who would become a speechwriter for the president.  Frum helped to organize the Winds of Change conference with Ezra Levant, in 1996, in an attempt to unite the Tories with the Reform Party.  However, PC leader Jean Charest, wanted nothing to do with them.  There was absolutely no common ground.

The AEI in Canada

Aside from Howard Pew's and David Frum's obvious connections, the  AEI has also inspired many Canadian think tanks, who often share financial backers.

They heavily influenced one of the first provincial neoconservative governments, that of Grant Devine in Saskatchewan (3).  Michael Novak is a regular speaker at both the Fraser Institute and the Manning Centre for Democracy, and according to Lloyd Mackey, has helped to shape the thinking of Stephen Harper. (4)

Their goals have changed little since the days of Lewis H. Brown.  They are just better organized, have more money, and have gained legitimacy thanks to the media, who often quote from their many reports.

Sources:

1. PUBLIC RELATIONS: Corporate Soul, Time Magazine, April 03, 1939

2. Testimony of Charles H. Roemer, Deposition taken April 25, 1984, Johns-Manville Corp., et al. v. the United States of America, U.S. Claims Court Civ. No. 465-83C, cited in Barry I. Castleman, Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects, 4th edition, Aspen Law and Business, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1996, p.581

3. Privatizing a Province: The New Right in Saskatchewan, By: James M. Pitsula and Ken Rasmussen, New Star Books, 1990, ISBN: 0-921586-10-8, p. 7

4. The Pilgramage of Stephen Harper, By: Lloyd Mackey, ECW Press, 2005, ISBN: 10-1-55022-713-0 , p. 94 & 209

The Politics of Obscurantism: Next You Control the Message

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

"His full conquest of the masses came only after [he] had silenced oppositional opinion and had acquired total control of the media." Konrad Heiden (1)

The next component of Obscurantism, a concept that a friend suggested I explore, is message control. I've covered most of these things before but was amazed at how well they fit with this definition. So if you feel uncomfortable calling Stephen Harper a Fascist, call him an Obscurantist. Both fit.

In the pragmatic exposé of Stephen Harper, in his new book Harperland, Lawrence Martin devotes a chapter to Harper's "control fixation". But control is a key element of neoconservatism, as espoused by Leo Strauss.

According to Martin:

The PMO was in the course of putting in place a message-control system, a vetting operation unlike anything ever seen in the capital. No other government had even come close to such a system of oversight.

The new regimen called for all public pronouncements by civil servants, diplomats, the military, cabinet members, and Conservative MPs to be approved by the Prime Minister's Office or its bureaucratic arm, the Privy Council Office (PCO). The vetting was by no means a quick rubber-stamping procedure. If a government official or a caucus member wanted to say something publicly, he or she would first have to fill out a Message Event Proposal (MEP) and submit it to central command. This form had sections with such titles as Desired Headline, Strategic Objective, Desired Sound Bite, and the like. It also had areas for supplying details on the speaking backdrop, the ideal event photograph, and even the speaker's wardrobe.

Once submitted, the MEP was studied by PMO and PCO officials, often bouncing back and forth between apparatchiks before getting final approval. Some MEPs required less vetting than others, but the massive centralization caused logjams, delays, and in some cases, cancellation of planned events because the requester never heard back in time. Keith Beardsley recalled even events for cabinet ministers being derailed. "Every communications director for every minister was trying to get stuff through. Their ministers wanted to do things," he said. But "because of the backlog [sometimes an event] got delayed and delayed and it was cancelled." In the past, while there was sonic vetting, departments produced their own news releases and scheduled events for ministers independently. Under Harper, such freedom was not allowed. (2)　

Time Magazine 1936:

Because Adolf Hitler's speeches may be used to prove almost anything, the Nazi Commission of Inspection of Nazi Literature announced that Hitler's speeches may not be quoted in print hereafter without the Commission's express permission. Hearing that the rebellious pastors of the German Evangelical [Lutheran] Church plan to print and circulate privately their unanswered protest to the Reichsführer against practically everything going on in Nazi Germany, the Gestapo (secret police) raided Confessional Synod offices, lugged off typewriters, mimeograph and printing machines. (3)

"Such freedom was not allowed".

The German version of the "Message Event proposal" was handled by Philipp Bouhler, who was "the Chairman of the Official Party Inspection Commission for the Protection of National Socialist Literature, which determined what writings were suitable for Nazi society, and which were not." (4)

Before you can even hope to set up a system of obscuring the message, you have to be able to control the message. And Stephen Harper incrementally created a system whereby he controls every word that comes out of the mouths of not only his caucus, especially his ministers, but the public service as well.

And the media has become so conditioned to this, that they rarely question it. Matthew Brett wrote recently for Global Research:

Not surprisingly, the Globe and Mail and other news organizations ran a press release from the PMO's office verbatim, with no critical commentary, analysis or insight. The state of media today is such that copy-pasting a press release from the PMO and slapping it on the front page of a national daily newspaper is accepted practice. Indeed, Conservative strategist Tom Flanagan writes that “compared to most countries with which I have any familiarity, the Conservatives in Canada actually have friendly media to work with.” The ‘Propaganda Model’ is more than alive and well, but sometimes without even bothering to ‘filter’ news content. (5)

The Conservatives in Canada have friendly media to work with, or just lazy media. Either way they should be ashamed. And this certainly contradicts their stance that the media is out to get them.

But besides just writing their own copy, the Conservatives now also take their own photos. After an image was published and incorrectly labelled as an actual event, Steven Chase wrote:

Since the spring [of 2009], the PMO has effectively set up its own picture service, e-mailing photos to Canadian media almost daily in an effort to find a market for publicity shots of Mr. Harper's activities. It's a service that ultimately competes with the work of photojournalists, but one, they argue, that should not be relied upon as a record of events. (6)

And they didn't stop at providing photos, but now also provide videos.

Taxpayers are being asked to pay an extra $1.7-million this fiscal year to help bolster Stephen Harper's communications support services – just as the Prime Minister's Office begins distributing government videos of Harper to the news media. Supplementary estimates tabled last month by the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's bureaucratic back office, boosted internal operational spending by almost $7.3-million for 2009-10. That's on top of existing budgets. (7)

By doing things in small steps, the public remains mostly unaware that everything they see and hear from our government, as reported by the press, is staged for our amusement. But when you look at the big picture, that's when it becomes frightening.

Sometimes the media, and pundits, must feel the hairs on the back of their necks stand up, so they will dismiss it by suggesting that other prime ministers have done this. But as Lawrence Martin says, it's: "... a vetting operation unlike anything ever seen in the capital. No other government had even come close to such a system of oversight."

"No other government had even come close." Worth repeating.

By dismissing this, journalists and columnists are only creating an enabling condition that further threatens our democracy, which is already hanging on by a thread.

Previous:

The Politics of Obscurantism: First You Obstruct

Sources:

1. Der Fhehrer, Hitler's Rise to Power, By: Konrad Heiden, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944

2. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 58

3. GERMANY: Tyranny, Time Magazine, August 03, 1936

4. Philipp Bouhler - Wikipedia

5. Canadian Politics: The Newly Benevolent Stephen Harper, By Matthew Brett, Global Research, March 14, 2010

6. Is Stephen Harper going too far in trying to control his image? By Steven Chase, Globe and Mail, November 06, 2009

7. Taxpayers on hook for $1.7-million as PMO rolls out video, By Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press, December 08, 2009

Chapter Five: The Sacrament of Politics

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Enthusiastic oilmen envision the Alberta of the future as a northern Texas whose oil and gas pipelines will fan out over the top half of the continent, driving the expanding industries of Canada and the northern U.S. as the oil and gas of Texas now power the South and East.  (CANADA: Texas of the North, Time Magazine, September 24, 1951)

As all that oil flowed out of Alberta, something else flowed in.  A new conservatism, then being thrust upon the Grand Old Party in the United States.

Premier Ernest Manning's close friend and confidante, J. Howard Pew, was a major player in the new Trinity of "God, Republicanism and the USA". 

Pew was a wealthy American oil tycoon and co-founder of Sun Oil (now Sunoco).  A Christian fundamentalist like Manning, he envisioned a North America run by the business elite, for the business elite, and based on the Supremacy of God.

We tend to dismiss this portion of our history, except as it relates to Alberta.  After all, the Social Credit Party is gone.  But in fact, it is now more important than ever, to study Ernest Manning's contribution to history, since it speaks to the time when Movement Conservatism first began in Canada.  Manning had abandoned the populism of Social Credit for the corporatism of the new American Right, and formulated his plans for a new Canadian Right, in the boardrooms of "enthusiastic oilmen", and financiers.

What was remarkable, was that they were able to turn a corporate takeover into a religious crusade.

Billy Graham and his Magical Kingdom

In 1964, Evangelical leader, Billy Graham, toured university campuses, speaking to students about God.  When appearing at Harvard, a young reporter for the school's newspaper, noticed that something was a bit off.  Or perhaps a bit too "on".

A question was presented to Graham from an audience member.  'How can I keep my intellectual integrity and believe in God?'  A good question, I suppose.  So good that someone else had made the same query at a press conference, held earlier that day.

In fact, it was identical to a question asked of Graham when he was speaking at Wellesley, Rindge Tech, Princeton and Michigan State.  The answers were also exactly the same, delivered with the same passion, and sense of revelation at such an obvious wringer.

The astute reporter for the Harvard Crimson, also noticed something else.  Graham's presentation reminded him of that of a Republican hopeful, who was also on a speaking engagement.  Said he:  "Billy Graham and Barry Goldwater have more in common than the initials they use." (1)

This would not have been such a surprise if the author had understood that both Graham and Goldwater were players in the movement conservatism that would soon be taking over right-wing politics.   Heavily scripted and rehearsed, nothing was left to chance.

When Billy Graham claimed to " believe every word of the Bible . . .", it was difficult for many in the audience to imagine how an ancient text could help solve the problems of the day.  Graham refused to address the Civil Rights Movement, only criticizing the demonstrations.

Harvard pastor, Rev. James R. Blanning, had been looking forward to Graham's appearance, but was disappointed.

Billy Graham was with us last week and it was a pleasure to have him in the Harvard community. Yet I think it should be clearly understood that he does not represent Protestant thinking and speaks only for himself. I say this because personally I have always felt that Dr. Graham combines a most appealing sincerity with an incredible understanding of Christian thought and theology. I say incredible because I don't know of any reputable Protestant seminary that teaches the kind of theology that he represented here last week.
 
For one thing, I am troubled by his insistence that the Bible was a kind of magical authority. His oft-repeated statement, "The Bible says," leaves the impression that a simple reading of the scriptures will provide all the answers to life. Never a word is said about biblical criticism or the contemporary understanding of textual material. In the matter of authority, the teachings of the Church or the development of theology are never mentioned. Billy Graham gives to the Bible a kind of authority that would make even Martin Luther uncomfortable. (2)

Other critics of Graham, suggested that he had taken religion back a century, something he would gladly claim to be true and intentional, though a century wasn't nearly enough.

Movement conservatism is a doctrine and their political actions a sacrament.  The infallibility of the Bible was necessary if they were going to build a set of principles around it.

But did Graham really believe it himself?  Perhaps not.

The late Charles Templeton (1915-2001), evangelical turned agnostic; wrote a book Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. In it he describes his journey from a popular Christian crusader, and colleague of Billy Graham, to his eventual abandonment of organized religion.

At a stage in his life when he was beginning to have doubts about his faith, he went to his friend Graham, expecting some spiritual guidance.  He asked him how he could accept creationism as 'fact' when there was irrefutable evidence that the world had evolved over millions of years. Graham, an intelligent man, told him "I've discovered something in my ministry: when I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power." (3)

It wasn't about what he believed but what he could sell.  He has built a  $100 million dollar empire and his own personal net worth is pegged at $25 million.  Former President Bush called Graham "America's pastor." Harry Truman called him a "counterfeit" and publicity seeker.

They were both right.

1964 was a pivotal year for movement conservatives.  They had taken over the Republican National Convention, bringing forth their own presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater.  Howard Pew had contributed to Goldwater's victory and financed Billy Graham's crusades.

When some in the mainstream media refused to run Goldwater's ads because they were too radical, they took down names.  When Harvard criticized both Graham and Goldwater, they dismissed them as "dupes, stupes and traitors".  And when Lyndon Johnson gave Goldwater a trouncing, they smiled. 

The battle lines were now drawn.  They had God and country on their side.  Let the crusades begin.

Perhaps the controversial Christian Crusader, Billy James Hargis said it best: 

In the wake of the tragic events of November 3 [1964], and their fearful consequences on the course of human events in the years to come, Crusaders must most assuredly don their armor of Christian responsibility and face the rigors of the battle ahead. With the cross of Christ and the American Flag as our only standards, we must reconsecrate our efforts, regardless of the cost, to right the terrible wrong which has been done. (4)

Canada Begins Her own Crusade

While Billy Graham was crusading for Howard Pew and his "Oil Tycoons" in the U.S., there was an opening for a crusader in Canada, and they saw promise in Preston Manning, the young son of Alberta Premier Ernest Manning.

He had studied the Reformation and was ready to apply what he learned to Canadian politics.  According to biographer Frank Dabbs:

Preston Manning's first major research project after his convocation was to assemble a body of literature on the Protestant Reformation and the history of English evangelical "awakenings" and American revival movements. He studied this material intensively for several weeks, created his own synthesis, then wrote a paper and developed some speeches about spiritual awakening in the 1960s. (5)

He then tested his theories on his father's Back to Bible radio program.  The elder Manning was hoping to return to the reforming passion that had first brought Social Credit to power in the province, instilling a sense of mission that could spread to a federal government.

It would take forty years and three failed parties, but eventually his dream came true, though he wouldn't live to see it.

Sources:

1. Billy Graham Silhouette, By Donald E. Graham, The Harvard Crimson, February 20, 1964

2. Billy Graham, The Mail, Harvard Crimson, February 26, 1964

3. Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, By Charles Templeton, McClelland & Stewart, 1996, ISBN: 0-7710-8422-6, p. 7-8

4. The American Far Right:  A Case Study of Billy James Hargis and Christian Crusade, By John Harold Redekop, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-28375, p. 201

5. Preston Manning: Roots of Reform, By: Frank Dabbs, Greystone, 2000, ISBN -13-97815-50547504, p. 59

The Politics of Obscurantism: First You Obstruct

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Obscurantism is characterized by deliberate vagueness in an attempt to obscure the facts. Republican strategists have mastered the art, passing it on to Canada's conservative movement.

Much of this comes from the mastermind, Leo Strauss, who is said to be the father of  Neoconservatism (the marriage of movement conservatism with neoconservatism, and their adopted children, the Religious Right). Now and then the media will hint that Stephen Harper is a Straussian, but when Rick Salutin came right out and said it, in a column for the Globe and Mail, he was fired. (1)

In understanding Leo Strauss and his political ideas, while they may originate with Plato's 'Noble Lie', they are actually found in the rise and prolonged success of the Nazi Party. A blueprint for fascism. The definitive Obscurantism.

I'm not talking about the war or the Holocaust, but simply how the Nazi Party was able to achieve such ultimate control of a nation. And they did it with a minority government.

If you read newspaper or magazine accounts of Adolf Hitler throughout the 1920's and early '30's, they are mostly unflattering and dismissive, mocking Hitler and his thugs.

In fact the term Nazi was not an abbreviation of their name: National Socialist German Workers Party, but a term coined by journalist Konrad Heiden, who followed Hitler for 23 years. He gave them the name when he would march with them in a loose infiltration to get his story. 'Nazi' he said was a Bavarian slang term meaning "country bumpkin" (2).

Time magazine began writing of them as early as 1923, but did not use 'Nazi' until 1935. They were simply the 'Fascist Brown Shirts'. And when they first entered the Reichstag, they did everything in their power to 'obstruct' as a means to 'obscure'.

Elizabeth May, in her book Losing Confidence, describes some of the obstructive actions of the Harper caucus.

In one memorable Question Period, the question was about the safety of pet food in response to the tragic incident of poisoned pet food from China. The Conservative backbenchers started barking, "Woof, woof. Bow-wow" ... Heckling has also taken a crueler tone. Sexist taunts are more common*. Government MPs have even taken to loud booing of certain Liberal MPs they most dislike, even before a question can be asked. This is particularly the case for women MPs. For a while, whenever Judy Sgro rose to speak, the Conservatives would chant "pizza" in reference to the allegations from a campaign worker that she had violated elections laws by accepting free pizza for her volunteers. Although she was cleared by Elections Canada, chanting "pizza" seems to entertain the Conservatives. (3)

Compare that to the behaviour of the Brown Shirts at the Reichstag (Parliament) in 1930.

At women's names the Brown Shirts crowed. "Kikeriki! Kikeriki! Kikeriki!" —German equivalent to Cockadoodle-doo! (Fascists both German and Italian, hold that women are respectworthy as hens, jeerworthy when by entering politics they try to be roosters.) On the first day of the Reichstag session absolutely nothing was done except to call and jeer the roll. (4)

And the Harper government continued this obstruction, even creating a manual on how to make sure that Parliamentary committees don't function properly. (5)

I think we need to grow up and start realizing that Neoconservatism is Fascism in it's political strategies. Leo Strauss was a product of this era. He feared communism and hated liberalism. As a young boy he became aware of the cruel aspects of Communist Russia when his parents offered safe haven to a group of Russian Jews, escaping a pogrom. They told horrible tales, which as a young Jewish boy, left him wondering if that could happen to him (6). His first brush with anti-Semitism.

As an adolescent he joined the Zionist youth movement, and became a member of the Blau-Weiss. Strauss would refer to it as "pagan-fascism", (7) and their leader, Walter Moses, liked to imitate Mussolini. It was here that Strauss claimed to have nurtured his authoritarianism, and the concept of a clique**, led by a dictatorial style leader.

He had an intellectual relationship with Nazi Carl Schmitt, and in fact it was Schmitt who got Strauss out of Germany before the worst took place. Strauss colleague Hannah Arendt once said that he tried to join the Nazi Party but was turned away because he was Jewish.

If we continue to squirm every time the Harper government is referred to as Fascists, we will never understand what is happening to our country. They are not Conservatives. They are not Tories. They are Straussian Fascists, and one of the documented strategies to gain and hold onto power, is to obscure and obstruct. Because Strauss believed that the people (us) are "intellectually unworthy of knowing the facts and truth about the government."

Footnotes:

*They even heckled Carolyn Bennett when she was discussing H1N1.

** Writer Paul Berman called neoconservatism ‘a clique with a style that is marked by ruthlessness.’ He saw in neoconservatism a dangerous ‘romance of the ruthless,’

Sources:

1. Rick Salutin's Last Words:  Why did The Globe fire its popular columnist? Do his last pieces offer clues?, By David Beers, The Tyee, September 30, 2010

2. Master of the Masses, Time Magazine, February 07, 1944

3. Losing Confidence: Power, Politics and Crisis in Canadians Democracy, By Elizabeth May, McClelland & Stewart, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-7710-5760-1, p. 71-72

4. GERMANY: Br, Time Magazine, October 27, 1930

5.  Tories blasted for handbook on paralyzing Parliament, Canadian Press, May. 18, 2007

6. Why We Remain Jews," Lecture delivered by Strauss at the Hillel House, University of Chicago, 1962

7. Leo Strauss's 1923 celebration of "pagan-fascism" , By Alan Gilbert, Democratic Individuality, January 8, 2010