Harpers Fascism

Monday, April 30, 2007

Harpers Fascism

Being an autocratic PM is not enough for Stephen Harper, he is now promoting narrow reactionary nationalism in Quebec, coming as he does from the reactionary rural based Reform Party of Alberta, which originated out of the Social Credit party,

This of course is the classic basis for fascism, the petit-bourgeoisie and farmers which coincidentally populate the racist populist 'third way' ADQ.

Instead, the prime minister chose to brandish his credentials as a Quebec nationalist, hoping to make further inroads in a province that is central to Tory efforts to turn their minority government into majority. "There is nothing more precious than the family farm, which represents so well all the values on which our country has been built,'' he said to rapturous applause.

Modern fascism promotes itself as 'the third way" as does Harper and the ADQ when they speak of their third way as Quebec Nationalists.

Apparently, the CPC believe that there is a "third way" between what they call "Liberal" federalism and Bloc Quebecois separatism. This is Conservative Quebec nationalism.

The Harper regime is a classic case of modern fascism, embraced by the neo-cons in their promotion of Machiavellian politics in reaction to Stalinism and the left.

More broadly, fascism may be defined as any totalitarian regime which does not aim at the nationalization of industry but preserves at least nominal private property. The term can even be extended to any dictatorship that has become unfashionable among intellectuals.

Fascists were radical modernizers. By temperament they were neither conservative nor reactionary. Fascists despised the status quo and were not attracted by a return to bygone conditions. Even in power, despite all its adaptations to the requirements of the immediate situation, and despite its incorporation of more conservative social elements, Fascism remained a conscious force for modernization.

In Fascism's early days it encompassed an element of what was called "liberism," the view that capitalism and the free market ought to be left intact, that it was sheer folly for the state to involve itself in "production."

The fascist moral ideal, upheld by writers from Sorel to Gentile, is something like an inversion of the caricature of a Benthamite liberal. The fascist ideal man is not cautious but brave, not calculating but resolute, not sentimental but ruthless, not preoccupied with personal advantage but fighting for ideals, not seeking comfort but experiencing life intensely. The early Fascists did not know how they would install the social order which would create this "new man," but they were convinced that they had to destroy the bourgeois liberal order which had created his opposite.