Second Part. "The New Fascism" In Canada And The Western World

(4) An overall attack is on-going against national culture, against the ability to debate basic issues freely and democratically, and against the right of people to be provided education ensuring an alert and critical citizenry. The attack against culture is persistent in press, media, colleges, and universities. The attack affects teachers and teaching throughout the educational system. (5) Parliaments, parliamentary democracy, and the concept of “democracy” itself are under furious attack as I suggest in the last column. Even the necessarily raucous and intense division in parliaments is described by supporters of The New Fascism as bad manners, childishness, abandonment of the “high road” of behaviour, and other such names. Carol James, leader of the B.C. NDP, has been taken in completely by the rhetoric, seeing her role as “taking the high road” and assisting (a corrupt) government to govern well! Real democracy – Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, the USA, and (?) Canada (?) – for instance, is actively polluted in its electoral aspect, actively suborned, and actively undermined so that fake elections are held or democratically elected governments are attacked and/or erased. Then fraudulent surrogates are set up. Those fraudulent surrogates are what we might call “capitalist liberal administrations”, depending upon the rule of monopoly or cartel private corporations which oversee a wholly or largely fake democratic electoral system and a governing process in which candidacy is tightly controlled (study the political history of David Emerson), campaign issues are falsely constructed (with the cooperation of the corporate monopoly press and media), and elected “representatives” are pre-arranged servants of (a) corporate power, (b) U.S. policy, (c) The New Fascism. (6) That process ought not to be over-simplified, dismissed, or denied. A related characteristic of The New Fascism is the destruction of publicly owned corporations possessing primary goals of service, equality of treatment, and assurance of community integrity. As governments become more openly parts of the private corporate enterprise system, they increasingly contract out public service jobs to (often foreign) corporations whose primary reason for existence is to accrue profit for a few beyond the reach of public scrutiny and accountability. For instance, the B.C. part of the recent National Census Taking has been called a gigantic disaster – with a large number uncounted. Three U.S. corporations (Canadian branches) were contracted to do the task, one a major weapons manufacturer. The result was chaos. No doubt the corporations involved have profitted generously from their “work”. And no doubt – despite all denials – they gained admission to private and personal information about Canadians that should never be available to them. Like it or not, a key to The New Fascism is the USA. Friends of the USA and people who want to see balance in discussions of Western power often want to reject that assertion. But fundamentals of The New Fascism were and are shaped in the USA and are dynamically developed to assure U.S. global power. One of the keys to The New Fascism is the private corporation. The U.S. has been and is chief generator and protector of the modern, multi-national private corporation working in close alliance with U.S, government. In all cases of U.S.-influenced policy, whether in the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, NATO, The Asia Pacific Economic Community, or others, a key factor, always, is the pressure to create “open” economies. They are declared to provide the best conditions for democratic communities. That is an outright falsehood. “Open economies” – in the parlance of globalizing organizations – are marked by a number of qualities, none definitive of real democracy. They are “open” to foreign investment – which means the economies are in danger of takeover and/or control by Western (largely U.S.) private corporations in close alliance with U.S. government. The economies are urged to accept “international” trading rules that incidentally almost always benefit Western (largely U.S.) private corporations. The economies are urged to “modernize” their economies with money gained from huge debtloads administered by, say, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund which, when possible, dictate labour codes, working conditions, and social security levels – always downwards. Finally, the countries urged to have “open” economies are persuaded or placed in a position in which they cannot refuse to destroy all publicly owned corporations (water, electricity, communications, healthcare, transportation, energy extraction, etc) and to offer them on “the world market” for private ownership. The new “democratic” governments of Iraq and Afghanistan (both invaded and occupied by U.S. “coalitions”), for instance, have legislated that foreign private corporations may enter the economy freely, own, exploit, and then remove all profits without restriction regardless of the needs of the people of those countries. For The New Fascism those are conditions of free, open, and democratic communities. So effective has The New Fascism become, so dominant in its indoctrination of voters, so universally supported by large, monopoly private corporations in press, media, and book publishing – in all forms of public communication – that parties devoted to The New Fascism have great power and move easily into positions of political control. Parties opposed to The New Fascism struggle under debilitating conditions – economic, informational, and institutional. They cannot, in short, get financial support except in scattered and weak ways. They cannot get a fair hearing for their platforms in any mainstream forms of communication. And they cannot find support in institutions – public or private – dedicated to “democratic society”. A brief – but shocking – example of institutional hindrance in Canada is the increasing, reactionary politicization of police forces and their covert and overt activity in political life. In other columns I have alleged a sophisticated plot to unseat B.C. NDP leader and premier Glen Clark, involving politicians (the first move began in Gordon Campbell’s constituency office), the RCMP (which spent months and months and months examining and re-examining witnesses and gathering a few dozen volumes of “evidentiary material” that resulted in a complete dismissal of charges), and the Supreme Court of B.C. where Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett sat with a straight face through weeks and weeks of argument that led to absolutely nothing. Repeated calls for an objective inquiry into the scandal has also produced absolutely nothing. But the exercise eventuated in a reactionary government led by Gordon Campbell. When I made a complaint to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, my complaint took more than THREE YEARS to process. The Commission finally found that two experienced officers in the B.C. RCMP wrongfully terminated the investigation I had called for. The Commission’s recommendations? That officers undergo better training, and that the RCMP should decide whether or not to re-open the investigation at its own discretion. At the present moment the B.C. Civil Liberties Union alleges the RCMP interfered in and “significantly influenced” the last federal election on behalf of the Stephen Harper reactionaries. The RCMP shockingly and improperly announced a criminal investigation into a leak about Minister of Finance Ralph Goodale’s change of taxation on Income Trusts. The announcement alarmed a public preparing to vote in the federal election. The RCMP has laid no charges and has made no explanations for its apparent bid to assure an election victory for Stephen Harper. It has given no reasonable response to the B.C. Civil Liberties Union. As B.C. Civil Liberties Union president Jason Gratl says: “We spent months in informal and fruitless discussion with the RCMP seeking an explanation” for the (irregular) announcement of the criminal investigation mid-election. (Vanc Sun July 14 06 B1) Perhaps worse, anyway deeply disturbing is what appears to be a concerted (B.C. Court system, police, press, media and government) cover-up, and/or obfuscation, and/or delay, and/or erasure of charges and procedures, and of a failure to provide adequate information absolutely necessary to the British Columbia population. The charges against two legislative assistants and a police officer resulting from an unprecedented raid by RCMP on legislature offices in Victoria on December 28, 2003 – spoken of by a police officer then in the terms of “organized crime” - have not been completed and almost no member of the public knows anything about the status of the charges. Parts are being undertaken very, very slowly with almost no press or media coverage, with both police and the courts apparently content with procedures about which the public knows nothing and about which some of its members have great difficulty learning anything 32 boxes of files were hauled out of the offices of Basi and Virk from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transportation on the fateful December 2003 day. Since then, one of the suspects has been charged with others in a large, additional bribery allegation to remove land in Sooke from the Agricultural Land Reserve. On June 29 of this year three of the people involved appeared in court, and BC Mary reports not a single indication was given in press or media about the conclusion of the appearance or the date upon which a next appearance will be held. (Go to http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com). She cannot find out anything about the status of the trial of the police officer involved as a suspect in the legislature raid. Readers will remember that some cabinet ministers surprised British Columbians by choosing not to run in the last election – looking for other work, wanting to spend time with their children, preferring other non-jobs, and so on. A reasonable and prudent Canadian might ask if their departure had anything to do with what should have been a much earlier outcome of the raid on the B.C. legislature. That same reasonable and prudent Canadian might also fairly ask if “organized crime” has more power in B.C. than organized law, honest parliamentarians, policing, and justice. The matter is of the highest importance because it appears that the Gordon Campbell government – and who knows who else – may be being preserved in its power by a tragic failure of the police, legal, and judicial systems in B.C. If so, then Canada is plainly in the condition of countries in which democratic society is a farce, manipulated by organized crime and private corporations. In a fascist state a seamy relation is developed among government leaders, police, the army, corporations, and other institutions likely to benefit from totalitarian government. Private corporations have more power than individuals or declarations of human rights. I repeat what I said in the last column. The New Fascism supports a fraudulent representation of democracy through a corporate class that wants to destroy it. It elevates private corporations to special and – increasingly – governing status through powers conferred upon them or by close links with members of government. (The B.C. Gordon Campbell government, for instance, stripped the B.C. forest industry of safety codes, elevated forestry corporations to government power over forestry, and watches them force workers into (literally) killing conditions – and pretends it has almost no role in supervision). The New Fascism attacks all institutions representing the equality and rightful public participation of ordinary people. It provides for increasing and unsupervised power of police and “security” forces. It elevates to power people who believe in The New Fascism. And it enlists press, media, and all other forms of communication possible in the production of a monolithic, monopoly of information designed to assure subservience and “loyalty”. That’s our present condition. Following columns will look at some of the six major fronts where The New Fascism is consolidating itself. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on July 21, 2006]

Note: http://bctrialofbasi-vi...