Stephen Harper is having a bit of a moment lately, thanks to his instantly notorious selfie last week with Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán, which both of them proudly tweeted about.
Mr. Harper is the former Conservative prime minister of Canada who is now chair of the so-called International Democrat Union, the organization of right-wing and even-farther-right-wing national political parties that serves as the Neoliberal Internationale in this era of faltering democracy.
Mr. Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary and leader of the increasingly far-right Fidesz political movement, which advocates a “national conservative” ideology. He has been accused of dismantling Hungarian democracy and using racist rhetoric in his quest to turn Hungary into an “illiberal democracy.”
Together, judging from their harmonic tweetery last Thursday, they are also members of an exclusive mutual admiration society – although not one without its differences.
Mr. Orbán tweeted first (in English) about his “great meeting” with Mr. Harper. “International cooperation between right-wing, conservative parties is more important than ever. Chairman Harper is a great ally in this respect. Thank you for your support, Mr. Chairman!”
Mr. Harper followed up a couple of hours later: “I was pleased to meet with Fidesz Party Leader @PM_ViktorOrban today in Budapest. We discussed the IDU’s strong support for Ukraine and the importance of centre-right parties strengthening their collaboration.”
Calling Fidesz a centre-right party is genuinely Orwellian. The same case could be made more convincingly nowadays about the Conservative Party of Canada, I suppose, although it’s been held back a little by the stubbornly small-l liberal preferences of large numbers of Canadian voters from achieving Mr. Harper’s ambitions for the party he helped to found.
As for the term collaboration, that’s a fair description of how IDU governments seem to try to work together to defeat more progressive parties in other countries – an activity that for mysterious reasons never seems to be called foreign interference by Canadian media. However, Mr. Harper may not have been aware that use of the term is fraught in Europe in ways it isn’t necessarily in North America. It’s something to do with what happened over there in the 1940s.
The photo included with both tweets – obviously snapped by a photographer in Mr. Orbán’s service – shows a vampirically pale Mr. Harper gripping the paw of the Hungarian PM, who in the shot strangely resembles Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford.
Perhaps Mr. Harper was there to try to get Mr. Orbán on side in the unhappy matter of Ukraine, Russia, NATO, and the Hungarian premier’s stubborn tendency to see things Vladimir Putin’s way in that conflict. Mr. Harper’s tweet certainly suggests so.
Back in Canada, Conservatives grow misty eyed when they think of Mr. Harper – after all, he was their last leader proven capable of winning a federal election. (They’ve actually had five leaders since Mr. Harper was beaten by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2015, although two were short-term placeholders. The two that led the party into elections with Mr. Trudeau both lost. The jury is still out on the latest one, Pierre Poilievre.)
We can be thankful, at least, that Mr. Harper’s friendly tweet exchange with an outright neofascist hasn’t prompted a spate of Internet memes asking if we miss Stephen Harper yet. (The answer is no, we don’t.)
Other Canadians, naturally, have a less enthusiastic assessment of Mr. Harper’s achievements in office than do his CPC followers.
“Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have racked up dozens of serious abuses of power since forming government in 2006,” wrote Tyee publisher David Beers shortly before the 2015 election. “From scams to smears, monkey-wrenching opponents to intimidating public servants like an Orwellian gorilla, some offences are criminal, others just offend human decency.”
The article listed 31 instances of broken laws and ethical lapses during Mr. Harper’s nearly 10 years in power. A couple of days later, The Tyee published 28 more ways Mr. Harper’s Conservatives “lied, flouted rules and stymied democracy to achieve political and ideological ends.”
So, in regard to their approach to the mechanics of democracy at least, Mr. Harper and Mr. Orbán would appear to be birds of a feather, flocking together.
But say what you will about Mr. Orbán, he is popular with Hungarian voters. He won a supermajority in 2010 that has allowed him to reject European Union efforts at multiculturalism, attack immigrants, interfere with the courts, and undermine Hungarian democracy, among other sins.
As blogger Susan Wright observed in a piece on this unsavoury pairing, “the CPC is frantically looking for the secret sauce to catapult the party back into power and keep it there.” And so far, she observed, nothing is working.
The party, she suggests, may be looking at Mr. Orbán’s brand of East European populism as a model. She asks: “Where might collaboration between the CPC and the likes of Orbán lead us?” One shudders to think!
If Mr. Trudeau was the anti-Harper, Mr. Poilievre is the mini-Harper.
Like Mr. Harper, the latest Conservative leader is not above circumventing the rules of how to conduct and finance a fair election.
Mr. Harper, it would seem, haunts us still.*
*With apologies to Christina McMcCall and Stephen Clarkson, who memorably said the same thing about Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau.
I always thought that Stephen Harper had authoritarian tendencies, maybe even dictatorial ones, considering his approaches such as micro managing the civil service, prohibiting Canadian scientists and others from speaking in public or allowing them so do so only within strict limits, vilifying the press, and attempting to discredit the judiciary by making a personal and unfounded verbal smear of the ethics of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin.
Others thought that I was making too much of P M Harper’s actions but, I think, a thoughtful retrospective review of his time as prime minister and his subsequent actions has proven this view to be accurate.
There is absolutely nothing Conservative about politicians, such as Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre, Doug Ford, Scott Moe, or Danielle Smith. They make a mockery of our democracy, cheat us out of our oil and tax wealth, do very pricey shenanigans, which cost us billions of dollars, destroy jobs, increase poverty, cause people hardship when they retire, increase the costs of things, ruin public healthcare, so they can privatize it, and wreck the environment. Yet, there are people who are intend on bad mouthing Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau, and they blame them for what goes wrong. Peter Lougheed was never this way.
The current name is neoliberalism.
Yes, when is foreign interference not interference? When it involves Conservatives.
Conservatives with nostalgia and selective memories should recall that Harper seemed most politically succesful between about 2006 and 2011, when he sporadically tried to appear more moderate. They should also remember after he finally won a majority in his third try, he put away his Mr. Rogers sweater vest and the illusions of moderation quickly ended. Perhaps for Canadians choices in the future will be clearer, I doubt the current CPC leader owns a sweater vest or is inclined to get one. However he does seem to have ditched his glasses in an attempt so be more broadly appealing.
Its too bad Harper is still hanging out with international authoritarians like Orban. It does what remains of his legacy no good. Of course we should also remember when Harper was first elected he talked tough on China for a while, but when it became clear that was not working he changed course. So much for his wanting freedom in the rest of the world.
COMMUNIST China has pulled more folks out of extreme poverty than any nation in history, and while no nation is
Perfect many of the folks the west holds up as being persecuted by the CCP are actually just criminals, and or terrorists. Western liberals should learn to criticize their own governments first, and most
Vocally, as what happens in other countries is largely the business of the folks living there and not the colour revolution loving west.
Calling China “Communist” is kind of like calling America “the land of the free.”
That’s ridiculous. Whatever version of communism the CCP is running now, China under Mao was about as communist as communism can get, and is one of the main reasons they are light years ahead now.
Mr Orbán certainly has earned the wrath of western punditry recently. But this is the world we live in. Anyone who goes against the grain, resists US imperial hegemony and puts the interests of their own country first is labelled a fascist dictator. When they go to the polls and a clear majority of the electorate choose such leaders it is called a “defeat for democracy.”
Ronmac: I refer to Mr. Orbán as a neofascist because he is a neofascist. That doesn’t preclude him from being right on some issues. Democratic reform is not one of those. DJC
Are alleged conservatives born contrarians or are they indoctrinated to be contrarians?
Ronmac, Harper’s new bro Orbán has surely earned the wrath of most of Hungarians. He’s earned at least the strong disapproval of much of the European Union. He’s earned a lot of irritation from the US and the UK.
He did it all by blowing off various EU laws and democratic norms. Orbán is second only to Recep Erdogan of Turkey for irritating anyone who doesn’t want to live under an autocratic strongman.
I can’t be bothered providing references. Look them up yourself.
Orban and Harper are both fascists, despite the former having a point about the Americans now and again. (Who are also fascists)
Not all authoritarians are fascists, but all fascists are authoritarians. There are and have been authoritarian governments on the left — the defunct Soviet Union and the extant People’s Republic of China come to mind — and, of course, there are still some absolute monarchies in existence, which are also authoritarian by definition, but do not qualify as fascist.
– Mussolini, and to some extent Francisco Franco of Spain, are more relevant examples of Fascism than Hitler or the Nazis, for the following reasons.
– The word “fascist”, let’s remember, was coined by none other than Benito Mussolini in the early 1920s, after he had become disillusioned by leftist politics in Italy and fell into the orbit of a group of Italian intellectuals who called themselves “futurists”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism
– Mussolini didn’t fully embrace anti-Semitism, at least to the extent of German Nazis, until he had become closely tied to Hitler, but he was certainly an ethnocentric white-Christian bigot who believed that the Blacks of Ethiopia were inferior to whites and so could be conquered with justification, and that only white Italians were fit to be full citizens. He had a poor opinion of the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe.
– Mussolini retained the figurehead monarchy — who finally overthrew him in 1943 after the Allied invasion of Italy.
– Francisco Franco was a true Christo-Fascist, aligning his brand of Fascism with the then-very conservative Roman Catholic Church, but Mussolini as well made nicey-nicey with the Church far more than Hitler did.
Anyway, that’s all I have to offer for now.
You would think with such a well oiled media machine, someone would have told Mr. Orban not to refer to Stephen Harper as ‘Chairman’ Harper.
Well, Bob, he is after all chairman of the International Democratic Union, that so-ironically named international version of the American Legislative Exchange Council (better known as ALEC).
You know, the corporate shills, lobbyists and Republican (or Tea Party, or Trumpist) politicians who’re trying to make America safe for billionaires.
Yeah once again, Chairman Mao was a great man beloved by millions. Just because western folks have been propagandized to death does not make up down black white or left right, history is history, things actually happened, China did not pull more people out of extreme poverty than any other nation in history by accident, nor should it be sneered at by western liberals
Despite their stupendous efforts to cover it up (hey look at us, we’re in a Black Lives Matter march), western liberals have always had deep seeded racist views towards yellow and brown people of the former colonial world.
Well, if it isn’t the man behind the curtain coming out to remind us occasionally of what he’d like to do to Canada! Perhaps an iron curtain around certain provinces currently run by right-wing populist premiers would suit his purposes. Vive l’ouest libre!
If you can’t hold the top job in the country because the people sent you packing, you might as well work from behind the scenes to undermine everything about it. Vengeful sore losers do have a tendency to want to burn the place to the ground, figuratively. That seems to be comrade Harper’s guiding philosophy of late. Also, please do not ask the current “loyal opposition, eh” comrade-in-chief to pass a top-level security clearance and kindly do not push him about why this “loyal” compatriot refuses to comply with this reasonable request.
I still remember when your motorcade nearly ran me down at high speed as I was crossing a street with the traffic light in Kelowna, Mr. Harper. Stop Harper! Seems it was an omen for all of us.
Time to speak up about Canada’s commitment on cluster bombs. Like stopping any further aid to Ukraine and raising hell in Nato by refusing demands for increased levels of military spending. Time for some creative peace making.
Prolly super unlikely being who the deputy PM is and who her grandfather was and who she worked for when she was in college
don’t know what world you’re living in but that is not how you win wars. If Ukraine doesn’t win this war, the next step will be other countries.
Cluster bombs are a terrible thing, but so is the continual bombing of Ukraine by the Russians. Sometimes you just have to up the game.
During my life I’ve never found that being nice to a bully helped anything.. Yes, they were misunderstood children in the past, but when they are threatening your family, its just best to do what works to get rid of them.
There is no negotiating with Russia. He won’t deal unless he gets Ukraine. As to Freeland and her ethnic origions. It is doubtful she would endanger Canada to achieve something.
Countries have tried to deal with Russia via sanctions, but that hasn’t worked. Once read Paton said after WWII, the Allies would have been better off if they had kept going all the way to Moscow. I’d agree. If we look at the history of the USSR and Russia, its not like they contributed much to the world.
Like the defeat of Nazi Germany, the first satellite, the first person in space, lifting Russia from peasant farmers into an industrial and scientific powerhouse, a list of scientific findings way too long to list, socialized medicine, greater recognition and participation of women in society, doing all this and more while isolated from the rest of the developed world. You’re not even wrong. This is the result of not being able to discriminate between information and propaganda.
Cluster bombs are literally banned by the UN because they just kill civilians. Using them for any reason is completely unjustifiable. Ukraine is not going to win this war, I think it’s fairly obvious at this point. The longer they are prohibited for suing for peace by the west- who is running Kiev, the more Ukrainians will die, and the more territory they will lose and the more their country will be destroyed.
As far as the USSR making no contribution I would say the sacrifice of 30 million soviets in absolutely savaging the Nazis and their allies is quite the contribution, just for a start.
As far Russia attacking any other European countries, I don’t believe there are any with as significant of a Russian population that has faced the total disenfranchisement of their human rights, followed by genocidal attacks for 8 years on said population, nor any acts of the Russian parliament requiring the action of the president. It is, once again the fever dreams of Russiaphobic western war planners amd is absolutely being used to justify continuing this ridiculous conflict.
Hi Bob,
As DJC points out, Stephen Harper is the chairman of the International Democratic Union. Nevertheless, the title “Chairman” Harper used by Mr Orban is ironic, to say the least.
Viktor Orban remains a curious figure. He leads a country that is an EU and NATO, yet is nationalistic and stridently willing to seek appeasement on the matter of Vlad Putin. One wonders why, for the sake of making the whole situation concerning Hungary, which is generally considered to be the least trusted member of the EU/NATO, why hasn’t there been some action to take Orban out?
On the matter of Putin, there can be no doubt that the Kremlin favours CONs for their manipulations. Which brings me to the need for a large-scale public inquiry into electoral interference in Canada. Of course, such an inquiry must surely include and investigation of all parties for their respective integrity in regard to their handling of foreign interference issues. I suspect that the NDP, Greens, and the Bloc have outside actors involved in their respective operations. Leaving the Liberals to the side, and investigation into the CPC’s handling of own foreign influence matters could be very telling.
Does the Kremlin have its fingerprints all over the CPC? And what of those favourite US CON actors, like the NRA, the American Heritage Foundation, and a myriad of other right foundations that support the CPC. It would be very interesting if we were to learn about the dirty launder in the CPC’s closet.
You’re concerned that Orban has some anti democracy leanings and you want to assassinate him ? That is truly an insane take. Truly.
Russia’s greatest partner is friggin CHINA what are you talking about they prefer cons.
This is fever brain stuff.
Once again we see these two Reformers making an ass of themselves and using the same pathetic excuse “ I didn’t read the shirt”. Danielle Smith and her pal Pierre Poilievre show -boating in Calgary proving how stupid they really are. I bet the hillbillies couldn’t get enough of them. I wonder how dumb they think we are? Of course they know it, they both got elected, didn’t they?
The right is making the bet right now that homophones outnumber folks who love their friends, family, and communities, regardless of what’s in their pants or who they may or may not behaving intimately with. I’m pretty sure they are wrong but we are going to have to kick some asses before this is all over, unfortunately.
Which leads me to suggest that since CONs don’t read what’s printed on the t shirts of the people who are photographed with them, it maybe a great idea to troll them with specialized t shirt messages.
How about I…
On the streets my a Vulcan
But between the sheets I’m a Klingon.
Poor old Stephen! He looks like Nosferatu’s uncle, or possibly a litre of 1% milk spilled on a white tiled bathroom floor in November of 2015! Breathing apparatus optional.
The cons has come out of hiding over the last decade or so, revealing their true intentions of transforming Canada into a neo-feudal state where democracy is only respected if and only if they win. When they lose at the ballot box, they and the corporate press engage in a campaign of endless hate, derision and protest directed at their political enemies. When they lose in parliament, they prorogue parliament, just as hairpiece Harper did not once but twice. That’s not how democracy works.
The Conservative love and admiration for autocrats and authoritarians is both historically consistent and deeply rooted, with the most current iteration seeking a return to a romanticized past and its ‘traditional values’ and as a means of thwarting an imagined conspiracy seeking to impose a malevolent globalist socialist tyranny. That is the rhetoric used to activate, focus, and mobilize the instinctive emotional drives in the simple minded rubes and Yahoos [ “The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with “pretty stones” that they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain.”] that comprise the selected tribal audience.
Behind the distraction and charade that is the public stage show Stephen Harper is merely voicing his secret wish i.e., the wish to destroy the old equalitarian version of liberal society and usher in a hierarchical society where a like minded, ideologically focused, self interested, and cynical political class can fully indulge their pecuniary desires (pleonexia) by getting their hands on the whip of political power. This particular crash course in building a kleptocracy Orban style include the old familiar and reliable schemes:
1. “Orban and his associates have a clear system, said Peter Kreko, chief analyst at the Political Capital think tank in Budapest: They build positions in sectors and prepare for the arrival of public funds. “Close associates of the prime minister get fat on state money,” he said.”
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/hungary-orban-balaton/
2. “Systemic corruption, the weakness of control institutions and the lack of transparent lobbying procedures constantly produce spectacular, often unimaginative and economically unsustainable investments, which are seized by the interest groups in power. At the lower end of the government close circles, it is the importance attached to the handover of the developments (ribbon-cutting, a selfie with the big man at the inauguration), at the higher end it is the client positions acquired in the previously created institutions, and even higher up it is the friendship of the contractor (and the potential benefits that this brings) that drives it all – with the taxpayer footing the bill. With the completion of stadiums, now it is the sports halls that dominate, alongside the all-time favourite swimming pools and spas.”
3. “Of course, the real safes are not in the palaces of oligarchs, and also not necessarily offshore. Orbán’s oligarchs have placed a significant part of their assets in more than 40 private equity funds, making it impossible to know where the capital came from and who actually the investors are. There is a private equity fund close to every self-respecting pro-government financier, be it the PM’s friend Lőrinc Mészáros, the PM’s son in law, Istvan Tiborcz, the circle around the PMs informal advisor Arpad Habony, the president of the Central Bank, Matolcsy, the IT mogule Gellert Jászai or Zsolt Hernádi, the leader the national oil company MOL, who was even convicted for corruption in Croatia.”
https://k-monitor.hu/article/20220217-hungary-s-state-of-corruption-heading-towards-elections
4. “No, Orbán is not building a right-wing totalitarian state—he’s building a kleptocracy.”
https://www.thebulwark.com/three-myths-about-viktor-orban-and-his-makeover-of-hungary/
5. “a vampirically pale Mr. Harper”, i.e., the victims have been bled, vide supra.
For the spilled milquetoasts that have pretended to lead then! https://youtu.be/ShB7zbHu9X4?t=15
*because the far right is continually violent is what I wanted to add
Something that does give me hope is that it appears Canada is moving away from the brand of conservatism the CPC is trying to sell. During Harper’s reign, our former Prime Minister was really frustrated he could not wipe out the orange stain in Edmonton Strathcona from the otherwise uninterrupted blue from the map of Alberta. Now, instead of one non-conservative seat, Alberta has four.
Climate change continues to be an albatross around the CPC’s neck; every year we have extreme weather events that result in more and more people accepting the fact that something needs to be done about our changing climate. The CPC needs to come up with a climate change strategy, but all they seem to have come up with is ‘not a carbon tax’.
Finally, the CPC is burdened with a membership that by in large lack critical thinking skills. In the absence of the ability to detect BS, the membership unquestioningly believes the right wing, ratings-motivated, rage message. As a result, step one to becoming leader of the party is to pander to the party’s misguided base, and double down on the false messages coming from commentators motivated only by ratings. Once selected, what does the new leader do? Erin O’Toole tried to pivot away from his base during the 2021 election, and got turfed for his trouble. So far Pierre Poilievre seems to be continuing to play to his base, but he at least has the luxury of another couple of years before the next general election in which he can hope the disgust many Canadians felt when he pandered to the Freedom Convoy participants with coffee and doughnuts is forgotten.
The CPC is becoming increasing more irrelevant to Canadians. While I welcome their demise, our democracy suffers as a result.
To be perfectly honest, I get misty-eyed when I think of Herr Harper too, but not for the same reason Fascist Conservatives do.
at some level I suspect Harper is sorry he walked away from the leadership after losing the election. Of course his ego most likely forced him into that, but once he was out of office, he really was nobody. He had to build a new image or base to achieve his goals and hence the nice time with Orban, who is simply a wannabe Putin.
When Harper came to office one of the first things Harper did was defund women’s organizations. The writing was on the wall at that point. When Trudeau won the election, my worst fear was gone: Always thought Harper, if he won that election with a big enough majority would have started to chip away at our right to choice. His behaviour while in office was not consistent with a democracy, so it seemed our right to choose would go out the door shortly. Let’s not forget the attitudes towards women and minorities during his reign. He like some of the other right wing neo-whatevers just want the white boys in control and ever one just follows orders and big business makes all the money. Harper was the P.M. who purposely spent less money on Indigenous children than non Indigenous children. That is almost as low as you can go, depriving children of health care, education, etc. They’re little kids, like who goes out of their way to make their lives more difficult?
The CPC’s search for “secret sauce” is so frantic because it keeps doubling down on an agenda that fewer and fewer voters want. Indeed, Canadians may get thankfully teary-eyed remembering how we got rid of the never-loved Harper, almost the instant the political establishment proffered someone better. Indeed, paleo- and pseudoCons are united in their sappy reminiscences of Harper not just because he’s the only electorally successful CPC leader, but because he’s also its Creator (nota bene: Genesistic allusion and the Cainite casting of co-conspirator MacKay).
Indeed, the affection shone on the bigoted, fascistic Hungarian leader, Orban, has more to do with omitting the ‘liberal democracy’ ingredient from the social-soup of the same name, the Canadian far-right party finding the electorate’s preferred recipe distasteful. In the effluvium of CPC misguided hubris, the only thing wrong with its policy recipe must be democracy itself. Indeed, Orban’s party uses the term, “illiberal democracy”—almost as if a food-value label less-read than shelf-life or, probably, contraindications that hardly anybody reads before consuming.
What do CPCers admire about the pudgy Magyar and his fascist globalism? In might be through wild rose-coloured glasses most probably illusory: both are doubtlessly redoubterists —although Alberta is only half the beating heart of Canadian conservatism—the missing half—, and a comparative pantywaist to the 1200 year-old Magyar redoubt upon the eponymously-named “Hungarian Plain” where the ancient Central Asian Steppe peoples took refuge from another horsey-culture that was simply bigger, not better, than theirs. Rather it is Orban’s popularity the CPC covets—that, naturally, much more deeply rooted in cultural myth than Alberta can ever dig up. But to be part of the same org, a worldwide, or globalist one, is at least inspiring to them.
Canadians, however, should be dispirited by the PP spawn-of-Harper, especially since he in particular was ministerial author of “The Fair Elections Act”—since we’re talking about democracy—which was so undemocratic it was among the first of the CPC legacy to be shit-canned by the new Liberal government after it terminated the HarperCon anomaly in 2015. Gotta hand it to the pallid blue-sweatered one, though: he don’t much give up, do he! But, really, it isn’t the first time Harper cozied up to the foreign far-right in order to support the neo-right undermining of sovereign democracy which Canadian voters consistently reject—although he might not have clasped hands with an agent quite so fascistic as Orban before (it depends on how one rates certain Republican agents to whom Harper promised, in return for their —uh—“support,” to make ‘nanny-state’ Canada unrecognizable when he was done).
But, what the heck!—Harper’s resigned from public life, if not public light (thanks to DJC)—but his acolyte PP ain’t. Heck, it’s only a couple of degrees of separation, for Pete’s sake!
Once again, conservative-minded Canadians need to take these connections into account. What happened to good, old-fashioned communitarian Toryism? Why can’t the bad political communitarians be relegated to the same parliamentary status as the good ones (the socialist NDP is upon the same spectrum, don’t forget)? Whatever, we can take comfort in the fact that our history is too short to include the rampant and often brutal centuries of Magyar persecutions of gypsies, Jews and, now, Muslims. But is our steadfast preference for Canada’s Natural Governing Party illusory?
International orgs self-labelled “democratic” just might want us neophytes to think it is. But is that interference? Not to Harper it ain’t—so what about PP?