BAXTER: . . Harper's Conservative propaganda machine

[Oscar]

Canadians pay the high costs of Stephen Harper’s Conservative propaganda machine

[ http://joanbaxter.ca/canadians-pay-the- ... a-machine/ ]

Posted by Joan Baxter on Mar 1, 2015 in Canada, Politics

Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is spending immense amounts of taxpayers’ money to promote himself, his government, the oil and gas industry, his neoconservative ideology and his neoliberal big-dog-devour-little-dog economic dogma – and this kind of propaganda machine does not bode well for Canada’s or any country’s democracy…


One of the very first things I noticed when, in the 1980s, I lived and travelled in some decidedly non-democratic countries in West and Central Africa, was the over-the-top narcissism of some of the dictators and their obsession with absolute control of their political messages, which were almost exclusively about themselves and what great leaders they were.

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Fast forward to 2015.

Most of those African countries I lived in are now democracies, not perfect ones, but far more democratic than they were two or three decades ago. And while there is still a long way to go in many of these young democracies, at least most of the signs are pointing in the right direction.

Full speed backwards in Canada

Not so Canada, where we’re been moving in the wrong direction, full speed backwards. The campaign to dismantle the democratic nation of Canada as we knew it was launched in 2006, when Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party came to power. Things went into overdrive after the federal election in 2011, in which just 6201 votes (of 14,720,580) in 14 swing ridings gave Mr. Harper’s Conservatives the margin of seats in parliament they needed to form a majority government.

With the absolute power that this unrepresentative “majority” – obtained with less than 40% of the popular vote – affords the ruling party, Mr. Harper and his henchmen then took the wrecking ball to Canada’s democracy and international reputation, laying the groundwork for a secret police force more suited to a police state than a democracy, and unleashing on the country their own megalomania – and still growing – narcissism.

Narcissism comes in different forms. It can be physical, if one is prone to obsessive vanity, conceit, self-regard, smugness and egocentrism. It can be psychological, characterized by extreme selfishness, a grandiose view of one’s own talents.

Sound familiar? Well, it would for anyone who has been keeping track of Mr. Harper’s self-aggrandizing and self-promoting record since he moved into the Prime Minister’s office in 2006.

An epidemic of vanity

Take his apparent obsession with his image on video and in photos, and his desire to share it with the world. The immodest photo gallery on the PM’s website boasts 55 pages, each with an average of 15 galleries, and then dozens of photos and videos per gallery, which adds up to a monstrous ego-trip of many thousands of carefully orchestrated and doctored images of Stephen Harper. All of which, of course, Canadians have paid for.

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Expensive disguises for the PM

Strange then, given Mr. Harper’s and his government’s obsession with showy spin and self-indulgent self-promotion in this orgy of narcissistic propaganda, that the prime minister himself seems to feel the need for disguises. Over the years, he’s tried it on as a loveable uncle in a fuzzy powder-blue sweater vest, a big game hunter next to the casually-dressed presidents of the US and Mexico in the Mayan ruins, as a Canadian Forces pilot, and a ludicrously attired cowpoke.

Perhaps he’s desperate to try to make himself look likeable, like something he’s not?

Why else would he have engaged a full time personal stylist and image-maker, who chooses his clothes, tames his cowlick to create his helmet of hair, plasters him with mascara, lipstick and cake make-up? Since when does a Canadian prime minister need a personal groomer who flies around the world with him, her travel expenses covered by the Canadian people? A remarkable feat of hypocrisy from a man who, as a Reform MP, publicly attacked Preston Manning for not fessing up that the Reform Party was paying $31,000 for his wardrobe.

Then again, what can one really expect from a government that has also managed to “misplace” $3.1 billion and avoided any sanctions for gross negligence or malfeasance, while bringing shame on our nation by pulling Canada out of the UN Treaty to Combat Desertification (the only country of 194 to do such a thing) pretending that by save a piddling $350,000 it was showing it was “fiscally prudent”? Or from a prime minister whose government spends so much of our money to create and bombard us with mail-outs loaded with poisonous messages carefully crafted to instil fear and hate-monger, and fanciful ones trying hard to make us believe that the man behind all this propaganda is not a narcissistic and dangerous ideologue?

What kind of leader would launch an all-out assault on democratic principles and unity in his country, employ a massive propaganda machine to try to cover it all up and sell himself to his people as something he’s not, and then smugly and quietly make them pay the costs for these insults on their intelligence and injuries to their country?

Oh, right, I remember now what kind of leader does that – I’ve seen it before in other countries – a dictator.