FIRST READING: Putin heads “fascist” government, says former Prime Minister Stephen Harper

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“It’s the 1930s again,” Harper said of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

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April 27, 2022 • 4 hours ago • 4 minutes reading • 302 comments Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper pictured during his appearance at the Raisina Dialogues geopolitical conference in New Delhi, India on April 25, 2022. Photo by YouTube / Observer Research Foundation

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TOP HISTORY

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems obliquely comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in a recent public talk and accusing the Russian leader of leading a “fascist” government.

“This is the 30s of the last century,” Harper said of Putin’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. “This is essentially a fascist nationalist government in Russia, invading a neighbor with utter disregard for any kind of legal framework, international or otherwise, and trying to deny it its right to nationality.

Harper made his comments Monday during a panel at the Raisina Dialogue geopolitical conference in New Delhi. Also present were former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and Jane Hall Lut, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under US President Barack Obama.

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Harper was prime minister from 2006 to 2015, a period that Harper said was largely characterized by Western efforts to welcome Putin to Russia internationally. US President George W. Bush has said he has peeked into Putin’s “soul” and found the Russian leader “direct and trustworthy.” Shortly after US President Barack Obama took office in 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even organized a public “restart” in an attempt to warm relations with Moscow.

“I have witnessed every attempt to bring Russia into the top councils of our alliance,” said Harper, who has been at the forefront of both NATO and the G8 during this era. Both American and European leaders, Harper said, tried to “embrace Russia, include Russia, make Vladimir Putin … a major player in our alliance.”

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Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the start of the 2013 G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo by AFP Photo / Alexander Nemenov

Putin “decided he didn’t want to be like that,” Harper said. “He decided he preferred to be an enemy of freedom and democracy and a rival to the Western world when he had every chance to do otherwise.

Harper personally met with Putin several times during his term as prime minister, most notably at the 2014 G20 summit in Australia, just months after Ukraine’s annexation of Crimea by Russia and the invasion of Ukraine. the eastern regions of Ukraine by units of Russian soldiers disguised as local separatist militias. After Putin held out his hand to the Canadian at the Australian summit, Harper replied, “I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to tell you: Get out of Ukraine.”

Canadian support for Ukraine is a foreign policy issue in which there is almost complete overlap between Harper and the current government of Justin Trudeau. In 2014, Harper launched Operation Unifier, deploying about 500 Canadian Armed Forces trainers in Ukraine. The mission was extended several times under Trudeau, in addition to the nearly $ 1 billion in financial and military support sent to the country between 2014 and the recent invasion of Russia.

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Putin and Harper on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Germany in 2007. Photo by Astakhov Dmitry / AFP / Getty Images

The focus of Monday’s panel discussion was on the future of liberal democracies, a point on which Harper was generally quite optimistic.

Despite the rise of more extremist elements in Western politics, Harper said that, unlike previous eras of democratic instability, today’s peripheral political actors “largely work in the context of trying to change government through democratic means.”

Moderator Palki Upadhai seems to have challenged Harper on the issue, citing the January 6, 2021 riots in which supporters of US President Donald Trump entered the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“You had a president who tried to use – frankly – constitutional means to overturn a result in the Senate, (for which) he failed. And you had a riot, “Harper said. “The fact is that the system was not actually in danger of being taken down.

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Participant in the rally for Al-Quds Day in 2018 in Toronto. The last such rally in Toronto, which included about 100 protesters on Sunday, included chants calling for the destruction of Israel. In a recent National Post column, Rachel Raza condemned the event, especially after it took place during Ramadan, a time when anger and conflict were supposed to be brought under control. “Thus, organizing an event that is nothing but a holiday of hatred is completely against the essence of Ramadan,” she wrote. Photo from Postmedia File

IN OTHER NEWS

Ryerson University is no more. From now on, the school will be known as Toronto Metropolitan University. The reason for the name change is the university’s claim that their namesake Egerton Ryerson is the “architect” of what has become the system of Indian resident schools. As historians claim in the pages of the National Post, this is not so clear. Although Ryerson advocated “industrial” boarding schools for Canada’s first nations, he was explicitly opposed to many of the factors that would make them best known, including mandatory state visits and strong reliance on corporal punishment.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to decolonize its name, the University of Toronto Metropolitan may have inadvertently chosen another colonial name. The word “metropolitan” comes from the Greek “metropolis”, which refers to the “mother city” of colonial power.

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A four-letter word has raised its head in the sanctity of the Canadian Legislature. During the interrogation period, the Prime Minister of British Columbia John Horgan was asked a series of sharp questions about the acute shortage of family doctors in his province. There were some mutual scandals, ended by Horgan, who said “aaaaaaa” and left the room. Horgan is currently recovering from a series of radiotherapy treatments for a recent diagnosis of throat cancer, and has only appeared sporadically since February. The word f is considered a “non-parliamentary language” in almost all Westminster parliaments, although it does appear from time to time. The most famous example of Canada still dates back to 1971, when then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said “hell” in opposition to progressive conservatives.

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In other parliamentary jokes, Liberal MP Julie Jerovic stood in the House of Commons to accuse Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford of “crimes against humanity,” a term defined by the United Nations as a “systematic” state-sponsored attack that causes deliberate death or large-scale destruction. What has the Ford government done to justify such an accusation? They did not achieve their climate change goals fast enough.

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