"Poilievre's Radical Guru"
If we wonder why we are having forever wars, social chaos, suppression of human rights and systemic poverty neoliberalism is the underlying cause.
Most Canadians are too young to remember Milton Friedman as the snake oil salesman selling neoliberalism in the 1970s and1980s. He was selling “ Freedom”, but freedom for who? He was regaled as the world’s leading economic guru when in fact he was a bag man for the corporate coup d’etat—Where the social welfare state would become the corporate welfare state. The nations of the world saw their wealth vacuumed up by the 1% where everything is commodified and everything could be bought, up to and including politicians. As a teenager, Poilievre latched on to his ideological “linus blanket” still clinging to it this very day.
In this excellent video journalist Martin Lukacs gives us an excellent summary of what neoliberalism is all about. Even though it has been around for forty years and done immense damage to our societies it has never been part of our political dialogue— even though there is a huge body of books and articles on it. With both politicians and the mainstream media there is a conspiracy of silence. But now we are in a crisis where one of the only ways forward is to address the damage neoliberalism has done.
If we wonder why we are having forever wars, social chaos, suppression of human rights and systemic poverty neoliberalism is the underlying cause.
In 1972 NDP leader David Lewis published his book The Corporate Welfare Bums which was a harbinger of things to come. Like so many other fore warnings it was passed over in the heedless forward rush of empire building and predatory capitalism.
Both Canada, the USA and beyond have been reduced to the barren lands of intended neoliberal consequences. As democracy declines and societies are fragmented the agents of plunder emerge, the oligarchs, the autocrats, the fake populists, the demagogues and the war mongers. In its naked demagoguery the present US administration is both a kakistocracy and by product of neoliberalism on steroids.
Fortress North America has become a political ghetto where we indulge in the trappings of democracy with no real democracy as Sheldon Wolin has documented.
Canada’s new government faces many challenges and civic activism becomes more important than ever. So too must the integrity of the mainstream media be challenged as it is no more than an apologist for the neoliberal agenda.
Martin Lukacs is author of The Poilievre Project: A radical blue print for corporate rule.
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Alex Himelfarb is author of Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge
History’s Parrot is read in 39 US states and 52 countries world wide
Why we are having “forever wars,” systemic poverty and social chaos.
Neo-liberalism follows its roots from Milton Friedman through to Frederick Hayek and the Mont Pélerin Society (1947). Forever wars, however, relate back to Leo Strauss who’s followers developed the neo-conservative movement, which demands for a successful state, the incorporation of religion (to help manage the masses) and a permanent enemy, to be always at the ready for war. Your neo-cons are William Kristol, Stephen Harper, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (former US Sec Def) and 10th Pres of World Bank and dean of Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Ted Morton and Walter Berns, Ian Brodie, and Harper’s communication’s director, Kory Teneycke, who, you might note, is active in PP’s campaign. Part of the belief-system of third-age neo-cons and evangelical Christains (12% of population) is that Christ can come again only after the Zionist entity (which shall remain nameless) controls all the original land of Palestine and beats Iran into the stone age. Neo-liberals are represented by Fraser Institute (which published, on behalf of over 600 stink-tanks world-wide) the World Economic Freedom Index, in which economic freedom Trumps any other freedom or social good. Oligarch’s unmitigated greed, in other words.
Thanks for this important article, Robert. We need to know both about Poilievre's values and what neoliberalism is all about and the consequences it has intentionally created.