COMMENT: Stephen Harper: Pawn of American Neoconservatives?
By Sara AM Golling
PM Stephen Harper’s inclination towards Christian Zionism and right-wing economic thinking marks him out as an important tool of the American neoconservatives, who have been powerful in shaping American foreign policy for the last generation.
Harper and his right-wing philosophy are products of what has been termed the “Calgary School,” at the University of Calgary. Shadia Drury, an expert on Leo Strauss, the philosophical father of the neoconservatism, paints the Calgary School as a Canadian version on American Straussians. Drury warned the Globe’s John Ibbitson that the members of the Calgary School “want to replace the rule of law with the populism of the majority,” and labelled Stephen Harper “their product.”[1]
In the early 1970s, a group of disillusioned Marxists, led by Irving Kristol, who had been at the head of a CIA front known as Encounter magazine, flipped to the complete other end of the political spectrum and became known as “neoconservatives.” As Kristol explained: “a neoconservative is a Liberal who has been mugged by reality.” Their guru was a radical academic by the name of Leo Strauss, from the University of Chicago, who espoused an anti-democratic re-adaptation of Plato, calling for the use of “Noble Lies” to lead the masses in directions they would otherwise oppose, because they didn’t have the mental capacity to know what was for their own good.
The neoconservatives’ radical view on economics, which has become the basis of American “conservatism,” is founded on neoliberalism, which begins with Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, the founders of the Mont Pelerin Society. Friedman has been hailed as the most influential economist of the past half century, but to his critics he is credited with bringing economic disaster to a number of countries, usually in the wake of a CIA-backed coup, as in the case of Chile under the brutal dictatorship of Pinochet. It was at the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago, that Friedman helped build what came to be known as the Chicago School of Economics.
The first form of neoliberalism, classical neoliberalism, was chiefly created in the period between the great wars in Austria by economists, including Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Concerned about the rise of both socialist and fascist governments in Europe at that time, they tried to restate the case for “liberty.” Hayek argued that any degree of state intervention in the economy as tantamount to“totalitarianism.”[2]
Neoliberalism is mean economics. The reason neoliberalism is dangerous is because the quality of any society is not measured by its wealth, arts or technology, but by the degree of its compassion and charity. While neoliberalism subscribes to the opposite: a maniacal notion of “survival of the fittest,” which has always been the root cause of barbarism throughout history. Despite the antiquity of such a prejudice, neoliberals disguise their vice in the jargon of Adam Smith, who preached a delusion that “greed is good,” proposing that selfish pursuit produces wealth for the whole of society, which is eventually distributed by a mythical “invisible hand.”
Therefore, prescribe the neoliberals, the government has no business digging its hands into the pockets of the rich to re-distribute to the less fortunate. These kinds of ideas appeal, as they always have, to vanity, where those who have achieved more privileged stations in life commend themselves that it has happened only through sheer hard work, and therefore, that all those lesser privileged are just lazy and spoiled by an over-generous society and become guilty of a sense of “entitlement.”
Neoliberalism, therefore, deceptively espouses Libertarian principles, to call for an end to “Big Government,” and the elimination or privatization of all essential social programs, including health care, education, welfare, pensions, and even the penal system.
In effect, Friedman and Hayek’s activities in calling for the adoption of “free market” principles, were part of a broader strategy pursued by the CIA for the subversion of social democratic institutions around the world, assisted through both the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. Hayek sponsored the global spread of these neoliberal economic principles when he inspired Antony Fisher of the Mont Pelerin Society to establish the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London during 1955. The IEA website states that, “Since 1974 the IEA has played an active role in developing similar institutions across the globe. Today there exists a world-wide network of over one hundred institutions in nearly eighty countries. All are independent but share in the IEA’s mission.”[3]
Among these were several think tanks like the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, founded in 1973, and Canada’s Fraser Institute of Canada in 1974, both supported by way of various foundations funded by the Rockefeller Empire of ExxonMobil.[4] It was the conservative administrations of Thatcher and Reagan that truly heralded the advent of neoliberal policies known in the US as Reaganomics, and brought forth an era of unprecedented wealth accumulation in the hands of a very few.
Neoconservatism was brought to Canada when Paul Wolfowitz’s teacher, Allan Bloom, and another Straussian, Walter Berns, taught at the University of Toronto during the 1970s, where they influenced a generation of political scientists, who fanned out to universities across the country. Two of their students, Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff, then went to the University of Calgary.
The University of Calgary school of political science which they joined was founded by American-born Colonel Edgar Burke Inlow, who himself was hired in 1961 directly from an intelligence position with the Pentagon in Washington DC, with special expertise in the history and politics of Iran and other oil-rich polities throughout the Middle East.Morton, also apolitical science professor, turned his attention to provincial politicsandinfluenced the direction of right-wing politics at the federal level as the Canadian Alliance director of research under Stockwell Day.
Morton and Rainer Knopff specialize in attacking the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was formally enacted in 1982, as the result of the efforts of the Pierre Trudeau. They claim the charter is the result of a conspiracy foisted on the Canadian people by “special interests.” The Canadian neoconservatives cultivated the complaint of “Western Alienation,” constructed on popular resentment around Trudeau.
Western Alienation, which has been the main point used to drive the rise of the Canadian conservative movement from the West, is founded on the notion that the Western provinces – British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – have been “alienated” from mainstream Canadian political affairs supposedly in favor of the provinces of Ontario and particularly Quebec, hiding a latent bigotry towards Quebecers that festers in the West.
Alberta is Canada’s Texas. And like Texas, politics in Alberta are dictated by oil, just as in the US the neoconservative movement has been funded primarily through the Rockefeller Empire of ExxonMobil. Following a rapid increase in the price of oil between 1979 and 1980, the Trudeau government introduced the National Energy Program (NEP), intended to relieve the oil price stress and redistribute the wealth generated by oil production. Being where most of the oil is produced, the program became extremely unpopular in Alberta. Spurred on by the neoconservatives and their backers, Albertans argued that the NEP was an unjustified intrusion of the federal government into an area of provincial jurisdiction.
However, Calgary Schooler Barry Cooper explained to journalist Marci McDonald in her important Walrus article, “If we’ve done anything, we’ve provided legitimacy for what was the Western view of the country.”[5]Cooper, political science professor and fellow, edited Strauss’s thirty-year correspondence with Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy. Cooper is also a member of the infamous Bohemian Club, who hold annual bacchanalian gatherings of the US’s powerful leaders in northern California.[6]
Cooper is also a member of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute(CDFAI), established in March 2002. CDFAI is ostensibly an independent research institute based in Calgary with offices in Ottawa. The institute claims to pursue new ideas to focus the national debate and understanding of Canada’s international policies with the ultimate aim of ensuring a more globally engaged Canada. CDFAI is financed by some of the world’s largest arms contractors, including General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin Canada, and Com Dev to name a few.
CDFAI is affiliated with the Canadian International Council (CIC), which grew out of the Round Table organization, the Royal Institute for International Relations (RIIA),founded in 1920, whose American branch is the Rockefeller-dominated Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). RIIA is now also known as Chatham House, and is ranked the second most influential think tank in the world. Its. The Director of CIC’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies is Calgary Schooler, David Bercuson, who co-authored Deconfederation: Canada Without Quebec, with Barry Cooper.
Reflecting the CIC’s agenda, the Globalist of the Year Award is presented at its Annual Gala Dinner. Past recipients include Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF in 2012; George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Institute, in 2010; Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2009; and Angel Gurria, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2007.
Cooper is a close departmental pal ofthe Calgary School’s informal leaderTom Flanagan, who was also chair of the CDFAI and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. When Stephen Harper submitted his candidacy for the leadership of the Alliance, Flanagan became his closest adviser, and also later ran the 2004 Conservative election campaign. Flanagan’s book, First Nations, Second Thoughts, was focused on attacking aboriginal rights,critiquing what he calls the “aboriginal orthodoxy.”
Although Flanagan himself has specifically denied charges that he is a Straussian, he calls himself rather a Hayekian, in reference to Friedrich Hayek. He and Harper entered a four-year writing partnership and together studying the works of Hayek.
Guided by the principles of the neocons at the University of Calgary, Harper worked to craft policies for the Reform Party in the late 1980s, which was founded on cultivating the perception of “Western Alienation,” the Noble Lie used by the neoconservatives as a Trojan Horse to build support in the Canadian government for neoliberal values and Zionist objectives.
Members of the Calgary School, notably Flanagan, worked hard to turn the Reform Party into the dominant right wing party and later to encourage a coalition of conservative parties. In December 2003, after a decade of division, he worked on the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the successor to the Reform Party the Canadian Alliance that created the new Conservative Party of Canada. In his own words, Harper conceded:
“Westerners, but especially Albertans, founded the Reform/Alliance to get “in” to Canada. The rest of the country has responded by telling us in no uncertain terms that we do not share their ‘Canadian values.’ Fine. Let us build a society on Alberta values.”[7
David Livingstone is an author and parnter in Lone Sheep Publishing.
[1]Marci McDonald, “The Man Behind Stephen Harper,” The Walrus, October 2004.
[2]William E. Scheuerman, “The unholy alliance of Carl Schmitt and Friedrich A. Hayek,” Constellations, Volume 4, Issue 2, (October 1997), pp. 172–188.
[3]“Institute for Economic Affairs,” Think Tank Watch.
[4]David Livingstone, “Fraser Institute and the Subversion of Canadian Values.” Rossland Telegraph, July 27, 2010.
[5]Marci McDonald, “The Man Behind Stephen Harper,” The Walrus, October 2004.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Emily Dee, “Calgary School, Chicago School and the Committee on Social Thought,” Aberhart and Harper on Crusade, June 7, 2011.
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