The Politics of Authoritarianism: "I've Never Seen Anything Like It"

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"In a democracy, a wannabe tyrant is just a comical figure on a soapbox unless a huge wave of supporters lifts him to high office." - Bob Altemeyer

When accusations arise that Stephen Harper is too controlling, his supporters will attempt to compare him to people like R.B. Bennett, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien. All of these men took a disciplined approach to governing.

However, the most common remark heard from supporters and critics alike is that they have never seen anything like this before. Not in Canada. Not in a democracy.

Two years into his governance, the man who brought in the Accountability Act was already hearing complaints that he was one of the most unaccountable prime ministers ever. A couple of other words were being used more often to describe Stephen Harper: autocratic and authoritarian. (1)

Pierre Trudeau certainly expanded the size and power of his office, and Jean Chretien kept an iron grip on his caucus, but Harper surpassed even Chretien.

Chretien had nothing like the extraordinary vetting system put in place by the Conservatives. Advisers Eddie Goldenberg and the late Jean Pelletier did wield enormous power--especially in the later years, when Chretien faced an internal uprising from Paul Martin's supporters—but at least caucus members and civil servants felt free to talk to the media without prior approval. (1)

And over the past five years Stephen Harper has continued to wield enormous control, while refusing to be accountable for any of his actions.

We know why the corporate media let him off the hook, "corporate" being the operative word, but why do his followers?

You see it constantly as they come to his aid, leaving their comments at the end of articles, even when they expose corruption.

It's part of what Bob Altemeyer calls Authoritarian Submission.

Everybody submits to authority to some degree. Imagine a world in which people ignored traffic laws and sped through red lights. The cost of auto insurance would shoot through the roof (although the line-ups to buy it would become much shorter). But some people go way beyond the norm and submit to authority even when it is dishonest, corrupt, unfair and evil. We would expect authoritarian followers especially to submit to corrupt authorities in their lives: to believe them when there is little reason to do so, to trust them when huge grounds for suspicion exist, and to hold them blameless when they do something wrong. (2)

But what of the roughly 2/3 of the population who didn't vote for Stephen Harper?

They also appear to be submitting to his authority, questioning very little. They are the ones who frighten me more than the Harper devotees.

Is it just that it's become the new norm? According to Allan Gregg discussing Lawrence Martin's book Harperland:

Even though it has become a cliché to refer to Stephen Harper as a control freak, the power of Martin’s argument hits you like a jackhammer. Those of us who follow these things quite closely remember a number of occasions when the Conservatives have found themselves in hot water because of allegations of abuse of power, but we tend to forget just how frequently this has occurred and the myriad forms this malfeasance has taken over the last four and a half years. (3)

Maybe that's why it's working. We're shell shocked.

He was going to be a different prime minister and indeed he was. And though he was operating more like a monarch than an elected Member of Parliament, his people still defended him.

[They] were content to explain away the abuse of power with the rationale that other PMs had done it and therefore so could Harper. The line of reasoning hardly served to enhance the state of democracy. The system, said [Donald] Savoie*, had devolved into a "court government," with the leader and a few select courtiers, most of them unelected, exercising power with kingly presumption. Savoie had hoped that Harper would move away from such a model once he'd settled in to office. But in fact, he was going the other way. (1)

We've never seen anything like it.

Footnotes:

* Academic and specialist in governance and public administration

Sources:

1. Harperland: The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 120-122

2. The Authoritarians, By Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, 2006

3. Negative Statesmanship: Stephen Harper may end up being known for what he does not do more than for what he does, By Allan Gregg, Literary Review of Canada

The Politics of Authoritarianism and a Democracy in Peril

"Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is opposed to individualism and democracy. In politics, an authoritarian government is one in which political power is concentrated in a leader or leaders ... who possess exclusive, unaccountable, and arbitrary power." - Wikipedia

I was given a link to a free book on the internet, The Authoritarians, written by Bob Altemeyer, an authority (pardon the pun) on the subject. He had been contacted by John Dean, author of Conservatives Without Conscience, who had used Altemeyer's vast body of work, while researching his book.

Dean, Goldwater [the late Barry Goldwater who was supposed to have co-authored Dean's book] and others with solid Republican credentials had been alarmed by the capture of the Grand Old Party by the Religious Right and its seemingly amoral leaders.

Inspired, Altemeyer decided to try his hand at publishing his own work, based on his years researching the subject. And what's interesting is that he tackles it not from the perspective of the authoritarian leader, but the people who allow that leader to have so much control.

Stephen Harper only gained complete power, because we relinquished ours.

Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.

That cancer has hit Canada, so it's important to read Altemeyer's book, to gain a better understanding of what is happening here, and hopefully learn what we can do to stop the disease. Simply getting rid of Harper won't be enough, although it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Continuation:

The Politics of Authoritarianism: "I've Never Seen Anything Like It"

Democracy in Crisis: Governing Under a Cloud