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How fitting that Ralph Nader has put out a consumer warning about Stephen Harper.

According to the former U.S. presidential candidate and long-time consumer advocate, this prime minister is a combination of Chevrolet’s doomed Corvair and Dick Cheney: A lemon and a warmonger, all rolled up into a consumer dud begging for a recall.

With police state powers about to be handed to Canada’s spy agency based on a factitious threat, Nader pointed out that the PM’s talents run to hyperbole, not to truth-telling or accuracy. (Time allocation has once more killed sensible debate on major legislation — this time it’s Bill C-51.)

“When Prime Minister Harper says jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced, one is entitled to say, ‘Oh really?’. What about Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin? It is just a wild exaggeration,” Nader said.

Sadly, it’s also sly politics.

Public policy should never be based on shouting “Fire” in a theatre, but that is what Harper is doing as he whips up support for Canada’s dubious mission in Iraq … and his re-election bid. After all, who could be against stopping beheaders? But the world we live in is so much more complicated than that.

For one thing, our ally Saudi Arabia likes to chop off heads.

For another, a large part of the U.S. interest in expanding this war comes down to simple blackmail. Barack Obama has already been put on notice that if the U.S. and its allies will not do the bidding of the government of Iraq, then the government of Iraq will look to another regional power to fight ISIS — Iran.

It pays to remember that dictators are sometimes elected. Consider the case of Hungary’s right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban, a leader who has been aggressively hollowing out democracy in that country since coming to power in 2010.

When a neo-con cheerleader like David Frum says we shouldn’t be involved over there anymore, you know there’s cause to question the mission.

And what is the mission anyway? The PM has already broken his word to Parliament about the role of Canada’s military. First it was train and assist, but not accompany. Now it’s all-in — boots and all — as the bullets fly. Sooner rather than later, that will lead to casualties.

As Harper well knows, nothing sanctifies a war like blood. And nothing ends public opposition as fast as coffins on the nightly news — at least in the beginning. And if there’s one thing Harper hates, it’s opposition.

Nader has said candidly what anyone with eyes and ears in this country has known for a long time: Harper has put Canada on the road to “militarization” and the “politics of fear.” There have been signs both large and small since his majority victory in 2011.

Consider the glowing CBC story about Canada’s invention of a new and deadly assault rifle. Just what the world needs.

And a few weeks back, on February 7, I wondered if I was seeing things when the Chief of the Defence Staff and four soldiers with masks and machine guns took centre-ice at the Air Canada Centre just before a Leafs/Oilers game. The only thing missing was Don Cherry rappelling down from the rafters with a knife between his teeth.

It was billed as a tribute to the military. You could accomplish that fine objective without the machine-guns. It was actually a communications welding job.

This government has done its utmost to bond the world of professional hockey with the politics of war.

What other country do you know that had a memorial event for the beginning of World War I ?

of World War I ? What other country wasted $28 million on marketing the faux history of the War of 1812 while simultaneously stiffing the veterans of the Afghan conflict?

What other leader decided to build a monument to the victims of communism, but had no trouble selling a Canadian resource company to a Chinese state entity?

As Nader observed, this country used to expend its psychic resources on peace-making. Now Canada backs destructive missions like the military action that toppled Moammar Gadhafi but delivered Libya into chaos.

Like Iraq and Afghanistan, these military missions completely destabilized the countries they were supposed to reform and modernize. Thirteen years of the War on Terror has given us not peace but ISIS —yet people are still buying this military/industrial B.S. shovelled at us by people like our prime minister, using our own taxes.

In his letter to Harper, Nader quoted from a former CIA station chief in Pakistan who said this about the war in Afghanistan: “We overwhelmed a primitive country, with a largely illiterate population, a tiny agrarian economy, a tribal social structure and nascent national institutions. We triggered massive corruption through our profligacy; convinced a substantial number of Afghans that we were, in fact, occupiers and facilitated the resurgence of the Taliban.”

Not much of an endorsement.

In 2014, the Afghan conflict still racked up more than 10,000 casualties. Perhaps that is why some of the PM’s staunchest enablers like the Globe and Mail are suddenly having a little buyer’s remorse as this dangerous administration continues to declare itself.

The Harper government now makes it a story when there is no imminent terrorist threat against the West Edmonton Mall. The RCMP has shown itself to be there to do Harper’s bidding. The Globe has rightly denounced the Harper government’s anti-terror bill as a threat to democracy and a giant step toward the creation of a secret police.

What Canadians may not realize is that this prime minister has no problem with secret police and other things that deny us our basic individual rights. Harper has shown time and again that he has never been a fan of democracy or the Constitution and never will be. Getting elected exhausts his interest in the principles of democracy. The rest is about the real deal — the naked exercise of unfettered power.

According to Mark Bowden, writing in Vanity Fair, this is what it takes to be a good dictator:

First and foremost, a dictator has to manage the system. That means controlling the party structure, the military, the economy and the security forces. It also means promoting the most loyal people, and demoting the able but disloyal. All threats to the dictator’s grip on the country must be “ruthlessly” eliminated. In the course of dealing with rivals, it is essential to appear decisive and to instil fear.

Bowden was writing about Kim Jong Un, but you’re not alone if it made you think of Stephen Harper — if, for example, the line about eliminating “threats” made you think of what happened to Kevin Page and Linda Keene.

It pays to remember that dictators are sometimes elected. Consider the case of Hungary’s right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban, a leader who has been aggressively hollowing out democracy in that country since coming to power in 2010. Orban, like Harper, originally capitalized on morally bankrupt leftists to win at the polls. Since those days, he has been involved in a fundamental remake of his country — just like Harper.

Here’s how people close to Orban have described him: a man who divides and rules, a man for whom “control” is the key issue, “a restless and combative” personality with “leanings towards megalomania.”

Here is what Orban has already done. He controls the media and the Supreme Court, has purged the diplomatic corps, has cracked down on non-governmental organizations and has accused them of being foreign agents.

And what is the number one item on Orban’s to-do list? He wants to destroy the Western democratic model in Hungary in favour of the example provided by authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, Turkey and Singapore. He says the Western model is dead.

Here are his own words as they appeared in the Guardian:

“We are parting ways with Western European dogmas, making ourselves independent from them. We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society. The new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”

Just yesterday, Orban lost his super-majority that had allowed him to make unilateral changes to the courts and other democratic institutions in Hungary. His party suffered a sharp drop in popularity over corruption scandals and a proposed tax on the Internet.

Are you listening, Mr. Harper?

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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