It's called a 'Memorial to Victims of Communism' but to Harper Canada's new massively contentious monument is really a reminder of Russian wickedness

Canada is set to erect its very own memorial to victims of Communism. You may think that's rather peculiar seeing a memorial like that would commemorate overseas events that have no direct connection to Canadian history.

But what's really curious is that the memorial is set to be of mammoth proportions and be located smack dab in the middle of Canadian capital. Moreover, the project is racing full speed ahead despite overwhelming and widespread opposition.

First announced in mid 2013 construction work on the monument site is already underway. That is despite the fact that the planned monument is highly unpopular. In May 77 percent of Canadians and 83 percent of Ottawans opposed the construction. Moreover, it has been blasted by architectural associations, legal experts , the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the mayor of Ottawa and the Ottawa city council.

Indeed, every aspect of the memorial, from its size, location, cost, design and intent has come under fire. Little wonder since the memorial itself would appear as a giant neo-Stalinists slab of concrete, and before revision was actually going to overshadow Canada's all-important National War Memorial honoring Canada's role in WWI and WWII.

All of that matters little, however, since the planned memorial has the massive backing of Harper's Conservative government whose brainchild it is - it was conceived by Jason Kenney who has been a minister under Harper since 2008.

Harper has given the project prime land in the capital worth $1 million right next to the country's Supreme Court, which had been reserved for a new federal court building. On top of that Canadian government will provide $3.5 million of the projected $5.5 million it will take to raise the monument.

Canada - hungry for East Bloc brutalist architecture

Why is the Harper government so invested in this project?

Without a doubt electoral politics are a major part of the answer. Scheduled for October 19 the next federal elections are projected to offer up an extremely close race between Canada's three major parties.

Albeit unpopular at wide, Harper hopes his communism victims memorial will endear him to some 3 million Canadians who stem from Eastern Europe of whom Ukrainians and Poles are the most numerous.

Indeed, the very idea for the unlikely memorial stems from Jason Kenney's 2007 visit to a private park belonging to Canada's small Czech and Slovak community where he was supposedly moved by a modest monument depicting a tortured man crucified on a hammer and sickle - the symbol of Soviet Union.

Albeit electioneering is an obvious motive, another aspect of the monument under construction shouldn't be overlooked - it agrees perfectly with Harper's moralist and interventionist worldview.

While Harper has been something of a political chameleon on fiscal and social issues he has always been a strong supporter of western military adventurism abroad.

In 2003 as leader of Canada's opposition he blasted Ottawa for failure to join America's invasion of Iraq.

After he took power in 2006 he greatly expanded Canada's role in the western occupation of Afghanistan throwing Canadian units into bloody battles in Afghanistan's Kandahar province - the very heartland of Taleban support. All but eight of the 158 soldiers Canada lost in Afghanistan perished under Harper.

Moreover, in 2011 Ottawa was an enthusiastic participant of the western bombing campaign against Gaddafi's Libya and a supporter of the prospective regime change in Syria.

In other words, if there is one thing that Harper believes in is that west enjoys enough moral high ground in relation to the rest of the world that it can freely and unapologetically use force beyond its borders and exercise power over foreigners.

What better way to drive home this point than to erect - right in the middle of the nation's capital - a physically imposing reminder of crimes committed by other people?

As a perceptive Canadian commentator noted, if Ottawa needed to commemorate a victim group there are plenty of such to be found in Canada's own history.

Why not a memorial for the children of native peoples kidnapped and abused in Canada's infamous 'residential schools' or one for the Japanese immigrants interned during WWII?

If a massive death tally was needed, why not a memorial to victims of British colonialism under which millions starved in Africa, India and Ireland and to which Canada was much more intimately connected than to Soviet and Chinese Communism?

But obviously, a monument to foreign victims of an Anglosphere government, would not jibe well with Harper's agenda of a highly-moralized western interventionism abroad.

Harper has no use for a reminder of Canadian-British shortcomings that would diminish his ability to claim moral high ground over overseas governments and peoples. That demands a reminder of their failings, not your own.

A monument to purported "100 million" victims of Communism, which in its original design was to depict the Katyn Massacre where Soviet NKVD troops massacred 22,000 Poles fits the bill perfectly.

Harper sailing the Baltic sea 50km off Russia coast, June 2015

The fact that the victims of communism memorial would remind specifically of Soviet (ie "Russian") crimes is also enormously convenient for Harper.

The Canada PM has suggested that Russia is a threat to world peace and may not be reasoned with. He has accused Russia president of harboring "imperial ambitions" and acting in an "aggressive and militaristic" manner.

Even more importantly, Harper is someone who still speaks of a "free world" to which Canada obviously belongs but Russia is excluded from. He is sure that Russian people "want the kind of free and democratic life that we have in the West,” and that under Putin democracy and human rights are threatened.

That is to say Harper is somebody who sees a basic continuity between Soviet Union and Putin's Russia. To Harper both are morally inferior states that Canada should stand in judgment of and is justified in offering scathing condemnations of.

Indeed, speaking at a fundraiser event for the memorial last year Harper ended up delivering a speech that was little more but an argument for an activist and hardline policy of confronting Moscow.

He spent most of the time praising the role of Canada and conservative Cold Warriors in opposing Soviet domination of eastern Europe, before going on to congratulate himself for backing Kiev in the war in eastern Ukraine, and suggesting that Russia was once again threatening freedom and democracy in eastern Europe.

Seeing how central moralizing against the Russian ‘Other’ is to Harper it makes every sense he would want to place a giant 'Look-at-What-the-Russians-Did' Memorial in the middle of his capital as a daily reminder of superiority of the "free world" over foreign, non-Western states.

Yet while the extent to which Soviet Union and Russia were one and the same is debatable, it is not debatable that Communist USSR and China primarily made victims, not of foreigners, but of their own citizens so that more Russians perished under Lenin and Stalin than any other people.

And that is what is the most perverse about the memorial which supposedly commemorates all victims of Communism - it takes advantage, including of, Russian suffering under Communist governments to support a basically racist view of Russia as perennially and necessarily morally subordinate to freedom-loving western leaders such as Harper.