Canada

How the well-honed playbook for whipping up authoritarian populism is being employed here and around the world. Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper, whose International Democracy Union helps hard-right leaders get elected, with one of them, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who gushed: ‘International co-operation between right-wing, conservative governments is more important than ever. Chairman Harper is a great ally.’ Photo via International Democracy Union. If the polls hold, Pierre Poilievre will be our prime minister and Donald Trump will be ruling the United States, which — according to the Orange One’s own words — will no longer be a democracy. Trump will act as a dictator on “Day 1,” he’s declared on Fox News. According to the world’s most indicted politician himself, a U.S. Trumpocracy will run along the lines of strongman Viktor Orbán’s increasingly undemocratic Hungary. Poilievre makes no such claims of course. But if he wins along with Trump, both countries will be part of the worldwide drift towards hard-right agendas tinged with authoritarian contempt for democratic institutions including a free and fair press. The tactics for steering ships of state sharply starboard are similar around the globe, having changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Today’s political campaigners, particularly on the populist right, rely far more on attack ads and tearing down one’s opponent rather than presenting one’s own plans for the country. Brilliant polling is done to find out what issues people react to emotionally. And the internet is played like an algorithmic Wurlitzer to convert whipped-up fears into devotion to cult-like leaders. That’s one of the reasons that outside influence on democracies has become such a burning issue around the world these days, including here in Canada. Although the Conservative Party of Canada initially singled out and hyped Chinese foreign interference in Canadian politics, largely because it made the Liberals look bad, the CPC has been strangely quiet about China since the federal government granted Justice Marie-Josée Hogue a two-month extension for her inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections. The inquiry’s initial report is expected to be tabled on May 3. In a Globe and Mail column, Andrew Coyne suggested what might be behind the uncharacteristic silence from Pierre Poilievre. Coyne wrote that both China and India may have interfered in the 2022 Conservative leadership race. Poilievre crushed his opponents on the first ballot. A record 613,000 new Conservative memberships were sold. A top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessment from October 2022 indicated that both countries interfered in the leadership race. /Which brings us to the International Democracy Union, or IDU, a global organization run by former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper that is dedicated to electing right-wing governments around the world. Membership extends to the extremely right-wing. Last year Harper met and fawned over Hungary’s Orbán, who pronounced Harper “a great ally.” If you want to see what sort of global club Canada will join if governed by a Poilievre-led Conservative party, a look at IDU’s membership — including the recently scrubbed — can be informative

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