Russian State TV Attacks Austrian Journalist Who Challenged Putin

Russians are proud of the role their nation played in the wartime defeat of Nazi Germany, which makes it all the more extraordinary that this week a YouTube channel associated with Russian state television borrowed an insult from the Nazi lexicon to deride an Austrian journalist who challenged President Vladimir Putin in a combative interview.

While Western journalists expressed their admiration for reporter Armin Wolf’s grilling of the Russian president for nearly an hour, Vesti News, which adds English subtitles to reports from the Russian state broadcaster, headlined a segment on the encounter: “The Lying Press: Putin Absolutely Destroys Dishonest Austrian Journalist During State TV Interview.”

The Curse of Totalitarianism and the Challenge of Critical Pedagogy

"Memory is the enemy of totalitarianism."—Albert Camus

The forces of free-market fundamentalism are on the march ushering in a terrifying horizon of what Hannah Arendt once called "dark times." Across the globe, the tension between democratic values and market fundamentalism has reached a breaking point. (1) The social contract is under assault, neo-Nazism is on the rise, right-wing populism is propelling extremist political candidates and social movements into the forefront of political life, anti-immigrant sentiment is now wrapped in the poisonous logic of nationalism and exceptionalism, racism has become a mark of celebrated audacity and a politics of disposability comes dangerously close to its endgame of extermination for those considered excess. Under such circumstances, it becomes frightfully clear that the conditions for totalitarianism and state violence are still with us smothering critical thought, social responsibility, the ethical imagination and politics itself. As Bill Dixon observes:

Political Frauds and the Ghost of Totalitarianism

In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination. One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Trump's popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgment rather than titillation. Marie Luise Knott is right in noting, "We live our lives with the help of the concepts we form of the world. They enable an author to make the transition from shock to observation to finally creating space for action - for writing and speaking. Just as laws guarantee a public space for political action, conceptual thought ensures the existence of the four walls within which judgment operates." (1) The concepts that now guide our understanding of US society are dominated by a corporate-induced linguistic and authoritarian model that brings ruin to language, politics and democracy itself.

Harper’s Hail Mary: Fighting an election on terrorism

Can the prospect of terrorism save Stephen Harper?

If you had doubts about whether the Harper government intended to make terrorism and the mission against Islamic State an election issue, they should have been resolved on Monday.

In St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, police were still examining the crime scenewhere a driver had mowed down two soldiers. But Stephen Harper couldn’t wait. Prompted by a planted question from a Saskatchewan MP about “unconfirmed reports” of a possible terrorist attack, the prime minister announced that he was extremely troubled by what he had already heard.

Stephen Harper: a smart tactician or just graceless narcissist?

Someone described Stephen Harper as a Sphinx without a riddle.

Sphinx or not, as he moves government in Canada towards something that is plainly tyrannical, there is no mystery about his increasingly dictatorial nature.

“You have to appreciate Orwell to get a feel for Harper,” former Liberal interim leader Bob Rae told me. “His government doesn’t like alternate sources of information. It likes to be the sole source of information.”

Bad news, Stephen. Democracy is always a choir, never a soloist.

Canada’s Totalitarian Shift

Naomi Wolf’s The End Of America, Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot might just as well be named The End of Canada, since the Government of Canada, now re-branded the “Harper Government”, is following many of the steps that governments follow (in varying degrees) to transition away from democracy and into the murky world of totalitarianism.

These, then, are the ignoble steps that Harper’s Canada is embracing to suppress the flames of liberty:

Government puts tighter leash on RCMP public statements

OTTAWA—The federal government may have a fluent bilingual communicator in its new commissioner Bob Paulson. But it has moved to keep Paulson and the Mounties he now leads on a much tighter leash, some even say muzzled.

The Star obtained a copy of a new communications protocol that requires the RCMP to flag anything that might “garner national media attention” to Public Safety Canada.

Everything from “media advisories, news releases, background info, media lines and talking points for spokespersons and senior officials/members” must be vetted.

Statements by RCMP members who appear before parliamentary committees would likely be massaged by the federal government beforehand, as the document clearly defines a “major event” as “an incident, event, announcement, and/or speaking engagement likely to garner national media attention.”

Signed Sept. 20 and effective immediately, the policy says the Mounties must consult and get approval from Public Safety for communications regarding non-operational matters “PRIOR (emphasis in original) to public use” for almost everything.