Canada must resist anti-democratic crusaders

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By David Suzuki

This beautiful blue planet, spinning around the sun in a vast cosmos, offers everything we need to survive and thrive. There’s no reason for hunger or the pain and misery we inflict on each other in our senseless rush for… what, exactly?

We have much to learn about ourselves and our place in existence, but we have the knowledge, science, technology and solutions to take care of each other and resolve many global crises.

Unfortunately, some people value their skyrocketing wealth and power over others’ wellbeing and survival. Under a global economic system that facilitates it, anti-democratic billionaires and oligarchs are scuttling some of the limited but important progress we’ve seen over the past few decades, hell-bent on pursuing their deluded interests at everyone else’s expense.

Take Elon Musk. The South African immigrant — who worked illegally during his early years in the United States but is an immigration hardliner — was able to essentially gain control of much of the U.S. government (likely with help from his pal, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin) for what to him amounts to pocket change. He now has direct influence over lucrative government contracts, competitors’ opportunities, hiring and firing and more.

While the pace of disastrous change in the U.S. is dizzying, we should have seen it coming. Billionaires and anti-democratic libertarians have been building up to this for decades. Much of it stems from the most profitable enterprise in history: fossil fuels.

In a chapter on taxes in her book At a Loss for Words, former CBC journalist Carol Off details efforts going back to the 1960s by “dark money” forces led by fossil fuel industrialists to overturn regulations, especially environmental, and remove barriers to companies by having the U.S. Supreme Court rule that corporations have the same rights as people, among other measures. This has substantially widened the gap between rich and poor that had been shrinking since President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. The richest one per cent now have more wealth than 95 per cent of the world’s population.

Referencing research by Democracy in Chains author Nancy MacLean, Off writes of “a small band of brothers” who in the 1970s created a “complete blueprint for a post-democracy world” that people in high places would put into play. The movement was sparked by political economist James Buchanan, a pro-segregationist who believed democracy and equality were incompatible with capitalism.

Charles Koch and his late brother David, oil barons whose businesses include processing bitumen from Alberta oilsands, took up the cause with a fervour, funnelling massive amounts of money into political lobbying, campaign financing and fake grassroots, or “astroturf,” organizations — all to protect unfettered capitalism and the right to private property at the expense of regulations, institutions and social programs. Koch companies have a long history of environmental violations.

“They proposed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, the Food and Drug Administration, and all government health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and to put an end to compulsory education for children and laws limiting the use of child labour,” Off writes.

Sound familiar? Off notes these are similar to goals outlined in Project 2025, the current U.S. administration’s road map. Project 2025 was produced by the Kochs’ Heritage Foundation.

The movement toward undemocratic authoritarianism is spreading, creating greater inequality, misery and death worldwide. It has politicized and rejected the necessary environmental science and progress that common sense people across the political spectrum once widely accepted — science and progress that have led to cleaner air and water for people and greater accountability for corporations.

Power and wealth buy political influence; they also buy media influence, aimed at selling largely compliant audiences the absurd lie that the billionaires and oligarchs are on their side.

We’re fortunate in Canada to have a relatively stable political system in a country considered to be a good global citizen. We have a strong economy, an educated population and we value diversity. But the U.S. is showing how quickly things can change. We can’t let that happen here.

Let’s hope our neighbours to the south get back on track with everything from environmental protection to narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Meanwhile, we need to keep the True North strong and free! Elbows up!

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.

REFERENCES:

Global economic system that facilitates it:

https://davidsuzuki.org/story/igniting-the-great-global-transformation

Worked illegally:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/26/elon-musk-illegal-immigration

His pal, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin:

https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-says-he-cant-russian-asset-because-putin-cant-afford-me-2034126

Have been building up to this for decades :

https://history.wisc.edu/publications/democracy-in-chains-the-deep-history-of-the-radical-rights-stealth-plan-for-america

At a Loss for Words:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/729716/at-a-loss-for-words-by-carol-off/9781039008434