Book Review: Marci McDonald's "The Armageddon Factor"
Prime Minister
Stephen Harper has virtually turned over the keys to his government to
right-wing Christians.
By Sheila Kieran
May 20, 2010
With “The
Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada”
(Random House; 419 pp; $32), Marci Mcdonald has written the most
important book on Canadian politics since Peter Newman’s “The Secret
Mulroney Tapes” in 2005. Backed by a breadth and depth of research,
“The Armageddon Factor” is a chilling look at Stephen Harper’s goal of
Chistianizing Canada and at how successful he has been so far. It is
particularly essential reading for women, who will be the most affected
Canadians if he ever gets the majority for which he yearns and
constantly plots.
Not that Harper has fully pleased the right-wing Christians who are the
foundation of his support. Says Mcdonald, “…they are not likely to be
mollified by his plodding incrementalism or cautious tweaks of the
bureaucracy. Aggressive and insistent, they are driven by a fierce
imperative to reconstruct Canada in a biblical mould.” In that context,
the idea that Harper didn’t realize what he was doing when he excluded
support for abortion services in his so-called “maternal and child” G8
– G20 initiative seems less likely. He knew exactly what he was doing:
playing to his evangelical-fundamentalist base, just more blatantly
than he usually does.
As Canadian women know to their sorrow, there are anti-choice hysterics
in every caucus. But their number – and now their influence – amongst
the Tories is chilling. So, too, is that fact that Harper has virtually
turned over the keys to his government to these people, attending their
conferences, paying tribute to them when they visit Ottawa, and happily
funding them. If he is not doing their explicit bidding, he is covertly
making this country into what they want. He appointed Christian
nationalists to senior ministries, among them Vic Toews, first to
Justice and, now, to Public Safety – and Stockwell Day, pal of
Holocaust denier and prominent anti-Semite James Keegstra, as Minister
responsible for the Treasury Board. Harper handed the Science portfolio
to Gary Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ontario who has done
nothing to refute the charge that he is a creationist who, like Day,
believes the world is 6,000 years old and that humans might well have
frolicked with dinosaurs.
The Canada-U.S. border has never existed for extremist Christians and
McDonald’s analysis of that situation is intelligent – and scary:
American fundamentalists, frightened that their courts now pay
attention to rulings in other countries, will do whatever they think is
necessary to prevent Canadian decisions that are antithetical to their
interests. As a result, they have helped organize and finance a web of
legal and other educational schools and academies here that adhere to
their most narrow-minded Christian beliefs. Many graduates of these
places have, unsurprisingly, found positions at all levels of the
Harper government, including in his office.
Right-wing Christians believe that, after the Battle of Armageddon,
there will be a ‘rapture’ in which true believers will be summoned to
heaven and, thus, saved. The bad news for Harper’s Jewish supporters is
that, unless they become baptized Christians, they’re not going to be
invited to the party. (Christian right-wingers believe that Israel must
conquer her enemies before the Second Coming.)
It’s well past time when we should know who Harper really is: not the
sweetie in the blue sweater but a dedicated, determined right-winger
who would make sure women stay in the kitchen and the nursery – and out
of his way.
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