Former prime minister Stephen Harper, despite his self-promoted brilliance and his self-perpetuated aura as being the smartest guy in the room, has never in his life met a mud puddle he didn’t want to step in. I guess, as they say, old habits die hard. Maybe without Ray Novak living in his garage, Harper doesn’t have the guidance he once did, not that Novak’s much better in the political principles department.
Harper, who is now the chair of the the International Democrat Union, heads an organization that encourages right-wing entities, government and organizational, to come together to collaborate on right-wing principles. These “principles” usually involve some sort of open hostility towards vulnerable populations that live within the borders of nations controlled by conservative-minded governments.
Harper met in Budapest, Hungary with Hungarian president Victor Orban, a despotic right-wing ideologue who has lurched his nation into a decided corner of intolerance with respect to human rights, social values, and immigration.
The International Democrat Union shaking hands with a man accused of undermining democracy and democratic institutions in his own country. It’s a great look for Steve.
Hungary is one of the top-two most odious “democracies” that belong to both the European Union and to NATO, with Turkey being the other. Hungary has regularly been criticized by the EU for its assault on democratic institutions, independent journalism, and its judicial system. And the face of all of this, of course, is Orban.
Harper couldn’t get in there fast enough.
Hungary, among other things, is currently deliberately holding up the ascension of Sweden into NATO, mostly for petulant reasons, which is the way that eastern European backwater conducts most of its business. I guess they don’t want to be upstaged by the Turks as the biggest assholes in NATO.
If I had to make a choice between Sweden and Hungary, well, that’s not much of a choice now, is it? Sweden takes the prize 100 times out of ten as a nation most aligned with what Canadians, other than most Conservatives, feel about how a nation should be run.
In physics, there’s that thing about how when two items touch, there is an exchange of matter between the two. So when Harper and Orban shake hands in front of the cameras, it’s hard to tell which guy is getting the most sleaze on his hands from the other. It is, as they say, a wash.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 