The Man of Three Cloaks

Winston Churchill said of the Russia that it was 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.' So too is the man I'm writing about; and like Russia, one that was just as dangerous.

The Man of Three Cloaks

by Frank Hilliard

Who wrote the following words, Marx, Lenin or economist William Beveridge who authored the report that formed the basis of the British welfare system?

"Capitalism in our country exploits the worker, and our legislation fails to protect him sufficiently . . . The liberal idea of property helped to emancipate the bourgeoisie but it is now hampering the march towards economic democracy . . . the present private enterprise economy is geared to the satisfaction of individual needs, not to that of collective needs."

Could be any of them, couldn't it. No, the author of these anti-capitalist statements wasn't Karl Marx, it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada writing in the McGill Law Journal and quoted by Christina McCall & Stephen Clarkson in the second volume of their book Trudeau and Our Times on page 78.

Trudeau got these hard left ideas from C.B. Macpherson, the Marxist political theorist at the University of Toronto, Frank Scott, Dean of Law at McGill University and a founder of the CCF and from Harold Laski, the Chairman of the British Labour Party in 1946. The handsome Canadian playboy at the London School of Economics wasn't always dashing off to Paris on his Harley-Davidson, he was eagerly soaking up Socialist dogma at home and abroad.

He refused to run as a socialist in Canada, turning down the idea flatly, because he saw the CCF had no chance of electoral success in Quebec. Instead he bided his time until deciding to become a Liberal in 1965 (at the age of 46). So, to be clear, this was no sudden appreciation of classic liberalism on the part of Trudeau and his cronies, this was a blatant power grab on the part of a group of like-minded Quebec socialists. Our Times states it even more clearly on page 87.

In effect, Trudeau and his comrades (ed: lovely pun), Marchand and Pelletier, aided by Marc Lalonde, hijacked the Liberal Party in 1968. 'We weren't Liberals,' Marchand frankly admitted later, 'but we decided to use the Liberal Party.'

Could anything be more clear than that? Really, truly, why isn't this publicly acknowledged by everyone?  Trudeau was a millionaire socialist who hid his political beliefs under the cloak of the ostensibly-centrist Liberal Party of Canada.That is the first cloak.

The second I dealt with extensively in my book A Conspiracy of Two, based on a blog post you may have read called René Lévesque & Pierre Trudeau. The argument I made there is that Trudeau and Lévesque played a game of good cop, bad cop with the Canadian people. The one argued for an independent state to strengthen French culture in Quebec while the other argued for a Canadian state that would guarantee a strong French culture in Quebec. It was seen by most of us at the time as an argument between a Canadian nationalist and a Quebec sovereigntist, but it was actually an argument over strategy.

Trudeau must, must have told Lévesque he could get the same things by creating and then carving in stone a new constitution. Lévesque must have said; 'yes, a new constitution Pierre, but for Quebec!.' Really, what's the difference? So let's call this cloak the cloak of Canadian nationalism to cover the belief in both men had in Quebec exceptionalism.

And now we come to the third and most dangerous cloak of all; the cloak of individual rights to cover a move by the state to own all rights; to cover, in effect, the adoption of proto-fascism as the Canadian way.

There are plenty of definitions of fascism, but the one I'm going to use comes from the source, Benito Mussolini,

If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.

and

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.

Thank you for that, Benito. And what could be more a synthesis and unit of all values than the Canadian Human Rights Commission based on the Charter of Rights and Freedom conjured up out of thin air by Pierre Trudeau? Take this case for an example.

The Quebec Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a Montreal man to pay his gay neighbours $12,000 for allegedly subjecting them to “homophobic comments,” death threats and invitations to fight, even though he was acquitted of the charges in a court of law nearly five years ago.

Or take this campaign to get millions of people to do what the Government decides is something they should.

Or take the current proposal of Liberal Party of Canada to provide universal day care for children.

Whether it's what you say, what drugs you use or how you take care of your children, the Liberal Party is the party of state intervention which 'interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.'

So how can I hang this cloak of proto-fascism over the bronzed statue of Pierre Trudeau, the concealed socialist? First, I can point you to the book Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg which points out that the roots of both Socialism and Fascism lie in the Progressive impulses of the French revolution. The Nazis, after all, were National Socialists, as opposed to the Communists, who were International Socialists. And where would Pierre have got ideas based on the French revolution?  My guess is the Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. He would certainly have studied it there.

But there is another, more telling, fact in Trudeau's life; his strident and public opposition to conscription in 1942 during which, Our Times says he made 'inflammatory statements at a public rally that were quoted on the Front Page of Le Devoir.' Why would one be against the idea of fighting to free France from fascist tyranny? Whether English Canada was following Britain's lead, or not; what had that to do with lifting Nazism from shoulders of the French people?

Well there is another explanation; it is that Quebec was pro-Vichy during the war; it supported the fascist puppet state because—wait for it—because it approved of it!

According to long-time friend and colleague Marc Lalonde, the contemporary clerically-influenced dictatorships of António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, Francisco Franco in Spain and Marshal Philippe Pétain in Vichy France were seen as models to many young intellectuals educated at elite Jesuit schools in Quebec.

Why would Trudeau, the master of cloaking not cloak his approval for fascism in a more acceptable rejection of English dominion? And why would this not all be explained away as youthful nonsense years later?

Oh, oh, you say. Trudeau would never support anything like absolute state power. He would never launch a National Energy Policy, impose Wage and Price Control or put troops in the street. Except he did. 

Oh Pierre, how little we knew you then; and how little we still know you now. You waved so many cloaks in our face we never saw the sword you slid into our heart.