Dangers of Extremist Politics
Manning addresses the dangers of political extremism in response to claims that he and the Reform Party harboured extreme and intolerant views. Manning claims that
"...everyone with political interests should be required to examine the "dark side of the moon." By this I mean the negative side (or downside of whatever political philosophy one finds attractive, whether it be liberalism, conservatism, socialism, nationalism, or populism."
Manning claims that as a consultant he occasionally encountered "zealous ideologues of both the right and the left" to whom he advised that they temper their political passions. To ideologue conservatives, Manning recommended that they read The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology by Fritz Stern who describes "how conservative ideologues in the 1920s inadvertently prepared the way for Hitler and the rise of fascism". To ideologue socialists, Manning recommended that they read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or read stories about the massacres committed by Pol Pot regime in Cambodia "to get a feel for socialism run amok".
Manning recognizes the prevalence of anti-Semitism which rose in the Alberta Social Credit Party and describes how his father as Social Credit leader actively purged anti-Semites from the party that later resulted in his efforts to purge racists from politics being recognized by receiving the B'nai Brith Humanitarian Award in 1982. Manning claims that like his father, he was seeking to purge racists from the Reform Party. Manning describes his October 1990 speech to Jewish community leaders in Calgary, Alberta, where he assured them that the Reform Party actively sought to purge racial extremists from the party through racially neutral policies.
On the issue of episodes of racism and extremism within the Reform Party, Manning spoke of the serious need to repel the party from absorbing such racism and extremism, saying that:
If a revival of grassroots democratic populism is to be characteristic of the revitalization of Canadian federal politics of the 1990s, especially in Quebec and the West, it is of primary importance that its leaders be well versed in ways and means of preventing populism from developing racist or other extremist overtones. (This, of course, is also the number-one challenge facing those attempting to lead the reform movements of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.)"
Read more about this topic: The New Canada, Topics in The New Canada
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