By Robert Spencer: Wed Feb 23, 2022.

Read the original here: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/canada-votes-away-its-freedom-185-151-robert-spencer/

Hitler’s Enabling Act also went along party lines.

The death of freedom in Canada went by a party-line vote Monday evening, with the ruling Liberals and the far-Left New Democratic Party voting in favor of Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, and the Conservatives voting against. The vote on Hitler’s Enabling Act, which ended the Weimar Republic, also went along party lines, although most of those who weren’t National Socialists were too intimidated by that point to do anything but go along. In Canada, none of the Liberals and New Democrats who voted for the Emergencies Act appear to have pondered the lessons of the Left’s history and how this whole thing can backfire on them so very easily.

Trudeau claims that he needs emergency powers to seize the bank accounts of his opponents and hound them in other extraconstitutional ways because even though the Freedom Convoy has dispersed, it could gather again any time, you see. Another threat to “our democracy,” as Leftists in both Canada and the United States refer to their hegemony, is just around the corner. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh claimed Monday that the Freedom Convoy “came here to overthrow a democratically elected government. It is a movement funded by foreign influence, and it is fed on disinformation. Its goal is to disrupt our democracy.”

If that reminds you of the Democrats’ rhetoric about their fictional Jan. 6 “insurrection,” that’s because Canada’s Liberals and the Democrats in the States are working from the same playbook: demonize their opposition as insurrectionists and restrict their activities accordingly.

Trudeau, meanwhile, keeps promising that this will soon be over: “There continues to be real concerns about the coming days, but we will continue to evaluate every single day whether or not it is time and we are able to lift this state of emergency.” Will you be surprised if he keeps on finding new reasons why the state of emergency simply has to continue for the welfare of all Canadians? I won’t either.

Trudeau also made one of the rare true statements of his mendacious political career when he said: “I can’t imagine anyone voting against this bill as expressing anything other than a deep mistrust in the government’s ability to keep Canadians safe at an extraordinarily important time.”

Well, yes, that’s right, Justin. Or more precisely, a vote against your invocation of the Emergencies Act expressed a deep mistrust in your government’s intentions, of the need for the Act at all, of your false characterizations of the Freedom Convoy, and more.

Nevertheless, Trudeau has won the day and can proceed to crush the truckers and their supporters, seizing all their assets until they cry “uncle” and submit to his hegemony, murmuring how much they love Big Brother. It’ll all be over soon and Canada will go back to normal, with the opposition to Trudeau’s regime now chastened and wiser, knowing that its opposition has to be toothless and ineffectual, à la Lindsay Graham and John McCain’s opposition to the Democrats in the States, or else Big Brother will have to punish them again.

The Left-fascists who are applauded these dark days in Canada, however, clearly don’t realize that they have authorized the use of a tool that can very easily be turned against them. Jagmeet Singh and the rest have probably never heard of Nikolai Bukharin, but they would be well-advised to study his life carefully now and ponder its lessons.

Bukharin, an early Bolshevik whom Lenin himself described as “the party favorite” and its “biggest theoretician,” was one of the architects of the Soviet Union, the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Bukharin was a true believer in Marxism, and so he actually thought that the state would wither away and the workers would rule in a truly just society, and so he missed Stalin’s maneuverings that placed him (Stalin) in a position of supreme and unchallengeable authority. Bukharin, as one of Stalin’s key rivals, was swept up in Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s, accused of all sorts of preposterous things, and finally executed.

Even as he was being dragged to his death, Bukharin was crying out, appealing to Stalin, certain that the whole thing had been a mistake, and that his comrade Stalin would ultimately rectify it. He was, of course, wrong. He didn’t realize that the authoritarian tools he had so unhesitatingly applied to others could be turned on him. Leftist revolutionaries always ultimately turn on one another; some of those who are thrilled that Trudeau is finally cracking down hard on those insufferable right-wingers will one day find that out.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Full disclosure: Bud has been a financial contributor to David Horowitz Freedom Center for many years. For Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov’s essay on David Horowitz’s life and work, click here.