Canada, Common Cause** Linchpin, On Contesting Populism*

In recent decades we, the Left, have had shockingly little to show for ourselves. Our 
various tendencies each have their own take on why this is, and the explanations are all 
familiar to us. Material conditions are not yet ripe. The Left is fragmented and 
sectarian. There is a crisis of leadership in the unions. Our activists lack the requisite 
commitment and discipline. The movement lacks militancy. Those of us with privilege have 
not yet become good enough allies. And from our class struggle anarchist scene, too often: 
the Left just needs to refocus on “class.” While there are no doubt kernels of insight to 
be found in some of these worn out tropes, let’s be honest. There are material conditions, 
and then there is the North American Left of 2015.

In Canada, neoliberal restructuring continues to erode the living standards of large 
sections of the working class. Urbanization, capital flight, and 
reaccumulation-by-gentrification have reorganized our cities. In Toronto, this 
reorganization pushes the growing lower strata of the class into the new inner-suburban 
proletarian districts. State immigration policies swell the ranks of a migrant worker 
underclass labouring under worsening conditions in the agricultural, manufacturing, and 
service sectors. All these pressures combine to fragment and re-fragment our class. We 
cannot overstate the Left’s failure to contend with this onslaught. Countless hours of 
internal debate have not produced a productive reorientation to these conditions. Our 
public forums, publications, and Internet presence are an echo chamber that deafens us to 
the very voices that should inform our politics: those of our neighbours and co-workers. 
Marginal, isolated and inward-looking, no matter our particular tendency we share a common 
affliction: our politics are ridden with populism.

Populism spans the political spectrum, but is commonly associated with the political 
Right. Locally “Ford Nation,” led by former mayor Rob Ford and his brother and former city 
councillor Doug, represents a populist political current of suburban Toronto. Ford Nation 
positions residents of the city’s inner suburbs as the disenfranchised common people, the 
political underdog whose interests are opposed in a perpetual contest with the politically 
dominant, left-wing, downtown elite. The Fords raise real working-class concerns, such as 
poor transit service outside of downtown. They build their following through direct 
contact with, and casework on behalf of, constituencies traditionally ignored by Toronto’s 
political class. This has allowed the Fords to mobilize electoral support for what is a 
fairly typical fiscally-conservative agenda of reducing and privatizing city services and 
cutting property taxes.

Populism is also the favoured politics of many a social movement. The Tea Party, Men’s 
Rights Activists (MRAs), Occupy, and environmentalists have much more in common than is 
often acknowledged. Within Left circles, much of what has been written about and discussed 
regarding populism concerns itself with analyzing how it is used by the Right, supposing 
it could be used better by the Left. We feel that the time has come to forge an 
understanding of populist methods and intentions that goes beyond its talking points and 
gets to its underlying politics. The following is our working definition of populism:

1. A way of talking and a method of organizing used by a leader, or leadership, to 
opportunistically increase their following among a certain group of people.

Our definition specifically does not reference the mass population, but rather a 
predetermined group of people. Populists only ever speak to a certain particular 
constituency, not a vague, indivisible mass. For example, “Ford Nation” is deliberately 
meant to be the residents of the inner suburbs of Toronto. This is not contained to “Big 
Populists” such as the Fords. Petit-populists abound, as well – especially among the Left. 
The key here is not the quantity of those being engaged, but the quality of the 
engagement. This shouldn’t be confused with cults of personality, which are more up-front 
about their authoritarianism. The bait-and-switch with populists is that rather than 
taking orders, you’re supposedly just following your heart, only to find yourself manipulated.

2. A method of arguing for solutions that ignores the complexity and subtleties of 
problems in favour of simplicity, if not willful inaccuracy; evoking feelings of fear, 
anger, love and hope in order to manipulate or pander to one’s constituency.

How many times have leftists opportunistically railed against “greedy bankers” or 
“corporate rule” rather than undertaking a careful investigation and strategic 
intervention into the intricate set of social relations that give rise to class struggle?

3. A proven strategy to increase numbers of followers, but one which produces a passive 
and politically weak following.

Populist leaders of leftist movements, whether a singular charismatic figure, an NGO, or a 
core of committed activists, either consciously or unwittingly pacify their base by 
stringing them along in a series of mobilizations and calls to action, which appeal to the 
state to redress their issue of the day. This produces a base comprised of individuals 
that, when substantively engaged directly on an individual basis, often present a level of 
incoherence and contradiction that can only be borne of an acute ignorance of their own 
supposed political orientation.

4. A strategy that substitutes superficial commonalities for more relevant shared material 
conditions.

Cultural similarities such as nationality, dress, composure, vocabulary, and music 
override income, employment, health, education, and physical safety as the basis for 
coming together. Populist movements are therefore always cross-class endeavors. On the 
radical left, our small-scale populism has us hemmed in with little to no presence beyond 
university campuses and subcultural radical scenes (punk, alternative lifestyles) where 
academic obscurantism and cliquishness abound. The educational events we organize, the 
propaganda we distribute, and the Internet articles, blogs, and Facebook posts we write 
are more apt to appeal to the people we hang out with on the weekends than to our 
neighbours or co-workers. The self-styled radical activists and intellectuals among us 
cultivate tiny followings and bases of support within their social circles, with only a 
pretense of building independent organizations of the class.

Our populism has produced a contemporary Left that has practically abandoned the terrain 
of class struggle, while feverishly working to maintain the illusion of engagement within 
it. We play at movement building and mobilization, call for solidarity and social justice, 
and mimic direct action. In a relentless blitz of protest organizing, public statements, 
social media campaigns, and internal engagements, we shroud ourselves in a fog of 
self-involvement. To the extent that we build any base within the class, it is tiny, 
inward-looking, and passive.

Populism has taken hold of us. We reproduce a deep-seated authoritarianism embedded within 
our politics. Authoritarianism so thoroughly enmeshed in our practices that it has become 
difficult for us to distinguish; it stands at odds with the very core of anarchist 
communist politics. Unless we begin to examine the folly of our conduct and refrain from 
habitually ingratiating ourselves to a demobilized base, even the best analysis is of no 
consequence. Until we shed ourselves of manipulative practices, we will continue to 
flounder amidst the decomposition of our class and the growing reactionary influence upon 
it. Until we drop the radical posturing, we will fall short of the task of revolutionaries 
– to organize working-class power. Until then, we are little more than organizers of protest.

This article will attempt to point out the dangers of populism manifested in three 
different areas of struggle. All three struggles will be further explored by our comrades 
in the pages that follow. For our part, we will concern ourselves with the Left’s 
particularly hazardous fixation on populism, and how it hinders revolutionaries’ prospects 
for contributing to these struggles. On the ecological front, we insist on abandoning 
one-off mobilizations and millenarian fear mongering. We call for struggle against 
reactionary movements that take hold within our class and demand that we evict ourselves 
from the house of liberalism in order to make war on enemies. And, finally, in contesting 
the police, we consider the possible end of the Copwatch era and stress the need for 
resistance to police brutality to go beyond reactive anger and become rooted in 
organizations that can defend territory. In issuing these warnings and suggestions, we 
hope to contribute to a reorientation to better organize for working-class power.

Marching On as We Poison the Well

The sky is falling as the seas rise and our ship sinks. But don’t worry – important steps 
are being made. Environmental justicers just need more support and we can save this dying 
planet. There’s little more sophistication to common leftist environmental rhetoric than 
that of a door-to-door canvasser. About as much participatory struggle is offered, as 
well. The change they seek is a change of habit, or better yet, a change of political 
parties. We need to join their mobilizations to save the planet and stop those 
(apparently) in favour of killing it. Lawn signs in favour of windmills, mobilizations of 
hundreds of thousands for stricter emissions controls, solar panels on parking meters, 
better fuel economy for public transit vehicles – all of these developments have the 
appearance of change. As revolutionaries, however, we find it difficult to identify any 
significant changes, and we refuse to pass on the due diligence that is required to truly 
tackle the issue. We can’t bank on only the appearance of change, otherwise we run the 
risk of continuing to set ourselves back, while foolishly thinking we are progressing.

In anticipation of the September 2014 UN Climate Summit in New York city, a global call to 
action was made by 350.org to stop climate change. The resulting People’s Climate Marches, 
organized not only in New York, but other cities around the world, were endorsed by 
fifteen hundred organizations – including unions, schools, and churches, as well as 
hundreds of NGOs. On September 21st, 2014, the day of the march, over three hundred 
thousand participants gathered in New York City. Although the number of marchers was 
significant, the march itself was nothing more than a large-scale version of any typical 
activist and NGO-led mobilization. Local activists replicated the event on a smaller scale 
in their respective areas, and for the foreseeable future, it left the climate, those that 
live in the climate, and those that profit from environmental devastation, largely unaffected.

With its simplistic “it’s now or never” or “all or nothing” millenarianism, the lead up to 
this “historic” march was off on a galloping populist pace. With its calls for everyone to 
change everything, it cast its widest net in order to catch... whatever. The mobilizers 
played on people’s fears, rather than telling them the truth: that climate change is real, 
and humans will need to adapt and make revolutionary changes, not to avert it, but in 
order to deal with it. Climate change is in fact here – as are we. It can’t be “stopped,” 
but we can still take measures to limit its further devastation. Vague statements like “an 
invitation to change everything” also don’t mean much, nor do they point the way to any 
concrete or direct actions. In fact, these sorts of statements demonstrate that the 
mobilizers have no trust in working-class people’s abilities to think for ourselves and 
create our own solutions to these problems. We need only to show up, but not to be 
consulted or organized with, as the environmental activist “specialists” already have the 
solutions. All they need are unthinking bodies to swell the demonstration’s numbers. This 
approach, of course, fails to achieve the nuanced conversation on environmentalism within 
the working class that is sorely required for real change to happen. The “base” that is 
created in this fashion, thus, will always be politically weak, while perhaps numerically 
large. Without the hard truth being presented, the lack of understanding of what is at 
stake is unavoidable. The end result, regardless, is that it becomes glaringly evident 
that this form of mobilization, and its populism, produces no independent or effective 
struggles relating to the growing environmental crisis.

Closer to home, in west Toronto, a “secret uranium factory” was discovered by 
environmental activists in the fall of 2012. Word was spread, town halls were called, 
residents were organized, and demands to close the GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada 
facility were made. All of this sounds like successful working-class organizing. In a 
residential neighbourhood, an industrial conglomerate operated a secret processing plant 
that posed lethal threats to all those in the surrounding area. Hundreds of neighbours 
were informed by environmental activists that the local water, soil, and air were 
potentially contaminated and that were a train to derail from the tracks next to the 
factory a cloud of lethal radiation could be unleashed on an unsuspecting and unprepared 
city. They were warned of potential birth defects and developmental impacts on their 
children. In the area surrounding the local elementary school an agitational propaganda 
campaign of spray-painting “nuclear holocaust” was taken up. Justifiably outraged, local 
residents organized to have the GE Hitachi factory shut down. Taking matters further, 
residents of this west end Toronto neighbourhood attempted to build links with Indigenous 
communities engaged in their own struggles against uranium extraction.

Here’s the rub – practically all of the claims and insinuations of the environmental 
crusaders that parachuted into that neighbourhood were false. There was zero evidence of 
local contamination, the uranium in question was un-enriched (not highly radioactive), and 
the factory had been operating for over fifty years at the same location with no 
correlating health impacts reported by local residents.

Regardless, the crusade against this potential nuclear holocaust kept chugging along and 
mobilized a significant number of residents of the neighbourhood, if only for a time. It 
did so by capturing and playing to people’s fears of past-nuclear disasters – going so far 
as to explicitly invoke Fukushima and Chernobyl. These “organizers’” goals may have been 
met (the factory continues to operate and pass safety inspections and soil testing, though 
there was some pretty decent local coverage of the key organizers) but only through 
deliberate manipulation.

Fool me once. Lying to people in order to get a better photo-op is strategically unwise in 
the immediate term. In the long term, after repeated kicks at the-sky-is-falling can, 
people don’t just stop taking you seriously, they start to hate you. They may even start 
to listen to anyone else that hates you, as well. This is the brand of fire populists play 
with. It shouldn’t just be viewed as anathema to core principles of what it means to 
organize within the working class. It should be viewed as potentially suicidal.

They Reap What We Sow

Only one thing could have broken our movement – if our enemies had understood its 
principle and from the first day had smashed the nucleus of our movement with extreme 
brutality. There you go – a Hitler quote right off the hop. Happy?

Much of the Left sees a fascist in every cop, conservative politician, and reactionary 
militant. For some this is transparent hyperbole, but for others an unassailable truth. 
And why not? If one wishes to marshal the full potential of outrage, what better way than 
to evoke the most evilest name in history? If one wishes to portray a struggle as an epic 
confrontation between the forces of good and evil, well, go ahead and “Hitler” it right 
up. So what if it makes little sense, or fails to hold up to scrutiny? It’s all in the 
game. Trouble is, two can play it.

We had our kick at the (equality/free 
speech/anti-racist/anti-sexist/anti-violence/multicultural/secular) can. Now, it seems, 
it’s the other team’s turn. We’re confronted by an interrelated rightward shift of 
“movements” that lurked on the sidelines of ours and studied us. They now emulate our 
rhetorical claims to righteous victimhood and our vague allusions to the justice of our 
cause. Like us, they obscure the matter at hand with a veneer of vague “isms,” while 
rallying forces behind them, rather than with them.

When the barricades go up (dutifully supplied by the state) we volley all the liberal 
objections in our arsenal at our enemies only to be met in kind. The vague (and 
occasionally incoherent) charges of intolerance, violence, prejudice, and dangerousness we 
levy against the Islamophobes, MRAs, and anti-Native organizers are neutralized with a 
simple counter-accusation of “YOU ARE!” We are engaged in a spiraling, intractable war of 
semantics over which of us is the rightful standard bearer of the peaceable liberal.

Trouble is we aren’t liberals. At least we aren’t supposed to be. When we are at our most 
honest, as revolutionaries, we have it in us to be principled, and at times brilliant, in 
our articulation of what it is we oppose, why, and what it is that we strive for. It’s 
when we find ourselves in the terrain of struggle that honesty escapes us. This is, often 
times, a calculated dishonesty. There’s a lack of trust that pervades the Left – not in 
ourselves, but in everyone else. A mentality that the size of a mobilization is the 
measure of struggle and that the size of our mobilizations are inversely proportional to 
the degree of our revolutionary honesty. The first evaluation is false and the second 
evaluation is, therefore, irrelevant.

This mentality presents itself as pathology most when we confront those enemies “among us” 
in the class who are mobilizing against “us” using the same tried and true rhetorical 
methods that we’ve been cultivating for political generations. We don’t find ourselves in 
the position of defending bourgeois virtues of nonviolence, free expression, and 
democracy. We put ourselves in that position by concealing our struggle for power and 
communism. Fearing that no one will listen to us otherwise, we grope around for a 
palatable pitch. We put in play politics that can’t support the weight of their own 
contradictions (those of liberal democracy and revolutionary communism) and are therefore 
destined to collapse. When we leave itinerant reactionary populists to pick up the rubble 
that remains and cobble together their own political edifice, how do we not conclude that 
we are the architects of our own undoing? Honestly. This is not simply a fear of 
recuperation. The concern is that we are furnishing a political environment we will soon 
be evicted from. One in which reactionaries will feel more than comfortable putting their 
feet up and making a home for themselves.

You Are Cordially Invited to an Eviction Party

It’s only a matter of time before we’re evicted from our claims of victimhood, demands for 
our rights of protected speech, and our positions as champions of secular enlightenment. 
We don’t propose fighting for our right to continue to inhabit this space. We should 
welcome the eviction and, with proletarian abandon, trash the place on our way out. We 
propose moving on. Salt the fields and poison the wells of populism. We propose war with 
enemies. We don’t simply carry a new world in our hearts, rather, we carry it on our backs 
as we proclaim it clearly and unequivocally in our words to our class and take on 
organizing in order that we may all grasp it with our fists.

On the Justice of Slitting Bearded Necks

When we square off against MRAs specifically, or misogyny generally, we should leave 
debates of “sexism” and statistical inequality to the liberal depths from whence they 
came. We should be honest with others and true to our more private discussions when we 
enter the fray. Leave behind the wordsmithing that reduces our politics to a pale 
reduction of its honest form. Ground struggles against patriarchy in our organizing of any 
front – because that’s what feminists do. Deliberately build our strength, wage battles, 
weaken and defeat misogynists, and make no excuses for that – because that’s what 
revolutionaries do. Let misogynists’ claims of victimization ring true. We should silence 
them. We should run them off. They should be afraid. We should wage war on MRAs publicly 
and effectively, while not wavering from our position that defeating patriarchy is a 
victory for humanity, and that all those that stand with patriarchy stand opposed to 
humanity – and us.

Nous Sommes Confus

The repugnance and brutality of a secularism that comfortably thrives at the heart of 
Christendom can’t possibly continue to be ignored by any revolutionaries. Nor can the 
facile, tacit support of religious reactionaries be seen as any rectification. Any game 
where the players have to pick between team Hitchens and team Galloway (or any of their 
farm teams) is a game that no revolutionary can win.

2015 began, for the Left, with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and the following 
increase of attacks on Muslims in France. The incoherence of progressive and radical 
rhetoric was thrown into stark relief as we attempted to reconcile the supposed impasse 
that pits “enlightened values” against segments of the working class brutalized by white 
supremacy and Islamophobia. Revulsion at the attack was met with anti-imperialist 
denunciation. Battle lines were drawn and the indignation was let loose with an abandon 
few others but leftists are capable of. To what end? When enlightened principle faced off 
against an attempted exorcism of the Left’s racist demons, revolutionary politics were 
left in the lurch. The unstoppable force of “anti-racism” collided with the immovable 
object of “free speech” and - as the idiomatic paradox implies - the outcome was 
incomprehensibly vague. Mobilizing sentiment behind these ideas became the priority, and 
reactionaries on both sides responded enthusiastically. Why we cling so dearly to these 
vagueries is a question that we must take stock of and rectify.

Settling Accounts

Whether it’s the “Two Row Wampum,” “The Dish With One Spoon,” class interest, or all of 
the above that guides our solidarity with Indigenous struggle, our analysis should be 
comprehensible as something more substantial than a meme, or a flag. We should be 
compelled by more than mere sentiments of guilt, shame, or admiration. It should be taken 
as incontrovertible that the Indigenous people on this land are those that are poised 
today to be those most opposed to the interests of the Canadian ruling class and its 
state. It should also be understood that some of the most potent (while still somewhat 
latent) opposition to Indigenous fighters will come from a Canadian population galvanized 
by their own ready-made sentiments of fear, indignation, and pride, and replete with their 
own flags and memes. It’s unlikely that in a balance of forces, “our” sentimentality will 
win out over “theirs,” if and when the question is called. This is anticipatable and 
unnecessary. There are real class interests for “settlers” to ally with Indigenous 
communities and territories engaged in conflict with the ruling class of Canada. We need 
to be clear on these, lest we perpetuate an approach to “the Indigenous question” far more 
suitable to antagonism than solidarity with Indigenous struggle.

Police: Pox Populi

Not since the events that followed Rodney King’s beating at the hands of fifteen LAPD 
officers have things “kicked off” to such a degree across the United States in response to 
the brutality of its police. For some it may be difficult to appreciate the significance 
of “the first ever viral video,” which clearly showed cops taking turns, as one after 
another truncheoned an unarmed Black man. It was 1992, and the real outcome of the “War on 
Drugs” was becoming impossible to ignore for an ever-growing number of people. The rapidly 
expanding police force and prison population stood congruent with, and not opposed to the 
spiralling violence again taking hold of the deindustrialized urban centres of the United 
States. The urban unrest of the 1960’s had been historically attributed to militant action 
in service of the “Civil Rights” movement (read: Black liberation). Back in the early 
1990s, it seemed quite likely that the US was poised on the brink of a new era of civil 
unrest. Yet unlike before, this unrest would not be in defence of liberatory momentum, but 
rather, in response to the decades-long all-out assault on the working class, generally, 
and the urban Black working class, particularly. Enter into this simmering cauldron of 
potential “rupture” the voices of all those that sought to lead their people to the 
promised land, yet again. This was twenty-three years ago. It would be a stretch to claim 
any concrete gains for the working class in its struggle against the police since, despite 
the galvanization of sentiments of objection broadly, and the reinvigorated militancy and 
consciousness of the Black working class specifically.

While it’s true to say the events of Los Angeles in 1992 were catalytic for many – gang 
members organized peace summits, prisoners familiarized themselves with the struggles of 
those that came before them, Copwatches were started formally and informally across the 
country, and the Prison-Industrial-Complex, as a growing phenomena, accompanied a 
generalized understanding of the police-as-enemy, again being articulated. Yet no 
breakthroughs can be claimed, despite the opportunities available.

We have every reason, twenty-three years later, to claim opportunities for breakthrough 
are again before us – though it’s far from a given. It can be said that the murders of 
Oscar Grant in Oakland and Trayvon Martin in a Miami suburb had each contributed to a 
stewing resentment giving way to localized resistance. But Ferguson seemed to be a 
watershed moment that was then compounded by the callously indifferent way in which 
Officer Daniel Pantaleo murdered an unarmed and peaceable Eric Garner – on camera. If Mr. 
King’s beating at the hands of the LAPD ushered in the era of Copwatch, does this mean 
that Eric Garner’s murder at the hands of the NYPD brings it to a close? While recordings 
of the brutality of police can still provide a catalytic spark for popular outrage, the 
idea that they are in any way a preventative measure should have been dispensed with as we 
watched Eric Garner having the life slowly choked from him by an officer who knew that his 
murder was being documented.

Police beatings and murders are common occurrences; the phenomenon of those beatings and 
murders producing a groundswell of resistance is far rarer; that resistance spreading out 
and sustaining itself, even more so. The resistance to police violence and state abuse 
that swelled in Ferguson, Missouri has given birth to new memes and slogans, sure, but 
more importantly it’s stirred the conscience and objections of hundreds of thousands of 
people across the continent and moved them to act. The how has been attributed to all the 
new communication methods and social networking technologies available to us today. Fine. 
The why is not that murdered but rather that the people in Ferguson most targeted by its 
police force were the ones that fought back. It was different than the staged protests 
everyone had become so accustomed to, and they, rightly, took notice. The how of the 
resistance has very much to do with the refusal of militants and residents in Ferguson to 
allow others to speak for them (while actually speaking at them). They took matters in 
their own hands and inspired thousands of others to do likewise.

When Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were run out of town, they didn’t leave behind them a 
power vacuum. In the absence (or following the removal) of self-appointed leaders, the 
power and intelligence of those they wished to lead came to the fore. Tactics diversified, 
fronts of struggle opened up, attacks were met with resistance, and every person inspired 
by the actions of those in Ferguson could imagine carrying them out themselves. Many did. 
Across the United States actions were taken up to give voice to those who objected to the 
role of the police. As activity spread, it was not a process of repetition giving way to 
stagnation, but solidarity paving the way for innovation. Thousands blockaded major 
roadways, took workplace action, organized walk-outs of their schools, and blocked access 
to major retail locations on the country’s busiest shopping days.

Success in struggles against police requires organization. Successful organizations 
require that their memberships be comprised of those impacted by police violence. These 
should be givens for any revolutionaries. What often goes unaddressed are the ways in 
which we enforce a division between these organizations and the resistance they are 
supposed to be facilitating. The organizations we construct are those that craft the 
rhetoric and analysis relevant to the resistance others carry out. “Revolutionary” 
organizations evaluate the conditions for struggle from a remove, while “community” 
organizations support (read: intervene on) the masses with workshops aimed at cognitive 
and behavioural remedies for privilege and oppression. Meanwhile, their chosen audience 
remains unmoved, either intellectually or physically.

This is no spontaneitist screed against organization, but a demand that we reconceive the 
role of organizations as something beyond the purview of those that think what they have 
to say to others is so important that they need institutions to do so. Organizations that 
can effectively respond to the scourge of police need be accountable and responsive to the 
will of those up to the task. Our current populist affliction is of no service to that 
end. And in many ways, our reactive hit-and-miss ambulance chasing mentality, at times in 
which police violence even moderately captures the attention of a broader segment of the 
class, acts as an interloping place-holder that obstructs, rather than contributes to, the 
building of organizations by those most in need of them.

If we wish to avoid another twenty-three year hibernation period for struggles against 
policing, we need be wary of our tendency to stymie the building of real organizations 
that can contest territory with the police. Overcoming the tendency to speak for and to 
“the resistance” is crucial for us to be able to contribute to the building of the 
organizations of counter-power best suited to combating the police. If not – we can, at 
the very least, afford the working class the courtesy of not standing in its way as it 
takes up that organizing itself.

Moving Forward

In our opening volley for Mortar Volume Three, we have tried to identify the Left’s 
default orientation towards the inherently authoritarian politics of populism, and the 
dangers therein. We want to be clear. We are in no way opposed to appealing to people’s 
anger, hopes, and fears in our organizing. On the contrary, not doing so will mean we fail 
to make the basic human connection required to agitate our neighbours and co-workers, and 
encourage their self-organization. We are for direct organizing within the class on all 
fronts to improve our lives and increase our power.

The hazards of populism lie, not in engaging with the passion evoked by the disparity 
between what the working class has and what it wants, but in its latent or explicit 
authoritarianism. We must shed ourselves of the bred-in-the-bone methods that capture 
those passions while corralling people into dead-end pathways that prioritize the most 
numerous or “militant” mobilization over the most powerful organizing. In doing so, we aim 
to demonstrate how self-organized working-class action can defeat and cast into 
irrelevancy even the most energetic displays of populist movements.

* Two Toronto Members, One Hamilton Member, One Kitchener-Waterloo Member
** Common Cause is a specific anarchist-communist organization, founded in 2007, with 
active branches in Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario.