(en) Canada, Common Cause, MORTAR #3 - Combating the
Reactionary Forces of Liberalism by One Hamilton Member, Two Toronto
Members, Two Former Members
To be honest, this is not the article that we set out to write months ago. Our original
intention was to take the three most potent reactionary tendencies that we see percolating
under the surface of Canadian working-class culture: an emboldened, backward-looking
misogyny, a domestically jingoistic nationalism intransigently opposed to anti-colonial
struggle, and a supposedly enlightened secularism that only thinly conceals a deep seated
racism - dissect them, and prescribe treatment. Relying on recent and more historical
struggles against reaction and backwardness within our class, we intended to help light
the way forward by contributing to a deeper understanding of what it is that we are up
against, and how it is that we will defeat it. This did not come to pass.
Instead, what we have for you is less a treatment regimen for what ails the working class
(and, by extension, the Left), and more of a diagnostic report of three salient examples
of reactionary tendencies attacking its composition and consciousness: Men's Rights
Activists (MRAs), anti-Native sentiment, and Islamophobia. We intend to take up how to
mount a counter-offensive in a later article. It is imperative that multiple
counter-offensives target these three reactionary tendencies and "movements" and defeat them.
In taking on the work of better understanding the political underpinnings of our
adversaries, it gradually became clear that we are not faced with the forces of reaction
our political forebears struggled against. Further, in our colonial, North American state
of affairs, we cannot uncritically adopt strategies and analysis from our anti-fascist
contemporaries in Europe without recognizing major differences in historical and political
context. Our enemies today are not the neo-fascist boogey men we make them out to be; they
are liberals - through and through. Make no mistake, we are not claiming that this
political alignment makes them less of a threat to the interests of the working class. In
fact, they may present more of a threat, in that we (the Left) continue to misread them as
we fail to mount an effective response. These reactionary currents destabilize the working
class by attacking its more marginalized segments, opposing working-class interests and
struggles, and shifting liberatory politics even further into the realm of the liberal.
In order to formulate a salient strategy of dealing with these threats, we need to first
understand who and what it is that we are up against. We determined that we were unable to
accomplish both of these tasks in a single article. Instead, we chose to put the horse
before the cart, for a change. So, please, join us as we examine the reactionary forces of
liberalism, and as you read, think on how best it is that we will extinguish them.
What are Reactionary Ideas? What are Reactionary Tendencies and Movements?
Reactionary ideas, broadly defined, are political beliefs that develop in response to
social change and which seek a reversal of said change - usually in the form of a return
to some idealized past. Often, reactionary ideas take root among socially dominant
demographics (such as white men) in response to the struggles of oppressed or otherwise
marginalized groups. More often than not, this phenomenon is associated with conservative,
or right-wing political currents. This is, however, not always the case. For example,
Stalinism and primitivism are two reactionary ideologies with roots in the Left.
In this article we speak mostly of reactionary tendencies. By this, we mean a loose
collection of reactionary ideas, public forums, small organized groups, and other elements
that have not yet coalesced into a full-scale reactionary movement. In this article, we
describe working-class anti-Native sentiment, MRAs, and Islamophobia as tendencies,
because they have not yet given rise to mass social movements to the extent that, for
example, the US Christian Right or the global Wahhabist movement have. The difference
between a tendency and a movement can be understood as the degree of organization,
influence, and unity of purpose and action among the different reactionary forces present.
Reactionary tendencies are mass phenomena, engaging and mobilizing significant numbers of
the working class. It is this fact, above all others, that makes them so dangerous; they
present anarchists with the challenge of taking on a mass movement. Mass reactionary
movements can be, and often are, led or directed by the ruling class. But they can also be
autonomous from, and in direct conflict with the ruling class, forcing anarchists into
what is sometimes described as a "three-way fight."
What is at Stake?
Reactionary tendencies present a clear danger to anarchists, and a significant challenge
to our ability to build class power. In a worst-case scenario, these tendencies could
rapidly take on a mass movement character, forcing us into a three-way fight for which we
are currently ill prepared. To be clear, this would be a fight which would take place on
our streets, workplaces, and campuses, and our enemies would be made up of neighbours,
co-workers and classmates. This is what it means to be in a three-way fight with the
ruling class and a mass reactionary movement. Even if this scenario doesn't come to pass,
and today's reactionary tendencies fail to crystallise into a mass movement (something
which cannot be assumed), they nonetheless spread and reinforce divisions within the class
- divisions that must be contended with if we are to build up working-class power.
Reactionary tendencies are currently on the rise across the globe. Some - such as
far-right nationalist parties in Europe, the global Wahhabist movement, and the
constellation of forces grouped under the Tea Party and Christian Right in the United
States - have already established themselves as full-blown reactionary movements. Within
this international context, we believe that the potential exists for the current cesspool
of reactionary tendencies in Canada to consolidate, or otherwise develop into one or more
mass reactionary movements. We feel it's important to try and understand the dynamics
driving this development, in order to help determine what role anarchist communists can
play in the building of an effective response. We may already be in a race against time.
Anti-Native Reaction, Men's Rights and Islamophobia: Reactionary Tendencies in Our Backyard
We've chosen these three festering reactionary tendencies because they appear to us as the
most pressing at the moment. We readily acknowledge that other reactionary tendencies
exist within the Canadian working class, and that the specific tendencies we are looking
at here overlap with, and are part of broader systems of oppression such as white
supremacy, imperialism/colonialism and hetero-patriarchy. But anti-Native reaction, MRAs
and Islamophobia appear to us as to be the most dynamic, and the most likely sources
(separately, or in combination) from which a reactionary social movement might emerge in
our backyard, and so these are what we will be looking at.
I. Anti-Native Reaction: Unfinished Business
Anti-Native reaction, or hatred of Indigenous peoples is, of course, one of the founding
pillars of the Canadian settler state. White supremacy - the ideology of the racial and
cultural superiority of Europeans, historically manifested through genocide and
colonialism - remains the dominant paradigm through which the Canadian working class views
the country's Indigenous population. The common racist tropes that have developed over
four hundred years among settler farmers and workers are familiar to anyone who has ever
had a conversation on the subject, and we do not need to restate them here. To this day,
they continue to provide mass ideological justification for the colonial project of
appropriating (or holding onto) and exploiting Indigenous lands, while pushing their
inhabitants to the brink of cultural extinction.
But today, for the first time in decades, Indigenous resistance is reaching a scale and
strength that is once again challenging the Canadian colonial project. This resistance is
fueled by several concurrent factors: a powerful cultural revival especially among
Indigenous youth (many being the first generation with some distance from the genocidal
residential schools), the high growth rate of Indigenous populations (approaching fifty
percent in Saskatchewan), a multiplication of militant land reclamations and defense
actions, a growing re-establishment, or re-assertion of self-government by various means
(for example the autonomous revival of the traditional Six Nations government) and to some
extent, growing awareness and support among non-Indigenous people (especially among
environmentalists and activists in general) for anti-colonial struggle. We don't want to
paint too rosy a picture; Indigenous revolutionaries and organizers face many challenges -
not least of which being their own Indigenous colonial administrators, and petty bourgeois
parasites. But the past decades have witnessed a steadily increasing pace of Indigenous
self-organization and resistance, having reached a level that has not been seen for over a
century. And all signs indicate that Idle No More was just one step in the growth and
consolidation of this burgeoning movement.
At the same time, under the guidance of the Harper government, the Canadian ruling class
is pursuing an accumulation strategy centred around an incredibly aggressive approach to
resource extraction. This is epitomized by the Alberta tar sands, but the same process is
taking place across the country. The Ontario and Québec governments' plans to massively
expand mining in their northern territories (known as the "Ring of Fire" and "Plan Nord"
respectively), the ecologically devastating pipeline projects planned or in construction
from the coast of British Columbia through to the Maritimes, and the increasingly
aggressive maneuvering by the Canadian state to secure disputed Arctic territories for
resource companies, are all part of this aggressive push by Canadian capital. All of this
is happening within a context of growing Indigenous resistance, so it is not surprising
that we are seeing an increasingly intense clash between the Canadian state and Indigenous
peoples defending their lands and culture.
In a colonial nation such as Canada, the combination of an Indigenous cultural and
political revival with an intensification of conflict between Indigenous peoples and the
state is likely to generate a more aggressive, or active, anti-Native reaction among the
non-Indigenous working class. We would argue that this is indeed what is already
happening, and increasingly likely to happen.
By "more active," we mean a reaction that goes beyond the "normal" levels of passive
political support shown by the majority of working-class Canadians for the colonial
project; something more than just morally supporting, or turning a blind eye to the
colonial maneuvers of the Canadian state and capital from afar; something beyond simply
partaking in the myriad everyday ways in which residents of a colonial state commit
violence against a colonized people. What we mean is the growth of more emboldened
anti-Native political sentiment, and the spread of organized groups who demand a more
aggressive colonial project, and are willing to actualize this demand independent of, or
even in spite of, the state. This is a generalization, but we might say that as Indigenous
resistance continues to approach levels not seen since before the consolidation of the
Canadian state, we may also be approaching a return of anti-Native forces that look more
like the private settler-farmer militias of old than the bigoted passive voter, or online
troll of today.
Does this seem too extreme a conclusion? We think not, and for a potential warning of
things to come, we point to the so-called "Caledonia Crisis": a wave of Indigenous
resistance and non-Indigenous reaction that began in February 2006, in response to a
housing development project, which was being constructed in flagrant disregard of an
unresolved land claim. By October, over a thousand local residents were marching in the
streets as part of a so-called "March for Freedom," demanding swift state intervention.
Playing the role of peaceful white victims, an anti-Native crusader from Richmond Hill
named Gary McHale and his supporters in Caledonia focused their anger at the supposedly
"Native-pandering" Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), and their apparent inability to
enforce "law and order" in a town shaken by the spectre of Indigenous terrorism. Employing
liberal rhetoric calling for "equal treatment by the law" and "equal rights," McHale's
organizing in Caledonia was a direct reaction to the resistance undertaken by the
Haudenosaunee people of the Six Nations on the Grand River against the continuing theft of
their lands.
On April 20, 2006, about five months before the March for Freedom, one hundred OPP
officers violently raided a land reclamation encampment at the Douglas Creek Estates,
which was established as the central site of Six Nations struggle against the developers.
In a fashion not quite resembling the police favouritism alleged by McHale and his
supporters, officers descended on the site, violently attacking members of the encampment
with pepper spray and tasers, and placing many under arrest. The resurgence of Six Nations
struggle following these raids saw an escalation in tactics in the form of highway
roadblocks, and a consistent determination from Six Nations resisters to defend lands
under the threat of colonial theft. It is in this context that McHale and his supporters
began to make the plea for heavier policing to bring "law and order" and "equality before
the law" down upon the heads of defiant Six Nations residents.
Even before McHale entered the picture, local reactions to the Six Nations land defenders,
while mixed, were channeled through the business-led Caledonian Citizens Alliance (CCA),
which mobilized thousands of locals and neighbouring supporters to oppose the land
reclamation. Seizing on these tensions, McHale, through his web-based project, Caledonia
Wake-Up Call (CWUC), and his provincial organization, Canadian Advocates for Charter
Equality (CANACE), joined up with other prominent reactionary figures in order to mobilize
opposition against Six Nations struggles and the reclamation in Caledonia. This wave of
anti-Native organizing crested in July of 2009, with the formation of the Caledonia
Militia (later re-branded as the Caledonia Peacekeepers), which prides itself on
performing citizen's arrests on Six Nations land defenders. Employing a discourse that
merges the racist paranoia of the War on Terror, colonial depictions of the "savage
Indian," and liberal claims of white victimhood under a "two-tier justice system" that
discriminates against non-Indigenous Canadians, McHale and his counterparts managed to
gain a following that is worth serious attention. The fact that, in 2008, McHale tied for
votes with a candidate from the New Democratic Party (NDP) when running as an independent
candidate in the Haldimand-Norfolk region is further indication of the significant local
support for his anti-Native political line. The implication for us, as revolutionaries, is
that there is a real potential for the anti-Native reactionary tendency in our class to
develop into a mass anti-Indigenous reactionary movement as the clash between Indigenous
resistance and the Canadian state heats up.
What is at Stake?
The (re)emergence of a mass social movement anchored around anti-Native reaction would
increase working-class support for the more brutal and violent aspects of colonialism, for
more state repression of Indigenous, anarchist and other anti-capitalist resistance
(happening before our eyes with Bill C-51), and for a more aggressive, ecologically
destructive resource extraction accumulation strategy. On the other hand, if anti-Native
tendencies can be countered, and support for Indigenous resistance increased among the
working class, this will make it harder for the state to crack down, thereby providing
more room for the anti-colonial, and ecological struggles to grow. As anarchists, we have
every interest in seeing Indigenous resistance to the Canadian state and capital continue
to grow. Anti-colonial resistance already provides a radical pole for other struggles to
gravitate towards; if it continues to gain traction, it is likely to pull these other
struggles in a more militant, revolutionary direction. While the outcome of anti-colonial
struggles depend, first and foremost, on the organization and commitment of their
Indigenous participants, all revolutionaries have a vested interest in helping to see them
succeed. For non-Indigenous revolutionaries, a particularly important task is countering
the anti-Native tendency among the non-Indigenous working class.
Making the Case Without Resorting to Liberalism
The question is how, exactly, to best go about doing this. Admittedly, Common Cause
members do not yet have much experience directly working to counter anti-Native tendencies
in our class - though our members do have a fair amount of experience organizing against
other reactionary tendencies. From our discussions on the subject so far, we have
concluded that we are skeptical of the "ally" model common among Indigenous solidarity
activists, primarily because it is oriented away from building broad working-class support
for Indigenous struggles. Instead, when Common Cause members have discussed how we should
support Indigenous resistance, we have focused on the question of how we can build active
political support for Indigenous struggles in the working class. More specifically, we
have asked the question of how we can convince our neighbours that it is in their interest
to see Indigenous resistance succeed. We are still in the early stages of developing our
thoughts on this question, but two political arguments have been put forward with some
tentative support in the organization. First, locally, in southern Ontario, we see much in
Haudenosaunee political thought that is both revolutionary and, we believe, appealing to
our neighbours and the wider working class. In practice, this will require convincing our
friends and neighbours to turn their back on the benefits of siding with the colonial
project, in return for aligning with Indigenous resistance in a project of mutual
liberation from capitalism and the state. Despite the daunting challenges inherent to this
task, it is crucial work to incorporate into mass organizing, because - and this is the
second point that we tentatively agree on - given the balance of power, Indigenous
struggles cannot ultimately succeed against the Canadian state, despite their impressive
scope and militancy, without significant support from an organized, revolutionary working
class. Neither friends organized into ally activist groups, nor liberal apologies for past
wrongs that lay out the multicultural welcome mat while brushing over revolutionary
Indigenous aims, will suffice. The revolutionary aims of the most militant Indigenous
resistance must be recognized fully, and clearly presented as such to our class - not
dressed up in liberal and solely moralistic terms. This will mean moving beyond the
self-validating framework of the Indigenous ally and towards an organizing approach that
actively and seriously seeks to achieve adequate levels of support among the
non-Indigenous working class.
II. Islamophobia: White Supremacy's Leading Edge
Over the past forty years, xenophobia and racism within the Canadian working class have
been tempered by the official state policy of multiculturalism, anti-racist movements, and
large-scale immigration from post-colonial and neo-colonial states. Despite this,
xenophobic and racist tendencies continue to hold the potential to galvanize a mass
reactionary force in the working class. We'd be foolish to think otherwise. While
successive decades of anti-racist struggles and equity-seeking reforms have helped shape
official state policy and working-class sentiment, white supremacy remains very much
intact. Today, we would argue that Islamophobia - a less-than-ideal phrase to describe
western anti-Muslim sentiment - is the leading expression of the timeless Canadian
tradition of working-class racism.
Liberal Imperialism Abroad
Western states, including Canada, have fueled Islamophobia through their military
responses to the ongoing resistance of people in the majority-Muslim world. Canada has
been engaged for over a decade in sustained military conflict with majority-Muslim
populations that refuse the position assigned to them by Western imperialism. But unlike
past imperialist episodes, the state has relied less on the assertion of the superiority
of the "white race" and its Christian civilization (though this remains an undercurrent)
and instead wields the values of liberalism to build ideological support for foreign wars.
Military campaigns against religious extremism, justified in the name of women's rights,
and other liberal-democratic freedoms - this is the imperialist ideology of the post-1960s
era. The ruling class, having survived and beaten back the movements of the 1960s, have
now appropriated their rhetoric in order to help shore up working-class support at home
for its wars abroad. This ideological strategy is made more palatable by the fact that
some of the most organized and well-funded forces of anti-imperialist resistance are made
up of reactionary authoritarians (led by the Wahhabist movement above all). The brutal
actions of groups like the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram are justifiably
revolting to the consciences of working-class people - not just in western countries such
as Canada, but globally. This righteous opposition to the spread of Wahhabist fascism, is
then co-opted by the state and channeled into Islamophobia, and increased support for
imperialism.
Liberal Racism at Home
The liberal rhetoric marshaled towards battling external "barbarians" gives rise to an
"internal" expression, in the form of Islamophobia (and other racist, xenophobic ideas)
disguised as, and fueled by a vigorous defence of secular liberal values. The so-called
"reasonable accommodations" and "Charter of Values" political ploys in Québec, along with
the federal Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, have been portrayed by their supporters as
necessary defences of liberal values against religious and cultural minorities - most of
all Muslims. Ultimately, these laws are nothing more than cynical manoeuvres by political
parties designed to consolidate the more reactionary sections of their electoral bases
without losing the larger, more moderate sections who (it is hoped) will support
reactionary ideas when presented in liberal form.
In Québec, the Parti Québécois (PQ) tried to use the Charter of Values to recoup the white
working-class Québécois voters that it had lost to new challengers from its right, such as
the Action Democratic du Québec (ADQ) and the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ). The PQ hoped
that by positioning itself as the defenders of liberal feminism and the separation of
church and state, in a way that clearly identified Muslims, Sikhs and Jews as "the
problem," it could rebuild its traditional coalition of right-wing and liberal/left-wing
nationalist voters. While the PQ failed to win the election on this platform and the
Charter was never passed, their experiment actually consolidated a consensus among the
main parties that a growing unease with Muslim immigration exists among Québécois voters,
and that this sentiment ought to be opportunistically stoked and incorporated into their
own respective electoral strategies.
The strategy of Québec's provincial parties has been mirrored by the federal
Conservatives. The racist Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act and a much
stricter immigration policy together form the core of this strategy. Under the Harper
administration, more immigrants are being accepted into Canada per year than under any
previous government - the majority of whom are coming from the Global South. Even refugee
numbers have remained steady, at roughly twelve thousand per year. So how do we square an
expansive (if more ruthless) immigration policy with reactionary racist legislation?
Harper and his gang are motivated above all by neoliberal ideology, and a desire to undo
the perceived damage done to their country by the ruling-class politics they identify most
with Pierre Trudeau and his followers - including what they perceive as a
culturally-relativist multiculturalism. The Reform/Alliance/Conservative Party gained a
significant electoral base for its politics by riding a wave of reactionary resentment,
"the white hot anger" with the ruling-class status quo. Then-leader of the Reform Party,
Preston Manning, believed that this was a necessary strategy to build the base needed for
a new aspiring ruling-class faction. The Barbaric Cultural Practices Act is a bone being
tossed to this traditional base. It is a good example of the new liberal racism in action,
designed to have a certain ring in the ears of the Conservative Party's "white hot angry"
working-class base - a stroke that rings out: "we know... and we are keeping those people
out, or at least forcing them to change their barbaric ways, and we will not be
intimidated by the liberal media, academics, NGOs and activists. We are with you, fellow
white Christian Canadians!"
At the same time, federal immigration policy has been revamped and geared towards bringing
in, and gaining the support of immigrants who the Harper faction hope to attract to their
own brand of social conservative, neoliberal politics. By all accounts, they have had a
great deal of success building an electoral base among the over two million new Canadians
who have migrated to the country during Harper's time in office so far. The Conservatives
have accomplished this by recruiting upwardly-mobile "economic" (as opposed to family
reunification) immigrants from the developing world's new middle classes, appealing to the
social conservative values of some groups, and diversifying their party apparatus.
Upon closer examination, it's clear that the Barbaric Cultural Practices Act has been
purposefully designed so as to avoid affecting the Conservative Party's fragile immigrant
base. First of all, it doesn't add new legal prohibitions that don't already exist on the
books. Second, the number of people materially affected by it will be very small. Third,
many immigrants are also quite opposed to the practices that the legislation singles out
(such as forced marriage, and honor killings), and view them as unwelcome reactionary
vestiges of the places that they have worked so hard to leave behind. Immigrant
communities are not internally homogeneous, and many differences and prejudices exist
between groups. This legislation plays on existing internal dynamics and cultural
divisions in a manner that is unlikely to have much of a negative impact on Conservative
efforts to build their suburban immigrant base. After all, given the current state of
Canada's electoral system, they only need around thirty five per cent of the vote in a
single riding to win. And as of April 2015, they are polling at around this figure in the
Greater Toronto Area, and even a bit higher in ridings in Mississauga and Brampton that
are heavily populated by immigrant voters. Their strategy seems to be working.
Within this context, the approximately two per cent of Canadians who identify as Muslims
provide a convenient and expendable punching bag. Harper can afford to appear culturally
insensitive, or even aggressive towards certain groups at times, so long as the overall
message remains: "work hard, accept certain core Canadian values and you will have a job,
model minority status, a house in the suburbs, and the freedom to take your kids to
hockey, cricket, or soccer, and church, mosque or temple." Those who have bought into the
multicultural, middle-class deal are not going to be too bothered if some among them are
given worse treatment (be they Muslims, refugees, undocumented workers, or the larger
immigrant working poor). At least this is how things appear at the moment.
This chameleon-like quality of Islamophobia makes it an appealing ideology for political
parties. It allows them to play to different, and often contradictory electoral bases at
the same time. It provides an effective basis for national political messaging that
conveys different meanings to the various components of a diverse electoral base, while
nonetheless providing an overall unifying ideological framework. It is a strategy
well-adapted to a terrain shaped deeply by the significant but incomplete advances of past
social movements, including global anti-colonial struggles. These days, overt white
supremacy and xenophobia will result in the marginalization of political parties in
Canada, in large part by costing them the support of key electoral districts among the now
vast and still rapidly expanding immigrant working class. But key organized groupings of
the ruling class (like the PQ and the federal Conservatives) also have important bases
that are increasingly open to a more forceful push of white supremacist ideas.
Islamophobia weaves these contradictory conditions into what is, for now, a workable
electoral base-building strategy.
What is at Stake?
One potential outcome of this current dynamic could be a homegrown Tea Party phenomenon,
replete with its own Canadian characteristics. The combination of officially-sanctioned
racism, militarism and Islamophobia, within a context of economic crisis and war, could
very well give rise to such a movement. In this hypothetical situation, the reactionary
ideas stoked and encouraged by the ruling class could give rise to a forceful reactionary
base that is no longer content to simply follow the leadership of Harper and company on
questions of immigration and assimilation. In fact, we have already seen this happen in
Québec, where a loud, angry, racist and xenophobic base has taken root - one that is not
content to remain loyal to any political party, but which instead pushes all of them
further to the right.
Left Responses: The Dead Ends of Cultural Relativism and Racist Secularism/Feminism
How should the Left react in this situation? Here the fight around the Québec Charter of
Values is informative. In that particular episode we saw the Left act in two ways, both of
which amount to political dead ends. A large part of the Québec Left supported the Charter
in the name of defending liberal values, such as the separation of church and state, and
equality between men and women. This part of the Left, including leading Québec feminist
activists and organizations, saw itself as refusing to accept cultural relativism and
taking a principled stand in support of liberal values that it believed ought to be
universal - or at least, ought to be the norm in Québec, regardless of one's cultural or
religious background.
Another leftist response to the Charter, especially evident in discussions outside of
Québec, tended to take a postmodernist, culturally relativist approach. According to this
line of thinking, any questioning of cultural and religious practices of oppressed
minorities is unacceptable, as it only serves to promote xenophobia, Islamophobia and
imperialism. The principled response to the Charter, then, is to defend the rights of
minorities to practice their cultures and religions, not only free from state
intervention, but also free from any intervention whatsoever, from any part of society -
including those leftists asserting the supremacy of liberal secular values. Often this was
an argument that could be heard in the silence of its proponents when confronted by the
question of what to do about patriarchal violence within targeted minority communities.
In our opinion, both of these approaches are politically bankrupt. The culturally
relativist approach sheepishly abandons core leftist principles, such as feminism, for
fear of provoking accusations of racism. In a confused manner, some principles are
elevated above others, depending on the context. But a principled approach demands that
core values be held equally, always. It means not making ethical trade-offs between our
core principles out of fear of being personally attacked by other leftists, and charged
with holding "privileged" views. Those who cower to this form of reductive politics leave
feminists from communities targeted by Islamophobia and liberal racism out in the lurch.
They give the Right the opportunity to paint the Left as spineless, elitist apologists for
an "anything goes" anti-racism or pro-immigration politics - an orientation that appears
to give exactly two shits about liberal democratic values, and by extension, the majority
of Canadians who hold them. This pushes large segments of the population to look to the
Right as the defenders of working-class values and interests, including, for example,
working-class LGBTQ members, who have their own reasons to fear the homophobia of certain
conservative religious and cultural groups.
But the "more principled" leftist response also has a fatal weakness. The problem is not
in asserting the defence of certain core principles, such as gender equality, against an
unprincipled dead-end cultural relativism; the Left ought to be unapologetic in its
espousal of certain core principles as universal - in the sense that we consider
principles such as gender equality to be non-negotiable, and that we desire to see them
spread and take hold across the global working class. We should call bullshit on shouts of
racism that stem from criticizing objectively oppressive practices. We should have no
tolerance for hierarchy and oppression in any and all communities, no matter what cultural
or religious justifications are used to prop them up.
The problem is that this part of the Left reproduced broader social dynamics of white
supremacy and national oppression by failing to take the lead from feminists and leftists
from the actual communities targeted by the Charter. While the cultural relativists
silenced these same voices out of fear that any critique of subjugated cultural/religious
groups would send cries of racism their way, the pro-Charter Left silenced these voices
by, at best, seeing those facing oppression inside their communities as helpless victims
in need of rescue by white feminists and liberals (using intrusive state legislation, no
less). At worst, these groups were presented as complicit in their own oppression, and
therefore a threat to liberal values and the freedoms of others. You can be a principled
leftist at the level of theory and still engage in racism at the level of practice - and
this is exactly what the pro-Charter Left did. In doing so, they entered into a coalition
with right-wing reactionaries, a move that will not end well for them, or us.
A Principled Left Response
An alternative to these two flawed approaches was led by leftists and liberals from within
the communities targeted by the Charter, with the support of the better part of the
ally-left (which included much of the anarchist movement in Québec). Their opposition to
the Charter looked a lot different than that of the cultural relativists; it asserted that
patriarchal oppression within subjugated cultural communities is, for one, real, and two,
is best fought (and being fought already) by members of those communities themselves.
State intervention fueled by widespread Islamophobia actually hurts those fighting
patriarchal oppression within these communities, by increasing Muslim women's dependence
on male partners and family members. For example, the Charter would have made it harder
for Muslim women who wear the hijab to find paid work, and thereby establish social
networks outside the family. In short, you don't fight one form of oppression by
increasing another. What is needed is a principled, anti-racist, feminist Left whose
practice is based around the concepts of solidarity, mutual support, autonomy, and the
self-organization of the oppressed. There should be no room on the Left for either a
cultural relativism that wants to "protect" oppressed groups by shielding them from valid
criticism and internal resistance, nor for a racist secular feminism that sees a need to
"defend" liberal or left principles in order to "protect" members of an oppressed group
"for their own good."
III. Men's Rights Activism
The examination of MRAs as a tendency which is actively organizing to perpetuate
patriarchal social relations began in Mortar Volume Two (Taking Account of our Politics:
An Anarchist Perspective on Contending with Sexual Violence). Here we take it up again,
with an eye to the role that this tendency might play in the development of a mass
reactionary movement.
What is it?
In the late 1960s, social and political advances attributed to the struggles of the
Women's Liberation Movement led to the creation of a parallel Men's Movement. This vaguely
progressive, yet inadequate movement saw men attempt to analyze their experiences with
patriarchy using a feminist lens. Unfortunately, the effort yielded paltry results, as
both progressive and revolutionary men found little incentive to participate in long-term
anti-patriarchy organizing with feminists. This failure produced a void that was filled by
the initial manifestation of a reactionary movement against feminism. Men whose personal
comfort and success often rested on the unpaid domestic work of women began to
characterize feminists as threatening and selfish, because they felt their own problems,
real or imaged, had gone unaddressed. The reaction to this perceived affront was the
creation of a Men's Rights Movement.
The current manifestation of MRAs, and their much larger base of allies and sympathizers,
take positions on a panoramic range of issues including health care, family law, fathers'
rights, war, education, gender roles, gender identity, sexual orientation, the workplace,
domestic violence, criminal law, prisons, abortion, rape, dating, and sex.
Gender Peace and the Disposable Male
Warren Farrell's 1993 best-selling book, The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the
Disposable Sex was seminal to the development of MRAs into their contemporary tendency, as
it popularized the idea that it is men, not women, who are disadvantaged, oppressed and
"disposable." Farrell, a former board member for the National Organization of Women, took
a sharp turn to the right in the late 1970s over the issue of child custody, where reforms
had been made which sought to equalize the legal framework of divorce.
In The Myth of Male Power, Farrell makes the argument that as individuals, men are seen as
less socially valuable than women. Relying heavily on cherry-picked statistics to
highlight many areas of life in which men objectively experience more risk to their
personal safety and restrictions to their freedoms, Farrell's reasoning is appealing to
some; it is undeniable, for instance, that men compose the majority of prisoners,
soldiers, and victims of workplace injuries. Foreshadowing the popularization of the
then-nascent (and still scientifically-controversial) field of evolutionary psychology,
Farrell conjectured that this fact was an evolutionary imperative that had derived from
women's role as child-bearers, which made them more valuable, in an evolutionary sense.
Because a man can inseminate multiple women in a short timespan, whereas women must
complete a nine month long pregnancy and all the risks of childbirth before they can
conceive another child, the evolutionary argument follows that an individual man's body is
a more rational sacrifice when faced with the prospect outside danger.
Karen Straughan, Contributing Editor at A Voice for Men, advances this theory in a video
blog entitled Feminism and the Disposable Male. Straughan posits that a sort of informal
social contract was formerly in place, whereby men would accept these necessary conditions
in exchange for more social power. However, she claims that feminism has disrupted this
purported gender peace by allowing women access to social power (in the form of jobs,
money, celebrity, etc.), while doing nothing to ameliorate the enhanced exposure to danger
faced by men. "[M]en don't even get our admiration anymore," she concludes. "All they get
in return is to hear about what assholes they are. Is there any wonder why they're
starting to get pissed off?"
Straughan elaborates on this broken arrangement in order to mourn the death of what she
sees as an imagined "golden age" of gender peace, and to call on MRAs to reverse this
process of male emasculation and victimization. Yet there is little MRAs can do to stop
this trend - particularly if they continue to misidentify the source of their own
declining living standards and social standing. The "grand bargain" between capitalism and
sexism, whereby working-class men, by virtue of their sacrifices as the family provider,
received, along with domination over women, higher wages than women, is being eroded by
more profitable economic arrangements. Capitalism commodifies all people, and under this
economic order anyone can be made disposable.
Six of One
It is well documented that the Fascist regimes of twentieth century Europe gained their
initial base by exploiting mass anxieties of economic and social decline, and redirecting
socialist and syndicalist programs towards right-wing nationalist ends. Since WWII, the
Left has been on a perpetual look-out for any reconstitution of neo-fascist movements. In
a number of countries situated within the economic peripheries of the European Union, this
has indeed come to pass. However we must contend that in English-speaking North America,
the issues that might otherwise have led to working-class support of neo-fascism have
instead been taken up by a variety of reactionary tendencies that are liberal at their heart.
Contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone, and observer of right-wing movements
Jeff Sharlet notes that many of the grievances that MRAs complain about are consistent
with those of "late stage American capitalism" but, because liberal rhetoric is so easily
and readily available to them, there is no reason to reach this far in their analysis.
Irreproachable concepts like equality, human rights, tolerance, and nonviolence are
mobilized as patronizing, easily-digested substitutes for liberation. MRAs express
considerable concern for issues that are also of central importance to revolutionary
leftists. Prisons, war and workplace conditions are common topics of conversation. But
instead of questioning the social utility of prisons, MRAs demand to know why
incarceration isn't more equitable; likewise, little reflection is given to why the state
requires such a steady stream of dead men's bodies, both civilian and in uniform. MRAs
must be facing an epidemic of repetitive strain injuries from all the blogs that they've
written on the economic troubles facing men today. And these problems are certainly real,
given the rampant and ongoing capitalist restructuring, which continues to leave fewer and
fewer working-class men able to support themselves and their families. Growing levels of
unemployment, as MRAs rightly point out, cast a massive blow to the feelings of self-worth
of men conditioned under patriarchy to feel that earning a wage is their primary
responsibility. Yet instead of questioning the actual source of their economic trouble,
capitalism, or the idea that each family unit is responsible for themselves, these people,
in a stunning "correlation indicates causation" error (which the many "skeptics" who are
sympathetic towards this movement should be ashamed of) blame a social movement whose
militant and revolutionary tendencies actually seek to address these problems.
Do not mistake this for us saying that MRAs are actually misguided, would-be
revolutionaries. They are, for the most part, unrepentant misogynists and class traitors
who deserve to be treated as such. However, their striking use of liberal vocabulary is
appealing to individual men (and women) who observe problems in their lives, and are in
search of answers in the form of analysis and solutions. And once drawn in, their
patriarchal impulses are strengthened and honed. MRAs are significant, not so much for
their ideas in and of themselves, but for the seamless way in which they adapt their
rhetoric to liberal ideology.
Power is still conceived in terms of domination over others, rather than as the capacity
to make changes that benefit everyone. Women are disproportionately employed in precarious
jobs, and presently take home only sixty-nine cents for every dollar a man makes in
Ontario. Sexism fuels consumerist exploitation, and vice versa. MRAs will never offer an
honest answer for young working-class men worrying about how they are going to make it -
just as liberal mainstream feminism will never offer a viable means for liberation to
working-class women.
Half a Dozen of the Other
The MRA movement is, at its heart, a liberal tendency that willfully misunderstands
collective aspects of feminism and the quest for liberation. "Women make less money than
men," says feminism, but "I am unemployed, and make no money" says the MRA--who probably
wouldn't take a minimum wage casual position as grocery store cashier or after-hours
office cleaner if it were offered to him, preferring instead to wait for the cushy IT job
he was trained for. The movement also assumes that there is not enough to go around: not
enough economic resources, not enough children, not enough emotional well-being, and that
advances made by women as a whole must somehow detract from men.
Men's rights activism is reactionary to the core. It offers its followers simplistic
answers and a clear target for all that ails them. Its goal is to undermine progress and
recoup the dismantling of patriarchal structures. Its praxis, while dishonest and
misogynist, is attractive to men unsure of themselves and their future in these precarious
times. Deliberate or not, MRAs have a developing relationship of mutuality with the
political and religious right, despite the liberal nature of their vocabulary and strategy.
What is at Stake?
So far in North America, the mainstream political involvement of MRAs has been just about
non-existent. Some of the MRAs' loudest voices, like A Voice for Men founder Paul Elam,
insist that politicians will never have a voice in their movement. There are hints of a
change, however. For example the Canadian Centre for Men and Families, which is located in
Toronto and opened its doors in 2014, has moved men's rights activism away from the
university and the electronic sphere, and onto "Main Street," so to speak.
In the US, MRAs know that they can count on traditional conservative political actors to
keep a slightly more publicly presentable anti-feminist agenda moving. For example, the
Utah state legislature is presently debating definitions of rape, and considering for the
record if engaging in sex with an unconscious individual constitutes rape. Definitions of
rape and debates over what constitutes consent are a central issue for MRAs. Many MRAs
want marital rape laws overturned, as they claim these laws violate the marriage contract
that gives men the right to sex on demand from their spouse. They have support in
Virginia, where a legislator claims that spousal rape is impossible, and that laws
criminalizing it would unfairly damage men's reputations if their accusations made it to
court. Regarding men's rights to abortions, a few US states already have pending
legislation that would require written, notarized consent from the "father of the unborn
child" before an abortion could be performed or induced.
Related to the issue of fatherhood and masculinity, the recent attention raised by the
Black Lives Matter movement to the racist praxis of the North American law enforcement and
criminal justice systems has racism apologists on the defensive. MRAs have chimed in by
claiming that racism is not the issue. Some point to feminized school environments and the
lack of "father figures" in Black households as the issue. World renowned neurosurgeon and
conservative US presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson specifically charges feminists with
removing male mentors from the formation process of boys at home and at schools. He
maintains that young Black men are not learning to be subservient to authority, and thus
neither are they able to exercise proper male authority. This, says the doctor, leads to
criminal behaviour and to trouble with the police and this has nothing to do with racism.
It "has to do with the women's lib movement." So the doctor`s diagnosis promotes an agenda
that the MRAs strongly support, but won`t ever advance themselves via their misogynist
tirades.
While Canada lacks a mass movement similar in nature and scope to the US Christian Right,
the arguments put forward by MRAs have found a strong echo-chamber on the Internet, and
often overlap with those of other reactionary tendencies, such as "New Atheists" and other
secular Islamophobes. Their effective and innovative use of widely-held liberal values to
manipulate feelings of male victimization pose a significant threat. This threat, while
already acute, would be particularly dire should MRAs ever merge with other reactionary
tendencies, thereby helping to instill a mass reactionary movement with a vitriolic and
dehumanizing hatred of women.
Towards a Response
For anarchists, MRAs certainly present a point of contention - whether this comes in the
form of individual misogynist attitudes sabotaging a group's mass organizing efforts, or,
when the need arises for anarchists to help defend against orchestrated hate campaigns.
There might indeed be times when direct, physical confrontations with MRAs are in order.
Of course those organizing more confrontational actions should do so with an understanding
that MRAs make political hay by playing the, "see how these feminists oppress us" card.
Shutting down or interfering with an MRA event can be an occasion for them to build
support on a university campus - but then, so can a forum held without opposition. The
important thing is that direct confrontational tactics should encourage others opposed to
MRAs to confront them as well.
In organizing alongside neighbours on issues such as tenancy, worker justice, and police
violence, one can see signs of a feminism that is rooted in the best of what feminism
means. When a woman leads her fellow tenants in organizing against a slumlord, and they
mount a successful rent strike, one sees people equipped to take on other oppressive men
and patriarchal institutions as well. These actions, and others like them build confidence
and a sense of power for those who participate. They point towards a rejuvenated militant
feminism that can stand up to capitalist and patriarchal exploitative practices. As we've
shown, MRAs will never offer an honest answer for the anxieties of young working-class
men. This leaves us with organizers, activists and scholars like bell hooks, who to
paraphrase, suggests that the struggle to end sexist oppression will succeed only by
organizing with a commitment to bringing about a new social order by means of a social
revolution. All that gets in the way of this must be contended with.
IV. Conclusion
And there you have it: what we hope will be taken as as our contribution to better
understanding what it is that we have standing in front of us. We hope it will be taken
well, because it isn't just an era of austerity, environmental decline, and a capitalist
regime that intensifies its domestic and international military offensives on the working
class that we struggle against. The forces of reaction and division have bored from within
liberal concepts and "discourse" and have prepared the ground for dynamic movements to
emerge from sectors of the working class, to the detriment of the class as a whole.
Revolutionary class struggle is both an inter- and intra- class struggle. For our class to
struggle for itself it must also simultaneously struggle with itself.
Antonio Gramsci is a dead Italian communist. Among his more "utilized" (read: referenced)
concepts is that of the "war of position" and the "war of maneuver". Essentially, the war
of position is that in which revolutionaries pursue greater influence within the class in
a slow and deliberate way, whereas the war of maneuver is that in which outright conflict
takes place, usually in the form of clashing with the state for power. These are
understood to be sequential affairs: first (position) and only after - the second
(maneuver). When it comes to reactionary movements, our "war of position" doesn't precede
our "war of maneuver". In fact, there is no distinction between the two when confronting
the long germinating reactionary tendencies within the working class as they give rise to
movements of class treason.
Despite the fact that it shouldn't -- it still surprised us to admit that those best
"positioned" to out "maneuver" the Left are not updating their "commies to kill list"
between shaving their heads and polishing their jackboots. They're lecturing people on
tolerance, free speech, and equality under the law between claims of oppression and
tirades of hatred for all things Left. This is neither a laughing matter, nor an
underwhelming adversary. The stakes are high and the already stacked odds will only
compound against us as long as we refuse to take stock of the facts before us.
These are not discreet tendencies. Islamophobes, MRAs, and anti-Native reactionaries
attack the class as a whole. With their movements' growth, working-class solidarity erodes
as working-class people are attacked by others within the class on liberal principle. No
working-class organizing can hope for success under conditions wherein these tendencies
aren't countered with simultaneous maneuver and position by revolutionaries. No
counter-offensive can hope for success when it holds to conceptions of its adversary that
are more morally convenient than politically accurate.
Our class enemies can't be defeated by a fist fight any more than they can by an
introspective privilege check. They can, however, be defeated by the informed and
deliberate organizing by the working class towards its own emancipation. This is what
class war means. It has many fronts that require equal attention. To not meet the enemy
today in the interest of "positioning" will only mean we will be outflanked by reactionary
tendencies tomorrow. What successful struggle against class treason should look like and
how the working class can organize itself to carry it out is not for any one article to
answer. Here we have only briefly offered a few points of strategy upon which to develop
more fully a dynamic, multi-pronged approach. But make no mistake -- this organizing needs
to happen, we intend to be there, it needs to be as honest, principled and merciless as
possible, and it needs to win.
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