Montréal Counter-information

From Montréal-Antifasciste

As antifascist and anti-racist militants, some of whom have been active for decades in the struggle against the far right in Montréal, in Québec, and elsewhere in Canada, we wish to absolutely disassociate ourselves from the recent statements made in the media by Maxime Fiset, spokesman for the Centre de prévention de la radicalisation menant à la violence (CPRMV), as well as from the overall position he has staked out.

We are well aware of the mainstream media’s taste for simplistic narratives, and of their particular attachment to recognized specialists (always the same ones), who are called upon give their stamp of approval to these one-sided fables. But the issue we are addressing is too important for us to allow the media and its alleged experts the leeway to peddle in falsehoods at the service of a simplistic and counterproductive doctrine that we do not and never will share.

It is worth noting that Monsieur Fiset was an active member of the fascist network, both as a founding member of the Fédération des Québécois de souche and as the local moderator of the white supremacist Stormfront forum, when some of us were quite literally fighting with his little neo-Nazi friends in the streets of our city, and even getting knifed by them is Québec City.

While we have no specific reason to doubt the authenticity of his ideological recantation, you can nonetheless understand the discomfort some of us feel seeing him jump up to speakon our behalf whenever the opportunity arises.

While Monsieur Fiset was once a committed neo-Nazi, his current discourse would be better described as “extreme centrist,” rather than leftist. He sees himself floating above the melee and imagines a certain symmetry between the far right and the far left, even going as far as to minimize the danger of violence posed by the far right compared to the far left. His discourse shares nothing with the political positions held by the greater part of the anti-racist and antifascist opposition, which both historically was and currently is communist, anarchist, and explicitly radical.

The State Anti-racists Have the Left in Their Sights

This isn’t a contradiction that should shock anyone; Fiset has never hidden the fact that he is effectively acting as a representative of a para-police organization, le Centre de prévention de la radicalisation menant à la violence (CPRMV). The government formed the CPRMV in 2015 to counter “radicalisation”among a handful of young Muslims attending certain Montreal CEGEPS.

Fiset has clarified that the CPRMV conducts research in four areas: the right, the left, religious activists, and individuals who radicalize around a personal vendetta. Let’s be perfectly clear: the left (particularly the far left) are not allies of the CPRMV; we are one of its targets.

The CPRMV defines “violent radicalisation” as necessarily involving the intention to use or promote violence in a way that threatens the “social well-being.” It is a given that the application of this formula depends on the ideological criteria of those applying it. It’s also based on a perspective that entirely overlooks the radicalization and militarization of states, as if the state was a neutral body that inevitably provided society’s political ballast. In addition, the CPRMV includes within its purview groups that don’t even fit into its already fuzzy categorization, but which could serve as “incubators” for individuals or sectors that might radicalize in the future. So, what we’re talking about is an extremely broad area of research.

Organizations like the CPRMV are predictable parts of the landscape for those involved in the antifascist struggle. Anti-fascism isn’t simply a struggle between two adversaries: us against the Nazis. It’s a three-way fight, with us not only in a battle with the far right but also against state and para-state organizations, which are just as hostile (if not more so) to the radical left as they are to the far right. Generally speaking, these state and para-state entities have a privileged relationship with the media and with other state bodies, as well as generous funding, all of which allows them to take up a great deal of space in the debate about the far right.

Given that radical antifascists have their historic roots in the revolutionary left, the actions of the state antifascists present us with challenges and with risks. With the resources at their disposal, these groups often release information on the far right that is useful to us. For example, groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S.remain key sources of information on far-right individuals and organizations. Even when those close to us produce reports on our far-right adversaries, they frequently (but not always) rely on dossiers released by these para-state entities. However, we want to avoid increasing the profile of these groups, because it is more than likely that they will eventually use their position not only to undermine our efforts but also to aid in the repression of radical antifascists and their allies.

The nature of their contribution to this repression takes a number of forms: conflating the far left and the far right; treating oppressive violence and violence against oppression as equivalent; calling for more far-reaching repressive state powers. Of course, these organizations often include well-intentioned people who under different circumstances could be doing valuable work.

But these groups can also act forcibly against us. The best known example is the Anti-Defamation League, which during the eighties went as far as engaging in espionage operations with the South African apartheid regime to collect information on dozens of far-left and anti-imperialist organizations. In some cases, ADL spies even worked to nurture links between neo-Nazis and pro-Palestinian organizations, to open the way for a subsequent hue and cry about the pro-Palestinian groups’ “anti-Semitism.”A scandal exploded when this operation was uncovered in 1993, and after several years in court the ADL was obliged to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to the militants it had targeted. It’s impossible to know whether the ADL has ever again sunk to this level again since this ignominious episode.

Closer to home, the so-called Ligue antifasciste mondiale (LAM) was active in Montreal during the nineties. The product of street fighting with neo-Nazi boneheads but under growing police pressure, LAM turned primarily to gathering information and specializing in statements to the media. One of LAM’s key priorities was to criticize other antifascist organizations, particularly the Centre canadien sur le racisme et les préjugés. In 1993, when the largest antifascist demonstrations in Montreal in many years were organized against the presence of representatives of Toronto’s neo-Nazi Heritage Front and France’s Front National, LAM acted primarily to sabotage the militant mobilizations. They even went as far as denouncing the anarchists behind the magazine Démanarchie to the police, and then publicly in the media following the Saint-Jean riots in Quebec City, in 1996. Shorty thereafter, it was learned that LAM had been sharing information on the left with the police for years.

We note with some amusement that LAM always worked very closely with Yves Claudé, alias Yves Alix, a “researcher” who has gravitated from the left to the far right over the years. We still have no idea who Claudé actually works for, but he “conducts research”and takes photos of both friends and enemies wherever he goes. His recent “exposé”on antiracists in the pages of l’Aut’journal is little more than a phantasmagorical updating of the sort of disinformation that he has been producing for twenty years now.

The preferred practice of the state antifascist organizations is to play the good cop, to be invited into our spaces, to have a role in our networks, to play the “critical ally” card, all to better understand us and eventually target and effectively destabilize us at the opportune time. How else is one to understand the actions and statements of Monsieur Fiset and the CPRMV?

Maxime Fiset and the CPMVR Actively Undermine the Antifascist Struggle

Until very recently, Monsieur Fiset’s omnipresence was just one more aggravation in the sociopolitical and media landscape. In a recent interview with the community newspaper Droit de parole, he went beyond what common decency permits by describing a group active in the Montreal antifascist scene in hostile and condescending terms, which, as well as fueling discord and providing grist for the police and far-right mills, exposes yet more of our comrades to repression and reprisals.

Last August 20, Monsieur Fiset was everywhere in the media declaring La Meute victorious, following a showdown in Québec City where La Meute was trapped in an underground parking garage for five hours, encircled by hundreds of anti-racists and antifascists. What leap of logic allows him to portray La Meute as victorious in this humiliating situation? To conclude that a group of antifascists who tipped over some dumpsters, threw a few lawn chairs and some other projectiles in the direction of the police, and physically attacked people identified with the ultra-nationalist movement de facto “lost the public relations battle,” on the one hand, de-legitimizes the greater anti-racist mobilization and, on the other, legitimizes La Meute’s anti-racist discourse. (He repeated himself recently, telling Al Jazeera that the far right was currently enjoying a “growing legitimacy.’) The flaws in his reasoning are obvious, and they serve to indicate the major chasm between Monsieur Fiset’s political understanding and that of the majority of the militant antifascist movement.

Monsieur Fiset is dogmatically attached to so-called “nonviolence,”while the international antifascist movement, from its earliest days in the 1920s until now, adheres to a diversity of tactics, including (but not limited to) the use of violence against organized far-right, fascist, and ultra-nationalist currents. The antifascist movement’s goal is to halt the fascist drift by any means necessary. (On this subject, we strongly recommend that Monsieur Fiset read Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, which could only help to illuminate some of the blind spots in his analysis.)

As Peter Gelderloos wrote in his indispensable book How Nonviolence Protects the State:

We believe that tactics should be chosen to fit the particular situation, not drawn from a preconceived moral code. We also tend to believe that means are reflected in the ends, and would not want to act in a way that invariably would lead to dictatorship or some other form of society that does not respect life and freedom. As such, we can more accurately be described as proponents of revolutionary or militant activism than as proponents of violence.

As antifascists and anti-racists, we are neither intrinsically for nor against violence. That said, we do support direct action and the strategic use of a broad range of tactical approaches. We are politically “radical” (in the etymological sense of the word, i.e., we want to attack the root—radix—of the problem), which isn’t something we try to hide, and we believe that violence is sometimes necessary to counter the far right and reverse the fascist drift. We don’t accept the authority of the state, and we oppose police repression on the part of a state that establishes socioeconomic conditions that favor the emergence of the far right, and then protects that “right” when it marches in the streets and diffuses its toxic ideology.

This “radical” position of simultaneously opposing the far right and the state makes perfectly clear our differences with Monsieur Fiset, his centre, and his moralizing liberal position. We have never heard Monsieur Fiset comment on police violence and abuse in either Quebec City or Montreal.We have never heard him denounce the state’s excessive physical, economic, and symbolic violence or its armed wing that cultivates the terrain on which the far right sprouts.

The moralizing pacifism of people like Monsieur Fiset is part of an ideological hegemony that serves the state and its repression to the detriment of social movements. We believe that the rise of the far right and increasing police repression of any and all expressions of opposition calls for an equivalent increase in resistance.

Numerous tactics working in concert as part of a common strategy is what we will need when the time comes. There have certainly been excesses open to debate, and we haven’t failed to critically address them (including Quebec City on August 20, 2017). That said, it is not the violence as such that needs to be criticized but its unproductive and nonstrategic use in particular circumstances that must be challenged when necessary.

To sum up, we don’t accept Monsieur Fiset speaking to the media in our name, nor for that matter in the name of all anti-racists in general or as a spokesperson for the anti-racist struggle. For us, Maxime Fiset is an impostor. He only represents himself and his centre, which at the end of the day makes him a mouthpiece for the liberal state we are resisting at the same time we fight the fascist scum in the streets.

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On November 12th, 2017 a demonstration of about 5,000 people snaked through Montreal under the banner “large demonstration against hate and racism”. This was a good show of force, and tactically an important step on the part of the organizers in a context where far-right groups have been able to match or out-mobilize anti-racists at times in recent months. The demonstration was clearly organized under a left coalition type of model, and as a result, suffered from some rather questionable populist language in their mobilizing call-out. Some of us were a bit concerned about a possible drift towards the de-contextualizing and delegitimizing of the concept of “hatred” which could likely come around to bite anarchists and other radicals in the ass in the future.

Some of us came to participate in the demonstration with critical solidarity, what follows is the text we handed out to participants in the demo and passers-by:

(some will recognize that the bulk of it is taken from Against the Logic of Submission, by Wolfi Lanstreicher)

Hatred

Many of the people at this demo are incensed by the whole drift towards fascism and other forms of authoritarianism in the current political climate. However, there is a constant tension to be consistent with one’s own values and ethics, for the sake of practicality, and especially in times of mass anxiety. With that in mind, as anarchists, we offer a critical take on the discourse of being “against hate”.

Having made the decision to refuse to simply live as this society demands, to submit to the existence it imposes on us, we have put ourselves into a position of being in permanent conflict with the social order. This conflict will manifest in many different situations, evoking the intense passions of the strong-willed. Just as we demand of our loves and our friendships a fullness and intensity that this society seeks to suppress, we want to bring all of ourselves to our conflicts as well, particularly our conflict with this society aimed at its destruction, so that we struggle with all the strength necessary to accomplishing our aim. It is in this light, as anarchists, that we would best understand the place of hatred.

The present social order seeks to rationalize everything. It finds passion dangerous and destructive since such intensity of feeling is, after all, opposed to the cold logic of power and profit. There is no place in this society for passionate reason or the reasonable focusing of passion. When the efficient functioning of the machine is the highest social value, both passion and living, human reason are detrimental to society. Cold rationality based on a mechanistic view of reality is necessary for upholding such a value.

In this light, the campaigns against “hate” promoted not only by every progressive and reformist, but also by the institutions of power which are the basis of the social inequalities (not referring to “equality of rights” which is a legal abstraction, but to the concrete differences in access to that which is necessary in order to determine the conditions of one’s life) that incorporate bigotry into the very structure of this society, make sense on several levels. By focusing the attempts to battle bigotry onto the passions of individuals, the structures of domination blind many well-meaning people to the bigotry that has been built into the institutions of this society, that is a necessary aspect of its method of exploitation. Thus, the method for fighting bigotry takes a two-fold path: trying to change the hearts of racist, sexist and homophobic individuals and promoting legislation against an undesirable passion. Not only is the necessity for a revolution to destroy a social order founded on institutional bigotry and structural inequality forgotten; the state and the various institutions through which it exercises power are strengthened so that they can suppress “hate”. Furthermore, though bigotry in a rationalized form is useful to the efficient functioning of the social machine, an individual passion of too much intensity, even when funneled into the channels of bigotry, presents a threat to the efficient functioning of the social order. It is unpredictable, a potential point for the breakdown of control. Thus, it must necessarily be suppressed and only permitted to express itself in the channels that have been carefully constructed by the rulers of this society. But one of the aspects of this emphasis on “hate” — an individual passion — rather than on institutional inequalities that is most useful to the state is that it permits those in power — and their media lapdogs — to equate the irrational and bigoted hatred of white supremacists and gay-bashers with the reasonable hatred that the exploited who have risen in revolt feel for the masters of this society and their lackeys. Thus, the suppression of hatred serves the interest of social control and upholds the institutions of power and, hence, the institutional inequality necessary to its functioning.

Those of us who desire the destruction of power, the end of exploitation and domination, cannot let ourselves succumb to the rationalizations of the progressives, which only serve the interests of the rulers of the present. Having chosen to refuse our exploitation and domination, to take our lives as our own in struggle against the miserable reality that has been imposed on us, we inevitably confront an array of individuals, institutions and structures that stand in our way, actively opposing us — the state, capital, the rulers of this order and their loyal guard dogs, the various systems and institutions of control and exploitation. These are our enemies and it is only reasonable that we would hate them. It is the hatred of the slave for the master — or, more accurately, the hatred of the escaped slave for the laws, the cops, the “good citizens”, the courts and the institutions that seek to hunt her down and return him to the master. And as with the passions of our loves and friendships, this passionate hatred is also to be cultivated and made our own, its energy focused and directed into the development of our projects of revolt and destruction.

Desiring to be the creators of our own lives and relations, to live in a world in which all that imprisons our desires and suppresses our dreams has disappeared, we have an immense task before us: the destruction of the present social order. Hatred of the enemy — of the ruling order and all who willfully uphold it — is a tempestuous passion that can provide an energy for this task that we would do well to embrace. Anarchist insurrectionaries have a way of viewing life and a revolutionary project through which to focus this energy, so as to aim it with intelligence and strength. The logic of submission demands the suppression of all passions and their channeling into sentimentalized consumerism or rationalized ideologies of bigotry. The intelligence of revolt embraces all passions, finding in them not only mighty weapons for the battle against this order, but also the wonder and joy of a life lived to the full.

Whether you call yourself an anarchist or not, to cling to this ruthless political system at a time when, in most peoples’ eyes, it’s legitimacy is in severe decline is to put the ball completely in the court of reactionaries like Trump, La Meute and Storm Alliance or alternatively, progressives like Trudeau, Zuckerberg, and the NDP. The open and outright white-nationalists and the liberal progressives are simply two sides of the same coin, based in the same progression of the same western civilization. Hence the same discourse around law, order, civility and rights.

While the right takes the mistakes of the anti-globalization movement and turns it into a racist “rebellion” against neoliberalism, towards economic nationalism, we must begin to articulate our own rebellion against this society. A rebellion that takes this as the battle of life against death that it is, one that acknowledges a complete break with the present order as the only realistic solution to our problems. Not only must we organize for self-defense against racists, and respond to the attacks of the powerful against the poor and marginalized. But we must also organize to create our own power and resources for ourselves, build relationships that chip away at whiteness and patriarchy, and launch attacks against the institutions of white-supremacist, colonial, Canadian society.

For a healthy hatred of white-supremacy, capitalism, authority and all social hierarchies!

Some anarchists

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