Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

Call for Presentations: The North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) Conference

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Jan 142018
 

From the North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN)

June 1, 2, 3, 2018 in Tiotia:ke, “Montreal, Canada”

The North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) is currently seeking presentations for our ninth conference to be held June 1, 2, and 3 (2018) in Tiotia:ke, also known as “Montreal, Canada.”

In keeping with the open and fluid spirit of anarchism, we do not limit the call for specific topics of discussion, but rather encourage presentations on broad and diverse historical, contemporary, and utopian matters.

NAASN welcomes works that examine issues of indigeneity, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexuality, youth and urban cultures; and scholarship that crosscuts disciplines and fields including but not limited to: philosophy, political theory, psychology, musicology, literary studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, critical race studies, critical Indigenous studies, queer and trans studies, gender studies, labour studies, disability studies, graphic design and plastic arts. We also encourage scholars in the hard sciences and other fields who find anarchist influences or relevance in their work.

Previous presentations have included grassroots struggles; social and peasant movements; decolonisation and Indigenous resurgence, border/imperialism, racism, police violence, torture, surveillance, technology, as well as biography, oral histories, historiography, and anarchist subcultures.

We seek to include voices of activists, militants, artists and academics; NAASN is a network engaged with the production of knowledge both within and without institutional walls. We are particularly interested in including marginalised voices and perspectives, and encourage the breaking down of barriers between disciplines as well as between the academic and non-academic or even Anti-academic. From the streets to the lectern, we encourage all those interested in the praxis of anarchism or anarchists to submit a proposal.

NAASN is intended to be a space where disciplinarity and resistance can converge on Turtle Island/”North America”. Submissions of panels, individual papers, workshops, book presentations, and alternative formats will be gladly considered!

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS + QUESTIONS

Conference proposal submissions, or questions, should be addressed to the NAASN 2018 organising committee: naasn2018@riseup.net

Please include in your submission:

  • Summary of your proposal (no more than 300 words)
  • A short (150 words) biography.
  • Languages you can present in. (This helps us plan interpreters; NAASN will be supporting live interpretation for French<->English; Spanish<->English; Spanish<->French; ASL/QSL.)

Attendance: We are cognisant of the barriers raised by distance and borders. If you anticipate you will be unable to attend in person, please indicate this in your submission; if your proposal is accepted we may invite you to submit a pre-recorded presentation that can be aired at the conference. We will also probably ask you to be available during to conference for a remote Q & A, technology permitting.

If you have an idea of the length of your presentation, feel free to include (for example, 20mins vs 40 mins). We will try to accommodate, but lengths of presentations will be affected by the number of sessions/speakers.

Please submit your proposal no later than January 31, 2018, and we will respond to all submissions by February 28th, 2018.

NAASN 2018 will take place on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. The Kanien’kehá:ka are the keepers of the Eastern Door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. In the language of the Kanien’kehá:ka, Tiotia:ke is the name of the island later dubbed “Montreal”, a site which has long been a meeting place for other Indigenous peoples, including the Algonquin.

MAKING CONTACT WITH NAASN

All inquiries about the 2018 conference should be sent to naasn2018@riseup.net . If you are able to assist during the conference, particularly with translation/interpretation please let us know — we need you! NB: Accessibility and/or safety inquiries are encouraged and welcome from attendees whether they are presenting are not. Inclusion is important to us.

For further information about the North American Anarchist Studies Network, or to subscribe to the network mailing list, we invite you to visit our website at www.naasn.org.

Please spread the word.

Fuck you, Fuck your Court, Fuck the Crown and the Queen you serve: Response to Sentencing of Line 9 Valve Turners

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Dec 272017
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info. Link to fundraiser at bottom.

On December 18th, 2017, two anarchist comrades were sentenced for their role in a 2015 direct action in which a Enbridge’s Line 9 was physically shut down. Their affinity group accomplished this by physically closing a manual valve, thus proving that it was possible to safely shut down pipelines. This action, the first of its kind, inspired a wave of similar actions, including one in which 5 pipelines in 4 different states were shut down simultaneously.

At the sentencing of Fred and Will, the judge found it suiting to give the defendants a lecture. “You were convinced”, he said, “that it was correct”. He went on to compare the activists action, in which no physical entity was harmed, with terrorist attacks such as Boston Marathon bombing and the Bataclan massacre in Paris. The commonality between these actions was the fact that they were all ideologically motivated. The judge went on to reference a man in Germany in the 1930s who believed that he had a righteous cause.

Well, two can play at this game. If the condemnation that follows seems overly scathing, keep in mind that this fucking judge compared our comrade to Adolf fucking Hilter.

This judge is a representative of the very same Crown that has been responsible for atrocities much worse than the Boston Marathon bombing or the acts of the Bataclan shooters. The genocidal residential school system was presided over by many judges, and the human cost of this system was much greater than the terrorist acts the judge cites. How dare you chastise our comrades, as if they were errant children, for disobeying your Law, when much greater atrocities have been committed by people using the Law as their weapon? It is your moral code, not ours, which is ill-conceived and naive.

You are old, and will not live to see the full extent of the coming cataclysm wrought by climate change and the economic and political crises it will precipitate. For those of us who must live with the consequences of your generations failure to address the ecological crisis, we cannot tolerate the rape of Mother Earth that Enbridge and their malignant ilk daily engage in. How dare you scold us for taking action in defence of our future? It is our future that state-sanctioned ecocide has been systemically impoverishing for centuries. Would you chastise us for desiring to pass along a liveable world to those who come after us? Would you rather that we wallow hopelessly and helplessly, watching the web of life upon which our survival depends deteriorate further and further? The political channels you would have us believe in have clearly proven their inability to address the planetary crisis. Would you rather that we shrug and say “Fuck it”? Or waste our lives pursuing state-sanctioned “solutions” that are sure to fail? How dare you claim the moral high ground, you who lives in luxury while the sixth mass extinction rapidly accelerates? What have you done to reverse the damage that this civilization, year after year, inflicts on the Earth?

Fuck you, you old fuck. We are trying to repair the damage that your generation has done. We are trying to staunch the world’s wounds before it is too late. How dare you reproach us for our actions? In your inane lecture, you compared Frederick Brabant to Hitler, for the reason that they both believed in a cause. It insults my intelligence to even dignify this with a response, but since I must stoop to your level, here goes: The election of Hitler was legal, the actions of those who protected Jews and other undesirables from the Holocaust was illegal. The actions of slave-owners whipping slaves was legal, the Underground Railroad was outlaw shit. The residential school system was legal, traditional indigenous ceremonies were forbidden. It is an idiotic abasement of the human faculty for reasoning to equate lawful with right, and unlawful with wrong. The law, in every country, is created by the ruling class of that country, according to the interests and inclinations of that class. That you cannot see this obvious fact demonstrates a poverty of imagination that you should be ashamed to display in public. What you are saying is, in effect, Might makes Right, and in doing so you place yourself in the spiritual company of the judges of countless oppressive regimes, who have legitimized terror and torture by upholding the Law. So I say unto you: in condemning our comrades, you were convinced that you were right, but so was the judge that condemned the Tsilqotin chiefs to death. Or the state toadies who ordered the eviction of Africville and the deportation of the Acadians. Or they who enacted the War Measures Act during the October Crisis. Or they who demanded that Chinese migrant workers pay a head tax or be deported. Or they who ordered that people of Japanese descent be interned in concentration camps during World War Two. Each of these men, we can suppose, believed that what he was doing was right. But this was not the case.

We believe that there will come a day when the actions of water protectors will be seen in the same light as those who fought against slavery and imperial conquest in earlier generations. Moreover, although we are grateful that our activism has enjoyed popular support, we do not need the approval of mainstream society. We acknowledge no authority higher than ourselves, and we will continue to act in accordance with the aspirations of our spirits for freedom and dignity. We will continue to fight in defense of Mother Earth, on behalf of future generations and all our relations, consequences be damned.

And make no mistake – our movement is growing. Those with their fingers on the pulse already know this – the rest of you will soon enough.

May the sun set on all you represent, and as your generation dies, may the asinine ideology you have so shamelessly espoused die along with you. Fuck you, fuck your court, fuck the Crown and the Queen you serve. May the day soon come where all belief in their sanctity fades from memory, and human beings once again honour what is living instead of your dead abstractions. Only then will we as a people to be able to speak meaningfully of justice.

In the name of our fallen comrade, the praiseworthy and beloved Jean Leger, we declare: ON LACHE RIEN – we are not giving up.

for the wild,

the Pukulatamuj brigade of the Imaginary Anarchist Federation

Our comrades are currently fundraising to pay for costs related to this case. Please visit their crowd-funding page, found here:

https://www.youcaring.com/frederickbrabantwill-1047438

TVA’s fake news and the islamophobic frenzy on the far right

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Dec 152017
 

From Montréal-Antifasciste

Tuesday, December 12, TVA Nouvelles reported that female construction workers doing roadwork outside a the Ahl-Ill Bait mosque in Côte-des-Neiges had been reassigned to work in other areas, following a request to this effect from the mosque’s directors. TVA initially claimed to have a copy of a work contract to this effect. If true, this would have been both sexist and illegal.

Within hours of this news report, there was a wave of outrage on social media. In no time at all, well-known far right and Islamophobic personalities were denouncing not only the Ahl-Ill Bait mosque, but Muslims in general, as well as various politicians who were apparently failing to take a stand quickly enough, not to mention the Fédération des Femmes du Québec, which was accused of remaining silent due to the fact that its recently elected president, Gabrielle Bouchard, is a trans woman (and as such, apparently, indifferent to sexism).

Before the end of the day, facts contradicting this narrative were beginning to emerge. The executive of the mosque explained that they had never made any request to remove women from the site. “We did ask for access to the parking lot, at noon on Friday, but we never asked that anyone be excluded. This request, if it was made, did not come from our organization,”stated Moayed Altalibi, the mosque’s spokesperson,in a press release. This was confirmed by Serge Boileau, president of the Commission des services électriques de Montréal (CSEM), which is in charge of the work site, who pointed out that the person who oversees the work site for the CSEM is a woman. “She has been there for three or four weeks, and was never made aware of any request at all, not was she ever bothered by anyone.”

Despite these facts clearly contradicting TVA’s lies, social media networks connected to the far right continued to spread the claim that women had been removed from a work site due to Muslims. Indeed, the very fact that a spokesperson for the mosque was insisting that they had no problem with women’s presence, was cited as proof that Muslims were liars who could not be trusted.

Not for the first time, a dishonest news report about Muslims in Quebec went viral. Not for the first time, the far right is mobilizing as a result. Not for the first time, it looks like the news story itself may be the result of far right disinformation, as screenshots from Mark-Alexandre Perreault (who seems to have been the initial source of this story) shows that he is not exactly a disinterested or unbiased commentator:

Following the TVA report, far right social media icon Josée Rivard was quick to put out a video, in which she first lambasted FFQ head Gabrielle Bouchard with transphobic invective, before turning her sites of Muslims who were apparently responsible for making a female construction worker lose a day’s pay. Putting forward a false view of ethnic relations in Quebec, she shouted about how, “We always welcomed everyone and we never had any problems and now suddenly a bunch of morons are coming here who are messing everything up.”

In short order two women close to La Meute – “Sue Elle” (aka Sue Charbonneau) and “Kat Baws” (aka “Kat Akaia”)–called for a demonstration outside of the Ahl-Ill Bait mosque, with the express intention of disrupting the Friday prayers on December 15. Sue Elle has been involved in numerous racist mobilizations in 2017, attending demonstrations called by the Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens, the Front Patriotique du Québec, Storm Alliance and La Meute. Working with neonazi boneheads close to Soldiers of Odin and Atalante, she also attempted to organize a demonstration against Haitian refugees outside the Olympic Stadium on August 6 – an event that she was forced to cancel due to a large antiracist countermobilization.

Kat Baws is close to both La Meute (her partner “Pat Wolf” holds an official position in the group’s Monteregie Clan 16) and Storm Alliance, and was one of the organizers of Touts Unis Pour Les Démunis, a (failed) far right PR operation on December 9.

Besides La Meute and Storm Alliance, Baws also sympathizes with Atalante, the Quebec City-based neofascist organization, and various pages that specialize in identifying and attacking antifascists:

Both Storm Alliance and La Meute quickly moved to back the call for a demonstration outside the mosque on December 15. Meanwhile on the event’s facebook page, it was quickly boosted by Isabelle Roy (aka Seana Lee Roy), former head of Storm Alliance Montreal and co-organizer of the TUPLD flop, and numerous others, as suggestions to sing Christmas carols to disrupt the mosque’s Friday prayers, to hand out bacon or ham sandwiches, etc. began to come in.

At the same time, in parallel, the Association des Travailleurs en Signalisation Routière du Québec announced that it too would be demonstrating on Friday in front of the Ahl-Ill Bait mosque. Organizing via twitter, the ATSRQ warned its members to leave prior to the 1:30pm demonstration (which it said might get out of hand), and then as more and more news reports came out on Wednesday casting doubt on TVA’s Islamophobic claims, finally canceled its plans on Thursday morning.That said –insisting she is acting on her own and now as a member of any group –Marie-Josée Chevrier had already made a public call for people to support the union demonstration, a call that was backed by individuals from various networks, including people close to the Front Patriotique du Québec. As of this writing it is apparent people may still be showing up Friday morning before the larger afternoon racist rally. It is worth noting that Chevrier, despite her disavowal, is a member of some interesting facebook groups:

Storm Alliance, La Meute, and the Front Patriotique du Quebec are said to be organizing security for the Friday afternoon demonstration:

At the same time numerous calls have been made on facebook for more ominous action. Isabelle Lavigne (a member of the Storm Alliance facebook group) posted a video in which, while insisting she was not calling for violence, she warned members of the Ahl-Ill Bait mosque’s executive that she had gotten their home addresses via a government website. Sébastien Cormier – whose family’s immigration problems were exploited by Storm Alliance in their November 25 demonstration – put out his own video, bemoaning the fact that Québécois had been indoctrinated into Islamophobia by the government, yet at the same time warning Muslims that if they keep on making “unreasonable demands” that things would explode. (We have the impression that “Seb” really doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into, accepting support from people who he himself seems to realize are racists.) La Meute member Patricia Celtique Gagnon put out a video calling for demonstrations in front of mosques across Quebec on Friday, a sentiment that was echoed by other social media denizens.

There have been numerous calls for mosques to be vandalized and attacked, amidst a swamp of racist memes and comments:

And this is of course just the tip of the iceberg.

The far right mobilization around this story – even though it is based on misinformation – is not surprising. In Quebec, a key element of racist organizing for the past ten years has been framed in terms of women’s rights. This can take a racist but anti-sexist form, or it can take the form of straight out paternalism about “protecting our women” and “women are sacred in Quebec”. This is part of a broader phenomenon in which, after years of racist rabble rousing from media and politicians alike, popular discontent here – even around actual issues – is increasingly frequently expressed by white people through Islamophobia.

Regarding these instant feminists of the far right, we also can’t help but notice how selective their outrage is. For one woman to have lost one day’s pay due to sexist constraints is indeed something that should never happen. But for a mass mobilization against this, in a society where on average every woman earns 88 cents to the male dollar (which translates into 28 days’ unpaid work every year), is clearly about a lot more than gender equality.

If women are being excluded from any domain, that is oppressive, sexist, and something we oppose without hesitation. However, we are now all-too-familiar with the way in which these stories are made up by media outlets like TVA, quickly becoming something “everyone knows”, never mind that the story is contradicted by facts. In this case as in so many others, lies have fed an anti-Muslim feeding frenzy.

This is a story we will be following up on in the days to come.

An Increase in Far-left Attacks in Quebec: Philippe Teisceira-Lessard to Blame?

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Dec 062017
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Exclusive insight into the modus operandi of the “far-left”, liberal use of simplistic grammar, words pulled directly from dictionaries: recent months have seen a recent upsurge in the number of articles signed by Philippe Teisceira-Lessard in La Presse.

As recently as November 23rd, 2017, Philippe Teisceira-Lessard allegedly published an article describing the alleged actions of the “far-left” in alleged ‘Quebec’. Through exclusive interviews with admitted ex-nazis (Maxime Fiset) and CSIS investigators, he delves deep into the dark underground of the ‘anarchists’, and surfaces with a profound analysis of the ideas and actions motivating the criminally-minded left.

We asked how Teisceira-Lessard has such detailed analysis and information about the motivations of the various actors who post anonymously on Montreal Counter-Info. When we reached out to a source who requested anonymity, we were informed that “he has insider knowledge… how else could he provide details of their intentions and tactics? How would he know that they draw inspiration from djihadist websites?”

There has been a recent upsurge in Teisceira-Lessard’s journalistic contributions. In 2017 alone, he published 54 articles, compared to only 13 in 2015. While reading through his articles from 2016-2017, we became increasingly aware of the glaring similarities between Teisceira-Lessard’s writing and the communiques that anonymously appear on Montreal Counter-Info.

“Similar to an Anarchist Blog”

As part of our investigation, we consulted technological experts who ran several algorithms to compare sentence structures and phrasing patterns from Teisceira-Lessard’s articles to those from various posts on Montreal Counter-Info. The results were, to say the least, disturbing.

In 99.2% of the comparisons, both Teisceira-Lessard and the anonymous contributors made liberal use of the following sentence structures: simple, compound, and complex. Both used subjects that employed verbs, at times linked by the conjunctions ‘and’, as well as ‘or’. What is most shocking, is that occasionally an independent clause was linked with a dependent clause through the use of the conjunction ‘because’.

After repeated linguistic triangulations between Teisceira-Lessard’s La Presse contributions and communiques posted on Montreal Counter-Info, Ian Lafreniere, the leading researcher in far-left symbology, stated with concern that “his articles are remarkably similar to anarchist blog posts”. Below we have highlighted several examples of similarities between Teisceira-Lessard’s writing and these anonymous communiques:

“A website called Montreal Counter-Info has become the hub of the movement, and releases communiques that claim responsibility for several attacks on people and property.”

“A video released on the website shows two individuals approaching a railroad and activating paint-filled extinguishers.”

“Many yuppies decide to show their wealth in ways other than by BMWs and Mercedes.”

Editor’s note: The websites actually made more frequent use of the compound-complex format than Teisceira-Lessard, who appears to not want to cloud his writing or confuse his readership with more than two clauses.

Internet as a Means of Communication

Lapresse.com, mtlcounter-info.org, ISIS.net/recruitment. All three are websites. They publish and distribute articles and editorial opinions to a wide audience, who access this information via the internet.

By its own admission, La Presse has been using the internet to disseminate its propaganda since 1999, and as recently as 2015, converted almost entirely to an internet-based distribution model. In what we can hardly view as mere coincidence, Montreal Counter-Info also uses this platform of primarily disseminating information via the “web”, while maintaining a small distribution base in print.

The manager(s) of the La Presse website did not respond to our email inquiries. Their host, the Canadian company Namespro Solutions, refused to reveal their identity to our computer science expert Daniel Lecavalier.

A History of Crime

Teisceira-Lessard is no stranger to the violent actions of the far-left. In April 2012, he was arrested and charged with breaking and entering and mischief for his “essential role” in the occupation and destruction of Minister Line Beauchamp’s office in Montreal.

In an interview following the events, Teisceira-Lessard admitted his involvement. “When the police talked to me about mischief, theft, and break and enter, I was in shock—these are strong words. These aren’t petty accusations!” he said with a hint of pride. Since then, Teisceira-Lessard has maintained a low profile and retreated to the seedy underground of the extremist blogosphere.

Helpless Victims

Though it is technically correct that far-right ideology has directly lead to the murder of eight muslim men, consistent racist attacks at a mosque, and an increase in violent assaults on people of colour, we cannot ignore the impact of the far-left’s actions. “We find ourselves in a situation where the far-left is as much of a problem as the far right,” says Michel Juneau-Katsuya, national security expert and ex-CSIS agent.

We approached several front-end loaders and security cameras, who would only speak to us under the veil of anonymity. In one touching testimony, a storefront window had this to say:

“These violent actions are completely unacceptable and have no place in a lawful society…in no way will I accept attacks on my family, their security, and their peace-of-mind.”

Our investigation and thorough analysis lead us to the following conclusion: if we disregard both ideology and content, there are far too many similarities between articles written by Teisceira-Lessard and those that appear on Montreal Counter-Info for them to be penned by different authors. We contacted the SPVM to request additional support of $524,937.50 to continue with our investigative operations, but their petty cash fund had recently been depleted.

We attempted to contact Teisceira-Lessard to shed some light on these new concerning allegations, but he replied only with “no comment”, a phrase he no doubt learned during his time in jail.

Balancesheet on the November 25 Counterdemonstration

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Dec 032017
 

From Montréal-Antifasciste

The joint La Meute/Storm Alliance demonstration of November 25, 2017 promised to be the largest far-right mobilization in Québec since the 1930s. The organizers anticipated a thousand people turning out to denounce the Commission publique contre le racisme systémique, which, ironically, the Liberal government cancelled on October 18.[1] At the end of the day, even the two groups and their allies from the nationalist groupuscules, the Three Percenters, the Northern Guard, and the boneheads from the Soldiers of Odin and Atalante only collectively reached half that number (300 to 400 max). Nonetheless, this mobilization could still mark a qualitative and symbolic watershed for the fascist drift in the province—a drift that police forces are more openly supporting, and in which many “mainstream” political actors are complicit.

While, in Montréal this year, we got used to the SPVM acting as a security force for La Meute and the other identitarian groupuscules, never was the collusion between the police and the far-right organizations as flagrant as it was in Quebec City on November 25. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Service de police de la Ville de Québec (SPVQ) brutally repressed antifascists, beating us with batons and shields, pepper spraying us, and making “preventive” arrests, with the clear goal of permitting the identitarians and fascists (some of whom were openly carrying batons and mace) to spread their hatred and racism unopposed in the province’s capital city. Additionally, the multiple approaches used by the media to demonize antifascist counterdemonstrators, both before and after the demonstration, contributed to normalizing the identitarian groups’ toxic discourse.

That said, we have to face the fact that we in the antifascist and antiracist movement have an enormous amount of work to do to make clear the urgent danger posed by the increasing shift to the far right. The various militant groups involved were only able to mobilize around 250 people to face off with the fascists at the Assemblée nationale.

An Underwhelming Antifascist Mobilization

To begin with, the Rassemblement populaire contre la manif de La Meute et Storm Alliance à Québec!, which the Quebec City ad hoc antiracist collective “CO25” put a lot of energy and thought into organizing, only drew a few hundred people, including those who made the trip from Montréal, who made up almost half of the assembled group, which was also augmented by small groups of comrades from Saguenay, Estrie, and elsewhere in the province.

Although a variety of objective factors undermined the mobilization (the time of year, the cold shitty weather, the early morning bus departure from Montréal, etc.), we also need to consider a certain number of complementary factors.

It was no coincidence that the major media published a series of articles demonizing the “far left” in the days leading up to the demonstration. The negative presentation of antifascists, treated as interchangeable with the far left, is an established approach that has only gotten worse since last August 20 in Quebec City. The negative image of antifascists that has been publicly fostered rests in no small part on a biased perception of violence and a dishonest portrayal of the far left and the far right as equivalent.

There’s simply no denying that the events of last August 20, some incidents in particular, seriously undermined the credibility of the antifascist movement, even in some circles that are would normally be sympathetic to us. Not everything, however, can be explained away by the media coverage. It’s pretty obvious that we are collectively having an enormous problem breaking through the hegemony of a particular legalist, pacifist, and pronouncedly nonviolent discourse, which could be described as “extreme centrism.” This sort of ideological monopoly, characterized by a rigid pseudo-ethic wrapped around a woolly ideological core, primarily serves the interest of the far right, which in its quest for legitimacy is making sure to cooperate with the police and to project a law and order image that belies the much greater and much worse violence at the heart of its programme.

To put it another way, given that the state, the far right, the media, and even certain progressive personalities have banded together to demonize the antiracist and antifascist movements, our movements face an uphill battle of popular education and the deconstruction of centrist myths.

We also have to recognize that racism is greeted with a high degree of tolerance in Québec, particularly outside of Montréal. Recall that the famous Commission publique contre le racisme systémique—which certainly didn’t pose a radical threat of any sort—was harshly criticized by the two main opposition parties, before being cancelled by the Liberal Party, which for abject electoral reasons replaced it with the a meaningless “Forum sur la valorisation de la diversité et la lutte contre la discrimination.” That very same week the Liberal Party passed the Islamophobic Bill 62, which is now facing constitutional court challenges. Without fail, surveys conducted in Québec confirm a strong popular sympathy for anti-immigrant and Islamophobic ideas, particularly in communities with few (or no) Muslims or immigrants, but which are inundated by trash media and the fear it whips up against the “other.” It’s a context where hostility toward antifascists is fed by both anti-left conservatism and a xenophobia that rejects and disdains anything that is not “de souche.”

On the other hand, the very structure of the social media that we are overly dependent on in our organizing favours echo chambers where users inevitably end up interacting almost exclusively with people who share their ideas and values. This plays no small part in the isolation of the far left and its views. The identitarian echo chamber actually seems to be a lot bigger and substantially more influential than the antiracist echo chamber, reaching more people every day. It’s obvious we have to find new ways to organize, and to do so we HAVE TO get off of the social media platforms and go into communities, or we risk radical antifascism being permanently marginalized. That means organizing and acting in the cities, neighbourhoods, and communities where the far right are intent upon recruiting.

An Exemplary Antiracist Gathering

On a much more positive note, we must note the excellent work done by our CO25 comrades. The popular gathering, even if it only brought out a small crowd, was a clear organizational success. Everyone appreciated the meal collectively prepared by members of the IWW, the Collectif de minuit, and Food Against Fascism, the speeches were clear and on topic, security was well organized, and the piñata was a nice way to end it. Overall, better communication vastly improved coordination between the cities. But it’s still clear that things are far from ideal . . . it was fine for a pleasant picnic to denounce racism, but it wasn’t enough when the pepper spray came! So, while the popular gathering was a success, the same can’t be said for the subsequent events.

The Most Unequal Faceoff to Date . . . A Brief Account of the Events

The parameters established by the “popular” gathering were clear; people planning to physically block the far-right march were to wait until after noon to move into position.

Following improvised leadership, a small group of about 200 demonstrators easily skirted a handful of disorganized cops to take to the street and move in the direction of René-Lévesque. The SPVQ riot squad got their shit together just enough to throw up a haphazard cordon at the intersection of René-Lévesque and Honoré-Mercier. Showing little taste for the fight (perhaps a prudent assessment of the objective conditions . . .), the antifascist forces didn’t try to break through the police line, instead choosing to occupy the intersection for a long as possible. At this point, the La Meute and Storm Alliance march was 150 meters away, in front of the Centre des congrès.

It wasn’t long before the cops received the order to put on their gas masks, a sure sign that chemical irritants would soon be coming into play. After about ten minutes the riot squad moved against the antiracists, more and more violently pushing them in the direction of the Fontaine de Tourny, generously dousing the front row in pepper spray, and they quite literally did this to clear the way so the racists could march on the Assemblée nationale as planned. The cops’ commitment to defending the racists’ right to demonstrate was almost touching.

Comrades resisted courageously for as long as they could, but eventually they were pushed back to the fountain. Metal barricades were dragged into the street to block the cops and snowballs rained down on the cops and the identitarians. However, by this point the resistance was pointless; most of the counterdemonstrators were dispersing, as rumours of an imminent kettle created confusion in our ranks. We withdrew to the Plains of Abraham, where there was an impromptu caucus, after which a hard core took off in the opposite direction, hoping to skirt the police and confront La Meute and Storm Alliance further on. A commendable effort, but unfortunately unsuccessful. At about the same time, the police arrested twenty-three comrades.

In the end, the far-right march was able to return to its starting point unopposed, yet still under a heavy police escort.

The police later reported an additional twenty-one “preventive” arrests shortly after noon in the area of the demonstration. The arrestees in these cases were charged with conspiracy to illegally assemble and being disguised with the intention of committing a crime. The police themselves admit that no crimes were committed by any of these people. Minority Report much? There are also some comrades who face additional charges.

La Meute, Storm Alliance, Atalante: The Same Struggle!—and the Police Working for the Fascists!

From our point of view, what was historic about the November 25 mobilization was the open unabashed coming together of almost all of Québec’s far-right forces. Until now, concerns about how they are perceived have caused La Meute, and to a lesser degree Storm Alliance, to keep openly fascist and white supremacist groups like Atalante and the la Fédération des Québécois de souche at arm’s length. This time they did not hesitate to cheerfully invite them to join their little party in the province’s capital. And in the aftermath of the demonstration Atalante Québec’s Facebook page included comments replete with praise from dozens of members of La Meute, Storm Alliance, the Soldiers of Odin, etc.[2] Which says it all.

Let’s be perfectly clear: Atalante members are white supremacists and unequivocal neo-fascists. There’s no room for doubt. The group was founded in 2016 by boneheads from the “Quebec Stompers” scene, part of the milieu surrounding Légitime Violence, a band with edifying lyrics such as: “Ces petits gauchistes efféminés qui se permettent de nous critiquer n’oseront jamais nous affronter. On va tous les poignarder” [The little leftist sissies who dare to criticize us would never risk confronting us. We will knife them one and all]. And perhaps even more to the point: “Déroulons les barbelés, préparons le Zyklon B!” [Roll out the barbed wire, Get the Zyklon B!], referring to the gas used in the Nazi concentration camps. Atalante has close ties to the fascist “Rock Against Communism” music scene, with the Italian neo-fascist group CasaPound, and here in Québec with the Fédération des Québécois de souche and the traditionalist Catholic Society of St-Pius X.

We also noted the presence of the Three Percenters (III%), a pseudo-militia whose members arrived at the demonstration decked out with reinforced security gloves and carrying telescopic batons, what appeared to be pepper spray, and other concealed weapons. This group, which has only recently established itself in Québec, includes conspiracy theorists and survivalists bound together by anti-Muslim and “anti-globalist” paranoia. The organization is primarily based in the U.S., but it has some chapters in English Canada as well. A few days after announcing themselves on November 25 in Quebec City, a number of “threepers” were part of the hodgepodge of dickheads who announced a pro-gun rally at the Polytechnique at the Université de Montréal, on December 2, 2017, four days before the annual commemoration of the 1989 shooting of fourteen women there by the anti-feminist Marc Lépine.

We are within our rights to ask why the Threepers weren’t arrested in Quebec City (or, at a minimum, why their weapons weren’t confiscated), while the police arrested twenty-one antifascists purely preventatively, pointing out in the media that weapons were found in the possession of some arrested militants. . . . And why were the Atalante and Soldiers of Odin boneheads permitted a lengthy gathering on the esplanade ramparts, from where they could fly their colours without the slightest interference from the police . . . while a few meters away the riot squad was mercilessly assaulting the antifascists.

The way the police were deployed in the contested space goes a long way toward suggesting complicity and a comfortable symbiosis with our adversaries. The police were in front of the far-right march with their backs to the identitarian protestors, focusing their attention on the antiracist militants. The SPVQ played a similar role on August 20, providing La Meute organizers with privileged information about the Montréal militants, extracted in a questionable way from a bus driver, thereby helping them to go ahead with their demonstration. But, frankly, this time not the slightest effort was put into hiding the complicity!

No big surprise that the identitarians applauded the police at the end of their demonstration . . .

Media Complicity

As expected, media coverage once again left a lot to be desired, typically portraying the antifascists as shit disturbers, when in reality we were on the receiving end of all of the violence! Most of the media repeated the SPVQ press statements without asking a single question, focusing primarily on the seizure of arms and throwing around the word “conspiracy.” We noticed a substantial difference between the coverage in the anglophone press and that in the francophone press. Significantly, the former doesn’t shy away from referring to La Meute and Storm Alliance as far-right, while the francophone press defaults to euphemisms and beating around the bush . . . when they don’t completely confuse the various groups and their respective positions (one TVA journalist went as far as to claim that Atalante were the antifa who had come to demonstrate against La Meute!). Xavier Camus has produced an excellent piece on the bizarre media coverage of the November 25 events.

Only the CBC thought it worth mentioning that the police had done the far right’s dirty work. To the best of our knowledge, in his piece appropriately entitled À bas le fascisme!, Houssein Ben-Ameur was the only columnist to set the record straight without feeling he had to tar the racists and the antiracists with the same brush.

Once again, it is the independent media that provided a perspective closer to what the antiracist and antifascist militants there that day actually experienced. The MADOC video is a great example.

A Negative Balance Sheet

In the final analysis, it’s hard to see this as a success for antifascists and antiracists. Obviously a modest mobilization was better than no mobilization at all, and we were frustrated by all of the adversity we faced trying to clearly express our opposition to these racist groups gathering in Quebec City. Even if November 25 wasn’t a victory for us, it would have been worse still had there been no opposition. It is also a fact that without the help of the police, even our modest mobilization would clearly have disrupted our adversaries’ plans in no small way. But that just isn’t good enough. To halt the fascist advance, we need to pick up our game, both at the level of mobilization and in terms of information and education. Furthermore, we need to find new ways to intervene, new approaches to mobilizing that allow us to break out of the ranks of the established left-wing scene and begin to meet and discuss with new comrades.

The best thing to come out of this mobilization was the improved ties between antiracist and antifascist militants in Montréal and Quebec City, as well as elsewhere in the province. Obviously we have our work cut out for us if we are to use this beginning to build ever stronger and more effective networks.

Some general observations:

  • Police complicity with the far right isn’t a problem that’s likely to go away. The fact that the new La Meute head of security is a former career police officer (from the Quebec City region) shouldn’t come as a great shock. It is getting more difficult to ignore the fact that the identitarian groups most certainly include members of the police force, and even possibly of the justice system. We need to look into this.
  • While the convergence of far-right forces on November 25 might seem disturbing, there are ways in which it helps us. The façade is crumbling, and claims made by La Meute leaders no longer seem credible. Their ties to racists are getting harder to hide. We need to draw attention to these links and ties.
  • We need to better prepare for tactical deployment. Some decisions that were made in the heat of the moment in Quebec City are clearly open to debate. For example, before announcing an imminent kettle, you need to be absolutely certain you’re right. That kind of warning has an immediate demobilizing effect, and it’s obviously a big problem if our demonstration scatters because of a faulty assessment. In the same vein, we need better communication, and we need experienced militants to begin sharing their skills with newer arrivals. There are, of course, security concerns with all of this that require some serious thought.

 

[1] There was also the fig leaf of support for “Seb,” a Québécois  man whose wife (a “potentially legitimate immigrant”) is having trouble immigrating to Canada.

[2] It’s worth noting that Dave Tregget, the leader of Storm Alliance, was himself the president of the Soldiers of Odin about a year ago and did not hide the fact that he was on good terms with Stompers and Atalante. Tregget has spent the recent months denying that he is a racist at every opportunity, but how can you doubt his racism when he and his buddies jump into bed with Atalante at the first opportunity? Tregget lies and manipulates, and it’s time the media recognized that.

The Gunnies and the Far Right

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Dec 022017
 

From Montréal-Antifasciste

The following is the complete text from a flier antifascists were planning to distribute at a counterdemonstration against a group that had planned to hold a pro-gun rally at the Place du 6 décembre (the memorial to victims of the 1989 antifeminist Polytechnique massacre, in which 14 women were killed) on Saturday, December 2nd. This rally has now been moved outside of Montreal, and as a result the planned counterdemonstrations have been canceled. We still feel it is worthwhile to share this text, which explains the connections between this rally – and the « gunnies » — with the Quebec far right. A more in-depth text on this subject will be coming soon.

Today some self-styled “gunnies” were planning to hold a rally at the memorial for the victims of the Polytechnique massacre, in which 14 women were killed in 1989 by antifeminist gunman Marc Lépine.

We are here to share our solidarity and outrage over this misogynist provocation.

Over the past year we have witnessed a sickening increase in hate crimes, and far-right organizing, across Quebec. This was sparked by a mass shooting at the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City, on January 29. The current far-right wave, while focused on Muslims, is hostile to anything that threatens their imaginary “traditional” Quebec society, made up of white, francophone, heterosexual Catholics, with men “protecting” women and laying down the law.

The so-called “gunnies” protest was organized by the collectif Tous contre un registre québécois des armes à feu, and specifically by Conservative Party officials Guy Morin and Jessie McNicoll. It is no surprise that both McNicoll and Morin, along with several people who indicated they would attend the event, are also supporters of various far right groups, such as Storm Alliance, La Meute, and the Three Percenters.

The Three Percenters is a group that many who planned to attend this event, including Guy Morin himself, are also associated with. “Threepers,” as they are called, are a paramilitary group that was started in the United States in 2008, pledging armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership. However, their political agenda goes far beyond simply supporting gun rights. In the United States, Three Percenters have been actively involved in vigilante patrols along the Mexican border, blocking buses of immigrants who have already been detained, and holding anti-refugee rallies. Threepers have held protests outside mosques, and have been involved in a number of cases of violence, including in November 2015 when one of their supporters shot five people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis. In Canada, Threepers have “staked out” mosques and tried to intimidate counterprotesters at anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant demonstrations.

There is clear overlap between Tous contre un registre québécois des armes à feu, the Threepers, and other far-right groups, including the Storm Alliance and La Meute. Several Threepers armed with clubs and wearing the group’s insignia were identified providing security at the recent racist demonstration organized by those two groups on November 25 in Quebec City, and before the facebook event for the December 2 “gunny” rally was taken down, a number of Storm Alliance and La Meute members as well as Threepers had indicated they would attend. At the same time, one of the “gunnies” who made an insulting video accusing the victims of Lepine’s massacre of being “polypleurniches” (“polycrybabies”), Martin Leger, is a former member of the neo-nazi Quebec Stomper scene from which the group Atalante (who were also present on November 25) emerged.

The plan to hold a “gunny” rally at the memorial to the Polytechnique victims is a clear antifeminist provocation. While groups like Storm Alliance and La Meute claim to favor equality between men and women, they routinely deride feminism for having “ruined” women in Quebec, or for being part of a leftist conspiracy to weaken the Quebec nation. These racist groups are mainly interested in positioning white francophone Québécois men as protectors of white women against the threat they feel “other” men pose. And yet, since December 6, 1989, over 1500 women and girls have been murdered in Quebec, generally by white men, often by men they knew. The racism of Storm Alliance, La Meute, and the Threepers will do nothing to protect anyone, but on the contrary will simply lead to heightened violence against women, including and especially women in the communities they target.

We are determined to resist by any means necessary the rise of the extreme right and its racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic agenda.

Montréal Antifasciste: United against racism, patriarchy and colonialism

 

Maxime Fiset and His Centre Do Not Speak for Us!

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Nov 282017
 

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.

Committees for territorial defence and decolonisation

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Nov 162017
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

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A breach was opened by an now well-known anonymous group . Their autonomous action to reoccupy the territory demonstrated the inseparability of ecological and decolonial perspectives. By blocking Junex’s oil project and by affirming the legitimacy of traditional Mi’kmaq sovereignty on the territory, their action made space for new possibilities of successful struggle. This call to organize is done with the audacious spirit of the first barricades, now fallen.

Since the dismantling of the barricades, the River Camp has become a central anchor in the fight against fossil fuels and fracking in Gaspesie. Beyond being a place of meaningful daily existence, the camp furthers efforts to build a force to oppose the economy of death, brought about by the extractivist state and the fossil fuel industries that it finance. By rallying inhabitants from everywhere in Gaspesie, in the rest of Quebec and the Maritimes, this space has proved that it has great potential in terms of creating encounters and alliances.

In their declaration of support at the Junexit banquet, two traditional Mi’kmaq chiefs wrote that “after the fall of the barricade, the fight has only begun. Relationships are forming between the Mi’kmaq District Chiefs, as well as native and non-native water and land protectors. We call on all groups and individuals concerned for the protection of the water and the land on the territory of Gespegawagi to give their support, and to join the struggle here.”

The call for a week of action was a success in multiple regions, seeing banner drops, occupations, protests, and train blockades. The cause, taken up by ecological as well as decolonial activists, became a symbol of the defense of the territory, of the necessity to protect the land and the forms of life we belong to. “Everything to lose, nothing to gain”. Even more than just opposition to projects of extraction, we want to express our attachment to the territory and the threat oil poses to that which we hold dear.

To think about the follow up of this struggle, and how to continue it, to see how we can contribute to the multiplication of these conflicts, we propose to friends, comrades, allies, and accomplices, to meet where they are – in forms favoring both autonomy and the expansion of the struggle.

Defeating Catastrophe

Ecology and Decolonization

Not a day goes by without another part of the globe ravaged by the phenomenon of global warming, not a day goes by that doesn’t remind us of the dramatic decrease in biodiversity every year. Under the effects of widespread fossil fuel extraction, catastrophe erupts into our daily life, painting a somber future. The derailment of a train full of oil destroys an entire village. Sudden climate change paralyses an entire region. What we call catastrophe is really nothing other than the norm of an economy founded on acceleration and growth.

Fossil fuels, intended to free us from dependance on the sun, have rendered us dependent on the institutions and infrastructures that produce them. Beyond those who want to delay or speed up the end of the world, a spark of life is given shape by combatting projects of the economy of death, and re-inhabiting the world.

Dispossessed, we are disconnected from others, each individual in their little personal situation, blind to the violence needed to keep this system in place. Defending the territory means breaking this little ball. It means to re-learn how to live with that which surrounds us and to work with those who constitute us. To break the normal tempo of the economy, to find ourselves again.

The blockade of Junex’s project in Gaspesie, and the camp that followed, are spaces that allow us to gather and organize ourselves against that which ravages the world. These spaces are linked to the territory, and weave new paths.

But if the disaster that is the oil economy seems self-evident to us, we must remember that from the point of view of native people, the relationship to this disaster is conceived differently. For them, this catastrophe is a reality that has been in process for 500 years. The destruction of the environment goes hand in hand with the dispossession that preceded it. Their perspective reveals the colonial character of modern history. It let us understand that the development of the economy would never have been possible except through dispossession and exploitation. This system still functions today, under the same logic, and Junex is the ultimate example.

To pose the question of defending the territory in “America” inevitably implies thinking about the process through which the extractivist economy and its instututions have been able to grow. This process is colonization, that is to say, pillage, destruction, and occupation of native territories. From an indigenous perspective, defending the territory is therefore inseperable from the struggle for decolonization. In this process, ancestral sovereignties repressed by 500 years of colonization have to be revived and put in the forefront. For the ecological activists, this implies creating non-native worlds capable of living without dispossessing others of land. Through a common struggle against that which threatens us and for the survival of new and ancient traditions, worlds that have up until now been incompatible can meet each other. This meeting must take into account the colonial order,so as to destroy it. By doing this we can address shared problems.

The construction of the “Americas” was nothing other than a long violent process to take over territories and resources. The fossil fuel industry is the new fur trade. The decolonial perspective offers a way to think about this tragedy. To interrupt History, we must block that which creates it – that’s to say, the infrastructure of the extractivist economy. The mobilizing force that can emerge from concrete alliances between the ecological and decolonial perspectives, between natives and non-natives, is the harbinger of a victorious struggle. The possibility to win against this world, and to create others, is in our hands. Let’s seize it!

What to do?

“Moving forward while questionning”

The proposed form of committees is designed to favor autonomy and local initiative. In supporting the River Camp, we believe in the importance of re-territorializing these struggles. The idea of combining defense and decolonization, for us, provides a shared sense of meaning without needing to work in a programmatic manner. Each location, each setting brings a different reality, without a universal solution. This is why we choose a humble path: “moving forward while questioning.” We must use the conditions on the ground to start and expand theses struggles in order to act directly, while also organizing for the long term.To do this, we suggest several directions for the coming months.

I. Know the Territories

It is first necessary to investigate. Practicing investigation means learning how to designate the enemy by making him appear concretely via his plans and policies. We must understand how they think, so that we can identify their endgame and prevent it. This stage, which is already under way, consists in identifying and understanding the projects of the extractivist economy throughout the territory and their links with the colonial program. These links can be found in the current development of the territory and in the omnipresence of extraction infrastructures. The territory is fractured by inequalities and united by a network of communication and transportation infrastructure. It is necessary to grasp its functioning, methods and, more particularly, to understand how this extractivist policy leads to the underdevelopment and loss of sovereignty for the inhabitants of the peripheral regions. In the same gesture, we must bind ourselves to resistance and understand the enemy from the point of view of what they mean. Links should be made between the people who live on the land and struggle to defend it. This involves learning to hold dear to what they love and to hate what threatens them, to share life.

II. Build Autonomy

The extractivist system depends on the circulation of resources from the peripheries to the center. In order to oppose this, our networks must allow us to respond swiftly and join actions rapidly once a call is launched. Building autonomy is first and foremost aimed at reuniting forces to combat what is devastating the territories. It is a matter of instilling a new force in protest movements and reinventing them through old and new traditions; these forms of life which allow us to live on the land necessarily teach us to fight against what threatens it. The effort is therefore multifaceted : to build a combative ecological movement, to support the traditional forms of indigenous sovereignty and to regain power over our lives. To do this, we must make our world habitable, that is to say, to re-discover material means, knowledge, imagination and existential meaning to hold in both desertion and confrontation.

III. Block Flows

To those who live in the city and for whom the world seems impossible to recapture, an important role is to bring confrontation by attacking symbols, infrastructures, enemies that threaten the forms of life we ​hold dear. In the city, as elsewhere, the modernization and development of the extractivist capitalist economy must be compromised until it becomes untenable. The survival of this economy depends on its ability to (1) extract resources and (2) to circulate them. Our tactical considerations must stem from this simple observation. Our mode of organization must enable us to effectively support the struggles that are taking place on territories beyond colonial borders, to help them to expand and to channel resources that allow their continuation.

We propose these steps in order to multiply blockades and actions in the coming months. The success of the actions that are undertaken will depend on our ability to build strong long-term relationships of trust that enable complicity, and a reciprocity that binds us together. The movement we propose to develop implies a profound deconstruction of the relations of power present between us, infused into our minds by colonial ideology. Thinking about decolonization involves projecting oneself into a broader time period than a campaign or a camp. In the end, we want to make moments when one lives and moments when one struggles inseparable.

Deepening ideas, Furthering the Struggle

The formation of a committee aims to bring those who wish to articulate ecology and decolonization in the fight for the defense of territories together. Committees allow for greater participation and coordination of efforts. They can both support the River Camp and organize themselves on their own territory. To build the committees and prepare to continue the fight against the oil companies, we propose some themes of activities and actions for the coming months. We plan to organize a training weekend and committee meetings in the coming months. In the meantime, it’s about maintaining tension, investigating ongoing projects, and building strong relationships.

Propositions

Organize support for the River Camp : Ensure a physical presence, provide equipment and money. People living in the camp decided to spend the winter there. We must therefore stay aware of the needs that will be expressed in the coming weeks in relation to this challenge.

Investigate and build solidarity : Go to meet people in struggle. It is fundamental to get to know the territorial defense struggles are built on bonds with those who engage in them.

Organizing autonomous actions : Targets and forms of action are numerous. The addresses are easy to find as long as the enemies are identified. Organinzing actions is both a way to connect with each other by including new people and raising the tone against extractivist economy projects.

Organizing discussion around books : For an Amerindian Autohistory / Red Skins White Masks / Carbon democracy. Political power in the era of oil / Wasáse indigenous pathways of action and freedom / The Anomie of the Earth: Philosophy, Politics, and Autonomy in Europe and the Americas / Decolonization is not a metaphor / 1492, the occultation of the other / Coloniality of Power and Democracy in Latin America

Establish fundraising activities : We must finance the continuation of the camp, the struggles in progress and the legal defence of those arrested during the blockage and the week of actions.Il faut financer la suite du campement, les luttes en cours et la défense des arrêté.es du blocage et de la semaine d’actions.

Organize screenings : Kanehsatake, 270 years of resistance / The Restigouche events / Does the Crown want to wage war on us? / For the survival of our children / Our nationhood / Kouchibouguac (List of films on offer available on the NFB website)

Produce agitation and information material : It is important to publicize the activities of committees through posters, leaflets and other dissemination tools. As well as to expose the population to ecological and decolonial issues.

Organize training for action : When time comes to implement actions or intervene in those already in progress, it is fundamental to know how to do it by minimizing the danger that we will run and maximize the one we represent: ABC of an occupation, preparation of medical teams, training in street tactics and survival in the forest, learning how enemy technologies work and those that can be useful to us.

Participating in the organization : During the next mothns, it would be interesting to circulate in the areas that have meant support for the River Camp. We propose to set up a conference tour.

Adopting positions of support in a general assembly

To organize discussions on Camp de la Rivière events with people who participated in the fight: campdelariviere@gmail.com To contribute to the next publications of the newspaper and build the network of committees: cddt@riseup.net

November 12th, Against Hate or Just Racism?

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Nov 132017
 

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

Not our website, but good for staying aware of local anarchist initiatives: mtlcounter-info.org

You Have to Start Somewhere

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Nov 092017
 

From Liaisons

Read also : Expériences de l’émeute du 20 août

In recent days, weeks, and months, new posters and other tags have made their appearance in the territory of Quebec City, visible signs of people who have made the bet of linking themselves to the world by leaving their mark on the walls of the city.

Whether we know their identity makes no difference to us. Liaisons [Connections] is the mask by which they become anonymous to power and open to the world; the reflexive and informative tip of the iceberg. What matters to us are connections created in the fault lines of power and actions to expand them.

This is why we’re making a call

We make a simple call: let’s multiply our presence everywhere in the territory. Everywhere, let’s multiply the fault lines. This way, there is no limit to our praxeological imagination. And why not begin with the walls? We’re starting a mural poetry contest in so-called Quebec City! Pictures received by email will be published directly on the website of Liaisons (liaisons.resist.ca).

Let’s use this occasion to re-learn the habit and experience of acting together in the moonlight. Let’s light up the night with a thousand fires!

Watch out for the cops! One should act quickly, watch one’s surroundings, monitor all the “citizens” who would like to play the heroes of private property (despite this happening rather rarely). We’re never too forward-looking or cautious. If you want a piece of advice or two, from our experience:

  • Taxis are the worst snitches, one should avoid them like the police.
  • If you take photos of your work yourself, use tools like exiftool, which allow you to erase data like the device’s location and model.
  • Sometimes, if we’re expected at night, the best time may be early in the morning or even, with the right tools (stencil and a bag to conceal it), and depending on the spot, in the middle of the day.

Let’s go!