RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 328 Yves Engler and Dealing With Repression
Episode 328 of RevolutionZ has as guest Yves Engler, a Canadian writer and political activist who shares his experience of being recently jailed for criticizing a pro-genocide influencer online and facing subsequent charges for "harassing the police" when he publicized his case. We discuss the growing criminalization of pro-Palestinian speech and the importance of solidarity in fighting back against repression.
Engler describes growing Canadian support for Palestine activism including how students at universities like Concordia have voted overwhelmingly for BDS resolutions while university administrations remain aligned with pro-Israel donors
We discuss the challenge of maintaining activism when results aren't immediate and in light of family and other responsibilities, doubts about winning, and other obstacles to activism.
Engler also describes how Canadian nationalism has been inflamed by Trump's recent tariff threats and we consider Trump's possible motives as well as differences and parallels between repression in Canada and the United States. and mainly how to successfully counter each.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 328th consecutive episode and our guest this time is Eve Engler. Eve is a Canadian, montreal-based writer and political activist. In addition to 12 published books, engler's writings have appeared in alternative press and in mainstream publications such as the Globe and Mail, toronto Star, ottawa Citizen and Ecologist. Recently, eve has encountered the long arm of the law. Some call it for his words. I think he was just in jail for, I don't know, perhaps five days or so, I'm not sure before gaining release. So, eve, how about, if we start with your current situation? What did you do and why did you do it? And then, what did they do and what do you think their reason was?
Speaker 2:Well, what I did I mean, I think there's probably lots of things that are in the background to why I got charged, but concretely what I was accused of initially was putting harassing this well-known Canadian Zionist influencer who's pretty at the extreme end of the pro-Israel movement. She calls for mass deportations. She's posted stuff from actions by neo-Nazi groups and the like, but basically I've posted dozens of times Actually the Crown said 72 times. I didn't know that In response to her posts on X, I guess more or less over the past year. I wasn't really aware of her. Her name's Dahlia Kurtz. Before a year from now she used to be a sort of corporate media. She had a radio program. She's be a sort of corporate media. She had a radio program. She's got some sort of corporate media profile.
Speaker 2:So I basically just responded to her racist, pro-genocide posts and I did it with snark, with biting politics. I never threatened her. I've never met her, I've never messaged her. I don't even follow her on X. I just literally responded to things that appeared in my feed. And so a couple of weeks ago the Montreal police inspector called me to say they wanted me to come to the station because they were going to charge me the next day for having harassed Dahlia Kurtz, and then I reported on it, I wrote about it and I promoted an email action alert campaign to the police inspector saying that they shouldn't be, you know, charging me. A few thousand people emailed the police by the next morning and the police's response was to then say I was harassing the police, was to then say I was harassing the police and they brought in four new charges of harassing the police for having written about it and sort of said this is ridiculous, what's coming my way. So now I'm basically charged with harassing this Zionist influencer and harassing the Montreal police. The charges haven't.
Speaker 2:The court hasn't adjudicated the matter whatsoever. I spent five days in jail because the police wanted to bring in a condition. They initially told this to my lawyer on the first day around the Dahlia Kurtz saying that I wouldn't be able to mention her name publicly, in effect, meaning I couldn't actually talk about the case against me and I was not willing to agree to that condition for my release. And so I basically spent five days in jail to get before a judge to deal with the matter of whether this condition was a legitimate condition to impose, and I should say that the judge didn't even hear our defense.
Speaker 2:Basically, as the Crown laid their case out for why this condition should be imposed on me, it became clear and I think this is where you know the room being full with people supporting me and supporting the you know free speech and the Palestinian cause the judge understood this had pretty vast free speech implications and had quite significant you know Palestine implications and basically forced the crown to concede on this condition and I basically agreed which I was willing to agree to before going to the police station that I would not interact with Dahlia Kurtz in any way, ie I would not respond to her racist messages on X anymore, and so I just blocked her, which she never did to me. So if she said I was harassing her, she could have just blocked me months and months ago. But she clearly was attempting to do a sort of kind of judicial policing kind of game.
Speaker 1:From harassing her, which is ridiculous, to harassing the police, which is truly humorous, and yet it's not funny. You know, when all is said and done, our laughing at it and I include myself in that is probably not very constructive, because it diminishes what is really very, very serious. I don't know about Canada very much, I apologize for that, but certainly in the United States what's happening is it's not a laughing matter, it's really serious business. I wonder, having had you know, experiencing it is a little different than how to respond, how to conduct ourselves in such a way as to not resign, not be despondent, not to even just fight back, but win. So what do you think? What are you taking away from your experience here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, I think there was a. It was a small win for free speech and for Palestine campaigning getting the condition.
Speaker 2:It's a really, really small win in the big picture but a very small win and that came because, you know, the support at the court was really clear. The judge clearly saw that the room was packed. It was an overflow room at the second room really clear, the judge clearly saw that the room was packed, it was an overflow room, had a second room and stuff like that. So that you know, having that solidarity inside the court and outside impacted very concretely on that. Now the broader question, I think is a really important one how do we the tension between denouncing the repression and you know, a week before being arrested I participated in a panel with the BC Civil Liberties Association lawyer on the new McCarthyism in Canada, all about the attacks against anti-genocide protests over the past 16 months and there's just an endless number of examples and we go in. And obviously what we're seeing in the States, with this recent detention of this Columbia student, mahmoud Khalil, by Trump and Trump boasting that he's going to start going after many others, we're seeing a serious escalation of this type of repression. So on one hand, it's obviously essential to denounce the repression, but then if we go too far and let that the sort of denunciation or let the sort of paranoia of the state or the power of the state that leads to inaction and that is and how do you denounce it? But then don't lead to, you know, sort of not doing what's most important here, which is ending Canadian-US complicity in the utter slaughter and destruction of Gaza. I don't think there's any simple answer to it. I think that part of it is to have some perspective on what's actually before us in terms of repression. I mean, I didn't enjoy spending five days in jail, but it was mostly just boring. It wasn't, you know, traumatizing or anything like that. So to have it wasn't, you know, traumatizing or anything like that. So to have some sort of sense, you know it's absolutely inconsequential compared to what, you know, palestinian prisoners are facing by Israel, let alone, you know, slaughter in Gaza. So in a big picture, internationalist, human perspective, it's very minimal. So I think it's important to keep that in mind. And then you know it's very minimal. So I think it's important to keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:And then you know it's also about broadening the tent in terms of. I think that there's people who may not be in agreement on the position against Canadian complicity in Zionism or Israel's destruction of Palestinians, but they do have some greater agreement on the free speech question. So can you use the repression from Zionist forces as a way to sort of broadening the tent in terms of a pushback? I think there's some evidence that you know can happen and has happened. I mean, you're seeing, you know some democratic lawmakers in the US putting their name to you know freeing Mahmoud Khalil from ICE detention, and I think that you see that. You know, in my case to some extent as well, where there was. You know people, you know when Canada put out a statement and you know they don't agree one way or another on the Israel question, but that I have the right to, you know, criticize a Zionist influencer on X. So broadening like that.
Speaker 2:But the main issue is just to not stop right. The way you win is if you just keep going, and I know it's really difficult to keep going when there's a sense that there's. You know, if you look at Justin Trudeau, on Thursday he declared himself I am a Zionist, amidst the recent new blockade of food into Gaza and 16 months of horrors. And now you've got the prime minister declaring I am a Zionist. So on one hand, we failed in terms of changing that political ethos in Canada over the past 16 months. But at the same time we've clearly had a huge success in shifting the terrain. And you look at the NDP, the Social Democratic Opposition Party. They've gone way, way, way better on the question of Palestine over the past 16 months.
Speaker 2:The number of people who are, you know, critical of Zionism or critical of Canada's support for Israel, that's increased substantially. So how do you, you know you navigate, being a sense of being kind of overwhelmed by? You know there's no quick fix right. This is, you know, canada's support for Zionism didn't begin 16 months ago, it's more than a century long, you know process. And then it, you know it fits in within a broader imperial foreign policy, which is something even broader, which then fits into broader structures of who owns the economy and the racism, white supremacy, all kinds of other broader political, and so none of those things are going to change overnight, but they can change, or they can lessen or they can weaken by multi-year or multi-decade activism, campaigning, organizing, you know it's funny, not funny again here in the US, and Canada is probably just a few steps behind on this trajectory.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know, but that's plausible, except of course for the recent US-Canada tension, which may work on behalf of slower change in Canada in this right-wing direction. But one of the things that is not commented often about, say, the Trump experience is what they did. So in a very short space of time, relatively speaking, they completely took over the Republican Party and they're currently restructuring the government, not in a reformist manner. They are literally striking at the roots of institutions. They're doing what we say we want to do, except they're doing it, of course, with a very different end in mind. Sometimes it's hard to perceive the end, but it basically looks like, of course, with a very different end in mind. Sometimes it's hard to perceive the end, but it basically looks like, you know, at a minimum, helping themselves, helping the rich, helping the powerful, and maybe more than that. But the extent to which they accomplished that, and then, in parallel, the extent to which Sanders of course it has a long history to which Sanders rose very quickly and was, to a degree, challenging structures does suggest that maybe things can happen a little more quickly than we sometimes fear, or at least I think so.
Speaker 1:But I have a different kind of question for you, which is how do you understand? Well, take Columbia. I can't give an example in Canada, but you can. I'm sure you know the president of the university. It's not just that he's not taking a humane stance, they're collaborating, they're literally becoming collaborators, and it's happening all over the place. And it is not evident to me how that is easy to explain. I mean, maybe you can. You know these people. Of course they're not our allies. You know the president of Columbia University, et cetera. Et cetera are not tribunes of the people. They're not seeking socialism, and so on and so forth. They're not seeking socialism and so on and so forth, but you wouldn't have expected them to roll over so quickly, as a great many of them are.
Speaker 2:It's like a profile in cowardice or something, or what. In other words, how do you understand that part of what's happening? Well, I was actually expelled from Concordia University. I was in the student union back in 2002. So 23 years ago I was expelled and that was done by a very liberal leader of the university. You know he would definitely probably voted for a liberal party and certainly called himself a liberal and he was willing to go the authoritarian route pretty quickly when protests hit the fan.
Speaker 2:I have to say I mean I think concretely with the universities, I mean I kind of agree with Finkelstein's thing that it really is sort of the billionaire Jewish donor, pro-zionist donor impact on the universities. I think that the you know we've seen this at McGill and Saini, the head of McGill, you know he's just been totally repressive and Sylvan Adams, the biggest donor to McGill, the biggest single donation, basically said it openly in a Canadian Jewish News podcast about sort of the News podcast, about sort of the there's a network of pro-Israel, well-off Jewish donors that have been able to have a great impact, you know. So I think that when you look at, you know Canada's support for Israel more broadly, I think it fits into a geopolitical empire. There's a Christian Zionist element. There's obviously a Jewish pro-Israel lobbying element. There's racism elements.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to concretely at the universities, I think there's a pretty good case to be made that the impact of specifically Jewish donors to pro-Israel donors is real. There's an age divide. I just wrote something about Concordia. Age divide. I just wrote something about concordia. Uh, concordia.
Speaker 2:Recently, other university in montreal they voted at a bds resolution 885 to 58 for due to resolution, right, um, but then immediately the head of the university, like later that day or early the next morning, condemned the vote as this like uh, you know, undermining democracy and a danger and all this kind of stuff and and so you know, like the opinion among students is just it's closing in on.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean not unanimous, probably half students don't really care, but people who actually pay attention, it's overwhelming. And yet the sort of donor class is still in this very pro-Zionist. So I think that at the universities that is sort of front and center. But I think that the broader element is that you know, liberals in positions of power, they obviously, I think pretty easily go in the direction of repression and their belief in free speech and dissent and challenge it crumbles pretty quickly when, when they're, they are actually sort of challenged, which is what the challenges are at Columbia and McGill and Concordia. It's not. It's asking very concrete things of of the university, you know, endowments or the university's relationship to Israel, exchanges and stuff like that, and they don't want to concede to the popular opinion among, certainly among students and probably even among most faculty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. I don't know whether you're aware. I mean it's a parallel track, I suppose. But Trump, musk, cutting the NSF and the NIH and the United States, basically funding for science and funding for health, that's not what the Germans did. Fascism in Germany did not say, okay, we don't want any science. They said we want science beholden to us and creating things that benefit you know. But they didn't cut it all. And it's striking. There are, there are things going on that are hard to explain even from the point of view of the perpetrators of what's going on, unless it's just really shock and awe. It's just really batter them, batter them, batter them until they give in and then we'll do whatever we really want. You know what I mean? I I have. I find myself having a very difficult time explaining, answering the question why did they do this, why did they do that? Which people ask me and I say, fuck if I know well in canada with trump and the whole terror stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean that's like incredible.
Speaker 2:I mean all the official commentators go on and on about trying to figure it out. I mean Trudeau's explanation seems to be the more sensible one, which is that he's actually trying to strangle Canada economically to push the annexation. I mean that To push annexation, I mean, as insane as that sounds, at one level that like that at least has a certain coherence. But like the one day you announce, you announce uh, uh tariffs, which is effectively hurting. Uh, you know general motors and chrysler, you, you know mega us corporations, you announce tariffs and a whole series of other mega us corporations that do some operations in canada, some across the border and the like. And then the next day you withdraw it.
Speaker 2:And then you go back and the fentanyl like fentanyl, I mean, there's more fentanyl that comes from the US into Canada. Like, if you actually think these questions seriously, canada has way bigger complaints. All the guns coming in, all the fentanyl coming in, it just goes on right. And so people are left with the, with the question I mean, is it all just that the guy likes attention? I mean he does like attention. We know that.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's so, so crazy, right you can. You can come up with explanations like that. I want to be in the spotlight. I'll use the hammer to keep everybody else in line and I'll be in the spot. I mean, you know you can come up with all these crazy things. It really is hard to fathom. In Canada, in the population. Is the population aroused and angry? Bystanding, I mean, what is your sense really of the Canadian citizens' reaction to the fact that the United States is behaving as it is?
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean not aroused in the sense of organized, but aroused in the sense of angry. Yes, there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 2:All the polls show just like remarkable shifts and I mean it's obviously reflected and the media amplifies it, and the poll this is now more than two weeks ago is basically 30% of Canadians consider the US an enemy state, so it's equal number of allies as enemy. The word enemy, which is, you know you wouldn't have got that from what has it been, at least since World War II, of of Canada being maybe the UK I mean Canada, uk being. It enables every US invasion around the world and it's completely structured to be an add-on, an appendage of US global domination and so it's a pretty remarkable show. I've never seen anything this rapid in terms of political. I think you know, from somebody who's been working on Canadian foreign policy for, you know, a couple decades now I've been obviously very ambivalent to Canadian nationalism because I disagree with this sort of mythology of Canada being benevolent kind of force. But obviously an important part of Canadian foreign policy is assisting the US Empire and this is an incredible opportunity to discuss all these different ways in which our military or political structure enables that and, to you know, to hopefully break that.
Speaker 2:I mean, just today I asked the leader of the Bloc Québécois about Canada purchasing 88 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin and I was like, well, we're paying $19 million to a US leading US military industrial complex company, while there's this, you know trade dispute, while they're trying, you know, trump is trying to sabotage the Canadian economy. Should we reconsider that? Obviously, canada buying the F-35s is all about, not about defense. It's about being able to assist the US, principally in NATO, you know, secondarily in, you know, bombing Libya.
Speaker 1:Whatever?
Speaker 2:Whatever right and so these things. And he actually answered like, yeah, we are willing to reconsider that, and so these things have just been. There's some space that's been opened up and I think from a, you know, from a progressive standpoint, this is the. I mean I don't want to look at it kind of like in a cynical way, but these are opportunities that we should. We have ideas floating around. Let's get these ideas out there when they might have a bit more traction than than they would in in, in in other contexts.
Speaker 2:And that, you know, on the Palestine question too, the Trump being so over the top on the Gaza, you know he's going to turn it into Riviera and take it over and this kind of stuff, you know. And simultaneously there's anti-Trump sentiment in Canada. Well, it's trying to make the Palestine cause be viewed as a little bit more of a Canadian nationalist cause, even though historically, canadian nationalism is very pro-Zionist, of course, and that goes back to the British Empire. But you know, use that to sort of push that that you know Trump's. We don't want to be with Trump on the Gaza file, and you know. So use some of these opportunities to. You don't want to go too far with nationalism and you know right, obviously First Nations and Indigenous people who've been, you know right, obviously First Nations and indigenous people have been wiped out by by Canadian, the Canadian state and Canadian nationalism. But yeah, use these sort of things to advance. You know policies or ideas that that you know are important ideas or policies policies.
Speaker 1:You almost have to wonder if you know. To open the gates to those kinds of discussions is not typically the way ruling elites operate. They try to not provoke that kind of thing. So what's the flip side of it for him? All right, so you're saying that Trudeau says the flip side of it is, since they have to do what we want them to do anyway, and since they have to support us around the world anyway, let's have them be the 51st state. Okay, so that's one possible explanation.
Speaker 1:I guess here's another strange one. Look at the extent to which you're describing Trump's behavior unifying the Canadian population around something, in this case around nationalism, and being upset by the United States. Suppose Trump is thinking that if he can provoke Canada and provoke Panama and provoke whoever the fuck into being bellicose toward the United States, into being bellicose toward the United States, he can increase his own support inside the United States nationalistically, in other words, have the same effect inside the United States that he's having in Europe and in Canada, except to his advantage here. Maybe that's his thinking, I don't know. You know, yeah, I mean, that's another sort of weird but plausible way of reading it yeah, there was all.
Speaker 2:There was all kinds of people angry when canadian fans were booing the us team at the recent uh four nations, uh hockey, uh tournament yeah, that's it's.
Speaker 1:You can just see the, the kind of effects. I wonder something else about canada. In the united states it's felt to me like people on the left. So now we're talking about people, not the whole population, but people who are seriously leftist, totally aware academically, intellectually, of what's been going on. Clear that more than a fraction have sort of felt it at the level that it should be felt.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to describe this. In other words, it's an academic phenomenon. Oh, isn't this interesting Fascism as compared to holy shit. This really is on a trajectory that is absolutely horrific and so I have to do something. And the I have to do something part from a position of not being really in touch very much has seemed to me to be almost stronger outside the left than inside the left, in some extent the best of the liberals. So Sanders and AOC and a couple others, three or four others, are really pushing. I mean they don't have the views that I would most like say, but they're fighting and they're exerting themselves.
Speaker 1:I mean Sanders, I don't know where he gets the energy from, I don't know whether it's reported in Canada. He's going from place to place to place talking to 3,000 or 4,000 people at a time in conservative areas in Trump land. I haven't seen that from the organized left. The spontaneous left is sort of happening. I don't know how to describe this phenomenon, I really don't. And if we bring it down to Canada and those campuses, why aren't they taking buildings? Why isn't Columbia? Total turmoil right now. I'm not sure what the answer to that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not really sure either. I mean the encampments in Canada through the summer, you know, april, may, june and all through the summer. Actually they were pretty impressive. I mean, at one level they were impressive. I actually happened to travel a bunch and so I went to Vancouver, victoria, nanaimo, kelowna, yeah, so like four or five of them I saw, you know, but I think that they and McGill here was the big one in the first one and it was, I think, so tenuous being able to, you know. So they were so under attack, being labeled as Hamas supporters or being labeled as anti-Semitic or just kind of under general attack, that just keeping that space was a victory.
Speaker 2:I mean, at Columbia they did try, right, they did occupy we named the one building the Hind Hall, I think, or something like that, for 24 hours, but the police came in pretty quickly. I don't know, I don't know enough about what happened in. I guess it was 69. But that I think that lasted a few weeks. They were able to occupy the offices for like a couple of weeks. In terms of its speed and maybe agility even was better, the NYPD was better this time, or quicker or more effective. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I agree with you.
Speaker 2:You know, in Canada the Palestine thing has been fascinating. There's never been a foreign policy issue where Canada contributed to imperialism, where there's been a bigger uprising than over the past 16 months. I mean there's just Montreal. Here there's been demonstration every weekend. Now it's down to 150, 200 people, but for 16 months at the high point there's 50,000. And then the main groups divided and so there was a Saturday demo and a Sunday demo for much of the last 16 months and so it's continued. I mean there's been tons of actions, just an endless stream of actions. You know student votes, just you know encampments, hunger strikes, all kinds of different stuff. That's never happened. So maybe in the US you obviously know better, you know Vietnam, maybe that was, you know, went over for a longer period and bigger demos. I don't know for sure. But this is sort of unique in Canadian foreign policy history but it didn't really come from the left. It's actually fascinating Like here this group, the Council of Canadians.
Speaker 2:It's been a left nationalist group for the past 35 years. At one point it had like 50 chapters across the country. I used to do lots of events, book events that deliver different local chapters and smaller communities with council. From what I can tell the council had like nothing, basically nothing. They put out like two tweets in support of like Palestine over the past like 16 months, so basically nothing to do with, you know, helping mobilize. Maybe some local chapters were involved, but it but it but it's really come from kind of a, you know, a sort of somewhat somewhat spontaneous and somewhat, you know, just like Palestine, focused Like it's not even clear to me that that that there's that much sort of spillover in terms of being critical of Canadian foreign policy.
Speaker 2:Even all these people who've, who've like, been exposed to, you know, canada assisting these horrors in Gaza, they don't even necessarily have broadened it to being, you know, anti-imperialist or anti-Canadian foreign policy or Canadian foreign policy not benevolent. I think some, you know some of that's happened. But but so, so you know, there isn't much of a of an organized radical left at all. You know that that could in a sense be, as you would say in french, like recuperation. They could, you know, recuperate, they could benefit from these mobilizations. You don't even really see many groups like they're like selling papers or you know like, like leftist groups selling papers at these demos and stuff and a very kind of like little, uh little presence, um, uh.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I don't, you know know, fully explain that. Is that to do with, uh, social media? Is that to do with attention spans being really limited because of social media? Is it because the level of consumerism has reached a point where, you know, that's just so much on people's mind? Is it because people are looking at the really big picture and they're saying, hey, the climate crisis is just wow, this is coming down, it's getting worse every day and it's such a macro issue to deal with? How can we possibly deal with this? I don't know how exactly that plays out in people's consciousness, but I do agree that there's a kind of remarkably little left sort of anti-cap list or socialist organizing taking place that's fitting into all this reaction.
Speaker 1:Have you heard about what's been going on in Serbia at all?
Speaker 2:I saw that there's protests partly sponsored or spurred by a train disaster or something like that, but not.
Speaker 1:Bridge collapse, yeah, but it's huge, right? It's like remember Greece when Greece was exploding, not that long ago? It's like that, but it seems like it's even bigger. And it has a remarkable aspect, which is when I was asking somebody who was in the know about it and this came up, this issue of well, what's the role of people who have a sustained and a history of well, what's the role of people who have a sustained and a history of left activism and left thinking and left views in it? And the answer was nothing, there's no role. This is an entirely different phenomenon and they described it as partly nationalistic defending Serbia against the government partly just an expression of a desire for freedom.
Speaker 1:Some of the stuff that's happening sounds incredible. The students are marching into rural areas. Of course, it's a small you know the distance, isn't that but they're marching into rural areas, going through them, to get people to understand that you can stand up and fight, and they're literally doing and they're being housed in the rural areas. So the situation is pretty volatile, but it's quite remarkable that it's. The left is sort of irrelevant, at least as far as what I've heard, partly because it's been wiped out and partly because it just doesn't speak the same language and I don't know whether that's happening or not. You know, currently in the US there's a little bit of both. There are certainly seasoned activists, committed, putting forth views, participating, organizing, etc. But there's also lots and lots of new people, and the new people don't always operate the same way or with the same thoughts in mind as old-timers. I don't know. Something like it may be going on in Canada too.
Speaker 1:A difference that's interesting in what you're describing is what you're describing is a phenomenon that is rooted in Palestine or in pro-Palestinian activism and concern In the United States. Now, that still exists, but that's not the dominant factor. The dominant factor is Nazis in the White House. I mean the dominant factor is that becomes a subset of what else is going on. I'm not sure. I do know. I mean you're moved to fight, you're moved to act, you're moved to speak, write, whatever. Not everybody is, and I mean among people who understand. You know, it's not that they've been tricked, it's not that they have been lied to so much that they believe lies. They believe the same thing as you and I believe, and they go back to work or to school and just do their thing. That's the thing that has to be somehow overcome, and I don't know how to.
Speaker 2:I agree, that's the thing that has to be somehow overcome and I don't know how to. I, I agree, I mean I can. Even you know a lot of people that I've been uh active with on palestine related stuff and other issues, but active with over the past 20 years. I've been like taking aback all these people who I know, uh, who just haven't come out to the demos, right, there's been demos at the weekend and uh, and I know that they, you know, are appalled by what Canada is supporting in Gaza. Uh, uh, you know, I also know that people have, you know they have families.
Speaker 2:I, I do too. I have two young kids as well. I try to bring them, I try to bring them to the, to the demos, but I, I do, I do, um, you know, is it? Is it? Uh, is it? Is it? Is it is it, is it despondent, is it? Is it that you know there was a the International Women's Day demo on Saturday and there was a couple thousand people and very heavy kind of anti-imperialist. Obviously, palestine was, you know, very present at it and you know, for that day, you see people that I wouldn't see at the, at the other demos. Is it just a matter of it's just too overwhelming to come out every weekend, or is?
Speaker 2:it a matter of you know. So we do the one, you know, one time a year there's two big ones. Maybe come out to the mayday, you come out to the um international women's day. Uh, yeah, I don't know how that, how that uh plays out. I, I know how to.
Speaker 2:On a personal level, like I, I mean, maybe it's a commentary on my, you know, indifference to, to like social life or social stuff, but, like you know, I'm feeling a sense of going out is, is it's just it, just it. It's it's invigorating, it's it's. You know, if you, you just watch Al Jazeera reports about the killing in gaza and then you just sort of, you know, go on with your day, I, I, that doesn't, that doesn't, that doesn't register for me in terms of um. So, yes, it's, on one hand, you know, some days it's cold out and marching through the winter in montreal is not in some ways pleasant, but but it actually is um, you know I, I, you know so there's a element of like self-realization by participating in this kind of stuff. Um, yeah, I do wonder how some of the, some of those questions about how um, is it a sense that we're not succeeding? Do people just come out because they, they sense that we, you know we might win, and so that's why, if you look at the first six weeks of the demos, they kept getting bigger and it was like 50 000 week, five or six. And then I think maybe a lot of people just conclude that well, we tried, didn't win, couldn't stop the government supporting this, didn't stop israel. And you know, I'm still appalled by what's going on, but but I don't come out, Is it that you know?
Speaker 2:That then gets into the questions of like, what is a win? And how do people conceptualize? Obviously, you want to stop seeing babies killed in Gaza tomorrow, everyone, but that's not all. We want to stop right, we want to stop something much broader in terms of justice for Palestinians. And then, quite frankly then, in terms of, you know Canada and what Canada represents globally, and you know. So how do you, how do you process a win versus you know the short term objective versus the bigger win? I don't know how to you know fully, you know what, what goes into that in terms of people's calculations? Know what? What goes into that in terms of people's calculations? But I do think, I think you know the, the pressures in, in, in this society, uh, towards consumption, towards realizing oneself through um, I don't know, I would say mostly, you know, watching the montreal canadians and whether the montreal canadians win or don't win, that that's like an important thing.
Speaker 2:And the thing that really struck me on that to see the capacities, was the student strike in Quebec in 2012. It was just a remarkable all this like latent creativity and talent that came out in a political way and to see all of that, there's so many different ideas for what types of demos, what types of actions, what types of art, what types of posters, whatever, right, and so like. We have all this. Obviously, this ingenuity, this creativity, most of it gets kind of put towards you know, what is profitable, what leads to, you know, buying more things and even at the level of.
Speaker 2:I saw recently a former activist friend who I haven't seen involved in any protests in many years but was quite active recently and what she's doing is like self-actualization in writing and this sort of very, I don't know, kind of progressive, if you want to call it. You know, getting attuned with oneself and all these things that I don't, you know, I think is, you know, useful and kind of like meditation, kind of whatever. All that I think is useful in one sense, but it has to be combined with like activity and action and political action. And you know, it's like all the forces of our society push us towards. Even if it's not towards, you know, full-on hyper-consumerism, it's towards I don't know sort of like self-actualization by being more attuned with how I feel when I'm writing and yeah, it's depoliticized.
Speaker 2:I mean to put it simply and it's you know. How do you overcome that? I don't know, besides trying to do what you can do to build a, you know, left consciousness organization, etc.
Speaker 1:You mentioned, you have two young children and maybe that's a factor in some people's lives. You know who Dave Dallinger is? I don't. He's the US Gandhi, right? He was a nonviolent activist starting in, I guess, world War II. He was active through all the 60s. He active through all the 60s. He incredibly impressive person and politically very, very astute. And I'm driving with him one day and he was older and he had kids and I asked him the question. I said you know, how do you reconcile going to jail which he did repeatedly, repeatedly with your family? And he said I almost can't talk about this without crying. He said well, I feel it's my responsibility as a father to show them what a life well lived is, but after that it's up to them. I don't know whether that's right or wrong, but it was how he dealt with it. I just thought I would relay it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I definitely feel that it's about instilling in your children a sense that there's injustice in the world, and I mean, everyone has different capacities to respond to that, but you have an obligation, really, I would say, to respond to that and you know whether it's all the way in terms of going to being sent in jail repeatedly.
Speaker 2:I was lucky to have my partners out of the country when I went to got detained, so my, but my parents are here, so and they're, they're retired, so that's not that difficult. And my, when my dad told my son what, that I'd been sent to jail he asked my dad is.
Speaker 2:Is my dad a bad guy? Is he still obviously the good and bad is? You know the police, we've had a number of discussions since then and you know seeing that process of Joshua kind of like thinking about these things and looking at it, you know it's interesting taken.
Speaker 2:I took him to have taken into dozens and dozens of demos and over the past six, eight months he's gotten sort of hostile to going to uh, to protests. He's very, he's very pro-Palestinian. He would, he, would he, you know he's would talk to his friend uh, endlessly about the bad things happening in Gaza, but but he's uh, he's uh, doesn't want to go to demonstrations and yeah, these sort of demonstrations are associated with, like, being dragged somewhere that he doesn't want to go, which is a tad unfortunate and probably will be the ethos for the next handful of years. But my younger daughter, who's not quite three, she's uh, she's obviously happy to go to demonstrations and you know it's kind of exciting and whatnot, but uh, but yeah, that process of you know figuring those things out, and I think it's difficult, for you know, every different person has different obligations when it comes to these.
Speaker 2:You know, if you don't have grandparents around and you get brought to jail, I mean, I, I made that argument to the police officer when they were. They were actually asking me to come in later that day, on the on the second day, and I was like, well, I have a seven year old who has to be picked up at at 310 at school and and you know where am I going to, where is he going to be tonight, and if you're going to, you know like that kind of stuff, and they actually sort of were willing to push the coming into the next morning at 9, 30 am, so all those things become part of it.
Speaker 1:And then you know how does it deal with your partner and all others dynamics that are that are broader, but um yeah I don't know whether you've seen any of the videos of sanders talks that he's giving out in you know those rural areas but with huge crowds. But one of the key things he says and he's very unequivocal about it, almost aggressive about it, more or less. I understand feeling frustrated, I understand being afraid. I understand being depressed. Get over it. There's no time for any of that and he's very he's. It's striking because you on the left, what you hear is what you were talking about earlier, a version of what you were talking about earlier. Take care of yourself Yourself, take care, you know it's. It's quite different. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah well I mean I, I obviously.
Speaker 2:I mean, of course you have to take care of yourself, yeah, but I completely agree with, uh, with sanders, that what, what's the point of being? I mean, yeah, it's the climate crisis.
Speaker 1:Everybody's going to get it soon. I mean the Columbia leadership, you know bad leadership was supine. They were on their knees, they were begging him and they're still getting blasted. So people are going to not be able to say, well, my tactic is, don't be overly provocative, to protect what we have that's going to go by the wayside pretty soon, you know, as a rationale, I think yeah, I would, I would, I would assume so.
Speaker 2:But also I mean, yeah, people need to, you know, take care of us.
Speaker 2:I've understood that. I saw you know activists when, in student days, where, where you know they, they did too much, obviously, support them doing you know tons of stuff, but it was literally not taking care of yourself in the minimal sense of that. I, I, the, obviously, that's you know, central, central to being able to engage. You know, eat healthy, get exercise, simply, but that's a, that's a really small element of uh, you know, whatever, right, and and and so, uh, yeah, you got to do that, but but the, the political, has to be front and center and and the and the, you know, getting down, uh, but that I guess that's some. You know, I, I get the idea of why engage in something that you don't think will be successful, that you know, that idea has makes some, has some logic to it, but, but I also think that there's a counter logic to it, or associated logic to that which is. Is that that that engagement is? Is you know, you, you, you, it's not going to convince people.
Speaker 1:In other words, it it. If you say to somebody who believes you're going to lose, who believes there is no such thing as winning, who believes there's nothing better, yeah, but become involved because it's enriching, it's fulfilling, it's not going to work. I don't believe it's going to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree that. Just, you know, isolated like that, certainly. But the idea that there's not better, I mean the idea there's not better, there's better in the here and now, you know, from the urban planning of Amsterdam compared to Montreal, to the unemployment insurance in France compared to the US, I mean this endless stream of you know showing that there are better in the here and now, you know, macro level. I agree with you that presenting an alternative to capitalism, for instance, is helpful in terms of engendering action and engendering, you know, mobilization and adherence to the left and the like. Um, but uh, I think that that that there is some less bad, at least, uh, alternative. I think that, um, you know, basically everyone agrees that that's the case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you can feel I mean, I don't know any of the answers here at all, but you can imagine a person feeling look, I can help my family, I can help my close friends by devoting myself to them. If I devote myself to movement activism, even to thinking about it, much less doing things about it, it's like rolling a rock up a hill. I'm going to get crushed when it comes back down. So I'm going to do the former. I might even cry over it, but I'm going to do the former because I can do that, because I can do that.
Speaker 1:And the left's response is somehow doesn't realize that this is, as you said earlier, not stupid. It is wait a second, wait a second. You can devote a certain amount of that time and energy over here and have an impact. And here's how and here's why it can work. And here's we don't put much effort into that. We just say, in a famous old version from the weatherman country sucks, kick ass. That was one of their slogans. This is not going to convince a sober, sensible, thinking person and regrettably we haven't done a very good job of of clarifying how it is that people's time, energy, thought, how it is that people's time, energy, thought spirit can make a difference and can win in the short run and then not get rolled back.
Speaker 1:The population is pretty sophisticated, like on a campus. You say, well, we're going to get rid of such and such a campus's support for arms shipments to Gaza. Well, the sophisticated student is thinking to themselves so what difference is that going to make? Somebody else is going to ship the arms over right. If it doesn't come from, if we don't do the research on our campus, well, they're going to do it over there. And that's not crazy. You know there's some validity to that and the left doesn't address it well enough. Or to even put it on a whole different plane, the right winger says you guys complain about repression. Look at how they've gone after Trump. And we laugh. Instead of explaining. You know, instead of clarifying, instead of meeting them where they're at, and you know dealing with what they're saying. Some of that's happening now, I think. I think things are changing. The only question is is it going to be fast enough, given where things are headed? It can be, I don't have any doubt about that, but will it be?
Speaker 2:So what do you see as the emerging resistance to Trump? You think it's the Sanders kind of building.
Speaker 1:No, that's the mainstream, visible part of it, and even there it's not that visible in the mainstream. No, I think there are people all over the place now who are scared, shitless and who are angry and who a subset of them will mobilize. I think it's happening. If I had to guess, I would say that on a good many campuses right now, students are meeting and are preparing for something like what we saw in the encampments or occupations or what have you in the spring. So I think we'll see another. I hope we'll see another round, even larger, probably even more militant and angry. I can't imagine on a campus if your president and the higher-ups and a subset of the faculty are literally collaborationists with what you believe to be because they are fascists. That has to provoke a great deal of energy and anger. So I'm expecting to see that. Then the question is what happens in labor? What happens in other constituencies? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, I saw a thing about the autoworkers.
Speaker 1:I've been surprised.
Speaker 2:The Canadian autoworkers were complaining that the UAW was supporting the tariffs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I was shocked by that. Sean Fain appears I don't know him right. He appears to be, or he appeared to be, and hopefully he still is a sincere, militant and knowledgeable person committed to fighting. And this was before Trump won, right? This was back.
Speaker 1:Me and another guy were trying to get it to be the case that he would be in the running for vice presidential candidate in the Democrats, which I think would have been quite amazing if it had happened, but it didn't. But in any event, I was shocked by that. I almost didn't believe it that they had come out for the tariffs. I don't know what's happening. I don't know why he's not highly visible. You know giving speeches and you know Musk is firing tens of thousands of workers. Why isn't Sean Fain saying cut it out, no more of that. Here we come and bringing the UAW to defend them? Imagine that happened. That would put a whole different complexion on what's going on now. But it didn't happen. I don't know why, and I'm sure plenty of them would relate. Plenty of workers would relate and right now I think that there are a considerable number of Trump voters who would relate. They're beginning to see. Uh-oh, you know, this is for real.
Speaker 2:I mean the, the, from the standpoint of U S capitalism. Yeah, the stuff with Canada and Mexico doesn't make sense. I mean there's elements that makes, I think, you know, some nationalist kind of tariff policy I, you know, I think is coherent, but the way this has all been playing out and the scope of the tariffs and the, you know that doesn't make sense from a standpoint.
Speaker 1:No, it's hard to understand. I actually find the Mideast policy hard to understand at some level. You know, it's all of it. Maybe we just don't understand, Maybe it is irrational. Don't understand, Maybe it is irrational. I haven't felt this way in, you know, my 70 gazillion years and you know I wish Noam was around to ask, but he's not and I don't know that he would know either. You know, I think he would just sort of say I knew he was bad, I knew this was serious. Just sort of say I knew he was bad, I knew this was serious.
Speaker 2:But if you're asking me to explain each of these steps, I can't. So what's the unlikely? But what's the counter? Is there a five-year flip in the other direction, towards a radical left? Is that-?
Speaker 1:I don't know, it depends.
Speaker 2:It would be more possible today than it would have been, you know, three months ago. Four months ago, I would suggest.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know, one scenario is okay the Democrats win in, whatever. It is two years, and then they went in four years and then we're back where we started. So that's one scenario, where we started. So that's one scenario. Another scenario is that Trump and MAGA succeed and we face a long, dark winter of authoritarian, perhaps flat-out fascist government. And they're not hiding it. That's another thing. That's new right. They don't hide it. They say what they're going to do and they do it and they celebrate it, and we don't believe it. I mean, it's so far out that it's not quite registering that yeah, they're really doing all this.
Speaker 1:When you know the first Trump experience, he realized he couldn't do it alone. And you know the so-called deep state meaning the entire bureaucracy was too much to overcome from his little desk in the Oval Office. So they had to do something. So they did. They put together Project 2025. They figured out what they wanted to do and they are currently deconstructing the entire US government and replacing it. Now, some of the stuff that they're replacing it with is you know, is RFK Jr a sensible choice for healthcare, even if you're a fascist? No, it's just lunacy. I don't know. He either is crazy and stupid and the luckiest person on the planet in terms of getting his way, or he knows what he's doing and I suspect, unlike most of my friends, that he knows what he's doing and we just don't get it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I thought from the beginning that he was all right. Let's have a bunch of sort of Saul Alinsky on the right. Let's have a bunch of little victories. Each time we have a little victory, we'll get a little stronger and we'll go for another victory. And the other guys are so stupid that we can cow them into submission. You know, they're so passive, they're so civil, they're so whatever right, we can cow them into submission and that's the path they're on. They did it much faster than I thought they would. You know this shock and awe stuff. It's still working, but it's got serious cracks too and, you're right, it is provoking the left. So even in the mainstream the sort of Sanders-like social democratic opposition in podcasts, videocasts Some of these guys are getting very aggressive.
Speaker 1:They are knowledgeable and one of them now is trying to organize. He's taking a lesson from the right. He's saying look, we can't win, we can't change things unless we have media. So I'm going to organize media. This guy and you know, he I, I don't know the details he went to the, the Congress, and he brought like a hundred media people and a lot of them young and you know, trying to develop uh with a, with a plan for having really progressive media. It was surprising when I heard about it. It was a little like the right who decided all we have to do is move 10% of the electorate, let's aim for 10% of the electorate. This is four years ago, eight years ago, and they got like 13 or something and they won. And now they're, you know, rebuilding the government. It's not about policies anymore in the US. I mean, the policies are there. You have to respond to them. They're important, they're life-threatening, but it's really about the structure of the government. You know they're reconstructing basic institutions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think, interestingly there is a little bit of an insulation from that. Historically the pattern would follow, but the sort of the nationalist rejection of Trump has actually kind of very clearly isolated Pierre Polyev, who is a sort of quiet MAGA guy who's the leader of the Conservative Party.
Speaker 2:he's been, you know, he's been boxed in on a lot of his sort of right wing kind of echoing of Trump, so I don't know how that's going to play out in Canada. Us goes down a long authoritarian Trumpian kind of direction, that will, of course, have fairly substantial impacts in Canada.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, we've crossed the hour mark. Um, is there something I haven't brought up that you'd like to bring up at the end, something that you feel like maybe we should have talked about but didn't? Nope, nope, you're okay. All right, thank you very much for doing this. Maybe, if our two countries aren't at war, we can talk again in a few months. I mean, who knows In a few months? I mean, you know, who knows? No-transcript.