“Yves Engler is the most destructive person I’ve ever known on the left. Ok I’m saying that. The only time I’ve ever seen him in political practice is in disrupting a meeting or harassing a politician.” Judy Rebick
“I like Heather [McPherson]” Judy Rebick
As the climate crisis spirals out of control, few environmentalists will use the term “tar sands”, let alone demand they be shut down. At the same time Canada’s private sector unionization rate has reached its lowest point since World War II and few question wealth concentrating, ecocidal capitalism. Even if one takes a more immediate view of the left’s predicament, the NDP has seven seats in Parliament and we’ve barely challenged an unprecedented increase in military spending.
Yet, I am the problem, according to a supposed leftist thought leader. Twenty minutes into a Rabble.ca discussion about the NDP leadership race Judy Rebick suddenly attacked a campaign promoting an anti-capitalist and anti-colonial platform crafted by 45 activists and researchers. Rebick complained, “Yves Engler’s people are trying to take over the chat which is annoying me no end. So just like cool it guys. You just convince us that its good he’s not on the platform by trying to take over the chat.” The unelected three person NDP vetting committee was justified in excluding an insurgent leftist campaign because some supporters posted in a chat!
When asked about my exclusion from the race, 20 minutes later the high-profile Avi Lewis backer launched into a vitriolic rant. Rebick labeled me “the most destructive person I’ve ever known on the left.”
In the same breath, however, she slammed the NDP’s vetting process, which was only discussed because my “destructive” activist campaign spotlighted vetting through articles, a webinar and alternative vetting forum.
In another sign of her cognitive dissonance, Rebick bemoaned how people on the left are no longer able to disagree. But that’s essentially what she’s attacking me for doing, labelling my (factually based) criticism of leftists enabling oppression of Palestinians, Haitians, Libyan, etc. “destructive”.
In her rant the self-described “troublemaker” bizarrely claims, “The only time I’ve ever seen him in political practice is in disrupting a meeting or harassing a politician.” Challenging genocidal politicians is “harassment”?
Beyond her power worship, Rebick displays stark ignorance. Does she not know I’ve published 13 books and a thousand articles?
As Rebick should know, I co-founded the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI), which Rabble has done numerous events with, including a high-profile Green Party leadership debate Rebick was paid to moderate. Whether she knew it or not, Rebick read questions I largely crafted during the Green’s foreign policy debate in 2020.
Rebick also spoke at the “Defend Sarah Jama, stop the attack on Gaza” online rally we organized a few days after the Ontario NDP expelled Jama from caucus (Avi Lewis explicitly refused to participate in the webinar or sign our accompanying public letter defending Jama). In fact, Rebick has signed multiple CFPI public letters that I largely put together in the background.
In the past four months Rebick has smeared me repeatedly. As my campaign to lead the NDP gained traction in the summer, Rebick started labelling me an antisemite and after I was excluded from the race last month she posted, “all Yves has ever done is promote himself” and “the only thing I’ve ever seen Yves Engler do besides his writing is to harass politicians and disrupt meetings.”
About the same time she started smearing me online, Rebick berated the Palestinian solidarity movement for not “allying” with genocide promoting Globe and Mail columnist Marsha Lederman. In September Rebick noted: “Listening to Marsha Lederman on The Current. It’s worth listening to if you are willing to listen. I think that Liberal Zionists who still believe in the idea of a Jewish state but oppose the genocide in Gaza can be allies in stopping Canada from continuing to arm Israel. Just writing them off cause they don’t want to use the word genocide or because they still believe in an idea they grew up with makes no sense to me and I think it is hurting the pro-Palestinian movement. Lederman is thoughtful and struggling with her position and her views.”
Lederman is a Jewish supremacist who has repeatedly used her weekly Globe column to enable Israeli violence in Gaza and across the region. Last week Lederman described protests at Indigo over the holiday period as “antisemitic” and two months ago she described her recent tour of Israel. In recent months Lederman has also spoken at events sponsored by Canada’s Jewish federations, which oversee the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Telling Palestine solidarity activists to “ally” with Lederman is deeply racist.
A year ago, I bumped into Rebick in Montreal enroute to challenge – “harass” in her parlance – a politician. She didn’t display any hostility towards me though at that point I wasn’t running against her favoured pick to lead the NDP. Rebick told me she was in town for Alternatives’ 30th
anniversary.
Rebick’s ties to that largely Global Affairs funded Montreal NGO is when I first became critical of her. She was on the board of that organization in the aftermath of the 2004 coup in Haiti, which Alternatives strenuously supported. I and others in Haiti Action Montreal denounced Alternatives for backing the murderous coup government. To get a sense of their colonial attitude vis-a-vis Haiti, Alternatives co-published a 2008 report that read: “In a country like Haiti, in which democratic culture has never taken hold, the concept of the common good and the meaning of elections and representation are limited to the educated elites, and in particular to those who have received citizen education within the social movements.” According to Alternatives, Haitians were too stupid to know what’s good for them, unless, that is, they had been educated by a foreign NGO.
Alternatives’ overt racism and articles justifying killing opponents of the coup was of little interest to Rebick (we convinced Naomi Klein to disassociate herself from Alternatives over their position on Haiti).
A longtime CBC host and beneficiary of government NGO funding, Rebick is a card-carrying member of the ‘respectable’ left. These establishment sanctified ‘gatekeepers’ have expressed a remarkable level of hostility to our insurgent left campaign to lead the NDP.
It’s informative to contrast the vitriol Rebick directs my way with the respect she offers right wing NDP leadership candidate Heather McPherson. Rebick recently posted “I like Heather” even though McPherson has applauded a Nazi, supported buying a tar sands pipeline, engaged with a CIA talk shop, sits on a NATO parliamentary body and praises leading Zionist Irwin Cotler.
Contrary to her claims, it is Rebick’s brand of power-worshipping, ‘respectable’, thinking/activism that is “destructive” to the left. It’s okay to be a left NDPer. It’s “destructive” though when you portray yourself as a “troublemaker” seeking to radically upend the power structure. Rebick’s forthcoming book is actually titled “How to Be a Troublemaker: What I’ve Learned from Sixty Years of Activism“!
A “troublemaker” who considers challenging politicians or disrupting government press conferences “harassment”? A “troublemaker” who long hosted a CBC program? A “troublemaker” who worked for government funded NGOs? A “troublemaker” who enables the NDP brass’s bid to squash an anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist campaign?
That’s “destructive” to the left.
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