The struggle against Canadian imperialism has taken various forms. On occasion it has included blockades, Molotovs and arms while a lively current battle is about paying the NDP $130,000.
In Haiti, they’ve repeatedly burned tires in front of the Canadian embassy or chucked rocks and Molotov cocktails at it. In Ramallah, they’ve pelted the Canadian foreign minister’s convoy with eggs and shoes while in Afghanistan hundreds blocked a highway chanting “death to the Canadians”. Others there laid Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
Demonstrators have targeted Canadian banks in many countries. In Trinidad they even firebombed one.
At dozens of Canadian-owned mine sites around the world, community groups have organized blockades or sabotaged equipment. Critics of Canadian mining firms have also marched on many embassies even taking a sledgehammer to the diplomatic compound in Athens.
Many have put their bodies, even lives, on the line resisting Canadian imperialism. Fortunately, in a major current struggle against Canadian imperialism all people will lose is money.
As bizarre as it may sound, getting the NDP to accept $133,000 is a major struggle against Canadian imperialism. The party doesn’t want genuine internationalism and anti-militarism part of the leadership race. (The party requires candidates to pay $100,000 to participate in the leadership race but they also take a 25% commission on funds raised through the party’s portal so each candidate must effectively raise $133,000.)
Last month the NDP refused to accept my candidacy and the funds raised to participate in the race. Now, supporters have pledged over $100,000 to get Bianca Mugyenyi in the race.
Will the NDP take the money? Or once again deny members the right to decide if they support anti-imperialism.
It says a lot about the party that they would even consider suppressing internationalism and anti-militarism in the current context. Canada continues to offer various forms of support for an apartheid state killing Palestinians daily during a ‘ceasefire’ and Mark Carney just “welcomed” the US kidnapping Venezuela’s president. The US looks set to bomb Iran and Carney has instigated the largest increase in military spending in 75 years. He’s doing so as, notes a recent Economistarticle, “Canadian soldiers have been carrying out Donald Trump’s orders”.
Has there been a more important time for the NDP to seriously grapple with imperialism and militarism?
But the party brass wants to avoid the subject at all costs. They failed to discuss international or military affairs at the first official debate and as I detail in my 2018 book Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada, the party “backed NATO and the Korean War. More recently, the NDP endorsed bombing Serbia and Libya. Over the years they’ve also supported military spending, Western policy in the Ukraine and the dispossession of Palestinians.”
As such, getting the party to accept an anti-imperialist candidate in the leadership race would represent a significant breakthrough. It would legitimize the ideas in the platform such as withdrawing from NATO and the Haiti Core Group or training a Palestinian force to oversee Israel’s occupation.
Concretely, the NDP taking Mugyenyi supporters’s money would grant the campaign access to the large NDP membership list to promote withdrawing from NORAD or rescinding the anti-Palestinian terror list. Passing vetting after such a long struggle would also attract media attention to the platform.
In some places the struggle against Canadian imperialism involves throwing violence at an embassy. In other instances, it revolves around convincing a social democratic party to take people’s money.
Will the NDP accept $133,000+ and allow members to decide if they support internationalism?
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