Ian adams: The Canadian Spy Novelist Ordered To Reveal His Sources

Originally published by CrimeReads (March 2022)

Literature and espionage have long had a close relationship, from writers who were spies, such as John le Carré, to the CIA’s manipulation of literature during the Cold War. One of the most fascinating chapters in this relationship, however, is the story of Ian Adams, a man whose fiction was so true to life that he was sued for libel by a real-life spy and ordered to disclose his sources in a court of law.

Ian Adams was the author of books such as S: Portrait of a Spy and Agent of Influence, which was turned into a film starring Christopher Plummer. He was the first spy novelist to focus on Canadian espionage, and probably the most successful espionage writer in Canadian history (excepting John Buchan, who served as Canada’s Governor General from 1935-40). He was also particularly notable for his anti-establishment approach to the genre.

Before turning to fiction, Adams was a feared and respected investigative journalist. He made his bones covering state crimes—topics such as Canada’s residential schools and the dirty wars in Latin America. In 1967, he wrote a ground-breaking story for Maclean’s about an Indigenous boy who died running away from a residential school, becoming one of the first people to cover the government’s genocidal practice of forced assimilation. The deck read: “Chanie was 12, and Indigenous. He died as the white world’s rules had forced him to live—cut off from his people.”

At the height of the Cold War, mainstream media largely toed the official line. In fact, CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, was specifically ordered to participate in the Cold War on behalf of Canada. This meant circulating propaganda. Despite this, there was no shortage of government activity worthy of critique. For instance, Canada was the site of a number of shocking experiments carried out by the CIA under the guise of anti-communist necessity. These included chemical weapons being sprayed over residential areas by airplanes and MK-Ultra mind control experiments carried out at McGill University.

As mainstream media turned a blind eye, the investigation of government malfeasance fell to muckrakers and activists. And, in his day, Ian Adams was one of the finest muckrakers in Canada. In fact, it has been claimed that his work actually led to the establishment of Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, when he exposed the RCMP’s incompetence in the field. Though he covered a range of topics, it was this entanglement with espionage and the RCMP that propelled Adams into the international spotlight.

In the mid-70s, while digging into Canada’s role in the Cold War, the journalist began to grow suspicious. He realized that the RCMP’s counterespionage unit had never actually caught an enemy spy. This was not only because the agency was corrupt and incompetent, he believed, but because it had actually been infiltrated by a Russian mole for decades. He even had sources who seemed to attest to the fact, off the record.

Wary of the restrictions that existed in the journalistic medium, Adams turned to fiction to explore his theory. He believed that fiction would allow him to speak truth to power with greater flexibility. Though his first novel, The Trudeau Papers, was released in 1971, it was not until the second half of the decade that Adams shifted focus entirely. His most famous, and most controversial, novel, S: Portrait of a Spy, was released by Gage in 1977. With it, Adams hoped to “demystify the RCMP” and help Canadians realize that the CIA was not alone in its Cold War criminality.

S: Portrait of a Spy, tells the story of a triple agent in the RCMP’s Security Services. The novel details the arrest (kidnapping, really) of S, a retired RCMP counterespionage agent in Australia, who is suspected of working for both the CIA and KGB. It examines a number of characters drawn from real life and explores the notion that the RCMP had been infiltrated by foreign agents for decades—a belief that Adams really held. Despite this, the book was fiction. It made no claim to actual factuality.

S was as an immediate success—the book sold 17,000 copies in just thirty days. But, the celebration was short lived. Within weeks, a Canadian spy sued Adams for libel, claiming that the main character bore a striking resemblance to himself. Though S was clearly intended to be him, he claimed, he had never been a mole. It was an unprecedented situation in the worlds of both literature and espionage. Gage, Adams’ publisher, panicked and pulled the book, and the novelist found himself on the wrong end of a $2.2 million dollar lawsuit.

Leslie James Bennett, the spy in question, worked his way through British and Canadian intelligence to become head of Canada’s counterespionage unit at the height of the Cold War. He was, as Adams later wrote, “our man against Moscow and the KGB.” In 1972, he was brought in for a covert four day interrogation in Ottawa. By the end of the interrogation, Bennett “went from being one of the most influential men in the Western intelligence community to a non-person.” Bennett himself revealed that this arrest was due to doubts about his loyalty to the Canadian government but the finer details of the investigation have never been revealed publicly.

Even in the face of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit, and with little support from his publisher, Adams did not back down. S was not intended to be Bennett, he stated, but a composite character drawn from a range of people. In fact, he argued, he knew very little about Bennett and had never even communicated with him. The real case was simply inspiration for his fiction. Unfortunately for Adams, Bennett had a lot of protection under the Official Secrets Act. Still, the novelist didn’t cave. The result was a complex legal case that was deadlocked for three years.

In 1980, as the standstill drew on, Adams was ordered by the judge to reveal his sources, becoming the first novelist in the English-speaking world ordered to do so. The judge argued that, unlike journalists, novelists were not protected from such orders under Canadian law. Adams refused. He saw it as a clear violation of his rights and bunkered down for an even longer, harder fight. Fortunately, support began to roll in internationally, both financially and otherwise. Attention to Bennett and his claims only grew.

For still unknown reasons, Bennett suddenly decided to drop the case before it went any further. Forgoing a potential $2.2 million, he told Adams that he would back down if Adams paid his legal fees and added a disclaimer to the beginning of the novel stating that the character S was not based on him. Adams took the offer and his book was re-released with more attention than ever. With an unusual disclaimer at the start of the novel, Bennett’s connection to the main character, S, solidified even further in the public imagination.

After S: Portrait of a Spy, Adams released four more novels, most of which deal with the largely unexamined world of Canadian espionage and its oversteps of power. His next book, End Game in Paris, is based on a true story of the RCMP’s infiltration of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a Quebec separatist group. Fittingly, it also involves double agents and the CIA.

Adams’ final book, Agent of Influence, was turned into an award-winning film of the same name starring Christopher Plummer. It is based on the story of John Watkins, Canadian Ambassador to the USSR, who died during an RCMP and CIA interrogation in 1964. It was alleged that the KGB trapped Watkins in a honey pot scheme and blackmailed him, threatening to out him as a gay man. The truth about the case, and Watkins’ death, remains a mystery.

When it comes to the shadowy world of espionage, the long tendrils of state power tend to keep facts, particularly the shameful ones, wrapped up and hidden away from the public eye. Official narratives are often distorted or outright lies. Often times, those who attempt to expose these facts risk imprisonment. In other cases, state confidentiality simply keeps evidence out of reach of investigators until interest has waned. In such cases, as Adams recognized, turning to fiction can often be the only true way to get a sense of reality.

The novel exists in a precarious position. Fiction is a frame—an outline which instructs the reader as to the way in which they should interact with the text. It is a reference to a system of conventions, a method of approach. The best fiction, it is often said, is that which most closely represents experiential reality: a distorted authenticity that rings true precisely because we believe it to be false. Writing fiction is a balancing act and the case of S: Portrait of a Spy demonstrates just how unstable this balancing act can be.

Ian Adams died in November 2021. He earned his stripes as a muckraking journalist but he solidified his legacy in the realm of fiction. The novel was the medium that allowed him to explore the realities of espionage, and the Canadian state’s darkest secrets, most fully. Doing so, he laid out a too-oft forgotten foundation for anti-establishment spy writing in the north.

terminal boredom by izumi suzuki

Originally published by Strange Horizons (November 2021)

Izumi Suzuki (1949-86) was a writer, actor, and counterculture figure. Though Suzuki is considered a pioneer of Japanese science fiction, Terminal Boredom is the first English translation of her work. It was released by Verso in April of this year with translations by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O’Horan.

The seven stories collected in Terminal Boredom explore a series of speculative worlds, from a matriarchal utopia to a world devoid of human beings. The stories are both disparate and cohesive, diverging and intersecting to establish a fresh and complex whole. Despite distinctions, certain core concepts—fixations on temporality, barrenness, isolation, and decay—recur throughout the stories.

In Frank O’Connor’s study of the short-story form, The Lonely Voice, he argues that short stories tend to focus on “outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society” (The Lonely Voice, p. 19). This is absolutely true for Terminal Boredom. For the most part, Terminal Boredom does not contain large-scale portraits of the dystopian worlds in which its stories are set. Instead, it features a series of fleeting images that constantly gesture towards the bleak psychological state of the people who occupy these worlds. The societies themselves, sick and decaying, are always viewed through the eyes of alienated figures who wander absently, searching for escape. This anchor is one of the work’s greatest strengths.

The characters in the collection are plagued by constant anxiety about the degradation of life. Alongside this, and closely intertwined, is a persistent fear that humanity is being eradicated. The eradication of humanity here is not so much the literal extinction of human beings but the erasure or decay of that which makes them human. This is connected to another of the volume’s recurring themes: the idea that simplification drives degradation. Characters fear that the complexity of life is being worn down by the trajectory of social progression.

At all times, these characters act in relation to their societies; however, social structures often seem distant, unaddressed, and unacknowledged. Instead, characters tend to deal with the consequences and implications of these structures in isolation. Their lives are consumed by immediate conflicts which seem to shield fundamental issues from critique. Even when certain characters indicate that they are well attuned to the impacts of social structures, they seem isolated in their awareness.

In “Women and Women,” for example, the narrative is explicitly framed by the utopian world Suzuki establishes. In this world, men are contained in “Gender Exclusion Terminal Occupancy Zones,” which keep women safe from violence. Throughout, the narrator directly relates her experiences to the overall structure of this society. But, she is still an outlaw, isolated at the fringe. As she states towards the end of the story, “To doubt this world is a crime. Everyone believes implicitly in this world, in this reality. I and I alone … know the great secret of this existence” (p. 33). Though not as poetic as other works in the collection—the writing feels stilted, at times—“Women and Women” is conceptually strong and serves to produce a framework for reading the following tales. The queer utopia created in the work is quickly destabilized; its rational, mechanistic solutions are unable to account for the complexity of life. Still, the logic that drives the existence of gender-based ghettos is amply demonstrated, producing a troubling and complicated story.

The characters in Terminal Boredom, then, consistently find themselves in worlds entirely natural to them but which somehow feel alien. These worlds are natural in the sense that they are the worlds that the characters have inherited; but they seem unnatural in the sense that the characters feel displaced in them. This is reminiscent of another theory advanced by Frank O’Connor, that one of the most characteristic aspects of the short story is “an intense awareness of human loneliness” (The Lonely Voice, p. 19).

From front to back, Terminal Boredom drips with human loneliness. This loneliness is not only born from literal isolation—even relationships between people are neutralized. The second story, “You May Dream,” establishes this in its first three sentences: “My eyes met hers through the glass. She was sitting against the wall, gaze fixed on the front window for who knows how long, waiting. Even when she saw me, she didn’t so much as wave” (p. 35). Throughout the collection, characters seem unable to communicate. Even when no physical obstacle seems to exist, emotional barrenness obstructs their ability to interact meaningfully. Relationships are perverted and distant. Here, the glass establishes a barrier between the narrator and her friend. The transparency of this barrier does not make it less obstructive but seems to heighten the disconnect. Even when their eyes meet, the connection is not made.

The narrator is not immune to this emotional barrenness. When she meets this same friend inside for coffee, the friend attempts to connect with her. The narrator is unable and unwilling. To her, their conversation is “a series of reactions, reflex responses” (p. 37). She only wants to give the responses that will make their conversation as easy as possible. She wants to avoid engaging on a deeper level, particularly when difficult topics begin to arise.

It is not insignificant that “You May Dream” opens with the narrator’s friend waiting absently. This is another concept that persists throughout the collection. For instance, one of the most memorable stories, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” opens with the line: “I was just killing time” (p. 123). Framed by the title of the book, Terminal Boredom, the sentence takes on particular significance.  Characters long for time to accelerate or slow. They wait around for something to happen—be it catastrophe or salvation.

In “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” characters are haunted by figures from the past and, in a sense, the future. The point of view slips between narrators, who are both keenly aware of the fact that time is passing. One of the characters works at an arcade, the other is a customer; they have a past that intertwines. The latter is killing time with nothing to do. The former is being killed by time, degrading physically and psychologically. Though the story is highly speculative, an anchor of realism exists: “My body is aging for real,” one of the narrators says. “An unbelievable amount. Sometimes when I decide to put on some foundation, to my dismay it gathers around my wrinkles; no matter how well I try to apply it, the foundation just ends up outlining them” (p. 126). This is pointed and familiar, and also serves to ground the speculative aspect of the work.

Of the arcade, the same narrator says: “There is no day or night here. Boys and girls wearing fluttery clothes come in hordes and all play alone.” This is immediately followed up by a seemingly disconnected thought: “Time might begin to pass at a frightening pace again. It’s why I incessantly keep checking the clock on the wall” (p. 126). This is a bridge, enabling the concepts of temporality, isolation, and decay to concentrate powerfully. Further still, when the two narrators attempt to interact, emotional barrenness prevents it. Of all the stories, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” might convey the essence of the collection most potently.

For a number of reasons, Terminal Boredom cannot be attributed exclusively to Suzuki. For one, it is not a translation of a collection constructed by the author. Instead, it is a new selection of stories from a larger collection (契約 鈴木いづみSF全集; or, Covenant: The Complete SF of Izumi Suzuki). It should also be remembered, of course, that the selected stories are not Suzuki’s original works. They are translations of them. As a result, the stories included are not actually Suzuki’s texts. By adapting Suzuki’s stories and constructing a collection, placing these adaptations in relation to one another, the author-translators of Terminal Boredom have created a new work entirely. Critique must be undertaken accordingly. Terminal Boredom is not a work by Izumi Suzuki but is an adaptation of Suzuki’s work.

Translation is an act of re-creation. A translated story is a reconstruction based upon the translator’s interpretation of the text. When reading a translation, the reader’s faith is placed in the translator’s judgement and ability. As much as their linguistic ability, the reader places faith in the translator’s literary ability. As literature is not only concerned with conveying information, the translator also has to attempt to replicate the poetic effect produced in the original work. This means that translation cannot be undertaken merely on a surface level. When translating a work, attention must be given to the play between the words and the potential literary significance that this play creates. The translator must analyze the structure of the text and attempt to decipher the ways in which it evokes an emotional response. In Walter Benjamin’s words, a translation must attempt to discover “that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation of the work in the alien one.”

The concept of translation and interpretation appears explicitly in “Night Picnic,” the third story in the book. In this story, “Earthlings” are apparently extinct. A family of non-humans have convinced themselves that they are humans who have somehow ended up on a foreign planet, separated from the rest of society. They study media and attempt to replicate what they see, striving to become the model human family. However, rather than appearing human, the characters take on a performative mishmash of distorted habits and behaviors that only loosely align with those of the human world. Like the other stories, the decay of humanness is ever-present. The notion of alienated figures existing at the fringes of society becomes literal. Isolation is overwhelming—in fact, the society that these aliens cling to so desperately no longer exists outside of memory. It cannot be reached, no matter how hard they try to replicate it. The translation is inadequate—the echo of humanity is lost.

Viewed in isolation, as a more or less original work, Terminal Boredom is a powerful collection. I cannot judge the quality of its translation on linguistic grounds. In literary terms, the prose that is presented can waver: at certain times, it feels stilted or stale; at other times, it is poetic and poignant. At all times, however,  the writing carries an undercurrent of loneliness, isolation, and decay. Characters wander through the pages, desperately searching for escape, filled with anxiety, as life—that “fresh and complex entity”—dries out and threatens to disappear. It is this fixation that ties the stories in the collection together and provides it with its heart and soul. Lonely voices cry out, and their ache reverberates long after the book is closed. Overall, Terminal Boredom is a strong, unsettling collection.

Surrealism: The Emergence of a Radical Experiential Reality

Originally published by The Commoner (April 2022)

'Freedom is the only cause worth serving,' Andre Breton, 1924

'It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognized itself,' Breton, 1952

In the early twentieth century, a group of artists in Paris saw that restrictive, arbitrary frameworks had been imposed upon society by structures of power. They recognized that these frameworks ran so deeply that they penetrated the mind and shaped the very way that it perceived reality. They also saw that things could be otherwise and took it upon themselves to develop a practice which could radically re-enchant the world and produce an alternative reality – a superior reality: surreality.

Surrealist practice was an embodiment of revolution. In the sense used here, surrealism refers to the artistic-philosophical work of a specific group of artists in twentieth-century Paris. Though the term surrealism has broader significance, focusing on the specific conditions which led to the ‘original’ emergence of surrealist practice in Paris enables focused exploration of the ways in which it destablised the prevailing 'liberal-moral-humanistic ideal of freedom' to produce a radical alternative.The birth of surrealism is often traced to the publication of Andre Breton’s manifesto, Manifeste du surréalisme, in 1924; however, by the time surrealism was formalised, it was already active in attitude and practice.

In 1922, two years prior to the publication of Manifeste du surréalisme, Breton wrote that:

‘Up to a certain point, one knows what my friends and I mean by Surrealism. This word, which is not our invention and which we could have abandoned to the most vague critical vocabulary, is used by us in a precise sense. By it, we mean to designate a certain psychic automatism that corresponds rather closely to the state of dreaming, a state that is today extremely difficult to delimit’ (Rubin, 63).

At this point in its development, surrealism was thought of as a psychic practice closely related to dream, not an artistic style. This idea underpins the trajectory of its development and is evident in the more extensive definition that Breton established in his manifesto, two years later:

‘SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

ENCYCLOPEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life. The following have performed acts of ABSOLUTE SURREALISM: Messrs. Aragon, Baron, Boiffard, Breton, Carrive, Crevel, Delteil, Desnos, Eluard, Gérard, Limbour, Malkine, Morise, Naville, Noll, Péret, Picon, Soupault, Vitrac.’ (Breton, 1).

Surrealism is concerned with the experiential aspect of dream; more specifically, it is concerned with consciously engaging with aspects of the experience of dreaming. Clearly, this is still not reducible to description of artistic practice or technique. In his manifesto, this definition is framed by extensive critical engagement with society and structures of power indicating that, as J.H. Matthews writes, ‘The first surrealist manifesto is not a programme for revolutionising art and literature, but a programme that appeals for a revision of human values’ (Matthews, 3).

In 1914, Europe ruptured. A consensus of rationalism, capital, and empire, carefully constructed on the backs of the poor and the colonised, was fundamentally shaken. The European sphere of accumulation culminated in an internal crisis. As the First World War dragged on, and the true conditions of European civilization were unveiled, the faith of its people faltered. Structures of power began to destabilise. By the time the German and Austrian people rose up and brought an end to war in 1918, the spirit of revolution flourished.

In the wake of this war, Breton and his contemporaries rejected ‘all the institutions upon which the modern world rested’ and attacked ‘the entire defence apparatus of society,’ from legal and military structures to psychiatry and education (Breton, 128). These artists believed that such structures of power generated, guided, and policed conscious perception and engagement with the world. They intended to dissolve pre-existing conceptual worldviews and create or capture different experiential realities and truths instead (White, 105). As Breton’s manifesto indicates, surrealists believed that it was necessary to unearth unconscious experience in order to do so, as unconscious experience enabled them to circumvent the rigid frameworks imposed by such power structures.

To understand the surrealist project, it is necessary to explore some of the conditions which led to its emergence. In many ways, surrealism was a unique concentration of practises, dispositions, and tendencies which were already circulating in early-twentieth century Paris. The Dada movement, from which surrealism directly emerged, is evidence of this in and of itself (Rubin, 12); however, the prehistory of surrealism is far vaster and includes a wide range of practises and dispositions dealing with subversion, experience, reality, and dream. It is important to recognize that, if a ‘text is a fabric of quotations, resulting from a thousand sources of culture,’ as Roland Barthes said, an entire movement has a mass of antecedents far too broad to trace (Barthes, 53). But, certain tendencies and movements seem to stand out pronouncedly in the years preceding the surrealist emergence and deserve attention here.

In 1952, Andre Breton wrote that ‘It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognized itself, well before defining itself, when it was still only a free association among individuals rejecting the social and moral constraints of their day, spontaneously and in their entirety’ (Breton, 128). This is an overlooked but vital statement about the prehistory of surrealism. The spirit of anarchism is embedded in the surrealist project. However, this spirit has largely been erased from it in historical analysis. Recognising the significance of anarchism to surrealism illustrates the true extent of the practice’s revolutionary potential. Due to its immensity and decentralised nature, anarchism cannot be neatly packaged and presented. For the study of surrealism, it is worth, instead, noting certain anarchist tendencies that were influential to the practice.

Paris is often identified as the birthplace of anarchism. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published a work titled What is Property? in the city (McKay, 12). In What is Property?, Proudhon intentionally subverted the prevailing connection between the terms anarchy and disorder to establish a theory of anarchy as order (Proudhon, 1840). Certain historians identify anarchism or anarchist practises in societies predating this but this identification  may be seen as a retroactive or, in some cases, colonial-minded categorisation. That being said, another French anarchist, Elisee Reclus, noted several decades later that ‘Anarchy is not a new theory. The word itself taken in its meaning 'absence of government', or 'society without leaders', is of ancient origin' (Reclus, 1894). Like surrealism, the attitudes and characteristics that became collectively baptised as ‘anarchist’ did, of course, exist in a positive sense prior to their formalisation.

In What is Property?, Proudhon established a theoretical foundation for anarchism which concerned itself with critiquing the State, property, and structures of oppression (McKay, 13). Rather than accepting the imposition of organisation from above, Proudhon advocated for the autonomous production of structures from the ground up (15). These ideas shaped socialist outlook for much of the nineteenth century and guided the structure of the Paris Commune of 1871, where worker’s associations attempted to create an entirely new, radical social order (43). The commune itself was crushed by the state after 72 days but in that short time became the biggest urban insurrection of the nineteenth century’ and provided further evidence of a strong anarchist legacy in Paris (Roper, 243).

Anarchism began to receive increasing attention in the early-twentieth century, likely reaching its European peak in the Spanish Civil War, in which surrealists such as Benjamin Peret fought (Graham, 127). In large part, the popularity of anarchism was due to the impact of the First World War on Europe. The war erupted, seemingly without sense , when various imperial powers in Europe found themselves tangled in a web of bureaucratic treaties and pacts (Jukes, 5). As it unfolded, all scientific, mathematical, economic, and technological structures in Europe were redirected to warfare. Logical calculations and industrial processes enabled mass slaughter. The accepted consensus of capital, empire, and rationalism culminated in internal crisis, resulting in the rupture of Europe. Even many beneficiaries of the system found it difficult to justify such a form of civilization, and mass resistance grew (51) Despite bourgeoise accounts, the war itself only really came to an end when Austro-Hungarian and German workers and soldiers revolted against their own imperial states (Broue, 34). By this time, revolutionary spirit had already blossomed across Europe. From Ireland to Russia, revolution erupted.

Perhaps the most important anarchist thread to trace when studying surrealism is the relationship between material and conceptual structures of domination. In 1910, Voltairine De Cleyre, an American anarchist, published an essay titled The Dominant Idea. This essay demonstrates keen engagement with ideas of conceptualization and the mind, and the role that such ideas have in the organisation of material life. As De Cleyre writes:

‘my conception of mind, or character, is not that it is a powerless reflection of a momentary condition of stuff and form, but an active modifying agent, reacting on its environment and transforming circumstances, sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly, sometimes, though not often, entirely’ (De Cleyre, 115).

This was written in response to a tendency she noticed in radical thought to focus so totally on material conditions that the reciprocity of thought and practice was overlooked (114). To De Cleyre, the material world was shrouded by ‘unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead unchanging souls’ (113). Domineering conceptions of the world police and motivate the actions of people if they go unquestioned, however, De Cleyre suggests that the potential for alternative action is always present in ‘the immortal fire of Individual Will’ which can be harnessed to ‘conquer and remould Circumstance’ (123). This approach is evident in the surrealist project. It is reflected, years later, in Andre Breton and Benjamin Peret’s statement that ‘The fight to replace society’s structures and the efforts made by surrealism to transform mental structures, far from excluding each other, are mutually complementary’ (Breton, 128).

Though anarchist tendencies were central to the surrealist project, and surrealists such as Peret and Breton explicitly called themselves anarchists at various points, most surrealists began to identify as Marxists. 3Breton later stated that this was largely due to a certain ‘delusion’ about the radical potential of the Russian Revolution (Breton, 128). The approach that the surrealists took to Marxism was somewhat distinct from dominant approaches in France, which emphasised rationalist, scientific, and positivist approaches; instead, surrealists adhered specifically to the ‘Hegelian dialectical heritage of Marxism’ (Lowy, 23). More than anything, surrealists resisted ‘the cold, abstract rationality of modern industrial civilization’ and its capitalist ‘disenchantment’ of the world (22). Transforming materiality, they believed, required re-enchantment. Industrial development was not the key to such transformation.

To surrealists, the potential for re-enchantment existed most evidently in unconscious experiences which were less fully policed by structures of power. As Breton wrote in his first manifesto, ‘If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them – first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason’ (Breton, 1). Specifically, this meant harnessing ‘the omnipotence of dream’ (1).

This focus on dream was also not without precedent. In her article Artists and Dream in Nineteenth Century Paris, Stefanie Heraeus notes that a number of French artists began to engage with the potential of dream in a unique way during the nineteenth century (Heraeus, 156). She identifies this practice as being of particular importance to the prehistory of surrealism. She also suggests that a fixation upon Sigmund Freud ‘seems to obscure recognition that in France, a paradigm shift in the pictorial as well as theoretical understanding of dreams was already taking place in the middle of the nineteenth century’ (152). Though Freud was undeniably highly influential to the surrealist focus on dream, his influence was not total. As a result, it is necessary to highlight some of these lesser known influences, particularly those that combined exploration of the psyche with aesthetic signification.

In particular, Heraeus draws attention to the importance of artists such as Jean-Jacques Grandville, who devoted his attention to understanding and expressing the ‘mechanism’ of dream, rather than using dream to construct traditional narrative (152). One of the important aspects of Grandville’s work is his aesthetic exploration of the scientific or psychological aspect of dream. For instance, Grandville’s engraving ‘The Metamorphoses of Sleep’ depicts something akin to associative logic. As Heraeus states, this engraving depicts ‘two chains of associations’ which interconnect in various stages ‘into a vase with a flower, which in turn is transformed into a female figure, only to dissolve into the mist’ (Heraeus, 156). Significantly, ‘the disparate objects are linked only through similarity of form’ demonstrating an alternative system of logic and conceptualization (156).

Heraeus draws a connection between Grandville’s art and the work of researchers, such as Alfred Maury, who began to undertake empirical research of sleep and dream from ‘the psychological point of view’ in the 1840s (157). Maury, who Andre Breton later called ‘one of the finest observers and experimenters ever to have appeared in the nineteenth century,’ placed specific emphasis on the way that dreams were able to exist beyond the laws of the waking world: In dream, ‘New laws, strange kinds of combinations and coincidental relations develop between persons, objects and words, whose contradiction with external reality does not surprise the dreaming subject’ (Breton, 12; Maury, 154). In addition to Grandville, Heraeus notes similar attitudes and practises in the works of Victor Hugo, Marie-Jean-Leon d'Hervey de Saint-Denys, Charles Meryon, and Odilon Redon. The connecting thread between these artists is not that they simply dealt with dream in their art but that they were concerned with constructing artistic languages which could accurately represent the state of dream (Heraeus, 164) [1].

In addition to dream, the surrealist desire for re-enchantment was drawn from the treatment of myth in the Romantic tradition. In Morning Star, Michael Lowy deals with the relationship between Romanticism and surrealism in depth. Like certain Romanticist threads, surrealism intended to produce a new collective myth which presented an alternative to dominant 'myths' of their respective era (Lowy, 15.) Such a desire can be seen in Breton’s manifesto, when he states that: 'Under the pretence of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices’ (Breton, 1). Lowy draws particular attention to Friedrich Schlegel’s idea of ‘new myth’ as developed in the classic Romanticist work Discourse on Mythology (Lowy, 14). In this work, Schlegel produces the idea of a new myth which was not merely a ‘pale imitation of the past’ but drew experience from the ‘deepest depths of our mind’ (Lowy, 14). As Lowy writes:

‘That mythopoetic interiority coming from the depths cannot accept the limits imposed by rationalist reason; it is the realm of ‘whatever forever evades consciousness,’ of ‘the beautiful disorder of the imagination’ and ‘the original chaos of human nature.’ That’s not to say that it ignores the exterior world; the new myth is also ‘a hieroglyphic expression of surrounding reality under the transfiguration of the imagination and of love.’ It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Schlegel, in these passages, intuitively identified the domain that Freud would a century later crown with the name Unconscious.’ (Lowy, 14).

This method was actively, and selectively, picked up by surrealists in the twentieth century. Like surrealism, Andre Breton believed that the idea of Romanticism as a mere artistic school was the result of neutralisation – Romanticism, to Breton, was a ‘specific state of mind or mood whose function everywhere is to instil a new generalized conception of the world’ (Lowy, 33). This Romanticist instilling of a new conception, in many ways, is what distinguishes surrealism from its most closely related predecessor, Dada.

In the summer of 1916, as the First World War was in full swing, an artist collective based out of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich published a magazine intended to document their activity (Lewer, 21). It was in this self-titled magazine that the word Dada appeared in print for the first time. ‘The next aim of the artists brought together here is the publication of an International Review,’ Hugo Ball writes in preface; ‘The review will come out in Zurich and will carry the name 'DADA' ('Dada') Dada Dada Dada Dada’ (21).

The Cabaret Voltaire was home to an ever-changing schedule of performances ranging from traditional readings and entertainment to avant-garde recitals in front of select audiences (Lewer, 25). Though little record remains of the more experimental performances, what does remain indicates that this collective was not concerned with ‘art for art’s sake’ but saw it as a ‘vehicle for the transportation of a profound and all-encompassing cultural criticism’ (Schaffner, 118). The artists were an eclectic collection who rejected war, nationalism, and the bourgeoisie. According to Hugo Ball, the cabaret’s ‘sole purpose’ was ‘to draw attention, across the barriers of war and native lands, to the few independent spirits who live for other ideals’ (Ball). In acts, distinctions between audience and performer were broken down; traditional structures organising and framing recitals were destabilised. However, The Cabaret itself was very short lived – it closed in the summer of 1916, only a few months after its performances began (Lewer, 25).

These few months, no matter how brief, likely represent the most important moment in the pre-history of surrealism. The 'first public Dada evening' occurred on July 14, after the closure of The Cabaret Voltaire, in a new location (Lewer, 26). At this event, artists such as Ball, Tristan Tzara, Emmy Hennings, and Richard Huelsenbeck performed music, poetry, non-verbal poetry, cubist costume, dance, and discussion (Lewer, 27). This 'soiree' provided the Dada movement with the attention it required to continue. Soon after this, the Dadaists quickly shifted away from performances and 'began to fix its art as objects and texts in exhibits and journals' (Partsch, 34).

Despite shifting focus from performance to the creation of artistic objects, the act was always core to Dada art. As Cornelius Partsch notes, the practice of Dada was 'disruptiveness in performance and the radical separation of signifier and signified in its language' (Partsch, 40). The embodiment of this was the 'paradoxical, spontaneous gesture aimed at revealing the inconsistency and inanity of conventional beliefs' – an extreme example of this is when Arthur Cravan 'punctuated a lecture' with seemingly random pistol shots (Rubin, 12). In a less extreme example, Tristen Tzara began experimenting with disruption and inanity by writing poetry 'by cutting out the individual words of any newspaper article, throwing them in a bag, shaking them, and recording them in the order that they were taken out' (Rubin, 41). As a result, it has been suggested by some critics that the process of creation is worth more attention than the objects which emerged from creation (Partsch, 39).

Dada was not a singular, unified, cohesive movement. As Tzara wrote in his Dada Manifesto 1918, 'Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrust toward unity. Those who are with us preserve their freedom. We recognize no theory. We have enough cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas,' (Tzara, 1918). The spirit of Dada was disruption and autonomy. It is more appropriate, therefore, to recognize tendencies in Dadaism, rather than an overarching structural definition. It can be stated definitively, however, that Dadaists believed that social orders of all sorts – artistic, linguistic, political, scientific – could not simply be 'accepted as a given' (Schaffner, 119). Attempting to prove that order could easily be otherwise became a major tendency in the practice – an active manifestation of a philosophy which challenged and destabilised structure itself (Jones, 11).

In 1919, André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Philippe Soupault launched a Dada-inspired journal called Littérature in Paris (Legge, 89). The following year, Tristan Tzara, the prominent Dada poet, moved to Paris from Zurich (89). For the next several years, Paris hosted a fairly significant Dada movement with soon-to-be surrealists at its centre. With the inspiration of Tzara, Dadaists in Paris placed significant emphasis on poetry in the early years – so much so that Elizabeth Legge argues that 'The primary matter of Paris Dada operations was language' (Legge, 94). In particular, this poetry purposefully disrupted, distorted, and ignored structures of grammar (96). In fact, the 'disenchantment' that these artists felt 'with the cultural and political status quo was so fundamental and deep-seated that they felt they could no longer express it within the boundaries of existing artistic and communicative conventions' (Schaffner, 118). In response, 'adapting what they knew of the psychoanalytic method of relaxing conscious censors to release unconscious flow,' Dada poets undertook automatic writing (98).

The nature of this approach to language can be understood by turning to semiological theories. In 1916, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics was published for the first time. In this collection of lecture notes, Saussure suggests a science of signs, which he refers to as semiology (Saussure, 68). The influence of semiology on the surrealist project is evidenced in a 1920 essay that Jean Paulhan wrote for Littérature which deals specifically with Saussure’s semiology, 'emphasizing the arbitrary nature of words as difficult resistant things in themselves rather than transparent vehicles of what is meant' (Legge, 94). Recognizing the arbitrariness of language is key to surrealism.

In semiological terms, a sign is an object (word, symbol, letter, icon, gesture, sound, etc.) which conveys meaning and significance (Saussure, 66). There are two fundamental aspects to the sign: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is 'the plane' of expression (the word) and the signified is 'the plane' of content (the concept/meaning) referred to (Barthes, 39). The matter of arbitrariness comes in when it is recognized that there is no natural, inherent connection between a particular signifier and the meaning that it conveys. For example, Saussure states that 'the idea of ‘sister’ is not linked by any inner relationship to the succession of sounds s-o-r which serve as its signifier in French; that it could be represented equally by just any other sequence is proved by differences among languages and by the very existence of different languages' (Saussure, 68). Arbitrariness does not imply lack of logic or structure in the merging of terms and concepts, but that this merging could have been done differently. Once established, however, the pairing tends to be naturalised. Playing with the 'logic' of sign pairing and denaturalizing it is evident in much surrealist art.

It is also important to recognize that the signified is 'not ‘a thing’ but a mental representation of ‘the thing’' (Barthes, 42). For example, the signifier bird refers to a particular idea which has been constructed by humans in order to understand and refer to 'birds,' rather than the authentic object as it exists 'externally' to humans. The entire concept of a bird, in essence, a metaphor. The bird itself is not a bird – it is referred to and conceptualised in that way due to the specific framework of understanding humans have constructed. The concept of bird also relies upon an endless array of other concepts which have been constructed in order to understand and refer to other aspects of the world (frameworks of biology, nature, etc.). As concepts are structured in accordance to frameworks of power, the very way the bird (and all experience) is conceptualised is catered particularly to those frameworks. In short, the specific way that the concept of bird has been constructed has certain implications. It could, for instance, cement and naturalise particular relationships between people and birds. The relevance of this to the surrealists is that the bird could, then, be conceptualised very differently and equally, perhaps more, authentically: the metaphor could be better.

In the early 1920s, Breton and a number of Parisian Dadaists began to distance themselves from the Dada movement (Legge, 99). Principles of Dadaism maintained their importance to the work of surrealists but the idea of 'shared exception to artistic and moral rules,' which Dada embodied, only seemed 'temporarily satisfying' (99) Legge writes that 'The principal value Breton retrieved from Dada was that it had created a ‘state of perfect readiness’ from which they could now move ‘toward that which beckons us’' (100). The emerging surrealists believed that the practice of Dada focused too entirely upon the disruption of the aforementioned frameworks and did not actively pursue alternatives (92). In his 1970 book, Surrealist Art, Sarane Alexandrian wrote that:

‘It is not true to say that surrealism was born after Dada, like a phoenix arising from its ashes. It was born during Dada, and became aware of its resources while it was in public action. Surrealism acquired a need to relate verbal or graphic delirium to an underlying cause, one less gratuitous than the total negation of everything. (Alexandrian, 46).’

After its breach with the constant negation that defined Dadaism, the surrealist movement took up the techniques and practices of Dada, such as automatic writing, and rallied them for revolution. Automatic writing, in this sense, tended to be the creation of literary works without the guidance of a preconceived plan or framework. It was, in essence, writing trains of thought driven by unconscious association. Whereas Dada tended to emphasize ‘anti-art’, the surrealist movement emphasized art’s transformative potential.

Drawing from the myth and mysticism of the Romanticist tradition, and the radical critique of anarchism and Marxism, surrealists repurposed the Dada movement to establish a new practice which intended to radically re-enchant the world. This practice is a disruption and reconstruction of the illusory nature of experience, tapping into less-structured areas of the mind in order to dissolve conceptual structures which have been imposed upon the mind by society according to already-justified and naturalised structures of perception (White, 105). As far as surrealists were concerned, at their best, 'logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest,' as these are the problems that they have been developed to answer (Breton, 1).

Unfortunately, radical re-enchantment did not unfold in a transformative manner when surrealism was at full force. In a matter of decades, the frameworks that surrealists rallied against intensified and concentrated, manifesting totally and brutally under the banner of Nazism. Following the war, Breton began to explicitly refer to himself as an anarchist again and was a strong supporter of the Fédération Anarchiste, which carried on the traditions of Voline and Spanish CNTs. By this time, however, the surrealist movement had petered out and been appropriated by the bourgeois world of high art. For a brief moment, however, before the darkest chapter of Europe emerged, it seemed to many that 'the imagination is perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights' (Breton, 1).

Perhaps, in some mystical chapter yet to come, there exists an alternative reality – a superior reality – where revolution remains 'the province of poets,' where the freedom of dream is more than just glimpsed, and where the spirit of liberation manages to unfurl entirely and without restraint: 'This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.' (Breton, 1).

The Power and Rôle of the Idea: de Cleyre and Bourdieu in Conversation

Originally published by The Commoner (June 2022); translated into Spanish by Libértame

Voltairine de Cleyre’s essay, The Dominant Idea, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work, 'Structures, Habitus, Practices,' both wrestle with the necessity of grounding theory in materiality with the necessity of recognizing the material impact of cognitive and social structures. In her essay, de Cleyre, an American anarchist, attempts to make sense of the role that dominant ideas, themselves, have on society. In his work, Bourdieu, a French sociologist, focuses on theoretical engagement with the structuring forces that allow such ideas to perpetuate and influence action. Placing these texts in conversation helps to better understand how thought both structures and is structured by life, allowing for more effective critique of existing power-structures, and will hopefully contribute to the development of 'a true appraisement of the power and rôle of the Idea' (de Cleyre, 1910).

Voltairine de Cleyre was born in Michigan in 1866. She was one of many who established a particularly American tradition of anarchism in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, characterised by the specific conditions of America as a burgeoning capitalist imperial power. As Hippolyte Havel writes in his biographical sketch:

'Born shortly after the close of the Civil War, she witnessed during her life the most momentous transformation of the nation; she saw the change from an agricultural community into an industrial empire; the tremendous development of capital in this country, with the accompanying misery and degradation of labor.'

Similarly, Iain McKay writes that de Cleyre’s 'odyssey through anarchism reflected the change in American anarchism itself as America moved from a predominantly rural pre-capitalist society to a predominantly urban capitalist one' (McKay, 2006). Though the description of mid-nineteenth century American society as pre-capitalist can be contested, de Cleyre herself also highlighted the 'concentration in capitalist production' in cities as a key element in the transition away from individualism and toward communism among American anarchists in the latter half of the century (de Cleyre, 1903).

The emergence of American anarchism was a movement flawed in many ways – lacking in attention to colonialism and steadfast in its belief in civilization and progress. de Cleyre, herself, spent much of her life espousing individualism over communism and championing the importance of property rights; yet, as Alice Béja writes in 'Dreaming (un)American Dreams,' this stage was also defined by attempts to reappropriate parts of the national myth 'in order to forge new alliances, expand the range of the anarchist message, and construct tools of resistance to state repression' (Béja, 1). American anarchists attempted to counteract state claims that anarchism was a dangerous foreign idea by establishing roots within the American tradition of ‘liberty’ itself.

Voltairine de Cleyre was a poet, a lecturer, and a teacher. As is clear, her views shifted significantly throughout her life as she attempted to understand how to best cultivate freedom. Yet, Emma Goldman later said that:

'The Dominant Idea was the Leitmotif throughout Voltairine de Cleyre’s remarkable life… Again and again, in days of excruciating physical torment, in periods of despair and spiritual doubt, the Dominant Idea gave wings to the spirit of this woman — wings to rise above the immediate, to behold a radiant vision of humanity and to dedicate herself to it with all the fervor of her intense soul' (Goldman, 1932).

In 1897, de Cleyre said that 'my feelings have ever revolted against repression in all forms, even when my intellect, instructed by my conservative teachers, told me repression was right.' Here, the notion that social structures condition individual perception is evident. It was clear to de Cleyre, by way of sentiment, that repression was wrong but finding a ‘logical’ explanation which could demonstrate this involved rigorously countering the restraints placed upon the mind by the society in which it existed. This notion was a guiding force in de Cleyre’s life and lies at the heart of The Dominant Idea.

In her theoretical work, de Cleyre was careful to avoid prescribing a single system of social organisation which could serve as a solution to repression, as she believed that different conditions in different localities made different solutions necessary. In 1901, she stated that 'I would see the instincts and habits of the people express themselves in a free choice in every community; and I am sure that distinct environments would call out distinct adaptations.' However, she specified that:

'My ideal would be a condition in which all natural resources would be forever free to all, and the worker individually able to produce for himself sufficient for all his vital needs, if he so chose, so that he need not govern his working or not working by the times and seasons of his fellows.'

Because 'the society of which we are part puts certain oppressions upon us' it is necessary, she said, to focus analysis on 'present conditions' first and foremost – the dominant structures of repression in any particular society must be identified and targeted specifically. This process must emerge within the locality in question.

It is important to recognise that social structures and society are not equivalent concepts. Society exists in direct relations between people; social structures exist conceptually in the collective consciousness of these people and in the material manifestations of these concepts. Collective consciousness, in this sense, does not refer to a linked cognitive structure between minds, but to the fact that conceptual meaning is established collectively – a particular consensus emerges within society about the significance of concepts, perceptions, understandings, and interpretations. These consensuses can be established by elite groups and then imposed upon, or fostered among, the rest of society. The manifestations of these conceptual structures allow for physical or material social organisation. This is important because it means that social structures are not pre-existing platforms upon which people arrange themselves in various roles but are actively-constructed and ever-shifting systems of relation. Critically, recognising this difference allows us to destabilise pre-existing social structures - if they were created in this way and require constant reproduction in order to persist, they might be transformed or replaced through a similar process.

Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus addresses similar problems. Unlike de Cleyre, Bourdieu was not an anarchist. Also unlike de Cleyre, his work can be difficult to engage with outside of academia – it is written in a convoluted style typical of many French structuralists. However, there is much value in his theoretical critique. In 'Structures, Habitus, Practices,' a chapter in his book The Logic of Practice, Bourdieu critiques the way that society imposes belief systems on individuals, and the ways in which these belief systems then guide people’s perception of the world and their actions within it. He demonstrates that such imposed belief systems become treated as self-evident truths and, therefore, go unquestioned, allowing them to reproduce seemingly of their own accord.

Bourdieu begins with a critique of objectivism. Objectivism, he states, is a viewpoint 'taken from high positions in the social structure, from which the social world is seen as a representation… or a performance' (Bourdieu, 52). From this viewpoint, the social world is treated as a spectacle – actions ‘on the ground’ are treated as the ‘playing out’ of preconceived plans. In contrast, another viewpoint treats all knowledge or theory as a mere record of what happens ‘on the ground.’ Instead of falling victim to either, Bourdieu argues that social conditions create certain systems of thought which, in turn, structure social conditions themselves. This process is perpetual.

In his chapter, Bourdieu argues that social structures are created and organised through a 'system of structured, structuring dispositions,' referred to as habitus (Bourdieu, 52). Once established, a dominant system of thought guides individuals to reproduce its logics without the conscious intention of doing so. Habitus is, effectively, a system of dispositions which are produced by social conditions, which then function as guiding principles to 'generate and organise practices and representations' according to their own logic (53). For example, capitalist structures will inevitably produce capitalist logics which, in turn, guide individuals and societies to reproduce capitalist structures. As capitalist logics become ‘naturalised,’ this process seems to occur on its own.

Bourdieu states that habitus is 'embodied history, internalised as a second nature and so forgotten as history… [it is] the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product' (56). Habitus is a system and a process: habitus produces habitus. It becomes a system of motivating, cognitive structures which operate in relation to the 'practical world' and enforce seemingly presupposed potentiality by way of reproducing its own logic (53). In essence, systems of thought emerge in a society which explain and interpret the actions which occur within that society. These systems then guide and police the potential actions that can be taken by people in those societies. The thought can become a matter of ‘common sense’ and, therefore, go unquestioned, allowing the systems to reproduce.

When the logic of habitus is naturalised, social institutions and behaviours, including economic systems, can become fully realised (Bourdieu, 57). Putting ‘thought’ into ‘practice’ seems natural and inevitable – therefore, social structures can continue to exist seamlessly without having to be constantly re-created in a ‘conscious’ way. Acting in accordance with these logics no longer requires ‘active’ justification because the logics guiding and transforming individual bodies and minds, and their respective roles in social organisation, are treated as common-sense (58). In essence, Bourdieu argues that social conditions are historically and materially created but that, once created, they compel people to recreate them and even structure the very way that people think and perceive the world around them, making their recreation seem necessary and inevitable.

This notion also courses through The Dominant Idea. In her essay, de Cleyre writes that 'my conception of mind, or character, is not that it is a powerless reflection of a momentary condition of stuff and form, but an active modifying agent, reacting on its environment and transforming circumstances, sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly, sometimes, though not often, entirely' (de Cleyre, 1910). In part, the essay was written in response to materialist approaches to philosophy, which served to destabilise the dominant theoretical frameworks that upheld particular structures of authority by abstracting thought from life. As Karl Marx writes in The German Ideology, laying out the premises of a materialist approach to history, 'The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals' (Marx, 1845). As a result, he states, history and philosophy must not seek truth in God or abstract theory but in the lived actions of human beings. Though materialist approaches grounded theory, de Cleyre argues that 'unqualified determinism of the material is a great and lamentable error in our modern progressive movement' because it has often caused the reciprocal relationship of theory and life to be undermined. Some of those who took up a materialist approach, she believed, ignored the influence that thought has on action.

The social power and role of the idea, in de Cleyre’s 'rude approximation of it,' is to guide and shape action (de Cleyre, 1910). Throughout history, she argues, certain dominant ideas have been identifiable in any given society. These ideas are what compelled the Egyptians to build pyramids and the English to construct towering churches – to actively work towards 'the greatening of God and the lessening of Man,' she says. When de Cleyre wrote this piece in 1910, she identified the dominant idea of western society as an overbearing compulsion to manufacture, consume, and possess things. This does not refer merely to commodities but to a possessive individualistic materialism.

In her piece, de Cleyre does not engage in the kind of analysis of 'structuring structures' or theoretical principles that produce and perpetuate generative schemes that Bourdieu does. However, she engages with the fact that certain ideas exert dominance and structuring force, compelling or instilling particular perceptions and actions in people. This is clear from the very first sentence of de Cleyre’s essay, which is as follows:

'On everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea – an idea, living or dead, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern immobile cast of the non-living.'

Though de Cleyre illustrates her point by focusing upon 'an idea' (singular) this is strikingly similar to parts of Bourdieu’s analysis – for instance, Bourdieu’s characterization of habitus as the active presence of history, embodied and internalised, forgotten as history and 'continuously pulling' institutions 'from the state of dead letters, reviving the sense deposited in them' (Bourdieu, 57). de Cleyre continues this approach in her second sentence: 'Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead unchanging souls' (de Cleyre, 1910). The unchanging nature of the dominant, structuring ideas is a point of tension between de Cleyre and Bourdieu; however, the simplified identification of the dominant idea as a singular entity falls away here, elaborating it as a looser, sweeping force.

Drawing upon Bourdieu can help to develop an appraisement of the way that these dominant social ideas function. To Bourdieu, the structures characterising particular conditions of existence establish habitus. When conditions of existence are homogenised, producing a homogenous habitus, certain practices, perceptions, and attitudes become objectified and are, therefore, taken for granted (Bourdieu, 58). The logic that develops from this allows practices, and our understanding of these practices, to perpetuate seemingly of their own accord.

The assumptions and presumptions underlying and motivating social organisation are naturalised and, therefore, seem to be already justified. Bourdieu states that 'the regularities inherent in an arbitrary condition… tend to appear as necessary, even natural, since they are the basis of the schemes of perception and appreciation through which they are apprehended' (Bourdieu, 54). Conditions are arbitrary not because there is no logic establishing or legitimising them but because things could be otherwise – there is no inherent necessity for conditions to take the form that they currently do. Yet, the form of these conditions, and the regularities of this form, establish the conventions and frames through which perception of them takes place. Therefore, further dispositions are established which are largely compatible with present conditions.

Habitus, the body of structuring dispositions, perpetuates itself by reproducing 'similarly structured practices' (Bourdieu, 54). The dominant ideas that de Cleyre examines function in much the same way, though de Cleyre is less forgiving in her characterization of this process: for every 'principled persecutor,' de Cleyre writes, there are hundreds of 'easy, doughy characters, who will fit any baking tin, to whom determinist self-excusing appeals' (de Cleyre, 1910). In both cases, however, ideas compel action and perpetuation seemingly of their own accord when populations are indoctrinated. Despite this, the active cycle of inculcation, circulation, and reproduction is chalked up to circumstance rather than activity.

It is important to recognize that, in both Bourdieu and de Cleyre, the possibility of remoulding circumstance by critiquing dominant ideas is ever-present. This is an integral part of their analysis. To de Cleyre, resistance to the compelling power of dominant social forms exists in the existence of individual will: 'the immortal fire of Individual Will' can be harnessed to 'conquer and remould Circumstance.' This might initially be read as another point of tension between de Cleyre and Bourdieu – Bourdieu’s elaboration of habitus as a generative scheme seems to suggest that all potential dispositions are established and restricted by it; however, with more careful attention it becomes clear that his analysis is not actually this restrictive. For instance, Bourdieu also argues that:

'Because the habitus is an infinite capacity for generating products – thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions – whose limits are set by the historically and socially situated conditions of its production, the conditioned and conditional freedom it provides is as remote from creation of unpredictable novelty as it is from simple mechanical reproduction of the original conditioning' (Bourdieu, 55).

Though habitus establishes the conditions and limitations of thought and action, the potential for redefinition and subversion always exists. The fact that mediation of socially constructed and collectively determined dispositions and practices always concentrates in the individual mind means that this is not an irreparable divide in thought. In fact, Bourdieu also writes that it is 'extremely dangerous to conceive collective action by analogy with individual action' (Bourdieu, 59). Individual bodies and dispositions are heavily structured by habitus; however, the individual must comply (knowingly or unknowingly) with the logic established.

Habitus is a dominant and powerful structural force but is not all encompassing. Individual habitus, 'inseparable from the organic individuality that is immediately given to immediate perception,' is not immediately homogenous (Bourdieu, 60). Even members of the same class of conditions do not have identical experiences, meaning that habitus is not uniform and allows for variance, though it will likely conceal or veil this potential. Furthermore, habitus is merely a primary form of conditioning, not the sole conditioning element active in any particular class of conditions of existence. Therefore, as de Cleyre states, 'the dominant idea of the age and land does not necessarily mean the dominant idea of any single life' (de Cleyre, 1910); or, as Bourdieu states, present conditions can produce 'misadaptation as well as adaptation, revolt as well as resignation' (Bourdieu, 62).

Voltairine de Cleyre and Pierre Bourdieu both undertake theoretical analysis of the relationship between material and cognitive/conceptual structures, exploring the manner in which thought structures, and is also structured by, materiality. The implications of this for social forms, particularly social systems of dominance, are driving factors of both The Dominant Idea and 'Structures, Habitus, Practices.' Bourdieu and de Cleyre demonstrate that material conditions will reproduce seemingly of their own accord unless people actively attempt to destabilize and transform the logics which uphold them. This has immediate significance. The racist nature of policing, for instance, will not simply disappear by increasing ‘diversity’ in the ranks - the logic of policing itself must be rigorously critiqued on a much deeper level. Likewise, it is because certain structures of thought are so deeply ingrained in the fabric of society that the abolition of policing seems ridiculous to so many. Without critiquing those structures of thought, the repressive practices of policing will continue uninterrupted in one form or another. These practices will also, in turn, cultivate certain perceptions among people which make the practices seem natural, necessary, and justified.

Recognizing the structuring power of pre-existing dispositions can initially seem to suggest that resistance or transformation is futile or impossible; however, by recognizing the reciprocal relationship between conceptual and material structures, the ever-present potential for change opens up. In fact, the potential for change may be even greater once this fact is established: transformative action can be undertaken in both physical spaces of oppression and conceptual or cognitive spaces of oppression. The value that this holds for practical resistance work might be understood in terms of cognitive imperialism. The importance of breaking down harmful ways of thinking, and rigorously critiquing the basic principles underlying thought, becomes evident when the structuring power of dispositions is realized. The importance of such exploration might also be made evident when looking at the very real potential for radical work under entirely restrictive conditions, such as imprisonment. Abdullah Öcalan, for instance, is one of many examples of people who have produced work which has had a significant material impact from a place of apparent disempowerment.

apocalypse now

Originally published by Counterpunch (April 2022)

Shape without form, shade without colour, 

Paralysed force, gesture without motion; 

Apocalypse is ongoing.

Species are dying at an unprecedented rate. Entire ways of life are dying: cultures, languages, peoples. For those lost, apocalypse has already come; for those on the brink, it looms ahead.

Humanity is not to blame. Particular patterns of human activity are. Specific logics and behaviors drive the eradication of life on earth: domination, destruction, development.

Anthropocene. The term is used to refer to a new historical epoch characterized by the fundamental alteration of the earth’s ecological systems as a direct result of human activity. While the recognition of fundamentally destructive patterns of behaviour is valuable, Anthropocenic thinking is dangerous.

Anthropocenic thinking risks solidifying conceptions of humanity as master, architect, of the world. It can suggest that humans were once merely adaptive. It can suggest that there is a state of equilibrium in which levels of domination and destruction are stable. It risks casting blame uniformly.

Human activity is not uniformly damaging to the earth. Certain peoples live in non-harmful ways. People are not equally complicit in forms of domination and destruction – some groups are entirely more subject than others.

To cast climate destruction as a human issue is misguided. It is behavioral.

Certain logics and forms of social organization have driven harmful engagement with the world over the past several centuries. A particularly potent concentration of these behaviours and patterns is capitalism, the primary driving force behind ecological degradation.

Over centuries, pan-European logics have established patterns of behaviour, highly intensified in colonialism and capitalism, which rely upon extraction and the exploitation of land and life. These patterns have propelled environmental degradation and species eradication to levels unprecedented in the history of human existence.

Of course, pan-European systems are not the only drivers of domination and destruction. They are, however, the most significant structures of mass domination and destruction and bear most of the blame when it comes to the structural roots of this tailspin.

In order for meaningful change to emerge, the specific behaviours that drive the socio-ecological crisis and threaten the existence of natural systems, human and non-human alike, must be identified. The particular conditions – conceptual and material – that perpetuate harmful ways of living need to be changed.

***

Problematic conditions do not result from a single structuring logic but from a concentration of perpetually generating and shifting logics.

Complex networks of conceptuality, logics, behaviours, and conditions allow harmful forms of social arrangement and organization to perpetuate.

***

The notion of human exceptionalism is a major driver of ecological destruction. This exceptionalism is naturalized to many – a matter so present it goes unseen.

Humanity and nature are not distinct realms. Humanity exists as an interdependent part of the socio-ecological system. Interdependence means that systems merge, bridge, and overlap – that nothing is entirely distinct. The socio-ecological system is not made up of a multitude of distinct parts which regularly interact on a hierarchical basis. It is fluid assemblage of ever-changing bodies which exist, at all times, in relation to one another.

Human behaviour is not separate from non-human behaviour. There is a clear connection between the destruction and domination of the non-human world and systems of destruction and dominance that humans impose upon one another.

Logics and practices guiding social organization are directly related to the logics and practices by which humans interact with the rest of the socio-ecological system. Extractive and exploitative relationships between humans are inextricably related to extractive and exploitative relationships between human and non-human.

***

Harmful logics pervade the so-called left.

There is a relentless pursuit of standardization, seeking to erase all but a specific form of life, transitioning from a diverse range of social forms to a universalised standard. There is a relentless pursuit of development, taking a certain linear evolution for granted, establishing a correlation between the passage of time and a specific progression of organization. There is a naturalization of these processes, treating them as inevitable and predetermined.

History does not unfold. There is no pre-existing structure yet to be fulfilled. Conditions transform perpetually.

The evolution of socio-ecological systems and structures is reliant upon localised interaction. The nature of this evolution is incredibly complex. The process is diverse, non-linear, and non-mechanistic. Attempting to impose a reductionist, linear structure of transformation is ineffective and dangerous. Attempting to chart transformation in the same way is prone to failure.

***

Vast strategies of transformation are required to address the ongoing socio-ecological crisis and the conditions that perpetuate it. These strategies must account for the complexity of socio-ecological systems, and the particular conditions of any given local system.

Ecological systems can be fundamentally altered by seemingly minor and insignificant adaptations and alterations. Change does not need to be centrally structured and directed to have significant impact.

An overarching framework of transformation, imposed upon local conditions, cannot adequately account for the complexity of local conditions. Instead, transformation must emerge from within localized regions. This allows it to account for the specific relations present in any given locality.

As systems are interdependent and interconnected, localized transformation does not imply isolation.

As Bookchin writes, transformation needs to include “coherent analysis of the deep-seated hierarchical relationships and systems of domination, as well as of class relationships and economic exploitation, that degrade people as well as the environment.” It must also include widespread reimagining of the conditions of human existence to establish positive forms of organization in their place.

Hierarchical forms of social organization generate systems of logic which serve to reproduce the same conditions of existence by only establishing structures compatible with their own logic.

Bourdieu’s theory of habitus is useful. Habitus refers to a system of guiding principles which emerge from conditions of existence to generate/organize thought and practice. These systems perpetuate by establishing a logic that is internalized or naturalized by the population so that following it no longer requires active reference or justification.

Once naturalized, the logic guiding and transforming individual bodies and minds, and their respective roles in social organization, is treated as an already-justified matter of consensus. This logic constantly guides thought and action to reproduce structures compatible with already existing structures. As a result, stepping beyond the boundaries of potentiality established by habitus becomes seemingly unimaginable.

Capitalist conditions of existence produce capitalist logics, which generate and guide further potential action to reproduce these conditions. Conditions of dominance produce logics of dominance, which generate and guide further potential action to reproduce these conditions.

Though habitus emerges as a dominant conditioning system, it is not the sole or total conditioning system.

Habitus can be undermined by recognizing the potency and credence of conceptualities regardless of the degree to which they are circulated. This means embracing decentralized, rhizomorphous methods of knowledge and being, and recognizing that life is a multi-dimensional, complex assemblage.

Tackling harmful structures requires engaging with complex networks of thought and material conditions of existence simultaneously. Potentiality must be recognized and materialized.

***

Society exists in direct relationships between people.

Positive society exists in every relationship built upon love and respect rather than fear and domination. The cultivation of meaningful relationships is a positive strategy of social transformation.

Positive relationships cannot blossom beneath the weight of domineering structures. The cultivation of positive society requires the eradication of harmful social structures.

***

Reimagination is key.

Reimagination means recognizing that the conditions under which we live are arbitrary. Conditions are arbitrary not because there is no logic establishing or legitimizing them but because there is no inherent necessity for them to take the form that they do.

Reimagination also means recognizing that the way that we conceptualize the world is arbitrary, and that dominant modes of perception serve to reproduce structures of domination.

It is necessary to reimagine our relationships and existence. This must be an active process, where alternatives to harmful structures and concepts are created. Doing so requires securing autonomy from imposing structures of domination and power, mentally and physically.

***

Power structures restrict the ability of individuals to detach from them. However, even if cooperation is attained by coercion or compulsion, systems perpetuate because logics are materialized via collective engagement on the part of the people.

People must secure autonomy by creating alternatives and constantly resisting the imposition of domineering structures.

This is insurrection. Insurrection is not the struggle for power. It is the struggle for autonomous life. It is the establishment of autonomy through the creation of solutions which embody and manifest local transformation, accounting for immediate conditions of existence.  It is fostering mutuality and love.

Though concepts are socially constructed, conceptuality always concentrates in the individual mind for mediation and attribution. Individuals must practice insurrection of the self. Self-insurrection embodies localization. It is a rejection of domineering institutions and arbitrary structures of organization. It embraces the multiplicitous and complex natures of individuals and societies.

Autonomy and insurrection do not mean isolation.

Radical socio-spatial geographies, where emancipatory organization emerges collectively, merge spatial and temporal being – structure and process. This tackles specific structures or institutions of power as well as the conceptualities and logics which perpetuate them. This is collective autonomy.

***

Humanity has an interdependent and complex relationship to the rest of the socio-ecological system.

Undermining dominance-based conceptuality is a necessary step in meaningfully addressing the socio-ecological crisis at hand.

Breaching the distinction between human and non-human existence is also necessary to properly account for the ways that human-human logics of dominance relate to interactions with the non-human world.

Destruction of life is a cohesive process.

***

Forms of resistance and revolution which focus upon seizure of power and the imposition of new structures of hegemony risk reproducing or commandeering logics and conditions of dominance.

Autonomous, decentralized strategies of emergence can account for the mutuality of structure and process. These strategies address the unique conditions established by various concentrations of process, structure, and logic.

The potential implications of minor interactions and physical dynamics are nearly infinite.

Transformation does not need to be overbearing to be significant. Engaging in imaginative construction of new conditions of organization and existence can actively transform conditions and relations to cultivate mutuality rather than dominance.

Alternatives to logics and behaviours of domination exist and can be fostered.

The emergence of conditions of existence and patterns of behaviour based upon interdependence and love rather than domination and destruction is necessary to alter the relationship that humans have to one another and the earth.

A single state of equilibrium does not exist. Action will always render transformation in the world. The nature of this transformation does not need to be violent.

***

Current ways of living are apocalyptic. Immediate transformation is required.

Otherwise, the cataclysmic tailspin continues; we sleepwalk to the end times.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. 

Echoes of Cold War II: Ukraine and the information war

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (May 2022)

In the autumn, American officials began warning that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent. To many, it seemed like fearmongering. Then, the Russian state made the “decision to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic” and shortly after tanks began to roll west of the parallel.

On February 14, just before the invasion, the NB Media Co-op published my essay “Echoes of Cold War: NATO Aggression and Ukraine.” The gist was that imperialist Western states are reifying a Cold War binary, that NATO expansion is at the core of much of the conflict in Ukraine, that NATO upholds American dominance in the post-war world, and that people in NATO member states must question the organization’s official narrative regarding the conflict.

The Russian invasion altered the course; but, Russia is still not alone in its guilt. The United States and its allies have managed to depict the act of invasion as the beginning of war in Ukraine. While, the invasion was an extreme acceleration, war has been ongoing since 2014, following Euromaidan and the annexation of Crimea. Imperial powers have been meddling in Ukrainian politics for even longer – before war broke out, Ukraine was a ‘soft-power’ battleground for Russia and the United States.

Western media depicts NATO as a neutral and defensive body. NATO is really a structure of military domination. It is not the cause of the current crisis but a tool which has contributed to it. It is also a driver of what liberals would call ‘instability’ in the region in question. Both the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 were used by the United States and its NATO allies for regime-change purposes in an effort to exercise control over the country. Since 2014, billions of dollars have been spent on military and cultural operations in Ukraine by NATO powers.

The current situation was not unforeseen. In 2008, NATO openly stated that Ukraine and Georgia would join the organization. Since then, its policy and practice has steadily moved toward the inclusion of these regions. In the same year, William Burns (now director of the Central Intelligence Agency) stated that:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite… from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. [Pursuing this strategy] would create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.”

In 2020, Zelenskyy issued a National Security Strategy which explicitly identified Russia as a threat and identified NATO membership as a key objective of Ukrainian policy. This act was celebrated by the Atlantic Council, NATO’s American think-tank, despite the fact that current leaders of the state, from Biden to Burns, have long warned about the dangers of Ukrainian NATO membership.

Most American officials probably do not view American foreign policy as imperialist; rather, they view it as a matter of “great-power politics.” The officials who feign shock now have really been aware for some time that such an outcome was likely or inevitable. It was simply deemed an acceptable risk for the sake of power politics. To them, the problem in Ukraine is not the invasion by Russia but the fact that the Russian pursuit of dominance in Ukraine runs contrary to their own interests.

Other NATO members, such as Canada, have been deeply involved in attempts to exert control over Ukrainian society and politics in order to expand the American sphere and undermine Russia. By effectively shifting all of the blame onto Russia, America and its allies have been able to skirt critique since the invasion in February. This analysis may seem to deny the agency of Ukrainian people; however, denial of agency is precisely the approach of imperial powers.

It is easily forgotten now that Western powers once supported Putin and that the ‘oligarchy’ in Russia is in large part a product of the West. As the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research stated:

“When the USSR collapsed, Western countries wielded their resources and power through Boris Yeltsin (1991–1999) and then Vladimir Putin (from 1999). First, the West impoverished the Russian people by destroying the country’s social net and allowing elite Russians to devour the country’s social wealth. Then, they drew the new Russian billionaires into investing in Western-driven globalisation… It was the West that helped the Russian billionaire class capture the state and ride astride Russian society.”

‘The West’ is not opposed to Putin for the sake of morality but because the Putin regime is no longer a vehicle for unfettered American expansion and extraction. Tricontinental also noted in the same article that the West overtly backed Yeltsin and Putin’s wars in Chechnya and only began to vilify Russia when Putin began to question the potential for actual integration into the Western sphere of power. War in Chechnya, like many conflicts elsewhere, was acceptable as it did not appear to threaten Western interests.

People in the West are so willing and able to instantly support Ukrainian resistance to Russian imperialism because they now find themselves aligned with Western imperial powers. As a result, their opinions and perceptions are being constantly reinforced by media, public discourse, and state bodies. Yet, when an allied state is the aggressor in an imperialist war, Western media serves to quell such unwavering support.

America’s global position of power can never be overlooked when examining conflicts such as the one in Ukraine. Isolating the war in Ukraine from it is a grave error. Yet, even anarchists at some of the most influential anarchist media outlets and collectives have bought into the idea that NATO is concerned with protecting Ukraine’s right to self-determination. This is likely the result of outrage at the violence currently being carried out by the Russian state in a European country, and the result of the effective “information war” being waged by Western powers.

William Burns, director of the CIA, has stated that the agency is waging an information war with Russia. A CIA ‘information war’ is an exercise in psychological warfare. This is no secret – the CIA was explicitly founded in 1947 in order to carry out covert “psychological warfare” in the post-war era. It quickly changed the term from psychological warfare to “information activities” to alleviate public unease. It should go without saying that a psychological warfare operation carried out by the agency should not be accepted uncritically.

The information war underwrites media coverage. Sometimes, propaganda is obvious, such as the wave of articles in serious news outlets showing Ukrainian soldiers holding puppies and kittens. Other coverage is less overtly propagandistic. It is the tone and the selection of facts. Though Western media outlets portray themselves as objective disseminators of free speech and truth, they are inextricably tangled up with states and major corporations. This does not mean that government agencies are necessarily dictating coverage by media outlets, however, it does mean that media outlets rely on and reproduce state perspectives and dispositions.

Canadian coverage is in no way insulated from this problem. In 2021, an investigation in Passage revealed that Canadian “editorial boards have supported Canada’s war and regime change efforts since the First World War 98 per cent of the time.” A 2021 investigation by Ricochet and Jacobin also ‘revealed’ that Canadian television panels are overwhelmingly dominated by corporate lobbyists. In the early years of the Cold War, the CBC was specifically ordered to disseminate propaganda by the government of Canada. Contemporarily, direct orders to disseminate propaganda are not typically necessary. The media is structured in such a way that it will automatically reproduce state ideology. Debate exists only within certain limits.

The contrast between the coverage of Western wars in non-European parts of the world and the war in Ukraine is striking. While Western media outlets make a point of using the spelling Kyiv rather than Kiev, they also actively participate in the erasure of Palestine as a nation by refusing to even name it and by white-washing Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people. This coverage is not disconnected from political activity. Despite the fact that Israel is committing ever-accelerating apartheid, Canadian arms exports to the country are increasing. It is no mere oversight that the fact that civilians made up 63% of people killed in Israeli assaults on Palestine last year did not result in the same level of outrage as the killing of civilians did in Bucha.

States and state officials are drawing direct parallels to the Cold War. When talking about ‘the Cold War,’ people think of covert operations and espionage. Yet, the fact that Western states may not be acting honestly now is somehow unimaginable. The fact that the same organizations that carried out unethical activities during the Cold War under the pretence of protecting freedom might still carry out those activities should not come as a surprise to anyone, particularly as one of the predominant organizations in question was proven to engage in torture on a systemic level during the so-called War on Terror.

It is important to note that Cold War imperialism was not entirely militaristic. Bhakti Shringarpure has noted that overt violence and physical/geographical mapmaking in the Cold War was paired with “a second plane… committed to the use of soft power that mainly aimed to influence opinion and often even claimed to improve people’s conditions through aid and education.” She also states that, while military power is often condemned, “there is a tendency to profess that soft power has inadvertent positive consequences,” and treat it apologetically. In actuality, the two planes of power are inextricable.

Western attempts to shape and control Ukrainian politics are imperialist actions. The immense levels of funding that the West pumps into certain Ukrainian cultural and media organizations is a form of imperialism. It is also a continuation of Cold War practice. For example, during the Cold War, the CIA established an organization in Italy called the Italian Association for Cultural Freedom, which became the “center of a federation of about a hundred independent cultural groups” championing liberal democracy in the region. This organization’s creation cannot be disconnected from the fact that the CIA also interfered in Italy’s federal election a few years earlier to ensure that the Christian Democrat Party won the election.

In Ukraine, the immense funding pumped into cultural and media activities by organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy should not be disconnected from the American interference in the 2004 and 2014 ‘revolutions’ or Ukraine’s apparent desire for American involvement in its own affairs. It should also not be disconnected from the immense build-up in the area of NATO troops or from the support being given to military organizations. Furthermore, these activities should not be disconnected from operations elsewhere, where the American state and its allies are involved in other self-interested military operations.

It cannot be ignored that The Kyiv Independent, for instance, the golden egg of independent Ukrainian news sources, has ties to the American and Canadian governments. Twitter, the hub of breaking news, has effectively been operating as an affiliate of Western states, silencing or hushing voices which do not conform to the official narrative and amplifying those that do. The hypocrisy of Twitter’s approach to flagging ‘state-affiliated’ sources is also clear, shielding the BBC, the CBC, and other Western state media organizations entirely from this classification.

Media coverage of ‘Azov’ is another serious matter of concern. After the siege of Mariupol, Azov is being treated even more heroically than before. Western media has been watering down the reality of the neo-Nazi organization in order to avoid undermining Ukraine’s national defence. Yet, simply recognizing the clear existence of fascist and neo-Nazi groups does not give legitimacy to Putin’s false justifications for invasion. It is necessary to identify and critique these groups despite the ongoing war because there is simply never a justification for neo-Nazism. The Russian invasion has likely served to accelerate the neo-Nazi threat and Western states have been actively aiding the ideological and military strength of their most effective organizations.

People are quick to dismiss the presence of neo-Nazi militias as insignificant simply because far-right political parties in Ukraine have not had electoral support to the same degree as far-right parties in neighboring regions. This is a ridiculous neutralization of the severity of their threat and relies upon a false equivalence. Simply put, how many ballots are equal to a tank? Furthermore, neo-Nazism is not ‘merely’ a far-right ideology. Neo-Nazism is a celebration of Nazism and the Holocaust. It is an attempt to revitalize the ideology and the material conditions which correspond to it. To pump weaponry into the hands of those calling for renewed Holocaust is never acceptable (the fact that Russian neo-Nazis also exist does nothing to change this). Yet, battalions with explicit ties to neo-Nazism are regularly celebrated in Western and Ukrainian media as heroes and freedom fighters.

People such as Hilary Clinton have compared contemporary Ukraine to Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the USSR invaded. Her analogy has a two-pronged effect – the first is to reify the Cold War narrative and the second is to highlight the apparent effectiveness of proxy warfare. However, this should be a major red flag. The consequences of pumping weapons and money into the hands of paramilitary organizations fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s are well-documented.

As was the case in the Cold War era, much of this ‘information war’ is being fought by private individuals (without direct direction from the state) who simply believe that they are doing the right thing. It is important to acknowledge that even when not directly orchestrated by the government, activity can benefit state power and serve to reproduce state ideology. When state ideology is accepted and bought into by the population, it can engage in patterns of reproduction and circulation seemingly of its own accord. As a result, it is imperative to remain critical.

It is important to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine; however, this condemnation is meaningless unless it is paired with broader critique of imperialist structures and the hyper-militarization that continues to fuel this war. It is also necessary to recognize the absolute danger that exists in treating Ukraine as a battleground in a ‘European’ proxy war with Russia. Furthermore, it is necessary to recognize that propaganda is not only spread by Russia and that turning a blind-eye to this fact contributes to further war.

In the wake of the Russian invasion, people in the West are actively or passively latching onto ‘liberal democracy’ and American imperial power. Fear of ‘disinformation’ has been used to stoke pro-military sentiments and silence critique. The media is currently replacing the threat of Islamic extremism with the threat of Russian aggression – an embrasure of effective Cold War practice, which allows the American state to overcome the blowback of the war on terror and the Trump administration to reclaim its position as a righteous and benevolent military empire.

Against Imperialism ii

Originally published by Counterpunch (March 2022)

Weapon stocks rise as the bodies fall. In this social media techno-dystopia, the charts come to hand in real time alongside footage of the bombs hitting homes – a guarantee on investment.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine must come to an end. The Russian state is ultra-reactionary, repressive, and imperialist. Criticism of NATO does not undermine these facts.

There is a prevailing conception that current criticism of NATO is ‘whataboutism’ used to excuse Russian imperialism. This is not the case. Instead, criticism is intended to demonstrate that aligning with Western powers means supporting the same actions that are rightly condemned when carried out by the Russian state.

Critics highlight the hypocrisy of Western condemnation of Russian actions not to play the contrarian but in an attempt to address imperialism in a meaningful way. As Vijay Prashad noted, “the same week that Russian forces entered Ukraine, the United States launched airstrikes in Somalia, Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen, and Israel struck Syria and Palestinians in Gaza.”

The world has long been divided into ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ peoples in the Western mind. Eurocentrism and white-supremacy have allowed Canadians, Americans, and Europeans to rage at Russian actions while ignoring the acts of imperialism that they themselves placidly contribute to.

The reason that Ukrainian victims of war are treated far differently from those in Syria, Yemen, or Palestine is not simply because the aggressor is Russian but also because the victim is categorized among the civilized people of the world.

It takes a peculiar form of historical amnesia to believe that Western criticism of Russian imperialism is benevolent. The invasion of Iraq and the formula of extradition and torture that America developed in the aftermath has been forgotten, I suppose. The ‘civilized’ have forgotten the carpet bombs and chemical weapons that were used in Vietnam, the lives of two-million civilians, the intentional destruction of farmland and food sources in an attempt to displace populations. It has been forgotten that Indigenous peoples who attempt to protect their land from further expansion and destruction by Western states are still met with militarized force.

Instances of imperial aggression carried out by Western powers are brought up in order to demonstrate the contradictory nature of current condemnation. This contradiction is not highlighted for the sake of smugness or deflection but because it drastically alters the nature of condemnation.

Uncritically accepting the position that Russia alone carries blame in this war contributes to further war. This does not mean abandoning those defending their homes in Ukraine against an imperialist invasion. Yet, it is important to question why people are willing to condemn horrific acts of war only when the specific acts are also being condemned by their own governments and media networks.

Imperialism does not exist in isolation. No instance of imperialism is an isolated ‘crime’ which just happened to occur – imperial wars are not blunders or missteps – they are elements of an ongoing process. Isolating one instance from the other distorts the situation at hand and prevents it from being meaningfully examined.

For those on the ground, defending themselves against Russian state forces, there is an overwhelming and immediate aggressor. People resisting imperialism should have support and praise. The anger that some Ukrainians feel at Westerners who ignore Russian imperialism at a distance is understandable.

From within NATO member states, it is still wrong to view this invasion in isolation and engage in self-serving outrage only because it is easy to do so now. It is imperative to reflect on a deeper level. This reflection involves examining our own role in the war, the connection between this war and others across the world, and its historical context.

Drawing on history is not deflection. History is the interpretation of past occurrences. We are necessarily alienated from it, which inevitably distorts, but also gives the opportunity for reflection – it allows events to be viewed contextually. This enables the critique of past occurrences in order to alter present actions and shape future conditions.

Putin’s claims of de-Nazification are self-serving. Ukraine is not a “Nazi state” and Putin’s primary concern in Ukraine is not the presence of Nazis. Yet, this fact does not undermine the legitimately concerning neo-Nazi and fascist presence in Ukraine. It also does not undermine the fact that this presence is being supported by Western powers and weaponized to combat Russia.

The support for neo-Nazi and fascist elements in Ukraine is not disconnected from the disproportionate attention that this war has received in Western media. The distinction between acceptable levels of violence inflicted on Europeans and non-Europeans should be central to this discussion. It should not be ignored that, as Césaire said, Europeans legitimized and cultivated the practices of Nazism on non-Europeans long before they were brought home.

Eurocentrism and white-supremacy are elements integral to European fascism and, in the case of Nazism, are particularly so. In Ukraine, ultra-nationalistic support has swollen in the face of imperialism. Those who attempt to downplay the threat of neo-Nazism in Ukraine often point to the fact that it primarily exists externally to parliamentary government and that, among the population, most people are not supporters of the far-right.

While it is certainly good that neo-Nazi parties are not winning in terms of votes, an organized militant force can exert disproportionate influence when compared to the electoral power of the same number of voters. Furthermore, a particularly definitive aspect of the fascist state is that it begins externally to the state apparatus – initially, fascism is always a minority element. The state apparatus, particularly its repressive elements, contain elements of fascism – breeds fascism – but fascist states emerge when fascists latch onto the state and attempt to establish control from an external position.

It is not inevitable that fascism will take hold in Ukraine and fascism should not be equated with all Ukrainian nationalism. Still, a degree of fascist Ukrainian nationalism, and neo-Nazism, is being explicitly condoned and supported. There is simply no moral justification for neo-Nazi support. It is also not difficult to envision a situation down the line where baffled historians attempt to understand the short-sightedness of Western powers giving arms to neo-Nazi militants in a war zone rife with ethno-nationalist conflict.

The West is not concerned with Russian imperialism because it is morally wrong. It is concerned that Russian imperialism undermines its authority. The treatment of this war in Western media and public discourse has been actively fueling and contributing to the ideological solidification of imperial power and to the legitimacy of imperial war when its victims are non-European.

Russian imperialism must be resisted, of course, but it cannot be resisted by embracing Western imperial power.

AGainst imperialism

Originally published by Counterpunch (February 2022)

“the working class are to be sacrificed that a small clique of rulers and armament makers may sate their lust for power and their greed for wealth.”

– James Connolly, 1914

Russia’s invasion of Western Ukraine is reactionary and imperialist. Yet, the Russian state cannot be cast as the sole antagonist in this conflict. Critics cannot afford to go silent now and implicitly condone Western imperial expansion.

People must reject the binary and refuse to allow themselves to be sucked into an imperialist struggle where the exploited classes are pitted against one another for the sake of state power and the enrichment of the elite.

Most Western leftists have so far avoided critiquing Russian activity in Ukraine. This is due to the overwhelming degree of criticism that Russia receives in Western media. Levying further critique at the Russian state risks giving legitimacy to NATO activity.

It is also important to note, without condoning repression, that Russia is less expansive than NATO and is a lesser threat to global liberty. NATO’s global military activity has been well-documented and critiqued. To focus on Ukraine, it is important to note that NATO should not be viewed as a legitimate critic of imperialist action.

NATO has spent the past thirty years expanding across Eastern Europe, situating itself firmly along Russian borders. Before the annexation of Crimea, NATO member states co-opted social unrest to install a friendly government in Ukraine. These states have continued to interfere in Ukraine’s political and economic structure since.

In addition, NATO has been actively training Ukraine’s military, including its National Guard, for years. NATO forces specifically met with and supported Azov Battalion, the National Guard’s most effective unit, which is a militant neo-Nazi organization.

The leader of Azov has explicitly stated that “the historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the white nations of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” On a tour of Azov’s headquarters, Time reporters were also told that Azov’s mission is “to form a coalition of far-right groups across the Western world, with the ultimate aim of taking power throughout Europe.”

These neo-Nazi militants have been actively waging war in Eastern Ukraine with Western backing since 2014.

The United States, NATO’s largest member, maintains global dominance with military force. On February 18, 2022, Foreign Policy published an article by Matthew Kroenig titled “Washington Must Prepare for War With Both Russia and China.” In this article, Kroenig stated that:

“First, Washington should increase defense spending. Contrary to those who claim that constrained resources will force tough choices, the United States can afford to outspend Russia and China at the same time. The United States possesses 24 percent of global GDP compared to a combined 19 percent in China and Russia. This year, the United States will spend $778 billion on defense compared to only $310 billion in Russia and China.”

This statement is incredibly revealing. Though the United States continuously depicts Russia and China as threats to peace, its own military spending is more than double the combined total of both countries. In order to contain these states, Kroenig also suggests that:

“Washington could always take a page from its Cold War playbook and rely more heavily on nuclear weapons to offset the local, conventional advantages of its rivals. The presence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe helped deter the massive Soviet Red Army for decades. Similarly, the United States could rely on threatening nonstrategic nuclear strikes to deter and, as a last resort, thwart a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan or a Russian tank incursion into Europe.”

As there is nothing less effective than an empty threat, threatening nuclear strikes would meant that the state would have to be willing to actually launch them.

Matthew Kroenig is not just a columnist – Kroenig has worked for both the Pentagon and the CIA and is now a Deputy Director for Atlantic Council, one of the most influential think-tanks in Washington. Atlantic Council is funded in large part by defence contractors and is a de-facto NATO organization. In fact, its counterpart in Canada changed its name from Atlantic Council of Canada to the NATO Association of Canada in 2015.

In keeping with American Cold War strategy, the Atlantic Council and the NATO Association primarily advocate for a transatlantic alliance. This alliance cements itself by establishing strong military, economic, political, and cultural ties.

Kroenig is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR is a private think-tank, funded by foundations and corporate donors, which was established by wealthy Americans following the First World War. The significance of this is that his position of influence is one of deep entanglement with both the corporate elite and the military apparatus.

The military industrial complex serves to both enrich the capitalist elite but also to further solidify the state’s position of dominance in the world. There is no benevolence in this militarization.

America’s ‘defence’ of Ukraine is entirely self-interested – all it takes is a glance at its relationship with Palestine to demonstrate that the American state does not legitimately have an interest in the right to national self-determination.

It should go without saying that NATO’s imperialism does not mean that Russia is benevolent. The Russian state is repressive. Contrary to lofty comparisons between Putin and Stalin, it is also capitalist. In particular, it continues to embody the kind of gangster capitalism that America supported in the country in the Yeltsin years.

There are elements of ‘the left’ which uncritically support Russia and China because they are viewed as states with the potential to upset America’s position of global dominance – because they undermine the notion of a unipolar world.

While America’s position of dominance means that it is definitely worthy of more critique than lesser powers, it is important to remember that a multi-polar world dominated by capitalist elites and their repressive states is not a world of liberty.

The war in Ukraine is not revolutionary. It is a war controlled by capitalist nation states. In such a war, the only winner can be the elite. Ordinary people will suffer tremendously. There will be siege and sanction, violence will unfold, reactionary elements will be fueled, and the consequences will become impossible to chart. War is unpredictable – a chaotic endeavor.

Conflict between the great powers has been brewing for generations. It has emerged and dissipated repeatedly. By some clumsy fortune, nuclear war was avoided decades ago – but the dice won’t always come up sevens – and, while most American and Russian officials probably do not actually want a war with one another, “the great danger remains the unplanned one,” as George Woodcock wrote in 1954.

Those who carry out imperialist wars are not the ones who benefit from them. To those who play dress up in the halls of government, people on the ground are mere pawns to be sacrificed for lust of wealth and power. To avoid such wars, people must stand resolutely against imperialism in all its forms.

Reject Russia – Reject America – Reject repressive states worldwide. Stand for people, for freedom, and for liberty. For love, respect, and mutuality.

Echoes of Cold War: NATO aggression and Ukraine

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (February 2022)

On January 26, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland commented on the stand-off between NATO and Russia regarding Ukraine, stating: 

“This is a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. This is a direct challenge to the rules-based international order and an attempt to replace it with a world in which might makes right, and where the great powers, the nuclear-armed powers, have the authority to redraw the borders, dictate the foreign policies, and even rewrite the constitutions of sovereign democracies whose only fault is that they are smaller and their militaries are not as powerful.”

This statement is hollow reification of the Cold War binary – democracy versus authoritarianism, good versus evil. As part of the NATO alliance, Canada is doing precisely what Freeland condemns. 

NATO is an aggressive, expansionist force. America, its most powerful member, has been at war perpetually since the Second World War. It has also participated in 70 foreign coups and has been involved in assassination plots on at least 30 foreign leaders. Its drone strike program of targeted killings has solidified assassination as a legitimate contemporary practice. Though these strikes have not yet targeted world leaders, the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was very close. 

Canada’s complicity in violence is no secret. It is not shy about arms trade, colonial dispossession, or imperialism. From the Middle East to Latin America to the Indigenous nations of this continent, it is a country that has always practiced the principle of “might makes right.” 

Canada has also been meddling in Ukrainian politics for decades. Like the United States, it supported the coup in 2014. Canada has spent huge amounts of money to promote “democracy” in the country, supporting Western-friendly organizations, and $700 million dollars on military aid since 2014. It has promised $120 million more. 

Freeland’s talk of anti-authoritarianism ignores that Canada and the United States have been actively training and supporting Ukrainian neo-Nazi militants – a particularly sickening decision as over 1.2 million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis in Ukraine during the Holocaust, something that Freeland should be well aware of. 

In May 2014, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia called Azov Battalion formed to combat Russian separatists. In November 2014, Azov Battalion was incorporated into the National Guard, making it an official part of the military. This was done with the knowledge that it was a neo-Nazi group.

Azov’s Nazism is explicit. Its members are adorned with Nazi emblems and its leader wrote a manifesto stating that the “the historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the white nations of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” 

An investigation by Time in 2021 demonstrated that Azov has become an influential part of global neo-Nazism since its incorporation into Ukraine’s National Guard. It has a political party, recruits internationally, and communicates with neo-Nazi terrorist groups such as Atomwaffen Division. 

Azov’s main recruitment center is located in a building owned by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. During a tour of the facility, Time reporters were told that Azov’s mission is “to form a coalition of far-right groups across the Western world, with the ultimate aim of taking power throughout Europe.”

In 2018, Canadian military officials specifically met with Azov. When they did, they expressed concern not because of its explicit Nazism but due to potential exposure in the media. American officials have also been photographed meeting with the unit. 

In 2020, the UN passed a resolution condemning Nazism. Two countries voted against it – Ukraine and the United States. Canada abstained. Right now, NATO is contributing to the militarized resurgence of Nazism in a region that saw some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust for the sake of its power struggle with Russia. 

Russian natural gas pipelines seem to lie behind much of NATO’s increased interest in the region. Like America, Canada is an extraction empire. Successive governments have shown that policy must always focus on expanding the market for oil and gas, and expanding into the alleged $1.2-trillion EU market has the duplicitous value of undermining Russian power. 

Russia’s military presence is imperialist but not unprovoked. NATO was specifically designed to combat the USSR in Europe. When the Cold War ‘ended,’ NATO promised not to expand further. But, since 1999, 14 Eastern European countries have joined the organization, causing bases to spread towards Russian borders. Today’s posturing is a continuation of the Cold War.

The Cold War is not reducible to a power struggle between two competing pan-European blocs. It was an “afterlife” of European colonialism, a struggle over regions of extraction. It was also a struggle between colonized peoples and colonial powers – a time of revolution. More than proxy war, there was imperialism. The false binary erases those who felt its impacts most severely.

The Cold War began when the Second World War ended and America found itself in a position of global power. Former powers were in ruins but America’s industrial production had quadrupled. Its military presence extended into occupied nations globally – a presence maintained to the present day, making the Department of Defence the largest employer and landholder in the world. 

In 1948, George Kennan, architect of the Cold War containment strategy, authored a report stating that: 

“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”

America suddenly controlled the extraction empire, the collective pool of colonial wealth. Its only major threats at this time were the USSR and China – states which opposed the very economic system that American power relied upon, which seemed more benevolent to many decolonizing peoples across the globe. 

After the war, European countries restructured via the Marshall Plan. Though the Marshall Plan is commonly understood as an aid program intended to bail out countries devastated by war, it primarily served to solidify America’s newfound position of dominance. At the time, the State Department explicitly referred to it as a means of “political warfare.”

In order to receive Marshall Plan funds, European countries were required to join the Organisation of European Economic Cooperation and take structural measures to ensure compatibility with American capitalism. These measures enabled American control over European markets and their chains of extraction. 

In the post-war world, liberalism became the ideology of American expansion and NATO its bulwark in Europe. Liberalism is not a vague ideology of support for freedom, as its proponents suggest, but a political practice compatible with specific social structures. In its American form, liberalism naturalizes the state’s dominant socio-political structures and its predominant form of domination: capitalism. 

The corrupt genius of American liberalism was melding capitalism to democracy. The spread of democracy became the spread of liberalism, the spread of capitalism, the spread of societies beholden to American extraction. 

As a post-war wave of decolonization took hold, liberalism gave postcolonial states the semblance of independence while upholding the relationship of extraction. Regions of extraction that threatened legitimate independence were met with physical intervention. 

This is not abstract theoretical musing draped across history. When America launched its Guatemalan Coup in 1954, a democratically elected government was removed from power specifically to further American economic interests. The coup included lists of officials to be assassinated and communists to be executed in the aftermath.

The previous year in Iran, the elected government was toppled following the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Britain’s largest overseas concern. An American-British collaborative operation code-named TPAJAX removed Prime Minister Mosaddeq from office and replaced him. The recent overthrow of Evo Morales demonstrates that this is ongoing. 

The Cold War has not ended. For America, Cold War involved fostering an environment conducive to the solidification and expansion of its position of dominance in the post-war world, facilitating the transfer of imperial power. States like Canada accepted their position of privilege within this sphere and accumulated wealth as a result.

NATO’s interest in Ukraine is not benevolent. It is about maintaining a position of control over the transatlantic sphere. Likewise, its condemnation of Russia is not due to the state’s repressive nature but due to its unwillingness to submit to American authority, its incompatibility with American interests, and its threat to American power. 

Canada’s media will always support its wars – or, it has done so in 98 per cent of cases, historically speaking – but people on the ground need to question the narrative, curtail warmongering, and bring the Cold War to an end. 

Katie taylor and amanda serrano make history

Originally published by Counterpunch (May 2022)

On April 30th, Katie Taylor, the undisputed lightweight champion of the world, successfully defended her WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF lightweight titles against Amanda Serrano, a seven-division world champion, at Madison Square Garden. Taylor and Serrano became the first women in history to headline a card at the ‘Mecca of boxing’.

Katie Taylor’s career is almost unbelievable. In 2001, she competed in the first officially sanctioned women’s boxing match in Ireland. In 2012, she brought a gold medal home from the Olympic Games in London. In 2016, she turned pro and by 2019 she had five world titles. Further still, she spearheaded a renaissance in women’s boxing in Ireland and the United Kingdom, ushering in a new era.

Taylor went into the fight on Saturday with a record of 20-0-0 with 6 knockouts. Serrano had a record of 42-1-1 with 30 knockouts. I predicted a draw in the lead-up to the fight and, though Taylor edged a victory on the cards, a draw would not have been an unjust outcome. In any case, the bout will likely be fight of the year. It is a fight that will go down in history as one of the greats, context aside.

Serrano, of Brooklyn, looked slick fighting on the front foot. She stalked Taylor, pushing her back into the ropes with a firm jab. She maintained range and when the distance closed she unleashed flurries in the pocket – making use of some of the most effective rear-hand uppercuts I have ever seen. At the end of the fifth, Taylor took shots that would have likely ended the fight for any of Serrano’s former opponents.

It takes a skilful craftsman to control a fight with a taller opponent on the back foot; however, Taylor did so masterfully. She faded back mere inches to avoid straight shots and then propelled herself in to return combinations of thundering counterpunches. When necessary, she held the center and boxed within Serrano’s range. As always, she demonstrated pure heart and unwavering determination.

There is no sense in being anything but short and sweet because Taylor and Serrano said it all on Saturday. In a year when boxing has found itself under the microscope once again – when cartels and corruption are at the forefront of everyone’s mind – the boxers put it all on the line and demonstrated just how magnificent the Sweet Science can be. Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano have altered the course of boxing history irreparably, and the title for the greatest ever Irish fighter has been claimed.

The war in Afghanistan and Canadian media propaganda

Originally published by Counterpunch (January 2021); republished by NB Media Co-op (January 2021)

On August 30, 2021, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, signalling the end of a twenty-year occupation. Since this withdrawal, the Canadian media has relentlessly pursued justification for the war. Criticism has been entirely restricted to critiques of the withdrawal and of the “failure” of the mission. This is a continuation of the Canadian media’s inability to effectively critique the military machine.

The American-led invasion of Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of nearly six million people. Rather than criticizing the consequences of withdrawal, the war itself should be the subject of criticism. It was an imperialist endeavor ever-marked by atrocity and bloodshed.

On November 11, amidst a wave of propaganda pieces, CBC published an article titled ‘We Did Our Best’: Canadian veterans of Afghanistan reflect on a year of loss. This article opens by stating that: “​​The rapid and shocking fall of Afghanistan to Taliban forces this summer has forced Canadian soldiers who served and sacrificed there during Canada’s 13-year involvement in the conflict to re-confront the meaning of their role in the country.” One soldier quoted states that “We did our best to provide the space for a possible future to emerge, and that just didn’t pan out.”

Such an approach is grounded in the notion that the war in Afghanistan was noble. This has been the framework for all coverage. For instance, a CBC article post-withdrawal stated that “For those closest to international efforts to build a civil society in Afghanistan, the events of the past month have been a bitter pill to swallow.” Another CBC article quoted a soldier who stated that “Over there, you can’t be anything other than what they say you are. You can’t be a man who is openly gay or you die. They don’t even believe that women are humans.” And, “You look at history, not one civilization has been able to come in there and tame the Afghan people and it’s not about that. It’s about helping them help themselves.”

Purely colonial logic allows the myth of benevolent conquest to prevail. When Canada joined the invasion of Afghanistan, on October 7, 2001, politicians supported this across the board on the grounds that it was necessary to defend “freedom and democracy” and fight the war on terror. This narrative framed coverage of the war throughout and persists to this day. Now, the idea being forwarded is that military conquest allowed Afghanistan to “civilize.” Criticism of the withdrawal process suggests that continued military occupation would enable the civilizing process to continue. This is colonial logic and follows a tradition stemming back hundreds of years.

It should go without saying that the war in Afghanistan was in no way fought for the sake of women’s rights. It is not even possible to meaningfully critique gender-based oppression while glorifying imperialism and neo-colonialism. The media has also consistently suggested that withdrawal has driven “a mounting humanitarian catastrophe.” The fact that the invasion itself was a major humanitarian catastrophe is ignored.

The war in Afghanistan was not about freedom, democracy, or the Afghan people. It was part of a campaign of imperialist aggression spearheaded by the United States and supported by the pan-European sphere of accumulation. Conquering and occupying non-European territories has allowed for intensive extraction and wealth accumulation. This campaign has been status-quo since the end of the Second World War, when the United States by-passed former powers to secure a position of global dominance. It is a process which continues to accelerate.

Since the 9/11 attacks, America has launched at least 91,340 airstrikes, which alone have killed between 22,679 and 48,308 civilians. The vast majority of these deaths occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite attempts to sanitize it, this kind of drone warfare is particularly horrific. Stephen Graham writes that psychologists in Palestine, for instance, have noticed “a whole generation of Gazan children suffering deep psychological trauma because of the continual exposure to the buzzing sounds of drones high above, machines that can spit lethal violence upon them and their families at any time.” This is terrorism.

The war on terror has been marked by Western powers using terror to control and subjugate. Paranoia instilled in populations has allowed states to effortlessly breach human rights, enforce authoritarian measures, and undertake massive military campaigns across the globe. When desirable, these anti-terror measures are applied to Indigenous peoples and others who threaten the state’s colonial regime at home. The media has contributed immensely to this by continuously bolstering and justifying state ideology.

On October 7, 2021, exactly twenty years after Canada joined the invasion, the Immigration and Refugee Board held a tribunal regarding Canada’s attempts to permanently ban Chelsea Manning from entering the country. Manning’s supposed crime is leaking secret documents detailing war crimes, such as unlawful killings, torture, and human rights abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The decision will be made sometime this year. It is undeniable that Canada is guilty of such war crimes. Among other things, it wilfully turned prisoners over to allies knowing that they would be tortured. The Canadian state’s attempts to ban Manning are an attempt to maintain control of the war narrative and mitigate critique.

The Canadian media, particularly CBC, serves as state propaganda. This does not necessarily mean that it receives direct instruction from state bodies. Instead, the overall structure ensures that state perspectives dominate coverage and commentary. Given the evidence of systemic war crimes that emerged when Australia’s role in Afghanistan was examined, it is no surprise that Canada has no interest in examining the mission critically. Controlling the narrative also enables the state to continue to exert colonial dominance internally and externally.

Ignoring the nature of such coverage contributes to ongoing colonialist and imperialist efforts at home and abroad. It is the duty of independent media to undertake rigorous analysis of the claims made by corporate and state outlets. Demonstrating that there is more credence to less-circulated perspectives can help unsettle the foundations of state dominance, conceptually and materially. This allows for stronger resistance to future wars and ongoing colonial practices.

Cultivate a communal response to COVID but reject policing and surveillance

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (December 2021)

On December 20, the Public Health Agency of Canada admitted that it monitored 33 million mobile devices in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. The population of Canada is only about 38 million.

Public Health has stated that this surveillance was carried out to better understand people’s response to pandemic measures. Yet, it was done without the consent or awareness of the surveilled. The agency has also stated that it now plans to track cell phones for at least five more years for analytical purposes.

It has already been revealed that the Canadian military carried out surveillance operations on domestic populations throughout the pandemic. These operations included analyzing and collecting social media posts by visitors and patients at long term care homes, after the military was deployed to them, and passing critical comments on to government personnel. In addition, political targets, including Black Lives Matter activists, were surveilled for unspecified reasons.

In 2020, the military began an operation to manipulate public opinion to increase adherence to government direction and reduce civil disobedience. This was an explicit attempt to manufacture consent and control subjects. The techniques used were drawn directly from military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Over one-million-dollars was spent on training for this operation before it was shut down. Even after being officially shut down, the operation continued for six more months.

In another operation, a military propaganda unit in Nova Scotia forged a document from the Department of Lands and Forestry warning residents that wolves had been reintroduced into the area. They also tested propaganda systems by playing wolf calls from loudspeakers. This was unrelated to health measures but exploited present conditions. The military claims that this particular operation was the result of incompetent individuals and a lack of oversight. However, other operations demonstrate that it was not isolated.

The military exploited the pandemic to experiment with the application of psychological operations developed for warfare to domestic populations. It has been claimed that the military did not receive permission from the federal government to carry this out. However, regardless of whether or not governmental permission was explicitly given, the campaign must be viewed in direct relation to other state efforts to combat the pandemic and control populations.

The prevalence of right-wing conspiracy theories and a general desire to aid COVID response efforts quells much critique. However, the state has consistently put the interests of business owners and professional classes over the interests of the workers. It has enabled the wealthiest elites to reap profits, landlords to raise rents, developers to drive up housing prices, and corporations to capitalize on the need for vaccinations. It is time to acknowledge that it is necessary to support public action to stop the pandemic and simultaneously condemn repressive state action.

As the Public Health Agency of Canada has demonstrated, government bodies are state, not public, institutions. And the state has responded to the pandemic by attempting to exert extreme control over populations. Rather than restructuring systems of inequity and exploitation, which allowed the pandemic to unfold so destructively, it has focused upon policing.

These authoritarian acts cannot be viewed in isolation and should not be understood as errors in judgement. Since the nineteenth century, Canada has consistently surveilled populations in an attempt to control and quell political dissent. The actions of the military and Public Health are not new. They are part of an ever-intensifying practice. Unprecedented conditions established by the pandemic have provided a particularly intense environment in which these efforts have concentrated.

The Public Health Agency secretly tracked the locations and movements of most people in Canada to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown measures – measures of physical public control. This surveillance was only revealed after the fact. This is cause for concern, regardless of claims of benevolence. The agency has since stated that data was “de-identified” and, therefore, that there are “no concerns under the Privacy Act.” Such a response attests to the normalization of mass surveillance and the perception that the consent of those surveilled does not need to be given. The fact that this was undertaken in relation to the pandemic should not reduce its significance; nor should the fact that this was carried out by a health rather than military body.

By adhering to lockdown measures and public health guidance, people put immense faith in the hands of state authorities. Public Health exploited this trust. The connection between this surveillance and previously identified military operations cannot be ignored as the military has been deployed specifically to carry out public health activities during this pandemic.

We should be cultivating a consensual and collaborative response to COVID-19. The state’s reliance on repression does not allow for this. Far from addressing the societal factors which have contributed to the severity of the pandemic, it continues to reinforce them. Without effectively critiquing structural issues, this response will continue. The risk, and inevitability, of repetition will remain.

We know whose land it is

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (October 2021)

On October 14, a memo was sent to all Government of New Brunswick employees by Ted Flemming, New Brunswick’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice and Public Safety, ordering employees not to “make or issue territorial or title land acknowledgements.”

Wolastoqewi Kci-Sakom spasaqsit possesom (Ron Tremblay, the Wolastoq Grand Chief morningstar burning) issued a strong response, identifying the memo as a continuation of genocide, reiterating that “we Wolastoqewiyik have never surrendered one speck of Earth, one drop of Water or one breath of Air.”

Flemming’s memo states that his order is in relation to “a number of legal actions which have been initiated by certain First Nations against the province, including a claim to ownership and title to over 60% of the province.” It also states that “while territorial and title acknowledgements may not be issued by GNB, there may be some few situations where it is desirable to issue an ancestral land acknowledgement.” In these rare cases, employees are ordered not to deviate from an approved acknowledgement attached to the memo, which emphasizes the absence of “terms such as ‘unceded’ or ‘unsurrendered’.”

Land acknowledgements have already been criticized as hypocritical when they are not accompanied by meaningful steps to recognize Indigenous sovereignty. With this memo, the Government of New Brunswick removes even the symbolic significance of these statements. It, instead, uses the acknowledgement to reinforce the state’s seizure of Indigenous land.

The GNB’s approved acknowledgement states that “We respectfully acknowledge the territory in which we gather as the ancestral homelands of the Wolastoqey, Mi’gmaw, and Peskotomuhkati peoples.” This is carefully worded to ensure that the speaker does not signify that territories referred to are still Indigenous lands. Restricting recognition to the existence of “ancestral homelands” presents Indigenous sovereignty as something that no longer exists.

The legal action referred to is likely a lawsuit filed by the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick seeking recognition of title rights. The six chiefs of the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick issued a response to Flemming’s memo, which notes that “We were forced to file a title claim because our rights continue to be ignored by GNB. Now, in response to this, the province seeks to further trample our rights and erase us from the history of this province.”

The lands claimed by the Government of New Brunswick were not ceded. Section 25(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees rights recognized by the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763, which guarantees that all land is considered Aboriginal land until ceded by a treaty. This is engrained in Canada’s constitution and serves as one of the fundamental pillars of its claim to legitimacy.

Flemming’s memo accelerates dispossession by attempting to prevent even rhetorical recognition of the legitimacy of Indigenous sovereignty on these lands. The fact that this was sparked by a legal case brought forth by the Wolastoqey Nation is evidence of the fact even playing by the government’s rules and participating in its legal system is not enough to afford recognition and respect.

In their response, the six chiefs state that “The Wolastoqey Nation is not seeking the return of all of the land in its traditional territory through the title claim. We made it very clear when giving the crown notice of our claim in October 2020 that we were not looking to displace homeowners in New Brunswick.” The lawsuit filed does not challenge people simply living on unceded land or request a full return of all territory. It requests that the government adheres to its own commitments.

Indigenous peoples are entitled to far more. This land is Indigenous. Regardless of treaty obligations, settlers must recognize the actual circumstances which led to the domination of Indigenous lands by European settlers. The government’s land acknowledgements may represent little more than symbolic gestures intended to placate people and quell resistance; however, Flemming’s memo represents the government’s active efforts to further dispossess Indigenous peoples and erase their histories. It is an attempt to double down on the colonial myth of legitimate authority.

The Canadian state, including the Government of New Brunswick, so strongly resists recognition of historical facts because the legitimacy of its existence depends entirely upon the distortion of these facts. Once the history of settler colonialism is actually recognized, the legal justifications for the continued possession of these lands can no longer be seen as legitimate.

The stormont election and ireland

Originally published by Counterpunch (May 2022)

The election in the North of Ireland has drawn a lot of attention in recent days. For the first time in history, in apparent contradiction to the very purpose of the state, people in the North elected Sinn Féin as the largest party in the assembly. As a result, Sinn Féin’s leader, Michelle O’Neill, is eligible for the position of first minister. Sinn Féin is, of course, the former political arm of the IRA.

Though the election is significant, it is not the “momentous blow to Protestant-oriented Unionism” that it has been interpreted as by many. Unionist parties still maintain over 42% of seats in the assembly. Nationalist parties hold 40.5% and ‘neutral’ parties hold the rest. One of the major changes is that these so-called neutral parties, such as Alliance, have drawn support from the more-reactionary unionist ones.

Yet, as Odrán Waldron keenly noted in Ebb Magazine, “58.8 per cent of Alliance’s voters favoured the continuation of British rule in Ireland in 2019, with just 25.6 per cent favouring the reunification of Ireland.” The ‘neutrality’ of their apparent non-sectarianism is not legitimately neutral – neutrality is, of course, a political position which is an impossibility. Waldron also notes that the British still control public funds in the North, including taxation. It also controls ‘foreign policy’ and military matters.

Further still, the model by which the political process functions in the North is British. As the BBC recently said, power sharing means that in “any government there must be representatives from both the nationalist community – who favour unity with the Republic of Ireland – and unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. The idea is that, whatever their historic differences, both communities have a vested interest in the system.” The power sharing process is designed to keep the system running – to uphold a British state structure, ensure peace, and maintain the status-quo.

It is important to note that the British model of state also maintains dominance in the South, where the Irish elite embraced British political structures as well as capitalism, its all-encompassing economic structure, following the revolution and civil war. Though the Republic of Ireland now has so-called political independence, it is still not free of the colonial claw. As James Connolly wrote in 1897:

“If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”

When England colonized Ireland, it imposed an economic structure which enabled dominance and extraction. It forced the concept of property on the people and established chains which enabled the English elite to perpetually extract wealth from the island and its people. A form of government was established which ensured that this system kept running – its contradictions meant that it would collapse otherwise. Today, the chains remain and wealth extraction continues, and whether a class of Irishmen – and men it is, for capitalism and colonialism are patriarchal structures – are also growing rich off the subjugation of the rest does not matter. The states in place both North and South are designed to uphold the structures of dominance that Britain imposed.

Therefore, the North is not alone in its continued reliance on Britain; however, it maintains direct British oversight and a parliamentary structure explicitly designed to cement Britain’s governmental control over the region. The region itself maintains a large British population which has established long-standing roots in Ireland – a population which has its own classes of exploited and disenfranchised people, suffering as a direct result of British structures of domination. It is this population which has been used to uphold British rule and to justify the British state’s unwillingness to release Ireland from its grasp.

It cannot be forgotten why the current system of governance in the North exists. It is not long since Irish Catholics in the North took to the streets to demand civil rights and were met with violence by the British state. It is not long since these people were subject to arbitrary internment and torture, since guns were planted in young Irishmen’s cars to justify arrests and passed into the hands of young loyalists to outsource executions. It is not long since a peace process was agreed to, which brought the most overt expressions of colonial violence on the island to a halt.

The still unspoken truth is that the British state bears total responsibility for the so-called sectarian violence in the North. ‘The Troubles’ were a product of a long-standing colonial system and its unbending repression of Irish people. The violence erupted when the Irish people asked for rights and the British responded by gunning them down. Irish nationalists are not innocent of disgraceful acts during the war that followed; yet, it is only because they resisted that they have anything at all. The British state not only carried out the bulk of the violence during this period but was only willing to bring an end to it on its own terms – the ‘peace process’ is a result of Irish people deciding that enough was enough, that the violence was too much and too pointless, because the British would never take their guns off Irish streets.

Now, Irish nationalists in the North try to oust British control through the channels of British government. Symbolically, it is significant that the post of first minister will go to an Irish nationalist in Stormont. Sinn Féin will inevitably push for a border poll with renewed vigor and may one day convince the British to allow such a vote to occur. Yet, for now, the system prevails. The DUP, the major unionist party in the North, unwilling to play second fiddle, is currently blocking MLAs from taking their seats in the assembly. Unless they begin to play along, Michelle O’Neill will not take her post and a government will not be formed. Power will once again go to Westminster and British control will be direct, for that is the neutral state of the North.

Ireland’s drive to join nato

Originally published by Counterpunch (June 2022)

Micheál Martin, Taoiseach of Ireland, recently said that “We need to reflect on military non-alignment in Ireland and our military neutrality. We are not politically neutral… We don’t need a referendum to join NATO. That’s a policy decision of government.” Martin’s claim that the government can make the decision to join the military body without a referendum cannot be overlooked. This renewed interest in NATO is driven, of course, by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

After securing independence from British rule, Ireland embraced a policy of military neutrality to avoid fighting in imperialist wars. However, because the Irish elite embraced the British model, Ireland found a place in the pan-European sphere of accumulation. The Irish state has already disgraced those who fought against British imperialism by striving for full integration into this sphere, which was once led by Britain and has been led by the United States since the end of the Second World War. Joining NATO would be a full abandonment of its anticolonial history.

In Sidecar, Lili Lynch recently broke down the problematic nature of Finland and Sweden’s desire to join NATO. She wrote that, for Sweden, “joining the West” means “binding oneself to a US-led power bloc and simultaneously doing away with any nominally socialist institutions – a process that has already been underway for decades.” For Ireland, it means binding oneself and doing away with any nominal claim to anticolonial legitimacy. With this motion, the Irish state is not only abandoning the rest of the colonial world but actively seeking to solidify its position of colonial superiority.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States suddenly found itself in control of Europe’s extraction empire. It held 60% of the world’s wealth and had quadrupled industrial production while former imperial powers were battered by war. Its policy and practice explicitly focused on maintaining this newfound position of dominance. As a result, its drive to ‘rebuild’ Europe in the aftermath of war, facilitated by NATO and the Marshall Plan, required European countries to take structural measures which enforced dependence on America’s capitalist interests.

To be part of ‘the West’ – to resist the totalitarianism that lurked like a shrouded beast in the East – meant embracing an environment conducive to the solidification and expansion of America’s position of dominance in the post-war world, facilitating the transfer of imperial power from Europe. The Irish state fell in line in many ways but has, so far, managed to avoid joining the imperialist military alliance. Yet, for those in power, joining NATO is the next necessary step in the desperate attempt to prove that Ireland is a productive part of ‘the West.’ When Martin says that Ireland is not politically neutral, he really means to signal allegiance to those same political structures that ravaged the Irish people for centuries.

Ireland is able to do so because the Irish have weaseled their way into the ranks of white supremacy. It has become a part of Europe and, as a result, feels far more sympathy for, and commonality with, any European than the colonized peoples of the so-called Global South. This has become evident in the treatment of war in Ukraine. As Olena Lyubchenko wrote in a recent article:

“we are told time and again by Western and Ukrainian elites that ‘Ukraine is fighting a European war’ and ‘Ukraine is defending Europe’. In this context, the emerging idea of ‘Ukrainianness’ and its equation with ‘Europeanness’ is mediated through a conceptualization of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Ukraine’s sovereignty and self-determination are increasingly understood by local elites to be bound up with incorporation into ‘fortress Europe’ and the making of the ‘Ukrainian nation’ as ‘white’ and ‘European.’”

Ireland has already secured its place on the security council and participates in European ‘defence’ missions to a limited extent. It is now steadily beating away those pesky principles which have so-far prevented the country from sitting alongside states such as France and Canada at the table of power. At this rate, Martin and Varadkar might as well take down the plaques at the GPO and lop the head off the statue of Connolly they keep tucked away behind the bus station in Dublin. Better yet, they can put up new ones at Kilmainham that read: ‘where the bastards died.’

The outpouring of sympathy for Ukraine and the unwavering support for its national defence efforts is not likewise matched by expressions of support for others facing similar situations around the globe. This is a key factor that needs to be examined. As Lyubchenko also wrote, “Surely, the circumstances confronting the citizens of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Ethiopia are also exceptional.” Where, then, are the cries to align with some power bloc determined to oppose the violence inflicted on the people of Afghanistan and Gaza?

There is a history of anticolonial solidarity in Ireland. In fact, as James Beirne writes, a dialectical tension exists in Ireland between the colonial and the anticolonial. There is likely more support for Palestine among Irish people than in almost any other Western state. Yet, the colonial bend in Ireland is showing force. Joining ‘the West’ is convenient to those, such as the Irish, who are able to benefit from its sphere of power. Support for the Ukrainian people can come in many forms but joining NATO is not, really, about support for Ukraine – it is instead about support for the European sphere and Ireland’s position in it.

Ireland walked a fine line during the so-called Cold War by making expressions of solidarity with colonized peoples without rocking the boat too heavily. In many ways it recognized then that struggles globally could not be reduced to elements of a power struggle between so-called totalitarianism and the free world. In distant corners of the world, it saw imperialism and revolution and knew its history well enough to know where it stood. It recognized that wars of the Cold War were, in many ways, a continuation of European colonialism.

This reality was hard to ignore when there were British soldiers on Irish streets and techniques of torture and control were being practiced in the North before being exported to the South. It was, of course, a NATO member which led one of the largest and dirtiest wars in modern European history in the still British controlled North of Ireland. Though a peace process was agreed to decades ago, it cannot be ignored that the overall structures which led to and enabled British imperialism and colonialism in Ireland have never changed.

It must not be forgotten that NATO actions are not benevolent and are not designed to uphold independence or to prevent violence. NATO is a structure of military dominance and its actions regarding Ukraine cannot be divorced from its overall structures and practices. It is not a body which strives to uphold liberty and freedom. It is part of a system by which the United States and the pan-European sphere enriches itself via domination over and extraction from the colonized people of the world. Joining NATO means embracing this entirely.

Irish settlers must support decolonization

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (July 2021)

In 1975, two boys playing in County Galway, Ireland, came across a hole filled with dozens of children’s skeletons. Decades later, the site was revealed to be a mass grave containing 800 children from the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. In 2010, 222 infant bodies from another home were discovered in a mass grave in Dublin. In 2015, a commission investigation was opened. This year, the investigation concluded that about 9,000 children died in Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland between 1922 and 1998.

Mother and Baby Homes were institutions in which approximately 80,000 unwed mothers gave birth to their children and were separated from them. Many children were then trafficked for adoption or were subject to medical experimentation. These homes were established and overseen by Catholic and protestant orders, and were closely related to the infamous Magdalene Laundries which housed and worked an estimated 30,000 women, largely on the basis of perceived sexual activity or desire. Like Mother and Baby Homes, laundries buried women in mass unmarked graves.

Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse was rampant in these institutions. This was not incidental. Abuse was the basis of their existence. Women lived in forced silence and followed rigid religious codes of behavior. This was intended to establish habits of life that would force penance on “fallen women.” While living at the institutions, women served as cheap labour for the state, the church, and private corporations. Thousands died; an untold number of lives were destroyed.

The discovery of unmarked graves in Ireland was met with a myriad of responses. Some were shocked, many were unsurprised, and the state went on the defensive. Because laundries and homes were run by Christian orders, overseen by nuns and priests, the state shirked responsibility for decades. The institutions were characterized as religious and, therefore, private. In reality, the institutions carried out their duties in collaboration with, and on behalf of, the Irish state.

Since the uncovering of mass graves on sites of residential schools, much discussion has focused upon the church. Trudeau has demanded a papal apology. While the church certainly holds significant blame, the brunt of the blame lies with the Canadian state. The main beneficiary of the residential school system is the state and the settler-colonial system that it upholds. Apologies and promises of funding are insufficient. Canada can, and must, take real responsibility. Flags should not be flying at half-mast. They should be taken down.

There are stark differences between the homes in Ireland and residential schools in Canada. In Canada, residential schools were specifically intended to eradicate Indigenous culture and ways of life. The schools served as part of Canada’s genocidal campaign against Indigenous people. However, as in Ireland, these institutions provided fully immersive environments which could undertake state action in an intensely concentrated manner. They were used to outsource dirty work.

Religion was used to help carry out the colonial project in Canada, as in countless other cases, including in Ireland. Like this continent, Ireland was colonized by the English. It officially secured independence in 1922. This was followed by years of civil war and, eventually, the Troubles. Independence from settler-colonial rule came at the cost of significant bloodshed and an immense loss of culture. Today, Irish society exists on a British model. Though this means the solidification of colonial structures, it also allows Irish people a place in the pan-European sphere of accumulation.

In 1985, representatives from the American Indian Movement travelled to Ireland to commemorate the deaths of Irish hunger strikers in an expression of solidarity with Ireland’s struggle against British colonialism. Today, 4.6 million Canadians claim Irish heritage. Anyone who does so has an obligation to proclaim solidarity with Indigenous peoples, recognize the hypocrisy of their settler-colonial existence, and demand that the Canadian state make every effort to repatriate Indigenous land and life, even if this means the dissolution of state power.

While the commission established to investigate the practices of Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland was an acceptance of state responsibility, it was also too limited to uncover and account for all of the abuses and deaths perpetuated against women and children by the state. In many ways, it failed. Here, there must be a more substantial investigation into the residential school system.

Trudeau has stated that “While we cannot bring back those who were lost, we can – and we will – tell the truth of these injustices, and we will forever honour their memory.” If he is sincere, Canada needs to relinquish authority. The Canadian government cannot be trusted to investigate its own crimes and prescribe a solution. Canada’s responsibility is to support a full external investigation and learn how to decolonize, legitimately.

The Pandemic is not isolated

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (February 2021)

In 2018, the WWF released a report indicating that 60 per cent of animals have been eradicated since 1970. For freshwater animals, the number is as high as 83 per cent. More recently, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services stated that a million species are at risk of extinction: this includes 40 per cent of amphibians and a third of marine mammals. Another report states that insect populations are declining at a rate of 2.8 per cent a year, and that 40 per cent of insect species may be extinct within the next few decades.

These numbers should bring society to a halt. Instead, we steadily ramp up destructive ways of living. In all of these reports, human activity is identified as the driving force. However, it’s important to note that human activity is not inherently or uniformly damaging to the earth. Instead, particular forms of social organization have driven harmful engagement over the past several centuries, encompassing the most intense and cascading period of decline.

Humanity exists as an interdependent part of the socio-ecological system. Interdependence does not just mean that humanity needs water to drink, food to eat, and air to breathe. It means that systems merge, bridge, and overlap–that nothing is entirely distinct. It means that the destruction of “nature” has a direct impact on humanity. It also means that the logics that allow human relationships to be built upon domination rather than love are the same ones that allow humanity’s relationship to the non-human world to be so destructive.

The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic results from human activity. The IPBES has stated that “the same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on the environment.” It also stated that preventing future pandemics requires behavioral transformation, and that the risk of future pandemics “can be significantly lowered by reducing the human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity.”

Our way of life is driving the eradication of life on earth. The ongoing pandemic highlights the complex and intersecting consequences of our behaviour. To bring it home further, those who have born the brunt of the pandemic are those who have been positioned vulnerably by the structures and practices of normal life.

In June, it was reported that 81 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in Canada were in long-term care homes. The conditions of care homes were not unknown prior to this pandemic. In fact, a few months before the pandemic hit, the government changed laws to prevent care home workers from accessing arbitration rather than addressing their concerns. These concerns included insufficiently staffed care homes, not enough hours of care available to residents, and staff members who are so underpaid that they must rely on food banks to live.

The way that society is structured allowed the pandemic to take hold. Instead of gearing up to return to the status quo, lives can be saved by deciding to use this disruption as an opportunity to transform. This requires accepting responsibility for the damage inflicted–blame which does not lie with isolated people seeking socialization but with the systems in place that have caused it to unfold so destructively.

Over centuries, logics of domination and development have established patterns of behaviour which rely upon extraction and the exploitation of land and life. These patterns have propelled environmental degradation and species eradication to unprecedented levels. A particularly potent concentration of these behaviours and patterns is capitalism, the primary driving force behind ecological degradation.

The ecological crisis results from laws of life constantly structured toward domination and development. Under capitalism, adhering to these laws is unavoidable. For one thing, capitalism requires the dispossession of people from the means of sustenance. This means alienating people from the land and establishing an extractive relationship. In order to gain access to the means of sustenance, people must sell their labour power to those who own the land so that they can participate in the market system and buy what they need to survive. Market imperatives mean that production and capital accumulation must consistently increase, consistently intensifying extraction and exploitation.

The response to COVID-19 has demonstrated that change can occur rapidly. In April 2020, global greenhouse gas emissions dropped between 10 per cent and 30 per cent. This was an unintentional by-product of attempts to slow the pandemic. With intentional effort, permanent change can be made. However, in order to have a real impact, the systems at fault must be actively transformed.

In New Brunswick, as elsewhere, harmful ways of living have become naturalized. People have internalized ways of thinking that cause cycles of destruction to continue. When the province, paradoxically, cannot imagine sustenance without the destruction of nature, the need for change is clear. When Saint John hosts the $10 billion dollar Irving empire but suffers from a child poverty rate of 33 per cent, the need for change is clear. When care homes are a threat to the life of their residents, the need for change is clear.

There has been celebration of New Brunswick’s economic outlook post-pandemic due to predictions of “rebound” and “growth.” In reality, this is no cause for celebration. The growing economic situation is grounded in relationships that are directly harmful.

New Brunswick is a large place with a small population. Here, localized transformation can lead to significant change. For localized transformation to emerge, widespread efforts need to be made. People are willing to drastically alter their habits to save lives. Directing this toward progressive alternatives, rather than reactionary measures, is key.

In the eyes of the Jackal

Originally published by The Fight City (April 2021)

In her 1986 treatise, On Boxing, Joyce Carol Oates writes that “the boxer meets an opponent who is a dream-distortion of himself in the sense that his weaknesses, his capacity to fail and to be seriously hurt … [are] strengths belonging to the other.” The opponent is always the boxer’s shadow-self. These words are not just poignant prose, but representative of the most insightful exploration of boxing philosophy ever written. And Saturday’s super featherweight showdown between Carl Frampton and Jamel Herring demonstrates the incisiveness of her analysis.

Frampton, ‘The Jackal,’ is thirty-four years old. Herring is thirty-five. The men have two losses a piece. In years past, just two defeats at this stage of their careers would have been regarded as impressive. But in the current climate, it foreshadows the final bell. The business of boxing is heartless and promoters are willing to waste little on blemished records. For either man, a third defeat could spell the end of a career. Worse yet, it could relegate a former champion to the dreaded role of stepping stone for younger, hungrier jackals.

For years, Frampton was hailed as a promising prospect. Under the tutelage of Barry McGuigan, one of the greatest of Irish boxers, Carl knocked out a series of impressive opponents: Martinez, Parodi, Cazares. In 2015, he went to war with Alejandro Gonzalez on the banks of the Rio Grande. In the first round, Frampton was dropped with a short jab to the chest. A barrage of body shots and low blows put him down twice more. Still, “The Jackal” showed his grit by battling back with determination and managing to win a unanimous decision.

In 2016, Frampton solidified his standing by taking a world title from Scott Quigg. However, just months later, he was stripped of this belt for refusing to fight the Cuban master, Guillermo Rigondeaux. Instead of contesting, Frampton moved up to featherweight. It was a wise move. Though Frampton had talent and heart to spare, Rigondeaux was a technical genius. At featherweight, Frampton dethroned Leo Santa Cruz to salvage his legacy and his reputation. But six months later he was drawn into a toe-to-toe dogfight in the rematch and the Mexican featherweight took back his title.

In 2018, the Jackal faced a true veteran, Nonito Donaire, in his hometown of Belfast and Frampton produced his finest performance to date. With effective aggression, masterful head and upper body movement, and an unwavering chin, he walked the future Hall of Famer down for twelve rounds to claim a unanimous decision victory. Once again, Frampton seemed destined for supremacy, but the tides turned when he faced Josh Warrington in Manchester. From the opening bell, the Irishman was battered with flurries of hooks. He fought hard but, in the end, found himself unable to best the Leeds Warrior.

At the age of 32, this loss did not bode well for the future prospects of “The Jackal.” Frampton took an easy comeback fight against Tyler McReary almost a year later and won handily, but prior to his next scheduled bout he broke his left hand, the setback sparking rumors of retirement. Instead, nine months after the McReary win he knocked out Darrell Traynor with a left hook. It was poetic, almost calculated. Now, Frampton is on the brink of reclaiming another world title and re-establishing his elite-level status. But standing in his way is a slippery American with a sharp jab and significant advantages in height and reach.

“The Jackal” has been clear. All he wants is to be a legend of Irish boxing. And, when this era passes, there is little doubt he will find his place among its other greats: Steve Collins, Barry McGuigan, Katie Taylor. He rose through the ranks as one of the most successful boxers in Irish history. It is not his talent or courage that ever wavered, but his value as an attraction, a product, in this cutthroat business. Thus, it is not so much Frampton’s legacy that stands on the line this Saturday, but his time and place in the ring. And time, as Oates reminds us, is the invisible adversary of all boxers.

By most accounts, the odds favour “The Jackal.” He may step inside the American’s reach and wear him down. He might even lock him in a corner and finish the job. And if not craftsmanship, sheer will may be just enough to carry Frampton through to his biggest win in almost three years. But, if the Irishman falters, his weakness will be Herring’s strength. His miscalculations will become prey for a fighter just as hungry, just as ambitious. Either way, as Herring vs Frampton plays out, Oscar Valdez, Gervonta Davis, Joseph Diaz Jr., and others, eagerly await their chance to challenge the winner.

This spring, blood is in the air. And young jackals are watching, waiting to feast.

New brunswick’s alt-right history is anything but new

Originally published by NB Media Co-op (January 2021)

A recent CBC news article noted that there has been a rise in “alt-right” activity in New Brunswick in recent years. While the surge in groups identifying as alt-right is concerning, their presence is not indicative of anything new. It is representative of something deeply engrained and consistently ignored in New Brunswick’s history.

New Brunswick has a long and sustained history of white supremacy. It’s the basis of the settler colonial state. The existence and dominance of the settler colonial state is the manifestation of white nationalism.

New Brunswick, and the Canadian state more broadly, relies upon the genocide of Indigenous peoples. The Canadian state has not only subjugated, eradicated, and dispossessed Indigenous peoples, it has also established a system by which Indigenous peoples must accept settler colonial ways of being in order to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the state. This is engrained in both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Alt-right is a term referring to various white supremacist belief sets. Alt-right groups will continue to emerge because they are rooted in the same fundamental principles and frameworks as the Canadian system. While New Brunswickers like to champion the province’s role in the underground railroad, they refuse to acknowledge its long and brutal history of slavery. This history exists in memory, in newspaper ads for runaways, and in the shackles that hung in attics across the province. It exists in the prison and incarceration system. Unfortunately, it does not exist in the mind of most New Brunswickers.

What distinguishes alt-right groups from dominant socio-political structures is that alt-right groups believe that the status-quo is drifting. They believe that mainstream society has become less supportive of certain principles, behaviors, and practices historically engrained in society. Alt-right groups believe that these systems should be unashamedly championed. For the most part, they exist outside of the state and attempt to encourage the overt embrasure of white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and patriarchal structures by the state.

A historic example which sheds light on the current situation, and reveals its absence of novelty, is the fact that New Brunswick once had a large Ku Klux Klan presence. This is vaguely referred to in the article mentioned above. However, this presence was not insignificant and is worthy of more sustained attention. In fact, James Lord, Charlotte County MLA from 1925-30, was vice president of the Ku Klux Klan of Kanada. Richard Hanson, Mayor of Fredericton, MP, and federal Leader of the Opposition, also maintained KKK ties. While helping them secure copyright in NB, he referred to the KKK as “a highly important order” and said “I want to do whatever I can for them.” In total, seventeen chapters spread across New Brunswick in the 20s and 30s.

Like alt-right groups today, the Klan emerged because it provided an organization that manifested what many people already believed. The Klan drew on ideas engrained in Canadian society and embraced them unashamedly. Lord and Hanson were not alone – many politicians across the country were Klan members. Others relished Klan support.

The Klan of the 20s has more in common with present movements than people likely realize. In Canada, the KKK was concerned that Anglo heritage was under attack. Like alt-right groups, the Klan particularly concerned itself with targeting immigration, racialized people, and the ever-growing specter of communism. One motto of the Klan was “White, Gentile, Protestant civilization.” Gentile, in this case, meaning non-Jewish.

Klansmen identified strongly with British Protestantism. As French people and Catholics make up a large portion of New Brunswick’s population, much of the Klan’s activity was focused upon anti-French and anti-Catholic activity. The KKK considered maintaining the dominance and hegemony of Anglo settlers to be a patriotic duty. As all settler populations relied upon the domination and displacement of Indigenous peoples, the Klan was more concerned with struggling against other settler groups than with Indigenous peoples directly.

Like alt-right groups today, Klan members were caught in webs of conspiracies and believed that secret elements were working against them. Like alt-right groups today, they embraced nationalistic symbols and the Canadian flag. Like alt-right groups today, they called themselves patriots and claimed to protect the traditional family structure. Like alt-right groups today, they saw themselves as moral crusaders defending white civilization against decay.

There are, of course, a number of differences between the socio-political concerns of Anglo Protestants in the 1920s and white nationalists today. For one thing, white nationalism has no shortage of support among the descendants of French and Irish settlers. The similarities are still telling.

White supremacy and the alt-right cannot be treated as a fringe movement or a new emergence. Its roots are well established and widely cast. It stems from the same foundation as New Brunswick and Canada. Until this is reckoned with, it will persist indefinitely.