Palestine, genocide resumes with greater intensity

Through this ever-lengthening chain of events, the breach of the truce in Gaza by the Zionist government and the resumption of genocidal war with greater intensity than ever goes virtually unnoticed despite the barbaric addition of a blockade to starve Gazans. Now, the neo-fascist Trump not only endorses the resumption of the murderous aspect of genocide but adds ethnic cleansing. This is fortunately out of reach for the moment due to Gazan refusal through a thousand sufferings, and popular pressure on the dictatorships most likely to collaborate.

Is it paradoxically because of the strong Trump-Netanyahu association and the open persecution of pro-Palestinian racialised activism in the United States by Trump that our mainstream media finally show more sympathy for the Palestinian cause?

Nevertheless, the Palestinian tragedy remains the least of the Canadian government’s concerns. It sits on its half-hearted Liberal-style positions, particularly regarding arms exports. This is denounced by the “Vote Palestine” campaign, “developed in consultation with the Palestinian community and its solidarity partners across Canada” and which demands to “impose a bilateral arms embargo on Israel”, to “end Canada’s involvement in illegal Israeli settlements”, to “fight anti-Palestinian racism and protect freedom of expression on Palestine”, to “recognise the State of Palestine”, and to “properly fund relief efforts in Gaza, including UNRWA”.

For racialised undocumented people and LGBTQ+, it’s hell facing a closed Canada

Trump adds layer upon layer to the usual anti-immigrant wake of US administrations. Recently, he did not fear defying the judicial system to deport hundreds of Venezuelans to the quasi-slavery prison built to measure by the autocratic president of El Salvador. Then he decided to remove legal status from half a million Latin American migrants, plunging them into the worst anxieties. Trump particularly targets LGBTQ+ people and even more so transgender individuals, to the point of “’cleansing’ references to the ’transgender delusion’”. More broadly, this ’cleansing’ extends to establishing a ’newspeak’ eliminating, among other things, any reference to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, accused of imaginary crimes.

And so the Montreal daily Le Devoir headlines that “The American LGBTQ+ exodus to Canada has begun” with “hundreds of applications per week”. Should we be surprised, when Trump during his inauguration speech “hammered home what he was already pushing during his campaign: ’From today, the official policy of the United States government will be that there are only two sexes, male and female’”, he declared, before signing a presidential decree to that effect in the evening.“Should we be surprised that LGBTQ+ people who have the financial and social means say”We will [...] pay whatever it takes to get out of this hell“. Is Canada welcoming them with open arms?”The short answer from immigration lawyer Stéphanie Valois: no. Even if, theoretically, Americans can request asylum, like all other people, ’being accepted would be very very difficult’, states the co-president of the Québec Association of Immigration Lawyers (AQAADI).“The”nation" strikes again on abortion rights: women must bear children

As for abortion rights, the 2022 Supreme Court ruling abolishing Roe v. Wade and thus the federal guarantee of the right to abortion is not enough for Trump. He took additional anti-abortion measures in front of thousands of “pro-life” demonstrators in Washington. “This gathering took place the day after the pardon granted by the new Republican president to 23 people who had participated in demonstrations against voluntary termination of pregnancy and were being prosecuted under the previous administration of Democrat Joe Biden.” The American president has repealed two decrees aimed at protecting certain women’s access to reproductive health. “At the same time, his head of diplomacy ordered the halt of all American public subsidies for abortion abroad”. And what about Vice President Vance’s statement who “insulted childless women in 2021 by calling them ’childless cat ladies’”?

The narrow nationalism of Quebec’s CAQ and PQ has long taken the Trumpist path

Trumpian ultra-nationalism is not afraid to go all the way in the fight against “wokeism”, as the right labels, to better stigmatise it, the struggle and defence of oppressed people. The narrow Duplessis-style nationalism of the CAQ has long taken this path, from the refusal to recognise systemic racism during the Joyce Echaquan affair, and despite the appalling precedent of the Quebec City Grand Mosque massacre, to the strengthening of the Islamophobic Bill 21. The case of Solidaire MP Haroun Bouazzi has more than shown not only the inherent racism of the main party in Quebec’s National Assembly but also of the other party with petty nationalism that dominates the polls by competing for the former’s electorate. That the former cheerleader of the so-called PQ Charter of Values is today the sponsor of the bill enhancing Bill 21 is itself revealing.

Neo-fascist ultranationalism demands the reproduction of the traditional family

Trump’s general policy only appears chaotic. It attacks the entire working people, let’s say 90% of the population. However, it targets first and foremost those on the front line, people who are oppressed because they don’t conform to the traditional societal norms of the bourgeois family. The backbone of such families is the transmission of inheritance to the male descendants... preferably sons rather than daughters. This leads to the persecution of genders that don’t conform to the reproduction of the traditional family, LGBTQ+ people.

This persecution extends to racialised people who are deemed irresponsible both with regard to the law, hence their police profiling, and with regard to marital fidelity. (Note that racism, by marginalising these racialised people, can paradoxically generate illegality and broken families.) Prejudices towards disabled people give rise to the same stereotypes. As for women, needless to say that their sexual relationships must be under male surveillance. Males, on the other hand, can mate without limits. The neo-fascistisation of the world brings us back to this conservative dogmatism that all major religions feed on and that their fundamentalism often transforms into a sordid caricature.

Québec Solidaire will speak to “workers”... what about oppressed people?

To get out of the hole, the leadership of Québec Solidaire now claims to no longer address the “middle classes”, interpreted as a mixture of the professional petty bourgeoisie and the most educated layer of the proletariat. The youth of these strata are not necessarily the best paid, many are only scraping by. This middle ground is recognisable as the Solidaire leadership/permanent staff/militants, full of leniency for oppressed peopprehSocio-economically speaking they often share their precariousness and poverty, if only during their student years.

But electoral opportunism dictates that the party will from now on address ’workers’. The old left, passionate about union struggles and uncomfortable with anything different, won’t complain. “For her [Ruba Ghazal, party spokesperson], the choice is clear; it’s the fight for workers’ rights and against the repercussions of the rising cost of living [’’and the deterioration of our public services’’ adds the party president in her letter to members, Editor’s note] that should be at the top of the Solidaire programme before the next election.” Could this bring out of mothballs the non-pragmatic demand for nationalisations? It is far from evident. What becomes of all those people who are victims of all kinds of oppression and attacks from the ultra-nationalist governments that proliferate and of which the Trump-Putin duo is the world leader?

The “weak” are the majority and tomorrow’s “strong” majority will become “weak”

Has the Solidaire leadership noticed that women being half the sky, the non-whites and non-males are by far the majority of the Québec population and the vast majority of the world population? The minority of white heterosexual men in good health that sits at the pinnacle of the social pyramid, having taken care to co-opt token people from oppressed groups to look good, runs a strong risk tomorrow of taking a great plunge. This plunge will mainly affect those who are not part of the 1%, the great collector of capitalist surplus value. Even for the latter, nothing is guaranteed: think of the long painful agony of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple.

They are not immune to accidents, chronic illness, significant permanent disability, unemployment or simply the inexorable and often debilitating old age. When one thinks seriously about it, at the starting point the national or global majority belongs to the camp of the “weak” and the majority of today’s “strong” camp will pass tomorrow to the camp of the “weak”. This awareness that everyone is concerned should produce a reflex of united front for the defense of oppressed people, by the same token a united front against their worst persecutors, neo-fascist forces and governments, if not simply ultra-nationalist ones. It’s a matter of elementary humanism.

The united front of oppressed people to pave the way for one for care and connection

The demand for a united front is not limited to the “woke” struggle, one might say. The ongoing and accelerating catastrophe of climate collapse and the sixth great extinction threatens the entire world by definition. Certainly, a few multibillionaires, just as they are unironically seeking “eternal youth”, are preparing a hideout for themselves and their descendants when the earth becomes an oven. The common people, however, are condemned to live on earth.

Quebec Solidaire’s “worker” turn suggests that it is disregarding its former priority, namely the climate struggle and biodiversity. Yet the alternative of a society of solidarity, care and connection, an expression originating from the main French trade union confederation, responds to the socio-economic needs of the working world. It responds by drastically reducing, and for greater well-being, direct energy needs and indirect ones for the manufacturing of an orgy of materials for mass consumption in the style of new green capitalism.

The collectivisation of eco-efficient social housing for all and that of wall-to-wall electrified, comfortable and frequent public transport free the budget of popular households from its two major weights which additionally place on it the yoke of financial capital. This draconian dematerialisation, all the more so as the Québec economy is already endowed with natural resources and adequate means of production for housing construction and that of collective means of transport, frees Québec from the tariff blackmail à la Trump. Non-meat food through agrobiology, a more difficult challenge, will do the rest, spurred on by a policy of administered prices decoupled from the market.

Socialised property as a consequence of care and connection, not its cause

As care for people and Mother Earth is incompatible with profitability and degrowth is incompatible with accumulation, private ownership of the means of production is doomed to fail in a society of care and connection. To achieve this, the socialisation of national savings, energy, communication, transport, housing and pharmacy will result. On the other hand, the reverse is not true because state monopolies can make private enterprise profitable. The provincial state-owned Hydro-Québec can, more efficiently than the private sector, double electricity production to satisfy the growth of green capitalism. As a bonus, the society of care and connection will allow for sharing reduced working hours and creating the necessary solidarity to welcome and support the “wretched of the earth”. All of which shows that the game is worth the candle. It will be a tough battle against capitalism which, as it becomes neo-fascist, will not give up anything.

Marc Bonhomme