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Showing posts with label The Walrus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Walrus. Show all posts

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Etobicoke Park Stairs, Niki Ashton, Jagmeet Singh & more -- 2017 on The Left Chapter in review

2017 saw over 300 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter. We also saw record numbers of hits and readers including the top piece in The Left Chapter's history.

It also saw the launch of new pages and features such as the Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project.

Consistently popular as well were our vintage postcard and photography posts such as Leningrad During the Days of the War and in Peacetime -- A Photographic Exposition of Resistance, Victory and Reconstruction, Vintage Vegas 1958 - A Colour Postcard Folder of the Classic Hotels and Toronto Working Class and Immigrant Life 1910 - A Photographic Exposition. 

I want to thank all of our readers and contributors very much for their feedback, support, criticisms and engagement.

The year had many posts that came very, very close to making this list including posts like John Horgan lets the facade drop with cynical, ugly comments after green-lighting Site C, In the shadow of October -- Reflecting on the USSR and Soviet power, If there is no left, there is no left -- A short note on the politics of appeasement and socialist ideology and Omar Khadr is 'innocent' even if he is 'guilty'. 

We also had contributions from other writers that were widely read and shared and included Scotty Hertz's trenchant and brilliantly titled The Constant Image Gardeners, Marko Velimir Kobak's The Meaning of October on its Centenary looking at the Russian Revolution's legacy, and Ammario Reza's Polling Success or Electoral Flop? Religious Neutrality Laws that asks if bills like Quebec's C-61 are really as popular as people think they are.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed this year and I look forward to seeing what interesting viewpoints and arguments we see next year!

(Remember that if you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share or if you want to share a petition/appeal or upcoming event you can send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!)

Here, without further ado, are the top ten posts (in terms of hits) on The Left Chapter in 2017:

1) Etobicoke "park stairs" story is a perfect example of the crass, reactionary, anti-regulatory nonsense that led to the Grenfell disaster

 By now almost everyone in  Toronto would have heard the story of newly minted Etobicoke folk hero  Adi Astl and how he built stairs quickly in a park for only $500 when city officials said building the stairs would cost $65,000 or more.

 Read more!

 See also: John Tory's austerity regime triumphs in latest Toronto budget

2) James Di Fiore's hatchet job on Niki Ashton deserves nothing but contempt

No doubt many have seen the inane hatchet job James Di Fiore wrote on the Huffington Post attacking Niki Ashton in deeply sexist, reactionary and over-the-top terms that lead to his absurd assertion from the title on that her "Obsession With Identity Politics Could Destroy The NDP".

 Read more!

 See also: The backlash against Niki Ashton from anti-Black Lives Matter commentators is what is really off base

See also: The sexist insults about Catherine McKenna are not acceptable because sexism is not acceptable

3) Don't be fooled -- The campaign against so-called small business tax reform is class warfare by the wealthy

Census data released today from 2016, according to Andrew Jackson of the Broadbent Institute, confirms "rising income inequality" in Canada.




In the two weeks since Jagmeet Singh was elected leader of the federal NDP in a first ballot landslide where nearly half of party members did not even bother to vote at all, the dust has settled to reveal a party that neither wanted nor embraced any serious change of course or path of introspection after the catastrophe of 2015.




Have you heard the news?

The "left" is "out of touch" with the pulse of what is going on in the United States and North America more broadly because insert left academic or commentator/insert left publication says this must be true due to Trump's victory in the US Presidential race.




Guest Editorial by Robert McCarthy

My name is Robert McCarthy from Sudbury, Ontario and I am supporting Niki Ashton to become the next leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. Like myself, Niki is a proud Democratic Socialist. She is the candidate that I most identify with. Her vision includes free tuition and student debt forgiveness, opposing pipelines where they infringe on Indigenous rights and endanger the environment, and the expansion of public healthcare to include dental care, pharmacare and access to mental health services for all Canadians. These policies are perfectly in line with what I believe.




The sins of the mother or father, grandmother or grandfather, should never be held against the child...unless they then appear to lie about and celebrate those sins.




What a difference a night and an imperial missile strike makes. Especially to those who jockey for position within the shadow of an empire.




To ring in the New Year The Walrus magazine decided to run a rather long, and very odd piece about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and the attempts by its leader, Justin Trottier, to allegedly mainstream men's rights activism (MRA) in Canada.




Given the truly inspiring turn of events within the Labour Party in the UK under Corbyn over the last couple of years it is not at all surprising that leftists in Canada are hoping that perhaps these conditions can be recreated here and within the country's mainstream social democratic party the NDP.



Have a happy and safe New Year! See you all in 2018. 
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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

CAFE, Molson Coors Boycott, Road Tolls & more -- December and January on The Left Chapter in review

December and January saw 47 posts published on The Left Chapter. In terms of hits this period saw the highest number, again, for any two month period in our history. This is the fourth consecutive two month period to set a record!

While all of the posts on this list were widely shared, a post from July that was re-shared after Pride Toronto made the correct and courageous decision to bar police floats in future parades -- a central demand of Black Lives Matter Toronto protesters -- went on over the last couple of weeks to become one of our most widely shared pieces ever and would have been number one on the round-up.

This was You cannot 'discriminate' against the police. They are agents of discrimination.

As always, thanks so much to all our readers and contributors.

Without any further ado the top six posts from the two months, in terms of hits, are:

1) Call it men's rights extremism because that is what it is -- What The Walrus got wrong in their article about CAFE

To ring in the New Year The Walrus magazine decided to run a rather long, and very odd piece about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and the attempts by its leader, Justin Trottier, to allegedly mainstream men's rights activism (MRA) in Canada.



320 Molson Coors workers at the Carlingview Drive brewery in Toronto are on strike. The company is calling for significant concessions from workers in terms of wages, pensions and benefits to offset an apparent, and likely temporary, downturn in sales.



While this trope has been around for a while, with the rather facile lines of debate that have arisen of late given Toronto Mayor John Tory's road toll plan, the bizarre and reactionary notion that Toronto is somehow a city comprised of latte drinking academics, intellectuals, and pompous elitists sneering at the rest of the province has reared its head again among lefties in Ontario.



As 2017 began New Democrats in New Brunswick awoke to discover that their leader, Dominic Cardy, had resigned. He did so in a profoundly graceless and petty fashion, entirely befitting the man, by releasing a long statement essentially denouncing the party he had led as being ideologically backward, riven by internal divisions and not actually interested in taking power.



by: Jesse M. Zimmerman

“Western leftists know almost nothing about Syria, it’s society, it’s regime, it’s people, it’s political economy, it’s contemporary information…They do not see us; it is not about us at all.” 

–Yassin Al Haj Saleh



As 2016 draws to a close, I think it is safe to say that we are seeing a genuine catastrophe unfolding in Ontario.

Seldom has a province had a government so singularly ineffective, seemingly corrupt, and astoundingly tone deaf and hypocritical. It is almost as if Kathleen Wynne and her cabal are actually intent on handing the reigns of office over to the deeply odious Patrick Brown.


The top food related post for the period was Lamb Keema with Onions


Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?


Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!



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Saturday, January 7, 2017

Call it men's rights extremism because that is what it is -- What The Walrus got wrong in their article about CAFE

To ring in the New Year The Walrus magazine decided to run a rather long, and very odd piece about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and the attempts by its leader, Justin Trottier, to allegedly mainstream men's rights activism (MRA) in Canada.


CAFE, for those unfamiliar with it, and as I have written about several times before, is the Canadian front group for the broader MRA movement generally. While for years now CAFE has tried to portray itself as a benign, charitable organization that is supposedly attempting to help men and boys in crisis, it has overt and clear ties to anti-feminist extremists and to their ideological aims, a point to which we will return. 

The article -- which was penned by no less than The Walrus' editor Jonathan Kay and one of its editorial fellows Lauren Heuser -- portrays Trottier as somehow in juxtaposition to the extremists and as in some kind of struggle against them for the soul of the movement in Canada while acknowledging that, for all his words to the contrary, Trottier seems to not be doing a very good job of this. 

The article highlights this by pointing to some of the speakers at CAFE's recent 2016 conference in Ottawa that Kay and Heuser admit as 'problematic' (another point to which we will return) and by also acknowledging that some of the MRA's most "strident online supporters are directly involved with CAFE."

It ends on a somewhat critical note by stating: 
As rational-seeming and pleasant as Trottier may be, he risks forever being overshadowed by the noisier and more extreme MRA advocates who ally themselves with his cause—some of whom are even given speaking roles at his events. Until the haters get shown the door, the men’s rights movement will never truly come of age.
Given that the article was titled "Don't Call It Men's Rights" this is all very contradictory and strange. It is also inherently, despite the relatively mild criticism on the part of Kay and Heuser, fundamentally a whitewash of what CAFE is actually all about and a bit of a weird decision to dedicate so much space to on the part of what has traditionally been seen as a progressive magazine.

The closing sentence "Until the haters get shown the door, the men’s rights movement will never truly come of age" implies that it is a movement that could possibly be meaningful (and come of age) without the "haters" when, in fact, they are intrinsic to the movement and its worldview. It is akin to saying that a White Rights movement could "come of age" by showing the "haters" the door, i.e. it is absurd and misses totally what the MRA is and what its aims are. Without the haters the men's rights movement would cease to exist.

Much of this ground I have covered before. From CAFE's misleading claims and its campus recruitment tactics to its overt ties with extremists like Dan Perrins to their association with the American hate site A Voice for Men.

In the Kay and Heuser article they mention that at CAFE's conference two of the speakers were Karen Straughan and Janice Fiamengo and while calling them "prominent MRAs" they barely scratch the surface (which could have easily been done with a Google search) of what these two are about. Straughan has a long history as a "contributing editor" with the A Voice for Men hate website and with making outrageous and offensive statements about women. Fiamengo, meanwhile, has written articles on Islamaphobic and extreme right websites and has even appeared on white nationalist radio programs to attack feminism, among the other highlights of her illustrious crusade.

The fact that these two spoke at the CAFE conference says all one really needs to know about any supposed desire to become more "moderate".

Never mind CAFE's attempts to hold an "Equality Day" concert (as if it is men who need equality!) in Toronto a couple years back that was cancelled when many of those involved discovered what CAFE was about or the bizarre interview with NOW Magazine that occurred in its wake.

CAFE and other men's rights groups also actually erase the very real oppression related to class, racism and bigotry, and homophobia that many men face by derailing nonsense about men being oppressed as men or by the mythical concept of 'misandry'.

The fundamental issue with the very notion of the need for a group like CAFE or of the Men's Rights Movement generally really comes through in the The Walrus article when Trottier says "We put aside the question of who has it worst in our society, men or women. That kind of polarizing debate doesn’t help in assisting individual people and families.”

The problem with this is that putting aside the notion "of who has it worst in our society, men or women" means ignoring the existence of systemic sexism and misogyny and amounts to a fundamental denial of the historic and continuing inequality of women, never mind the shocking prevalence of male violence both against women and generally, and the reality of rape culture. There is absolutely no doubt "who has it worst in our society" and it is inherently reactionary and misogynist to imply that there is even a question about this of any kind on a societal level. Doing so is both dangerous and harmful to countless "individual people and families" most especially women and children.

It is incredibly important not to put this reality aside in any discussion of "equality" and it is only polarizing to those who oppose the very need for a feminist movement or for a continued fight for women's rights.

It is through this type of obfuscation and pretend "moderation" that Trottier and CAFE continue to both be totally entwined with the extremists while peddling what amount to thinly veiled denials of the actual reality of our male supremacist society and the ongoing struggle for women's equality.

Further Reading:

 Lies our fathers told us: The men's rights movement and campus-based misogyny

A Voice for Men's new Canadian misogynist campaign, CAFE and Ryerson University

Dan Perrins, CAFE & Canada's Men's Rights movement

Mainstreaming misogyny: Canada's new charitable hate movement, CAFE

Guess what's coming to U of T: The Men's Rights Movement, Janice Fiamengo and Paul Elam

Diminishing legitimate 'male' issues: Gary Mason, the Men's Rights Movement and the myth of misandry

Anti-MRA Links & Resources
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Friday, December 9, 2016

The Walrus' latest attempt to 'build bridges' between 'culturally divergent groups' leaves much to be desired

Apparently perturbed by all of the division and misunderstanding that the North American commentariat have decided exists between folks like academics and the 'common people', The Walrus -- that venerated Canadian progressive magazine -- has decided that Canada needs to do some bridge building!

How to accomplish this?

Well, it seems the Walrus wants to do a reality TV style knockoff  "odd couple" and pair up opposites to chat, break bread, and so on. A kind of Come Dine With Me, only with deep and meaningful conversation one presumes.

Hence, on The Walrus' Facebook page we find the following:


Yes, indeed, The Walrus "is seeking a conservative, rural, religiously observant mainline Christian, middle-aged male" (who is also highly likely to be white) -- or in other words a caricature of what is assumed to be a Canadian Trump supporter --  "to engage in sustained and candid discourse with a liberal, urban, atheistic college professor and self-described hipster", another caricature of a Trump opponent.

Given that the goal is allegedly to "build bridges between...culturally divergent groups within Canadian society" I guess we should assume that the professor would reflect Canada's diversity and be a person-of-colour or a woman, right? 

Guess again! The "liberal, urban, atheistic college professor" is apparently a white male professor at Concordia. (As I determined by tracking down a public Facebook posting they made.) 

I am sure that the professor's intentions are very good but, to be clear, The Walrus' editors apparently want two men -- one of whom is known to be white and the other who is to be a "conservative, rural, religiously observant mainline Christian, middle-aged male" -- to represent the "politically and culturally divergent groups" of Canada in an exercise in national bridge building discourse. 

In 2016.

Because, of course, what Canada really needs is a rapprochement between Christian conservative and liberal men. These voices are clearly not being heard enough. 

Afterwards, perhaps they can movingly tell the nation how they really aren't so different after all. Or maybe they are different? Or maybe who cares?

The Walrus needs to seriously reevaluate this idea because as it stands, even if just a gimmick or quasi-satire, this is a pretty exclusionary attempt to allegedly be inclusive and "build bridges". 

The Walrus might want to consider adding a few more divergent voices to the discussion if they want it taken seriously. 

 See also: Introducing the Calgary Police Service's "Diversity Unit" -- led by four middle-aged white guys!
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Monday, April 4, 2016

It is not "political correctness" that hurts the poor Mr. Kay, it is systemic oppression and those who enable it

Oh my God!!!

Stop the presses everyone! It turns out a well known right-winger -- in this case Jonathan Kay, formerly of the flophouse Conrad Black vanity rag The National Post, now editor of The Walrus -- has discovered that "political correctness" is hurting poor people!

How is it doing this?

After starting his piece by talking about the terrible hardships caused in some markets by the staggering housing prices that have been created by the real estate bubble, according to Kay it is because a "a narrow fixation on identity politics has compromised the left’s traditional focus on wide-angle issues of socio-economic stratification, poverty, and income inequality."

What does he base this sweeping and rather astounding generalization on? Well on the actions of the Mayor of Vancouver related to the release of one single study and:

...from what I’ve read on social media and in Walrus editorial submissions, many activists and pundits seem far more comfortable striking positions on highly compartmentalized identity-politics issues that can be reduced to succinct, tweet-able messages. Accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, in particular, can encourage a pack mentality—and so politicians such as Robertson are (understandably) terrified of arousing accusations that they harbour impure thoughts.
He then goes on to assert that:

a generation ago, opposition to the Canada–United States free-trade deal and nafta were the dominant obsessions of the Canadian left. And rightly so. Globalization has revolutionized our economy, creating whole new classes of winners and losers. By contrast, news of last year’s Trans-Pacific Partnership—the largest trade deal in history—was treated for the most part as an obscurity. Progressive media were far more interested in culture-war battles over the likes of #OscarsSoWhite, niqabs , and Donald Trump. Important Canadian stories with enormous economic impact continue to get short shrift.

Seriously. He claims all this.

Kay is just the latest in a long list of right-wingers offering that most disingenuous of all advice, the lecturing of the the left on how to "do" the leftism they themselves actually vigorously oppose.

What he says is total, demonstrable and absolute nonsense.

No one was even talking about income inequality in any serious way prior to the Occupy  Movement, whatever its flaws may have been. And only the left continues to, all the time, in every left-wing forum anyone takes ten seconds to look in anywhere at all! The idea that this is not a primary focus of the left is beyond ludicrous.

Has Kay somehow remained blissfully unaware of the $14 and $15 Now living wage movements across the United States and Canada that have been fighting for union rights and an end to poverty wages and that have made these issues front-and-centre on the political agenda?

This was not due to the benevolent indulgence of right wingers like Kay! It was due to mass mobilization by leftists and labour and union activists. The exact opposite of what he claims.

Did he sleep through the mass and very vocal opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? This has been the focus of countless initiatives, forums and fights and, unlike in the mainstream or right-wing press, the left-wing press is flooded with articles about it.

In fact, rabble.ca alone has had, even by just a cursory count, in excess of 30 posts about the TPP so far this year! The notion that the TPP has been treated as "obscure" is moronic.

Frankly, what the fuck is Kay talking about?

There have always been those, in both the right and the left, who act as if issues around anti-racism, homophobia and women's rights somehow "detract" from the "real" issues that the left supposedly should be dealing with.

But, news flash to white dudes with good jobs, these ARE all issues directly related to poverty to begin with! Systemic racism, sexism and homophobia and the structural results of these oppressions leave countless millions poor in addition to the other vicious indignities and injustices that stem from them.

But, beyond that, the issues are not even remotely mutually exclusive, and while Kay may be able to find some isolated examples here-or-there, in fact the vast bulk of leftists see these struggles as all interconnected. As part of a totality of struggle for human emancipation.

Of course Jonathan Kay would think that "political correctness" is somehow hurting the poor. This is an easy, though rather facile and silly thing to say. It deflects from the real narratives in the media and beyond that are actually hurting those living in poverty and that are the right wing narratives.

You know, the ones that regularly excuse inequality and injustice as byproducts of the capitalist system and as "inevitable" and that pretend that women, the racialized, the marginalized and those living in poverty really have nothing to get bent out of shape about.

They denounce "political correctness" as opposed to the systems that create the poverty and inequality in the first place and as opposed to the ugly and institutionalized pillars of racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia and class that maintain and ensure them.

If Jonathan Kay wants to "call out" someone who has a history of writing for, editing and supporting publications, writers and newspapers that directly and openly attacked anyone fighting for economic justice and equality, maybe he should start with himself.

Recent pretensions aside, it is how he has spent most of his career.

See also: In praise of the "social justice warrior"

See also: The myth of the leftist, feminist, anti-racist, elitist
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