The “freedom” convoy has come and gone. It has had a major politicizing impact on Canadian society as well as having repercussions internationally. Unfortunately, it has disoriented some on the left — some have claimed it to be a working-class uprising aimed at the ruling-class elites while others have denounced it as a manifestation of fascism. It is the latter claim that this article will be taking up. The energy and organizational capacity that the convoy has given to the extreme right should be acknowledged, and is a cause for concern, but it should not be exaggerated. Many on the left, accustomed to denouncing any expression of reactionary sentiment as fascism, have labelled the convoy, its leaders and its supporters with that name. But does it merit that label?
Using the criteria developed by the 1920s German communist, Clara Zetkin, let us look at the acid test for fascism:
- Fascism possesses mass characteristics, with special appeal to the petit bourgeois (small business owners and sections of the professional classes). A march of 10,000 and a 3-week “occupation” of a capital city does not make a mass movement even if the petit bourgeois presence in Ottawa was significant.
- Fascism uses anti-capitalist demagoguery — totally absent, in this case.
- Fascism uses national chauvinism to incite militarism and war — patriotism was certainly present in the form of the ubiquitous Maple Leaf flag but war and militarism? Hardly.
- Fascism uses violence from anti working-class shock troops. It aims for the total destruction of trade unions and working-class parties and organizations. This is not happening.
- Fascism uses racism and racist scapegoating. This is happening but the extent has been exaggerated. Racism was not a unifying theme of the convoy/occupation, rather it was a strong undercurrent.
In addition, a key feature for fascism to make a big impact or to end up in power is that it requires the backing of a significant section of the ruling class as the latter is fearful of socialist revolution from below. Despite a section of the Conservative Party MPs flirting with the Ottawa protesters, there was little evidence of Big Business supporting the extreme right. In Italy and Germany, the ruling class gave power to the fascists, they did not resist it. Furthermore, we should recognize that fascism doesn’t come out of the blue. Its emergence is inextricably tied to the economic crisis of capitalism, the kind of crisis that Europe went through in the 1920s-30s. Even with 5 percent inflation and supply chain woes, Canada’s economy grew by 4.8 percent in 2021 (projected growth for 2022 is 3.5 percent), indicating a certain resilience through the COVID years. Of course, the working class and poor are unlikely to benefit much from this growth, but neither is the economic situation likely, in the near future, to be so grim that it provides a mass breeding ground for fascism.
No room for complacency
Of course, there are no grounds for complacency about what the convoy movement represents. The far right are confident after their successful blocking of borders, a three-week encampment in Ottawa and the gentle approach of the police. They are likely to increase attacks on buildings such as mosques and synagogues as well as racialized and Indigenous people. The labour movement must respond to such assaults.
Some of the people involved in the convoy movement could, under certain conditions, provide the seed for a future fascist movement. The labour movement has to be on guard for this, but the most important thing is to recognize things as they are now, not as they may possibly become. That includes getting our terms right, not with the aim of scoring an academic point but of being clear about the stage through which we are passing and avoiding the scenario of the boy who cried wolf. It’s not just the left who don’t get it, the right is equally confused. One of the features of the convoy was protesters denouncing Trudeau for being a “fascist.”
Presented with these points, many on the left will concede that the convoy, as a whole, wasn’t fascist and that indeed fascism isn’t currently a mass movement in Canada since most of the features listed above are not present. But then maybe it’s just the leaders and organizers who are the fascists, not the ordinary foot soldiers. It is worth looking at the key organizers of the convoy:
A who’s who of the organizers
- Chris Barber: He operates a firm with four trucks and, at the end of the Ottawa occupation, was charged with counselling to commit the offence of mischief, counselling to disobey a court order and counselling to obstruct the police. He was able to post the $100,000 needed for his bail. Barber calls the COVID-19 vaccine mandates “tyranny at its finest” and compares the policy to the government of North Korea. He has Confederate flags on his wall at home, calling it a “piece of cloth.”
- Tamara Lich: She has been described as “the spark that lit the fire.” Until recently, she was involved in Maverick, a western separatist party. She was also involved in the yellow vest “United We Roll” truckers’ protest of 2019 related to defending western oil interests. According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. she’s not a major player but “she’s in the far-right ecosystem.”
- Pat King: Anti-hate.ca describes him as “so toxic he’s (sort of) disavowed.” He was also involved in the 2019 United We Roll protest, is an out and out racist who has gone on record promoting the “great replacement theory” whereby Anglo-Saxons are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples — with plans to “flood with refugees and subvert the education system.” During the protest, he said, “the only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets.”
- Benjamin Dichter: Once a Conservative Party candidate. He appeared as a co-organizer on the GoFundMe page for the convoy. He has made Islamophobic sentiments in public. In 2019 he claimed that “Islamist entryism” is “rotting away at our society like syphilis.”
- James Bauder: President of Canada Unity, based in Calgary. He was a founder of two groups affiliated with Yellow Vests. Among his Facebook likes are Christians against Islam, QAnon, Ban the Burka. In 2019, he was involved with yellow vests in trying to break up Unifor’s secondary picket of 750 refinery workers in Regina, members of Unifor Local 594. He has promoted anti-vaxx and QAnon conspiracies, called into question the official account of the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand and encouraged rioters at America’s Capitol to “get back up and win the fight.”
- Jeremy MacKenzie and the Diagolon movement: On February 13, the RCMP arrested 13 people following the seizure of more than a dozen guns, ammunition and body armour at the border crossing of Coutts, Alberta. Researchers at Anti-Hate Canada say that the symbol used on a couple of the armour patches is the flag of an invented country of Diagolon — (A proposed nation composed of territory from former American States and Canadian Provinces, which when mapped, form a Diagonal line from Alaska to Florida) and the emblem of a “neo-fascist” and militia movement of the same name. The group has not been linked to any violence, but the researchers say that a string of meetings where members have posed with firearms indicate that it is becoming “a militia network.” Diagolon is an “accelerationist” movement that believes a revolution is inevitable and necessary to collapse the current government system. It has members and chapters across Canada. Its de facto leader is MacKenzie, a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces based in Nova Scotia, who was part of the Ottawa convoy.
In sum, this is a motley group of western separatists, conspiracy theorists, racists, Islamophobes, Trump supporters and men who like playing with guns. It is not the kernel of a fascist organization aiming for a violent overthrow of the existing order.
White supremacy?
It’s apparent that the common thread linking these individuals and groups is racism, particularly of an Islamophobic and South Asian character. Is this sufficient to brand them as fascist? The defining characteristic of the German Nazis was not antisemitism, which had a long history in Germany even before Hitler arrived on the scene. It was one element to define fascism but by no means the only one or the most important (see above). In Canada 2022, racism takes the form of hate directed towards Indigenous people, Black people, Chinese, south Asians and Jews.
The Diagolon movement is troubling but, at this stage, there is no evidence of it having a significant presence. After the fascist label, a less extreme one but equally misleading is “white supremacist.” White supremacy is a widely used phrase that has many meanings. A common one is the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups. Clearly apartheid South Africa and the slave-based southern states were based on white supremacy, although as they were also class societies, there were poor white people, who were told to put up with their poverty as they were not Black. The Klu Klux Klan is a white supremacist organization. There is no doubt there were some in the convoy, but there is no evidence that a majority of convoy members were white supremacists.
That the overwhelming majority of participants in the Ottawa convoy were white does not of itself prove that it was a white supremacy event, although the organizers conspicuously did not reach out to the many South Asian truckers. The majority of Black Lives Matter protesters in Canada, following the murder of George Floyd, were young white people. Attention has been drawn to the presence of swastika and Confederate flags in Ottawa. Inexcusable, but not the dominant flavour of the occupation. If this were a protest where racism was the dominant theme, there would have been a lot more speeches, flags and texts denouncing immigrants accompanied by signs advocating white power.
Claiming the public square
One prominent Toronto lefty had this to say on Facebook in answer to the question, “Then you are politically hostile to the convoy and its leaders, but you defend their right to protest?” The reply was: “Not for a moment. Fascism isn’t an honest perspective that can be legitimately put forward and debated. It’s a violent, racist initiative that, if it is allowed to grow, will use violence and terror against our movements in pursuit of its vile and reactionary aims. I don’t think we should rely on the state to protect us though. The working-class movement should not permit the far right to claim the public square and should never have tolerated this disgusting convoy.”
Leon Trotsky had a phrase for this — confusing the second month of pregnancy for the ninth. He coined the expression originally to describe communists who misread a non-revolutionary situation for a revolutionary one and, as a result, called the workers to rise up and take power when the objective conditions had not matured for this. In the context of the danger of fascism, the same applies. About a third of the population, including a good many working-class people, had sympathy for the convoy’s claimed grievances. The key approach is to offer these people an alternative to either the far right or the liberal centre.
The sprouts of fascism in Canada barely exist but calling the people in sympathy with the convoy “disgusting” (from above-quoted Facebook post) will not win them to a working-class alternative. Rather, like Hillary Clinton calling Trump’s supporters “deplorables,” it will increase their alienation and anger, and make them more open to far-right ideas.
Unfortunately, as the union leaders and the NDP did not put forward alternative policies to the Liberals during COVID, this left a vacuum the convoy partly filled. The labour movement needs to confront fascists with a political program and confront them when they appear on our streets. But it must be based on mass mobilizations, as in the past, rather than just a street scrap with a bunch of antifa shouting insults at the fascists over a line of police. When faced with serious fascist mobilizations, as in the 1930s in many countries, Trotsky commented that if it was impossible to convince a fascist, “his head should be acquainted with the pavement.” But note the precondition given by Trotsky. The general approach should be that of reaching out politically and not just having a street scrap.
It is important that the labour movement and the NDP do reclaim the public space, not to confront a few fascists, but to put forward bold policies that address the real needs of working people, such as 10 days paid leave, a $20 minimum wage, a program to build public affordable housing and more.
“Violent fascist gangs are not composed entirely of ruffians of war”
Clara Zetkin wrote extensively on fascism and the struggle against it. She pointed out that “it is extremely important that we purposefully and consistently carry out the ideological and political struggle for the souls of those in these layers (the hungry, the suffering, the disappointed, and those without a future), including the bourgeois intelligentsia. We must understand that, incontestably, growing masses here are seeking an escape route from the dreadful suffering of our time. This involves much more than filling one’s stomach. No, the best of them are seeking an escape from deep anguish of the soul. They are longing for new and unshakable ideals and a world outlook that enables them to understand nature, society, and their own life; a world outlook that is not a sterile formula but operates creatively and constructively. Let us not forget that violent fascist gangs are not composed entirely of ruffians of war, mercenaries by choice, and venal lumpens who take pleasure in acts of terror [our emphasis]. We also find among them the most energetic forces of these social layers, those most capable of development. We must go to them with conviction and understanding for their condition and their fiery longing, work among them, and show them a solution that does not lead backward but rather forward to communism. The overriding grandeur of communism as a world outlook will win their sympathies for us.”
