Reformists in Cahoots With Pro-NATO Reactionaries

“Antiwar” Demo in Vancouver

On April 9, soon after Canadian and other NATO bomber jets began raining death and destruction on neocolonial Libya, the Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA) and its local affiliates held “antiwar” protests in several cities. Yet the official publicity for the rallies in at least Vancouver and Toronto ostentatiously did not oppose the assault on Libya! Indeed, in its call for the Vancouver protest, the Stopwar.ca coalition—which includes the Communist Party of Canada, International Socialists and other pseudo-“Marxists”—called to “support the uprising” in Libya, an “uprising” already supported by NATO jets.

The elementary duty of genuine Marxists is to oppose all the predatory wars of the imperialist rulers against weaker, “Third World” countries. We call to defend Libya against the current imperialist onslaught, while giving no political support to the bourgeois bonapartist regime of Muammar Qaddafi. We fight to mobilize the working class to struggle against our “own” capitalist rulers and their bloody attacks from Afghanistan to Libya. This is the polar opposite of most of the fake-left who, having long pleaded with the capitalist rulers for “peace” in Iraq and Afghanistan, have more recently embraced the pro-imperialist Libyan “opposition” that called for the NATO bombings in the first place. In so doing, these groups put themselves in the camp of forces backed by the U.S., Canadian and European imperialist powers.

This was especially clear at the April 9 Vancouver rally for “People Power, Not War!” organized by Stopwar.ca and the CPA, where pro-imperialist speakers were given extended speaking time to justify the NATO bombing! While claiming to be “absolutely opposed” to the bombing, the organizers were unfailingly polite to these apologists for imperialism, letting no less than three of them speak extensively. Supporters of the Trotskyist League responded by loudly heckling and chanting “Defend Libya against NATO bombings!” and “Imperialist lies!” while raising slogans against Canadian, U.S., French and British imperialism. Others in the crowd of about 100 joined in booing the speakers.

Also present at the protest was the local Third World nationalist outfit Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO). This organization postures as more “militant” than Stopwar.ca, and carried a couple of placards against the bombing of Libya. Yet at no point did MAWO raise a peep of protest against the charade on stage. Five days later, in an act of cowardly ass-covering, MAWO sent an open letter to Stopwar.ca and the CPA complaining of the presence of the “pro-war speakers.” The letter noted that “Stopwar.ca and CPA co-chair Derrick O’Keefe spoke at the end of the rally to confirm that they had invited these speakers knowing full well the pro-war message they were going to put forward.” Naturally, MAWO failed to mention its own silence at the time. And its conclusion was merely to argue for an all-inclusive “antiwar movement”: “…now is not the time to remain divided based on petty or sectarian differences….”

None of this is surprising. Far from being any kind of “anti-imperialist” alternative, MAWO’s liberal “antiwar” politics are not fundamentally different from those of Stopwar.ca, only adding a pinch of uncritical cheerleading for reactionary Third World capitalist dictatorships such as the mullahs’ Iran. Working hand-in-hand with Stopwar.ca in the build-up to the 2003 U.S.-led attack on Iraq, MAWO’s founders in the Fire This Time group—a cultish claque centred on one Ali Yerevani—only created a separate “antiwar” front following organizational quibbles within Stopwar.ca.

These various “antiwar” outfits all appeal to a supposed liberal wing of the bourgeoisie against the wrongdoings of its very own capitalist system. Most of the fake-left groups behind the CPA and Stopwar.ca routinely call to vote for the NDP, which supports the NATO bombing of Libya. We Trotskyists oppose the illusions such organizations sow in the capitalist system and put forward our proletarian and internationalist program for socialist revolution to sweep away this system of war, oppression and exploitation.