June 2004

Saying the R Word

Macdonald Stainsby
OP Contributor

I had a dream last night that involved
an event I went to in November of
1999. The Communist Party of
Canada had their annual dinner in
honour of the Russian Revolution,
“Great October,” off the tongues of
these folks. In my waking life, there
would be two things that I'd recount
if asked about this evening. One of
them was a speech, nothing particu-
larly brilliant, but there was one
moment that recalled pride where
there has been none for so long. In
reference to the defeat of the USSR in
the Cold War, the people who cringe
and cower, who aren't quite as tall, or
simply shrug their shoulders when
speaking of socialism and of an end to
capitalism—instead of any such
change in posture, this speaker listed
the acts of imperialism since the
defeat of the Soviet state. This speech
was made before the turn of the
Millennium and just a couple of
weeks before the definitive arrive of
so-called “anti-globalization” at the
Battle of Seattle. The list of imperial-
ism’s misdeeds since then, and after
9/11, has grown so much longer,
starker, and more ominous that his
final comments still resonate. “The
time has come for us to stop apolo-
gizing.”

At the time, I took that to mean
that people who had defended—or
who would like to see—a Soviet sys-
tem, should stop being intimidated
and afraid of what they stood for. I
would still not want to make any Red
stop, twist up and explain away
minutia of the USSR before being
allowed to call for the end of imperi-
alism. But now that sentence means a
lot more to me.

It is time all of us stopped dancing
around what it is we really want.
There is nothing at all shameful—be
it anarchist, undecided, communist,
revolutionary feminist, et al—in
declaring a permanent, open hostility
to not only imperialism, but to any
and all visions of the world that con-
tinually denigrate our dignity as peo-
ple, and dehumanize our relations
with one another.

Later that November 7 evening, I
experienced what returned to my
dreams last night. There was a speak-
er who had been talking about things
I have long since forgotten. Then, he
asked us all to pause and recognize
two people seated among the crowd
that evening. A man and a woman in
their eighties stood and acknowl-
edged the attention. The speaker let
us know they were veterans of the
International Brigades that fought
Fascism in Spain. One had been a
field medic, the other a soldier. We all
stood and gave deep, prolonged
applause. I remember the feeling that
overwhelmed me to be in the pres-

(she was murdered in the Holocaust).

Thousands of people are becoming
homeless as I write this, and for some
newly minted refugees, it could be for
as much as the fourth time since
1948. This is happening at the same
time as even more images out of Abu
Ghraib Prison prove to the world
what Iraqis already knew about US
motives—that Cuba has been further
legislatively strangled than ever before
for having the gall to defend a system
that has given them higher literacy,
culture, and physical educational
access than any society in the world.
For that, they must be punished, and
no treatment can be ruled out.

 

4

ence of veterans of a non-recognized
campaign against Fascism. Not for
the tales of nostalgia, but for the les-
sons I still try to walk with me where
I go. My dream was of having a dis-
cussion with someone about what is
going on in the modern era and the

parallels to the 30s.
There is one Holocaust survivor left
in the Israeli Knesset, Yosef

“Tommy” Lapid, the leader of the
centrist (by Israeli standards) Shinui
Party. There is nothing remarkable
from a human rights point of view
about the rabidly secular Lapid—he
is a firm believer in the legitimacy of
the creation of Israel by massive eth-
nic cleansing. Yet he was still moved
to remark of the recent Israeli cam-
paign of home demolitions in Rafah
that the images reminded him of his
grandmother picking through rubble

Of course, no one should be at all
surprised to find that upwards of 80
mercenaries from the paramilitaries of
the genocidal model democracy of
the South, Colombia, have been cap-
tured invading the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela—another peo-
ple currently making leaps and
bounds in social welfare, education,
and health rights in an increasingly
hostile atmosphere of foreign-direct-
ed subversion.

In my dream, I was stating it feels
like we have so much fear about say-
ing who we are and what we really
stand for. Internationalism is not
manifested by our recent (North
America wide) retreat into parliamen-
tary and electoral cretinism. We need
to exhibit a deep understanding of
our role: those who can slow down
the mechanisms of imperial power.

Opinions

Once, with the Luftwaffe bombing
the people of Guernica, we had our
people there and yet today we are
afraid of activity that goes outside of
the carefully constructed “acceptable”
routes provided by bourgeois democ-
racy. And in all of our agitational
material, we act as if we don’t have a
side, as if this were like WWI with all
fighting parties equally in the wrong.
That’s not the case.

Meanwhile, seeking each other out
quietly and discreetly after every new
family member disappears into places
like Abu Ghraib or under rubble in
the Brazil district of Rafah, resistance
ranks swell. Bolivarian Circles across
Venezuela respond to the escalated
aggression of global capital by arming
themselves and learning basic maneu-
vers. Most significantly, Venezuela has
made common cause not only with
peace, but the inherent right of self-
defense, self-determination, and
internationalism manifested in esca-
lating oil shipments to the Cuban
Revolution.

If the people of our ranks began to
think of their actions being some-
thing other than educational materi-
als en masse, then we could make sig-
nificant leaps forward in one major
area: Honesty. We all know and
believe that it is both right and just
that people rise to resist the removal
of their self-determination, but we are
afraid of the word resistance and even
more afraid of acts of resistance for
ourselves. Our time is not best spent
by breaking an understanding of our
position globally, but by placing our
hopes on getting the good people
elected, at least enough New
Democrats so we can then influence a
minority government into reducing
military spending, or enough left
Democrats to force Kerry to turn to
the UN. Please.

When recent social movements
have seen themselves as part of an
international movement with solidar-
ity among all regions at the heart, we
have had a tremendous social power.
That has been precisely the vision
inherent in being part of a global
movement. That understanding of
how we ultimately answer to a larger
movement than our own also

continued on page 12

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