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Book Review
Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy
Connor Bennett, July 24, 2024
https://marxist.ca/article/book-review-canadas-long-fight-against-democracy
Every day we are inundated with press releases, articles and statements condemning the authoritarian regimes of China, Russia and Iran. Canada, we are told, stands in defence of democracy from their foreign tyranny.
With Ottawa backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, however, millions of working class Canadians can now see with their own eyes the blood-spattered face of Canadian imperialism beneath the democratic mask. As communists, our foremost duty is to expose and combat imperialism at home—and in this, we should applaud the recent publication of Yves Engler and Owen Shalk’s new book Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy.
The book is an overview of the role played by the Canadian state in overthrowing more than 20 democratically elected governments across five continents—by means of economic asphyxiation, mass disinformation and diplomatic isolation. And failing all else, they have not been above sending the Canadian Armed Forces to participate in the kidnapping, arrest, and even murder of national leaders.
Engler and Shalk illustrate exactly how Canadian imperialism has used every means at its disposal to force foreign governments to submit.
To take just a few examples: in 1961 Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the Republic of Congo, was kidnapped, executed, and dissolved in a vat of acid by the forces of UN-backed military officer and eventual dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. When Lumumba was overthrown in a parliamentary coup, Canadian troops actively worked against him, and Canadian army officer and UN Chief of Staff Jean Berthiaume then helped Mobutu capture him.
In 2004, Canada took an active part in the coup Against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the popular president of Haïti. He was kidnapped by American and Canadian soldiers, exiled to the Central African Republic, and replaced by the stooge of Western imperialism, Gérard Latortue.
Finally, Canada helped found, organize, and fund the right-wing Lima Group to oppose the United Socialist Party of Venezuela—regularly accusing Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolas Máduro of “robbing the Venezuelan people of their fundamental democratic rights” while at the same time backing Operation Gideon, a botched military putsch in 2020, along with other attempted coups.
The book is filled with similar examples of Canada’s “defence of democracy”. For its breadth of information it is a valuable resource for communists in combatting the apologists of imperialism at home.
However, the book suffers from one serious theoretical weakness: after spending nearly 200 pages demonstrating how Canadian foreign policy has essentially been at the service of Canadian businessmen, Shalk and Engler limit themselves to a call for “non-interference in other countries’ affairs”. But until we answer the question of why the Canadian state interferes in other countries’ affairs in the first place, this wish remains a total fantasy.
We must go further and reckon with society as it really is: one that is fundamentally divided into a small minority of exploiters and a vast majority of exploited workers. Genuine democracy is impossible so long as the overwhelming majority live to produce the wealth of a handful of multinationals. Only by abolishing private ownership of these companies who bleed the workers, peasants, and youth of the world to gain their profits—only by abolishing capitalism—can we end imperialism once and for all.
The authors obscure the fact that the Canadian state is an instrument of class rule—whether it is wielded against Palestine activists, Indigenous land defenders, striking workers, or against the workers and peasants of another country. Genuine democracy is not compatible with Canada’s extortion of oppressed nations around the globe, and so the Canadian ruling class has no qualms toppling any democratic government which they cannot corrupt, bully, or extort into serving their own interests.
To fight for a genuine democracy—that is, democracy for the majority of masses of workers, peasants, and youth all over the world, against the rule of this clique of exploiters—we must wage a relentless struggle against the charade of Canadian democracy at home and the bloodthirsty parasites that it defends.
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