BT comments prepared for Toronto anti-NATO protest

The following remarks were prepared for a Toronto Coalition Against NATO rally on 22 November in front of the convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour:

The Bolshevik Tendency is here today as part of the Toronto Coalition Against NATO, a united front focussed on opposition to NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine. During the past six weeks the world has been appalled by the monstrous assault on Gaza by the Israeli apartheid regime. Both of these conflicts pose the threat of potentially spilling over into a nuclear Armageddon. The Canadian ruling class, following its American senior partner, has offered military, financial and political support to the fascist-riddled regimes of both Zelensky and Netanyahu.

There is widespread sympathy for the Palestinian victims of the genocidal Zionist terror in Gaza, but there is far less recognition that working people have an interest in a Russian military victory in Ukraine—despite the reactionary character of Vladimir Putin’s oppressive capitalist regime. For decades, US strategists have been mooting plans to shatter the Russian Federation into a welter of smaller, more easily exploited neo-colonies—a policy often cynically described as “decolonizing Russia.”

NATO attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in recent decades have had devastating impacts on those societies and today Ukraine is being destroyed in pursuit of NATO’s proxy war against Russia. The $9 billion Canada has pumped into NATO’s failing campaign will have to be paid for by working people through tax hikes and further cuts to social housing, education and healthcare.

The organized workers’ movement is uniquely positioned to resist the capitalist drive to war—concretely by “hot-cargoing” arms shipments to both Israel and Ukraine. The Greek railworkers who, in April 2022 refused to load military equipment for Ukraine, offer an inspiring example. An international wave of mass political strikes modelled on their action could jam the gears of the imperialist war machine, touch off a resurgence of class struggle and strike a powerful blow against the global capitalist system of oppression and exploitation.