Commentators have tried to smear pro-Palestine protests in all kinds of ways. Flavio Volpe invoking the memory of the 1933 Christie Pits Riot to try to do so, though, is particularly absurd, and requires correction.
As someone who studies fascist culture and history, I’m worried we are being led to take the wrong lessons from the Christie Pits Riots.
The events of August 16, 1933, which would later become known at the Christie Pits Riot, are the seminal example of Toronto working class and immigrant history. Communities stood together against violent hatred from white supremacists.
In the summer of 1933 Anglo-Canadian supremacists had organized themselves in so-called Swastika Clubs. Members saw their Anglo-supremacy (i.e. British supremacy) in the same way that Nazis saw their racial supremacy.
Tensions rose to a breaking point when fascists brought a swastika banner to a baseball game in Christie Pits to incite the Jewish and Italian athletes and their fans. The resulting violence saw the swastika banner seized and torn up, and the city enacted anti-hate speech laws in response.
At the AGO a bit over a week ago, on March 2, outside a scheduled reception for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, hundreds of people protested at entrances denouncing the complicity of both governments’ support of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. A similar protest was held outside a Liberal Party fundraiser dinner in the Yorkville neighbourhood hosted by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister Ya’ara Saks, preventing them from attending, according to police.
Despite what Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, wrote for The Toronto Star last week in his op-ed, “AGO protest was intimidation fuelled by police inaction,” those antifascists in 1933 would have been supportive of the protesters.
We must not be drawn to the wrong lessons, especially from Volpe, who has liked social media posts by far-right supporters of Israel and is the son of hard-line Israel supporter and former MP Joe Volpe.
It should be noted that Flavio Volpe was given quite the media platform: in addition to his Star op-ed, he was also quoted about the protest in a reported Star article and in separate articles in the Globe & Mail and National Post, and he was a guest on a Global talk radio show. The Star published no critical opinions responding directly to Volpe.
Let’s remember, though, that those who protested at the AGO were confronting complicity and indifference in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the far-right, fascist-adjacent Italian prime minister’s visit. In doing so, they were following in the footsteps of those who fought the Anglo-supremacists in Christie Pits.
Invoking Christie Pits as justification for further police crackdowns on protest, as Volpe does, suggests that he isn’t offended so much by fascists as much as by disorderly protest of them. (more...)
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