On Sunday, the New Democratic Party made history in electing Avi Lewis, a Jewish man, as the next leader of their party. Today, Konrad Yakabuski, a columnist for The Globe and Mail has written an article titled “The NDP has an antisemitism problem.”
In any other world, this sort of lazy, dishonest rhetoric would get a journalist fired from their job at any self-respecting news publication. We do not, however, live in any other world. We live in this world, a world where The Globe is perfectly okay with these kinds of articles. In fact, the higher-ups at The Globe are almost certainly delighted that Yakabuski would use this sort of rhetoric to divide the Canadian left.
It’s no secret that Avi Lewis is not a friend of the rich. In his platform, he calls multiple times for taxes on wealth. Lewis would implement a tax system that would treat the ultra-rich’s capital gains as income. More specifically, for the very richest Canadians, Lewis proposes a 3% wealth tax. For the top earners at The Globe, this would mean that they’d have to downsize from three yachts to a measly two. In understanding this, they have no problem sowing the seeds of infighting on the left, no matter how ridiculous the claim that does so may be.
Class Consciousness
For all intents and purposes, it can be understood that the higher-ups of The Globe (and other large news outlets) are acting perfectly in line with their own self-interests by allowing this to happen. The Globe’s owners, the Thomson family, are said to be worth an estimated $98B dollars (yes, billion with a B). The company’s chief officers are no-doubt on multi-million dollar salaries. For these people, a strong NDP means that they may have $80B sitting around instead of $98B; that 20% of their current wealth – wealth that they could never possibly use, would go to hungry Canadian families instead.
This sort of greed is not unique to the Thomson family, nor is it some recently-developing empathy-crisis that Western society is facing. Rather, this sort of greed is inherent in capitalism. When Marx said “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets,” he understood this. In a capitalist system, at a certain point, money will continue to make money for its own sake. This money doesn’t help anyone, nor can it even go back to strengthening a business at a certain point. It mostly just exists to ensure that poor people still exist.
It is for this reason that The Globe and Mail is not the only company that has been heavily advertising sleazy, dishonest articles targeting Lewis’ leadership. The Calgary Herald, a publication owned by the ever-so omnipresent Postmedia Network, published a “Red Scare” article accusing Lewis’ NDP of being “more communist than social democratic.”
Even the Toronto Star, a publication that many consider to be on the left-wing of the Canadian political spectrum, is publishing opinion pieces by “progressives” that have written Lewis’ party leadership off less than one-hundred hours into his tenure.
The reason for this is simple. The Globe, Postmedia, The Star, and all of these other Canadian corporations can brand themselves, to varying degrees, as Canadian progressives in public. In Canada, there’s a sort of inherent left-wing cultural bias at play. Be it due to our proximity with the right-wing neighbours of the south or years of Liberal influence, this is just how it is. In reality, however, these companies fear one thing more than anything: the disruptor.
The Star can agree with Avi Lewis when he says that gay people deserve to have rights or vaguely that homelessness should be ended in Canada. But when Lewis actually proposes policy options to end homelessness, which would mean a significant dip in The Star’s bottom line, all bets are off. At this moment, Lewis becomes an irreconcilable enemy to the capitalist system. Let the slander pieces begin!
False Consciousness
There’s another interesting dynamic at play here. Because behind every Globe, Sun, or Star opinion piece attacking the good name of Avi Lewis, there is an overworked, underpaid journalist going to war for the billionaires that they are employed by. What’s going on here?
Konrad Yakabuski, the author of the article for which my opinion piece is titled, is by no means an ultra-rich man. From what we know about the Yakabuski family, they are what could be considered a political dynasty, a role that pays less than you may think. Konrad’s father, Paul, was an MPP from the 1960s to the 1980s. A couple of Konrad’s brothers have also held political positions. Though this may seem rich in influence, the reality is that the very richest members of this family may just barely be scraping a 7-figure net worth.
The Yakabuskis are not in the ultra-wealthy class that Lewis will significantly raise taxes on to provide for Canada’s poor. They may be slapped with small upper-middle class tax increases. That’s it. But people like this, people like Conservative MPPs and right-wing journalists are the exact type of people that enable billionaires to keep their fortunes. This group of people, a group that more radical thinkers may call “class-traitors,” are the individuals who keep up the capitalist myth on a day-to-day basis.
In his article, Konrad Yakabuski exhibited what can only be described as an impressive display of intellectual dishonesty. To start off his Op-ed, Yakabuski immediately conflates antisemitism with anti-zionism. After this, he misinterprets Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s comments about the “Epstein Class” to be about a Jewish elite class. Kinew was very clearly not talking about a Jewish elite class. He was simply talking about the billionaire class, as evidenced by his inclusion of President Trump in this statement. To any sane person, this marks two times in the same 700-word article that Yakabuski eagerly stretches the truth to make his claims.
Is there a reason why Konrad Yakabuski holds these beliefs? I’m truly just not sure. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that poverty can be ended without it meaningfully affecting his upper-middle class life. Perhaps the myth of meritocracy was instilled in him by his father at a young age. Perhaps he rightfully fears that if his bosses’ bottom line is reduced even slightly, that his role at The Globe is in jeopardy.
Conclusion
To the unwavering optimists out there on the political left, I regret to inform you that it’s not going to get better in the immediate future. These attacks on Lewis are going to continue. It does not matter that he is a proud Jewish man. He is going to be called antisemitic for believing that the state of Israel should not have the right to genocide a region’s native people. It does not matter that his policy only calls for social democratic reforms similar to those seen in the Nordic countries. He is going to be called a Soviet-era communist.
For the time being, all we can do is fight it. Fight back on this rhetoric. When your reactionary uncle brings up “the communist NDP leader” at a family barbecue, be prepared to defend Lewis’ practical egalitarian economic positions. When it’s time to vote, don’t think twice about “strategically voting” for the Liberal Party that has habitually betrayed you for over a decade now. And if we stay vigilant in doing all of this, we might be able to take away the Thomson family’s third yacht.
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