First Published: People’s Canada Daily News, Vol 7, No. 16, January 19, 1977
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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The national minority Canadian people have always had to fight state organized racist attacks just to survive. The Canadian state is racist and fascist and has always singled out particular sections of the people for attack, and the people have a glorious history of resistance to state organized racist attacks.
Today, it is the East Indian and West Indian people in particular who are subject to the most savage racist attacks by the Canadian state. But the people have not taken these attacks lying down. Under the leadership of the East Indian Defence Committee, the East Indian community has taken up the line of active self-defence – using words against words, fists against fists, sticks against sticks and if need be, guns against guns – to defend the honour and dignity of the East Indian people. Self-defence is the only way, and this line has the support of the broad masses of the Canadian people. In opposition to this line of reliance upon the strength of the community, the Canadian state is financing a host of schemes to undermine the resistance of the national minority people and to undermine the support of the other Canadian people for the line of active resistance.
The state has financed various programmes to propagate this line of reliance upon the state. It is organizing “education” programmes to make the people “aware” that they should not be racist. It finances various community-police “anti-racist” organizations and telephone hotlines etc. to promote the line of reliance upon the state and to oppose the line of active self-defence. The police have even threatened that people who assist victims of racist attacks are liable to arrest and would be charged. All of this is part of the two-fisted attack of the state: 1) to perpetrate racist attacks on the people and 2) to sow illusions about Canadian “democracy” to keep the initiative of resistance to the state organized racist attacks out of the hands of the people.
Should the people rely on the state for protection? Certainly not! It would be a good thing if the state would put a stop to the racist attacks, but in fact they don’t and what are the people to do when they are attacked? Stand by and be beaten? This is what the police would have the people do, but no person in their right mind would do such a thing. If you are attacked, you must defend yourself on the spot, waging tit for tat struggle with the racist thugs. The people have every right to defend themselves against the state organized racist attacks, and indeed must do so!
This has been shown many many times. As far as the police are concerned, they are mystifiers even to the point of “wondering” whether the attacks on immigrant and national minority peoples are even racist attacks. In one instance, in Hamilton, ten Chinese students were attacked within an hour and at a public meeting, the police stated they had yet to ascertain whether the attacks were racist or not. The police offered a suggestion that printed cards be made available to students which would outline steps to take when attacked by a racist: call the dean of the university, call the police, get a witness, etc. The ridiculousness of such a plan to “combat racist attacks” is self-evident. The police were even further exposed in this case, when it was revealed at the meeting, that the witnesses who did come forward were turned away by the police.
The facts prove that the state will not stop the racist attacks. The state is racist and fascist and it is the Canadian state itself which organizes the racist attacks. The Canadian state has always singled out sections of the people for attack. It uses all its organs – the press and the entire media, the educational institutions, and the entire legislative, judicial, bureaucratic and police apparatus to organize racist attacks and political repression against the immigrants and national minority people.
The state has financed many ’studies’ to “prove” that it is the people who are racist and responsible for these attacks. In 1975, it published its racist and fascist “Green Paper” which singled out East Indian and West Indian people for attack. More recently it financed a “study” to “prove” that the Canadian youth are inherently racist. Since the state organized the “Green Paper” propaganda campaign to whip up racist hysteria, the capitalist press has hysterically blamed East Indian people and other national minority people from Asia, Africa and Latin America for every sort of problem from unemployment to inflation.
Self-defence is-the only way. Racist attacks are not a matter of some social problem between people from different backgrounds, as the state tries to make out. They are not a cultural phenomena. It is a straight forward problem of the state attacking a section of the people. There are countless examples of this in Canadian history.
Those people who are attacked can only defend themselves by organizing themselves into their own organizations on the basis of revolutionary struggle. This means they should not confine their struggle to the commissions on human rights and all the other committees of the state to make sure that the people do not defend themselves against the racist attacks.
FIGHT STATE ORGANIZED RACIST ATTACKS THROUGH MASS REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE!