Dennis Fox’s Weblog

Sex, sloth, anarchy: Fringe has it all in today’s Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail caught my attention because a month from now I’ll be in British Columbia visiting friends. Canadians often claim superiority to the United States, and I think they’re more right than wrong, but more on that after the excerpt:

VANCOUVER — The B.C. Sex Party thinks public schools should teach youths to enjoy sex and masturbate. The Work Less Party says the North American rat race is shortening our lives and wrecking the environment. Then there is the Annexation Party of B.C., which posits that British Columbia would thrive better as the 51st state of the United States. They are the fringe and single-issue parties with platforms ranging from myopic to out there. …. [Y] oung people often gravitate toward fringe parties, especially if they are drawn to a single issue, such as the Marijuana Party’s platform to legalize pot.

However, B.C. appears to have a party to fit every movement: the Green Party, the Natural Law Party, the Western Refederation Party; every belief: the Idealist Party, the Freedom Party; and every anarchist twinge: the Party of Citizens Who Have Decided To Think For Themselves and Be Their Own Politicians.

…. Despite their tongue-in-cheek platforms, some fringe parties have serious messages tucked between the easy gags. Mr. Ince of the Sex Party said mainstream parties are notoriously skittish about dealing with sex issues — be it education or prostitution — because they fear alienating voters. But Mr. Ince said prostitution is a life-and-death issue for thousands of women. Canada’s laws feed antipathy to prostitutes and put their lives in danger.

And while Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell appears to be coasting to a second term, pollsters say there is sufficient public dissatisfaction with the Liberals that some disgruntled voters will vote fringe. But what’s considered fringe east of the Rockies is inching toward mainstream on the Coast. That’s the case with B.C.’s Green Party, which actually led over the NDP in the popular vote in some ridings four years ago.

Except for the Annexation Party’s short-sighted interest in joining the U.S., most of the parties mentioned seem to raise serious issues despite, as the article says, their tongue-in-cheek platforms. However, I’m not sure that running for office is the best way to raise those issues. Once a party begins to imagine actually winning, there’s pressure to drop the interestingly outrageous in order to better appeal to the cautious mainstream. The Green Party’s history on both sides of the Atlantic is a good example.

But I kind of like The Party of Citizens Who Have Decided To Think For Themselves and Be Their Own Politicians.
One of the friends I’ll visit in British Columbia is Ron Sakolsky, who taught as I did at the University of Illinois at Springfield (originally the more interesting Sangamon State University). Ron has an article in the most recent anarchist magazine Fifth Estate (their 40th anniversary edition) about his post-retirement move from the U. S. to Canada. It’s not on-line, but here’s a bit of Ron’s view on the U.S - Canadian divide:

As an anarchist in voluntary exile, I’ve never looked back. What’s hardest about being an expatriate though is that many people here, especially other expats, assume that I am uncritical of Canada and even want to become a citizen. Actually, I prefer Canada to the US with the same wariness that makes me prefer a good cop to a bad cop, never forgetting that both the good and bad cop are often part of the same police state entrapment scenario and neither should be trusted with your liberty….

For starters, I am very aware that I am living on stolen land… Much of BC remains unceded and Indigenous title to the land has never been extinguished…. As always since the original European invasion, the struggle for land and liberty continues unabated…. [Ron goes on to talk about white supremacy, class inequality, and other issues.]

However, Canadians generally seem to me to be less arrogant than their US counterparts in relation to world politics. Canadians, for the most part, don’t grow up thinking that their country is the center of the universe or that they are the toughest kid on the global block in the way that most Americans do. This is not to say that Canada is idyllic.

Perhaps not idyllic, but the week I expect to spend with Ron and his partner on a small island off Vancouver Island’s coast sounds pretty idyllic to me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Anarchism, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.