The Red Review | Issue #19 (April 2025)

Socialists in Canada, the United States and Mexico say NO to Trump

by Socialist Action Canada

Workers, women, youth, and allies - Take Direct Action to Stop the Trade War!

American President Donald Trump fosters chaos. His aim is to enrich himself and his corporate cronies, even turning against America’s erstwhile capitalist allies. The working class and low-income folks are sure to suffer the most in Trump’s infernal tariff war. What is to be done?

Start by rejecting nationalist demagogy. The Canadian ruling elite is imperialist in its own right, commanding some of the biggest corporations in the world, particularly prominent in the fields of banking, mining, energy resources, forestry, retail and manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, American Capital covets that wealth as Washington’s share of global production and military dominion declines relative to other powers. That is the background to threats issued by U.S. President Donald Trump to “annex by force” Greenland and the Panama Canal, and to absorb by “economic pressure” the Canadian state and its riches.

The Election of Unrequited Dreams

by Barry Weisleder

The snap 2025 Ontario election did not produce very snappy results. To save face, the leader of every major party is busy putting lipstick on the pig in a vain effort to portray some semblance of victory.

Ontario Tories won a majority of seats on February 27, but failed to get the BIGGER mandate that (Captain Canada) Premier Doug Ford sought. Naturally, taxpayers are on the hook for the $189 million dollars spent on the exercise. The 43.3 per cent turnout for the mid-winter frost-fest was pitiful, just two per cent up from the worst-ever showing. All around, it was an election of unrequited dreams.

The New Democratic Party hung on to Official Opposition status -- mainly thanks to the undemocratic First Past The Post system, and an uncanny concentration of support in some 27 of the 124 Ontario ridings.

Why Should You Vote for the NDP in the Upcoming Federal Election?

by Socialist Caucus

The New Democratic Party is the only political party in Canada that has roots in the social movements and labour. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress(CLC) came together to found the NDP over 60 years ago and have worked together ever since. Today, the NDP remains the only labour based political party in North America.

The Conservative Party

The Conservative Party is the primary party of Canada’s business and political elites. Poillievre's chief of strategy, Jenni Byrne, is a lobbyist for Loblaws, which was found guilty of price-fixing bread products and recently investigated for mislabelling meat products.

Poillievre practices libertarian populism. He will cut services we rely on for everyday life; a vote for Poillievre is a vote against your interests.

Free Yves Engler

by Owen Schalk

In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is enough to land you behind bars

On February 20, long-time Canadian Dimension columnist and contributor Yves Engler was arrestedby Montréal police at the behest of pro-Israel media personality Dahlia Kurtz. In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is apparently enough to land you behind bars.

Canadians involved in progressive politics, from the left-wing of the NDP and Greens to the Communist Party, read Engler’s work and admire his commitment to social struggle. For decades, he has organized in support of just causes, from helping stop war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Concordia University in 2002, to tirelessly confronting Canadian politicians about their complicity in the genocide in Gaza, to penning a vast catalogue of work that shatters complacent illusions about Canada’s benevolence and reveals the often cynical, profit-driven, anti-democratic heart of Ottawa’s foreign policy.

A Guide to Dismantling the Edifice of Lies on the Ukraine

by Hans Modlich

From Hero to Zero in 40 odd minutes in the Oval Office, Vladamir Zelensky flamed out in front of the entire world’s cameras. He proved true once again the famous Henry Kissinger adage, that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be America’s friend is fatal!

Clamouring for security guarantees that he should have known he would not get, Zelensky ended up in a shouting match with his master over the “killer and terrorist Putin”. In a bizarre twist Trump ended up accusing him of “gambling with World War III” and then unceremoniously tossed him out of the White House. Three days later Trump suspended the flow of satellite and AWAC intelligence and paused supplies to the embattled Ukrainian military.

Aaron Mate in his March 2^nd post stated; “For panicked cheerleaders of the proxy war against Russia, the consensus view is that Trump has betrayed a stalwart US ally, sided with an enemy in Moscow, and may have even deliberately triggered the clash to serve his treacherous agenda.”

Labour Pains

by Jenn Clamen

My foray into labour organizing for sex workers began in 2002 when the co-founder of the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW) visited the outreach project I worked with in London, U.K. The IUSW was looking for support to mobilize members for the U.K.’s first sex workers’ union. I was pumped! The energy around the table on voting day was palpable. People who worked on the street, in porn, in brothels, sex phone businesses, strip clubs, and other parts of the industry voted in the first sex workers’ local of the U.K.’s third-largest union, the GMB. Despite this very important recognition of sex workers’ right to self-organize and to join a trade union, it was unfortunately a symbolic gesture at best. Although the GMB would later help registered sex work businesses like strip clubs negotiate labour conditions, they were unable to provide avenues to address labour abuses for the great majority of sex workers who laboured under sex work criminalization in the U.K. Since at least the early 2000s, many unions across the globe, in addition to the GMB, have vocalized their support for sex workers, but these statements have not improved actual working conditions in criminalized sex industries.

The Truth About Trump’s Dismantling the Government Bureaucracy and the “Constitutional Crisis:” A Marxist Assessment

by John Pottinger and Jeff Mackler

That President Trump has dismantled or significantly gutted some dozen or more government agencies, frozen the allocation of trillions of dollars in the federal budget allocated to run the country, fired multiple thousands of government workers – including top heads of major agencies and departments – appointed the nation’s richest capitalists and their cohorts to scrutinize how the new or reconstructed agencies will operate, if at all, and how millions, billions and trillions of dollars will be spent is all TRUE AND AT LEAST IN PART LEGAL under longstanding capitalist laws and regulations. And if Trump’s Supreme Court appointees approve some of his reactionary moves, they will become “the law of the land,” barring the intervention of mass working class forces in the streets that aim to challenge capitalist rule

Momentarily paralyzed Democrats, who, in the past, largely vetted the funding of these agencies via virtual gifts to the corporate elite, along with largely secret tax code dodges and overt multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for the same capitalist elite,

Smash Zionist Genocide and Apartheid

by Socialist Action Canada

After 17 months of genocidal bombardment and invasion of Gaza, the Zionist state has killed nearly 50,000 people, 2/3 of whom are women and children. Many more are injured, or still buried beneath rubble. Respected medical journal The Lancet estimates 200,000+ fatalities due to disease, unsanitary conditions and malnutrition. Zionist pogroms in the West Bank, supplemented by Israeli tanks, have slaughtered hundreds, a prelude to total ethnic cleansing. Outrageously, U.S. President Trump insists that the U.S. will “own” Gaza, turn it into a Riviera for the rich, and force the Palestinian people out to Egypt and Jordan. The “ceasefire” hangs by a thread, while Israel threatens to bomb Iran's nuclear energy facilities.

Zionist forces attacked both Lebanon and Syria. In Lebanon, over 4,000 people have been killed, with over 16,000 injured. Israel still occupies and leveled parts of southern Lebanon. Israeli fighter jets flew low over Beirut to intimidate over 1 million mourners at the funeral for slain leader Hassan Nasrallah. During the uprising against Assad in Syria, the Zionist military seized additional Syrian territory (in violation of international law) beyond the Golan Heights which it first occupied in 1967.