Alliance Ouvrière is Much Scarier Than the Ruling Class Thinks

A fake guillotine is nothing.

Jay Lesoleil || For International Workers Day, a labour organization called Alliance Ouvrière (AO; Workers’ Alliance in English) brought a mock guillotine to the big union demonstration in Montreal. Rank and file workers bussed in by the major unions laughed and cheered as the guillotine passed by on its rolling platform. It was a funny prop, an over-the-top nod at the popular rage simmering in Quebec after years of rule by the malevolent Yeerks of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) party. At the end of the demonstration, Alliance Ouvrière members carried out a mock decapitation of a papier-maché dummy, representing Quebec’s business elites, in front of a laughing crowd. Good family fun for all.

The next day, a ‘Rebel’ ‘News’ ‘reporter’ ‘broke’ the ‘story’: union thugs threaten bolshevik terror at Montreal murder-rally, etc. Within hours, the heads of every political party in the province, plus every major union central, had denounced Alliance Ouvrière and distanced themselves from The Incident. The leader of the Parti Quebecois said that he was shocked and sickened. The leader of Quebec Solidaire demanded that AO apologize. The Minister of Labour, a horrifying little worm named Jean Boulet, wriggled and wept about how frightened he had been.

What followed was a full-fledged meltdown. The political elites in the province, and their cringing lackeys in the media, descended into a frenzy of pearl-clutching snowflakery. The right-wing podcast circuit started pumping out content about the spectre of communist terrorism. The mainstream liberal media came out with piece after piece quoting ruling-class freaks about how sad they were and asking sour-faced lawyers if these scary union rabble could be made to answer for their crimes in a court of law. Opinion writers moaned and lamented about how our noble democracy is now in danger from political extremism. TVA called it ‘une violence inouïe’ (an act of unprecedented violence). The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said that it was ‘orchestrated by a radical fringe known for also displaying the symbols of the pro-Hamas movement’. Politicians started accusing one another of not taking the guillotine seriously enough. The police said they were opening an ‘investigation’. The Minister of Labour, whom the dummy resembled, said he would be personally filing charges. The National Assembly in Quebec City voted unanimously to condemn The Incident.

All in all it has been a nauseating experience watching these people fall over themselves to pretend that this innocuous act of street theatre qualifies as an unacceptable act of violence to be censored and condemned. It has demonstrated that the parasites who rule us are entirely too comfortable, an entitled and out-of-touch class of hysterical aristocrats who believe that they deserve special police protection from feeling offended by demonstrations. Hilariously, everyone who isn’t six years old understands that demonstrations are more or less useless other than as a means of letting off steam and showing the flag; demonstrations have been entirely absorbed into the framework of liberal capitalism and have essentially no impact on policy. A mock guillotine, therefore, doesn’t represent some sort of violent threat, as these disgusting freaks pretend. What it actually represents is the crossing of a line, a transgression against a code of politeness already totally tipped in the favour of the enemy class. Sending the cops to investigate Alliance Ouvrière is the equivalent of the Victorians sending somebody to Australia for insulting the Queen. You can have your completely toothless little demonstration which we will totally ignore, but if you dare to even gesture at the possibility of something a bit scarier, you’ll be hearing from the cops.

Ironically, as the whining minions of capital in Quebec City will find out, Alliance Ouvrière is actually not an ‘activist’ organization, and doesn’t really care about street theatre, and is engaged in something much, much scarier than fake guillotines: organizing the working class into fighting unions, radicalizing the existing unions, and rehabilitating the political strike as a weapon against the vampire class. It is the organization that successfully carried out the first unionization of an Amazon site in Canada, a distribution centre outside Montreal, which was so disruptive that the company pulled out of the entire province of Quebec. It is a major emerging threat to capital because its base is not in student politics, identity politics, or some boutique Trotskyist microsect but in organized labour, notably in the public sector and the construction sector. Its members are organized into industrial sections and are actively engaged in building power for the working class inside and outside of the major unions. It is not lobbying or begging for concessions; it is not a woke infographic-generating machine; it is not the one true Leninist vanguard party issuing lengthy denunciations of the twelve other one true Leninist vanguard parties. It is something far more dangerous: a socialist organization run by and for normal people with a clear vision for social transformation through working-class politics, and the ambition and energy to make it happen.

If you live in Montreal, join Alliance Ouvrière’s Montreal chapter today. If you live elsewhere in Canada, check out local chapters: AO now has chapters in Quebec City, Hamilton, Halifax, the GTA, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Waterloo. They are working hard to turn things around for the left in this country. If you are sick of nothing happening and want to be part of the solution, get involved. If you live elsewhere and are part of an organization, see if your organization can issue a statement of solidarity with AO. If you are in a Quebec union, or are a member of Quebec Solidaire, contact leadership to express that you think their condemnation of AO is a major strategic error. If you work in media, see if you can help turn this feeding frenzy into a disaster for the ruling class by using this moment of attention to publicize their many crimes against real people.