Michael Bueckert

This report for Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) presents data related to Canada’s export of military goods to Israel; this includes the current values and historical trends, the types of goods being exported, and the potential risk that these exports may contribute to a deteriorating situation for human rights and international law. This report also situates the current trend within an historical context, which reveals that there is precedent for restricting sales to Israel over concerns about human rights and military aggression. The report recommends that Canadian officials take immediate and proactive measures to eliminate the risks associated with its arms exports to Israel by suspending military trade and launching a parliamentary study.

PHD DISSERTATION

This dissertation explores the struggle in Canada over international boycott campaigns, providing a comparative analysis of Canadian solidarity movements which deploy economic practices of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (known collectively as “BDS”) to target the policies of foreign country, specifically focusing on campaigns against apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel. In particular, this study looks closely at the organized backlash to these campaigns, including the role of domestic lobbies and state-led propaganda campaigns, in an attempt to explain why the boycott campaign against South Africa appeared to be so successful, while the campaign against Israel has struggled to become popular. This analysis relies on original archival research, as well as interviews with both supporters and opponents of these boycott movements. It also provides a new theorization of BDS in terms of its political economic character, exploring the limits and possibilities of these forms of activism, both in terms of material economic impact (as per Marx) and their role in ideological struggle (as per Gramsci and Hall). This study identifies a number of factors which distinguish the pro-South Africa and pro-Israel lobbies, which have affected the ability of each lobby to articulate to common sense and build popular and state support. While the pro-South Africa lobby ultimately failed to counter the anti-apartheid movement, Israel’s support within Canadian society has allowed its defenders to go further and deploy coercive measures against boycott supporters, narrowing the space for pro-Palestinian solidarity activism.

This article explores the debates in Canada over the call for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against apartheid South Africa, and demonstrates how the African National Congress (ANC) became a significant reference point for both supporters and critics of the anti-apartheid movement. Through close engagement with Canadian civil society, the ANC built its status as the exclusive voice of South Africans, a position that allowed it to influence the movement’s demands, including its support for armed struggle. Friends of South Africa, unable or unwilling to defend apartheid itself, instead focused their efforts on demonizing and delegitimizing the ANC as terrorists and agents of the Soviet Union—but this failed to significantly damage the reputation of the ANC or weaken the call for boycotts. This article is based on extensive new archival research from sources including the Canadian Mission of the ANC and the Canadian-South African Society (an affiliate of the South Africa Foundation).

In 2013, the Harper government announced the merger of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) into the new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD). This paper analyzes CIDA as an agency of the capitalist state and evaluates whether the merger further subordinates aid to commercial interests. It argues that the merger represents a shift in the structure of representation of the Canadian state that privileges capitalist class interests in the formation and implementation of public policy.

This thesis evaluates the post-development concept of “alternatives to development” from the perspectives of critical political economy and Western Marxism. Post-development
theorists have long critiqued how development depoliticizes social life and suppresses alternative political imaginations. In formulating alternatives to this mode of social change, they emphasize place-based politics of cultural difference, premised on notions of coloniality, economic difference and autonomy. As I demonstrate, these theoretical positions are limiting, for they unnecessarily close off post-development theory from potential strategies and allies. Alternatively, I argue that the Marxist concept of reification provides an alternative analytical framework which transcends these limitations. By highlighting the role of capitalist class relations in shaping subjectivity and limiting political imagination, the concept of reification thereby illuminates the conditions which make thinking and acting “otherwise” materially possible, while expanding the scope for social action beyond the margins of the capitalist world system.

Palestinian solidarity movements are frequently accused of crossing the line from legitimate criticism of Israel to antisemitism. In order to make this determination, Israel's supporters often rely on Sharansky's popular "3D" framework which specifies that criticism can be considered antisemitic if it involves demonization, double standards, or delegitimization. This chapter evaluates the 3D framework by comparing it to the rhetoric of supporters of South Africa in the 1970s and 80s, who consistently complained that the country was subject to unfair criticism from the anti-apartheid movement. Drawing upon archival research and interviews, this paper demonstrates how the friends of South Africa believed that the country was being demonized, “singled out” for criticism, and held to a double standard, and who warned that South Africa's enemies posed an existential threat to the country itself. This suggests that the 3D framework is not a sufficient or reliable tool to evaluate antisemitism, but merely codifies rhetoric commonly used by countries facing campaigns of economic isolation.

https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/advocating-for-palestine-in-canada

Book chapter in Carroll, W. & Sarker, K. (Eds.) (2016), A World to Win: Contemporary Social Movements and Counter-Hegemony. Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books.

This chapter examines the role of organizational structures in mediating anti-capitalist solidarity in the Occupy movement. It explores the debate surrounding the ‘horizontal’ tactics and organization of Occupy, which included leaderlessness and consensus-based decision-making, with an emphasis not on assertions of ‘effectiveness’ but rather on the underlying conflict over what it means to be in solidarity,or "responsible to the other." While horizontalism is predicated on a notion of solidarity rooted in respect for the individual autonomy of the other, contradictions emerged in practice, most significantly when the horizontalist emphasis on participation prevented solidarity from being extended to those unable to participate. The chapter argues that the experience of Occupy reveals the limits to the horizontalist practice of solidarity, and suggests that formal structures—including leadership and representation—may be necessary to facilitate a solidarity capable of prefiguring a desired, post-capitalist future.

http://arpbooks.org/books/detail/a-world-to-win