Why I Left Fightback
or, now, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)

In early 2018, I joined Fightback/La Riposte Socialiste, the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency. I was in my first year of university. I had seen the grief, misery, and exploitation of capitalism firsthand, and I was excited to join an organization of other like-minded people working to overthrow this system and build something better. Unfortunately, my ability to participate in the organization was disrupted by numerous experiences of harassment, abuse, and violence. These experiences on their own would not have necessarily made me resign — I understand that socialist organizations exist within the broader context of capitalism, and that this makes interpersonal harm inevitable to a degree. However, after witnessing the completely inadequate, misogynistic, and careless ways that Fightback’s leadership responds to allegations, I felt that I was unable to continue my involvement in good conscience.

During my recruitment meeting, I was asked if I agreed with the organisation’s stance against “call-out culture”. I agreed, and still do agree, that conflict resolution is healthier for social movements than public condemnation. However, in retrospect I see this question for what it was: the men recruiting me asking for assurance that I would allow violence enacted against me or others to be swept under the rug. I am making this statement publicly because I have done everything else in my power to address these issues, and nothing has changed — in fact, my efforts to improve the organisation from within were met with resistance and hostility. At this point, I am convinced that the inability of the IMT’s leadership to handle gendered violence adequately is a feature, not a bug.

Shortly after my recruitment, Fightback was banned from the picket lines of CUPE 3903’s strike at York University. I was not present at York, but found out afterwards that the organization was expelled over the treatment of an ex-member who came forward with sexual assault allegations. As a survivor myself, I found this extremely troubling. When I raised concerns about what happened in a branch meeting, I was told loudly and assertively by the male chair that the allegations were “political attacks” and that there was “no abuser in Fightback”. As it turns out, there were multiple, and one of them almost killed me. While I cannot speak to the specifics of what happened at York, I believe the victim who came forward in 2018 was speaking about the very real sexual exploitation, victim-blaming, and abuse apologia that exists within the organization. I believe them, and I believe the 5 comrades who left the British section for the same reasons.

As someone who was at one point a literal “poster girl” for Fightback (my image has been used in promotional material for the organization), I believe I have a moral responsibility to share these experiences. I have been involved in the recruitment of multiple young women to the organization and understand that my visible presence over the past 4 years has contributed to other women and LGBT people coming to view Fightback as safe and welcoming. While it has been amazing to see so many talented, intelligent, passionate organizers come into their own through this work, my fear for the vulnerable young people who believe deeply in this organization has been keeping me up at night. I know how demoralizing, heartbreaking, and isolating it is to feel betrayed by your own comrades in the wake of a traumatic experience. Sharing these experiences publicly is terrifying, but I would not be able to forgive myself if I did not do everything I could to prevent this happening to somebody else.

Incident 1

My first distressing experience in Fightback happened about a year after I joined. Before this incident occurred, my time spent in the organization was inspiring and exhilarating. I had been socially isolated for much of my life, until suddenly I was surrounded by comrades who understood the hardship I had experienced and were fighting to change the conditions that caused it. I gained a lot of political and personal confidence during this time. However, I lost that confidence when I was sexually harassed and threatened by the man who recruited me to the organization. This occurred at the 2019 Montreal Marxist Winter School.

The comrade in question was involved heavily in recruitment, reading groups, and writing for the paper. I looked up to him as a political mentor and a good friend. Like many Fightback members, he drank at events. A few weeks before Winter School, he had gotten drunk at our reading group that he led, and began ranting to me about his negative opinions about trans people in front of other members of the reading group. This made me uncomfortable, but I initially dismissed it (this was not the first time someone in the organization had made strange comments about my trans status).

At one of our final nights in Montreal, the organization hosted a pub night. At this event, the comrade that recruited me came up to me and immediately began making overtly sexual comments towards me. He asked me loud, invasive questions about my body, my transition, and what “made me wet”. He told me he was going to “spread rumours to the entire organization” about me “fucking” one of my platonic friends, unless I invited him back to the apartment I was renting. He threatened to physically endanger himself because I would not bring him home with me. It was a devastating experience to have someone I respected treat me in such a degrading way in front of other members. I dissociated through the rest of the trip. When I got home, I cried while telling my partner what happened. I was too hurt and ashamed to go into detail. I missed work and school for a number of days afterwards.

After missing branch meetings repeatedly, I told my branch chair what happened. She told a member of the Executive Committee (EC), who then called me on the phone to talk about the incident. I told him to the best of my ability, as I was still struggling with intense feelings of shame and guilt. After this conversation, the EC instructed the comrade who recruited me to call me and apologise. He told me he “had been feeling bad about what happened”, but insisted his sexual harassment and threats were intended as a “joke”. He said he would try to drink less at events. The situation was considered “resolved” and no disciplinary action was taken.

After this happened, I was repeatedly placed in branches, reading groups, etc. with the comrade who recruited me. He became increasingly hostile towards me, seemingly in retaliation for my reporting him to leadership. He would raise petty disagreements and “corrections” any time I spoke in meetings, and derisively accused me of a range of political “faults” from liberalism to feminism to Maoism. I became increasingly uncomfortable. When we were placed in a very small online branch together during the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, his behaviour became intolerable.

We were some of the few experienced members in this branch, and the new members were too intimidated to speak. Being criticized by the comrade who’d previously harassed and threatened me was now my primary interaction with the organization. I began missing meetings again, as I would feel panicked and sick for hours before they were supposed to start. After being questioned on my attendance by leadership, I explained the situation and suggested that my attendance would improve if I was transferred to a different branch. I was told that working with members I did not “get along with” was part of the “professionalism” required to be a revolutionary. I was also told that this had been a “recurring problem” with the comrade who’d recruited me, but that he “did a lot of very important work for the organization” so nothing further could be done about his behaviour.

Ultimately, this situation ended in me reaching a breaking point and no longer being able to attend any meetings or events for a period of months. Throughout this “break”, I was regularly contacted by various leading comrades inquiring about how much longer I was going to be inactive. It seemed as if leadership was very anxious that I was going to leave the organization, although there was still no action taken on the situation that had caused my inactivity. I ended up temporarily leaving Toronto and moving in with a friend in Hamilton. This decision was partially motivated by my desire to participate in activism without having to encounter the comrade who recruited me.

For a brief period of time after relocating, I was able to enthusiastically participate in the organization. I quickly became a branch chair, and began leading an introductory reading group. Explaining socialist ideas to other working class people was very rewarding for me and made me feel like I had the potential to do real, meaningful political work. This continued for a few months, until the second incident.

Incident 2

In the spring of 2021, I entered a relationship with another member of Fightback. This relationship was one of the worst experiences of my life. I knew this man for years and naively believed that he was a committed socialist who believed in the liberation of women and trans people. My trust in him as a fellow “comrade” allowed me to overlook patterns of misogyny and cruelty that escalated over the course of our relationship into emotional abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence. The situation worsened until an instance of strangulation that, according to my doctors, could have killed me or caused long-term brain damage. I was able to exit the relationship with the help of my current partner (who had also been assaulted repeatedly by my ex-partner) and friends who were scared for my safety. This experience was incredibly traumatic and destabilizing, and I am still recovering.

My ex-partner was a member of the organization for approximately 6 years, leading multiple branches and reading groups during that time. He inflicted violence casually, as if it was something he had done many times before. I know for a fact I am not the only person in the organization he hurt — he admitted that he had been involved with numerous other members and that he had been violent in past relationships. I know of multiple people he was previously involved with who have since left the organization. He stated on more than one occasion that the organisation’s social atmosphere enabled his abuse.

When I told a friend in the organization about what happened, she insisted that I speak to the EC. I was hesitant, both because of my previous attempt to report sexual harassment, as well as an ongoing situation wherein another friend who had reported sexual assault was being ignored (further detailed below as Incident 3). Ultimately, I went through with speaking to the EC about my ex-partner because I wanted to protect other members of the organization. I also co-authored a letter to the EC, along with 4 other members who shared my concerns, outlining our criticisms of the reporting process and some suggestions on how it could be improved. The letter, edited for confidentiality, can be read here. https://archive.ph/o/5FW0k/https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1CJveznJpdC10C6dnSLXtEuvbLwOdKnSYbDabYsr4HeE/edit

I spoke to an EC member about my ex-partner about a week later. I explained what happened, and the EC member seemed to take it quite seriously. He spoke with my ex-partner, who said his memory of some events was “fuzzy” due to his drinking, but told the EC member that what I said was true and that the EC should believe me about everything. I had already confronted my ex-partner about the abuse privately, and he had confessed and admitted he needed help. He did not attempt to deny what happened.

Shortly after this, the EC member contacted me to set up a meeting between me, him, and Alex Grant (another EC member who is the founder and, at least to my understanding, effective leader of the Canadian section of the IMT). The EC member told me this meeting was to discuss the sexual harassment described in Incident 1, which we had used as an example of the failures of the reporting process in our letter. I was somewhat intimidated as I had never really interacted with Alex before, but I felt optimistic that these long standing issues were finally being addressed. My optimism turned out to be misplaced.

When I entered the Zoom meeting, Alex immediately demanded that I “tell him what happened” with my ex-partner. I was confused and unprepared as I had been told this meeting was to be about a different subject. I had already given a complete statement to the EC member I spoke with prior and my ex-partner had already admitted he was guilty. When I asked why I was being asked to repeat myself given these circumstances, Alex told me he needed to “hear it from me directly”. Forcing me to recount events he already knew about just so he could personally scrutinize me felt gratuitous and inhumane.

Because I felt like I had no other choice, I went over the events again. I told Alex, in detail, about the severe and life-threatening physical abuse and sexual assault I had been subjected to by an older, more experienced comrade. When I finished, Alex’s only reply was to rebut my statement by claiming that my ex-partner did not “remember any of that happening”. This was a strange exaggeration based on the one comment my ex-partner made about his memory being “fuzzy”, disregarding everything my ex-partner said about my allegations being true. The other EC member brought up that my ex-partner had instructed the EC to believe me, that he had described his own actions as “inhuman”, and that there were witnesses who had independently noticed signs of physical abuse. Alex still stated that he would need to “formally” interview my ex-partner to get “his side of things”.

At this point, the friend I brought with me to the meeting for support requested that Alex attempt to limit meetings with my ex-partner and inform us when these meetings were happening. She explained that my current partner and I had been staying with her as a safety precaution due to my ex-partner’s history of violence and her concern for our safety after confrontations. Alex did not understand. She explained that strangulation was the clearest predictor of violence escalating “to the next level”. Alex still did not understand. She was forced to spell out that she was worried about my ex-partner killing me and my current partner because he knew where we lived. To this, Alex’s only response was asking me, “So are you going to move?”

At this point in the conversation, I was understandably frustrated. Alex had made me re-traumatize myself unnecessarily, he had been more defensive of my abuser than my abuser himself, and now when faced with the possibility of a member of the organization he started committing femicide, he was asking me what I was doing as a victim to prevent it. He did not seem to understand the severity of this situation or why repeatedly contacting the man who almost strangled me to death might have consequences for my safety. It was evident that my concerns about the organisation’s disciplinary “process” were more than warranted — they seemed incapable of taking basic precautions to keep victims from getting killed. I asked Alex if I could speak honestly, and he said yes. I told him that this was an unnecessarily stressful, traumatic process and that something desperately needed to change for the good of the organisation. This was when Alex started to raise his voice.

From this moment onward, Alex interrupted me, spoke over me to get me to stop talking, and eventually started yelling. He said I was being irrational, emotional, and needed to calm down (again, he was the one yelling). He aggressively chastised me for having the audacity to write a letter to the EC about the reporting process, telling me they would not be considering any of our suggestions. When I attempted to bring up the perpetrators of Incident 1 and Incident 3, who were both still active in the organization, he accused me of “never letting things be over” and “not allowing people to get better”. He seemed completely disinterested when I tried to communicate that these were not isolated incidents, that I knew of multiple other victims, and that I was worried for the safety of other vulnerable people in the organization. He made me sit there silently while he lectured me condescendingly about how I needed to treat the organization “like a workplace” to prevent things like this from happening, how I did not need to like people to work with them, and how leadership wanted members to deal with “relationship drama” and “gossip” on their own time. At one point, he yelled over me while I begged him to take this problem seriously, stating “[Perpetrator 1] made mistakes. [Perpetrator 2] made mistakes. [Perpetrator 3] made mistakes.”

Rape and domestic violence are not “mistakes”, they are conscious acts of power and control that are inherently counter-revolutionary. As both a socialist and a trained social worker, I was stunned by how terribly this conversation went.

Ultimately, despite Alex’s stated intent to draw this process out by interviewing my ex-partner again himself, the EC voted to expel my ex-partner based on the significant evidence and his own admission of guilt. It is my understanding that this was the first time in the history of the Canadian section of the IMT that a member has ever been expelled for sexual assault or interpersonal violence. I do not think this decision is worth applauding, for a number of reasons: he’d already directly admitted guilt, had been actively detrimental to the functioning of his branch due to neglecting his responsibilities as a branch officer for an extended period of time, and had not made it secret that he was planning on leaving in the near future.

Furthermore, despite being told that my ex-partner had been “expelled”, that was not in fact what happened — he was suspended from organizational work, but would be considered for readmission after a year if he went to therapy and continued to pay his monthly subs for this period (essentially paying his way back into the organization). He eventually decided to leave on his own terms. Aside from the handful of members of the last branch he was in, the membership of the organization has not been informed about his “expulsion” or the reasons for it. I believe reading this statement will be the first time some Toronto members will be learning about the fact that a branch chair in their city had repeatedly violently assaulted numerous female and trans members of the organization. I feel that not ensuring Toronto Fightback members were aware of this fact was actively negligent on the part of the EC.

Incident 3

In the summer of 2021, a friend I met in the organization was sexually assaulted by a well known Fightback cadre. I will be referring to these individuals as “my friend” and “the perpetrator” respectively for clarity. The perpetrator was heavily involved in various aspects of work, including contact work, recruitment, reading groups, CUPE union work, Indigenous solidarity work, and the 2019 student strike. I believe, as do many other observers, that the perpetrator was protected by the EC in the wake of my friend’s allegations. We believe this was due to his intense involvement in the work of the organization and the fact that he comes from a bourgeois family, which allowed him to donate significant sums of money to the organization and provide free space for events at the properties his family owns in Toronto.

My friend’s relationship with the perpetrator, as well as the fallout of the end of their relationship, was characterized by angry, controlling, and violent behaviour. He used emotional and physical coercion to get my friend to behave the way he wanted, including threats of violence towards himself and others as well as physical and sexual assault.

His harmful behaviour was also demonstrated frequently through his actions in Fightback. I directly witnessed many instances of racism, antisemitism, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny from the perpetrator, and have heard of many more from other members of the organization. He alienated many people both within Fightback and in its periphery through his frequently belligerent and hateful conduct. As I later learned, there had been many complaints made about him to the EC over the course of his membership, but little to no action was taken to rectify it. I find it hard to believe that other members who did not have the same vast amounts of time, money, and resources to contribute to the organization could have gotten away with acting in this manner.

After my friend ended their relationship with the perpetrator, his behaviour within the organization worsened dramatically, which to my knowledge resulted in even more official complaints lodged against him. This included spreading degrading and demonizing rumours about my friend to other members of the organization, threatening violence towards my friend’s new partner which included descriptions of attacking him with a hammer and pulling his teeth out with pliers, making graphic sexual comments about many other female and trans members of the organization, and vividly recounting disturbing details of his current sex life including one instance of having grabbed and lifted a woman by the throat during a sexual encounter. I brought up this behaviour to members of the EC myself, but no follow up was made and as far as I’m aware no actions were taken in response.

After my friend suffered through months of the perpetrator using his position of power in the organization to socially punish them for leaving him, they came forward to the EC about a specific instance of sexual assault. My friend’s allegations were initially dismissed as “gossip”. When multiple concerned observers pressed the EC on the issue, the perpetrator was given a “stern talking-to” and instructed to leave my friend alone. He was also instructed to “take a break” from socializing within the organization, but this was really more of a suggestion than an instruction as it was not enforced in any way. Since he had denied the allegations, the EC behaved as if their hands were tied.

Although the perpetrator had been told by the EC to stop socializing within the organization, when we confronted the EC with numerous social media posts that showed him at bars with young female comrades, we were told flippantly that the EC “could not stop him from hanging out with his friends”. Despite multiple pleas from me, my friend, and at least half a dozen other members for the EC to do anything to keep young women and trans people in the organization safe, the perpetrator was allowed to continue business as usual within Fightback for approximately 6 months.

Notably, the perpetrator was permitted to host weekly branch meetings in his home while under investigation for sexual assault. Alex Grant was at the time the member of the EC my friend was in contact with and was not only aware of this situation, but attended the meetings personally as he and the perpetrator were in the same branch. It is very unusual for branch meetings to be held in a member’s private dwelling — this is the only time I am aware of this happening. Furthermore, the EC knowingly instructed women and trans members, who were unaware of the allegations, to attend meetings in the home of an accused rapist. There is no justification for why the perpetrator was not placed on a forced hiatus immediately, let alone after multiple members of the organization repeatedly begged the EC to do so out of fear for our fellow comrades.

Throughout this extended period of willful inaction on the EC’s behalf, Alex had many conversations with my friend in which he attempted to coerce them into “mediation” with the perpetrator, instead of an official investigation carried out by a control commission composed of non-EC members. This “mediation” process was to be facilitated behind closed doors by Alex himself, and would involve both parties reaching a “compromise” about what happened. Alex continued to pressure my friend into “mediation” despite them repeatedly stating their discomfort with the idea. When questioned about the legitimacy of the “mediation” process he was proposing, Alex compared it to “Indigenous restorative justice”. There are a number of obvious red flags here:

1. Why did Alex, as the hypothetically neutral party in this process, repeatedly try to tell my friend what course of action to take? Why was his preferred course of action one that left the entire process in the hands of EC and kept my friend’s allegations secret from the rest of the organization?

2. Alex is in no way qualified to facilitate anything like the “mediation” process described. As a social worker with crisis training, I cannot imagine feeling confident enough in my abilities to lead a dialogue between an abuser and their victim. Why Alex thought that it was remotely safe, reasonable, or appropriate for him to even suggest this as an option is beyond my comprehension.

3. As mentioned previously, Alex was attending weekly branch meetings with and in the home of the perpetrator for this entire time period. In addition, he was actively interacting with and leaving friendly comments on the perpetrator’s social media posts. These should have been considered serious conflicts of interest from the moment he was chosen to handle the case, let alone in the context of him serving as a “mediator” between my friend and the perpetrator.

4. It is transparently ridiculous to suggest that a victim and perpetrator reach a “compromise” when one party is alleging that abuse occurred and the other is denying it. If this process had been carried out, it would have essentially been the organization aiding the perpetrator in gaslighting his victim into silence.

5. Alex’s suggestion that this process in any way resembles “Indigenous restorative justice” is both laughable and insulting. Alex is a white British man. As someone who actually understands how restorative justice works, I can firmly say that it is nothing like the misogynistic, victim-blaming nightmare Alex was attempting to enact. Furthermore, it is completely tone-deaf to invoke Indigenous justice processes to legitimize a rape cover-up, especially during a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and especially within an organization where multiple Indigenous members have been abused.

These private conversations between Alex and my friend continued for a period of months. In their final meeting, my friend attempted to demonstrate the severity of their case by reading a pre-written statement that fully detailed the assault and abuse they experienced. To this, Alex responded by saying, “What if I told you that I know the (name of perpetrator) from this week, and you know the (name of perpetrator) from 6 months ago?”. He told them that the perpetrator was “very apologetic”, insinuating that the perpetrator had admitted to and expressed remorse for the assault. This was a lie, and one that I believe was told to get my friend to agree to “mediation” under false pretenses. Furthermore, if the perpetrator had actually admitted to committing sexual assault, why was he still be in organization? When my friend pressed Alex on these questions, he did not provide a satisfactory answer. He did, however, finally agree to launch a formal investigation. I do not believe it was coincidental that he did this only when caught deceiving a victim on behalf of their abuser.

After this prolonged, exhausting struggle to get the EC to launch an investigation, a control commission was finally called. The commission, which was composed of 3 non-EC members who did not know either party, found the perpetrator guilty of sexual assault. The control commission’s investigation took approximately a month and was much more compassionate than the EC’s convoluted and failed attempts at carrying out an investigation of its own. The perpetrator was suspended for a year. While this was a victory my friend and many of their supporters fought to achieve for a long time, it does not give me any faith in Fightback’s “process”.

No one involved in the botched investigation has offered my friend a genuine apology for the hellish ordeal they were subjected to. Disciplinary action was only taken once non-EC members became involved, after an unreasonably long battle with the EC. My friend only received any degree of justice because of their immense patience and perseverance, and because they were supported and encouraged through this war of attrition by many other people who believed them when the EC did not. I believe that the vast majority of victims would have simply resigned from the organization rather than go through what they did for so long. The organization’s leadership has not taken any responsibility for endangering countless other members of the organization by enabling the perpetrator. No accountability has been taken for this colossal failure by the organisation to protect its membership. No steps have been taken to prevent something like this from happening again.

Conclusion

My final contact with the organization was a conversation with another full-timer, which occurred when I attempted to lower my monthly subs. I did this after months of silence following my conversation with Alex. I explained to the full-timer who contacted me about my subs that I was a committed socialist but could not justify supporting an organization that endangered its members. After I explained my concerns, he could not argue with anything I said, and agreed that it seemed like something suspicious was going on. He told me he would look into the issue and get back to me — he never did. I resigned over a month later and have not been contacted at all.

While I am writing and publishing this statement as an individual, I am aware of a number of other people who have recently stepped back from the organization or ended their membership for the same reasons. The chronic mishandling of sexual abuse in socialist organizations is clearly one of the biggest problems facing our movement, leading to collapses in the ISO, SWP, and WRP. On a broader scale, interpersonal violence and bigotry have destroyed countless movements. I believe these issues need to be faced head-on, with humility, empathy, and a genuine willingness to change. We desperately need to learn how to treat each other better, or we are doomed.

I do not think Fightback’s leadership is capable of these tasks. Frankly, I believe the organization is run by intellectually dishonest social conservatives who are incapable of acknowledging their own mistakes (including climate change denial in a quietly deleted article from 2008). Militant under Ted Grant, the IMT’s organizational and ideological predecessor, believed homosexuality was a capitalist aberration that would “disappear” under socialism and fought against programs aimed to combat racial discrimination while it held power in Liverpool (more sources here, here and here). The organization has rebranded as simply holding “principled criticisms” of “liberal identity politics”, and now opportunistically attempts to recruit young activists mobilized by struggles against racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, but the chauvinism at its core remains the same. I’ll let Alan Woods, the primary “theoretician” and international figurehead of the organization, speak for himself:

“A representative of the American SWP was in London and asked to meet us. [...] I had my notebook and pen ready to take notes, but after a while I let my pen drop and just sat there aghast. He was a student and was supposed to be one of their “cadres”. But all he talked about was Black Nationalism, Women’s Lib, Gay Lib, Vietnam and Cuba. I thought to myself: all that is missing is Flower Power and the joys of marijuana and the picture would be complete. Once again, not a single word about the working class or the class struggle.” (From Chapter 7 of his hagiography of Ted Grant, written in 2016)

This kind of chauvinism is far more divisive to the working class than “identity politics” will ever be. It is utterly meaningless to repeat empty platitudes about how prejudice of all kinds will disappear in a socialist society when you oppose any efforts to keep those prejudices from tearing our movement apart from within. Leadership that cannot admit to its own profound political mistakes in the past is ill-equipped to truly criticize and correct its dangerous flaws in the present.

In one of many discussions I had with leading comrades about the issues described in this statement, I expressed that I felt survivors of sexual violence were treated with hostility and suspicion by the organization’s leadership. To my surprise, the member I was speaking with did not disagree. Instead, I was told that it was actually necessary to treat any allegations as a political attack against the organization until proven otherwise, because “even Alan Woods” has been accused of misconduct. I have been assured that these allegations were false and that the woman behind them was “crazy” and “actually coming on to Alan” (no explanation was given as to why a young woman would be “coming on” to a man in his 70s, or why the IMT seems to cross paths with “crazy” victims everywhere it goes). After looking into these claims myself, I

uncovered a statement that describes the mishandling of these allegations and others in the British section of the IMT. I cannot substantiate these claims further, but I can say that their description of facing a “wall of silence” after coming forward, being written off by leadership, and leaving just to do so on their own terms, is incredibly familiar to me.

There are many people in the IMT I deeply respect and a number I consider close personal friends. I believe the organization is mainly composed of kind, dedicated, intelligent people who are motivated by an honest desire to transform society for the better. I imagine most rank-and-file members of Fightback would be horrified by what happened — their leadership has betrayed them just as it betrayed me. Despite my care for many members, I cannot condone an organization that treats victims of sexual violence like traitors. These instances are indicative that something has gone very, very wrong in the IMT, and I don’t know what, if anything, can be done to fix it.

I do not believe this spells the end for socialist organizing in Canada. In fact, I believe the mishandling of abuse on a small scale is indicative of larger political and organizational defects that render any organization guilty of this apologism both incapable and undeserving of attaining power. I have seen good people excuse behaviour they never would under other circumstances because they believe the IMT is the only organization capable of leading the working class to victory — this cognitive dissonance reflects a deeply unhealthy approach to politics. There is no reason to believe the IMT is the only hope for socialism other than the fact the organization itself constantly repeats this baseless claim. We cannot build socialism on rotten foundations. No leadership is unreplacable. No work is vital enough that we must allow marginalized people to be chewed up and spit out without consequence.

I am going to be a socialist until the day I die, and I am going to keep fighting to make our movement safe, healthy, and ultimately victorious. I hope you will, too.