As someone who studies fascist culture and history, I’m worried we are being led to take the wrong lessons from the Christie Pits Riots.
The events of August 16, 1933, which would later become known at the Christie Pits Riot, are the seminal example of Toronto working class and immigrant history. Communities stood together against violent hatred from white supremacists.
In the summer of 1933 Anglo-Canadian supremacists had organized themselves in so-called Swastika Clubs. Members saw their Anglo-supremacy (i.e. British supremacy) in the same way that Nazis saw their racial supremacy.
Tensions rose to a breaking point when fascists brought a swastika banner to a baseball game in Christie Pits to incite the Jewish and Italian athletes and their fans. The resulting violence saw the swastika banner seized and torn up, and the city enacted anti-hate speech laws in response.
At the AGO a bit over a week ago, on March 2, outside a scheduled reception for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, hundreds of people protested at entrances denouncing the complicity of both governments’ support of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. A similar protest was held outside a Liberal Party fundraiser dinner in the Yorkville neighbourhood hosted by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister Ya’ara Saks, preventing them from attending, according to police.
Despite what Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, wrote for The Toronto Star last week in his op-ed, “AGO protest was intimidation fuelled by police inaction,” those antifascists in 1933 would have been supportive of the protesters.
We must not be drawn to the wrong lessons, especially from Volpe, who has liked social media posts by far-right supporters of Israel and is the son of hard-line Israel supporter and former MP Joe Volpe.
It should be noted that Flavio Volpe was given quite the media platform: in addition to his Star op-ed, he was also quoted about the protest in a reported Star article and in separate articles in the Globe & Mail and National Post, and he was a guest on a Global talk radio show. The Star published no critical opinions responding directly to Volpe.
Let’s remember, though, that those who protested at the AGO were confronting complicity and indifference in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the far-right, fascist-adjacent Italian prime minister’s visit. In doing so, they were following in the footsteps of those who fought the Anglo-supremacists in Christie Pits.
Invoking Christie Pits as justification for further police crackdowns on protest, as Volpe does, suggests that he isn’t offended so much by fascists as much as by disorderly protest of them.
Back in 1933, The Toronto Daily Star (now The Toronto Star) called the anti-fascist and swastika-waving rioters alike as “hoodlums” and as a “disorderly” mob. The police did not solve the problem of emboldened fascists in 1933 in Toronto. It was a mass community response that did.
It is a further perversion of history that Volpe claims protesters’ use of slogans like “there is only one solution” and “intifada” (his phrasing) is somehow similar to the use of “Heil Hitler” in 1933 at Christie Pits. The full slogan, “There is only one solution; intifada revolution,” means the solution to the violence and abuse enacted on the Palestinian people is in resisting and overthrowing the brutal status quo.
In 1933, Nazis in Toronto, honoring their leader with shouts of “Heil Hitler” did so to establish their power and to intimidate groups they saw as inferior. It was a slogan which divided Toronto into two groups: those who heard the call and recognized it as affirming their supposed superiority, and those who recognized it as a call for their subjugation and eventual extermination.
In contrast, the call for intifada is a call to resist systemic violence. It is a call for an end to Israel’s occupation and apartheid. These two contexts are not the same.
The protest at the AGO had nothing to do with Toronto’s Jewish community, aside from the fact a number of Jews critical of Israel were there participating in it. It is absurd then for Volpe and others to assert that these slogans are meant to intimidate Jews – which they aren’t – when he is talking about an Italian-Canadian friendship association event.
It is likewise unconscionable for Liberal MP Marco Mendicino, who was heckled by protesters while entering and exiting the event, to smear those present as “disgusting antisemitic protestors.”
Giorgia Meloni, the guest of honor at the reception at the AGO, has a well-established history with the Italian far right. She spent her childhood in the youth wing of the Italian fascist party, has participated in spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories (e.g. about “globalists”), hosted alt-right former Trump advisor Steve Bannon at official events and publicly honored a member of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic government in 2020.
To claim the rioters of Christie Pits would be on her side is ludicrous.
Trudeau and Meloni are perfect targets for protesters and well in line with the history of those who marched against fascism 91 years ago.
Ira Lewy is a PhD student in International Relations at McMaster University with a focus on militarism and fascist culture. He is a member of Independent Jewish Voices in Toronto.
This article appeared in the 2024 May/June issue.
