Editorials
Editorial Committee
Stepping out of a Toronto courthouse last April, Montreal-based activist Jaggi Singh addressed the media about his decision to plead guilty to “counselling to commit mischief” during Toronto’s anti-G20 protests in June 2010. Nearly a year after being arrested and eventually charged with…
From UTA Number Thirteen
UTA Editorial Committee
The moment in which we find ourselves is marked by promise and peril. Throughout the Middle East, popular uprisings are dramatically accelerating history and undermining a half-century’s worth of geopolitical certainties. Meanwhile, in Canada, the US, and Europe, right-wing politicians and…
From UTA Number Twelve
UTA Editorial Committee
Particular moments can, like a lightning flash, illuminate the terrain upon which we struggle. The recent anti-G20 convergence in Toronto was one such moment. Under the glare of the world’s media, three social forces – the capitalist state, the social democratic left, and the small but active…
From UTA Number Eleven
UTA Editorial Committee
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. For the last two years, the financial crisis and global recession have presented the left in North America with the best opportunity in recent memory to move beyond the defensive postures of “resistance.” Rocked by the most severe financial crisis since…
From UTA Number Ten
UTA Editorial Committee
As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we are faced with an uncomfortable paradox. On the one hand, the spectre of catastrophe – economic, ecological, social, biological, and nuclear – looms as large as ever. Even in mainstream political discourse, it’s possible to…
From UTA Number Nine
UTA Editorial Committee
While many radicals would rather not admit it, it’s difficult to talk about a specifically Canadian project of anti-capitalist renewal without considering the role that social democracy plays as either an obstacle to or a potential stepping stone for mass radicalization. As one of the most…
From UTA Number Five
As radicals, we’re often accused of looking for trouble. The problem is, nowadays, we don’t have to look very far. Everywhere we turn, it seems like trouble has seized the initiative. It has stolen the wind from our sails. It has come looking for us. Under conditions like these, being radical…
From UTA Number Seven
Except for graying professors encased in ivory towers and card-carrying members of anachronistic socialist sects, nobody really reads Lenin these days. Like wide-legged furry pants, he seems to have been relegated to the dustbin of history. Few will be worried, then, that the turnout at the 100th…
From UTA Number Six
We are living in a moment of paradox. Prospects for rebuilding the radical left in North America seem as tentative as ever. At the same time, the face of our enemy has never been clearer. Capitalist class rule makes little attempt to hide its deprivation and hypocrisy. Imperialist wars of…
From UTA Number Four
Writing our most recent histories seems to bring to mind the reliable touchstones of literature. Let us say, then, that it was the best of times – and the worst of times. A little over five years ago, our world was turned upside down. All it took was two events: Québec City and September 11.
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From UTA Number Three
In this issue of Upping the Anti we continue our attempt to engage with the radical political currents in Canada and around the world from which we have taken our name; the politics of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-oppression. In our first editorial, we took as our starting point the…
From UTA Number Two
Our name Upping the Anti refers to our interest in engaging with three interwoven tendencies which have come to define much of the politics of today’s radical left in Canada: anti-capitalism, anti-oppression, and anti-imperialism. These three political tendencies, while overlapping and…
From UTA Number One
For the generation of radicals that grew up at the end of history, today’s economic crisis comes as a relief. Despite the hardship the collapse of global markets is producing, it remains consoling that we’ll never have to sit through another story about the inevitability of progress. And it’s…
From UTA Number Eight