When people lament how disorganized the left is in this country, do they understand the role that rightwing forces have played to make it nearly impossible to do broad-based organizing in this country? Let's start with the concrete wall within mainstream media

You simply cannot get access to a mainstream media platform and discuss real leftwing politics. You can talk a little bit, sometimes, based on various issues, in the most narrow fashion, but mostly it's a total shut out. How do we bring these politics to a mass audience?

The neoliberal transformation of Canada deliberately crushed large, national social movements. Like, very much deliberately destroyed things like the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and denigrated leftwing leaders.

Operating within this paradigm, unions shifted more towards business unionism, with less attention paid to building things outside of their membership, or beyond mainstream politics (this is shifting though...)

And operating within this paradigm, the NDP has floundered, unable and unsure about what it's role should be. It embraced neoliberalism as well in a spectacular showing of self-immolation, and what's left now is charred flesh.

You can barely talk about any of this stuff anywhere in Canada. What are our options? The Social? Macleans? The National? It's a **total shutout** by owners and management and Canadians don't really see how bad it is. They just see ... nothing.

You want to see how this operates? I've just published a book about the neoliberal transformation of Canada and it explains why everything today is fucked in the way that it is. I haven't done a single interview about it. Now, if only I had worked at CBC for 30 years ...

... the system protects its own and actively pushes out anything that threatens it. You cannot have a serious conversation about The Left in Canada without acknowleding that.