While many Western governments have been taking an authoritarian turn in recent years, the U.S. government has accelerated this shift under Trump’s second administration. Mass incarcerations and deportations, the use of the National Guard in Democratic cities, hateful and extremely violent rhetoric targeting LGBTQ2+ communities and migrant populations, and attacks on reproductive rights — the assaults are coming from all directions. To this we can add the presidential decree designating the antifascist movement — and, in reality, any antifascist thought — as terrorist.

What about the situation in Canada and Quebec? Well, we’re not immune to such a turn.

Since taking office, Prime Minister Carney has been drawing heavily from the Conservatives’ playbook: blatant regression on environmental measures, handouts to oil lobbies, and the omnibus Bill C-2, which targets migrants and undermines privacy rights for the entire population. In Quebec, the CAQ is holding its own in this race to the bottom: restricting the right to strike, threatening unions’ financial autonomy, obsessing over (and attacking) trans people and inclusive language, fixating on secularism in the education system and public spaces, and even calling at its party convention to restrict the right to protest. Meanwhile, the PQ seems eager to compete, adopting an increasingly reactionary, populist, and conservative discourse — not to mention the improbable resurgence of the moribund PCQ.

Faced with this situation, the Front antifasciste populaire (Front Pop) calls on all individuals alarmed by this social climate and willing to mobilize, as well as all groups already engaged in struggle and determined to confront this unashamed far right, to join us for a first antifascist solidarity demonstration. We will send a message of solidarity to those fighting in the United States and elsewhere — and to our own governments as well: we will not be crushed!