EXCLUSIVE: Communists call for Soviet style dictatorship and revolution on Toronto campus

Toronto Metropolitan University has remained silent after a Marxist-Leninist campus group was recorded pushing for a revolution, class warfare, and a communist dictatorship in Canada.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Toronto Metropolitan University has remained silent after a Marxist-Leninist group operating on campus was recorded pushing for a revolution, class warfare, and a communist dictatorship in Canada. The group was also heard calling property owners “inhuman capitalist beasts.”

While at a Revolutionary Communist Party meeting titled “How Communists Fight Oppression” hosted at TMU’s Victoria building last Wednesday, True North recorded members of the RCP calling for a revolutionary overthrow of liberal “capitalist” democracy. The group also asserted the necessity of a Leninist Soviet style dictatorship in Canada.

A look at the group’s social media reveals no shortage of propaganda videos advocating for a Soviet-style revolution.

Alex McKeever, one of the main speakers of the event, told an undercover True North reporter that the party has 700 members nationwide but thousands of international members. However, the RCP is not a political party on any ballot in Canadian elections, but hasn’t ruled out the possibility of doing so.

The RCP was not listed on the school’s student club page, but was still able to rent out a room on campus. In 2021, the then-Ryerson Student Union revoked the club status of the Ryerson Conservative Club after maligning the group for alleged “extremism.”

External groups renting space at the university are bound by school policies such as respecting protected groups, including “Religion and Creed” under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Policies include rules against “Hate activity,” including symbols, and other expressions of hatred or vilification. Conduct that is demeaning or threatening could also result in the revocation of campus privileges.

Many with a heritage which had become victimized by the Soviet Union’s and other Socialist totalitarian states’ systemic oppression could fall under this category.

TMU’s diversity policy cites respect for history and lived experiences, including “intergenerational trauma, systemic oppression and socioeconomic status.” This could encompass those victimized by Soviet and other Socialist totalitarian states’ systemic oppression.

Neither TMU nor the department in charge of renting space out to external groups responded to True North’s requests for comment on potential breaches of school policy.

During an hour-and-a-half-long meeting, the RCP had several speakers who put their names forward to speak in a live-action, role-play-style communist party meeting.

During the talks, one individual, Jacob, stressed the importance of “striking at the heart” of the most “radical and committed wing” of the pro-Palestine movement, the students. He stressed the importance of staging a protest to “shut down campuses” altogether, and “make it impossible for anything productive to happen on campus.”

Alex McKeever, one of the group’s members, led the initial talks, where he said, “We saw only a fraction of what’s possible” in the “Great Russian Revolution.” He noted that the will of the majority “can be dismissed outright” but claimed the RCP speaks for the good of said majority.

He disavowed any attempts to achieve socialist goals via reforms or democracy, as the “inhuman capitalist beast” class would never allow the “proletariat” to seize control. He asserted that unspent money in the pockets of Canadians should be taken by “the majority.”

When asked about the necessity for violent revolution, one speaker frequently featured in RCP propaganda videos said the whole purpose of their meetings is to form a party to become “the most organized force to fill a vacuum” left after revolutions in the West – to put Vladamir Lenin and Karl Marx’s ideas into practice, and not just talk about it.

Members of the group repeatedly claimed that all forms of oppression in the world, including racism, were inventions of “capitalism,” ignoring oppression under the socialist dictatorships that they advocate for.

After the talk, Layla, who was in charge of selling the literature and the RCP newspaper, said that liberal capitalist democracy is actively waging a class war against the working class and that workers should be armed to defend themselves in this class war.

When True North prodded further on the necessity of a violent class war and revolution, the Marxists on campus repeatedly recommended Lenin’s “State and Revolution,” saying it would answer many questions about what the group advocates for.

Historian Robert Conquest, in “The Harvest of Sorrow,” estimated that around 1-2 million were killed via executions, repression and famine policies under Lenin. Stéphane Courtois, the author of the “Black Book of Communism,” estimated 4–6 million deaths attributable to Lenin’s regime. Those figures do not include the tens of millions more killed by socialist regimes after Lenin’s reign.

Lenin repeatedly advocated for politicide, classicide and totalitarian dictatorship in Russia and around the world. His writings repeatedly called for mass executions and terrorism against religious groups and landowners.

In the recommended reading “State and Revolution” sold by the RCP at the event, Lenin said it was “impossible” to fulfil the ideas of Marx “without violent revolution,” and claimed that to believe in democracy and to be fearful of dictatorship during the revolution was to “betray socialism.”