Santa’s Rebel Elves Wish You a Merry Anti-Colonial Christmas!

John A. Macdonald and Queen Victoria statues were vandalized again in so-called Montreal, with red and green paint.

December 24, 2018 — On Christmas Eve, Montreal-area vandals have covered the John A. Macdonald Monument (1895) and the Queen Victoria Statue at McGill (1900) with red and green paint respectively.

This action, claimed by Santa’s Rebel Elves, continues a series of paint attacks on symbols of racist British colonialism in Montreal. The Macdonald Monument has been vandalized at least six times, while the two Queen Victoria Statues in Montreal have been painted at least three times (including in green paint on St. Patrick’s Day 2018).

Concerning the Queen Victoria statue, the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade, responsible for the St. Patrick’s Day vandalism, wrote:

“The presence of racist Queen Victoria statues in Montreal are an insult to the self-determination and resistance struggles of oppressed peoples worldwide, including Indigenous nations in North America (Turtle Island) and Oceania, as well as the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and everywhere the British Empire committed its atrocities.The Queen Victoria statues are also an insult to the legacy of revolt by Irish freedom fighters, and anti-colonial mutineers of British origin. The statues particularly deserve no public space in Quebec, where the Québecois weredenigrated and marginalized by British racists acting in the name of the putrid monarchy represented by Queen Victoria.Queen Victoria’s reign, which continues to be whitewashed in history books and in popular media, represented a massive expansion of the barbaric British Empire. Collectively her reign represents a criminal legacy ofgenocide, mass murder, torture, massacres, terror, forced famines, concentration camps, theft, cultural denigration, racism, and white supremacy. That legacy should be denounced and attacked.”

Concerning the Macdonald Monument, a poster seen on the streets of Montreal concisely sums up his racist legacy as follows:

“John A. Macdonald was a white supremacist. He directly contributed to the genocide of Indigenous peoples with the creation of the brutal residential schools system, as well as other measures meant to destroy native cultures and traditions. He was racist and hostile towards non-white minority groups in Canada, openly promoting the preservation of a so-called “Aryan” Canada. He passed laws to exclude people of Chinese origin. He was responsiblefor the hanging of Métis martyr Louis Riel.Macdonald statues should be removed from public space and instead placed in archives or museums, where they belong as historical artifacts. Public space should celebrate collective struggles for justice and liberation, notwhite supremacy and genocide.” (Poster Link: http://bit.ly/2L0v7a0)