Stiles' Sarah Jama Screwup

Why Even Consider This?

(Nathaniel Arfin and I talked about the 401 tunnel and Sarah Jama on the Scrimshaw Show, which also included an all time rant from me on the idea that I’m somehow disloyal to my principles for wanting a different LPC leader. Do listen, subscribe, etc.)

On Wednesday, buried underneath the absolute idiocy of the Premier’s 401 tunnel “announcement” (given it will never happen, calling it an announcement feels wrong, but whatever), NDP leader Marit Stiles admitted that the door is not closed to Hamilton Centre MPP, anti-semite, and rape denialist Sarah Jama to return to the NDP caucus. Jama was, of course, booted from the NDP caucus in October after a series of events that everyone has collectively decided to pretend didn’t happen.

What actually happened with Jama was she put out a statement on October 10th where the word Hamas doesn’t appear, she condemns the 75 years of violence rooted in settler colonialism without mentioning the victims of October 7th, and spends more time listing Israel’s (genuinely oppressive) actions in Gaza over decades than anything else. She did not directly say the Israelis deserved it but from a member of a political movement that is so aware of hints and winks and nudges when the far right them, the plaintext meaning of that statement is that Israel deserves it for their behaviour. Then, Marit Stiles and her spoke, they came to an agreement that any future statements on this topic would be vetted by the Leader’s office. Jama agreed to this deal.

Fast forward about two weeks and Jama is being censured on the floor of the Legislature. Jama gives Stiles and the leadership a copy of the speech she claims she intends to give in that debate. She then gives a completely different speech that in effect doubles down on her original statement, continued to call Israel an apartheid state, and is booted from caucus. The NDP swiftly leak that she was booted out not for pro-Palestinian views, but for blindsighting the leadership.

In November, video comes out of Jama claiming that the reported instances of sexual violence by Hamas on Israeli women on October 7th were admitted lies (they were not) and that her treatment was proof of a Zionist conspiracy that controls an entire lever of government. Stiles survived an internal party attempt to force open the leadership, before losing the Kitchener Centre byelection to the Greens, a result that has been seen as impacted by the Jama Saga. (The NDP also ran a councilor who was a NIMBY while on council while trying to run as a YIMBY party, but disentangling those two things is impossible.)

It’s worth litigating all of this history for a real reason - Jama is an odious piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to have a seat in the Legislature, and frankly should be widely condemned by every progressive in this country. That Elle Magazine initially named her a trailblazing woman earlier this year is mental. She claimed that the Zionist lobby “controls an entire government operation”. She is an anti-semite. There can be no doubt about that.

But even beyond the moral case for striking out against Jama’s odious bigotry, there is an electoral case for it too. Marit Stiles has staked a significant amount of her credibility inside the NDP on the idea that she did what she had to do on Jama for the good of the party. This is a woman who doesn’t have very much credibility, because she was never elected to the job in a contested fight. The NDP’s decision to rig the Horwath succession meant that she had significantly less credibility within the party than Bonnie Crombie does now, because unlike Crombie’s internal opposition who now feel compelled to be constructive because we lost in a fair fight, Stiles’ internal opposition don’t feel that compulsion in the slightest. The truth is Stiles accepting the coronation was a mistake, because the NDP needed desperately to have a big fight about the future of the party. They didn’t, and now they’re having this fight by proxy of an anti-semite.

Stiles is clearly considering backing down, but she shouldn’t. She should have the faith in her party and herself to win Hamilton Centre even if and when Jama runs as an independent, and she should have the faith in the decisions she and her team made in 2023. Because if they abandon the courage of their convictions and let her back in, they’re fucked. And it’ll entirely be their own fault.

I’ve mostly avoided writing about the Ontario NDP this year because I don’t know what to say that isn’t just regurgitating the same point I’ve been making about Jagmeet’s federal NDP for years now. They’re two parties stuck together, they don’t know what to do, and they’re stuck between a strident progressive left that cares about trans rights and Palestinians and an old school union populist left that wants more money for hospitals in Windsor but cringes when they see overt expressions of homosexuality. (If you’re bored reading that paragraph please know I’m bored writing it.)

The real problem for Stiles at this point is that the decision has been made. What those who want Jama back in the party are, in effect, arguing is for the NDP to not be bound by the sunk cost of having already made the decision. Their argument is that Stiles shouldn’t feel compelled to stick with a dumb decision just because she doesn’t want to admit she’s wrong. The problem is, she wasn’t wrong.

The NDP-CPC battleground is full of seats where Jama’s brand of progressivism is poison. Windsor West, Thunder Bay, Oshawa, Niagara, London, Hamilton West, other various Northern Ontario seats, all of them are at risk to the PCPO and all of them hold views on social values closer to Doug Ford than Sarah Jama. In pure, crass, seat terms, you’d much rather tack away from Jama’s views, because losing 5% to the Greens in Danforth is way less consequential than losing 5% to the Liberals or PCs in Windsor or whatever.

More importantly, Stiles made this a fight about her leadership. If she lets Jama back in she might as well hang a flip flip off her shoulder for all the good anyone will take anything she ever says again. It is a moral travesty that Stiles et al would even consider Jama. It’s also electoral poison. Don’t be idiots.