The warning from the North: A Canadian call to resist Authoritarianism, Climate Collapse and Collective Erasure

Let us begin, as we must, with clarity — not spectacle. Let us see past the blaring headlines, the distraction of social media feuds, and the numbness of daily crisis fatigue. Let us instead confront the deeper danger — the slow-burning architecture of authoritarianism and ecological collapse — now spreading with terrifying familiarity across Turtle Island and beyond.

What threatens us is not merely the rhetoric of one man, or one party. It is a convergence of crises — political, ecological, and moral — driven by systems of unaccountable power that prize domination over democracy, profit over planet, and spectacle over substance.

And though I am from the lands we call Canada, the threats we face do not stop at borders. Because tyranny does not need a passport, and collapse does not respect jurisdiction.

We in Canada are not spectators to the rise of fascism in the United States — we are targets. Donald Trump, an indicted felon, a serial liar, and now a declared enemy of democracy, has directly threatened us: with economic warfare, with mass deportations, with military escalation, and with erasure of Indigenous rights.

He has mocked our sovereignty. He has pledged to rip up climate agreements, impose crushing tariffs, and punish any resistance to fossil fuel expansion. He has already called for the annexation of Canadian resources. He sees Indigenous sovereignty not as a sacred truth, but as a political obstacle. This is not hypothetical — it is happening.

We must understand: this is not about “Make America Great Again.” It is about rebuilding empires, erasing memory, and unleashing the raw, extractive violence of petro-authoritarianism.

What we are witnessing is not merely a regression — it is a reassembly of a dangerous global script. From Netanyahu in Israel, from ICE’s aggression to Trump’s promised interventions, the pattern is the same: demonize the outsider, dismantle the law, normalize militarization, and concentrate power.

It begins by discrediting elections and undermining democracy. We’ve seen it: in Trump’s Big Lie, in the armed mobs at Capitol Hill, and now in the calculated campaign to make democracy seem broken, corrupt, and irrelevant — so it can be replaced.

Then comes the assault on dissent. Journalists are enemies. Protesters are anarchists. Whistleblowers are traitors. And anyone who speaks inconvenient truths — whether about genocide, police violence, or the climate emergency — is smeared, surveilled, and silenced.

In parallel, there is a relentless war on reality itself. Facts are dismissed as fake. Science is ridiculed. History is rewritten. And the most dangerous myths — of racial superiority, of divine nationalism, of male domination — are elevated into political dogma.

Here in Canada, we know this playbook. Our own governments have used it against Indigenous land defenders, against migrant workers, against climate activists standing peacefully on the frontlines of survival. We have watched RCMP officers raid sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory with militarized force. We have seen governments criminalize protest to protect corporate interests.

We must be clear: climate justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and democratic resistance are now existential threats to the powers that be. That is why they are targeted. That is why we must protect them.

Trump’s threats toward Canadians and Indigenous Nations echo the very same strategies used against Palestinians in Gaza, against queer and trans communities in Florida, against asylum seekers at the southern U.S. border. These are not isolated attacks — they are nodes in a system of oppression.

We must stop pretending that Canada is immune. We are not safe.

Trump has already promised mass deportations –including of Canadian dual citizens. He has vowed to criminalize climate activism and dismantle protections for LGBTQ2S+ people. His allies want to ban books, erase trans lives, and unleash fossil fuel corporations to ravage what remains of our living Earth.

If you are Indigenous, queer, Muslim, undocumented, disabled, or simply someone who believes in justice — you are in the crosshairs. And this time, the machinery of oppression is better funded, more algorithmically precise, and more globally networked than ever before.

But we are not powerless.

We must sound the alarm — not later, but now. Not only with our voices, but with our actions.

We must organize. We must protest. We must protect each other.

We must turn despair into determination — and fear into fuel for collective resistance.

We must remember: authoritarianism does not begin with a bang — it begins with a shrug. With normalization. With exhaustion. With silence.

That is why we must refuse to be silent.

Let us reclaim the power of truth.

Let us defend real journalism — not corporate stenography, but brave, independent truth-telling.

Let us restore the sanctity of education — not as job training, but as empowerment to question, to imagine, to dissent.

Let us make solidarity more than a slogan — let it become our daily practice. Let us recognize that what is happening to Palestinians under occupation, what is happening to trans youth in red states, what is happening to land defenders in Canada — these are not separate struggles. They are one struggle.

We are in a war — not of tanks, but of time. Not of ideology, but of extinction.

We do not have decades. We do not even have years.

While Trumpists in the U.S. and their enablers in Canada sabotage climate policy, we are hurtling toward irreversible biospheric collapse. The Amazon is near tipping. Arctic permafrost is thawing. Methane is rising. Fires rage. Crops fail. And our window to act is closing fast.

We must fight for a world where children can breathe clean air. Where Indigenous Nations have full jurisdiction over their lands. Where migration is not a crime, but a right. Where queerness is celebrated, not criminalized. Where truth matters more than profit. Where democracy is more than procedure — it is participation, protection, and purpose.

We are the ancestors of tomorrow’s resistance. And history will remember not just what we endured, but how we answered.

So let us answer boldly.

Let us rise.

Let us rise for the water defenders.

Let us rise for the refugees.

Let us rise for the silenced whistleblowers, for the grieving mothers, for the exiled journalists, for the jailed activists, for the endangered Earth.

Let us rise with the stubborn clarity of those who know that what is planned next is not inevitable — unless we do nothing.

Let us rise — not as citizens of one nation, but as caretakers of all life.

Because this is not only about the next election. It is about the next generation. It is about the kind of humanity we refuse to surrender.

And though the storm is coming — though the machinery of oppression grows louder — we know something deeper:

That people, awakened and united, are more powerful than any despot, any demagogue, or any death cult disguised as governance.

So resist. Organize. Educate. Disrupt. Defend. Rebuild.

Let the warning not paralyze — but prepare.

Let the pain not silence — but radicalize.

Let our love — for land, for justice, for each other — become the power they cannot crush.

This is your country. This is your world. And no tyrant, no billionaire, no fossil-fueled demagogue can take it from you — unless you let them.

So don’t.

We are not alone.

We are not too late.

And we are just getting started.

Howard Breen, is a climate and humanitarian advocate, who ended 11 months of house arrest in April for disruptive Extinction Rebellion actions, the last being in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs and clans opposed to the Coastal Gaslink pipeline in British Columbia, Canada