Aimé Césaire’s “Boomerang Effect” and the 1970 October Crisis in the Global Cold War

This article offers a re-examination of the 1970 October Crisis through the lens of Anti-Colonial intellectual Amie Césaire’s theory of the boomerang effect. Césaire’s theory, which argues that the violence of colonization will ultimately normalize the use of violence against a colonizing country’s own citizens, can be applied more broadly to shed light on the normalization of violence stemming from global resistance to anti-imperial movements. To place this theory within a Canadian context, this article focuses on the 1970 October Crisis, where the Canadian government invoked the War Measures Act to limit civil liberties in response to the actions of the FLQ, the Front de Libération du Québec, an organization with ideological connections to Third World anti-imperialist movements. In doing so, this article explores how the Canadian government’s response to the FLQ reflected a global normalization of state violence and acceptance of anti-imperialism as an existential threat to the nation, which in turn justified the use of excessive force against a country’s own citizens. Approaching the October Crisis through this lens offers new insight into an important moment in Canadian history by drawing attention to the ways in which Canada is informed by events beyond its borders.