Opinion | The Anarchist, Toronto’s anti-capitalist cafe, is closing after getting scalded by capitalism

If you are anti-capitalist, starting a business is not a good idea.

For example, I am anti-plummeting. It’s why I don’t skydive. The Anarchist, which described itself as “an anti-capitalist café, shop and radical community space on stolen land at 190 Jarvis,” is shuttering its java zealotry on May 30.

Hopefully, customers do not loot the remaining pastries and torch the place.

In a farewell note, Gabriel Sims-Fewer, the owner and sole employee, said the past year was an “amazing experience” as he connected with the community while not tolerating “the presence of professional class-traitors (pigs and military).”

Eliminating cops as potential customers is not a plan an MBA grad would endorse for those selling coffee and doughnuts. Referring to them as “pigs” is also offensive. Then again, this is how Mr. Sims-Fewer reacted to the death of Queen Elizabeth II: “The queen was s-t, and should have died sooner. That’s it.”

So, yeah, that’s it. He doesn’t sound like a fellow you’d want to make small talk with over a cappuccino. You ask for sugar. He blows a gasket ranting about hierarchical coercion. You pull out your phone. He starts tidying merch, including Spanish Revolution books and canvas totes emblazoned with, “All Shoplifters Go To Heaven.”

Right. Then they steal Saint Peter’s biscotti.

Sims-Fewer concluded his charming farewell with: “F-k the rich. F-k the police. F-k the state. F-k the colonial death camp we call ‘Canada.’”

No word if he will apply for unemployment benefits from said death camp.

But as The Anarchist prepares to percolate its final pot of outrage, this may be the first time a local indie café has made international headlines. There were stories this week in the New York Post, Daily Mail, Fortune, Yahoo, the Independent.

Sims-Fewer finally got the PR needed a year ago before he discovered that anti-capitalist capitalism is an oxymoron, especially when it can’t turn a profit.

Starting any small business in Toronto is fraught with challenges. A private café is almost a suicide mission when there is a Starbucks or Tim Hortons on every corner. But it can be done. There is a café at the end of my street. It is always packed. I am assuming they offer yummy snacks and beverages at competitive prices. I’m also assuming the barista is not wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt while dumping beans into a $10,000 Jura Giga machine and talking about overthrowing the government.

Can I get my coffee to go, please? I have a job and taxes to pay.

The anarchists make the MAGA cult seem perfectly reasonable. Honestly, I would welcome a family of vacationing Trump supporters into my home and let them stay as long as they desire before I’d spend three nanoseconds with a wild-eyed anarchist. Do the anarchists even know what they want? No authority? No institutions? No rules? No laws? That’s not anarchy — it’s a Best Buy on Black Friday. No thank you.

And without capitalism, how do the anarchists expect to live? There is no barter system in which you can acquire a bungalow or even a bus shelter for 5,000 tomatoes. “Pay What You Want” is not a viable business strategy in the long term. If I saunter into Ikea and tell a sales rep I will give him 50 cents for that leather sectional, I will be escorted off the premises by security and pelted with Swedish meatballs.

Look at what happens when anti-capitalist protesters and anarchists take over a street in Seattle or Portland after declaring it an “autonomous zone.” Things go “Lord of the Flies” real fast. You end up with bearded dipsticks trying to take over offices. You get hippies cooking communal vegan stew in an old boot. You get public urination, vandalism, shootings and total chaos until order is restored by police and government.

Capitalism, whatever its flaws and inequalities, remains the best system in the history of civilization. You can only open an anti-capitalist café in a capitalist society. There are no anti-communist cafés in communist countries.

Here in the West, we are open to ideas — even laughably bad ones.

In his farewell note, Sims-Fewer whined about how “the lack of generational wealth/seed capital from ethically bankrupt sources left me unable to weather the quiet winter season, or to grow in the ways needed to be sustainable longer-term.”

Yes, well, entrepreneurs often need loans to start a small business. Walking into a TD or CIBC and referring to the manager as “ethically bankrupt” is not going to help open the vault. But for the anarchists, it’s always easier to blame “the system” instead of their own profound shortcomings as individuals. This is why The Anarchist is closing after one year, including six months of rent-free generosity from a capitalist landlord.

This was never a café. It was a haughty exercise in vanity and hubris.

Sims-Fewer said The Anarchist was “a huge success in every way I hoped,” so presumably he did not hope for a successful business. He teased a future “project.” Why am I now picturing an off-leash dog park that only allows cats?

He also spoke of the “education” he gleaned. Maybe he learned to grow up.

There is a “FAQS” on the Anarchist’s webpage. The final question is, “But how can you be anti-capitalist if you sell things?!?!”

Gabriel Sims-Fewer’s response says it all: “Lol.”

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