Another socialist experiment bites the dust
Internet users are mocking the creators of a socialist experiment gone awry after an “anti-capitalist” cafe was forced to close down after one year.
Gabriel Sims-Fewer, who refers to himself as “a white, cisgender, queer man”, opened The Anarchist coffee shop in Toronto last year based on his hatred for capitalism. He offered a “pay what you can” pricing model to accommodate the “working class”.
“I hate how everything in specialty coffee is so inaccessible to working class people, and inhospitable to everyone but the white upper middle class,” Sims-Fewer wrote on the shop’s website. “That’s also why I continue to scrutinise my prices and look for opportunities to lower them. Maybe when the shop has a couple more workers, allowing us to make significantly more drinks per day, we’ll be able to do an across-the-board price cut.”
Those workers, Sims-Fewer explained, must have a certain color, sport certain genitalia, and be disoriented about gender.
“The best thing I think I can do is hire people who aren’t white, cisgender, heterosexual men, make them equal owners, and follow their lead in making the place less white-male-centered than the industry standard,” he had remarked. “That’s what I’m working towards.”
But in an angry notice recently posted to the website, Sims-Fewer blamed capitalists for the fact that The Anarchist will close on May 30th:
“It's been an amazing experience, connecting with so many great community members, sparking desperately needed debate, raising the blood pressure of Conservatives (that includes you, ‘anarcho-capitalists and ‘Libertarians’), fulfilling the dream of most service workers by not having to tolerate the presence of professional class-traitors (pigs and military), and experimenting with living and working in ways that don't enthusiastically embrace the pure misanthropy of Capitalism. Unfortunately, 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.”
“F*** the rich. F*** the police. F*** the state. F*** the colonial death camp we call ‘Canada.’ Solidarity,” he concluded.
During the pandemic, Sims-Fewer joined the government in imposing a vaccine mandate on diners despite the fact that vaccine mandates disproportionately impact the Black population.
Sims-Fewer drew mockery online.
“Wait? They’re now out of business? That’s crazy…I thought this was a can’t miss idea,” wrote one netizen on Twitter.
“Starting your own business bc you hate capitalism. Nice,” tweeted another.
Another wrote: “You know he can only open ‘his own coffee shop’ in a capitalist economy right?”
