Muslim University Student Falsely Accused of School Stabbings; Islamophobes Continue to Run With the Claim

A little over a year ago we posted an article regarding a planned Valentine Day massacre in Halifax that the police managed to prevent before it started. The three individuals (one of whom killed himself as the police closed in) had social media presences that included allusions to the Columbine murderers and, of interest to this blog, replete with National Socialist iconography.

Whether or not Lindsay Souvannarath, Randall Shepherd, or James Gamble actually subscribed to the Nazi ideology who's symbols were found on their Facebook and Tumblr accounts or merely were attracted to the darkness associated with symbols is yet to be determined. But there is one person who is certain what was responsible.

Islamic jihadists.

Wha???

We wrote about Ms. Walsh in relation to Ron Banerjee's "Rise Canada" where she was listed as the Atlantic Regional Leader (she did not respond to our query concerning the factual nature of the claim). What became abundantly clear though through our research is that she loves the Conservative Party and Ezra Levant and really hated the Trudeau Liberals, the CBC, and Muslims.

And when the news about the Halifax murder plot broke, Ms. Walsh was convinced, despite the lack of any evidence to support her claim, that the suspects were motivated by Islamic extremism:

Anyone familiar with mindset shouldn't be surprised. In the Islamophobic echo chamber where real journalism is dismissed in favour of fringe "news" that supports the preexisting prejudicial narrative, there is always a way to spin a story to implicate the hated "Other."

So, when these fringe websites suggest that Trudeau is a Muslim convert and thus a traitor who needs to be (a) removed from office, (b) executed, (c) both, or that ISIS is coming across the Mexican border, or that Obama is funding ISIS, or that Muslim-Canadians all subsist on welfare, or there is an effort to implement sharia law in Canada, or any other insane conspiracy theory where Muslims are front and center as the villain, these people believe those stories because they are already inclined to believe them. When mainstream news publications proved evidence which disputes the conspiracies, that evidence is dismissed and the mainstream journalists are accused of being, "in the bag for the jihadis"

Which brings us the sad story of Dunbarton High School in Pickering.

On Tuesday, a 14 year old girl with a history of mental illness slashed a number of students with a knife before being stopped by a teacher. Thankfully none of the injuries, described as “Band-Aid-type cuts," were very serious. It was later learned that the young woman taken into custody was suffering serious depression and was suicidal based on posts found on her Tumblr account. It seems that she had been crying out for help for some time:

The Goat-Blood Drinking Senate Candidate and the PEGIDA UK Leader Who Was Too Much Even For UKIP

Sometimes we learn about some particularly odd characters when receiving information from our readers:

Meet Augustus Sol Invictus, a Libertarian candidate for the senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio.

Aside from changing his name to a Latin phrase which is loosely translated as "Majestic Invincible Sun" and, thus, indicating that he has an ego that Donald Trump might envy, Augie here is an interesting cat for other reasons:

Meet Augustus Invictus, the Florida Libertarian Who Loves Paganism, Civil War, and Goat Sacrifice

A few relevant points:

There are a few reasons why Wyllie finds Invictus such a distasteful character. "Mr. Invictus has repeatedly vowed that it is his destiny to start a second civil war in America," Wyllie wrote in a Facebook post announcing his resignation. He continued, "He has described himself as an American Fascist... He has expressed support for a eugenics program... Many of his supporters are known members of Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups."

While the Florida Libertarian Party didn't out-and-out eject Invictus from its ranks, it did issue a press release Monday condemning the Senate candidate's views. "The LPF has not endorsed Augustus Invictus and has not provided him with any support," the party's new chair said in the statement. But, the party added, "Under the law, we cannot prevent him from running as a Libertarian and he is not required to enter our certification process."

The impetus for all this was apparently a post on Invictus' Senate campaign website titled "A Declaration of the Failings of the US Government." In it, the candidate does display some pretty racist views, like accusing the federal government of abandoning "its eugenics programs & elitist mindset in favor of a decadent ideology that rejects the beauty of strength and demands the exponential growth of the weakest, the least intelligent, and the most diseased."

Still, weird name and racist views aside, Invictus might have gone unnoticed by the public at large if it weren't for Wyllie's assertion that, "Mr. Invictus was ejected from Ordo Templi Orientis for brutally and sadistically dismembering a goat in a ritualistic sacrifice." Naturally, this got people's attention, piquing the interest of the national news media....

Now we generally don't write a lot about the American nutters unless there is a direct link to Canada, so you all know where this is going:

Second Case of Anti-Muslim/Government Vandalism at Calgary School In a Week

Before we get to the meat of things, we thought we would begin with a screenshot taken from the Canadians 4 Canadians since it will explain, in some part, the mentality of those who would support this most recent case of extremism:

These people are responsible for all the killing around the world this is a fact [sic].

Last Sunday vandals scrawled anti-refugee/Syrian/government graffiti on the walls of a Calgary junior high school. Messages such as, "Syrians go home and Die [sic]" and, "kill the traitor trudeau [sic]"really don't leave much to the imagination regarding the motives of the vandals and was of a violent tone which warranted inclusion in our recently updated "History of Violence" timeline. 

Today, the same school was targeted more damage done:

‘Real Canadians hate Syrians’: Calgary school vandalized once again with hateful messages

Clara Ho, Postmedia News | February 21, 2016 10:47 AM ET 

More from Postmedia News

Calgary police are investigating after the walls of a southeast junior high were once again sprayed with hateful messages directed at Syrians and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Officers were called just before 9:30 a.m. Saturday to Wilma Hansen junior high school in the community of Queensland after someone in the neighbourhood reported the vandalism to police.

“We are still doing neighbourhood inquiries,” said Sgt. Kelly Todd, adding the incident could potentially be investigated as a hate crime...

Some of the messages include,"Syrians are animals,""real Canadians hate Syrians,""burn all mosques,""Syrians go home and take Trudeau," and "While Syrians feast in hotels, Canadians starve on the street, kill the traitor Trudeau." Windows in the school were also smashed out.

Much of the rhetoric mirrors language found on many of the ostensibly anti-Trudeau Facebook groups, (most of which seem to be primarily a means to target Muslim-Canadians and Syrian refugees) and PEGIDA Canada. For example, this post was made last week on Canadians Against Justin Trudeau:

Regarding the most recent incident in Calgary, the membership of both Canadians 4 Canadians and Canadians Against Justin Trudeau is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand many celebrate the vandalism. Others don't like the damage but rather than condemning the individuals who carried out the act instead blame Trudeau (as self-described conservatives who claim to believe in personal responsibility, this is indeed a bit odd). Still others claim it is a "false flag" intended to make "white Christians"look bad and blame Muslims for the attack.... and also Justin Trudeau again.

First, the folks at Canadians 4 Canadians offer their $0.02:

Significant Update to "History of Violence" Timeline

When, "The History of Violence" timeline was created more than 4 years ago, our researcher began at 1989 and ended at 2011. It was always intended to be a living document so as the years passed we continued to add to it when new incidents occurred. And sadly, we've had to add to it every single year since its creation.

We also knew that there were a lot of incidents we were missing that extended well before 1989 so, as we added new incidents of violence to the database, we continued to research past events.

Our first source of new information was Warren Kinsella's Web of Hate though we were all very much familiar with his book already. While there were certainly examples in the book that were new to us, it served mostly to fill in the blanks regarding some of the events we has already documented. Using Web of Hate we pushed the timeline back to 1981. When this writer found a copy of Dr. Stanley R. Barrett's Is God a Racist? The Right Wing in Canada in a used bookstore we not only extended the timeline back to 1970, but we also included a number of other incidents that occurred throughout the 1980s. Still, we knew there were significant gaps that still needed to be filled in.

That brings us to our recent discovery of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS).

When researching a completely different issue, we stumbled upon a paper written by Dr. Richard B. Parent and James O Ellis III entitled, "Right-Wing Extremism in Canada." The paper itself included a timeline of racist violence in the appendix dating from October 9, 1960 to September 28, 2001 and the link to our own "History of Violence" as another example of an online chronology of violent incidents. This alone would have been impressive, however the TSAS also includes on their website a massive database containing, as of this writing, 1821 incidents. Many of those incidents do not fall into the scope of our particular project, however the list of incidents provided by TSAS allowed us to push back the timeline to 1960 and filled in the blanks during years where we had previously not documented any incidents. The year 1981, which previously contained only two events, now has been increased substantially as we have been able to include documentation of the intimidation and violence directed towards the South Asian community at the time, much of it seemingly inspired by the provincial wing of the KKK.

We asked the folks who run the website if we might include their data on our own timeline and they kindly consented. Any new entry with (TSAS) will provide a link to the website where it originated from (in many cases the words used on the Canadian Incident Database are taken verbatim and included in our timeline). There are cases too where we were able to find archived news articles of the events in question; those are also included when possible. We have included more than 40 new entries and will be including more as time goes on.

A few observations regarding the timeline as it is now.

We are currently living during a time when Islamophobia is a real danger in this country as the rhetoric targeting Muslims his becoming increasingly heated. In the timeline we've noted that violence towards Muslims and their places of worship have increased in number, especially during the contentious election campaign in which the then governing Conservatives attempted to use both the niqab and the Syrian refugee crisis as political wedge issue. Our concern is that the violence directed towards Muslim-Canadians will continue to escalate. In the meantime, the msm has started to look at the dangers of right-wing violence in the country, however this examination has been ridiculed by some on the right for not focusing on the "real" danger facing Canada: political Islamism.

Looking at the numbers, we would suggest that right-wing, racist inspired, violence is a very real danger. Since 1972 and based on data from the timeline, 41 people have been murdered by individuals tied to far-right extremism. Since September 12, 2001, there have been 19 people killed by individuals who hold far-right and extremist views. During the same period, individuals motivated by Islamic extremism accounted for three incidents in which religious reasons were a prime motivators. We can also discuss the numerous assaults, attempted murders, arson incidents, sexual assaults linked to right-wing extremism to prove that these people and groups really do pose a danger to individuals.

We are not minimizing the deaths of the three who lost their lives as a result of Islamic extremist actions nor are we suggesting that such extremism isn't of concern. We are suggesting that Islamic extremism isn't the only extremism that we should be trying to root out.

A second observation, still on the theme of Islamophobia, is the claim that Muslims are the only religious group (as if "Muslim" is monolith) to use violence which our readers will know is a historically ridiculous claim to make. Though it wasn't a part of our project, we were struck by the number of incidents in the Canadian Incident Database that puts the lie to that claim. Starting on January 27, 1960 and extending to the early 1980s, the Sons of Freedom engaged in a campaign of bombings focusing on both public and private property. Where the Son's of Freedom Muslim extremists? Nope. The Sons of Freedom were Doukhobors, a communal Christian community. And while they really did have some legitimate concerns the provincial government of BC and the federal government ignored, we're not sure that a campaign of bombing was the best way of seeking redress.

With that, we invite our readers to take a look at the improved timeline.

A History of Violence: 1960 - 2016 

More MSM Focus on Far Right in Canada and Reaction to ARC Article

We noted at the end of January that some in the MSM were beginning to pay more attention to the threat posed by right wing extremism in the country.The Maclean's article in question focused specifically on those using social media to post virulently hateful and threatening anti-government and especially anti-Muslim/refugee rhetoric comments, many of which seemed to go beyond legally acceptable free expression. The reaction to the Maclean's article was swift and somewhat hypocritcal:

It seems that the folks who fee threatened by the article would apply different standards to those who disagree with them than they would apply to themselves.

On the one hand, they write this:

On the other? 

We could continue to discuss the irony of their complaints about stifled free speech at length, but we think we will just leave it at this for the time being.

One of the "hapless private Canadian citizens" profiled in the Maclean's article has also signed the petition and has encouraged others to do so as well:

 

We're guessing that Mr. Witko is the individual who was visited by the RCMP and who's "political views" the petition creator seems to intent on protecting.

Fine. Shall we take a look at some of those political views?

While taking pleasure in children dying certainly qualifies Witko as being a horrible example of humanity, it is likely protected as free expression (which isn't to say that he is also free from well justified condemnation).

These other recent posts, including two posted during the past few days? No, they are actually criminal in nature:

Posted in "Canadians Against Justin Trudeau." 

February 2016 Bits and Bites

So PEGIDA Canada held another rally today without telling anyone. The results were as sad as the previous effort despite the spin they placed on it:

 

In related news, we're still following the aftermath of our recent article detailing the often violent anti-Muslim/anti-refugee and anti-government rhetoric found on a number of Facebook groups such as PEGIDA Canada. We will be doing a follow-up soon, but we thought we would provide a preview of the reaction from one of the groups we were monitoring until recently, "Trudeau is Malignant":

Oh you are just adorable!

We can't seem to find the group any longer which means they have either shut it down or have figured out which of the 50+ members was our dummy profile. Either way, what was posted there wasn't much different than the bigoted, hateful, and often violent posts found in other groups.

We'll save that all for a later article, but for future reference just because we haven't mentioned you, doesn't mean we aren't aware of you.

In the meantime, let's talk about Paulie's latest adventure:

Worst. Abbey Road. Reenactment. Ever.

Fallout From Previous Article

Looks like our last article managed to spook more than a few folks. The following was posted yesterday and can be found on the Canadians United 4 Canada Facebook group which we profiled in the January 31 article:

Nice sentiment.

Here is what was posted today at Canadians United 4 Canada:

Stay tuned.