Paul Fromm's Annus Horribilis: Part II

When we posted the news release regarding the anti-fascists' efforts to oppose the PEGIDA Canada rally planned for today, we received some comments condemning our efforts to deny the free speech rights of the participants. We would argue that opposing PEGIDA Canada publicly isn't so much denying them their freedoms as it is showing them that the majority of people believe they are Islamophobic assholes, thus engaging in their freedoms as well. We would further add that we aren't the ones organizing the counter-protests, but we do support the efforts of those opposing PEGIDA Canada.

One of the folks who has commented on ARC promoting the counter rally was our good friend Paulie:

Since you can read the message he is referring to here, we won't bother with that part of Paulie's missive, but we can't say we feel a lot of love from him.

But this part kind of amuses us:

Not sure how a request to bring blags, banners, and noise-makers is a call for violence. Sounds more like a plan to disrupt the PEGIDA Canada event with noise and sounds. Still, it is sort of rich that Paulie is complaining about the anti-fascists plan to disrupt the PEGIDA Canada event when Paulie himself has a history of disrupting opposing rallies and speaking engagements himself back in the 1970s as a founding member of the Edmund Burke Society:

Toronto, ON – William Kunstler assaulted by members of the Edmond Burke Society

Attorney for the Chicago 7 William Kunstler was assaulted and slightly injured during a speech in Toronto after members of the Edmund Burke Society stormed the stage. Prior to the assault the Burkers had been heckling Kunstler so a spokesperson was invited to state the groups views. Paul Fromm took the stage and poured water over Kunstler’s notes, resulting in Kunstler pouring water over Fromm.

Toronto, ON – Edmund Burke Society precipitate riot

“In May 1970 the Burkers counter-demonstrated against ‘the last of the big Communist anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in Toronto’ … The ensuing violence resulted in widespread damage to property, numerous injuries, and almost 100 arrests, 90 per cent of them supposedly left-wingers, the remainder Edmund Burke Society supporters. In later years, it was revealed that the rampaging demonstrators and the destruction actually were precipitated by Edmund Burke Society infiltrators into the left-wing ranks. The purpose was to discredit the anti-American peacenik movement.” (Barrett, 59)

Toronto, ON – Edmund Burke Society associates arrested for assassination plot

Police arrested two men after receiving tips of a plot to assassinate Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin in Toronto. Raids on a number of homes of several Edmond Burke Society members yielded weapons and what spokesperson Paul Fromm characterized as, “equipment.” Earlier in the week Edmund Burke Society member Geza Matrai attacked Kosygin while the Soviet premier was visiting Ottawa.

Toronto, ON – Edmund Burke Society members attack audience in Convocation Hall, University of Toronto

“Quebec labour leader Michel Chartrand and lawyer Robert Lemieux, referred to later by a former Burker… as FLQ communists, were the targets. As the Toronto Daily Star (29 March 1971) described it, Edmund Burke Society members hurled a stink bomb, threw stones through windows, and sprayed the hall with a mace-like substance. The building caretaker had to be treated for temporary blindness, and a Toronto Telegraph reporter also hospitalized after being kicked in the head and abdomen.” (Barrett, 60)

Barrett, Stanley R. Is God a Racist? The Right Wing in Canada. University of Toronto Press: Toronto. 1989.

And given his support for the likes of the Aryan Guard/Blood & Honour, Volksfront, National Socialist Movement, Klan, etc, it's sort of hard to take Paulie all that seriously.

Besides, he might have to deal with other more pressing matters in the near future:

Meet Austin Collins, a participant in Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Robb's "Faith and Freedom" conference in 2011. It appears that Collins stumbled across our little spot on the Internet, read about Paulie's difficulty with fidelity (NSFW), and unlike other "White Nationalists" didn't sweep Paulie's indiscretions under the rug:

John Beattie's Blind List and the Civic Election in Minden

On August 10, we posted an article concerning Jeff Goodall's efforts to win a seat on the Oshawa city council. As an unrepentant member of the old Edmund Burke Society and as an unrepentant racist, we were quite interested in his campaign. His friend, former leader of the Canadian Nazi Party John Beattie who is campaigning for the position of deputy reeve in Minden, Ontario, was quite happy with our article as he believed it would result in more votes for Goodall. However Goodall dropped out not long after our article was published citing the difficulties of a city-wide campaign. We had, somewhat tongue in cheek, taken some credit for his leaving the race. Goodall denied our article had anything to do with his dropping out of the race, Beattie at one point believed that our article was a contributing factor. Soon after though he apologized to Goodall for having written that the ARC article "scared [Goodall]" and caused his departure from the race.

Now, if our readers are wondering how we know so much about this, the reason is that we have had access to Beattie's email blind list for close to three years. Well, indirect access. We aren't on the blind list itself, but we are on another mailing list in which Beattie's messages are also included. Call it a sort of racist news aggregate. We never paid much attention to his messages (we actually got to the point where we were deleting the mailing list messages we were receiving from this source because they weren't especially interesting or useful), however Beattie's decision to seek elective office in Mindan resulted in our keeping tabs on his messages.

A few of his earlier messages, including one where he states his belief that elections are a waste of time as well as one that mentions lil' ol' ARC, are included here:

Back briefly to Goodall, we actually have Beattie to thank for letting us know that Goodall was running in the first place:

Jeff Goodall Withdraws Candidacy in Oshawa

A few days ago we published an article regarding former Edmund Burke Society member Jeff Goodall and his efforts to win a council seat in the upcoming Oshawa civic election. Former Nazi leader John Beattie, who is running for the position of deputy reeve in Minden, ON, really couldn't contain his glee. Aside from the fact that he continues to believe we are the ARA, Beattie doesn't seem to think that our coverage will result in an increase in Goodall's overall vote. While we sincerely doubt that to be the case, we're sure that our focus on Goodall did result in at least one Oshawa resident taking notice:

Hey, if you are comfortable with an endorsement from the Goudreau, have at 'er.

But it seems that Beattie might have counted his chickens a little bit. Not long after we published our Goodall article, Beattie posted a link to it on his Facebook profile giddy with excitement. That post in no longer found anywhere on his profile.

We think this might be why:

Another White Nationalist Running For Public Office: Jeff Goodall in Oshawa

We've gotten a lot of positive feedback regarding our SOS Stooges series. However, we have discovered that not all of our readers are fans:

We first wrote about Goodall when BCL noted that Ontario MPP Randy Hillier posted a link to an article on Goodall's blog. BCL further observed that Goodall had made some rather bigoted comments about African-Canadians while we couldn't help notice his shout-out to Kyle McKee's Blood & Honour out of Calgary suggesting they were classier than the Calgary Police.

Oddly, Goodall didn't seem to appreciate our observations.

An examination of Goodall's blog quickly indicates the sort of person he is. Anti-immigrant, anti-Jew, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Black.

And now he wants to be an Oshawa city councilor:

Short Update on ARC's History Project

As we enter the final couple of days before 2014, we thought we would provide an update on the ARC history project. Those who follow the blog will remember that we sent out a request a year or so ago asking that anyone who has news letters, racist propaganda, photographs, newspaper clippings, or any other documents that might be able to tell the story of the racist movement in Canada to send us a scanned copy. Our focus had been primarily on the Heritage Front and the period between 1989 and 1999, however we decided to expand our focus, so we have in our possession not only electronic and hard copies (thanks to a good friend in Victoria) of primary documents originating with the Heritage Front, but also documents from the Nationalist Party of Canada and the Western Guard Party.

Our readers might have noticed that we have again added to our, "History of Violence" article and time line. Originally the time line ran from 1989 to 2011, but as contemporary events continued to unfold we extended forward to the present date. Likewise, as we conducted more research, we pushed back the starting point, first to 1981 and now to 1970. Many of the new additions feature the Western Guard, but the earliest focus on the Edmund Burke Society.

In a lot of ways, the Edmund Burke Society was the grandfather of the modern racist movement in Canada. The organization was established by three men, Leigh Smith, future Nationalist Party of Canada leader (and perpetual Toronto mayoral candidate) Don Andrews, and this fella:

Yep, our buddy Paulie.

The philosophy of the Edmund Burke Society, founded in 1967 at the University of Toronto, would be described today as paleo-conservative. Not overtly racist when it began, it became increasingly so as the membership became more active and more raucous. Eventually the organization changed its name from the Edmund Burke Society to the Western Guard (later the Western Guard Party) in 1972 which was indeed overtly and violently racist.

Paulie has denied he was a member of the Western Guard. But that isn't quite true as he was a member for at least the first few months after the name change and the "change" in tactics and ideology (though to be fair he did split with the organization before the end of 1972). Paulie suggested he didn't agree with the direction of the Western Guard and instead went on to form his own organizations.

That being said, we actually have some evidence that Paulie's views might not have differed so much from the Western Guard.

Old Haunts of the Heritage Front

We're currently waiting for some information regarding a couple of upcoming articles, but we thought that we would revisit our project concerning documenting the history of the Canadian racist movement. The primary focus of our research has been on the years 1989 to 1994 under the leadership of Wolfgang Droege which coincided with the rise and decline of the Heritage Front, though there was a brief mini-resurgence in 2001 under the watch of Marc Lemire.

Two weeks ago a couple of ARC members began documenting some of key locations in the early history of the Heritage Front in Toronto. There are rumors that some of the locations, such as the, "Zündel Haus" may be torn down to make way for condos so we decided to record them while they still exist.

Don Andrews: Nothing If Not Persistent

Summertime and the livin' is easy!

We have to admit that the blog has not be a primary focus for our members. Life has gotten in the way in the best possible way and we've been just having way too much fun. As such we really haven't been interested in allowing the miserable excuses for humanity that we cover here to harsh our mellow.

Then, this evening, one of our members doing a pretty routine check of bonehead websites noticed this on the Nationalist Party of Canada's website:

And, as is clear by the following article, we weren't the first to catch this brainfart by the city of Regina:

Regina duped by white supremacy group

The city agreed to a request by the Nationalist Party of Canada to proclaim a week in Oct. "European Heritage Week"

CBC News  Posted: Aug 20, 2013 6:47 PM CST

The mayor of Regina has cancelled a proclamation to declare a week in October "European Heritage Week" after he says he was fooled by a white supremacy group.

The group called Nationalist Party of Canada put in a request in July.

40+ Years of Paulie

Received this message in response to our previous post:

There's a wonderful picture of baby-faced Paulie, soaking and out cold, after he lunged at William Kunstler and the old man defended himself by dousing him in a pitcher of water. It was carried in papers across North America in May 1970 and was Paulie's first major foray into media stardom. If you could dig that one out of the archives I'm sure Paul would really appreciate it. 

You mean this incident, we presume?

Does it look like Paulie is a velvet jacket to you too?

Jesus. Paulie was a fashion disaster even in his 20s.

Sadly we can't seem to find our copy of Paulie after the soaking (and after he learned it was a bad idea to attack William Kunstler), but we'll see what we can dig up.

But for this photo, we say to our anonymous reader, we do believe you owe us a beer.

UPDATE 1: Well that was quick. We found it.

Make that two beers. And not some shitty domestic crap. We expect something imported. From Belgium. And we don't mean Stella Artoi.

UPDATE 2: Holy crap! We need to look through our files more often!

Make that 3 beers.

20 Years of Paulie

We're still working our project to document the early history of the modern racist movement in Canada (focusing on the years between 1960 and 1999 primarily and paying special attention to the Heritage Front, Western Guard Party, and Edmund Burke Society, though any photos, newspaper clippings, letters, or documents would be a welcome addition to our collection). We have been thrilled with the wealth of information we have received from our readers and we wish to thank all of you who have contributed to the project.

One of our readers sent us the following editorial cartoon from 1993 that we thought we would share:

The cartoon refers to Paulie's association with far-right hate groups, particularly the Heritage Front. In 1993, it was reported that Fromm had attended a neo-Nazi event celebrating Hitler's birthday two years earlier; the cartoon references this event.

And 20 years later, we see that Paulie still likes to associate with neo-Nazis:

After whining about the "destitute" Tremaine, Paulie makes his usual financial request.

One again has to wonder how much of that money Tremaine will ever see?

If you wish to contribute to the project, please contact us at arc.collective200 (at) gmail.com. 

Paul Fromm: Campus Alternative and "Countdown"

We continue to receive photos and documents from our readers as we proceed with our project to document the history of the early racist movement in Canada. A few days ago, we received the following message:

I saw your call out for old documents from the white supremacist movement, so I'm sending you pictures for two documents I came across that I thought might be of interest.They're anti-Edmund Burke Society/Western Guard flyers from the 1970s created by a Toronto group called the Revolutionary Marxist Group and feature good ol' Paul Fromm fairly prominently.

This is truly great stuff. Not a lot is known to us about what Paulie was up to after he left the Western Guard. We know that he began another short-lived group called Campus Alternative (membership numbers unknown) and publishing a newsletter called, "Countdown" but that was about it. This sheds a little more light on this period. The documents themselves we suspect are from 1973 or 74.

Blast from The Past: Nationalist Party of Canada and the Western Guard

UPDATE 3 (replacing UPDATE 1): Never mind. :)
A little while ago we spoke of our interest in documenting the rise and fall of the Heritage Front (and yes, Grant Bristow and CSIS play a significant role in that history, "Narrow Back"). We have received some information and photos, but we thought we would take this opportunity to remind our readers that we would still like your help.

Some of the information we have received actually goes WAY back. Those who know the history of the Heritage Front are aware that it was created by disaffected members of Don Andrews' Nationalist Party of Canada. Nationalist Party members Droege, Bristow, and Lincoln founded the Heritage Front soon after they returned from Libya after attending the the twentieth anniversary celebration of the invitation of the Gaddafi regime, as they felt that the Nationalist Party was no longer an effective means of pursuing their goals. In that sense, the Nationalist Party (according to their own family tree) might be thought of as the Heritage Front's daddy:

Hmmm, we guess then that the Western Guard would be the grand daddy and Paul Fromm's Edmund Burke Society would be the great grand daddy.

September 2011 Bits and Bites: Blasts From the Distant Past, the Recent Past, and Current News Sandwiched in the Middle

Sometimes we like to revisit some older stories, some of which are so old they predate this blog by close to four decades.

For example, here's a name we haven't heard about in years:

Well, it's not entirely true that you were the provincial Socred leader, is it Paulie?

Situation in Libya: Gaddafi Victim of Jewish Propaganda Campaign and Evil Zionist (Not Really)

Well, at least according to disgraced former member of the Canadian diplomatic corp., Ian V. Macdonald by way of Paul Fromm:

Anyone with any knowledge of the Canadian racist movement shouldn't be surprised by Macdonald's defence of the Gaddafi regime which is currently trying to hang on to power, killing thousands Libyan citizens in the process. In 1987, Macdonald organized a Canadian delegation to Tripoli to commemorate the American bombing of Libya the previous year. Warren Kinsella also noted a link between Macdonald and the Gaddafi regime:

Paul Fromm: The Genteel Face of Racism?

Our friends BigCityLib and Dr. Dawg posted articles excoriating CTV for giving Paulie a forum yesterday during his BC protest to attack the Tamil migrants and for failing to mention his rather sordid past (and present) in the White Supremacist movement. Nary a word of Paulie's links to the Heritage Front of the past, nor the Aryan Guard now, was mentioned. Paulie is instead introduced as an immigration reform activist.

Criticism of the media white-wash of Paulie's views and associations came from another, somewhat unexpected, source:

'White supremacist' puts a genteel face on racism

Joseph Brean, National Post · Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010

Paul Fromm's efforts to rouse public opinion against the Tamil migrant ship began last month from his home in Ontario, with impassioned messages posted to Stormfront.org, the Florida-based neo-Nazi website of which he is a "sustaining member" and radio host.

It continued last week in Calgary, when he led a group of Aryan Guard skinheads to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's constituency office, and so terrified the receptionist that she locked the door and would not accept Mr. Fromm's delivery of a letter until police arrived.

But for Canada's best known racist agitator, things did not really get going until he reached the Pacific shore at Esquimalt, B.C., on Saturday, where the boat was docked.

There, accompanied by Doug Christie -- famous as the go-to civil liberties lawyer for every top Canadian racist of the last 30 years -- Mr. Fromm got himself front and centre on the national weekend news, flanked by his small group of two dozen protesters.

Mr. Fromm, whose license to teach high school in Ontario was revoked in 2007 for his activism against non-white immigration and ties to groups like the defunct neo-Nazi Heritage Front, appeared in reports by three major news outlets, identified only as the leader of a group called "Canada First," or "Canada First Immigration Reform Committee."

“If we do need immigrants, the public opinion polls show that the majority of Canadians don’t want the ethnic balance upset,” Mr. Fromm said, according to the Toronto Star story.

The media exposure for his message recalls an episode in 2008, when Fox News was criticized by a U.S. anti-hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, for allowing Mr. Fromm to appear as a "free speech activist."

Fox News is one thing, but to score prominent coverage offering comment on a national refugee crisis to the Toronto Star, Canadian Press, and CTV indicates that Mr. Fromm's nose for media is especially refined.

No outlet responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Fromm said he was "pleasantly surprised at the amount of press interest."

"I did find it unusual," he said. "I took it to mean that some of the journalists have actually gone to journalism school."

The Victoria Times-Colonist reported on the protest and identified Mr. Fromm as a "white supremacist."

The others are not the first media outlets to be fooled in this way. On the surface, "immigration reform" has the same kind of naive appeal as "historical revisionism," a euphemism for Holocaust denial, and a field in which Mr. Fromm is highly regarded as a free speech champion.

Dressed as he was in a suit and tie on a sunny summer's day, Mr. Fromm made an obviously professional spokesman for the media pack. His manner is typical of the public pose struck by other elder statesmen of Canadian racism, such as Don Andrews, a fellow traveller back to university days in Toronto, whose conviction for the wilful promotion of hatred against blacks and Jews was upheld in 1990 at the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr. Andrews has a similar attention-grabbing prank of getting municipal governments across Canada to declare "European Heritage Week," without realizing that the sponsoring organization, his Nationalist Party of Canada, is explicitly white supremacist.

It is a winning strategy, to put a genteel face on racism for the unsuspecting public, as Jared Taylor of American Renaissance discovered in Halifax in 2007, when he challenged an unwitting Black studies professor to debate him on multiculturalism, then basked in media coverage when the professor realized he was an avowed racist, and cancelled.

In the case of the Tamil migrants, all Mr. Fromm had to do to seize the spotlight as a voice of dissent was to gather a few people on a roadside outside of Victoria, B.C., and just start talking.

"The only way to really do something about people smuggling is to make sure that if you come in through the back door illegitimately like this, you don't get in," he said in the CTV report. For balance, his remarks were followed by the more welcoming sentiments of a group of native women from a nearby reserve.

For the modern "immigration reform" activist, that is how to play the publicity game -- think like the media, get to the scene, and get on camera. And if success if measured by exposure, it is also how to win.

"I'll talk to anybody," Mr. Fromm said.

National Post

jbrean@nationalpost.com

We have to applaud Mr. Brean for being able to see through the veneer of respectability that Paulie has created for himself over the years and label Paulie as the bigot he is.

One part of the article that struck us and which we want to explore a little more is that Paulie puts a "genteel face on racism." Exactly how genteel has Paulie actually been since the late 60s when he became active in the White Supremacist movement?

Those who are aware of Paulie's past know that he was one of the founders of a group called the Edmund Burke Society. The Edmund Burke Society has always been presented by Paulie as a group of young college kids who were opposed to communism and the shift to the left in the country as a whole during the Trudeau era. To listen to Paulie, it was a group dedicated to free speech and engaging their opposition in a vigorous intellectual debate over the direction of the country and would attempt to sway Canadians through the strength of their ideas.

The reality paints a different picture of the Edmund Burke Society. The reality seems to be these were thugs who physically attacked their opposition and shouted down and attempted to intimidate those they disagreed with.

In June 1970, William Kunstler who was at the time defending the Chicago Seven, was speaking to students at the University of Toronto. Soon after he began his speech, a contingent of the Edmund Burke Society began to heckle Kunstler in order to drown him out and prevent him from speaking to the assembled students. Kunstler invited one of the group, Paul Fromm, to come to the podium to voice his groups concerns about his visit. Long story short, Paulie ended up all wet and Kunstler was attacked by the Edmund Burke Society members in attendance:


So much for free speech.

Another even more serious case involved visiting Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin. Kosygin was attacked by a member of the Edmund Burke Society Gezan Matrai. Rather than disavow the attacker, the membership expressed pride in Matrai's efforts. Later, on a tip that there was an assassination plot against Kosygin, the homes of Edmond Burke Society members were raided resulting in a number of weapons being removed (it doesn't appear that charged were layed in the alleged assassination plot, however).





In the early 1970s, the Edmund Burke Society was re-named the Western Guard, becoming a more overt racist group with a National Socialist bent. As a member of the Western Guard, Paulie and some of the other members attempted to take over the Ontario Social Credit Party:


Finally, though Paulie now styles himself as a free speech advocate, such was not always the case. We've already noted how he and the Edmund Burke Society tried to shut down those who they disagreed with. As a member of the Western Guard, it appears that he may have targeted art as well:


After a few months, Paulie left the Western Guard. In the early 1980s he began presenting himself as an immigration reform advocate, garnering a fair amount of press in the process. He was even referred to as a political analyst, so we suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when the media are taken in by his rhetoric.

We used to wonder why Paulie would support and defend groups like the Aryan Guard. Perhaps the answer is he sees a little of himself in them.