Blood & Honour/Combat 18 Listed as Outlawed Terrorist Organizations

I created the blog in November 2007 in large part to monitor the Aryan Guard, a Calgary-based hate group founded by Kyle McKee that I saw as having an incredible potential for violence. Eventually the Aryan Guard "patched over" to become Canada's first official (though there had been individuals affiliated long before) branch of the Combat aligned Blood & Honour.

As both the Aryan Guard and Blood & Honour, this hate group was implicated in numerous assaults, arson, a pipe bomb, weapons charges, uttering threats, and attempted murder. Two former members who created the rival WEB were later charged and convicted of murder. Another Blood & Honour group aligned with Volksfront was also implicated in a number of assaults.

My primary goal had been to warn people about this group. Though I've certainly expanded the scope of the blog significantly since its original creation, I've tried as best I could to keep tabs on the members and supporters of Blood & Honour as they became much more discreet online but no less dangerous in the real world.

As such, I view news as a significant event in the effort to combat hate:

1. Neo-Nazi groups have been placed on Canada's listed of terrorist groups for the first time. https://t.co/i97QERG0Ww

— Stewart Bell (@StewGlobal) June 26, 2019

Extreme right groups (Blood & Honour/C-18) were added to Canada's list of terrorist groups for the first time. I suppose it's fitting to announce that our (@Palgrave_) book on right-wing extremism in #Canada is set to be released in September (co-authored w/@OT_FSSH's B. Perry). pic.twitter.com/hCKrbrs7H1

— Ryan Scrivens (@R_Scrivens) June 26, 2019

NEW (!!): Canada has added international neo-Nazi groups Blood & Honour and its "armed branch," Combat 18, to its list of outlawed terrorist organizations, alongside groups including al Qaida, ISIS and Boko Haram. https://t.co/fmm9nom2aj

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) June 26, 2019

I was interviewed by Vice News earlier today when the news of the designation of Blood & Honour and Combat 18 as outlawed terrorist organizations. I was asked about the activity of the group in recent years and noted that while not engaged in the overt activities of the past, it was still very much active as this 2016 screen shot indicates:

Rather than engaging in marched in Calgary or, as in the case of the last march Edmonton, the Calgary Blood & Honour instead engaged in surreptitious flyering and nearly monthly get togethers sometimes featuring guests who had been in the news:

I kept track of these events and while they were reasonably good at maintaining security, their failures were duly recorded:

More recently, Blood & Honour has been promoting a camp out that is to take place in both Alberta and New Brunswick:

McKee himself no longer lived in Calgary. He and his partner have moved to New Brunswick where McKee now runs a tattoo business.

Based on interactions on the business' Facebook cite, he seems to be one of the go-to tattooists for members and friends of the Northern Guard in the province:

I also mentioned in the interview that as happy as I was that Blood & Honour and Combat 18 have been designated at terrorist groups, I also hope to see further scrutiny on groups such as the III% militia, Northern Guard, Proud Boys, Soldiers of Odin (or any of the other Nouns), and the Yellow Vesters which often serve as "gateway drugs" so-to-speak for entry into even more extreme groups.

On this readers need not take my word for it:

In the Iron March forums, a Blood & Honour organizer told a student on Vancouver Island in 2016, “If you really want to stop the leftists at your school you’re going to have to use more than just arguments, but at least it’ll be a permanent solution.” Thankfully it didn't happen.

— Canadian Anti-Hate Network (@antihateca) June 26, 2019

Long time readers won't be at all surprised to know that long-time figure in the hate movement Paul Fromm is a bridge between the extremist Yellow Vests and the even more extreme Blood & Honour:

Yellow Vest Extremists: Two Case Studies From Edmonton and Calgary

I've been offline -- at least on the blog -- for over a week now in part due to finishing up some work-related projects (the work I'm actually paid to do), prepping for the holidays, and a long, long, LONG, drive back to the mother province to visit my family; ma has been dutifully fattening me up with cookies and nanaimo bars while pa has been providing home brewed beer at trying to engage me in discussing an activity known as "sports." Still, I have been keeping abreast of at least some of the activities the far right have been engaging in.

Last Saturday another series of Yellow Vest protests occurred. Fewer cities and towns appeared to have participated and the numbers were down in all cases while a number of venues saw an increase in the number of counter-protesters. Online the infighting and factionalism has been growing as participants sling insults at each other almost as much as they do towards the Liberal government in Ottawa and Notley government in Edmonton. Also, while there had been some effort to minimize the number of violent threats on the main Yellow Jacket Facebook pages, those efforts appear to have collapsed. 

It was inevitable that this new movement would attract mainly the same faces (Steven Myatt, Ron Banerjee, Georges Massaad, Faith Goldy, Georges Hallak, etc) and groups (Soldiers of Odin, Northern Guard, Storm Alliance, La Meute, Canadian Combat Coalition, III%ers etc) I've been seeing at these protests the past number of years in addition to some newer, though still familiar, movement such as those who are associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory(s). Two of the faces associated with the Yellow Vests will be familiar to readers and include one more recent addition as well as someone who frequented the days of ARC Classic.While the initial momentum in much the rest of Canada appears to be waning as the attention span of the supporters diminishes and the weather turns colder, Alberta is still quite active. 

In Edmonton the Yellow Vest protesters were outmaneuvered by the counter-protesters who showed up in larger numbers equaling or even perhaps slightly surpassing the Yellow Vest reactionaries, last week, the previous weekend saw a large number of far-right extremists show up including members of the Wolves of Odin. Now ARC readers will be familiar with this group as it used to be the Edmonton chapter of the Soldiers of Odin before they were compelled to change their name by the mother hate-group in Finland due to negative media attention. Prior to the name change the SoO were the focus of a story involving members of the hate-group hobnobbing with members of the United Conservative Party. Among those who attended the UCP event as well as the Yellow Vests protest on December 15 (where a journalist was roughed up, btw) was this fella:

III% Alberta Covered By CBC. Also, Angry III% Alberta Leader Doesn't Understand Meaning of Words

Watch #CBCTheWeekly's investigation into an armed U.S. paramilitary group called the Three Percenters coming to Canada. @CBCNews  https://t.co/pdb4ecYeUh

— Wendy Mesley (@WendyMesleyCBC) April 29, 2018

Full disclosure. I was among those who were contacted by the CBC to provide some of the background for this story as well as sharing some of the screen shots that have I've amassed, including some that have not yet been published. Mack Lamoureux of "Vice" should also be given credit for being perhaps the first journalist in Canada to cover the III% movement in detail close to a year ago:



Though brief, the story does a good job of showing that despite their claims the III% militia are the paranoid, Islamophobic, bigots this blog has proven them to be.

The Threepers also saw the news story and, well, they weren't happy that they were characterized by their own word and through their complaints and impotent threats pretty much prove every claim made about them in the story:

I really enjoy Beau Welling's reaction. First, both Douglas Calvert and in a later comment Beau himself, speak about the importance of "freedom of speech" but then Beau claims that he will sue because he doesn't like what is being said about his racist militia.

Such snowflakes.

Second, he claims that the CBC is focusing on them to distract Canadians from the "real story" about the van attack that occurred in Toronto last week. He and other Threepers are continuing to push a quickly debunked narrative on the fringe right that the man who murdered 10 people was a member of ISIS and has blamed Trudeau directly. These are some of the relevant screen shots:

This alone confirms much of what the CBC story stated concerning the Threepers.

Revisiting the Hijab Story and the General Denial of Islamophobic Violence

Back in 1982, one of my Grade 2 classmates arrived at school more than an hour late. The teacher began to admonish him and demand why it had taken him so long to walk to school AGAIN (we lived in a small town).

Benjamin stammered that someone tried to pull him into a van.

At that point I remember my teacher's face turning to ash. You see there was a time in the late 70s through the late 80s when news of people trying to abduct children was frequently on the news and constituted, in retrospect, somewhat of a widely believed urban myth since even then it was far more likely that a child would be kidnapped by someone he or she knew rather than a stranger. The teacher took Ben to the office immediately. Not long after we saw police cars pull up in the parking lot out the window and his mother sprinting into the school, frantically heading straight to the office sobbing all the while. One by one the Grade 2 class was taken into an empty classroom to be questioned by the police to see if we could maybe provide any information. Did we see that van? What color was it? How many people were inside? Where did we see the van?

Wanting to please the police officers who were trying to protect us, we all provided what we thought would be helpful answers.

I told the police officers the van was black with a painting of a girl with a sword in a bikini riding a big cat (remembering that my uncle had a van just like that because, you know, he was a classy fella) and one person driving. One of my friends said she saw a red van by the park with two men and one woman. Another saw a blue van with two people and a dog. All of us, so far as I know, gave the officers what we believed to be "helpful" answers and endeavored to be as creative as possible.

Of course if they has asked where we had last SEEN Ben on our way to school, some of us might also have said we saw him between the Johnstone's garage and fence feeding their pet rabbits as he often did on his way to and from school through the back alley shortcut many of us took and  which is why he was often late for school.

It didn't take long for the police to figure this out for themselves. I don't remember much of what happened after, though I do remember Ben being made to stay in the class during recess for a week and his parents grounding him for a month; he was playing outside within the week after his parents apparently relented. The incident wasn't really ever spoken about again until graduation when it was recounted as a humorous anecdote about Ben during the grad dinner a decade later, but other than that it was mostly a forgotten story.

Sometimes children lie. They lie because they don't want to get into trouble. They lie because they want to provide the "correct" answers to people in positions of authority either through subtle or not subtle coaching or through their own form of creative fill-in-the-blanks. They lie because it results in attention. They lie because of psychological troubles. They lie for a variety of reasons. It doesn't make them bad. It just means they are kids who aren't entirely aware of the consequences of their lie. For example, not long ago in Okotoks, AB a young teen claimed to have been attacked at her home and had her throat slashed before the suspect, described as a blond male, ran off. The story made the news provincially and nationally and was actually used as an example by some of the Islamophobic bigots and groups ARC covers as an example of Islamic violence since some automatically assumed the suspect was a Muslim:

• "Something Bad Happened? Let's Blame The Muslims."

However by November 24 the police had determined that the young girl had made up the story. There was no follow-up in the news after that and people promptly forgot about it though I remember some people express sympathy for both the girl ("she needs psychological help and I'm praying for her") and her family ("oh, they must be so embarrassed!).

Similar sympathetic attitudes were not expressed towards the 11 year old girl who claimed to have been attacked by a man who cut up her hijab or her family who, once the realized the story wasn't true, soon apologized "to all Canadians." (though this act of contrition was not expected or demanded of the Okotoks family previously mentioned):

Lee Down is the Toronto chapter leader of the Northern Guard

In the world of Islamophobes, guilt is assigned to the group. An 11 year old child lied, so that means all Muslims are complicit:

That last claim by Myatt isn't exactly an original one. On January 29, 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette is alleged to have entered the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City where he then opened fire. As a result six people were killed and others injured. At the time of the tragedy, the groups and individuals ARC monitors had three primary reactions to the tragedy:

1. They celebrated the attack and hoped for more.
2. They accused Muslims of killing Muslims (and again, some were very happy about this as well).
3. They claimed it didn't happen, that Bissonnette was a patsy, or that it was a "false flag."

• Shooting at Mosque in Quebec City and Initial Islamophobic Reaction

Disguised B&H; Leader McKee Gets Far To Close To Prime Minister Trudeau

I haven't written a great deal about Calgary's Blood & Honour, though I have been keeping an eye on them. For the most part their public profile has been relatively low with the occasional flyer and/or sticker promoting the group being found around Calgary. They have however hosted a number of private events, some of which have been discussed on the blog, at their new club house. Their online activity seems to be primarily trolling news personalities and Calgary businesses that have somehow run afoul of the racist gang:

The trolling has helped myself and others figure out a few things about the growth and membership of Blood & Honour Calgary which may be shared at a later date. That said, it is no doubt frustrating for the targets of these online attacks, however is is mostly childish and quite frankly a bit embarrassing that this has been the most public form of activity that McKee and co. have been engaging in.

But then there's the kind of "trolling" that is much more concerning because it represents a major security breach.

ARC's Response to Outing of "Nazi Mom"

We're sure that by this point, talk about ARC's communication with the woman referred to as the "Nazi Mom" has become fairly wide spread within the bonehead community in Canada and elsewhere as a result of poor security on her part. There is no indication that ARC email accounts have been compromised.

To address the elephant in the room, I will admit that ARC is guilty as charged.

"Nazi Mom" (and she will continue to be referred to as such given the legal issues related to the child custody issue that has been going on for close to 10 years now) contacted ARC in the middle of 2014. While still associated with the movement, she provided information about those individuals that she felt were not of moral rectitude. Eventually, and over the years, this writer began speaking to her on a more human level as I thought that perhaps I might be able to lead her out of the movement that she had been a part of for much of her adult life; those efforts may or may not have been naive on my part, but as I have found some success in the past, I figure that it was worth a try.

In any case, a former friend of the "Nazi Mom" who found himself with access to her email account sent information to myself and others concerning allegations of theft and prostitution, as well as evidence that she had been in contact with ARC for a number of years. One of the individuals who received the information was Bill Noble who promptly posted some of her contacts with ARC on the hate site Stormfront. Among those who replied was Kevin Goudreau who posted messages threatening the "Nazi Mom" and demanding that she reveal more of the identity of your's truly. That thread on Stormfront was either removed or moved to a members only part of the forum before I was able to get any screen shots, though I did manage to save part of the text of one of Noble's posts which will be discussed later.

In response to Bill Noble, I have the following question:

Do you really think that she is the only informant within your movement that ARC has?

More Activity from B&H; in Calgary

A heads up from a friend in Calgary:

More stickers found this weekend. This time around Bowness High School in Calgary's Northwest.

More as information becomes available.

Soldiers of Odin: Strike Three

In a recent article published here in which we briefly discussed the resignation of former national vice-president and Quebec president of the Soldiers of Odin, it was clear that there was (and likely has been for some time) a bit of an ideological struggle within the movement in Canada. One faction of the SoO wants to disassociate itself from the overt racism of the gang which was started by a well-known Finnish neo-Nazi while the other faction wishes to strengthen the connection to the Finnish movement and the core raison d'etre of the Soldiers of Odin which is anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim in nature:

But as Tregget was busy building the group's membership he was also running afoul of the national leadership as well as the movement's international leaders in Finland. 

According to his one-time second-in-command, Tregget gave a series of interviews in the fall in which he downplayed the links between the Finnish and Quebec branches of the group. 

He also insisted on patrolling the "political correct" areas of Quebec City, like St-Roch, where the group was less likely to confront the city's immigrant population, said Katy Latulippe, who is now the acting president of Soldiers of Odin-Quebec. 

There are conflicting accounts of what, precisely, happened. Latulippe said Tregget was suspended. Tregget said he quit: "Finished with the racist image of Finland," he later told CBC News in a Facebook message. 

Regardless of the details, what is clear is that with Tregget out, and Latulippe in, the group's Quebec chapter will undergo a reorientation....."Dave avoided that, on patrols, we go into areas where there are a lot of Muslims or Islamization," she said during a recent phone conversation.

We should stress that we believe that much of this soul searching is primarily one of optics and how the SoO desire to perceived by the public rather than a disagreement about the fundamental nature of the gang's motives:

SoO, which has chapters across Canada, denies, on its public Facebook page, any accusations of being racist or anti-immigrant and claims to exist to primarily protect women and children by keeping the streets safe.  

However, it’s been alleged the group’s private Facebook page is filled with racist and xenophobic comments, mainly directed towards Muslims.

However there might also be an element of self-delusion as exhibited by Regina, Saskatchewan president Ryen Ward who was interviewed by Paul Dechene for "Planet S":

“I am not accusing you of being a racist,” I explain at one point. “I am saying that this is the cultural context in which the Regina chapter of the Soldiers of Odin swims, and I’m curious as to why you would want to carry all this cultural, racist baggage if you’re really serious about being seen as welcoming and helpful?” 

But as far as Ward is concerned, his group’s negative image has nothing to do with its founder, its connections nor its imagery. It’s all the fault of the lying media. 

“The danger lies in the lies printed about us and the fear you evoke into your readers,” he writes. “For the last time, we are not racist.”

Ward contradicts himself later on though he clearly doesn't see it that way:

When our conversation moves to politics — specifically, Trump — Ward raises his concerns about immigration. 

“Our problems occur with a lack of proper vetting system in which people coming into the country should receive a face to face interview. Very similar to Kellie Leitch’s idea,” he writes. 

And when I press him on this, and on Black Lives Matter, this happens: 

“I would like them [new immigrants] to be interviewed to [ensure] that they do not have anger or hatred, as ISIS [has] stated [that] they have infiltrated the refugee camps and [they’re] sending terrorists to North America through such lame processes that we just believe everything. I would like them to be interviewed on their beliefs of Sharia Law, and other such ideologies that do not fit into our Canadian laws or way of life. 

“Black Lives Matter are not the only protestors/rioters that have caused discord in the USA. I am talking about all of the hate groups. From the KKK all the way to the Black Panthers and every group in between that calls for the death to another race.

Further indication of Ward's apparent difficulty in engaging in self-reflection can be found on social media.

Uhm, no. No it wasn't.