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:

Edson, AB Hate Crime Suspect Identified; Linked to Blood & Honour in Alberta

Earlier this week someone drove a stolen vehicle into a provincial building/court house scrawled antisemitic vandalism on the walls in Edson, Alberta. Police said at the time the case would be investigated as a hate crime.

At the time I was trying to remember if I knew anyone in Edson who could have been a suspect but I drew blank.... as it turns out mostly because I'm growing older and my memory sucks these days because it turns out that it WAS someone who I was aware of and who has made an appearance on the blog:

The man accused of driving a stolen vehicle through the Edson courthouse on Saturday and vandalizing the property with anti-Semitic slurs is a part-time rapper who appears to hold a dark fascination with Hitler. 

Kelvin Zawadiuk, who lives in Edson, is a part-time musician who performs under the moniker La Haine, French for The Hatred. 

"He's very clearly, a fairly traditional neo-Nazi," according to Barbara Perry, a criminologist specializing in hate crime at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

Kelvin Zawadiuk was associated with Blood & Honour when the group was especially active in Alberta. Back in 2011, three members of the hate group were charged with committing a series of assaults in Edmonton as they were engaged in flyering. One of those individuals, James Brooks, was also the "star" of a film being directed and produced by Zawadiuk:

Brooks plays the lead role in a forthcoming low-budget film, Blue Eyed Devil, directed by Edson-based filmmaker kelvin Zawadiuk, about a violent neo-Nazi. 

"James is a really intelligent guy, really charismatic," Zawadiuk said. "He has a real screen presence and he was perfect for this, a skinhead character. It's an ode to the 1970s and 1980s exploitation movies, a character study, a man descending into madness. It's just meant to terrify you."

But Zawadiuk wasn't just interested in the far-right for "artistic" reasons. He also very much shared the ideology of Brooks and the other members of Blood & Honour and was supportive of Robert Reitmeir when the latter was accused (and later convicted along with Tyler Sturrup) of murder:

Despite supporting two members of WEB that had broken with the then Aryan Guard, Zawadiuk also appears to have been close to Aryan Guard founder/leader (later rebranded as Blood & Honour) Kyle McKee and other members of the group:

Finally, Zawadiuk was invited to B&H events in Calgary as recently as 2015, though it isn't certain if he attended:

Now while Blood & Honour in Alberta seems to have declined since McKee and his partner Chelsea moved to New Brunswick to become one of the go-to tattooists for the Northern Guard, the hate group is still a going in the country even as they attempt to remain under ground.

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:

Alberta Has Declared Dean "Sovereign" Clifford To Be A Vexatious Litigant

I've occasionally wondered what the self-proclaimed Wolverdean has been up to since he was released from prison after having received a three years sentence on drugs and weapons charges related to his "freeman-on-the-land" pseudo-legal woo. Upon his release Dean was relatively quiet and wasn't the tax avoiding go-to guru he had been prior to his incarceration, so much so that I stopped paying attention to him and as a result missed this update from November:

Dean Clifford, a Freeman on the Land previously involved with the neo-Nazi Stormfront forum, has been declared a vexatious litigant in Alberta. Freeman on the Land is a sovereign citizen movement that believes laws don't apply to them (they do). https://t.co/Ot9i4mdcdj

— Canadian Anti-Hate Network (@antihateca) December 2, 2018

Costs have been awarded against Clifford's 'client' and himself. See the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Decision here: https://t.co/lHIhW7bby8. CC @R_Scrivens

— Canadian Anti-Hate Network (@antihateca) December 2, 2018

Dean Clifford started promoting himself as a freeman-on-the-land guru in earnest back in 2012. At the time we (when I could still say "we") at ARC teased an upcoming article focused on Dean which resulted in this reply:

Bring it on you communist mother fuckers. I have room for one more target, and my organization is MUCH larger and world-wide. Every freedom loving man and woman on this planet despises groups like you who try to stifle societies and individual freedoms with communist oppression and a police state of government control and laws. 

There's 10 of you in a room on welfare somewhere on Canada. This will backfire worse than the smear sHit Piece "The National" did. Of course, I'll be shocked if you actually allow this comment to be posted. Bring on the poo flinging, and violence, because that is all you people are capable of. 

Your smears are pathetic, your followers are so intellectually stagnant that it is terrifying, and you're all worse 'dead-beats' than the people you claim to hate. You're motto could not be more perfect to explain your organization, "We are against hate, and we hate anyone who doesn't go along with that." You must be the dumbest fuckers alive, a literal living oxymoron. 

I notice every single one of your staunch supporters hides and even posts as anonymous. Yeah, you must all truly believe in what you do, and most certainly are willing to assume liability for your statements and claims. Attach a face to your smear, you gutless shitheads. 

Every one of your front page stories is published by a fag who thinks he's a vampire. IS there more than one person even on this site? Oh man, this is going to be EPIC, I cannot wait! 

Talk soon ass-clowns. 

P.S. "intellectually on par with that of the Occupy Movement." Now that was just plain insulting, they're about as intelligent as you people, you are all a celebration of underachievers.

Suffice it to say we never did actually "talk soon" and Dean's attempt to intimidate ARC failed spectacularly. What Dean was trying to stop ARC from publishing (my own laziness resulted in not publishing much sooner) was his long history of posting on the American hate-site Stormfront:

• Canadian Freeman Movement: Ties to Extremism

Here are a few relevant posts:

We also learned that Dean was in continual correspondence with former Aryan Guard member (and man who spent time in prison on hate crime charges) Bill Noble:

• Dean Clifford and Bill Noble: Emails

Some of the exchanges indicate that Dean was aware that Aryan Guard leader Kyle McKee, then a suspect in an attempted murder targeting a member of a breakaway hate group (who would later be convicted on murder charges himself), was apprehended in Winnipeg while hiding out at Noble's residence.

March 19 Anti-Muslim Rallies: Some Victories, Some Hard Lessons

By this point ARC readers know that any time we mention Kevin "The Chairman" Goudreau on the blog, it is probably because he did something profoundly stupid or embarrassing but isn't self aware enough to realize that this is the case:

Yep, the Goudreau held a rally in Peterborough while wearing an ill-fitted suit because he now wants to project gravitas.

Though really, to refer to what the Goudreau held as a rally is sort of like polishing a turd and calling it a diamond:

Still, despite holding his "rally" (word is they were there for less than 5 minutes) in what looks to my uneducated eye as a relatively empty street with few people to witness it, and what few people who did witness the event simply mocked him and his merry band of short bus passengers, the Goudreau appears to see it as a massive success and his first step towards his inevitable rise as der Kanadisch Führer:

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At least one person however, seemed to imply that the Goudreau was sort of gilding the lily:

That's right folks. There were more anti-Muslim rallies in select Canadian towns and cities this past week.

Kevin's explanation for the pathetic nature of his rally is flimsy at best, but it is telling in that he really believes (and is likely correct) that some of the kind of people who would attend a "White Pride" march would also be attracted to an anti-Muslim protest. It's sort of a Venn Diagram, but of hatred. For example, Goudreau has some prominent anti-Muslim activists amongst his own friends:

Brad Salzberg, the leader of the Cultural Action Party of Canada, isn't just anti-Muslim but is also anti-immigrant in general. He held a very small anti-Muslim protest in Vancouver this past Sunday. And Sara Smith is better known as Sandra Solomon, an especially vocal and virulent anti-Muslim protester associates with Eric Brazau and Ron Banerjee; she was a key speaker at the anti-Muslim event that took place Sunday in Toronto.

When analyzing the anti-Muslim protests that took place this past Sunday, I think it is important to look not only at the victories scored by those who opposed the xenophobes and Islamophobes, but it is equally important to recognize that there were some setbacks.