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.

"I Disagree With Violence But....": The Justification and Celebration of the Christchurch Mosque Murders By Paul Fromm and Robert Jones

It didn't take long for the likes of Paulie to try and justify the murder of 50 adults and children worshiping at two Christchurch mosques. In a post on his blog, Fromm posted the entirety of the murderer's "manifesto" along with his own forward justifying the attack while couching that justification if claims to oppose violence:

The most relevant section of the forward his here:

Of course long time readers of ARC and those who know the long history of Fromm's support for violent hate groups who do the dirty work that he tacitly promotes know just how hollow Fromm's claim to "disagree with... violence." He has supported groups such as the Aryan Guard/Blood & Honour, Volksfront, the KKK, and a multitude of groups who have engaged in violence and he has rationalized every single instance:

In fact he has his own links to Christchurch, New Zealand where another violent hate group had been founded:

Here Fromm is shaking hands with Kyle Chapman while on a speaking tour of New Zealand in December 2010. Chapman was leader and founder of the neo-Nazi hate group Right Wing Resistance that formed targeting Maori and other Polynesian peoples, other New Zealand peoples of colour, Jews, and Muslims:

• Anti-Muslim pamphlet upsets residents

Right Wing Resistance also had a number of chapters around the world. Many were quite small including a Canadian chapter whose sole active member was profiled on the blog in late 2015:

Fromm isn't the only prominent disseminator of hate propaganda who has helped to poison the well and creating the conditions that contribute to events such as the Christchurch tragedy. Like others regarded as leaders or (to use a more resent term) influencers in the white nationalist movement internationally, Fromm toes right up to the line where he doesn't overtly advocate for violence, but justifies it when it occurs as the inevitable consequences of an ethnically diverse society and that the remedy is to make society not ethnically diverse.... however that task would be accomplished is left up to the imagination. These dog whistles are heard by those who ARE potentially inclined to commit such reprehensible acts, but those who have helped to foster this noxious environment have their plausible deniability. 

A figure on the far right whom I have written about due to his active involvement in protests and groups that are increasingly more extreme, Robert Jones, represents the kind of person people like Paulie are dog whistling too:

We usually find the sort of radicalization Robert Jones is undergoing in teens, however like the children who find their way into hate groups, Jones is someone who seems desperate to belong to something. He has been a member of the Soldiers of Odin, the Proud Boys, and the JDL as an affiliate. He has eventually been booted from all three of the groups mentioned and now he's on his forth, the hate group known as the Northern Guard. He has also embraced overt fascism and worships Donald Trump as a sort of living god (note that he has more than one Facebook account two of which I will be sourcing in the article without bothering to make the distinction):

When the Christchurch murders took place, Jones was immediately drawn to the manifesto which he has spent a great deal of time sharing online:

Jones seems aware that posting links to the manifesto, as well as the video of the murders, violate Facebook's terms of service regarding dissemination of hate propaganda and violence, but he seems determined to share these with a wide audience:

Jones' reaction to the murders has been equally crass:

Duarate seems to be under the impression that Fraser Anning, the Australian senator
who blamed the Muslim community for the the murder of their members for
the audacity of living in New Zealand, is a leftist because he likely didn't
read the article.... because he seems to be an idiot.

The term "retribution attack" used by Jones is telling as he very quickly begins to justify the murders and dehumanize non-white peoples: