Recently, we heard about more antics of the Rebel Media terrorizing everyday Albertans they don't like (seems to usually be a person of colour or science supporters). Rebel Media, a far right outlet pretending to be the news, has
been pushing out conspiracy theories and skewed "news" stories for a few years now centred around immigration (mostly about Muslims), taxes and anyone to the left of Mussolini. Their past entertainers like Lauren Southern, Faith Goldy and Gavin McInnes have all developed their own careers in performative assholery:
Keean Bexte, who cosplays as a reporter for the Rebel Media has targeted a historian and local activist out of Edmonton named Bashir Mohamed. Bexte referred to Mohamed as an "unhinged Muslim refugee", described him as thuggish and accused him of pushing Bexte off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic.
If you watch the footage, you can see that Bexte never actually moved, lost his footing or anything to suggest a push. I guess when you're someone like Bexte, having someone stand next to you is a push. This is important to note as it seems to be Bexte's brand of hyperbolic melodrama. An example of Bexte doing this is to describe Mohamed attending a meeting as crashing it, we'll elaborate further and how Bexte is creating space for violence against Mohamed.
An unhinged Muslim refugee crashed a Catholic School Board meeting this week because they wouldn't do things his way. A "gang symbol" was removed from the classroom, and Mohamed is now crying racism. Here is his sketchy past: https://t.co/6arXjkGgMTpic.twitter.com/kabcAv3nDS
To give some back story on this - Mohamed has been helping a family and issues around discrimination at school by staff. A child named Emmel wore a durag to school, he was asked to take it off and that the durag was gang affiliated. The family reached out after the mom, Una Momolu was banned from the school during a meeting. Momolu was banned due to a report of aggressive behaviour, except that the Edmonton Journal reports that Momolu had been recording audio of the meeting and the audio tells a different story, as does Emmel.
You can watch a video summarizing the incident here:
Mohamed, who has amassed a decent sized following has been helping the family by lending his voice in the community around these issues. Bexte, as mentioned before about his brand, said that Mohamed CRASHED the meeting, here's the video of that meeting that you can see for yourself and how he CRASHED it (he didn't, he sat in his chair, put his fist in the chair 10 minutes in and held up a petition).
So let's recap. A family has a son made to take off his durag by the school, when his mother comes to advocate for her son, she is accused of aggression. The police are involved and the mother is banned from the school for a year. Mohamed helps the family, canvasses the community and attends meetings. Our local "Rhodesian noob" Bexte then turned this story into a hit piece.
Bexte posted a twisted version of this story to Twitter and YouTube and the comments are alarming.
Bashir Mohamed is now monitoring the comments where these videos have been posted across social media . These comments are full of threats fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment and outright racism. All of these are memes we've seen before about diversity and Trudeau. It's never going to stop is it?
Over the past year, Cosmin Dzsurdzsa, the husband of alt-right campus activist Lindsay Shepherd, has received recent coverage for his previous work as an editor for Charles Bausman's Russia Insider. A central hub for the dissemination of pro-Russian disinformation during the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, Russia Insider was funded by Konstantin Malofeev, the oligarch sanctioned by Canada for his role in funding Russian militias involved in the country's invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Malofeev is also known for funding the activities of Russian political operatives Aleksandr Dugin and Alexy Komov, individuals involved in foreign influence operations targeting western countries. Ever since his public exposure, Cosmin has made pains to self-censor himself as a means to stay relevant though still enjoys signalling his extremism to his followers. He frequently claims to have not known about Bausman's ideological inclinations, that is not true. A VKonkate page Cosmin created during his stint at Russia Insider shows the only person that Dzsurdzsa followed was Holocaust denier Aleksandr Dugin. Past tweets include quotes of American Nazi sympathizers during World War II, including Ezra Pound and James Laughlin. Currently, Dzsurdzsa now works as an editor for the Post Millennial, an astroturfed website cofounded by Jeff Ballingall whose coverage revolves solely around producing partisan propaganda favouring the Conservative Party of Canada.
Dugin's sordid past can be found elsewhere. Our preoccupation with this character today lies in his role in Russian influence operations of varying severity, from the invasion of Ukraine, to the 2016 coup attempt in Montenegro, to his follower's orchestration of an arson at a Hungarian cultural centre in Ukraine - an act meant to inflame tensions between Hungary and Ukraine. Dugin's totalitarian ideological framework is a major inspiration on the alt-right. Richard Spencer's estranged wife Nina Kouprianova translates Dugin's works in English alongside her colleague Michael Millerman, of the University of Toronto.
As previously mentioned, Dzsurdzsa is married to Lindsay Shepherd, the infamous alt right campus organizer who has worked to give speaking opportunities to Faith Goldy and Ricardo Duchesne. Both are affiliates with ID Canada, the Canadian branch of Generation Identity. On March 20, 2018, Shepherd hosted a speaking event for Faith Goldy titled “Ethnocide: Multiculturalism and European-Canadian Identity,” a speech based on an earlier interview Goldy had with George Hutcheson, the leader of Students for Western Civilization (SWC). The speech was to be recorded and uploaded to Youtube until a fire alarm derailed the event. Goldy's audience was led outside by Shepherd, with SWC members acting as security for Goldy. In February this year, Hutcheson interviewed Millerman for the SWC Youtube channel. Among their topics were, of course, the ideology of Aleksandr Dugin and supplanting the post-WWII liberal-democratic order.
In September 2018, I passed on information received from one of my assets to ARC Collective indicating that Faith Goldy's mayoral campaign was run by members of Generation Identity Canada (rebranded as ID Canada). Other evidence began piling up, proving the campaign was principally a joint operation between ID Canada and its Toronto campus affiliate, SWC. Campaign expenditure disclosures revealed ID Canada founder Tyler Hover managed the campaign webstore. Hover is mostly known for being a literal cuckold among antifascists when he confided to fellow StormFront users that his Russian girlfriend slept with his close friend when she visited Canada. Three months prior to these revelations, MARTIN SELLNER, a leading figure in Generation Identity, travelled to Moscow, Russia alongside his wife Brittany Pettibone and Lauren Southern to interview Aleksandr Dugin. Generation Identity is heavily influenced by the National Bolshevik movement that spawned Dugin, and Sellner himself has been interviewed in 2015 by the Centre for Continental Cooperation, a think tank founded by Yuri Kofner, a student of the Moscow State University of International Relations. At the same time Southern was interviewing Dugin, Ezra Levant, Southern's former employer, was in Moscow filming pro-Kremlin propaganda. On February 2019, I pointed out and provided information on the various relationships Rebel Media staff had with Generation Identity. Rebel Media was cofounded by Ezra Levant, Brian Lilley, and Hamish Marshall. Marshall currently serves as the campaign chair for Andrew Scheer and also works for One Persuasion, a political strategy firm founded by former Tory staffers which utilizes psychographic information to microtarget voters, in the same vein as Cambridge Analytica. Rebel is known for promoting far fetched and malicious conspiracy theories, including suggesting the Ste Foy massacre was a false flag, Rebel staffer Jack Posobiec "just so happened" to come across emails from French President Emmanuel Macron's 2017 presidential campaign stolen by Russian security services, and having a man who worked for an online white supremacist military surplus retailer shouting Russian propaganda at MP Kent Hehr about Chrystia Freeland's grandfather being a Nazi collaborator. Rebel acts as an amplifier for pro-Russian narratives in Canada's information ecosystem, making it impossible to think of him as anything other than an asset to the Russian Federation....
...which brings us to the point of this article. For three years, I have spent much of my time conducting surveillance and research into the western far right's networking with Russian actors. I have kept a close eye on Dzsurdzsa since his start at Free Bird Media, along with others that worked on the site (ie Students in Support of Free Speech). On occasion, I would even heckle him and Alex van Hamme through Twitter. Dzsurdzsa wasn't the only person writing for Free Bird Media to move on to become an editor for Post Millennial, nor was he the only person involved in actively spreading pro-Russian disinformation. Meet Alexandra Hollenbeck, former student of Moscow State University School of International Relations, former American Section Editor for the Post Millennial, and an unquestionable Russian asset:
As already covered by Dahn Shaulis, Hollenbeck has been travelling between much of the Anglosphere and Russia. Older articles since scrubbed from Post Millennial by Hollenbeck were extremely inflammatory and included propaganda about white South Africans, claims Donald Trump has been exonerated over accusations of a criminal conspiracy with a hostile foreign power to defraud the government of the United States, and opinion pieces denying the use of bots in Twitter campaigns. In her short and volatile career, Hollenbeck has had documented meetings with foreign dignitaries to Russia, peculiar opportunities for a "student journalist." As Shaulis notes, "Images from March 2019 show Hollenbeck posing in two photos, stating that she was at Putin’s party office and the Russian Duma, celebrating the news that Donald Trump had been cleared of Russian collusion allegations. Her images were posted with the hashtag #russianspylife." Interestingly, there is also a photo of Hollenbeck and Post Millennial staffer Yaakov Pollack outside Mar-A-Lago, celebrating the presidential pardon of Sholom Rubashkin, a white collar criminal with ties to Berel Lazar, a Chabad rabbi and the Chief Rabbi of Russia.
The Port Washington Chabad, known for its patronage by the Kushner family and ties to Russian organized crime, including Tevfik Arif (who is Russian-Turkish by nationality), Tamir Sapir, Rotem Rosen, Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, and Daniel Ridloff. All men were involved in Bayrock, a company central to several Trump "projects," including Trump Tower Moscow. It should be considered peculiar for a student journalist to be travelling all over the world. meeting foreign dignitaries - especially after only attending Moscow State University of International Relations for a short period.
When Mr. Shaulis contacted Post Millennial and TPUSA, they played down any wrongdoing, but silently removed much of Hollenbeck's content from their websites. The content that was removed were blatant examples of disinformation known to be pushed by Russian active measures, including narratives of supposed "white genocide" in South Africa, dismissals of Russian-sourced social media operations, and suggestions of failed attempts of interference of foreign agents in Russia's own elections without evidence. In the past, Post-Millennial co-founder Jeff Ballingall has been dismissive of foreign interference in the Canadian election. Is it really any surprise that he would be, in spite of warnings by our allies and own in the intelligence community?
I think this is going to end up being a different article than readers might be used to. So before I start I'm going to include some links. If you think someone you love is or is at risk of being radicalized by extremist propaganda or you yourself have fallen down an alt-right (or any other form of extremism) rabbit hole and are looking to get out, please look to the following for help (I'll add more links as I become aware of them):
I also contacted Mubin Shaikh about this article. He wrote this:
Actual deradicalization programs are still lacking but the best folks who do this stuff are former NeoNazis. One guy who is super awesome is Arno Michaelis who teamed up with Pardeep Kaleka after the latter's father was killed in a NeoNazi attack on their Sikh Temple.
Some others out there by name who I think should be mentioned are:
The last few weeks have been very busy personally, professionally, and in terms of keeping up with what actions of the groups and individuals ARC keeps an eye on. In fact I haven't even had time to personally focus on some of the more events that occurred this month such as the Pegida Canada rally that took place in Toronto on Saturday (there wasn't much to it) or the rally in Estevan, SK attended by Yellow Vesters, Northern Guard members, and Canadian Combat Coalition members, though our friends YVCE has that covered on their Twitter account and very kindly covered this and other stories on the blog (read the entire thread):
Todd McDougall and Derek Storie attended Mullet Fest in Estevan today, fresh on the heels of harassing a Winnipeg-based antifascist organizer at his business (and getting thrown out.)
McDougall, a Proud Boy, hung around with other hate group members like Ed Jamnisek of NG. 1/ pic.twitter.com/U2UncRjXRS
As I sit here in my basement (which I stress once again is in a home I own and which has a library, a fireplace, and a bar and is awesome) beer in hand though, I find myself with time to think and have been reflecting on the topic of radicalization and the path that people take towards extremism.
Yeah, not exactly a cheery subject, eh?
As of the writing of this article Patrik Mathews, the Base recruiter who was profiled by journalist Ryan Thorpe, has gone missing after his dismissal from the military. Despite being part of a hate group planning a race war in which non-whites, Jews, and Muslims would be exterminated, Tim "Braying Jackass" Kelly of the Proud Boys knows who the real victim is:
We also learned this week that the Canadian Nationalist Party led by Travis Patron who is as an overt antisemite apparently now has the signatures needed to be registered as an official party and while we certainly don't expect them to win anything we do see the danger of normalizing racist, anti-LGBTQ, antisemitic, and Islamophobic rhetoric in the political sphere.... which if we're going to be honest is a market many PPC candidates already seemed to be trying to corner themselves:
The Canadian Nationalist Party admits to advocating for a white majority - and calls for the “parasitic tribe” - a barely concealed reference to Jews - to be removed from Canada.
We have already filed our request for their application & membership list. https://t.co/cEGR2J7488
Spotted in Saskatoon today. If any of our followers see any more please tear them down, only if you can do so safely. pic.twitter.com/ZYTyKjAoVl
— Yellow Vests Canada Exposed ðŸ?´ (@VestsCanada) August 31, 2019
These three seemingly dissimilar cases (other than the fact they all involve racist groups) are interesting to me right now since they actually demonstrate a path for radicalization where a person moves from extremism to even greater extremism. A person this blog has been aware of but who I suspect is following a similar path of online radicalization by far-right extremist propaganda will be used as a bit of a case study:
The person pictured here is named Skyler François who lives in either Vancouver or Burnaby based on information found on his two LinkedIn profiles, one of which has him claiming to be a professional gamer:
Long time readers will no doubt recognize the flag behind François:
It is the same flag he is holding on his current Twitter profile:
Before I continue I need to explain that François' use @strobe88 on Twitter is relatively recent as he had been using @skyler_francois prior to at least May 2019:
I'm guessing Str0be is his gamer tag.
As such readers will notice both @skyler_francois and @strobe88 thought this article though the Str0be handle will be more common as most of the screen shots were taken after the change had occurred.
François has been on Twitter since 2013 when he would have been around Grade 10. Looking at what he posts on Twitter now one wouldn't be surprised to see that he would be someone whom ARC might take an interest in:
April 17, 2013 - August 23, 2014: Left of Center and Typical Teen Interests
However this wouldn't have been the case as recently as January 1, 2018. Prior to 2018 most of his tweets were related to video games, finding school boring, girls, and getting high with very few that were political in nature, however those few tweets that were political in nature suggest that François held very different views than he does now:
Based on other content and previous posts François would be in high school at this time (Grades 10 and 11).
August 24, 2014 - January 1, 2018: Gaming
Between August 2014 and January 1, 2018, almost every tweet and retweet made was completely apolitical in nature focusing primarily on gaming. The only exception I was able to find was a single tweet in November 2016 concerning the election of Donald Trump and the subsequent protests that took place which perhaps indicates a shift in François' views might have started as a result of the Trump presidential campaign and victory, though this is very much conjecture:
If a shift had started it wasn't apparent as the remainder of 2016 and 2017 was devoted to tweets and retweets about gaming pretty much exclusively:
That would all change almost immediately after ushering in 2018
January 2, 2018 - May 14, 2019: Falling Down the Alt-Right Rabbit Hole and ID Canada
The contrast is quite jarring, so much so that one would be excused for believing a completely different person took over François Twitter account on January 2, 2018.
While gaming seemed to be the most significant aspect of his social media identity prior to January 2, 2018, François hasn't tweeted or retweeted a single gaming related item since January 1, 2018. His Twitter feed became exclusively devoted to far-right political discourse; Lauren Southern, "InfoWars'" Paul Joseph Watson, Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone, "Breitbart", Faith Goldy, and other groups and individuals. He also began engaging with detractors and arguing in favor of white nationalism:
There was absolutely no indication or hint that this was going to happen based on his earlier social media activity. Since January 2, 2018, François' tweets have become increasingly extreme.
François first came to my attention through his association with ID Canada, a hate group that he started to promote himself as early as February 2018:
ID Canada was formerly Generation Identity Canada prior to rebranding. ARC has already published numerous articles about the group whose suspected leader (though there are questions regarding his involvement now) Tyler Hover was an active member of Stormfront and the branch in Montreal was a front for Alt-Right Montreal. The hate group was also actively involved in Faith Goldy's mayoral campaign (I've included a few relevant links):
It is this promotion of ID Canada that brought François to ARC's attention (before I promptly forgot about him again):
He also began to vigorously advocate for and promote the group when engaging with others on Twitter:
I'm not sure what François thinks he means by ID Canada as being "recognized by the government"? Does he mean a charity? An NGO? Having a registered trademark? None of that is true. Maybe he thinks that because ID Canada has been in the news (regarding their stickers at least) that constitutes being "recognized" by the government? In any case I'll chalk it up to talking a big game.
Here François posts the usual line we've heard from identitarians. They aren't racists and they respect all cultures but they want to protect and preserve "white" culture which means limiting immigration however those POC who are here already are fine.
This line is expressed in even greater detail in another lengthy exchange in August 2018:
I don't think François needs to worry about anything especially profound within ID Canada.... and yes I know he is guilty of a malapropism.
François is adamant here that neither he nor ID Canada is racist (despite his reference to the 14 words coined by convicted terrorist and white supremacist David Lane). He writes that he isn't a white supremacist, that he would never "kick anyone out", and that ID C Canada bans Nazi sympathizers or anyone holding (I'm guessing the work he means is "extremist") language.
Keep these statements in mind.
June 3, 2018 - August 7, 2018: Gab and Canadian Nationalist Party
During this time François also created a profile on Gab:
Gab is a social networking site established in 2016 that claims it supports nearly unrestricted free speech. In practice it has attracted extremists who have been kicked off other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter among others. The demographics are primarily male, white, and far-right politically. Members include alt-right founder Richard Spencer, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, former BNP leader Nick Griffin, Blair Cottrell, and Christopher Cantwell among others. One of the more infamous members was the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter who murdered 11 people; he wrote on Gab shortly before engaging in the massacre, "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."
François was active on Gab very briefly between June and August 2018, however he spent his time there promoting both ID Canada and Travis Patron's Canadian Nationalist Party:
I'm not sure that the profile picture was the one he originally chose for his Gab account, but it provides another example of a shift towards an even more extremist position.
By May 2019, François had come to embrace National Socialism and created what he believes is a political party:
May 15, 2019 - Present: Canadian Union of Fascists
However he would later change the name to that of a political party that existed briefly in Canada in the 1930s:
Since this time François has been retweeting his own CUF tweets as well as those of the PPC and overt racists like Donald Trump and Stefan Molyneux as well as a BC identitarian group Northern Identity, a group that I find very interesting in part because they blocked the ARC Twitter account moments after I followed them because OBVIOUSLY ARC is comprised of snowflakes.... I guess?
This marks a further escalation in the level of extremist rhetoric. Where once he suggested he wasn't a white supremacist and that Nazi sympathizers would be banned from membership in ID Canada he is now openly advocating for National Socialism in which the belief in racial superiority and antisemitism is at the core of the ideology:
I'll let the readers comment on the irony of a National Socialist supporter claiming common cause with Slavic peoples.
And where he once claimed that non-white peoples were free to remain in Canada....
.... he now supports forcible deportation.
What's the next step beyond deportation? History sadly provides us with that answer.
And finally there is the issue of François advocating for and celebrating violence:
This is the part of looking at Skyler François that is the most concerning. Much of the imagery he's posting echos that which Patrik Mathews and members of the Base as well at Atomwaffen Division have disseminated. François also posted this video in which an individual is brutally assaulted which also mirrors the aesthetic:
Rather than see this for what it is, an unjustified assault, François and a few of the people following his CUF Twitter profile celebrate:
That's where we are now.
Conclusions?
So why bother looking at Skyler François at all? ARC's critics will rightfully argue that he isn't a significant figure on the Canadian far-right; he is fringe even amongst the fringe. There's no concern that he and his "political party" the Canadian Union of Fascists will be registered by Elections Canada, run a single candidate, or win even a tiny fraction of a single percentage of any vote. This is just yet another of ARC's long winded posts (hey, it's a wise man who knows himself and I KNOW that I can beat a dead horse into the ground).
In truth, that's exactly why I wrote this article.
François isn't special, but it is because he is completely nondescript that is why we need to pay attention to him and people like him. Through 2013 and 2017 there was no indication at all that he would have been radicalized. So what the hell happened to him and why did it seem like the flipping of a switch?
Was he radicalized through gaming? The election of Trump? Events offline and reinforced by online propaganda?
I honestly don't know.
Now me not knowing might not be a big deal. I'm not a psychologist and it isn't my job to know these things. However I fear that people whose job is to figure this out are not doing so. That might not be their fault as resources aren't likely being devoted to figuring out which young, white, male will be the next to turn to far-right extremism as much as they should be.
A brown male named Ali, Fahad, Imran, or Muhammad? Well that's an entirely different story. Those guys will be watched like hawks the moment they order a falafel rather than a ham sandwich in a diner.
No, François isn't special, but neither is he alone. I think it is in society's interest to figure out how he and others like him have turned out as they have if we want to prevent the violence this particular demographic has shown itself to be capable of.
The following video is one individual's story of how he was radicalized and his eventual rejection of the alt-right ideologies.
