Showing posts with label III%. Show all posts
Showing posts with label III%. Show all posts

Saturday, October 31, 2020

October 2020 Bits and Bites: Halloween Edition

We haven't really done a bits and bites article in some time but we thought we would do so now. Please forgive our omissions in this purposely irreverent look back at the month of bigots behaving badly, often towards each other.

In the last article we discussed the antics of Brian Kidder who, since it was published, has continued on in his campaign to arrest a politician. He is not surprisingly being egged on by some of the bad actors who have profiled consistently on this blog:

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Friday, August 28, 2020

Canadian Far-Right Responds to the Murder of Two Protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was shot and paralyzed by police last week, which set off major protests in the city. It was during one of these protests that Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17 year old boy from Antioch, Illinois, who is a member of a right-wing militia, shot 3 protesters, killing 2 and injuring one. He was later arrested by police, after he had fled the state. Numerous videos on social media show the attack, with Rittenhouse shooting a protester in the head, and shooting into the crowd. Initially, protesters had attempted to disarm him of his assault-style rifle. 

We won't go too in depth on what happened in Kenosha, as it's already been reported on at length. 

However, predictably, the Canadian far-right has reacted with their usual callousness and hatred. 

Jeremy MacKenzie (AKA Raging Humanist/Rick Handy), and John Southern (who claims to have been involved in some capacity with Wolfgang Droege of the Heritage Front) were gleeful that protesters were murdered in the street:

On Facebook, members and associates of Yellow Vests Canada were quick to defend the killer: 



Other Canadian far-right groups have also been supportive of the killer, such as Canadian Combat Coalition and the Threepers, both far-right anti-Muslim militia groups: 




A reference to Anthony Huber, who attempted to disarm Rittenhouse using his skateboard 

 
Chris Vanderweide, who is awaiting trial for assault due to his involvement with the attack on Hamilton Pride, is also supportive, as is his girlfriend Leigh Stuart:





Ron Banerjee of the patriot movement and Rise Canada is wondering why he can't carry a gun in Canada and shoot people that confront him:

Sam Bell, who runs the Alberta Separatist Youth League, an Alberta thinly disguised white nationalist group, and is also associated with Wexit, posted supportive memes to both his Facebook page (Make Alberta Great Again) and his Instagram. 


Rittenhouse isn't from that city 





Mark Friesen is a nationalist from the yellow vests and a failed PPC candidate. He is also showing support for the shooter.

 



Kazz Nowlin, formerly of the Threepers and currently of the Canadian Sheepdogs, has been especially vocally supportive of the killer: 





Over on Telegram, the virulently racist and antisemitic Canada First (Public) channel has expressed support: 






And the Proud Boys as well: 



As unsurprising as the reactions are, it is very disturbing that an untrained 17 year old boy in the U.S. can walk around with an assault rifle, and attempt to quell a protest against racialized police violence. He killed 2 people, said so to the police, and the officers on the scene did not arrest him. If that isn't an example of white privilege, I don't know what is. 
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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

GUEST ARTICLE: Far-Right Fail to Bait Anti-Racist Protesters in Rural Alberta

After more than 12 years, in January 2020, the founder of the ARC blog, Kurt Phillips, stepped away, passing the blog to new writers. Since then, he has contributed the the Canadian Anti-Hate Network as both a writer and a board member. 

This is Kurt's first guest article. 

You can follow Kurt at @ARCCollective on Twitter. 
*  *  *  * 

The murder of George Floyd that resulted in mass protests against racial injustice has become an international movement as people from around the world have take to the streets to protest police brutality and systemic racism within their own countries. Canada has been no exception as protests and rallies in support of BLM and other racialized peoples have occurred in every major city. These protests have been with very few exceptions peaceful as far-right counter-protesters such as the Urban Infidels and Soldiers of Odin among others have been vastly outnumbered resulting in these groups slinking off into the shadows.

The protests however have not been confined to the big cities. Several smaller cities and towns have also held protests including a number in Alberta. Though many of the people in these communities have been supportive, they have also been targeted by far-right groups who have attempted to intimidate organizers into shutting down.

One such example is the town of Innisfail, Alberta where Brittany Bovey organized a rally against racism. In doing so she quickly became the target of an orchestrated campaign of intimidation to prevent the protest from occurring.

Among those who appear to have engaged in this campaign was WEXIT leader Peter Downing who has been railing against the BLM movement and the fight for racial equality. In one post made to the group’s social media page, Downing wrote the following:
It’s time to show these communist fairies who is boss. 
We’ll bring “enforcement” back to law enforcement. Its gonna be like pre-1982… the Good Ol’ Days are coming back baby!

Downing himself is a former RCMP officer whose former wife alleges he threatened to throw her out a window.

Because of a deluge of threatening messaged Ms. Bovey initially cancelled the event which resulted in Downing posting on Twitter, “Innisfail Rocks! Good job telling these communists to take a hike.” However, when the event was rescheduled he posted this on Facebook:
It is likely that there will be a counter-protest. 
We don’t take kindly to left-wing terrorists in these parts.
Many of the posts on the WEXIT group page engaged in the usual conspiracy theories that we have become accustomed to; that any person coming to protest was being paid to do so, that George Soros is the mastermind, or that “we never had any problems with racism until Trudeau was elected” with some claiming they were never racist until the BLM movement began. Still others suggested engaging in targeted violence as, for example, one person suggested that a snipper should take out the leaders and that “two boxes of ammo should do the trick.”

Calls for violence against the participants were not confined to the WEXIT pages as similar sentiments have been found on Yellow Vests Canada, Northern Guard, Worldwide Coalition Against Islam, and some groups supporting the PPC. Perhaps the most concerning comments are found in the III% Alberta group. The III% is an American-based militia founded on the erroneous belief that only 3% of colonists participated in the War of Independence thus they were among the elite. The III% also have made inroads into Canada and members have participated in numerous rallies and protests often acting as “security”. Members of the Alberta III% shared several links to news about the rescheduled rally including those from the far-right Rebel Media which characterized the protest in Innisfail as “BLM outsiders planning ‘re-education’ rally in small Alberta town.”

Some comments were as follows:
Where can we contribute to buying more live ammo for the cops? 
Can I bring my AR just to piss off the Liberals 
Asking for a lot of trouble 
Shoot first ask questions later.
Perhaps the most telling comment appears to have been a reference to an especially ugly time in Alberta’s past:
Where are the brothers from Caroline? Only [need] 4 or 5 of them to put these fools in their place 
In the 1980s Caroline, Alberta was the headquarters of the Aryan Nations in Canada. Then leader Terry Long organized a rally that brought members of the Aryan Nations and Klansmen from across Western Canada and the United States. Among those present was Carney Nerland who would later be convicted of manslaughter in Saskatchewan after shooting Leo LaChance, a Native trapper, in the back. Long himself was later implicated in an assault on a former journalist by three neo-Nazi skinheads in Edmonton that left the man blinded in one eye.










The Innisfail protest took place on June 13. It is unclear if any of the III% militia appeared as they said they would, however there was a very small counter-protest.




One of the counter-protesters was Pat King who helped to organize the Yellow Vest convoy to Ottawa and had been involved with Downing’s WEXIT movement. King has spoken of Canada and being an “Anglo-Saxon” nation and has perpetuated antisemetic libels. Also present was Keann Bexte who now works for Rebel Media but who has his own problematic history with race.





Despite the efforts by counter-protesters to provoke a violent response, the more than 300 attendees from both Innisfail and surrounding communities refused to take the bait and engaged in civil discussions with many of the counter-protesters who were at least willing to listen. The success of the protest in Innisfail has already inspired activists in other smaller communities to hold similar events recognizing that racism isn’t a big city problem but one that exists everywhere despite the inability, or refusal, to recognize it exists.
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Monday, March 02, 2020

February 2020 Bits and Bites: (Fake) Posters, Win Nay is Embarrassing, Robert Jones Escalates, and Tim Jones Goes Mask Off

February has been a ride. We're still working on collecting the worst of the worst with the far-right's response to Wet'suwet'en, which we'll publish in other article(s) as it deserves. For now, here are some highlights from the last month.

A video was posted to YouTube by Hamilton Ed (last name unknown), who is a staple at the Yellow Vest and other far-right rallies around the city. The posters were promptly ripped down by some stellar Hamiltonians, and police were called, who advised Ed that people had as much right to rip them down as he had to put them up.


Screenshot from YouTube comments

"Diversity hire," huh. And about those posters Ed...

* * * *

Leigh Stuart found some rather silly posters in Kitchener-Waterloo apparently attributed to Kitchener-Waterloo Against Fascism, which seemed a little strange.
 Here they are in full view: 

These posters are exactly what one would expect from someone who 
was anti-antifascist pretending to be antifascist. 


If this strikes you as odd, you'd be right. 

We reached out to folks involved with Kitchener-Waterloo Against Fascism and confirmed that they did not produce or put these posters up. In fact, they scoffed at the poor workmanship and design of the posters. 

Now, we don't know exactly what transpired, but these are obviously fake and it's possible someone took a cue from Ronny Cameron. 

* * * *

Everyone's favourite hate group hopper Win Nay continues to be...interesting. We thank Edmonton Against Fascism for their tireless contributions. 
 This led to a bit of a feud: 
Where a ...duel?...was discussed. 
 * * * *
Robert Jones, former Proud Boy Grown Ass Man, has upped his extremist ante, re-joining Twitter to share some siegepilled garbage and describing himself as a neo-fascist, with a skullmask and a sonnenrad. 

Jones, who would increase the average age of Atomwaffen by 7 years all by himself, has evidently become further radicalized since his days with Proud Boys, Northern Guard, and Soldiers of Odin. 

Boomer Division reporting for duty. 





He's gone full antisemite. We're wondering how Meir feels about this, given his previous relationship with the JDL: 




And is engaging George Burdi's (RaHoWa, Heritage Front) new folk music partner, Cat Weiss:


It's safe to say that the radicalization pipeline worked on Jones. 



 * * * *

Tim Jones, of Nova Scotia and previously/currently of Northern Guard, has recently showed off his fancy new vest from yet another "motorcycle club," Rogue Brothers, that features some interesting patchwork: 





And that's a wrap on February, 2020. 
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