Marc Lemire Out in Hamilton

Former neo-Nazi hate group leader Marc Lemire is no longer working for Hamilton by mutual agreement. We provided evidence to investigators that he continued to host hate materials on his now-defunct blog after the story broke.https://t.co/y9SMd23ktn

— Canadian Anti-Hate Network (@antihateca) August 16, 2019

Marc Lemire will not return to work for the city following investigation: sources. https://t.co/ULDqCSeJs1 #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/pPgYJwP7SP

— CBC Hamilton (@CBCHamilton) August 16, 2019

Sources say Lemire won’t be coming back, but for lots of us questions remain about how a known Neo-nazi got hired and may have been deliberately hidden at the City for years. It’s possible that other employees should face discipline. https://t.co/onIVxxtNxJ #CanLab #HamOnt #OnLab

— Sarah Molyneaux (@Sarah_Molyneaux) August 16, 2019

Right to the end, Lemire continued to deny his long-time involvement with the Heritage Front, involvement that ranged from simple membership early on, work on the hate group's website and later hosting it and numerous other hate sites, and finally the leadership of the hate group. This is all outlined in "Marc Lemire: A Summary of Information" that includes links to article written about Lemire's involvement in organized hate.

While the removal of Lemire is positive, there are still a lot of questions regarding his employment and why he appears to have been protected by Hamilton government officials. We also still have questions about his access to sensitive information and whether that information could have been shared with his fellow travelers.

Examination of Marc Lemire: Part XIII

Between 2008 and 2013, ARC published a series of articles detailing Mar Lemire's racist past and his involvement with the Heritage Front. I compiled all of the links on this single page:

Marc Lemire: Summary of Information

It has been more than six years since I've added to this series of article that highlighted the history of Marc Lemire's involvement with and eventual leadership of the Heritage Front. When I posted the last few articles I sort of felt like I was beating a dead horse so whenever I had heard of Lemire's name come up in my investigations, such as his participation in the memorials of lawyers Doug Christie and more recently Barbara Kulaszka I either briefly discussed his involvement or ignored it all together.

Chris Edmunds, Malcolm Ross, Michele Erstikaitis, Marc Lemire

I had assumed there was no further use in covering Lemire since I believed he was of no particular significance any longer.

That turned out to have been a mistake on my part, but it is a mistake that journalists such as Mack Lamoureux has rectified:

Marc Lemire is the last leader of the Heritage Front which has been described as one of the most impactful white supremacist groups in Canada since the Klan. A former member of the Heritage Front told us how he was a “very obliging foot-soldier” prior to being its leader.

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

His existence at the city was a quiet one with odd things like his outgoing message being his extension number not his name. Several days after I first contacted him on his work phone, his extension was taken out of service. The city would not confirm or deny that he worked there

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

A source told us that Lemire would have had back access to city employees data, something that worried @MatthewGreenNDP, Hamilton's first POC city councillor.

Green told us he was disgusted he didn’t know about this. pic.twitter.com/zyO03ZBeJG

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

For my American followers this would kinda be like uh... if Philadelphia had Don Black (of Stormfront fame) in their IT department. https://t.co/17FOqPMNJQ

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

Those articles on Lemire that I thought of as overkill I'm happy to say helped Mr. Lamouroeux in his research so I sort of feel a bit vindicated in having written them, but full credit to Mack for his dogged work.

I know there was another journalist who had been working on this story as well but she appears to have been stymied by the City of Hamilton for some reason which no doubt will result in a great deal of interesting speculation:

I did an FOI recently asking for any email correspondence containing the words "Marc Lemire" combined the words "Heritage Front," "neo-Nazi" & other terms. I'm looking for the response I got right now. Needless to say, it didn't turn up what I was looking for

— Samantha Craggs 🦉 (@SamCraggsCBC) May 8, 2019

Lemire's extension was never available in the city's dial-by-name directory. It always required going directly to a human being, who would connect you

— Samantha Craggs 🦉 (@SamCraggsCBC) May 8, 2019

However, Ms. Craggs was able to get Lemire to speak about his involvement with the Heritage Front after the publication of the "Vice" article.
In news that will surprise no one who follow this blog, Lemire lied:

"The Heritage Front stuff dates back to when I was a teenager," Lemire said, linking to an article where he said he's not a Nazi or white supremacist. 

"I reject the Heritage Front for what it was, as I have stated consistently for over 11 years." 

But, as Vice reported, an archived web page from the Heritage Front's website from 2001 shows Lemire distributing flyers saying "immigration can kill" in Hamilton. A post on Lemire's own webpage from that same year also describes him as the "head honcho" of the organization.

ARC first published this a number of years ago:

Hmmmm, 152 Carlton Street....

When this was published on Lemire's website, he would have been 26 years old.

In fact Lemire hosted the Heritage Front on Freedom-Site from 1998 (age of 23) to roughly 2001 when he appears to have moved it to a separate server. Here is an example of one of those early Heritage Front websites (December 2000, I believe):

And here is the HF merchandise page where the hate group sold their magazine featuring former KKK leader David Duke and videos by the leader of White Aryan Resistance Tom Metzger:

Gee, 152 Carlton Street again?

Surely a coincidence.

And here is a request for donations to keep Freedom-Site alive:

There's that 152 Carlton Street again!

Curious isn't it? I mean, it would be amazing if one could link that address directly to Lemire, wouldn't it?

Oh! You mean he had a personal webpage?

Sigh....

And by the way, here is one of the images of the Canadian Patriot Network Lemire designed:

Subtle Marc. Real subtle.

And what did his other website look like when Marc would have been 23?

Tsk, tsk....

The reality is that Marc already tried to snow people regarding his past with the Heritage Front. In that case, he had a willing stooge in Ezra Levant who refused to challenge Lemire's claims because Levant also had an agenda:

Uh, the Heritage Front uh, was active back in, uh, the the 90s and I was a young kid at the time. I had some, uh, interest in some of the things that they were doing in particularly thing like uh opposition to employment equity, things like reducing immigration. So I uh, listened to some of what they were about, and uh, I went away from it. I mean I was involved with them peripherally in my teenage years.

Well, Lemire is right that he was involved with the Heritage Front as a teenager:

CANADA - FEBRUARY 23 Hearing Adjourned Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege and his white supremacist supporters leave University Ave. courthouse yesterday. (Toronto Star)

But he was also involved in his early 20s as he continued to count Wolfgang Droege as a friend:

For Someone Who Claims He Doesn't Support Nazis, Travis Patron Sure Does Associate With A Lot Of Nazis

In the follow-up article to an earlier article posted to ARC regarding a planned event by Travis Patron and the Canadian Nationalist "Party", it was noted that the event had been cancelled and Patron made a not-so-subtle threat directed at myself and other anti-racist activists. Now for someone who claims to be a supporter of free speech and bristles at "being silenced" it might seem a bit hypocritical that he would look forward to "permanently silencing" me and other like me. That however presumes that Patron (and other like him) actually care about freedom expression other than as a means for his own ends.

We've seen this song and dance before:

When posting the screen shot of the threat though, I initially failed to notice one of the individuals who had commented:

Tyler Chilcott is this fella:

The Far Right Continues to Embrace Anti-Democratic Ethnic Nationalism and Authoritarianism (With Northern Alliance Cameo)

It has been an interesting week in the news. Donald Trump attacks traditional allies including Canada (specifically the Canadian prime minister) and his supporters in this country eat it up. Some of them have openly advocated for the invasion of the country to remove the Liberal government by force. Others "merely" want him to impose punitive tariffs on the country so that Canadians are made to suffer for the folly of electing the Liberals. Most of those self-described "patriots" ARC keeps an eye on unironically continue to refer to Justin Trudeau as a traitor. In the meantime these same "patriots" celebrate when Trump refers to a man who inherited his dictatorship from his father and grandfather and who's government is responsible mass execution of dissidents and the imprisonment of anyone who is believed to oppose the regime as being "tough" but who still "loves his people."

Really though, none of this is at all surprising as these elements of the far right in Canada, the United States, and many other countries have openly embraced ethnic nationalism and authoritarianism despite still claiming to favor democratic freedoms.... so long as those democratic freedoms are only afforded to people who look and think like they do.

POLL: 52% of Republicans would support postponing the 2020 presidential election if President Trump called for it.

(The Washington Post)

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) August 10, 2017

I recently read a very interesting article that discussed the phenomenon in the United States. Research indicates that intolerance of minorities cause much of the majority population (white) to reject the principles of democracy when it is seen as benefiting otherwise marginalized peoples and results in a willingness to embrace authoritarian forms of control that will maintain their dominance even in the face of demographic changes:

A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy. 

Miller and Davis used information from the World Values Survey, a research project organized by a worldwide network of social scientists which polls individuals in numerous countries on a wide range of beliefs and values. Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results. 

The World Values Survey data used is from the period 1995 to 2011 — well before Donald Trump's 2016 run for president. It suggests, though, that Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

Given demographic changes, the far right find themselves in a bit of a bottle-neck so they have had to be much more creative in maintaining control, and this often means subverting the most basic of democratic practices, the vote:

White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.

There are, of course, even more extreme positions:

Miller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy." Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

We've been hearing more and more about the desire to create an "ethno-state" here in Canada from a number of groups and individuals including Faith Goldy and Ronny Cameron. The patently undemocratic attitudes that would deny certain Canadians their democratic rights and create a tiered system of citizenship was also proposed by Steven Myatt recently:

Yeah, I know the last few articles have been a bit Myatt-centric. Just hear me out on this one. 

We can laugh (and I did) about the clumsiness of Myatt talking about running "in politics" as well as the fact that this is a position that is so patently unconstitutional the courts would strike such a law down immediately (this assuming that Myatt would ever find himself in a position to enact such a law which seems less likely than me beating Justify in a footrace). It would also ironically disallow the first two prime ministers of the country from being involved in politics as well as numerous other Canadians who have emigrated from somewhere else.

But let's be honest here. Myatt is NOT talking about someone who looks like this:

Conservative MP Tom Kmiec, July 31, 1981 in Gdańsk, Poland

Myatt IS talking about someone who looks like this:

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, born January 2, 1979 in Scarborough, ON

The truth of this can be seen in one of Myatt's responses:

Well, when it comes to the House of Commons and the Senate federally, there were a total of 56 who are citizens of Canada through naturalization. However it is more clear that Myatt thinks that some people "look" Canadian and others don't. Considering he had 46 people seemingly agreeing with him, it seems that there are others who feel the same way.

One of those people is someone we haven't seen in a long, long, time:

That would be Tyler Chilcott, formerly of the now defunct neo-Nazi Northern Alliance based out of London, ON:

Jason KING, David RUUD, WINNICKI, Tyler CHILCOTT,
Tomas SZYMANSKI at Zundel demo in front of Metro West

On the archived website, Chitcott had published articles with titles such as "Wholistic Racialism", "Please Rise and Sing", and "The Native Conflict" as well as some really horrible poetry.

Congratulations Steven. Tyler Chilcott likes the cut of your jib.

The first person who posted "Blood and Earth" hearkens to the "Blood and Soil" ethnic nationalism heard at the Charlottesville rally last summer and, even more prescient,  was a slogan used by the Nazis (Blut und Boden).

Response to the Demise of Sec. 13 in "Maclean's"

Earlier today, we were contacted by "Maclean's" and asked about our take on the demise of Sec. 13. We responded as follows:

We think that the government was incredibly short sighted in their decision to eliminate Sec. 13. It was a useful and cost-effective tool in the effort to eliminate some very vile, hateful, and potentially dangerous rhetoric online and in the public sphere. Now we have only the criminal code which, in a few cases, is like using a machete when a scalpel would have been more prudently utilized. 

Those individuals and groups who were called before the Human Rights Tribunal and who were found to have violated Sec. 13 were not innocent lambs who were victimized by Big Brother. They were people and groups who were causing real harm in their communities. Their words did result in harm, and I don't mean hurt feelings. People's homes were vandalized. People have been assaulted. And these criminal acts had, in many cases, began with the dehumanization of fellow Canadians for no other reason than their ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation. 

The people who are celebrating this are the extremists on Stormfront and VNN and a host of other racist webforums, but as we wrote on our blog they should consider that now there is only the criminal code and the penalties are more severe than anything Sec. 13 dished out. It should also be noted that racists aren't content with only Sec. 13. Paul Fromm, for instance, has said he and his group will next focus their attention on the criminal code sections regarding hate crimes.

We get the impression that the "Maclean's" in which Sec. 13 will be discussed is coming out this week. We don't expect that our entire response will be published, or if any of it will be for that matter, but if it is we thought we'd include the entirely of our response here.

And as for the responses from the boneheads, we present a small selection:

An Examination of Marc Lemire: Part VII

This extension of the Lemire articles is in direct response to the statement made by Lemire in August (repeated in December) when asked by Ezra Levant about his involvement in the Heritage Front:

Uh, the Heritage Front uh, was active back in, uh, the the 90s and I was a young kid at the time. I had some, uh, interest in some of the things that they were doing in particularly thing like uh opposition to employment equity, things like reducing immigration. So I uh, listened to some of what they were about, and uh, I went away from it. I mean I was involved with them peripherally in my teenage years.

Now, for someone who claims to have only been peripherally involved with the Heritage Front in his teenage years, it is interesting that he has surrounded himself with people who were members of the Heritage Front.

In the last post on the subject, we included a newpaper article from July 21, 1998 which provides information concerning Heritage Front activities in Kingston, ON.  At this point the Heritage Front was still active, but it is pretty clear that the Bristow affair had resulted in a precipitous decline in the fortunes of hate group (there would be a brief resurgence in 2001, though this too would be short lived), but it is clear that Droege and the remaining chapters across Canada were still trying to make conversions.

When we looked at the article again, one name (other than Droege) jumped out at us:

Occupy Movement: Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee

Oh, how we loves us our Free Dominion!

The folks at Free Dominion present themselves as principled defenders of speech. This is, on the surface, a noble sentiment. Principled men and women from Voltaire to Gerry Spence have defended speech that they personally found abhorrent, but that they still believed was necessary to defend for the sake of everyone's freedoms.

The folks at Free Dominion are not Voltaire or Gerry Spence. They aren't even a poor man's Lenny Bruce or George Carlin (NSFW, FYI), though the members are often inadvertently funny.

Ruud Plans On Protesting Gay Pride Parade In London

The folks in London, Ontario celebrates their Pride Week a little later than most cities, but by all accounts it's a rocking affair. Of course it does attract it's fair share of protesters, but they've sort of become part of the show as they stand along the side of the street with their homemade signs that contain some well used rhetoric (i.e. wages sin yadda yadda yadda) calling on the parade participants to repent of their wicked ways.

In our experience, the parade participants are usually either quite pleasant to the protesters or mercilessly mock them because, well, they are sort of funny in their impotence.

One of the groups that has protested the parade in the past have been our good friends in the Northern Alliance and the Canadian Heritage Alliance, as well as some of their hanger-ons. Last year, they didn't show up. Couldn't get the numbers they wanted we guess, though they really have never been a large group at these events.

This year however, Stormfront user and Northern Alliance member, "For Honor" promises a return performance in the protester sideshow event:


Perhaps it would be useful to remind our readers who, "For Honor" is:

Yep, it's Dave Ruud. This picture was from a few years ago during another Pride Parade protest. He's also the go to guy in the Northern Alliance now that Jason Ouwendyk has dropped out of public.

Some of Ruud's fellow travelers aren't comfortable with his public announcement on Stormfront however:


Yep, Tom Winnicki, pictured at yet another Pride Protest in London, feels that Ruud has said too much:


But that hasn't stopped Ruud from providing other useful information:


The people involved in organizing the protest (i.e. getting people to show up and hold a sign while helplessly being the subject of pity and ridicule) are at great pains to stress that those who do participate are to leave their Nazi flags and symbols at home:


But we thought you were PROUD to be white? And by saying that this is a, "clean protest" is that a tacit admission that there is nothing, "clean" or particularly honest about, "White Nationalism."

Well we are shocked! Shocked we say!

But then considering the affinity of the Northern Alliance to Nazism, that might be more a self-reminder than anything:


That last picture includes Canadian Heritage Alliance leader Melissa Guille who has also attended the London protests in the past.

In fact, Ruud has a rather odd obsession with the London Pride week parade. We could post dozens of screen shots, but we'll limit it to a couple:

The protests also have attracted an odd group of people. Sort of like this guy:


So, who is Wayne Kellestine? We'll let Ruud explain:


Wow. Talk about the company you keep.

So who's going to be coming out? We think that we could start with those who attended the last protest in 2008. Ruud will be there of course and maybe Winnicki. We think that Guille might make an appearance as well:

Perhaps Randall Linton will show up:


It wouldn't be a protest without Tyler Chilcott:

And finally, this Northern Alliance member who's name we still aren't sure of (but would love to know):


As for this year's events, if you bring a camera, be sure to keep this humble blog in mind when you consider sharing.