Canadian Anti-racism Network

Hate groups are growing in size and number throughout Canada as they are in the United States and Western and Eastern Europe. But there is a failure to understand and address this growing problem in Canada. Members of the most violent and extreme groups are easy to recognize. When these groups parade with nazi flags and bear signs advocating violence against immigrants, their motives are hard to misinterpret. But equally extreme groups have learned to blend with the mainstream. They meet in libraries and universities under the ruse of "defending" free speech or promoting "responsible" immigration policy and foreign aid reform. These groups claim they are not racist but are just concerned with preserving European culture and "ethnic balance". To help address the serious misunderstanding of hate groups in Canada www.stopracism.ca presents information on (1) reporting hate group activity while staying safe, (2) methods of stopping racism and hate group recruitment, (3) the convergence between racist and fascist ideology and mainstream politics, and (4) developing a better understanding and response to the “addiction to hate” of former members of hate groups.

The assumption has been that racism is somehow a “natural” genetic or cultural response to difference. This results in a failure to explain why individuals from similar backgrounds may choose hate, while others do not. It also fails to explain social change over time towards different cultures. The reduction of hate to cultural difference or genetics results in a total failure to address the re-birth of fascism. But ignoring the political and economic factors that have given rise to racism results in access to government funding, while failing to address the root causes of racism and hate in the first place. We examine the political and economic factors that result in racist ideology, hate groups, and terrorism because that is the only way to address its root cause.

Recent state sponsored research addresses fascism as just another type of “extremism.” In this mindset, or ideology, fascism is equivalent to progressive protests against racists, or as Trump would have it - there's good on both sides! This view has resulted in a total failure to understand and address the rise of racism and hate as a social movement, on the one hand, and to develop methods of preventing the growth of fascism and fascist ideology, on the other.