Storm Alliance at the border: “We’re not racists, but …”

From Montreal Antifasciste

Is a racist who knows they’re a racist more, or less, racist than a racist who doesn’t know that they’re a racist? It’s a pertinent question, since it seems that a trait almost universally widespread among racists is to energetically deny their racism, a posture epitomized by the classic phrase “I’m not a racist, but …”

The participants in the anti-fascist demo at Lacolle on September 30 were a bit taken aback by the cheerful response of the Storm Alliance demonstrators to the slogan [♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫] (tr: “everyone hates racists!”). The several dozen older folks, white as the snow, who had come from the four corners of Québec to protest “illegal immigration” and “Trudeau government policies,” began to chant the same slogan back at the anti-racist protesters with remarkable enthusiasm.

This is far from being the only contradiction among the “Stormers” and their associates, but it’s nonetheless impressive to see the level of denial that some people are capable of expressing, unless of course it’s an intentional strategy to give their racist movement a veneer of legitimacy. It’s a hypothesis supported by the messages below, sent by the administrators of the Storm Alliance Facebook page after September 30 in an effort to “clean up” the more obvious of the many disgraceful expressions of hatred and racism on their social media.

Be that as it may, it’s time to set the record straight. It’s all well and good to repeat “everybody hates racists!” like a like a bunch of zombies, but it’s time to draw to the attention among the more naive Stormers that a bunch of unabashed racists and Nazi sympathizers were in their midst that day. Let’s get to it …

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Let’s start with the subtle reference in the name Storm Alliance (SA) to the Nazi paramilitary organization: the Sturmabteilung (SA). As well as the shared SA acronym, there is a resemblance between the Storm Alliance logo and the Nazi Sturmabteilung logo. Dave Tregget, the group’s leader, insists that any resemblance is coincidental … Ach so, jawohl Herr Führer. [tr: “Oh, yes, yes, mister Leader.”]

Consider also that the Storm Alliance demo was to take place at the Lacolle border crossing, immediately in front of the makeshift camp set up to receive the recent wave of refugees. It was by taking over the space at the main entry for the camp that anti-fascists and anti-racists were able to block the Storm Alliance’s access and prevent them from intimidating refugees—entirely symbolically, in this case, given that the camp is empty. No matter, the Stormers had no choice if they were to save face other than to convince themselves that they had won the battle, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. And then, bizarrely, Dave Tregget insisted in the media that their demo “had nothing to do with immigration.” It’s worth asking why they chose the border and a refugee camp as the exact location for their protest, but anyway …

It’s more difficult, however, to ignore the fact that the other demos organized across Canada on September 30, IN RESPONSE TO A CALLOUT BY THE  STORM ALLIANCE, were specifically anti-immigration and were organized by an assortment of far-right individuals and organizations (including the Northern Guard, CCCC, the Proud Boys, the III%, etc.), among them the Führer of the Canadian Nationalist Front, the Peterborough-based neo-Nazi Kevin Goudreau. Read the overviews and reports prepared by the Groupe de recherche sur l’extrême droite (GREDA) and Anti-Racist Canada.

With all of that that in mind, let’s get to the heart of the matter and name a few of the notorious racists identified in the crowd of the Sturmers. . . .

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Let’s start with the low-key neo-Nazi, Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, who appears to attend all of the far-right racist gatherings. He is now notorious as the former administrator of La Meute’s Facebook page who participated in the white supremacist mobilization in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. Shortly thereafter he was spotted at La Meute’s August 20 demo in Quebec City, despite assurances from the organization’s leaders that he had been suspended. Beauvais-MacDonald popped up again at Lacolle on September 30, sporting his red baseball helmet, which he also wore on March 4, April 23, July 1, and in Charlottesville!

Since his trip to Virginia, and in spite of his sudden notoriety, Beauvais-MacDonald hasn’t been discreet; in fact he upped the ante in the subsequent days by sharing the “14 words,” a code phrase inspired by Mein Kampf and universally recognized as a white supremacist slogan.

In a Gazette interview , Beauvais-MacDonald asserted that “There is nothing inherently wrong with (the slogan),” and that by sharing the “14 words,” he hoped to “expose the anti-white sentimentality that has been programmed into [his] friends and family.” At Lacolle, he explained to a Vice reporter that he came to “counter the antifa, who are against whites.”

More recently he has publicly proclaimed his attachment to a “fascist platform” by posting a documentary about English fascist Oswald Mosley on Facebook.

Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald’s unambiguous reputation as a neo-Nazi was apparently not enough to convince Tregget, Éric Trudel, and the other leaders of Storm Alliance to exclude him from their gathering.

The day after the faceoff at Lacolle, Beauvais-MacDonald published a message on Facebook that leaves no room for interpretation, featuring the hashtag #makefascismgreatagain. Note the “likes” of Robert Proulx (more below), John Hex (a member of the SA security team for September 30), Rachel Child (who acted as a medic, photographed here in the company of Éric “Corvus” Venne and other individuals addressed in this article:

[♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫]

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At Lacolle, as was the case during his trip to Charlottesville, Beauvais-MacDonald was accompanied by Vincent Mercure Bélanger, who was wearing the same ignorantly ironic t-shirt that he was spotted wearing in Virginia.

 

 

[♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫]

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Another casual admirer of Hitler (who certainly doesn’t want to be confused with a racist) was at Lacolle: the aptly named René Blaireau (“blaireau” can translate as “dork” in English). He doesn’t hide his hatred for Muslims, but he particularly expresses his overriding anti-Semitism:

 

[♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫]

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That brings us to one of our preferred protagonists in this little band of (not) racists: Robert Proulx. This self-proclaimed “head of security” at La Meute, Front patriotique du Québec, and now Storm Alliance demos (we hear rumours that La Meute was cavalier enough to toss him out during the recent putsch) claims whenever possible that he can’t be a racist because he’s an “Amerindian” (sic). Proulx often asserts an “Iroquois” identity (sic) and his “Warrior” status, and has used the Warrior/Unity flag ostentatiously at numerous racist demos in 2017. On Radio-Canada he himself acknowledged his ignorance as to what the Warrior/Unity flag signifies (he calls it “the flag with the sun on it”) and has wisely decided to no longer carry it at demos. He seems to have roughly the same understanding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy flag, judging by the following post:

Whatever identity claimed by Proulx, it’s clear that he is an active accomplice in racism. Take, for example, his proximity to practically all the (not) racists examined in the article, including the Hitler groupie René Blaireau mentioned above.

 

And then there’s his enthusiastic participation as the head of intimidation at events organized by racist anti-immigrant groups[1], the many and far-ranging Islamophobic or out and out fascist commentaries that he “likes” (for example, Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald’s “14 words” and #makefascismgreatagain), and his sharing of the xenophobic #remigration hashtag created by neo-fascist groupuscule Atalante.

In his interview with Stu Pitt, Proulx claims to “not understand why” he is “considered a target” by the antifas. He insists that he “protects” the “demos against racism,” but not for the “neo-Nazis or anything like that,” because that’s “not his bag.”

Please, Robert, read this article carefully. It might help you to understand …

[♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫]

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Now, back to Hitler and the Nazis. Another participant at the SA demo at Lacolle was the comic Chantal Duchesneau, who on her Facebook page posted, “as a joke” of course, the words “How many illegals could be housed here” accompanied by a photo of a gas chamber at the Dachau concentration camp. Do we actually need to explain the entirely horrifying and grotesque nature of this remark?

[♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫]

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To finish this sweep of the horizon of (not) racists who were with the SA at Lacolle, the animator of the Anti-Antifa Québec webpage deserves a special mention, the dazzling  Stéphanie Godbout/Langevin/X and her boyfriend Vincent Gariépy/Bergeron/X, another regular on the security team at racist demo such as the La Meute demo in Québec City on August 20. This (not) racist couple are close to the Soldiers of Odin, the local section of anti-immigrant organisation founded by a n neo-Nazi in Finland. Under the leadership of Katy Latulippe, the group has remained faithful to the white supremacist credo of its founders.

As a recent example of her (not) racism,[2] Stéphanie Godbout / Anti-Antifa Québec warmly applauded the torchlight march in Charlottesville, sharing a post by Jason Kessler, the main organizer of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally.

[♫ Tout le monde… déteste les racistes!  ♫]

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BONUS!

Little known fact, on the morning of September 30, a valiant Soldier of Odin attempted to disrupt the buses chartered by Solidarity Across Borders to transport anti-racist demonstrators to Lacolle. He threw eggs filled with bright-coloured poster paint at the windshield of the first bus in the convoy. Unfortunately for the assailant, comrades already on site quickly chased him down. Fortunately for him, the police were also there and quickly arrested him. (For the record, poster paint is notoriously water soluble, and it only took a few comrades about ten minutes to clean up the mess. The famous neo-Nazi poster paint attack that the Soldiers of Odin crow about affected nothing—it didn’t even delay the anti-racists’ departure.)

The guy with the Dollorama poster paint was none other than David Leblanc, a racist skinhead and member of the Soldiers of Odin, who those familiar with this site have already met, interestingly, in the company of (not) racist Robert Proulx.