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May262025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
We’re writing what follows to enable anarchist comrades and anticolonial militants to make informed decisions about where and how to engage in struggle.
In a press release published May 17, 2025, and available on their Facebook page, the Association of Nehirowisiw Aski Land Defenders (MAMO First Nations) condemns acts of vandalism recently committed on forestry machinery apparently belonging to a contractor involved in cuts on their territory.
The press release goes further, claiming that “these acts cannot and must not go unpunished.” It continues: “If you witness an act of vandalism or if you have any information that may assist the investigation, we strongly encourage you to share it without delay with the police authorities.”
We believe that relationships of struggle are strongest when they are nourished by practices of honesty and transparent communication on the motivations and limits of each of us. We hope that these events can be the basis for nuanced and open conversations about solidarity.
In the run-up to Journée nationale des Patriotes 2025, celebrated on Monday, May 19, this year, the ethnonationalist organization Nouvelle Alliance (NA) called its second annual commemoration of Nouvelle France settler Adam Dollard des Ormeaux at the monument in his honour in Montreal’s Parc La Fontaine. On May 20, 2024, the far-right group had a similar gathering at Dollard’s monument (the year before that, NA activists had gathered at Pied-du-Courant, in the southeast of the city, to pay tribute to the Lower Canada Patriotes). The folkloric Dollard des Ormeaux is not, it must be stressed, the hero that NA and reactionary nationalists of its ilk insist on glorifying.
One of the posters seen around the Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood in May 2024, in the days before the commemoration of the Patriotes.
Did You Know?
Dollard des Ormeaux is not the “saviour of New France” that nineteenth-century “historians” make him out to be.
He was a young French adventurer who tried to steal furs from the Iroquois. The idiot ended up trapped in Long-Sault.
He refused to negotiate with his enemies, which led to the revolt of his Huron allies, and that worked out badly for him and his companions.
Some versions of the story claim that he built an improvised explosive device that detonated where he was holed up, thereby guaranteeing his defeat.
Rather than being the courageous saviour of the colony that Lionel Groulx portrays him as, he is more of the OG imbecile of French Canada, a pillar of self-sabotage, rendered a heroic figure by nationalist scribes in need of foundational yarns.
Also, Fuck Nouvelle Alliance!
Fed up with some fifty identitarian nationalists with stone-age ideas traipsing around Montréal with impunity, concerned citizens and people from the neighbourhood, along with members of community organizations, anti-racist activists, and trade unionists mobilized in recent weeks to organize a “People’s Festival Against Fascism” in protest.
The poster for the People’s Festival Against Fascism that appeared around Montréal in the weeks leading up to the event.
The main goal of this festive gathering was to occupy the area around the Dollard des Ormeaux monument in order to denounce the growing influence of the far right, in general, and the ambitions of Nouvelle Alliance, in particular. The celebration was a great success in its own right, by our count, attracting between three and four hundred people to the park between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. We salute the tremendous effort made by those involved, and are reassured to see that citizens of Montréal and of Québec generally are ready to mobilize to confront the recent wave of normalization of the far right in public discourse.
A number of articles have been published in the media over the past few days, the majority demonstrating a flagrant lack of understanding of Nouvelle Alliance and its strategy. While we welcome the mainstream media’s growing—albeit belated—interest in Québec’s far right, it is clear that their attention to this area is still leaves something lacking, and that for a variety of structural reasons, they generally ignore the considerable efforts our collective has made over the past few years to shed light on this subject.
Here, then, is a detailed insider’s account of the events of May 19, 2025, that we hope will shed light on elements that have been overlooked or simply glossed over by the media and other key observers.
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Leading up to the Gathering
On the evening of Sunday, May 18, the day before the commemoration, Nouvelle Alliance posted a series of characteristically austere photos on its social media accounts, saying: “the Patriote song [Tex Lecor, 1968] will be sung at the foot of the Dollard des Ormeaux monument.”
Nouvelle Alliance publication on the evening of May 18, 2025, the day before the Dollard des Ormeaux commemoration.
Given that Nouvelle Alliance was certainly well aware of the popular festival scheduled to take place at the foot of the monument at the same time as their event, this made it clear that they planned to occupy the contested space.
How they planned to do that became clear on Monday morning at around 8:00 a.m., when a contingent of a dozen or so people, made up of part of the NA core and a few goons, who were possibly recruited for the occasion, gathered at the opposite end of Parc La Fontaine. This contingent, dressed in black, moving in military formation, and wearing combat gloves and mouthguards had clearly come looking for a fight.
Eliott Labrie Laplante, a member of Nouvelle Alliance’s core group, has never been able to deal with his manhood being called into question! Here, several hours after the morning’s confrontation, he’s still sporting his reinforced gloves.This previously unknown individual, identified as Dany Ayotte from Québec City, was particularly active in the morning’s physical confrontation. Here he is still wearing his reinforced gloves not long after.
This small group soon began marching toward the Dollard Des Ormeaux monument, with the clear aim of physically dislodging the popular rally organizers who were setting up and, we presume, taking control of the space “by any means necessary.”
Fortunately, alerted by the previous day’s publication to the possibility of violence, a few autonomous activists mobilized in the early hours of the morning to confront them and prevent a cowardly attack on citizens taking the opportunity to advance a vision of an inclusive and welcoming Québec. There was a physical confrontation in the southeast section of Parc La Fontaine, during which NA members made full use of their combat gear.
It’s clear that the Nouvelle Alliance core group arrived anticipating—and savouring—this sort of confrontation. This new combative approach, which until now we hadn’t associated with this group, stands in stark contrast to the image of clean-cut middle-class hipsters that the group has promoted for several years. It will be interesting to see for how long NA can maintain this ambiguity. Engaging in hand-to-hand combat with left-wing activists will complicate efforts to carve out a place in mainstream politics by infiltrating the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois.
Once an SPVM intervention ended the confrontation, the NA members who had taken part in the assault were held by police at a distance from the monument where two rival events were scheduled to take place.
It’s worth noting that the prevention of NA’s plans as a result of the confrontation enabled the organizers of the popular festival to quietly set up their six tents, hang numerous banners around the monument, and go ahead with the convivial, family-friendly event. We salute the courage of those who blocked NA—whose violent impulses are now obvious—to protect their community and, ultimately, guarantee the success of the event.
A Festive gathering in Parc La Fontaine
By 10:00 a.m., it was party time, and antifascist sympathizers began to gather in growing numbers. Litres of coffee were served, there was face painting for children, lively music rang out across the park, and impromptu soccer matches added to the fun. The atmosphere was decidedly festive!
One of the banners surrounding the monument [Neighbours welcome/fascists out].Hundreds of hot dogs were served.A number of tables were set up in the tents.
Participants in the popular festival chanted anti-fascist slogans to drown out Nouvelle Alliance’s tedious speeches.
The same cannot be said of the experience of the small band of identitarians gathered around NA, who were unable to get close to the monument and found themselves facing off with the police for quite a while.
Nouvelle Alliance activists slink away from the police cordon.
Unfortunately for Nouvelle Alliance, real life isn’t a school yard and announcing your event first isn’t enough to reserve a space, especially when it’s to spread hatred of others disguised as love of your nation.
The nationalist group’s militants and its sympathizers were forced to set up on the sidewalk about fifty metres from the Dollard des Ormeaux monument, held at bay by a large police presence and the several hundred people who attended the festival against fascism. Disappointed and looking dejected, the Nouvelle Alliance militants and their sympathizers tried, rather feebly, to hold their commemoration in spite of everything, but were drowned out by the popular festival’s music and antifascist chants.
Nouvelle Alliance commemorates its ghosts on the sidewalk.
Speaking of sympathizers, we should mention the notable presence of David Leblanc, a neo-Nazi bonehead well known in antifascist circles, since he likes to take photos of himself giving the Nazi salute (he was notably active with Soldiers of Odin Québec). We also mentioned him almost exactly one year ago, since he was also present at the Nouvelle Alliance commemoration on May 20, 2024.
Bonehead Dave Leblanc has a bad cramp in his arm.Leblanc (from behind) having a good laugh in May 2024 with NA members, here with Émile Coderre.Dave Leblanc’s presence went unchallenged at the Nouvelle Alliance event in 2024; seen here holding the Carillon Sacré-Cœur alongside fellow neo-Nazi Shawn Beauvais MacDonald.
At the time, the identity group’s leaders claimed that they couldn’t control who participated in their events, as they were public activities, and that they hadn’t known the ugly truth about David Leblanc. What excuse will the cryptofascists of Nouvelle Alliance come up with this year? Knowingly and without raising an eyebrow, they allowed a loud and proud neo-Nazi to walk alongside them all day, even shaking his hand and chatting with him.
Bonehead Dave Leblanc stands next to Nouvelle Alliance leader François Gervais, giving an interview to Alexandre Cormier-Denis, on May 19, 2025.Neo-Nazi Dave Leblanc marches with Nouvelle Alliance, May 19, 2025.
It’s hard to imagine that some people still doubt Nouvelle Alliance’s ideological position.
Another sinister character who reappeared for the second year running was Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, the main organizer of the Frontenac Active Club, who was again spotted prowling around the Nouvelle Alliance gathering. After arriving alone this time, he was joined by two others and left shortly afterwards.
Beauvais MacDonald was part of the Nouvelle Alliance commemoration in 2024.Shawn Beauvais MacDonald returned in 2025, but left shortly after this meeting at some distance from the festival. Were these people acolytes? Cops telling him to piss off? Who knows?
Perhaps the most significant appearance at the NA commemoration, however, was that of Alexandre Cormier-Denis. Cormier-Denis, whom we’ve already talked about (and will have more to say about very soon. . .), had announced the week before that he would be taking part in the NA commemoration and invited his supporters to join him. Cormier-Denis, it should be remembered, is the main host of the far-right “reinformation” project Nomos.TV, which stands out for its ethnic nationalism and its profoundly racist and Islamophobic statements. His extreme positions led to him being disqualified from presenting a brief to a parliamentary commission on immigration in 2023.
To give you an idea, here’s a sample (from dozens of examples) of Cormier-Denis’s positions (on immigration, “rewilding,” the future of patriotism, etc.), which clearly align with those of Nouvelle Alliance, since they appear to constitute a mutual admiration society:
Cormier-Denis’s presence clearly shows that the social project proposed by Nouvelle Alliance resonates with the worst of Québec’s fascist and fascist-adjacent elements. François Gervais, president of Nouvelle Alliance, readily granted him a live interview lasting several minutes, in which we are treated to a confused and subjective description of the current period, in which antifascists, “Bolsheviks,” and progressive independentists are lumped together.
François Gervais en entrevue avec Alexandre Cormier-Denis pour la chaîne Nomos.tv.
Anyone who thought that Nouvelle Alliance was above the racist rhetoric of Cormier-Denis and his acolytes was clearly wrong. Nomos and Nouvelle Alliance are one and the same movement.
Once the dreary NA speeches were over, their “commemoration,” which lasted at most twenty minutes—compared to an hour last year—turned into a sad and solemn little march (not a smile to be seen), at around 12:30.
The Nouvelle Alliance fools on parade.
Surrounded by dozens of cops, around fifty sympathizers of this groupuscule marched along Rachel and Saint-Denis Streets, toward Carré Saint-Louis, the starting point for the annual Grande marche des Patriotes, organized by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste (SSJB). Along the way, the ethnonationalists, still led by their president, chanted reactionary and exclusionary slogans like “Patrie, Nation, Tradition,” as well as classics like “le Québec aux Québécois” [Québec for Quebeckers]. It’s worth noting that these slogans echo those of the French far right. For example, the neo-Nazis of the Comité du 9 Mai (C9M), who marched with impunity in Paris a few weeks ago, regularly chant, among other things, “Europe, Jeunesse, Révolution” [Europe, Youth, Revolution].
Same cadence, same delivery, same content: it’s clear that that’s no coincidence. In addition to its Québec precursors, NA is inspired by the worst of the European far right (identitarians, royalists, revolutionary nationalists, etc.), and that’s worth noting.
Meanwhile, the People’s Festival Against Fascism was in full swing, and a good time was had by young and old alike. More than five hundred hot dogs were served, and the games and music continued for several hours after Nouvelle Alliance’s departure.
Once again, we applaud the extraordinary effort of the organizers and congratulate everyone who chose to spend part of their Monday promoting and defending inclusive anti-racist values.
There was music.We danced!We redecorated the Dollard monument.Between three and four hundred people came over the course of the day.Numerous flags, including the Pride flag, waved above the anti-fascist festival.
Many progressive pro-independence activists were also present, including members of the Front pour l’indépendance nationale (FIN) and OUI Québec, who held up a poster produced for the occasion: “L’indépendance du Québec sera antifasciste” [Québec’s independence will be anti-fascist].
The Patriote tricolour was also waving at the anti-fascist festival!
At Carré Saint-Louis
Nouvelle Alliance’s misadventure wasn’t over. The fun continued when they arrived at Carré Saint-Louis at around 1:00 p.m. and attempted, as they have in the past, to parasitically attach themselves to the annual Grande marche des Patriotes organized by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste. To their dismay, they were not welcome—for the second time that day!
Unlike last year, the SSJB had stopped to consider who it partnered with and made the judicious decision to inform Nouvelle Alliance’s leaders in advance that they would not be welcome this time. However, there’s what you say and there’s what you do, and on the ground, the SSJB leadership’s position did not prevail. Instead, the SSJB tried to negotiate a compromise, allowing Nouvelle Alliance to participate if they agreed to put away their banners and flags. Like last year, however, the NA militants failed to keep their word and did, in fact, display their colors as soon as the march got underway. Luckily, the presence of a small (but solid!) progressive pro-independence contingent put an end to that.
OUI Québec militants and comrades from the Front pour l’indépendance nationale (FIN) joined forces to prevent Nouvelle Alliance from joining the main march, sealing NA off. After a brief hesitation, during which the progressive independentists courageously held the line, despite being outnumbered by NA activists, the police intervened to separate the two sides by, quite literally, pushing the progressives out of the way.
An anti-fascist contingent at prevented the identitarian groupuscule from joining the main body of the Grande marche des Patriotes.
The entire SSJB march took place without the toxic presence of Nouvelle Alliance, the latter marching a hundred metres behind, completely surrounded by the SPVM.
Progressive independentists sealed Nouvelle Alliance off from the Grande marche des Patriotes.
We’d like to congratulate OUI Québec and FIN for having the courage to stand up for their anti-fascist principles despite the pallid support of the march’s organizers. Over the years, we’ve often criticized the contemporary independence movement for its complacency toward the far-right groups that pollute its ranks. Let’s give credit where credit is due: OUI Québec’s recent strong stance offers hope for the future of the sovereigntist movement.
Unfortunately, not all sovereigntist groups are created equal, and the ludicrous presence of the Action socialiste de libération nationale (ASLN) at the Grande marche des Patriotes proves the point. The latter, whose rapprochement with Nouvelle Alliance we recently exposed, joined their new comrades for the duration of the march. Friendly handshakes were exchanged, and a few jarring red flags were seen amid Nouvelle Alliance’s sea of blue. This situation marks a turning point in relations between the ASLN and NA. Until recently, the two groups had kept their rapprochement under wraps, but now their alliance has come out into the light of day. Despite their ideological differences as to the ideal future for Québec, it would seem that their reactionary social positions provide sufficient common ground. The rest of the pro-independence camp be warned: support for either of these two groups is support for their conservative, anti-migrant, anti-diversity, anti-woke, and fundamentally reactionary social project.
An image that sums up the whole sordid affair: Nouvelle Alliance leader François Gervais, flanked by neo-Nazi bonehead David Leblanc, gives an interview to ethnic ultranationalist fanatic Alexandre Cormier-Denis for the far-right reinformation channel Nomos.TV, while Billy Savoie and the Stalinist ASLN bozos cackle in the background.
Conclusion
As we have seen, Nouvelle Alliance has become increasingly visible within a far-right ecosystem, from which it foolishly believed it would gloriously emerge to infect the rest of the sovereigntist movement with its nauseating ideas.
It’s about time the mainstream media got its facts right, rather than buying into the mendacious propaganda being spewed by Québec’s far right. It’s a pity, for example, that newspapers readily publish the whimsical nattering of commentators who are either confused or acting in bad faith, such as secularism activist Nadia El-Mabrouk, who, in a letter published in Le Devoir on May 23, admits that she was unaware of Nouvelle Alliance (and, therefore, couldn’t possibly understand the nature of its project and its discourse) but, nevertheless, defends its presence in the broad sovereigntist family, as well as encouraging us to embrace dialogue and universal love.
Fortunately, the new generation of sovereigntists doesn’t share this blindness, as is evidenced by the position taken by OUI CVM, which loudly and clearly denounces this new reactionary alliance and everything it represents.
The struggle for Québec’s independence is a very complex issue, and anti-fascists of different stripes certainly disagree on the desirable outcome, but whatever happens in Québec in the future, we make this promise today: fascists will NEVER rule here.
Bonus tracks :
Leading Nouvelle Alliance activist Émille Coderre, whose problematic past we’ve discussed in the past, and whose entry in the PQ and the Bloc we’ve noted several times, makes a hand gesture widely seen as code in contemporary white supremacist movements. Way to go, guy!
À l’heure actuelle, des blocus s’érigent sur le territoire Atikamekw (Nehirowisiw Aski) afin de résister au nouveau régime forestier de la CAQ. En solidarité, des militant.e.s anti-colonialistes ont saisi contrôle de l’intersection de Papineau et Ontario durant l’heure de pointe.
Paralysant toute circulation en direction du pont Jacques-Cartier pour près de 20 minutes avant que la police arrive, les manifestants ont utilisé des fusées éclairantes pour se protéger des motoristes effronté.e.s. La police a été prise par surprise et s’est retrouvée incapable d’intervenir. Les manifestant.e.s ont pris la rue après avoir quitté l’intersection et ont pu se disperser sans arrestation ni intervention policière. Le succès de cette action nous inspire durant un moment critique qui demande plus de solidarité avec les gardien.ne.s du territoire qui refusent activement le land grab de la CAQ.
Les blocus érigés sur les routes de grumier ont besoin de support urgent pendant que la saison d’exploitation forestière recommence. Les Gardien.ne.s du territoire Nehirowisiw Aski résistent actuellement les actes coloniaux d’exploitation et de destruction sur leur territoire. Ici se trouve la première ligne de résistance au nouveau régime forestier de la CAQ – un régime qui vise à céder une immense portion des forêts du soi-disant Québec à l’industrie forestière sans consentement ni égard. Les Gardien.ne.s du territoire appellent pour du support immédiat et des actions de solidarité. Que ce soit en forme de présence au blocus, d’action ici à Tiohtià:ke, ou de dons de matériel ou d’argent, cette lutte doit être assumée par les gens de la ville. Nous devons perturber tout confort et toute complicité paisible.
Les gardien.ne.s du territoire ne sont pas les seul.e.s responsables pour la protection de leurs terres et pour la résistance à la marche de la mort colonale de l’industrie extractive – Il existe des premières lignes de résistance partout. N’attendez pas la permission. Ne demandez pas la justice. Les Gardiens du territoire nécessitent du support matériel et immédiat et de courageux.ses complices anticolonialistes.
Announcing the 8th Annual Halifax/K’jipuktuk Anarchist Bookfair September 6th, 2025 (rain date September 7th) Workshop & Table Applications now Open
With each passing day, our lives are further controlled by power structures that subjugate our bodies and land in service of profit. Our social lives have become confined by tech billionaires who horde our data and manipulate our behaviour to train AI. Our alienation from the natural world has become normalized as it crumbles beneath our feet. As the rearing heads of fascism strobe across the doomscroll, we are reminded that now, as always, is the time for anarchism.
Anarchism is not merely a reaction to fascism or capitalist power structures — it invites us to imagine a world, imagine our lives, free of coercion. When much of the public is being swindled into pro-‘Canadian’ rhetoric & consumerism here on stolen land, we as anarchists remain staunchly opposed to nationalism. We see nationalism as a tool of colonialism and capitalism to keep us from seeing the lies behind their facade. We dedicate our lives not to individual wealth & economic progress but to responsible interdependence, solidarity & self determination. We find meaning in exploring our collective dreams of liberation.
On Saturday, September 6th, 2025 we invite you to join us for Kjipuktuk/Halifax’s 8th Annual Anarchist Bookfair to convene, scheme & dream a liberated world together. All ages are welcome to come cultivate curiosity, solidarity & mutual aid through sharing books, zines, art, music, discussion, and skills.
As our world continues on a disturbing & overwhelming trajectory of extraction, displacement & genocide, with anarchism we can ride this shitstorm together with integrity and resolve.
If you would like to table or offer a workshop, please apply by July 10th:
After a five year hiatus, Warrior Up is back. The intention of this project remains the same: to compile guides and practical information relevant to struggles against industrial devastation.
The ‘Arson’ page compiles guides on setting fires. The ‘Sabotage Techniques’ page compiles sabotage techniques for different types of infrastructure. The ‘Studying Vulnerabilities‘ page compiles analyses of how the megamachine functions and where it is vulnerable. The ‘Maps‘ page compiles mapping projects focused on infrastructure and extractive industries.
This project relies on submissions, so please send us content, including anything published years ago that we may have missed! We now use an Autistici email:
warriorupthrowdown ( at ) autistici ( dot ) org
Our PGP key, however, remains unchanged (Fingerprint 4283 5D10 4ABA 6B2D 0C60 A4F1 F7A9 73A3 8FD8 16E0). It can be found on the contact page, which now also includes a contact form.
The article we published about the Frontenac Active Club last August seems to have seriously hampered this neo-Nazi-inspired group.
After being barred from the gym where he was training, Martin Brouillette, from Rawdon, contacted us to ask us to remove his name from the article . . . for the safety of his family. Obviously, his family has nothing to fear from anti-fascists; the problem lies with Barette’s white supremacist activities and his stream of inflammatory rhetoric on social media. At this point, however, we see nothing to indicate that Martin Brouillette has continued his neo-Nazi activities . . . apart from the fact that he still proudly displays his fascist tattoos alongside photos of his children on his Facebook page.
The other members of the group have disappeared, and posts on the FAC Telegram account have largely dwindled to republishing content generated by other groups in the Active Club International network and some affiliated neo-Nazis in English Canada. On May 3, FAC members took part in a visibility action in Toronto organized by the white nationalist (neo-Nazi) network formed around the tiny groupuscule Nationalist-13, along with some thirty acolytes from the general area and from elsewhere in Canada.
As for the group’s leader Raphaël Dinucci, from Laval, he didn’t directly react to the article, but the FAC leadership has shifted, and he has gradually faded from view, eclipsed by Shawn Beauvais MacDonald. The latter is notorious, both for having been part of every recent Québec neo-Nazi project (Alt Right Montréal, Atalante, White Lives Matter, you name it, he was there) and for having been central to each organization’s self-destruction!
Despite his “Friendly Fash” sobriquet, he has continued to do what he does best: being as detestable as a human being can be. On weekends, for example, he can found wandering around by himself on av. Mont-Royal or boul. Saint-Laurent, wearing ostentatious Adolf Hitler clothing and hanging out on various terraces, book in hand, hoping for a run-in with antifascists; that hasn’t worked out for him (we’re not complete idiots, after all). Beginning a few months back he started having company. He has taken the very young, extremely racist Sandrine Girardot under his wing and into his home. (We’ve mentioned Sandrine in the past.) Recent posts about the relationship this forty-year-old neo-Nazi militant is having with the young Girardot (twenty-four) strongly suggest that he can add scumbag and predator to his CV.
Now, let’s get to the main subject of this article: David Barrette, from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
Unlike the other members of the Frontenac Active Club, who are known for their online discretion (with the notable exception of Beauvais MacDonald), David Barrette tends to go to the far limits of depravity in his online hate speech. He praises Hitler, argues that the shape of the skulls of different “races” indicates different degrees of intelligence, and mocks police murders of racialized people; nothing is too racist (or too Nazi) for Barrette. With Facebook’s moderation standards now virtually non-existent, Barrette is free to post his Nazi rants on a daily basis with no fear of repercussions.
It’s also clear that the police and the courts in Québec aren’t really interested in combating online hate speech. Proof of this is their total inaction in the face of clear and repeated infractions—and, of course, the cringeworthy botching of the case against Gabriel Sohier Chaput, aka “Zeiger.” At the risk of repeating ourselves, it is, as always, perfectly clear that responsibility for fighting the rising tides of racism and fascism lies with the community as a whole, both those aligned with militant anti-fascism and others who wish to take concrete action.
We were shocked recently to see Barrette take a further step in his online violence. In a recent post, he wrote: “Fuck your optics, I’m going in”—a clear reference to the phrase posted by the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018, shortly before he killed eleven Jews—which might reasonably suggest that Barrette is preparing a similar sort of massacre. Shortly afterward, he followed up this message with “I’m joking,” and, given that nothing happened, it is likely that he was “joking,” but a “joke” of this nature (especially coming from an unapologetic antisemite) can’t be taken lightly.
We made it perfectly clear in a previous article that David Barrette poses a constant threat to our communities: he has attacked a pro-LGBTQ+ rally; he spreads hate speech online as easily as other people breathe; he has a history of violence that is well documented in his criminal record (more on that later). Therefore, publicly claiming that he is preparing a mass shooting is obviously a red flag, regardless of whether or not he’s “joking.” Even those who work in the area acknowledge that predicting mass shootings is a near-impossible task. Given his extreme Nazi views, Barrette clearly raises plenty of red flags. Furthermore, he hasn’t confined himself to the virtual world; not only has he attacked a LGBTQ+ protest, as mentioned above, but he has joined the Frontenac Active Club. We think the community should be aware of him and take the potential threat very seriously. Above all, we think it’s important to draw all of this to the attention of his employer GloboTech Communications (or simply GloboTech).
Barrette is very prolific on the IRC chat platform, where he and a few other losers spend their days talking absolute crap. In Barrette’s case, this means talking about his love for Hitler and his hatred of racialized and LGBTQ+ people. At one point, he wrote: “I have an Arab colleague and I like him.” We can only imagine how strained this working relationship must be. All the more so, given that he has also written: “I talk to Jewish women, Black women, Arab women. . . . I tell them openly that the goal is to deport [millions of] people like them” Believe it or not, this is one of his more coherent posts amid his hallucinatory a hate-fueled Nazi ramblings.
Brief comic relief interrupted this incessant stream of hate on IRC last month, when Barrette accidentally posted a picture of his dick in the #montreal group’s chat room. The reactions were priceless:
We’re aware that a number of people involved in the struggle against the circulation of hateful ideas have contacted GloboTech, the company that employs David Barette. Oddly, the company seems to very committed to protecting this neo-Nazi: as soon as his name is mentioned, whether on the phone, by e-mail, or via the chat service, company representatives suddenly go silent.
Recently, comrades informed us of David Barrette’s lengthy criminal record, which suggests that he may be a violent repeat offender. An overview of his criminal record shows that he has been convicted of death threats and causing bodily harm, threatening to burn or otherwise damage property, conspiracy, breach of probation. . .
We are unable to determine whether or not the various domain names managed by Barrette—for example, the domains national-socialists.club and freespeech.club belong to him—are hosted by GloboTech, since they’re hidden behind Cloudflare.
That said, we discovered something very interesting in the MX records (Mail eXchange, a list of servers that are allowed to send e-mail on behalf of a domain name). Barrette included one of Globo.tech’s IP addresses in the list of servers accepted for national-socialists.club and freespeech.club. Only GloboTech’s administrators would know whether or not the websites (one of which is clearly Nazi in character) are hosted on their servers, but the MX records show that Barrette at least intended to use Globo.tech’s servers to send e-mails from his sites.
Globo.tech’s management seems to think they can remain neutral in this situation, but there’s no such thing as neutrality, even less so when it’s used to protect a Nazi who attacks LGBTQ+ demonstrations, spreads hate online, and alludes to preparing a mass murder.
When GloboTech protects David Barrette, the company becomes an accomplice, all the more so if its inaction allows him to use its resources to spread hate. GloboTech can’t go on playing ostrich for much longer.
Last February, the Poubelle Alliance Facebook page, which takes great pleasure in satirizing the identity group Nouvelle Alliance, which we’ve written about on several occasions (notably here and here), revealed alleged links between NA and the Action socialiste de libération nationale (ASLN, formerly the Parti communiste du Québec).
It was already clear that this groupuscule was from a section of the left we weren’t all that thrilled with: retrograde and ossified in its thinking, nationalist, anti-woke (in plain English, reactionary) and, true to the red-brown tradition, uncritical of autocratic regimes. After leaving Québec solidaire to throw its support behind its Parti québécois “comrades” Péladeau and Lisée—see “Le Parti communiste appuie… le PQ” (Journal de Québec, 2018); “Des communistes séduits par PKP” (La Presse, 2014)—the party’s youth wing seems to have fallen under the Stalinist spell, rehabilitating Enver Hoaxa, prime minister of Albania for over forty years, and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
A quick look at the ASLN’s website and recent communications (including attempts at memes that could only be described as complete crap) is enough to reveal the deeply cringe-worthy nature of this tawdry trifle, both in form and content.
Folkloric portrait gallery on display during an ASLN “training camp” last February. On the right, the always relevant Joseph Stalin. Yikes.A sampling of the ASLN’s avant-garde memetics.
The exact nature of the ties between the ASLN and Nouvelle Alliance has been somewhat fuzzy, but we now have enough to allow us to hypothesize. While it might seem strange that a group that claims to be left-wing, however reactionary it may be, would actively extend a hand to activists on the far right of the political spectrum on the basis of a shared aspiration for Québec’s independence. However, we now have tangible proof of this rapprochement.
On March 24, the ASLN posted an invitation to a “Colloque des patriotes” to be held in Desbiens, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, on May 3–4, featuring a “debate” between ASLN and Nouvelle Alliance “leaders.” ASLN’s “leader” Billy Savoie subsequently promoted the event and the debate, promising to confront Nouvelle Alliance’s “nonsense”—that and a lot of other noise.
As we see it, holding a debate with ethnonationalists effectively legitimizes them, and any openness to them indicates a willingness to engage with their toxic ideology.
Beyond that, it’s questionable that the ASLN actually holds any positions that would actually challenge Nouvelle Alliance’s “nonsense” or even provide the basis for an interesting and relevant “debate” (spoiler alert: expectations are low). Here’s Billy Savoie’s response to a comment on the post announcing the colloquium:
The “leader” of the ASLN, Billy Savoie, explains here to an internet commenter that his organization’s communism is not radical-left… We can only agree.
Anti-woke nationalists deflecting attention from their reactionary essence by including a few tokenized people of color. . . on that basis, the difference from Nouvelle Alliance is hard to see. Fans of the Parti Québécois, Catholics, and opponents to “mass migration”; it’s more like the communist ASLN is trying to outdo Nouvelle Alliance in backwardness to carve out a niche for itself in the nationalist/independence scene. . . all the while waving a red flag.
It’s fairly evident that wanting to nationalize multinationals—if they’re foreign—and support PMEs—as long as they have the nationalist stamp of approval—has more or less become a typical communist feature. Communism that doesn’t aspire to abolish oppressive systems has already gone off the rails, but to declare oneself a communist and nationalist, while proposing social policies largely in line with those of a far-right group is nothing more than toxic red-brownism.
The ASLN, it would seem, is playing directly into Nouvelle Alliance’s hands, legitimizing its orientation and giving it yet another platform to promote its narrow vision of the French-Canadian nation.
Nouvelle Alliance has always claimed to be neither right nor left, despite its clearly reactionary platform and its many fascist-adjacent and full-blown fascist sympathizers! Whatever its leaders may say, the ASLN seems to be bending over backward to give a group of right-wing activists a platform to amplify their message.
Nouvelle Alliance’s activists increasingly find themselves in situation where the only people still willing to talk to them are people who are clearly confused (to say the least).
Given this obvious rightward drift, the shine is coming off of the ASLN, its activists are finding themselves personae non grata in pro-independence circles, and some of the group’s founders have disappeared from its publications.
Could it be that kissing up to the far right has created tensions within what is allegedly a left-wing organization? Might it be that other members of their central committee understand who really benefits from this grotesque rapprochement?
One of the “leaders” of the ASLN, Sébastien Paquette, greets the “leader” of Nouvelle Alliance, François Gervais.
Bonus track :
Billy Savoie, who is apparently a high school teacher, gives his Secondary 5 students readings by Alexander Dugin, infamous for being the ideological conscience of Vladimir Putin and as the founder of the National-Bolchevik movement.
Tonight, people engaged in combative mutual aid. Food should be free, as with all essential items. The scourge of capitalism has made it so that necessities such as food and housing are things to be earned rather than inalienable basic needs.
Today we are making food free in our own way, by liberating sustenance to redistribute amongst the community. And we will do it again. The state apparatus may try to stop us, and in doing so, show its true colors. The government and the corporate interest it serves are not your friends. They will sooner let you starve than sacrifice their bottom line. Eat freely!
Comments Off on A Response to the Commentary on “When There Are Many of Us, We Do What We Want”
Apr252025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Following the repeated failures of so-called “combative” demonstrations in Montreal between 2023 and 2025, two militant texts sought to offer, on the one hand, a strategic analysis focused on massification through autonomous structures, and on the other, a skeptical critique of that orientation, denouncing the fetishization of demonstrations and militant voluntarism. Both texts share a common diagnosis: our collective weakness in the face of the state, our isolation, and the routinization of our mobilizations. The present text is a critique of the second piece, written by N.
The Fetishization of Spontaneity: A Critique of Anti-Strategy
The core disagreement between the two texts seems to me to hinge on a central strategic question: how can we explain the fact that the majority of the working class—including its most exploited segments—does not spontaneously respond to calls for radical mobilization, and instead, in advanced capitalist countries, remains largely passive or aligned with various forms of reformism?
N. rightly points out the routinized and sometimes performative nature of certain activist practices. However, in attempting to explain this passivity, his response leans into a kind of mechanical determinism that legitimizes a cynical skepticism—one that dismisses any form of political mediation as a futile avant-garde project: “It is the social contradictions themselves that produce struggles, not a group of revolutionary evangelists trying to convince proletarians dulled by capitalism one by one.”
If it is necessary to break with the “fetishization of the demonstration”—the idea that it constitutes the core of our political practice—it is equally important to be wary of the fetishization of spontaneity, which consists in rejecting the necessity of organization in favour of a passive expectation, based on the illusion that the contradictions of capitalism will mechanically trigger a mass uprising. This posture amounts to a strategic retreat that cloaks political powerlessness in the mystique of spontaneity.
The Passivity of the Exploited Classes
The passivity or reformist orientation of the working class is largely explained by the fundamentally episodic nature of the class struggle. The contradictions of capitalism are not, in themselves, sufficient to make workers revolutionary. As Charles Post argues, class consciousness does not arise mechanically from exploitation, but rather emerges primarily through the lived experience of self-organization and collective struggle—experiences that open space for receptivity to radical ideas.
However, this foundational condition for the development of class consciousness—active participation in mass struggles—can only ever be partial, rare, and temporary. Structurally, the vast majority of workers cannot sustain long-term engagement in the struggle, since their position within capitalist social relations requires them to sell their labour power in order to ensure their own material reproduction. The imperative of individual survival therefore limits, under normal conditions, the possibility of sustained collective engagement.
In the absence of collective struggles, capitalist logics, reformism, and the institutional forms of liberal politics tend to regain hegemonic status. Workers are then less inclined to seek a transformation of the system and instead aim to secure what they perceive as a fair share of it—without challenging its underlying structures of power. Worse still, when reformism fails and no credible radical alternative is available, capitalism is able to produce the very material conditions for its own ideological reinforcement: individualization, social fragmentation, and competition among the exploited. In this vacuum, reactionary, racist, and patriarchal movements flourish—even within segments of the working class itself.
It is therefore deeply irresponsible to abandon the self-organization of direct action and the construction of alternatives—whether in the name of reformism or out of a fetishization of spontaneity. The contradictions of capitalism, on their own, do not generate class consciousness, nor do they lead to human emancipation.
The Avant-Garde
The inherently episodic nature of class struggle means that only a small minority of the working class remains durably engaged in militant activity. What we might call an “avant-garde”—without any dogmatic overtones—refers here to those who, in the lulls between waves of struggle, strive to keep alive practices of solidarity and confrontation, whether in the workplace or within communities.
To avoid any misunderstanding, this is not a classical “Leninist” or “Trotskyist” notion of the avant-garde as an enlightened minority bearing a political truth to impose upon the masses. Rather, it is a way to designate a concrete role: that of individuals who, despite isolation, exhaustion, and defeat, persist in sustaining institutions, practices, and imaginaries of struggle—often invisible, yet essential to the reproduction of a militant collective memory. This role can—and should—be debated, renamed, and critiqued. But to abandon it altogether would be to surrender to strategic disarmament.
It is true that some militant figures, in certain contexts, become the social base of a working-class bureaucracy, detached from the concrete realities of waged labour and prone to the logic of reformism: distance from sites of production, freedom from the constraints of wage labour, and the adoption of organizational jargon and apparatus-driven practices.
But there are many others who continue to organize while living the contradictions of capitalist work: precarity, alienation, subordination. These are militants embedded in the everyday life of the class, patiently organizing their co-workers, neighbours, and communities.
Any organization, no matter how well intentioned, can generate its own inertia, rigidity, and hierarchical tendencies. But this should not serve as a justification for rejecting political mediation altogether. The fetishization of spontaneity, which draws a strict line between conscious militancy and popular authenticity, runs the risk of discrediting organic militant activity—that is, the kind of organizing that emerges from the lived experience of the oppressed—by reducing it to a suspicious form of avant-gardism, or even to a so-called “revolutionary racket.”
N.’s article illustrates this tendency when it cites contemporary movements perceived as spontaneous—such as the BLM/George Floyd uprisings, the Yellow vests movement, or the social revolts in Chile—highlighting the absence of mass organizations guiding them from the outset. However, it is highly unlikely that these movements emerged without the active involvement of a core group of experienced individuals, shaped by various militant traditions, whether or not they explicitly identified with a revolutionary consciousness.
Moreover, despite their strength, these movements did not articulate a clear revolutionary project—which might in fact serve as an argument in favour of the initial text. In the absence of autonomous mass structures grounded in explicitly anti-capitalist practises and discourse, social conflict tends to express itself in reformist, incoherent, or contradictory ways. Had a structured revolutionary counter-power existed over the past two decades—one rooted in collective memory, political culture, and autonomous forms of organization—it is likely that the political consciousness emerging from these popular movements would have been more clearly oriented toward systemic rupture.
Post-Industrial Society and Class Consciousness
Social classes are historically dynamic relations, and their political expression requires both a shared experience of exploitation and an organizational effort to build a collective force conscious of its own interests.
Yet many activists today resist the project of constructing class consciousness, often drawing on assumptions rooted in post-industrial society theories. According to these perspectives, the expansion of the service sector, the growing complexity of professional structures, the rise of theoretical knowledge, increased living standards, and the emergence of state regulation have reshaped social conflict around the control of information. This, in turn, is said to have enabled the emergence of a new middle class composed of managers and skilled employees. For these approaches, contemporary society is no longer structured primarily by class conflict, but rather by identities and discourses capable of defining themselves. As such, our societies are seen as less constrained by socioeconomic factors like class, and as offering greater room for individual agency—unlike the more rigid industrial societies of the past.
Nevertheless, these analyses tend to overestimate the impact of changes in the division of labour on relations of exploitation. As Peter Meiksins aptly puts it, “capitalism has never, not in the past, and not now, generated a homogeneous working class. On the contrary, it has consistently created a varied, highly stratified working class, and capitalists have had an inherent interest in making sure that it is as divided as it possibly can be.” Likewise, the increasing complexity of the contemporary division of labour does not eliminate the structural conditions of reproduction for the working class—namely, the obligation to perform surplus labour by selling one’s labour power on the market.
Although specific relations of exploitation characterize particular sociohistorical conditions and shape class formation, class consciousness has always been a contingent, relational, and collective process—constantly in flux between formation and disintegration. In this sense, class consciousness is not a mechanical product of socioeconomic factors, but the outcome of conscious agents acting within given social, political, and economic conditions. In the past as today, the development of a collective class consciousness has been a difficult and demanding process, forged through sustained and deliberate efforts of militant organization.
In short, capitalism still generates “fields of attraction” that polarize society into lived class positions. Sociohistorical processes can—and have—led to the emergence of groups becoming conscious of themselves as a class opposed to another. The challenge today is to bring about such a process through sustained organizational efforts, as was achieved in previous periods.
Self-Organization as a Conclusion
The lack of people in our demonstrations is a symptom of the current passivity of the working classes, in the sense that the street is an extension, not the centre, of social conflict. This passivity is rooted in the absence of collective struggles that provide an alternative to individualized or reactionary responses.
To claim that we should avoid organizational efforts for fear of becoming “revolutionary evangelists” is irresponsible. It condemns us to remain what we have been for the past three decades in Quebec: a radical fringe within reformist social movements; a weak political mediation with no real capacity to constitute a social force capable of threatening the existing order.
What is needed is not a dogmatic return to a rigid form of organization, nor a moralistic conception of militancy, but a materialist strategy for rebuilding the autonomous social power of the working class. This is not about imposing a universal model, but about affirming that without durable forms of mediation between experiences of exploitation and a political horizon, no counter-power can take shape.
A coherent revolutionary politics today should:
Identify the sites where exploitation is most intense, visible, and collectively experienced;
Build struggles that aim to democratize and repoliticize production and social reproduction;
Make the street an extension, not the centre, of social conflict;
Focus on the patient construction of class consciousness as a historical process;
Build popular organizations capable of demanding democratic control over economic spheres, through the unification, not the mere juxtaposition, of struggles.
Comments Off on Among the Fragments – A Response to Inaction
Apr252025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Struggle isn’t a puzzle we solve by sharpening definitions.
It is mud. It is cold dawn. It is the door that must be knocked on twice because the first knock was fear and the second is a promise. Like we’ve always been told.
He insists: “We must write, because only then will we be able to tell who is serious and who is not”.
We need theory that walks like the body does: limping when we limp, sprinting when sirens grow, picking glass from its heel after the march, then laughing about it around the kitchen table while the kettle shrieks.
Remember how it felt when the names were lighter? We called ourselves anarchists, autonomist, anti-authoritarian, some remained nameless, only to be used as a shorthand for the impossible promise we carried like contraband in our chests: that no hierarchy is eternal and that ordinary people can and should arrange their life without overseers.
We were meant to be the crowbar; we were meant to pry open rooms we were locked out of. Then the rooms multiplied, each declaring itself the only legitimate sanctuary. We became curators of micro‑identities: anti‑authoritarian but not anarchist, autonomist but not left, insurrectionist but suspicious of the autonomists. Language then turned itself into something heavier than the deeds it was meant to inspire.
Writing is not the enemy. Writing is a whetstone — but the blade must leave the house. Let pamphlets circulate, but let every pamphlet end with a time and place: “Meet here. Bring tools. No Phones.”
Let zines be passports that expire unless stamped by action.
Our word need be scrawled on cardboard, rehearsed in networks, corrected in practice, revised by failure, annotated in bruises, and eventually sung — without copyright — by crowds that forget who wrote the first verse, by crowds we won’t be apart of.
Hold the pen lightly, hold one another firmly, and hold no illusion that theory absolves us from the necessity of risk that is expected from each of us. Our pages must be worth the dirt that clings to their margins. So dirty them.
Fred Hampton claimed that only revolutionaries die, not revolutions. Yet, I can’t help but smell the reeking odor of formaldehyde off of both me and those around. Our rallies feel like wakes: we chant slogans that sound like last rites, we smash storefronts like mourners breaking dishes, hoping the clatter will bring about the insurrection, the revolution, le grand soir. The streets reply with sirens, batons, no red sun. Insurance replaces the window, we keep the bruises, lose momentum again.
Meanwhile, the rest of us exchange theoretical love letters across online boulevards where eye contact is impossible. We scroll, applaud, eviscerate, scroll again, waiting for the curtain to fall on the academic pageantry. If the pen must be hoisted like a holy relic above all else, I would sooner snap it, scatter the ink into garden soil, let it nourish tomatoes for me to eat, as only then would it be of use to me.
To the comrades in our Montreal milieu, who walked away, who have been seduced by the glow of theory, who are disillusioned, your absence gapes like an open ravine; it’s filled with ritualized quarrels. We keep circling the same questions — what now, how, with whom — discovering each time that the void is expanding because we have no base, no ground compacted by shared labour, no community. Inaction does not merely leave a space; it deepens the chasm that now threatens to swallow what little remains of our common ground.
To those who’ve departed: where are you now? Will we only cross paths under tear gas, silhouettes lit by dumpsters on fire? Will we be worthy of your presence then? Must devotion be visible only in the strobe of police batons? Will your labour be lent for barricades only? Come argue across the table while the coffee burns, scream at me in raw disagreement, have an unexpected laugh.
When you are all satisfied after the ink is finally dry, close the laptop, lace your boots, find the fraction of the faction you cannot stand and invite them to hash this out over a beer no obscure webpage can overhear. Let our factions braid themselves into something sturdier than agreement — into familiarity, into a landscape where contradiction is welcomed and nobody is exiled. Only dialogue, stubborn and messy, can weld practice back onto principle until sparks fly and the metal holds.
Writing is a spark, not a furnace. The furnace is built in kitchens, meetings, late night phone calls, and beer soaked arguments that end with a workable list of next steps, and a solid plan.
Respond to this post if you must, but understand I won’t scroll back to read it. I only seek a tap on the shoulder, a chair pulled out for us to sit.
