Montréal Counter-information

From Montréal Antifasciste

Using the pseudonym “Neuromancer,” Alex Liberio was one of the neo-Nazis active on the Discord server and in the Iron March chatroom, as well as an engaged participant in the activities of Montréal’s alt-right from early 2017 until January 2018.

In May 2018, the tenacious efforts of Montréal antifascist militants led to the exposure of a an alt-right chatroom on a Discord server meant to serve as the launching pad for the “real-life” activities of a group of militant neo-Nazis in the Montréal area.[1] A series of articles published in the Montreal Gazette forced two of the key organizers of the group into exile: Gabriel Sohier Chaput, alias “Zeiger,” and Athanasse Zafirov, alias “Date” (also sometimes “LateOfDies” or “Sam Houde/Hoydel”). Zeiger was not only a central figure in this little Montréal-based group but was also part of an international network that developed from 2015 to 2018; notably as a prolific producer of content for The Daily Stormer website, as a moderator of the Iron March chatroom, and as a key propagandist for the explicitly National Socialist and accelerationist tendency of the alt-right movement. There is a warrant for his arrest in Québec, and he is currently in hiding. Meanwhile, “Date” (or “LateOfDies”), who seems to have been gradually radicalized,  beginning in the “Pickup Artists” scene personified by the misogynist Roosh V, was a key organizer in the local and national alt-right milieu; exceptionally as a leading organizer of the pan-Canadian gathering held in Ontario in July 2017. He relocated to California in 2018, where he is comfortably ensconced in the doctoral program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, in spite of our article that exposed him and his new life.

Three other notorious militants from this little group were also unmasked by the antifascist community, including Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, alias “FriendlyFash” (or “Bubonic”) and Vincent Bélanger Mercure, alias “Le Carouge à Épaulettes” (or “BebeCoco”), both of whom participated, alongside Sohier Chaput and other Canadian far-right militants, in the Unite the Right demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11 and 12, 2017. The third, Julien Côté Lussier, alias “Passport,” who was once the spokesperson for ID Canada (an effort to legitimize the “ethno-nationalist” movement among the public at large) recently garnered attention as a candidate in the 2019 federal election in southwest Montréal. Antiracists in his riding revealed that in spite of his militant fascism, Côté Lussier is still employed by the Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

Another extremely active member of the “Montreal Storm,” chatroom is the subject of this article–the user who went by the code name “Neuromancer;” and, as the recent leak of the Iron March forum’s logs proves, also participated in the latter under the pseudonym “iamneuromancer.”

At this point, Montréal Antifasciste can positively confirm that “Neuromancer” is Alexander Liberio, a Montréal metal musician and a student of Cognitive Science at McGill University up until last year. Possibly feeling the heat after Zeiger was doxxed and the contents of the Montreal Storm forum were published, Liberio made his way down to the U.S. and is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Theology at the Holy Trinity Orthodox seminary in Jordanville, New York. His move is entirely consistent with his vision of Christianity as both synonymous with “white culture” and “inherently fascist”, and in being the best vehicle for achieving the goal of the 14 words (the white nationalist credo formulated by the neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane).[2]

///

Alex Liberio (b. August 6, 1989), known as “Neuromancer Wintermute” in the Montréal metal scene, has been part of a number of music projects since the early part of the current decade.

It seems that he was the president of the student council at Vanier College in 2012–2013, after which time he focused on his music and entered the Cognitive Science Program at McGill University. It is difficult to say exactly when he turned Nazi, but he complained on a number of occasions about being betrayed by a friend and being “fully doxxed” in 2016,[3] after a white nationalist intervention at a public antiracist event. Oddly, we know nothing about this alleged doxxing and can find no trace of it.

We first noticed Liberio at La Meute’s “coming out” demonstration in Montréal, on March 4, 2017. He was hovering around the PEGIDA Québec contingent in the company of several individuals who were likely the original core of the Montreal Storm group, aka Alt-Right Montreal, among them, Vincent Bélanger Mercure and Athanasse Zafirov. On this occasion Liberio was  interviewed by Global TV, which allowed us to put a face to his pseudonym.

A few weeks later, on March 26, he joined both the Iron March forum and the Montreal Storm chatroom on Discord.

Uncompromising Nazi

By participating in the Iron March forum, “Neuromancer”/Alex Liberio got to rub shoulders with some of the most influential and dangerous neo-Nazis in the world, including the creator and main administrator of Iron March, Alexander Slavros, and other members of this “accelerationist” community, who went on to create the Atomwaffen Division, an underground neo-Nazi network connected to a series of murders and planned attacks. His proximity to Sohier Chaput and his willingness to engage in “real-life” activities led to his enthusiastic participation in the endeavours of the “Montreal Storm Book Club” (in Daily Stormer parlance, or “Pool Parties” as they were called by users of the alt-right forum The Right Stuff), including the ID Canada project launched by Athanasse Zafirov, Julien Côté Lussier, and others.

Christianity as a prized tool of fascism

“Neuromancer”/Liberio is part of a not insignificant tendency within the alt-right/neo-Nazi movement that identifies with the Orthodox Christian tradition. He makes no effort to hide his belief that Christianity is the best vehicle for Nazism.

He enrolled in his first year as an undergraduate student in the Fall of 2018, at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, in Jordanville, New York, under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Amercian Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. As far as we know, he is still there today.

The seminary’s disciplinary code stipulates that “The Seminary reserves the right to withhold a degree from a candidate when there is compelling evidence of serious moral misconduct.” It remains to be seen whether or not the seminary considers participating in a variety of neo-Nazi actions and organizations “serious moral misconduct” . . . or if the Russian Orthodox Church actually is an appropriate vehicle for realizing Adolph Hitler’s vision and that of the contemporary adherents of his ideology.

Disclosure of the Evidence

Examining the e-mail address “iamneuromancer” posted the Iron March forum (iamneuromancer@gmail.com), we found a 2015 online announcement to recruit a bagpipe player for a folk metal group (probably Bibracte, which Liberio led for a while with his partner).

This announcement included a telephone number. Deeper research into the number turned up an announcement on a Chinese forum for an apartment sublet in Hochelaga. Not only do the photos of the apartment published in this announcement show exactly the same décor as seen in a number of videos on the YouTube channel Icon Iconium, in which we see Liberio and his rats, but we also found the e-mail address: alexander.liberio@mail.mcgill.ca.

A search for Alexander Liberio confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt his ties with the Orthodox seminary in Jordanville, New York.

 ///

 

What does this mean for these nazis? And what are the implications for our communities?

From Charlottesville to El Paso, by way of the Atomwaffen Division attacks and the Christchurch massacre, the online activities of Alexander Liberio’s generation of neo-Nazis have repeatedly crossed over into real life, delivering death and terror in countries across the world. For all that, what stands out about them is how fragmented and fragile their connections were and are; it takes relatively little to disrupt and scatter the networks in the various online chatrooms. But with what consequences? New Iron March revelations have come out every day since the original leak, allowing us to see just how easy it is for “regular” white men to go about their nondescript middle-class lives as students, civil servants, hipsters, etc., while fantasising about race war and genocide, “white sharia,” and “boots on the ground.” The question that we once again face is: What can we concretely expect from these wannabe race war space marines?

In particular, we invite our readers to consider the implications for our communities if the Nazis are left to pursue their activities with impunity.

We intend to redouble our efforts to make sure that these guys can’t simply get on with their lives and continue fomenting hatred as if it’s business as usual. Above all, we will work not only to disrupt their networks but to prevent their reconsitution. The steady stream of attacks and mass murders make it clear that even if these networks are strategically precarious, the tactics they push can lead to disaster.

That said, an effective counterattack necessarily requires a far more vigorous response from antiracist and antifascist communities, a response whereby our ways and means of action reflect our desire to eradicate the Nazis once and for all and secure a viable future for all children.

 ///

---

[1]  Discord is a software developed to facilitate vocal communication between on-line gamers. Its features, including the private nature of communication, drew the attention of numerous members of the alt-right movement, who began heavily using it between 2016 andt 2018.

[2] David Lane’s infamous credo is: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” He coined this phrase while in prison for his activities with The Order, a terrorist neo-Nazi organization active in the 1980s and responsible for a number of murders and armed attacks, including the assassination of outspoken Jewish radio host Alan Berg.

[3] Doxxing is a tactic that consists of publicly releasing an individual’s personal information to do them harm in one way or another.

From Montréal Antifasciste

This White Nationalist is Still Employed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

Thanks to the diligent efforts of antiracist militants and a local network of antifascist sympathizers, Montréal Antifasciste is in a position to confirm that the independent candidate who ran in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, Julien Côté (Lussier), is a longstanding white nationalist activist, an active participant in a number of alt-right (neo-Nazi) chatrooms, a key alt-right organizer in Montréal and across Canada… and an employee of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

 

Last October 15, six days before the Canadian federal election, the CBC published an article about the independent candidate in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, Julien Côté. Until last year, Côté was the national spokesperson for ID Canada, an “identitarian” organization the CBC called “a known white nationalist and xenophobic group” that notably adheres to the “great replacement” thesis that is so very popular with right-wing extremists. (This murky theory has, among other things, motivated a number of fascist massacres in recent years, including those in Christchurch and El Paso.)

We must humbly acknowledge that we had missed Julien Côté’s candidacy until the CBC article was published. Unfortunately for Côté, however, once a national spotlight was shined on his candidacy, we remembered his role in Montréal’s alt-right milieu and were prompted to dig a bit deeper…

In the hours after the article was published, a number of social media posts from Montréal Antifasciste and other antifascists and antiracists revealed his close links with the far right,[1] which put Côté under so much pressure that he felt obliged to engage the services of Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald as “security” for the door-to-door stumping he had planned for Verdun on October 19.

It’s amusing, that after denying being a racist on every available platform, Côté saw fit to engage the services of a notorious Nazi. He probably had good reason to call for reinforcements, given the spontaneous neighbourhood mobilization to directly confront Côté and his henchman, but nonetheless his choice of bodyguard left a lot to be desired if the candidate actually wanted to sanitize his campaign.

A resident of Côté’s riding explained to us why she along with others felt it was necessary to mobilize in the wake of the CBC’s revelations:

“For us, it’s clear that Julien Côté used his campaign as a pretext for recruiting sympathizers. His phone number was on the posters, and he conducted a street-level campaign with invitations for coffee and a chat. He also infiltrated all of the neighbourhood citizen websites, and his own website invited internet users to make contact privately for a detailed explanation of his electoral programme. We moved quickly to expose Côté for what he is and limit his traction. We also contacted Montréal Antifa, because it quickly became clear that this wasn’t just a neighbourhood issue, and it was important that his activity be tracked.”

We can only applaud this grassroots initiative and gladly acknowledge that this article may well never have been written were it not for the diligence and panache of the residents who wrote us so that we could work on it together. That is exactly what a healthy antiracist and antifascist movement looks like.

From there, revisiting some of the info we had previously gathered on Côté, it was soon evident that the CBC’s revelations were only the tip of the iceberg.

 

A Scrubbed Twitter Account (too little too late)

On October 20, the Twitter user @Un_Migrant revealed that the @Mox_Nisi account appeared to be Julien Côté’s account. It obviously wasn’t by happenstance that @Mox_Nisi had begun to promote Côté’s candidacy with great enthusiasm… the very same day he announced his candidacy! Here’s a series of screenshots that illustrate this curious “coincidence”:

 

Confirming the Neo-Nazi Connection

In fact, it was no coincidence that Beauvais-MacDonald was the goon present to protect Côté from the rage of Verdun residents on October 19: if Beauvais-MacDonald represents the moronic and nasty element in Montréal’s alt-right, Côté is obviously part of what passes for the intellectual vanguard of the white nationalist movement. The two likely met in 2016 or 2017 as part of the small group of alt-right activists involved in the Montreal Storm chatroom, which included other ethnonationalists (correctly described as the most recent heirs of the neo-Nazi historical tradition), including Gabriel Sohier Chaput, aka “Zeiger”, Vincent Bélanger Mercure and Athanasse Zafirov, aka “Date”.

Victim of his own ego, Côté was the primary architect of his own demise. By tracking the digital breadcrumbs he left trailing behind him over the years, we were able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Côté (b. September 22, 1981) used the handle “Passport” in the Montreal Storm chatroom and in other private Discord chatrooms reserved for vouched members of the Canadian alt-right (self-styled “leafs”).

For obvious tactical reasons, we don’t intend to enumerate all of the evidence we’ve collected, but the sum and nature of that evidence makes for a truly impressive dossier. When we compared Côté’s avatar on his Skype account during the interview he gave to CityTV in January 2018 and the avatar chosen by “Passport” on Discord, we couldn’t help but notice that it was the same illustration, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, a Romantic-era painting by the German Caspar David Friedrich. That is obviously a truly niche reference. But it was by following a link posted on Discord by “Passport” to a video of a conference with Jordan Peterson in Ottawa, where he was accompanied by Zafirov and where he asked Peterson a question, that we were able to confirm that the voice of “Passport,” which can be heard on the audio track, is without a doubt Côté’s voice.

His participation in various Canadian chatrooms and political projects show that Côté/“Passport” is more than just a key figure in the tiny alt-right scene in Montréal; he is also part of an alt-right community that is attempting to consolidate itself nationally. Notably, he was, according to the CBC report, at the heart of ID Canada, a groupuscule clumsily modeled on European “identitarian” movements like Generation Identity. (It was to defend an ID Canada poster in Edmonton that Côté, as the spokesperson for the organization, gave the interview to CityTV in January 2018. The slogan at the top of that poster read: “You Are Being Replaced.”) But that’s not all. He was also one of the key organizers of a national alt-right gathering held in Ontario in July 2017,[2] as well as one of the organizers of white nationalist professor Ricardo Duchesne’s Montréal conference a month earlier. Côté has also attended alt-right gatherings in the US a number of times, including meetings of Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute.

Both his virtual and practical activity make it obvious that Julien Côté, aka “Passport,” played a primary role, alongside other known neo-Nazis, in an attempt to expand the white nationalist movement in Canada. But that’s not the last surprise he has in store for us.

 

The Curious Story of the Anti-Immigration Activist Who Works for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

Numerous internal sources confirmed for Montréal Antifasciste that Julien Côté is an employee of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Not only has Côté crowed about it on Facebook (see screen captures below), but research of the Canadian government’s Canada Gazette shows that the Public Service Commission “granted permission… to Julien Lussier… to seek nomination as a candidate… in the federal election in the electoral district of LaSalle–Émard–Verdun, Quebec.” It turns out that his full family name is Côté Lussier. It would seem that hyphenated family names are a thing for neo-Nazis.

When digging a little further into Côté Lussier’s past, you can imagine our surprise at discovering that he is well-versed in dirty tricks when it comes to anti-immigration efforts.

In September 2012, he and his partner, Magdalena Baloi-Lussier (Madi Lussier, who, among other things, acted as the official agent for Côté Lussier’s electoral campaign) were removed from a list of witnesses invited to testify before a parliamentary commission on immigration when a NDP member of parliament discovered that the couple were responsible for an anti-immigrant website that espouses racist theories. According to a Toronto Star article:

“Sections of the site include one on so-called ‘Chinafication’ and ‘Arabization.’ There is also a video interview with Canadian white supremacist Paul Fromm and several from a conference of the ‘racialist’ group American Renaissance.”

The archived version of the “Canadian Immigration Report” website and the content of their YouTube channel confirm the concerns of the committee members who convinced their colleagues to withdraw the invitation extended to the Baloi-Lussier couple.

As it happens, the nature of this website corresponds to another project that Côté Lussier wanted to start with his Nazi comrades from the Discord chatroom (the now-defunct website borderwatch.ca) to identify people irregularly crossing the Canada/US. Border.

Another curious link, to say the least, is that the deputy who invited them to testify, the Conservative Chungsen Leung (who, we might add in passing, was Stephen Harper’s parliamentary secretary for multiculturalism from 2011 to 2015), was described by “Passport” on Discord as a deputy who is “firmly on [our] side,” who “hopes that whites will develop a backbone,” and who “recognizes that [we] are a superior race.”

So, a racist who caused a controversy during official public hearings on immigration in 2012, a controversy that received substantial media coverage at the time, is still employed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada as we write this. Could it be that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, one of a number of governmental agencies responsible for regulating and perpetuating an apartheid system based on prisons for migrants and a regime of endless deportations, an organization with a history of racism, sexism, and ableism simply has a high level of tolerance for white supremacy? If you think about it for a moment, it’s not that surprising…

 

///

It is a shame that a man like Julien Côté Lussier has been able to spend years promoting racism without being held accountable. As someone who worked for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, traveled to far-right shindigs in the United States, and occupied important positions in domestic racist organizations, he was well-placed to play a role in consolidating the fragmented and disorganized neo-Nazi milieu in Canada. It is difficult to understand what he was thinking when he decided to run as an independent in the elections, a stupid move that was bound to attract unwanted attention and provoke a strong response from anti-racists in his riding. Be that as it may, we fully intend to ensure that his poor judgement does not go to waste.

We venture that Julien Côté Lussier will regret having plastered his face on the proverbial pole.

 

 

 

---

[1] During a Q & A session on Reddit Côté was quite literally overwhelmed with embarrassing questions about his platform.

[2] This particular milieu made headlines that same year, in August 2017, when Beauvais-MacDonald and Bélanger-Mercure were identified by antifascists among a group of Québécois who travelled to Charlottesville, Virginia, to participate in a series of white supremacist demonstrations, the infamous Unite the Right rally. Gabriel Sohier-Chaput, part of the same group,was later identified as a prolific neo-Nazi alt-right propagandist, noteworthy for having re-edited James Mason’s work Siege (one of the main sources of inspiration for the terrorist Atomwaffen Division and most of the contemporary National Socialist movement) and publishing numerous articles on Andrew Anglin’s Daily Stormer website.

In May 2018, Sohier-Chaput was doxxed by Montréal antifascists and forced into exile following a series of Montreal Gazette articles. At the same time, the contents of the Montreal Storm chatroom were made public on the Unicorn Riot server, where Nazi chatrooms on Discord are being archived.

Other members of this milieu, including the main moderator of the national Discord forum and the cohost of the neo-Nazi podcast This Hour Has 88 minutes, Axe in the Deep, whose real name is Clayton Sanford, were identified the previous month by diligent Vice journalists.