National Insecurity: The RCMP Knocks on Doors in Montreal

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Dec 072019

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

When it comes to its colonial, racist regime of borders and prisons, the Canadian state, in its police headquarters and technocratic backrooms, sees trouble on the horizon. With a network of border posts, patrols, surveillance technology, detention centers, courts, “alternatives to detention”, and deportation squads, this country’s rulers hope to secure the authority to determine who can make a life on the territory they fraudulently govern, who can find a place to live, who can send their kids to school, who can access health care, who can go about their days without fear. They are supported in this project by mass media always ready to dramatize any new trend in irregular border crossings, by cultural myths positing Canada as friendly and welcoming, concealing a murderous, cruel reality, and of course by the far right, who have the vital task of mis-directing poor and working people’s anger towards fellow victims of the global economic system at the root of their sense of powerlessness.

Yet this web of domination is far from impenetrable. Canada’s land border with the United States is too massive to completely control; clandestine crossing points abound. Likewise, overstaying a visa and keeping out of CBSA’s sights is not impossible. Across the country, migrants organize solidarity networks to ensure that no one needs to face the serious challenges of accessing services without status and confronting a racist immigration system alone.

This year, a list of CBSA agents’ names was published, encouraging people to hold them responsible for their destructive effects on our communities and comrades. And over the past two years, in response to the government’s effort to build new migrant prisons, Montreal-area contractors who have accepted work on the prison slated to open in Laval in 2021 have faced protests and a series of attacks, beginning with the release of crickets into prison architect Lemay’s building in spring 2018. This past July, a Lemay vice-president’s BMW was burned outside his home. On the night of October 26, the general contractor for the prison, Tisseur, appears to have lost a truck to a targeted arson. Most recently, this month, vehicles parked at the headquarters of subcontractor DPL had their tires slashed.

Such actions have an impact, both material and psychological; as the president of excavation firm Loiselle told the media after its headquarters was vandalized, “we don’t want trouble with these people.” Should these attacks continue and spread, they could quickly change the landscape of the state’s capability to maintain and expand the enforcement of borders, immigration, and citizenship.

It is no surprise that police agencies, of which at least 4 in the Montreal area have unsolved events related to the migrant prison within their territorial jurisdiction (SPVM, SPL (Laval), SPAL (Longueuil), and SQ), would join forces to share resources and coordinate a more intensive investigation. In fact, a La Presse article in July revealed that such a move was in the works.

The week of October 28th saw the first clear signs of this escalation in repressive resources, as a small number of long-time activists received house visits and phone calls from RCMP officers on the island of Montreal. The officers belong to an INSET (Integrated National Security Enforcement Team), the unit that has coordinated security for summits like the G7 and investigated other instances of what they call “violent extremism”. Each INSET is made up of RCMP officers, CSIS agents, and members of local police forces, as well as members of CBSA and Citizenship and Immigration Canada [source: Wikipedia].

The officers who paid these visits in October had no warrant, and they said they wanted to discuss migrant justice organizing, as well as anti-gentrification movements, in relation to criminal acts that are under investigation. Those visited did not let the cops in or speak with them.

We consider these events important to share publicly so that comrades can take appropriate precautions, recognize patterns, and avoid the spread of false information. Anyone who is contacted by the RCMP, other police, or CSIS in a similar way or in relation to this investigation is strongly encouraged to let comrades know as soon as possible.

In past investigations, the Montreal INSET has used tactics that include bugging phones and houses, tailing suspects, surreptitiously entering houses and offices to make observations unbeknownst to suspects, and infiltrators and paid informants. Even combining these methods and others across several years, the INSET has been unable to bring charges in the past. Collectively, it’s clear where our power lies when faced with this type of investigation: the value of silence and total non-cooperation with any police can not be overstated. There is nothing to be gained by letting officers into your home or saying anything to them. Without a valid warrant, police have no right to enter your home or office (see the COBP’s “Guess What! We’ve Got Rights!?”). Contact a trusted lawyer if you are unsure of your rights in any situation.

Moreover, we benefit from continually reflecting on our security practices and striving to build a security culture that keeps us and our comrades as safe as possible while allowing us to fight with conviction and expand our capacity. This recently published reflection on security culture has much to offer both as an introduction to the topic and a prompt for re-assessing and refining our practices.

By bringing other struggles to which anarchists have contributed, namely anti-gentrification, into their sights, and by brandishing the spectre of “terrorism”, despite investigating mere arson and broken windows, the RCMP shows that it is not simply trying to solve specific crimes; they want to disrupt our movements’ ability to challenge the racist and colonial foundations of the Canadian state and the capitalist imperatives that govern it everywhere. With or without legal proceedings, they want to assign criminality to ideas that threaten them. They want us to be afraid to take the risks necessary to build something different. They want to break down solidarity between those speaking publicly and those acting clandestinely, so that public organizing contains itself within the approved channels of protest, and anonymous interventions are denounced and isolated. Importantly, they are also signaling that our movements are a threat to their ability to carry out their functions, a reminder that now is not the time to shrink away.

We know that the mere threat of repression can be effective at disrupting movements. While the information about this investigation and INSET tactics is concerning, we see no reason for paranoia or panic. This much is simple: if the cops have questions, it shows that they don’t know what they want and need to know. The struggle continues, and it is through the continued and increasing involvement of a wide variety of groups and individuals dedicated to keeping each other safe, sharing information and resources, and refusing to allow the state to sow divisions between us that we will all be the most formidable opponents to the police and the border regime.

When targeted by repressive forces, it can be tempting to appeal to discourses rooted in legality, decrying the ‘excesses’ of the state or demanding protection for ‘civil liberties’. But our movements will be stronger in the long run by acknowledging that if we want to see their world of confinement and control in flames, it’s inevitable that they will attempt to shut us down, by any means at their disposal. Once we step away from the myths of public opinion, it should be clear that there is nothing to gain by portraying ourselves as victims. It’s a question of practicing an unyielding solidarity and denying the state the power it seeks.

Call for Solidarity

In the event of raids or arrests related to the RCMP/INSET investigation, we call for offensive solidarity in Montreal and beyond against border enforcement infrastructure, or whatever targets are most relevant in your area! ?

Debunking Atalante: Not Nazis But… Yeah Actually

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Dec 052019

From Montréal Antifasciste

Whatever the interested parties may say, their neofascist/identitarian/national revolutionary/anti-communist/Nazi lineage is as clear as the Stompers/Légitime Violence/Atalante connection. The tattoos, fashion statements, musical tastes, and antics of the known Atalante members give some indication of their political orientation, and their sympathies are entirely and uncontestably “neo-Nazi.”

In September, Montréal Antifasciste published an article revealing where some of the key activists in the neofascist group Atalante Québec work. The objective was, as always, “exposing the fascists to their communities, colleagues, employers, families, and neighbours, from whom they generally hide the real nature of their activities […] because the projects they are involved in in their personal lives endanger both their immediate colleagues and the general public, most particularly racialized people, Muslims, Jews, queers, and leftists.”

Breaking with its usual practice, Atalante rushed out a communiqué to respond “aux propos diffamatoires incitant à la haine contre” eux [to the slanderous statements inciting hatred against] them and to the “fausses allégations lancées contre [nos] members” [false allegations made about (our) members]. Laughably, the communiqué responds to accusations we never made and twists some we did to make it easier for them to defend themselves. In particular, it attempts to portray Atalante and its militants as some sort of community-based charity organization that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the “neo-Nazi movement” and is simply committed to “aid to families.”

Let’s be perfectly clear, we target Atalante Québec so heavily because they are a far-right organization directly modelled on European neofascist and identitarian movements like CasaPound (Italy), Groupe Union Défense (GUD), Troisième Voie, and Bastion Social (France) that are part of the revolutionary nationalist tendency (heirs to the Nazi Party’s Strasserist current) and were formed around the ultranationalist bonehead gang the Québec Stompers Crew and the Rock Against Communism band Légitime Violence.

If more proof is required, we’d be more than happy to oblige.

///

It seems as if they “doth protest too much”

From the get-go, the communiqué is a wee bit defensive:

« Dans un premier lieu, Atalante n’est pas un mouvement prônant la haine de l’autre, mais l’amour des siens. (…) Aussi, ce que des adultes consentants font dans leur chambre à coucher ne nous intéresse pas et ne nous regarde pas. De ce fait, nous refusons toutes les accusations stigmatisantes d’homophobie qui sont lancées par nos adversaires. »

[To begin with, Atalante is not a movement that promotes hatred of others, but rather, love of our own. . . . Furthermore, what consenting adults do in their bedroom is no concern of ours, which is why we reject all of our adversaries’ accusations, denouncing us as homophobes.]

This particular clarification is odd, to say the least, as the Montréal Antifasciste article that the communiqué claims to be responding to never specifically accused Atalante of homophobia nor has any other article that we’ve published. So why the vigorous rebuttal? It makes you wonder…

The following paragraph really ought to be accompanied by a mournful violin. Atalante’s social activity in “its milieu,” they tell us, includes “distributing food,” cleaning up graffiti, and providing “aid to families,” while their political activity is limited to “postering, publicity stunts, counter-demonstrations, commemorations, philosophical education, and physical training.”

Even leaving aside the fact that the political activity in question promotes an “ultranationalist,” viciously identitarian, and xenophobic project (hello, “remigration”!), presenting Atalante as a perfectly inoffensive community organization isn’t going to fool anyone—besides, of course, a handful of naive people who are taken in by this crass attempt to whitewash the true nature of the project.

They fulminate indignantly about us accusing “them” of having “agressé plusieurs personnes racisées et parfois à l’arme blanche” [attacking numerous racialized people, sometimes knifing them]. Again, this is odd, given that we did no such thing. What we did , in fact, point out is that a member of the Québec City Stompers, Yan Barras, also an Atalante militant from day one, stabbed six people in 2007 and was sentenced to two years in prison for this violent crime. It’s also true that in the article “Unmasking Atalante,” we reminded people that the group’s entourage includes a number of individuals who have been found guilty of armed racist attacks, including Mathieu Bergeron, Steve Lavallée, Jonathan Côté, and Rémi Chabot-Brideault. While we aren’t saying every Atalante member has been involved in attacks of this sort, the regular involvement of Mathieu Bergeron, for example, in Atalante’s actions and activities is enough to demonstrate that there’s a legitimate point to be made here.

The strident indignation that runs through the rest of the communiqué about the violence of the “antifascist groups,” including the absurd claim that “far-left websites” make “de fausses allegations contre [nos] membres (…) dansle but de les assassiner socialement, professionnellement et même physiquement” [false allegations against (our) members . . . with the goal of assassinating them socially, professionally, and even physically (our italics) are also perplexing, given Raf Stomper’s numerous explicitly violent threats in more than one Légitime Violence song:

« Ces petits gauchistes efféminés,
qui se permettent de nous critiquer,
ils n’oseront jamais nous affronter, on va tous les poignarder! »
(Légitime Violence)

[These little leftist sissies,
who dare to criticize us,
wouldn’t have the nerve to face us,
we’d just stab them all!]

« Tu cours à ta perte, tu connais notre réputation.
Une lame qui te transperce, un bruit une détonation!!! (…)
Tu succombes à nos coups tu passes sous nos roues. (…)
À grands coups de matraque j’entends tes os qui craquent. »
(Anti-Rash Action)

[Play at your own risk, you know who we are.
A knife will rip through you, a noise, an explosion!!!(…)
We’ll beat you down and roll right over you.(…)
A mighty blow with a club,
and I hear your bones cracking.]

Not nazis, but…

What we find most amusing about this insufferable whining has to be the claim that Atalante’s project “n’est pas animé par une logique raciale” [is not motivated by any racist thinking], that the allegations of Nazism amount to “defamation”, and that suggesting that people in Atalante’s entourage “advocate national socialism” reflects the “totalitarian doctrine” of the antifascist movement.

As far Atalante not being motivated by “racist thinking” goes, they’re going to have to explain to us their decision to reproduce an effigy of Julius Evola on the wall of the group’s private gym, the same Evola for whom “the revolt against the modern world” is fundamentally and profoundly racist.

The portrait of supremacist theorist Julius Evola (for whom Adolph Hitler was not radical enough…) appears between those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Dominique Venner on the wall of Atalante’s private gymnasium.

And what to make of militant fascists who deplore the alleged “totalitarian” character of their adversaries?

Be all that as it may, rather than responding to this laughable attempt at self-exoneration with the gazillionth written document, we’ll let some photos and videos from various Atalante members’ social media accounts speak for themselves.

///

Ian Stuart Donaldson was the singer of the band Skrewdriver and the founder of the international neo-Nazi bonehead network Blood & Honour. Ian Stuart coined the euphemism “Rock Against Communism” to describe the galaxy of extreme-right bands with an ultra-nationalist/Nazi allegiance that were part of the “White Power” movement from the early 1980s on. Légitime Violence is heir to this tradition in Quebec, as are many of the “anti-communist” bands whose colours are often worn by members and supporters of Atalante, such as SPQR and Bronson (Italy), Brassic and Offensive Weapon (United States), In Memoriam and Lemovice (France), etc. In Canada, Blood & Honour is listed as a “terrorist entity” by the federal government.

…

Read the article in its entirety on Montréal-antifasciste.info

What Is Property?

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Dec 042019

From subMedia

All power structures are rooted in ideology. A shared belief in this ideology is what keeps the structures of power in place. Under capitalism, the edifice of social control is built on the collective illusion of private property, and the sanctity of the so-called ‘free market’. Any moves taken to challenge this logic will therefore provoke pushback from the system’s indoctrinated cheerleaders, and will certainly catch the attention of the repressive and recuperative functionaries of the state. But as the saying goes… you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And you definitely can’t overthrow capitalism without messing with people’s stuff.

So…. what is property, anyway? And what do anarchists have against it?

Alexander Liberio : Metalhead, Nazi… Christian Orthodox Seminarian

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Nov 242019

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.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “iamnueromancer,” introduces himself to the neo-Nazi forum Iron March.

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.

Profile of Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromance Wintermute,” on metal-archives.com. NOTE: In February 2022, the band Vehemal got in touch with MAF to request a retraction and issue the following statement : “While it is true that Alex Liberio was our guitarist for a time, we were not aware of his online activities. We want to make it clear that Vehemal condemns all forms of hateful speech and actions.”

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.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” claims he was doxxed in 2016.

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.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” at the La Meute demonstration in Montréal on March 4, 2017.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” claims on Discord to have been interviewed by Global News.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” talks to Global News at the La Meute demonstration in Montréal on March 4, 2017.

On Iron March, Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” talks about participating in the La Meute demonstration in Montréal on March 4, 2017.

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

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” joins the neo-Nazi Iron March forum on March 26, 2017.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” joins the Montreal Storm chatroom on Discord on March 26, 2017.

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.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” follows Gabriel Sohier Chaput, alias “Zeiger” on Iron March.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” says he lost old friends but developed new friendships on the basis of a shared interest in fascism and Adolph Hitler.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” criticizes Gabriel Prévost-Mathieu, alias “Canadian Übermensch,” on Iron March for his lack of seriousness.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” chastises Gabriel Prévost-Mathieu, alias “Canadian Übermensch,” on Iron March.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” complaining that antifascists were out of line when they , because Graveland “isn’t even nazi.” protested a Black Metal festival in 2016, because Graveland “aren’t even NS/neo-nazi Black metal.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” makes a direct connection between this Alt-Right crew and ID Canada, an fledgling organization attempting to legitimize white “identitarian” nationalism in the eyes of the Canadian public at large.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” mentions the “extreme vetting” measures observed by the group Alt-Right Montreal.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” argues that 2017 is the year for members of the alt-right to meet in person (and develop a strategy to “take the White House” in 2020!)

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” considers Jews “satanic,” “genocidal against [our] people,” and “worthy of hate.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” to nobody’s particular surprise, is also a homophobe.

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.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” believes that Christianity is the best vehicle for realizing the White Nationalist credo of the “14 words.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” believes that Nazi ideology is “applied biblical law.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” explains that the Bible is the best synthesis of “Western/European/white culture and history”,(…) without which the concept of a “pan-White European race” wouldn’t exist.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” explains that Christendom “means whites.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” believes that Christianity is “inherently fascist.”

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” trumpets the merits of the Orthodox Church.

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.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” enrolled in the Holy Trinity seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church in Jordanville, New York, in the autumn of 2018.

Alexander Liberio, alias “Neuromancer,” still attends the Holy Trinity seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church in Jordanville, New York, in 2019-2020.

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.

///

Uncovered links :

https://devpost.com/iamneuromancer/

https://neuromancer-wintermute-visual.tumblr.com/

https://soundcloud.com/neuromancerwintermute

https://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/mcgill-and-concordia-student-groups-host-kellie-leitch-event-124712/

http://uilleannforum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3531

https://soundcloud.com/alexander-liberio

https://www.couchsurfing.com/people/ironmaiden54

https://ondeschocs.com/photos-valfreya-et-bibracte-montreal-13-janvier-2017

https://www.facebook.com/VCSAvanier/photos/a.10151196804818019/10151196811243019/

http://theconcordian.com/2012/10/vanier-student-association-drops-playboy-condoms-sponsorship/

https://www.hts.edu/news_180913_1

https://hts.edu/news_190926_2

https://eadiocese.org/photos

[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.

Friday, November 29: Nobody Pays! An International Call for a Strike against the Rising Cost of Living

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Nov 212019

From CrimethInc.

Everyone pays for the rich to get richer. We pay with our labor, working to fill their pockets. We pay with skyrocketing rent as they gentrify us out of our homes. We pay with the destruction of the environment, the erasure of our communities, the stress in our day-to-day lives. We pay for things that used to be free, like water. We pay taxes so they can hire more cops to terrorize us. Everyone pays, but only they benefit.

We could talk about the high cost of living—but who’s really living?

On November 29, nobody pays. This is a call for a strike addressing all the ways they are squeezing us, all the ways they are making it impossible to live.

There’s a call in Seattle for a fare strike on public transit. In Portland, people are rallying on November 29 in Pioneer Square; in San Francisco, people are meeting at 16th and Mission. There have been demonstrations about transit costs and enforcement in New York City for weeks already and more are scheduled this week. Chicago is in on this, too. Wherever you are, you can organize something or carry out an action with your friends.

A strike is a blow. It’s not just a boycott; it means interrupting the system, stopping it from working. At the least, you could avoid paying the fare on public transit in your city. But it’s better to make our refusal public and collective. Hop the turnstiles all together. Open up the gates and intervene if security tries to harass anyone. Sabotage the machines. Make the walls proclaim “Nobody Pays!” with posters or spray paint. Set up a table and give out literature about why no one should have to pay, ever. Establish a fare dodgers’ union like they did in Sweden.

People around the world are in revolt against the rising cost of living. In Ecuador, people occupied the parliament and forced the government to cancel all the new austerity measures. In Chile, mass fare evasions gave birth to a countrywide revolt that even the military could not suppress. From Paris to Beirut and Hong Kong, people are recognizing that our only hope is to resist together.

November 29 comes on the cusp of the 20-year anniversary of the demonstrations that shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in 1999, showing the power of direct action to change history. Today, opposition to capitalism has spread widely, but it’s up to us to spread the practices of resistance that will make us ungovernable.

The fare evasion movement in Chile.

Nobody pays—because they’ll spend millions for cops but they’ll kill a person for dodging a two-dollar fare. Nobody pays—because the infrastructure they build is not meant to serve us, but to control us. Nobody pays—because we don’t just want a few piecemeal reforms, we want to show that we are strong enough to change the world ourselves. Nobody pays.

Julien Côté Lussier: The Hubris of a Neo-Nazi Who Hoped to Get Elected

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Nov 072019

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.

Canada Gazette, Part I, volume 153, number 37 : COMMISSIONS, August 30, 2019

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.

Extinguishing Rebellion

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Oct 242019

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an international environmental movement that calls itself non-violent and as extreme as the situation. It appeared on the Montreal scene around a year ago. On October 8, 2019, a handful of their activists realized a coup d’éclat, forcing the closure of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge for more than an hour in the middle of morning rush hour. Their actions show a willingness to put themselves physically in play that has become an unavoidable necessity in ecological struggle. In this sense, their courage and determination can only be reassuring. However, criticisms have also converged from somewhat all over in regards to their ideology and practices, raising issues that are important to address.

In Paris, where XR activists, among other things, erased anti-police tags during the ocucpation of a shopping mall, an open letter notes a dismissiveness toward police violence, a dogmatic non-violence that is insidiously violent, and the exclusion of the popular classes from the action framework. They are critiqued also for lacking a strategic reading of the situation and of power relationships.

A critique of the British branch of XR observes their profound misunderstanding of the functioning and impacts of judicial repression of activists.

Almost everyone makes fun of their desire to be arrested by the police, though it is not a joke, but the result of a bizarre and dangerous interpretation of social movement history. Not to mention it favors the construction of a white, middle-class movement, regardless of efforts to give the organization an intersectional facade.

Even faced with these partisans of a particularly intransigent pacifism, it’s stunning to realize how difficult it can be to distinguish between a real XR initiative and a hoax:

PLEASE.
DEAR READER.
DO NOT DO THIS.

“At this point, should you wish to take further action, red handed people are invited to continue the procession to a nearby police station to turn themselves in. “https://t.co/O6LdO5Jy3T pic.twitter.com/rO7mPAPXJf

— Anarchist ?Federation ❤? (@AnarchistFed) October 17, 2019

Others have engaged with the justifications that XR provides for non-violence. Let’s take a closer look at this. The group cites an academic study by Erica Chenoweth titled Why Civil Resistance Works to affirm that non-violent movements have succeeded twice as often as movements that used violence, between 1900 and 2006, in the context of conflicts between state and non-state forces. In such a complex world, we’d like if such neat statistics could guide us in choosing means of action. There are just a couple minor problems.

Number one: the study defines a “violent movement” as one in which more than 1000 armed combatants die on the battlefield. Thus excluding urban riots, as well as armed groups from the Red Army Faction to the Zapatistas. And indeed, struggles that lead to over 1000 battle deaths tend to be characterized by the substantial militarization of an intractable conflict, making it difficult for the non-state side to attain the goals that motivated it to mobilize at the start. The force of an insurrection is social, not military.

Secondly, for the purposes of the study, “non-violent movements” include those that are primarily, though not entirely non-violent. Note that no one is proposing a climate movement that would be primarily violent: instead it’s a question of making space for a diversity of tactics, where various modes of action are valued and ideally reinforce one another. That is to say a movement that a statistician could indeed classify as primarily non-violent, but where people in black bloc are on the front lines confronting the police, while nocturnal crews sabotage infrastructure without getting caught, allowing them to attack again and again. Nowhere in the study does non-violence translate to an obligation to turn oneself into police after breaking the law.

We might also ask questions about:

the tendency for power to name as “violent” all resistance that actually disrupts the normal course of affairs, regardless of the concrete acts involved;
the fact that it’s often violence from police forces that provokes a “violent” response from a social movement, in other words violence is often imposed on a movement when it poses a real threat to the powers in place;
the definition of victory vis-à-vis our multiple medium- and long-term goals, as well as the capacity for power to offer concessions at the price of pacification and recuperation: when the future of life on earth is at stake, is compromise possible?

In any case, using Why Civil Resistance Works to ground the claim that we need to sit down in the street making peace signs at the cops is an insult to activists’ intelligence. XR’s leaders should not try to make us believe they are guided by social science if they are in fact merely enacting a morality aligned with the police state or a desire to serve as legitimate intermediaries vis-à-vis power. XR tells governments to “tell the truth”, but when it’s a question of resistance strategies, they are not interested in an honest reflection on the choices before us.

Yet, we only need to look at any of the many places where rebels have succeeded in making power back down in recent months, whether in Hong Kong, Ecuador, Chili, or the gilets jaunes in France, or to understand the history of Indigenous land defense struggles in “Canada”, to come to a simple realization: a capacity for self-defense is essential if we are going to force capital and the state to really cede ground.

We don’t wish to overly repeat critiques of XR that have already been expressed well elsewhere. And XR presents its local instances as autonomous, so we would like to give their structures in Quebec the benefit of the doubt and not judge them too much based on the group’s actions in other countries, even if these often seem like the logical outcomes of the group’s founding ideology, to which chapters subscribe.

We’re also aware that any mass political organization contains lines of tension, so this intervention certainly does not target the entire group as individuals. On the contrary, we have no doubt that many of these activists will be amazing comrades and accomplices, from whom we will learn a lot, over coming years of the development of a diversified and determined struggle against the world that is destroying the planet.

In watching XR’s beginnings in Montreal, however, we have a couple concerns regarding the local organization.

In an interview on TVA Nouvelles after the shutdown of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, a spokesperson of XR Montreal defends the activists who climbed on the bridge against the accusation of extremism by specifying that “they’re people like you and I, who were 100% non-violent, they didn’t resist the police, they discussed reasonably.” We have questions about what is meant by “like you and I” and which people or classes of people would fall outside this designation. We must also think about the effects of this type of discourse on those who are not 100% non-violent, who resist the police, who don’t see an advantage to discussing reasonably. Logically, these people would be the “extremists”, and they would deserve the harsher treatment in the media and in the courts that this term entails.

This discourse feeds the creation of a division between good and bad protesters, which tends to increase repression experienced by those who are already taking the biggest risks, who seek a total rupture with the devastating order of capital and the state. In addition, it sabotages the creation of links between groups and individuals that would strengthen the struggle.

We’ve also seen awareness-raising efforts and a handful of sit-in style actions, the last one occurring the afternoon of October 8th after the bridge blockade in the morning. The gathering of 250 people was unable to attain the action’s target after the SPVM’s riot police lines didn’t budge faced with shouts of “we’re non-violent, please let us through!”, followed by the chant “Police, go softly, we’re doing this for your children”. The deadening scene spoke for itself as to the limits of a “civil” disobedience that is in fact fully captured within a servility extinguishing any real perspective of rebellion.

We would be delighted if events to come contradicted us, but we believe we’re seeing the same dynamics that have elicited legitimate criticisms of XR elsewhere in the world emerging in their discourse and means of action in Montreal. It’s not about rejecting any pathway that diverges from our own, but about naming strategic and tactical failures for what they are, refusing an absence of solidarity with rebels that don’t adopt total pacifism, and creating the conditions for a real collective intelligence in struggle. In the hour of climate emergency, we don’t have time for illusions.

Climate Strike: The Time Is Ours!

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Oct 202019

From Les temps fous

The morning of September 27th, the streets of Montreal and Quebec City were taken by storm by a historic human tide. Hundreds of thousands, young and old, hit the street in response to the international call for a Global Climate Strike. This call for a planetary strike arrived in Quebec in the spring, when student associations and teachers’ unions began voting to walk out on September 27. In the summer, cégep administrations, threatened by the prospect of illegal strikes by teachers, decided to make the day of September 27 an “institutional day” and arrange the calendar accordingly. Institutional days, as a mechanism for capturing and absorbing strikes, gradually spread throughout the entire Quebec education system, from elementary schools to universities. If, at first, one could be satisfied that more than 600,000 people would be “freed” by the authorities to participate in the demonstration of September 27, doubts arise with respect to the future of the movement and its autonomy. The strike as a voluntary and collective interruption of daily routine has been diverted by school administrations, which used institutional days to ensure that they would maintain control of the agenda and temporality of the struggle.

On September 17, the administration of the CSDM (francophone secondary school board) sent a letter to parents informing them that a pedagogical day would be moved to allow students to participate in the demonstration of the 27th. Beyond the calendar change, the letter was an opportunity for the CSDM to openly threaten students who would seek to strike beyond September 27:

2. Advise your child that in no case may he prevent other students from attending class, since the scolarisation of students is a fundamental right that must be respected;

3. Remind your child that he must show evidence of civility and not participate in blocking access to school in any way whatsoever, with respect to anyone, because this may constitute mischief under the meaning of the law.

All while arranging the calendar to permit protesting on September 27, the CSDM in this way seeks to ensure that the Friday strikes affecting many schools last spring don’t reproduce themselves. It reminds us that institutional days decided from above enable the intermediary powers that are school boards, cegeps, and universities to delegitimize strike days decided from below.

At the university level, the situation at Polytechnique lucidly revealed the fears of power regarding the movement’s development. Despite an electronic vote by students more than 78% in favor of class cancellations, the Polytechnique administration refused to accept the “request” for a levée de cours. Polytechnique director-general Philippe A. Tanguy – former engineer with the French oil company Total – justified this refusal by saying:

“Polytechnique supports this cause, but we are also aware that, unfortunately, this global day of action will not be sufficient to resolve the climate issue; there will be others, and we will not be able to cancel classes for all of these days”.

His justification effectively shows the limits of asking authorities to cancel classes. Despite the adoption of institutional days in many institutions, we cannot forget that a strike never awaited approval by bosses and other authorities to be carried out, and that it’s perfectly normal that it disrupts the institution’s calendar and daily routine, and more largely, society.

The major union federations also played a key role in the disappearance of the strike from public discourse. While various unions began adopting strike mandates for the climate outside of the Labour Code’s legal framework, the union federations explicitly intervened in the movement by demanding that protest organizers stop calling for workers to strike. In place of the collective “Planet on Strike”, formed by workers at the grassroots level, the collective “The Planet Comes to Work” substituted itself, coordinated by union federation leaders. Whereas Planet on Strike aimed to shake up the legality of strikes in Quebec by assuming at the same time the necessity and illegality of the strike, The Planet Comes to Work sought to mobilize workplaces while eliminating all mention of striking from posters, flyers and communications. During the press conference on September 27, Serge Cadieux, spokesperson of The Planet Comes to Work and secretary-general of the FTQ, reminded us of the federations’ lack of political courage by refusing to mention the ten or so unions that had chosen to strike and reaffirming the federations’ submission to the Labour Code. Beyond their lack of political courage to reappropriate the strike outside its legal framework, Serge Cadieux reminded us of the depoliticization of contemporary syndicalism: he affirmed that “there is no opposition between the economy and ecology” and that unions were working with “the world of management” and “the world of finance” in order to confront the climate crisis.

The proximity between the union federations and political and economic power is not new, although one might have thought that in the current context of climate crisis the federations would see the necessity of a rupture with the capitalist system. Far from it! In any case we have no illusions about the union federations’ role in the climate strike movement which has been and will be one of pacification and recuperation.

Through their support of the movement, administrators, politicians and bosses strive to drain environmental questions of all their political character. A flattened “struggle” emerges, without conflict, in which there are no guilty or responsible parties. We all agree on the importance of the environment and we march together to underline it, as if fossil fuel development, the appropriation and destruction of land, or the destruction of rivers and oceans were natural processes escaping our control. Desjardins, National Bank, and CIBC take measures allowing their employees to miss work to protest, MEC closes its stores, alongside a long list of companies ranging from a legal firm to an advertising agency. Joining protesters in the streets, heads of state, ministers and CEOs appear as citizens like the others, who’ll promise to stop buying plastic straws, for their children’s future. They deny the political character of the environmental movement, as if the future of the planet depended more on the good will of each individual than on the decisions they make. By flattening and pacifying what should be a struggle, they try to contain environmental issues within the straitjacket of individual consumption, wherein everyone must do their part, and the 500,000 demonstrators do not realize the collective force that could be produced by their encounter.

Green capitalism’s recuperation of environmental struggles has refined itself now over several decades. It’s probably because these struggles have the capacity to put a colonial and capitalist world into question that they’ve been neutralized so effectively. But for once, the discourse of recuperation sounds oddly false. The generation that grew up surrounded by the same lies, that tell it to study, recycle, work, eat local, and impoverish itself for an increasingly uncertain future, refuses to continue playing the game. Throughout recent months, we’ve seen strike votes passing with huge majorities in unexpected cégeps, illegal strike mandates in local unions, and high school students organizing strikes and weekly demonstrations over many months.

Behind the “strike for the planet” lie questions that largely exceed the stakes within which labor strikes are legally contained. The strike for the planet is not a “pressure tactic” in hopes of getting better working conditions or blocking a tuition hike. Politicians are asked to “do more”, but the rare efforts to define what that could mean fall flat. No demand appears able to contain the extent of the stakes raised by the movement. It’s the very condition of the worker or student subject that could be thrown into question by this strike: why continue studying, working, and investing in your RRSP while the world crumbles beneath our feet? The strike for the planet has the capacity to see itself for what it is, a political strike capable of interrupting the temporality of this death-machine world, a temporality where the growth of capital and colonization is interwoven with the acceleration of ecological catastrophe. In the hour of climate emergency, it is no longer a question of pleading with authority for liberation, but rather of Striking in the most political sense, that is to say destituting our everyday life by collectively retaking each moment of our existences. We can no longer follow the rhythm of a protest movement fenced in by the state. We must strike, interrupt, and radically transform our relation to the world and to time.

Maxime Bernier’s PPC and the Far Right

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Oct 182019

From Montréal Antifasciste

Voting is not really our thing, but we do recognize that this is a time when more people are speaking about politics and policies, including many that will have a real impact on many people’s lives. This time around (not for the first time) the Conservatives are contending with a national party to their right, as Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada fields candidates across the country on a populist platform with climate denial and anti-immigrant sentiment as its key planks.

Maxime Bernier was a federal cabinet minister from 2006-7 and 2011-15 in Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party government. He ran for the Conservative Party leadership in the 2017 leadership election, and came in a close second with over 49% of the vote in the 13th round, after leading the eventual winner, Andrew Scheer, in the first 12 rounds. In August 2018, Bernier resigned from the Conservative Party to create the People’s Party of Canada. The PPC quickly latched onto fears about immigration and immigrants as key issues, alongside support for pipelines and various climate denial conspiracy theories. Indeed, while climate denial is perhaps the most prominent right-wing theme we found on Quebec PPC candidates’ social media accounts, race and racism are what have repeatedly made headlines for Bernier’s populists.

The PPC is part of a (tried and true, worldwide) phenomenon of right-wing splinter parties emerging from the main right-wing party, opening up space on that party’s right. This was done most successfully in Canada by Preston Manning’s Reform Party in the 1990s. The Reform Party emerged to the right of Brian Mulroney’s “mainstream” Progressive Conservatives in 1987 and was so successful that it displaced the PCs before re-joining them in 2000. Like the PPC today, Reform attracted widespread support from right-wing Canadians, most of whom were disaffected Tories, but also a smattering of neo-Nazis and far rightists who jumped on the bandwagon before being eventually expelled. Reform ended up absorbing the rump PC party, and rebranded itself as the “new” more right-wing Conservative Party under Stephen Harper. This in turn provided Bernier with a home for his own political career, from which the PPC has now emerged. In other words, the PPC is part of a dynamic of a section of Canadian voters pushing to the right that has been going on for decades. In a certain sense: nothing new; however, we must keep in mind that both the global and national contexts today are far more favourable to the far right, and it is not for nothing than many Bernier supporters compare his “outsider” campaign to that of Donald Trump.

While the PPC is not even close to being a Nazi or fascist party, even as he ran for Conservative leadership in 2017, Bernier was being singled out by some Canadian neo-Nazis as a potential “maverick” who could help to shake things up in their favour, much as Trump had done in the United States. They weren’t wrong – since founding the PPC, Bernier had adopted a strategy of using racist dogwhistles to try to consolidate support from the most reactionary white Canadian voters. As such, the party has become a pole of attraction for numerous far rightists hoping to either build political power or (for the more far-sighted) to move the frame of debate further to the right. Collecting selfies alongside Bernier had become a pastime for a slice of Canadian reactionaries even before media reports about neo-nazis like Alex Brisson from Huntingdon, Paul Fromm of Ontario, and members of the Northern Guard in Alberta, as well as with members of the Proud Boys, all posing with “Mad Max”.

There have been suggestions (for instance made by B’nai B’rith Canada) that Martin Masse, PPC spokesperson and architect of its public relations strategy, has been key to its embrace of the far right. Masse was owner and publisher of Québécois Libre, an online libertarian news outlet that shut down in 2016. That the PPC’s cozy relationship with racists is primarily due to the influence of one person is highly doubtful, however – rather, the PPC is positioning itself as the option-of-choice for those who find the Conservatives insufficiently right-wing.

Racism is clearly one of the most effective tools for such a strategy, witness PPC billboards and tweets against “mass immigration” and also “against antifa,” or Bernier’s diatribe about “radical Islam” being “the biggest threat to freedom, peace and security in the world today.” “The other parties are complacent and pander to Islamists,” Bernier accused, promising that “The PPC will make no compromise with this totalitarian ideology.” Bernier’s platform calls for a massive reduction in immigration to Canada, down to between 100,000 and 150,000 new immigrants per year, and almost doubling the number of “economic migrants”. He also wants the government to cut off all funding for official multiculturalism, to leave the United Nations Global Compact for Migration and to prioritize refugees who, among other things, “reject political Islam.”(About all this, one might want to check out this article in Politico magazine, that has observed that attitudes towards immigrants have become a key factor in determining which political party Canadians support.)

Such a strategy involves a balancing act. To succeed, Bernier and the PPC have to play to the crowd with lines that the far right will recognize and embrace, all the while not making themselves appear beyond the pale. Perhaps that is why Bernier was a no-show at last year’s December protest in Ottawa against the United Nations Compact on Migration. Organized by the anti-Muslim group ACT for Canada, Bernier was scheduled to speak alongside members of La Meute, Rasmus Paludan of the Danish far-right Stram Kurs political party, and Travis Patron of the (actually white nationalist) Canadian Nationalist Party, before he backed out at the last minute.

A number of media articles have revealed the far-right connections of people active in the PPC as organizers and members whose signatures were used for the PPC to attain official party status. For instance:

Darik Horn, a PPC volunteer and also security agent who has accompanied Bernier at a variety of events and media interviews, has been revealed to be a founding member of the neo-fascist Canadian Nationalist Party.
Shaun Walker, an American immigrant and organizer with the PPC in St Catharines, as well as one of those who signed for the PPC to become an official party, was revealed to have been the president of the National Alliance (a U.S.-based neo-Nazi organization) in 2007, and also to have been convicted of hate crimes at the time for violence against people of colour. Following these revelations Walker was expelled from the PPC, and Bernier claimed he had slipped through the party’s vetting process. However, it was also revealed that Bernier himself followed Walker on twitter.
Others who signed for the PPC to become an official party include Janice Bultje, a founding member of PEGIDA Canada (under the name “Jenny Hill”), and Justin L. Smith, leader of the Sudbury chapter of the Soldiers of Odin.

Unsurprisingly, a number of PPC candidates have made headlines as their social media posts past and present have come to light:

Brian Everaert, the PPC candidate for Sarnia-Lambton posted tweets that called Islam a “wart on the ass of the world,” as well as posts about Hilary Clinton and arming teachers. Bernier refused to condemn Everaert.
A variety of racist and transphobic posts on social media are revealed to have been made by Bill Capes, the PPC candidate for Essex.
Kamloops PPC candidate Ken Finlayson posted on social media comparing climate activist Greta Thunberg to a girl featured in Nazi propaganda from the 1940s.
Sybil Hogg, the PPC candidate for Sackville-Preston-Chezzetcook, made a series of posts on Twitter and Facebook with anti-Islam statements within the last year, including one where she characterized Islam as being “pure evil”.

These stories are misleading, though, in that they suggest that the PPC has a few bad apples in it, whereas really the whole party is rife with such sentiments. One gauge of this, and a sign that it is intentional, is those candidates who have left (or been kicked out) when it became clear that there would be no condemnation of the far right from the upper ranks:

On September 12, Brian Misera was removed as PPC candidate for Coquitlam–Port Coquitlam after he publicly called upon the party leadership to publicly repudiate racism.
On September 30, Chad Hudson, who had been the People’s Party candidate for the Nova Scotia riding of West Nova, quit the party due to its racism, explaining that “I firmly believe now that I’m doing more of a service to this community by calling out this hate and this garbage than actually remaining in the race.”
On October 8, Victor Ong, PPC candidate for Winnipeg North, resigned, bemoaning the fact that the PPC “has attracted all manner of fringe, scores of conspiracy theorists and a host of ugliness from coast to coast. That’s not to mention Bernier’s embittered base, replete with ‘white is right’ ideology and (Make America Great Again) hat-wearing members.”

Indeed, a cursory examination of the Facebook pages of PPC candidates reveals that what is really noteworthy is how selective news stories about racist tweets or FB posts have been. Almost every single PPC candidate in Quebec has recently (and repeatedly) shared articles from climate denialist sources, including many with a clearly conspiratorial bent. Mark Sibthorpe, candidate for Papineau, even produced his own YouTube “exposé” revealing how George Soros is behind an international globalist conspiracy to crash economies and make money by spreading panic about climate change. Secondary to climate denial, fears about threats to “free speech” and about “mass immigration” are both recurring themes for Quebec’s PPC candidates, and roughly one in five have recently shared articles from what we would term “national populist” or far-right sources, including LesManchettes.com, the website of André Boies (the French-language translator of the Christchurch killer’s “Great Replacement” manifesto, associated with Montreal’s Yellow Vests), André Pitre’s far-right “Stu Dio” YouTube channel, and a more eclectic and sporadic mix, including Faith Goldy, Alexis Cossette Trudel, Black Pigeon Speaks, the Yellow Vests, and the highly racist “Voice of Europe”.

Still, PPC candidates are not all cut from the same cloth – for some, this is their first foray into politics, whereas others have been around for a while. For instance, Ken Pereira, the whistleblower from the 2013 Charbonneau Commission, was slated to run for the PPC as one of its Quebec candidates, until he had to withdraw his candidacy in early September following his son’s arrest for murder. Pereira produces videos on André Pitre’s YouTube channel, alleging all manner of far-fetched conspiracies, including those relating to QAnon, described by Vice as “a wild theory that an individual who goes by ‘Q’ is leaking information detailing a massive secret war Trump is waging against the ‘deep state’ and an international cabal of pedophiles—and calling the 9/11 terror attacks a ‘false flag.’”

Similarly, Raymond Ayas, who writes for the Postmillenial and is active in the Catholic far right in Quebec, is running as PPC candidate for Ahuntsic-Cartierville. As spokesperson for the Association des parents catholiques du Québec, in 2017 Ayas was reported in the media defending a talk by Jean-Claude Dupuis of the Société-St Pie X and a former leader of the Cercle Jeune Nation and Marion Sigaut (close to Alain Soral in France). It might be noted that members of Atalante were reported to have been on hand at the talk to provide security.

The PPC will be lucky to win more than a couple of ridings in Canada, and may simply fizzle and die. Or it may consolidate a bloc of voters to the right of the Conservatives, making the framework of political debate in Canada even more hostile to racialised people, Indigenous people, Muslims, and immigrants. Either way, the racists and reactionaries who have gravitated around the PPC are unlikely to just go away, and some may be around for years to come; if for nothing else, that makes them worth taking a look at, and keeping an eye on.

Call to Action: Solidarity with Rojava—Against the Turkish Invasion!

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Oct 102019

From CrimethInc.

Demonstration today (Thursday) at 6pm in front of the Turkish Consulate (1250 René-Lévesque ouest) – Facebook event

On October 6, the Trump administration announced it was pulling US troops out of northern Syria, essentially giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a green light to invade Rojava, carry out ethnic cleansing, and forcibly resettle the area. We are calling for people around the world to engage in protest and/or disruption at Turkish consulates, US government offices, arms manufacturers, and businesses connected with the Turkish government, such as Turkish Airlines.

Since 2012, the autonomous region of Rojava has hosted an inspiring multi-ethnic experiment in self-determination and women’s autonomy, all while fighting the Islamic State (ISIS). After years of struggle, despite sustaining massive casualties, fighters from Rojava participated in liberating all of the territory that ISIS had occupied and freeing those who had been held captive in ISIS strongholds.

In an attempt to justify permitting Turkey to invade Syria, Trump has tweeted that US taxpayers should not have to pay to keep ISIS fighters detained. In fact, the US has not paid a cent to detain captured ISIS fighters; that has been completely organized by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The reality is that the Turkish invasion of Kurdish territory will create the conditions for ISIS to reemerge and resume operations in Syria and around the world. For years, Turkey has permitted weapons, recruits, and resources to reach ISIS through its borders.

Both ISIS and the Turkish invasion pose an existential threat to all the ethnic and religious groups indigenous to the region, including Arabs, Christians (Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Syriacs), Turkmens, Chechens, Alevites, and Yazidis. Many of these groups have gained a voice in their own lives for the first time, yet now face massacre at the hands of the Turkish military and the jihadists.

Turkey’s invasion of Rojava sets a new precedent for military aggression, ethnic cleansing, and the destruction of egalitarian and feminist experiments like the one in Rojava. It sets the stage for more bloodshed and oppression everywhere around the world, paving the way for ethno-nationalist autocrats like Trump, Erdoğan, Bashar al-Assad, Jair Bolsonaro, and Vladimir Putin to dominate world politics for generations to come.

For months, people in Rojava have called for international solidarity in the event of an invasion. We must bring attention to the plight of the people in Rojava and make it known that there will be consequences for this.

To keep silent is to be complicit.

We call on all people of good conscience to engage in protest and disruption at Turkish consulates, US government offices, arms manufacturers, and businesses connected with the Turkish government, such as Turkish Airlines. The Rojava Solidarity Committee Europe has joined organizers in Rojava in calling for a day of action on October 12 against the Turkish invasion; we endorse this call, and call for further actions before and after October 12.

We need to build a context for broad-based direct action as a step towards building a global movement that can make such atrocities impossible. Together, we can stop the invasion.

See you in the streets.

Tools

Endorsements

If your organization endorses this call, please circulate this text and contact us at coordination.for.rojava@protonmail.com to sign on. This list will be updated regularly at crimethinc.com and itsgoingdown.org.

Coordination for the Defense of Rojava
1312 Press
Acid Communist League of Atlanta
Agency (www.anarchistagency.com/)
Horacio Almanza Alcalde
Angry Socialist Community – ASC (@AngrySocialists)
Anon Anarchist Action
Antifascists of the Seven Hills
Antifascistas Belo Horizonte – Brazil
Atlanta Antifascists
The Autonomous University of Political Education
The Base
Bay Area Mesopotamia Solidarity Committee
Black Rose Anarchist Federation – Los Angeles Local
Black Socialists of America
Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross
The Boiling Point Collective (http://facebook.com/pg/boilingpointkzoo/about/)
The Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen, Unitarian Universalist Minister, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Houston
Breakaway Social Center
Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists
Cooperation Jackson
CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective
The Dandelion Network
Decolonize This Place (decolonizethisplace.org)
Demand Utopia Seattle
Democratic Socialists of America – Communist Caucus
Denver Anarchist Black Cross
Direct Action Front for Palestine
DC Antifascist Coalition
Ricardo Dominguez, Associate Professor, UCSD
Economics for Everyone – Olympia (facebook.com/EconomicsforEveryoneOly/)
Extinction Rebellion Seattle
The Fayer Collective
The Final Straw
Frontline Organization Working to End Racism (FLOWER)
Flyover Social Center
David Graeber
Hispagatos
The Holler Network
Industrial Workers of the World – Atlanta
Inhabit
It’s Going Down
Kali Akuno
Kasa Invisível Belo Horizonte – Brazil
Knoxville Anti-Fascist Action
The Lucy Parsons Center
Midwest Unrest (@MW_Unrest)
No Space for Hate Bloomington (https://nospace4hate.btown-in.org/)
Noumenon Distro
Olympia Solidarity Network (olyassembly.org/olysol/)
One People’s Project (idavox.com)
Pacific NorthWest Antifascist Workers Collective
Dr. Ian Alan Paul, Assistant Professor of Emerging Media at Stony Brook University
People’s Defense League – South Louisiana
PM Press (www.pmpress.org/)
Progressive Global Commons (@ProGloCommons)
rek2 (as individual)
Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement- Elm City
Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement – NYC
Revolutionary Organizing Against Racism (ROAR Collective)
The Right to the City – Timisoara, Romania
Rojava Montréal
Rojava Solidarity Colorado (@RojavaSoliCO)
Rojava Solidarity Portland (facebook.com/rojavasolidarityportland/)
Rojava Solidarity Seattle
Scuffletown Anti-Repression Committee
Seattle Rising Tide
Micol Seigel, author of Violence Work
Soflaexit (Soflaexit.com)
Solidarity Against Fascism East Bay (SAFEBay)
Sprout Distro
Tar Sands Blockade – Texas
The Teardown Community
The Torch Antifascist Network
Voices in Movement
A World Without Police
Youth Liberation Front (Portland, Seattle, Wisconsin, Carolina, Bay Area, Illinois)

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