Last February, the Poubelle Alliance Facebook page, which takes great pleasure in satirizing the identity group Nouvelle Alliance, which we’ve written about on several occasions (notably here and here), revealed alleged links between NA and the Action socialiste de libération nationale (ASLN, formerly the Parti communiste du Québec).
It was already clear that this groupuscule was from a section of the left we weren’t all that thrilled with: retrograde and ossified in its thinking, nationalist, anti-woke (in plain English, reactionary) and, true to the red-brown tradition, uncritical of autocratic regimes. After leaving Québec solidaire to throw its support behind its Parti québécois “comrades” Péladeau and Lisée—see “Le Parti communiste appuie… le PQ” (Journal de Québec, 2018); “Des communistes séduits par PKP” (La Presse, 2014)—the party’s youth wing seems to have fallen under the Stalinist spell, rehabilitating Enver Hoaxa, prime minister of Albania for over forty years, and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
A quick look at the ASLN’s website and recent communications (including attempts at memes that could only be described as complete crap) is enough to reveal the deeply cringe-worthy nature of this tawdry trifle, both in form and content.
Folkloric portrait gallery on display during an ASLN “training camp” last February. On the right, the always relevant Joseph Stalin. Yikes.A sampling of the ASLN’s avant-garde memetics.
The exact nature of the ties between the ASLN and Nouvelle Alliance has been somewhat fuzzy, but we now have enough to allow us to hypothesize. While it might seem strange that a group that claims to be left-wing, however reactionary it may be, would actively extend a hand to activists on the far right of the political spectrum on the basis of a shared aspiration for Québec’s independence. However, we now have tangible proof of this rapprochement.
On March 24, the ASLN posted an invitation to a “Colloque des patriotes” to be held in Desbiens, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, on May 3–4, featuring a “debate” between ASLN and Nouvelle Alliance “leaders.” ASLN’s “leader” Billy Savoie subsequently promoted the event and the debate, promising to confront Nouvelle Alliance’s “nonsense”—that and a lot of other noise.
As we see it, holding a debate with ethnonationalists effectively legitimizes them, and any openness to them indicates a willingness to engage with their toxic ideology.
Beyond that, it’s questionable that the ASLN actually holds any positions that would actually challenge Nouvelle Alliance’s “nonsense” or even provide the basis for an interesting and relevant “debate” (spoiler alert: expectations are low). Here’s Billy Savoie’s response to a comment on the post announcing the colloquium:
The “leader” of the ASLN, Billy Savoie, explains here to an internet commenter that his organization’s communism is not radical-left… We can only agree.
Anti-woke nationalists deflecting attention from their reactionary essence by including a few tokenized people of color. . . on that basis, the difference from Nouvelle Alliance is hard to see. Fans of the Parti Québécois, Catholics, and opponents to “mass migration”; it’s more like the communist ASLN is trying to outdo Nouvelle Alliance in backwardness to carve out a niche for itself in the nationalist/independence scene. . . all the while waving a red flag.
It’s fairly evident that wanting to nationalize multinationals—if they’re foreign—and support PMEs—as long as they have the nationalist stamp of approval—has more or less become a typical communist feature. Communism that doesn’t aspire to abolish oppressive systems has already gone off the rails, but to declare oneself a communist and nationalist, while proposing social policies largely in line with those of a far-right group is nothing more than toxic red-brownism.
The ASLN, it would seem, is playing directly into Nouvelle Alliance’s hands, legitimizing its orientation and giving it yet another platform to promote its narrow vision of the French-Canadian nation.
Nouvelle Alliance has always claimed to be neither right nor left, despite its clearly reactionary platform and its many fascist-adjacent and full-blown fascist sympathizers! Whatever its leaders may say, the ASLN seems to be bending over backward to give a group of right-wing activists a platform to amplify their message.
Nouvelle Alliance’s activists increasingly find themselves in situation where the only people still willing to talk to them are people who are clearly confused (to say the least).
Given this obvious rightward drift, the shine is coming off of the ASLN, its activists are finding themselves personae non grata in pro-independence circles, and some of the group’s founders have disappeared from its publications.
Could it be that kissing up to the far right has created tensions within what is allegedly a left-wing organization? Might it be that other members of their central committee understand who really benefits from this grotesque rapprochement?
One of the “leaders” of the ASLN, Sébastien Paquette, greets the “leader” of Nouvelle Alliance, François Gervais.
Bonus track :
Billy Savoie, who is apparently a high school teacher, gives his Secondary 5 students readings by Alexander Dugin, infamous for being the ideological conscience of Vladimir Putin and as the founder of the National-Bolchevik movement.
Comments Off on Trans day of vengeance W: quebecor trashed, cybertruck wrekt
Apr022025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
In the spirit of Trans Day of Vengeance and April Fool’s Day, a cell of trans anarchists crashed the fuck out, targeting transphobe media and transphobe truck. Around 4:30 in the morning, angered by the police violence at the trans vengeance demo, armed and masked trannies took their vengeance to Quebecor, parent company of Journal de Montreal, TVA, and more. These media outlets have consistently spewed transphobic, bigoted and fascist poppycock into the news cycle. Around 5 windows of their square victoria headquarters were smashed to shit, light pink paint was sprayed on the windows and inside the entrance, and fireworks were tossed in.
As they were dispersing, the trannies stumbled across a beautiful parked cybertruck. Angered by elon musk’s transphobic and fascistic rampage, the little transes jumped on this golden opportunity. “Fuck Nazis” was tagged on the back in bright pink, red paint covered the sides, and the front windows and windshield were smashed to smithereens.
Happy april fools, elon, go suck a trans dick
And happy trans day of “visibility” to all. May our rage and revenge be visible to all those who wish us harm <3
Comments Off on What’s Happening in Turkey — From an anti-Authoritarian Perspective
Mar312025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Why the current uprising in Turkey deserves our support.
Background
The Republic of Turkey, which was founded on the genocide of the Armenians in the region with a nationalist and murderous leaven, has not changed much in the past century. For non-Muslims, Kurds, Alevis and women who did not hold the majority and power in their hands, the state and its successfully constructed society were always a source of oppression. But starting in 2002, as a consequence of Erdoğan’s dictatorship, oppression, poverty, violence and exploitation started to be felt also by the majority of the society. In 2013, after increasing bans and oppressions, millions of people stood up for their freedoms in the Gezi Park riot that took place in cities all over the country. The months-long resistance ended with unprecedented national-scale police attacks in which eight young people aged 15-22 were killed and thousands detained. Since 2014, the Turkish state has become a police state, and after the 2016 fictitious coup attempt, it has been ruled with absolute authoritarianism under the state of emergency. Since 2021, as a result of the economic crisis that has escalated with great momentum, 60% of the population now lives below the hunger line.
Millions of people, forced into more misery every year, believed that the government and this situation would change in every election, but Erdoğan, who controls the media and the justice system, has never allowed this to happen through fear and manipulation. In the meantime, in order to prevent oppressed groups from coming together, he created a deep hatred within society, labeling each day a new community as terrorist-enemy-foreign agent: Kurds, Alevis, university students, syndicators, lawyers, journalists, academics. While these people were imprisoned on terrorism charges through state courts, those who were still out of prison were fooled by the propaganda that those imprisoned were terrorists. ‘Terror’ became a magic word for Erdoğan to maintain his power, while people who challenged authority ended up in prison, exile or death. In this way, he created zombified individuals and society that is losing its power day by day and collapsing politically, economically and morally. It is exactly in this context that the current uprising is being driven by the youth, who have never seen a mass uprising in their lives, but who have taken to the streets saying ‘nothing can be worse than living this way’. Millions of young people who have been brought up with the teaching that the previous rebels were terrorists and that the state and the police were friends, at least in theoretical terms, are now facing a different reality. Let us take a closer look at these protests.
Towards the 19 March ‘coup’
On the morning of 19 March 2025, hundreds of police arrested Ekrem İmamoğlu from his home – the mayor of Istanbul, who is believed to be a presidential candidate in the next election and to defeat Erdoğan- on terrorism and corruption charges. While the incident sparked widespread outrage in Turkey and around the world, Imamoğlu was not the first metropolitan mayor in Turkey to be dismissed and detained by the Turkish courts. Since 2016, many elected mayors from Kurdish cities have been dismissed, arrested and replaced by a government official in similar operations. The fact that these Kurdish mayors have been accused of these magical terrorism offenses has convinced the majority of Turkish public to legitimize this and not to oppose it. The silence against this injustice in Kurdish cities empowered Erdoğan to do the same to other mayors run by the CHP (second largest political party, turkish-nationalist centre-left) and prepared the ground for this ‘coup’ on 19 March. The detention of even this highly popular, politically powerful, rich, Turkish, Sunni, privileged man on magical terrorism charges for opposing Erdogan has caused great shock and outrage. Now the honour of being a terrorist could be awarded not only to marginalised people, but to anyone who did not take Erdoğan’s side.
While the public dissent was being destroyed a little more every year, the people who had kept silent in deference to the state, the media and the courts had now found themselves in the target list. Thus, thousands of young people who had even forgotten how to dream under poverty, restrictions and oppression, and who had not yet been labeled as terrorists, suddenly woke up from their sleep or finally exploded in anger and took to the streets in many cities across Turkey on 19 March to start protests. Although it is difficult to say that the protesters are homogeneous, it is possible to say that the majority of them are gen-z who have no previous protest experience for the reasons described above, who have not been able to get out of the fear bubble created by the government, who have been exposed to the very intense social engineering of the Turkish state through institutions such as school, media, family, etc., but who are now unable to breathe out of despair and want change. Although the detention of Ekrem İmamoğlu was a spark for these young people to take to the streets, they started to express their anger and demands on many issues by saying ‘the issue is not only about imamoğlu, have you not understood yet?’.
Encountering the state and overcoming the fear wall
Like almost every other gathering in Turkey, these protests were responded with massive violence by the police. For the first time, the protesters encountered the police, who not only wanted to disperse the crowd, but also to make everyone there pay a price for being there; who saw themselves as having the authority to punish people without the need for judgment, who were arrogant, bully, brutal, who had a personal hatred for the protesters and personal pleasure in torturing them, who were sure that they would not be held accountable for any of their violence. The protesters, who until then had regarded the police as a regular job like teaching, nursing or engineering, were unaware of how the police had become more mafia-like and monster-like every year, by hunting down ‘yesterday’s terrorists’. Thousands of youth seeing enemy law being applied to them too were brutally attacked by the police using an unbelievable amount of tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons in one night. Faced with a massive attack, the majority of these young people did not know how to protect themselves in such an attack, how to care for each other, how to organise themselves. For some of them, responding to the police would mean being a ‘traitor’ or a ‘terrorist’, so they just froze, while a larger number, thinking that they had nothing to lose, broke the legitimacy of the police and responded to police violence with resistance. Having had the opportunity to express their anger for the first time, they covered their faces and threw everything they could at the police, danced in front of the water cannons instead of running away from them, and discovered that the power and legitimacy of the police was something that could be overcome. They did not seem to have a strategic plan for where this protest was going, nor did they seem to have a well-thought-out political consciousness. But the night was dominated by anger and a sense of having been heard for once, and this in itself was highly political, and the night ended with many injuries and arrests.
It was the first time since 2013 that there was such a massive protest with hours of resistance against the police. Although the protests were not shown on any TV channel, they were followed by many people through social media. The wall of fear was crossed for many people who realised that it was possible to oppose, to challenge the state, to rebel. The next day, more and more people took to the streets in more cities in Turkey to protest. At the same time, the Turkish state nationwide restricted the internet bands, taking minutes to upload even a ten-second video to the internet. Experienced protesters who supported the protests both at the streets and online informed people that this problem could be overcome with a VPN. And this time, the Turkish state blocked access to about 200 X accounts of journalists, legal associations, media collectives and political parties through Elon Musk. On the same day, the High Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK) prohibited any live broadcasts on TV channels. Again on the same day, although not directly related to the protests, the Board of Directors of the Istanbul Bar Association, known to oppose Erdoğan, was dismissed by a court decision.
At the same time, many lawyers from different cities who wanted to defend the detained protesters were also detained in police stations and courthouses. The number of detainees was increasing all the time, and some were ordered to be imprisoned or house arrest. The mayor, Ekrem Imamoğlu and around a hundred politicians, who had been detained the previous day, were still being questioned at the police station. All this oppression and fear did not discourage people from protesting in the streets, but only fueled it. During the protests, MPs who took the microphone and gave speeches hoping for help from the election and the law were booed. The youth were pressuring the MPs to make a call to the streets, not to the ballot box, and this was accepted. This moment itself was another threshold point because ‘calling for the streets’ had been recognised as illegitimate in the law and society fabricated by Erdoğan for years. The fact that MPs who were engaged in ‘legal’ politics dared to do so was itself quite surprising for everyone. It was as if thousands of people, one by one, were crossing the invisible wall that the whole society did not know whether it really existed or not, but no one dared to go beyond it, and they were looking around in bewilderment in this land they had never set foot in, wondering what would happen to them.
Nothing is more horrible than living this way.
Strategy of the Turkish State
Many long-established social opposition actors in Turkey made widespread calls for these protests, condemned the arrest of imamoğlu, supported the youth’s legitimate demands for justice, democracy and freedom, and stood up against police violence and bans. On the other hand, the Kurdish political movement (DEM Party), one of the strongest established actors of street protest, chose to limit its support to its high-level party leaders. Only party representatives made a symbolic visit to the centre of the protest, and released a statement declaring Imamoğlu’s detention as a coup d’état. The DEM Party’s support for such a large and widespread uprising, where ‘ordinary citizens’ were able to protest for the first time in years, could have been a game changer for the fate of the country and could have put Erdoğan in a harder position than ever before. From today’s perspective, it is not difficult to guess what was behind Erdoğan’s intention to start a peace process with the PKK in the past few weeks. However, why the DEM Party took such a stance remains a more complex question, the answer to which is left to be answered by history. Nevertheless, at this stage I think it is more important to talk about the results rather than the reasons, because the DEM Party’s distance has had two important consequences. The police on the street as well as Erdoğan in the political Arena, managed to escape from a very important threat. The participation of the DEM party and the Kurdish youth in the protest could have make Erdoğan’s job very more difficult. Compared to the Gezi Park riots, the lack of experience, resilience, organizational skills and determination that the DEM Party and Kurdish youth could have brought in the protest was clearly noticeable.
I think that if Erdoğan and his police had one single wish for this time, they would use it to keep the Kurds away from these protests. The second of the results explains this better: The absence of the Kurds as a collective in this field gave more space to the nationalist and statist tendency, which was already quite strong among the protesters. Leaving aside the argument that this is both a cause and a consequence of the absence of the DEM Party, it should be noted that this crowd, which was uniformised in terms of ethnic identity, tended to be uniformised in other issues as well, with the result that those among the protesters who struggle with an intersectional approach, such as Kurds, feminists, LGBTI+s, socialists, anarchists, animal rights defenders, etc., became even more ‘marginalised’ in the protests and were understandably hesitant to be visible with these identities, for example, to hold up a rainbow flag, for their own safety. In most cities, LGBTI+ people did not feel safe to come to the protests collectively, nor an individual queer could figure out with whom they would feel safe at the protests. If Erdoğan and his police could make a second wish, they would definitely choose to wish that an intersectional struggle would not emerge from these protests. Because intersectionality, both in terms of the number and the quality it would bring, was Erdoğan’s worst nightmare. Because the future, the sustainability and the direction of this legitimate anger that emerged in the protests and whether it would ever threaten the state or not depended on its intersectional character. As explained at length above, Erdoğan had manage to achieve his current absolute authority through his precise policy of destroying the grounds of intersectionality. There was no doubt that the joining forces of all the oppressed in these protests would benefit all the oppressed and disadvantage their common enemy. However, I regret to say that Erdoğan and his police seem to be having good luck and their two most desirable wishes are being realised in the uprising that has been taking place since 19 March.
Happening now: widespread resistance against a very violent repression
As of today, 27 March, the protests still continue with the character I mentioned above. In the past week, queers, feminists, anarchists, socialists… have made significant progress in becoming more visible and giving the protests a revolutionary character. Simultaneously, the launching of a massive boycott campaign against many government related companies caused a great panic. On the same day, seeing high-ranking government officials giving pose in boycotted companies and advertising their products in support of these companies proved once again that we were officially at war: The Turkish state criminal organisation and its capital had declared a war against everyone they perceived as a threat to their interests. Apparently, their priority was not even to arrest people in this war, but to collect data on who was on the opposing front. It was not for nothing that the police, who surrounded the demonstration at the universities yesterday, said that they would release the protesters in exchange for removing their masks. Meanwhile, several guides on personal data security posted on social media by those who have been on the streets for years have been life-saving. While Erdoğan’s professors at some universities have been sharing attendance sheets with the police to mark students who are not attending classes these days, many professors who supported the call for an academic boycott have already been dismissed from their posts. Although I have said that arrests are not the first priority, the prisons around Istanbul have reached their capacity and new detainees are expected to be sent to prisons in nearby cities. It is surprising only for those who do not know the real function of the law that dozens of people have now been arrested for the minor offense of ‘violation of the law on meetings and demonstrations’, which was not taken seriously in previous years because most of the time people did not even receive a fine as a result of the trial.
Resist queer!
The necessity to take the side of the stone thrown at the police, not the person who throws it
We are at a point where it is once again clear that the approach taught to us by classical justice system and politicians, that we should unconditionally take the side of one of those in conflict, or that the status of victim and perpetrator should be two different people/identities that are strictly separated from each other, is leading us into a trap. It is so striking to watch how so many of 16-24 year old protesters, who are ready to threaten and expel Kurds or LGBTI+s who would come to the protests with their open identities and visibility, based on the mandatory education they have received from Erdoğan’s school, media and family, become perpetrators and victims at the same time. Since 19 March, as victims of the state in this uprising, if more than 2000 people have been detained, thousands of people have been injured – some of them fatally -, dozens of people have already been put in prison, unknown numbers of people have been kicked out of their families’ homes, universities, jobs, and have been labeled as terrorists by the intelligence services, this is partly because of the power they have lost as a result of their role as perpetrators. I see that this trap has caught on among some ‘yesterday’s terrorists’ and that a significant part of them, in particular in the Kurdish political party, which have spent their lives fighting against the state are at best indifferent to the violence of the state and the justified demands of the protesters. I also interpret the lack of knowledge and the silence of the antifascist movement in Switzerland and Europe in this light. Therefore, I feel a responsibility to explain what is happening in this uprising to other rebels around the world, because explaining that the current uprising, despite its complexity, deserves international support and solidarity can only be possible with an anti-authoritarian perspective that does not fall into the trap of taking sides, which is about to disappear in Turkey. It is possible to support this uprising without victim blaming of someone for being tortured by the police and without excusing the same person as a perpetrator for attempting to suppress the Kurdish banner.
Where to place such a controversial uprising?
This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported, because the protesters are not only nationalist/apolitical generation z. Many queer, Kurdish, anarchist, socialist, anti-speciesist, feminist, people who believe in intersectional struggle… are raising their voices against injustice and resisting the Turkish state in the streets today as they have been doing for years. Despite their fear of the majority of protesters, they prefer to be on the streets and they are bearing a heavier share from state violence. The complexity of this uprising means that they need support more than ever. Backing this uprising is essential for them to come out of it with some regained ground or at least without being further pushed back. This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported because, one by one, the protesters, even if they harbour counter-revolutionary ideas, are legitimate in what they are revolting against, and this is what determines the legitimacy of an uprising: The organs and policies of the Turkish state, symbolised by Erdoğan. It does not matter that the majority of protesters want the dictator Erdoğan to fall and be replaced by the nationalist Imamoğlu. Today, we can stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight to bring down Erdoğan and tomorrow, we can part ways when the demand is to replace him with İmamoğlu. Once we have destroyed the biggest existing power, then we will fight to destroy the second biggest power, and then the third, until there is no power above us. This anarchist point of view calls for the support of any threat to Erdoğan, his state, his police, his judiciary. Criticism of these protests shouldn’t serve to isolate the uprising, but rather to inform the debates that will follow if it succeeds.
This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported because a dictator is using all the power and resources of the Turkish state, which has become a ‘criminal organisation’, to massacre people who do not have these power and resources, regardless of who they are. Not only protesters, but also their lawyers, journalists documenting torture, doctors treating the wounded at the protests, those who speak out about it, those who open their doors to people affected by the tear gas, anyone who is not in absolute obedience is now being punished. In the Turkey of 2025, where the state controls all private and public aspects of life and all our potential support is dismantled, Erdoğan surviving this uprising would mean leaving everyone who has ever questioned his authority locked in a burning building. This might be the first, only, and last chance we’ve had in years to act against Erdoğan’s power. That’s why any support for this uprising or any blow struck against its target, the Turkish state carries vital significance. This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported because for those who do not hold power and the majority, women, Kurds, Alevis, queers, the poor, youth, immigrants, ‘yesterday’s terrorists’, the first step toward breathing, being heard, and gaining freedom is the collapse of the current order. This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported, because this may be the last chance for us ‘yesterday’s terrorists’, who have already been imprisoned and forced into exile for rebelling for years, to see the daylight again in the country we were born.
Montréal, November 30, 2024—Last night was the second of three nights of the Messe des Morts black metal festival, at the Théâtre Paradoxe, in Montreal’s Ville-Émard district. An anti-fascist demonstration was held to denounce the chronic complacency of the festival and many fans of the genre toward the National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM), or neo-Nazi, current that infuses this milieu, particularly the presence in this year’s program of at least four bands linked to this current by their themes, affiliations, and collaborations.
As a result of a campaign to pressure the promoter, Sepulchral Productions, and the venue’s management, Paradoxe, three of the problematic bands—Horna, Sargeist, and Chamber of Unlight, those with the clearest links to NSBM—were denied entry to Canada as a national security threat, according to the promoter’s press release. Two other bands, Conifère and Phobocosm, had withdrawn from the program in the days leading up to the festival, for “obvious” reasons in the first case and “personal” reasons in the latter.
Nonetheless, the Swedish band Marduk, whose thematic obsessions with the military exploits of the SS and Wehrmacht during the World War II, which we’ve already addressed elsewhere, not only managed to play their scheduled gigs but also filled open slots on short notice, performing on all three nights of the festival.
Outside the theater, some two hundred people answered the call and joined the demonstration organized by the Montréal Antifasciste collective, the culmination of a sustained campaign of denunciation and mobilization that lasted several weeks. The diverse and combative crowd included residents of the neighbourhood, Southwest Montréal community groups, and a number of autonomous contingents gathered behind the banners of the SITT-IWW and the local chapter of Independent Jewish Voices.
A lot of pork on the hoof for the Messe des Morts…
Unfortunately, from the outset, the demonstration was surrounded and paralyzed by a massive police presence: several hundred officers on foot, on bikes, in cars, and on horses, spread over two city blocks, forming a tight perimeter around the theater. Although some fifty comrades managed to temporarily thwart this force, it proved far too imposing for us to effectively and sustainably challenge. At around 5:45 p.m., the demonstration was rendered immobile on Monk Boulevard, less than a hundred metres from the theater. The police then set up a checkpoint further south, triaged people and directed ticket holders down a parallel street that allowed them to bypass the unsafe perimeter and reach the theater entrance. It’s fair to say that on this particular evening the police literally carried the fascists’ water. It’s worth noting that a number of the SPVM officers on the front line were wearing the “Thin Blue Line” patch, a recognized far-right symbol. Wearing it is discouraged, but it has not yet been prohibited by the police service.
As absurd as it may seem, the local neo-Nazi milieu’s steroid-ridden mascot turned up at around 6:00 p.m., to “troll our small gathering.” After a tense five-minute standoff, he left with his tail between his legs. Under the circumstances, a physical altercation would inevitably have triggered a brutal and disastrous police intervention. We commend our comrades for keeping their cool in the face of this flagrant provocation.
(An aside, in passing, to the politicians—and the media—who have hallucinations of antisemitism every time there’s a Palestinian solidarity demonstration: the real antisemites, the fucking neo-Nazis, are right in front of your face, and you choose to send your rabid dogs to protect them.)
After an hour on site chanting antifascist slogans (“Siamo tutti antifascisti!” “Ville-Émard en a marre, des fachos et des bâtards!” [Ville-Émard has had its fill of fascists and bastards!]), we understood that there was nothing more to be accomplished by lingering in this suffocating trap, and the group pulled out and marched south on Monk Boulevard. The SPVM tightly flanked the procession, with the riot squad boxing us in on both sides. A hundred meters from the Monk metro station, a platoon commander, annoyed at a comrade’s legitimate protest, inexplicably decided to lead his men in a violent charge against the front row of the demonstration, swinging batons and whacking people with shields, as well as making liberal use of pepper spray. The point seemed to be to make sure everyone knew who was in charge! The demonstrators then dispersed into the metro, the riot squad with them every step of the way.
The Montréal Antifasciste collective would like to extend its heartfelt thanks to all the people and organizations who took part in the campaign of denunciation campaign and in the mobilization.
A Campaign with a Positive Balance Sheet
As we explained in our October 27 article, Montreal’s anti-fascist community had not felt it necessary to mount a denunciation campaign against the Messe des Morts in recent years, as it had done in 2016, because the programming did not present any particularly problematic groups. The 2024 event, however, was a provocation.
In early October, we contacted the administration of Théâtre Paradoxe (a social economy enterprise) to encourage them to take the necessary steps to prevent the questionable groups from performing at their venue. Unfortunately, all our diplomatic efforts came to nothing, as the theatre’s administration claimed to have no manoeuvring room as a result of a contract with the promoter of the Messe des Morts, the real culprit behind this grotesque fiasco. So we had no choice but to keep our promise to demonstrate outside of the festival.
Whatever one might say about Friday night’s events, which were entirely dominated by the SPVM, we feel we’ve achieved the campaign’s broader objectives:
two of the four bands targeted, those closest to the NSBM scene, were unable to play at the festival;
we effectively alerted the community of a problematic situation; in particular, the Théâtre Paradoxe administration, which clearly knew little about the vampire it had invited into its home;
Our actions had major financial consequences for the festival’s promoter, whose activities over the years have shown an unquestionable sympathy for NSBM.
At the end of the day, we can look back on a positive campaign. In the coming months, we will be maintaining communication with the Théâtre Paradoxe administration to ensure that the 2024 edition of the festival is the last to take place in this venue. We’ll also be keeping up the pressure on the festival’s promoter, who has once again demonstrated complacency toward a hateful ideology and its manifestations in the black metal genre, despite his claims of political neutrality.
Of course, we’ll also remain constantly alert to ensure that Montréal remains resolutely anti-fascist.
Comments Off on About Violence: A Communiqué on the Block NATO Demonstration*
Nov252024
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
*This release is based on the journal Block NATO, organised by CLAC and D4P, but it is independent. We will explain here the reasoning behind our actions of the evening of Friday, November 22nd, because we know why we do these things and we believe very strongly in what we do.
Let’s put things first in context : Friday marked the start of NATO’s parliamentary assembly in Montreal. NATO represents the military apparatus of the global north, it’s the biggest military alliance in history. While our governments are already making the life of the excluded and exploited a death circus, NATO pressures Canada to invest 50% more of its GDP into the military. That represents 55 billion dollars. NATO is a major decision-making body that embodies militarist and imperialist interests. It’s also an accomplice in the genocide happening in Palestine.
NATO includes the richest countries in the world, namely Canada, Germany, the United States, France, Italy and the UK, but it also conspires with non-member allies such as Japan and the Zionist entity (Israel). It protects the capitalist interests of the global north, with the United States as a semi-formal secretary. NATO organises the threat and capacity to act in devastating ways to counter any initiative of liberation of the global south. Its interests are imperialist: the States formed and governed by capital aspire to extend their power by exploiting external territories where they steal resources, destroy nature and enslave people through political, economic and/or military domination. It normalises the horror of its crimes against humanity by camouflaging them as humanitarian missions and by splitting the political costs between different countries, maintaining their democratic bases in ignorance or illusion.
The military interventions supported by NATO protect governments aligned with American interests and crush any alternative, keeping the global south under capitalist constraints. NATO’s alliance with the zionist entity is ideologically coherent, as a colonial enterprise, but Israel also provides technologies of control and weapons that NATO states use throughout the world, in their imperialist missions and on their own populations.
And oh by the way, no we don’t support Russia or prefer it to NATO, people typically think NATO is about defending against Russia, but we don’t even care, every fucking colonizer of this world has to be taken down, we hate this capitalist system and its extensions from the bottom of our heart.
The problem we’re fighting here isn’t specifically NATO’s assembly, nor the actions of the CDPQ (which requires every public employee to fund the Palestinian genocide), but they are symptoms of that problem. What the problem really is, is the dominant system which causes all these horrors : capitalism. There is no more time for calm and asking nicely. Resistance is legitimate, the State and the police can no longer have a monopoly on violence – if it’s the only language they’ll hear. We want the illusion to stop and we want to draw light, in the streets and in the media, to the horrors deployed right under our noses. We attack capital, materialised most densely downtown, to oppose symbolically and materially the most odious crimes committed for capitalism:
The windows of the Palais des Congrès, where the NATO summit is happening
A car set on fire
Riot police covered in paint
Businesses’ windows smashed
Our acts are charged with rage born from the horrors we witness and denounce here, but also from our own grief: between climate collapse and housing crisis, inflation and shit jobs, health and education systems in ruins, xenophobia, transphobia, covid and depression, profiling and repression, the rise of fascism, etc. All of which answer to the same system. We have had enough and we are horrified, so we gather and we show our refusal. Our actions have had a symbolic and material impact: they have imposed costs financially, have disrupted and disturbed, have propagated our ideals and made visible this very legitimate and necessary struggle.
Before anything was even attacked, the police charged, pepper-sprayed and hit us. In our fight, we have seen the complicit posture of our governments : police violence is an obvious manifestation of it. To repress our actions, the police, the state’s guard dogs, have used weapons and tactics developed by the zionist entity and other NATO investments. The police have again and always defended the interests of the rich and the State: pepper-spraying, beating, breaking ribs, gassing, poisoning. It tries to choke hopes of freedom for human lives and nature, currently massacred, but we are still standing. We denounce the arrests and many injuries (cracked skull, broken arm, projectiles in the eyes, etc.), but we are still standing. The Fall was warm and winter will burn hotter, because the struggle is all we have left, because we need to do everything we can, because we love our revolutions deeply, because we love our comrades and what we know we can do together.
The media will focus on our violence, they will manipulate our messages, our messages confronting the atrocities perpetrated by Israel and NATO – responsible for millions of deaths. So it is crucial to say again that it is the brutality of the oppressive structures governing us that we fight, that the worst violence is the State’s and that that violence is a direct consequence of capitalism.
“If you are at a table with a Nazi, and ten other people are hanging out with him, you have a table of Nazis”
This dictum may sound like a joke, but the idea it expresses is nonetheless poignant, accurate, and relevant. We are firmly convinced that the contagion effect of complacency in the face of the most reactionary, racist, and hateful far-right currents can only pollute any environment where they are tolerated.
That’s why, a few weeks ago, we launched a campaign to denounce and have cancelled the presence of several NSBM (neo-Nazi) bands booked to play the 2024 edition of the Messe des Morts black metal festival, organised by the Sepulchral Productions label and its main manager, Martin Marcotte.[i]The campaign will culminate in a demonstration on November 29 at 6:00 p.m., in front of the Théâtre Paradoxe, 5959 boulevard Monk, in Montreal.
Since the publication of our dossier on these bands on October 27, we’ve received an outpouring of outraged comments from black metal fans who, following a well-known script, accuse us of demonizing or seeking to “cancel” the entire milieu. For the most part, what these reactions have in common is a complete disregard for essential issue at hand and the use of all sorts of fallacious arguments to defend tooth and nail the countercultural milieu in question.
To be perfectly clear, we aren’t criticizing this milieu for being fundamentally neo-Nazi—we don’t, and we never have, regardless of our critics claims. What we do criticize is the fact that the black metal scene is too tolerant of the neo-Nazi elements that persist within it, as shown by the presence of at least four bands with greater or lesser links to NSBM in the 2024 line-up, including the headliner, the Swedish band Marduk, which cultivates a profound ambiguity in this respect.
The purpose of this post is to respond to our critics and to once again invite all black metal fans to take measures to clean up their scene once and for all.
We’re not talking about the 1930s, or the 1980s, but November 2024, in Québec, Canada, and the US. It would be facile in the extreme to pretend that fascist movements don’t present a real threat today. For at least a decade, the populist right has been on the rise in many parts of the world, and in its wake, the far right has been rearing its ugly head, with a constant parade of fascists and far-right supremacists of all stripes.
This is the alarming context of our campaign to denounce the Messe des Morts.
It’s an established fact that neo-Nazi NSBM current has always had a parasitical relationship with black metal. It’s not always openly displayed in this milieu, but it persistently permeates it, and, above all, it is widely tolerated. Elements of the black metal scene that explicitly condemn and reject the neo-Nazi movement (such as the Black and Anarchist Black Metal movement) are the exception.
The most common approach to denouncing this reality is the one we’ve seen over the past few weeks: a superficial reaction characterized by categorical denial and inordinate defense of the black metal milieu. As the type of music they love forms a central part of their identity, fans “take it personally”: they’re black metal fans, and they’re not personally Nazis, ergo, black metal can’t be Nazi. What we’re talking about, however, is not the adherence of this or that fan of the genre to the principles of National Socialism but the complacency toward the NSBM subgenre that runs through the milieu.
We routinely encounter the same basic handful of arguments, which together form a sort of circular reasoning:
It’s just not true!
NSBM as such, or its alleged influence within the black metal milieu, is some kind of myth perpetuated by “communists” and other “bad people.” This is the easiest position to refute. NSBM is unquestionably one of the constitutive currents of black metal, and has been since the very beginning of the genre.
NSBM does exist (somewhere else. . .), but here it’s a negligible phenomenon, or at least it’s non-existent at Messe des Morts, which is above suspicion.
According to this line of argument, NSBM is a hyper-marginal phenomenon, best ignored altogether. As always in such cases, we strongly contest this ostrich approach. The NSBM current may be in the minority in its explicit expression, but its implicit “cultural” presence in the milieu is chronic and its influence widespread. The presence at the festival of three or four groups with notoriously suspect associations and/or dubious obsessions with Nazism—not unlike the inclusion of Graveland in 2016—testifies to the fact that links with NSBM, and cryptofascism in the case of Marduk, are never far away at the Messe des Morts. We also know that Martin Marcotte, the main person behind Sepulchral Productions and the promoter of the Messe des Morts, distributed NSBM material in the 2000s, as well as organizing shows with neo-Nazi groups. To the best of our knowledge, Marcotte and Sepulchral Productions have never issued a retraction, publicly denounced the neo-Nazi current in black metal, or taken an official anti-racist stance, which would, at the very least, have the effect of redressing the current ambiguity. Vague claims that the event is “apolitical” just don’t cut it.
It’strue that there are more or less Nazi elements in the milieu, but “you don’t understand,” that’s part of the genre’s codes; it’s a culture of transgression, and, for the most part, it’s “not political.”
The NSBM elements in the scene should, thus, be seen as entirely folkloric and strictly meant for “shock value.” This is an absurd position. Any event or environment where Nazi elements are tolerated is by definition political. To paraphrase the African-American activist Angela Davis, in a milieu notoriously teeming with neo-Nazis, it’s not enough not to be a Nazi; you have to be actively anti-Nazi. Otherwise, there will be no reason not to always suspect the milieu of complacency and complicity. The cultural manifestation defense does not hold water: culture and politics are, in fact, inseparable and often consubstantial.[ii] Any claim to apolitical status on the part of cultural or countercultural movements must, therefore, be taken with a grain of salt.
It’s true that there are Nazis, but that’s “no big deal”; it’s “their right.”
Do we really need to explain what a pile of shit this argument is? Fascism, and a fortiori Nazism, are not ideas like any other. They are hateful ideologies that have a concrete effect on the lives of the targeted people and groups and when they succeed have absolutely catastrophic consequences. History leaves no room for question. It’s perhaps not surprising that a musical genre that cultivates a fascination with the morbid should revel in both the occult and the “evil” aspects of Nazism, but, in this case, there’s a fine line between morbid fascination and complacency. And it’s precisely this complacency that we reproach the black metal milieu for.
It’s “just music”; I listen to NSBM, but that’s just a matter of taste and a question of individual freedom; it doesn’t mean I’m a Nazi.
We seriously doubt that. You need to take a good long look at yourself if you like music that promotes genocidal thinking and glorifies the actions of the Nazis. In any case, you shouldn’t be surprised that anti-fascists consider you to be part of the problem. Freedom of expression is not and must never become a smokescreen for the promotion and trivialization of hateful ideas. This, of course, is what the new far-right populists are trying to do at the moment,[iii] using this defense, combined with misinformation and confusionism, to promote the worst reactionary reflexes in the mainstream, which, obviously, favors their political advance. We shouldn’t fall for it.
Anyway, anti-fascists are far worse (and far more violent); you say you’re anti-fascists, but you’re the real fascists!
Some commentators have used personal anecdotes of altercations to try to demonstrate that anti-fascists are, on the whole, eminently violent beings who seek only to intimidate and repress anyone who doesn’t think like them. It’s a well-known ploy. It’s easy and convenient to decontextualize isolated incidents to deflect the conversation and avoid addressing the problem. It’s no secret that anti-fascists seek to “cancel” Nazis. It’s even part of their job description. In this instance, what we have asked of the management of the Théâtre Paradoxe, and indirectly of the promoter of the Messe des Morts, is to remove from the bill the three groups examined in our article (plus the one identified by Pivot in an article addressing this polemic). We’re not necessarily seeking to have the entire festival cancelled (although, at this stage, the problem seems to be ubiquitous), but primarily to encourage self-examination within the black metal community. We remain committed to this goal.
Clearly, given the reaction to our campaign denouncing the Messe des Morts, bad faith is as much a part of this subculture as confusion and complacency. All too often, its followers go to considerable lengths to ignore, or at least deny, the problematic nature of the elements reported.
To return to the quote that opened this piece: if you’re at a party where a neo-Nazi advertises his presence, and everyone tolerates him being there, puts up with his antics, and does nothing to actively exclude him, you’re, in fact, at a Nazi party. This is all the more true if the bands hired to entertain the party have had Nazi members, have played with Nazis, have bought Nazi propaganda articles from Nazi websites, and specialize in songs glorifying Nazi exploits. And if the party organizer himself has already distributed music by Nazi artists. . . Are you starting to see the pattern here?
There is a way out. It would be entirely possible for these groups, events, promoters, and even the fans of the genre who all get lumped together to take a clear and unambiguous stand against any hateful ideology, including racism and antisemitism, sexism and homophobia, and in particular fascism and Nazism. Such a public stance would remove any ambiguity. There would, of course, be consequences to such a statement of principles—the genre’s NSBM adherents would no doubt feel betrayed—but that is the price to be paid to clean up a countercultural milieu that would be better off not permanently dragging around this ball and chain.
It can be done, and it has been done. In the 1980s and 1990s, the neo-Nazis tried to leech onto the punk and skin counterculture, and the community mobilized to completely and permanently exclude them. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but, even today, these elements are systematically ostracized, and the boneheads still have to hide and play circle jerk.
This is an invitation to take a stand and clean up the scene once and for all. To do so, you have to take off the blinders and face the problem head-on.
[ii] It’s becoming increasingly clear that political transformations proceed from cultural transformations, and that the political developments we’re seeing today—the rise of the right and the far right—are the result of patient manipulation of mass cultural codes by skilled ideological actors over the last several decades.
[iii] Among the weapons used by these ideologues (think Trumpism and Elon Musk) are disinformation and confusionism, the method of deliberately blurring the meaning of words and political concepts to confuse and undermine people’s sense of reality, thereby encouraging them to buy into various conspiracy fantasies and the false solutions promised by demagogues. Another of their favorite weapons is “gaslighting,” a form of mental manipulation that involves misrepresenting or distorting information in such a way as to make people doubt their perception of reality. One of the main challenges facing us in the post-truth era is precisely to combat the perverse effects of these stratagems on the political sphere and on society in general.
So the fascists won in the united states, in france, in italy… and they’re banging at our door. What do we do now? Well, we do what we’ve always been doing: We organize!
Build an immigrant support network
Lots of people will be forced to flee the states. The threat of “denaturalization” (a fancy word for deporting anyone non-white) means that a lot of racialized people might be forced to leave the united states in a hurry. A lot of LGBTQ+ people, and especially trans folks, will be looking for shelter very soon, due to transphobic and queerphobic laws.
Americans are currently looking to build an underground railroad to help bring people to safe places. We should therefore make sure that there are actually safe places for them here. As long as canada marks the united states as a safe country, a lot of these people might end up here without a legal status. The drawback of a more social state like ours is that we rely on that state for a lot of our services. Therefore, infrastructure for people without a legal status here in Tio’tia:ke is rather limited.
The Immigrant Workers Center (iwc-cti.ca) works with people with precarious status and will need support. Solidarity accross borders (solidarityacrossborders.org) is also building support for people with precarious status and will also need help.
Assist your local antifascists
We’re not exactly in a safe place either here. Fascism is also on the rise here. The legault government is inching everyday to full-blown fascism, and the federal conservatives might be elected on a very far-right mandate. And that’s without taking into account the actual nazis and their apologists. Contact your local antisfacsist crew (in Tio’tia:ke see montreal-antifasciste.info) to see how you can help, or create your own crew! At the very least, take down any sign of fascist presence. Don’t let them take any hold in your neighborhood!
We’ve also seen a recrudesence of punk and metal shows, despite the recent closure of friendly scenes. These shows have been mostly apolitical, and if we’re not careful, they can be taken over by fascist crowds. Hosting friendly merch tables can help remind people of what is at stake, and the importance of kicking out fascists and nazis from our shows.
Build alternatives to lost services
One of the main issue in the united states, and possibly soon in canada, is access to abortion services, and gender-affirming hormones. But there was a time when we could take care of most of these services ourselves. The older trans generation might remember a time when trans people would meet at people’s home to learn how to cook their own estrogen and testosterone. The american Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (fourthievesvinegar.org) provides this service by teaching people some basic pharmaceutical skills.
Another solution could be to build a health clinic cooperative. The Clinique Communautaire Pointe-Saint-Charles (ccpsc.qc.ca) is an example, and have been providing health services to the Pointe for decades now. While these cooperatives are theoretically bound by the laws of the land, it could be a lot easier to do some additional services on the side than at an hospital or state-owned clinic. This might be crucial for people without status, for instance.
Prepare for climate catastrophes
At this stage, climate catastrophes are to be expected. The current “leaders” of the world have made their policy to ignore the climate crisis. We cannot expect any action to address it in the forseeable future. Protective measures will probably protect richer neirghborhoods, to the expense of others. We’ve already seen sea walls being built to protect white-owned houses, and consequently pushing the water surges into racialized neighborhoods.
We got hit hard this summer in Laval, but it was nothing compared to what we’ve seen in Asheville (north carolina) and Valencia (spain). The Firestorm Books collective in Asheville provides some information of what they did after the catastrophe. There are also a number of anarchist mobile intervention units ready to intervene following a tornado storm or a hurricane. They are often quicker to respond than state resources, especially less affluent areas.
While we’re not currently in a tornado or hurricane-prone area, this might change soon. We could use such resources.
Learn to disobey
While it can be tempting for some to perform a highly visible action, this is not something that most people can do. That doesn’t mean that you can do nothing! Every little can help : Forget to ask for identification before giving a service. Mark a lifesaving medication as lost, and give it to people without status. Loose the police’s request for information, or return it with the wrong information, to the wrong address. Confer with colleagues to refuse to apply racist, sexist policies.
The legault government recently pass the racist bill 96, which forces government employees to speak french to the people who come for services. What we’ve seen in practice is that almost every worker disobey that law, despite having received a stern directive to apply it. Most government employees will speak to you with the language you prefer, despite the law forbidding them to.
This refusal to obey is significant. This is what we need in a fascist state. Well, we won’t cry if certain (or all!) embassies were to burn down during the night, but this is not something most people are willing to do. Learning to disobey, this is something we all can do, and should learn to do.
Conclusion
This aim of this little article is just to give you some hints on what you can do. There are many other things we will need! The key is to be curious, observant, and imaginative. Look around you, talk to your comrades, and see what people are missing, determine what needs to be done. The old approaches got us into this mess: maybe it is time to find new ones.
One thing is certain: they want to drag us all into the night. The least we can do is to be kicking and screaming!
Earlier this week a group of people sabotaged Gastops’ factory in Ottawa, the only place in the world where engine sensors are produced for Lockheed’s F-35 combat jets — including the ones dropping 2,000 pound bombs on Gaza. We cut the wiring inside all of the heat pumps on the Gastops roof, locked them out with official Ministry of Health and Safety lock-out tags, shut off the gas, broke the handles for their systems, and cut the lines to their backup communication system on the way out.
The following letter and photos were left on site:
It’s worth noting that we disabled their heat pumps as it begins to get cold here in Ottawa and as displaced people in Gaza and Lebanon plead with us to help them secure shelter, blankets, clothing, as they freeze in displacement camps. Earlier this month an Ottawa neighbour lost her uncle while he returned to his home in Gaza attempting to bring back blankets for the children so they would not freeze to death. He was murdered by air strike while doing so, likely by an F-35 that Gastops supplies parts to.
People growing tired of politicians continuing to support the slaughter of civilians in Palestine and Lebanon will continue to escalate actions seeking peace and an end to these war crimes.
At the end of 2010 an individual act of despair in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a daring, enraged, and joyful upheaval that travelled through North Africa into the Middle East and beyond. People defied the oppressive systems they had been immersed in for generations and came together in the streets to topple the political elites at their helm. The authorities, at first stunned by this courageous spirit that they couldn’t understand, then unleashed a cynical and brutal response.
This defeat is still being inflicted on the people in the region, and is also felt all over the world by those who stood in solidarity with the uprisings but were mostly unable to overcome their powerlessness as the uprisings were massacred.
The horrors in the region during the last decade are many. To name some that stick most in my mind: Sisi has turned back the clock in Egypt to military dictatorship with the material support of the US. The regimes in the other North-African countries are paving over any sign of freedom while being coaxed by European countries to shut down the immigration routes over the Mediterranean. Without the murderous military campaigns of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Syria, Assad wouldn’t have survived the uprising. The Iranian regime itself brutally oppressed three different uprisings in the country in the last decade. Most people in Lebanon are in a daily struggle for survival because of the greed of its political leaders while mobs at the orders of Hezbollah beat down street protests. Early on in the uprisings, Hamas, who has shot political opponents in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, culled attempts at an uprising by rounding up protest organizers and threatening them with murder. Leaders in the region understood once again that they can use any means against the populations under their control without real push-back from outside. Indifference, cynicism and opportunism trump moral appeals, and strategic alliances are always in play. The world churns on. For those of us who have not looked away, how can we not see a connection between Assad bombing Syrian cities into obliteration and Netanyahu razing Gaza?
The authors of “Towards the Last Intifada” (Tinderbox #6) don’t acknowledge these experiences of the last decade. Instead, they propose to join the opposing side of an American geopolitical alliance (keeping true to American centralism in their own way). According to them, the Axis of Resistance shows the path forward for anarchists to struggle against empire. This article seems to confound resistance with ‘the Resistance’. That is to say, they collapse any form of resistance from people in Palestine, and more broadly in the region, into a particular representation, adopting an umbrella term used by states, militaries, para-state/para-military organizations to describe their own activities. The authors of the article warn anarchists against being too sensitive to hierarchy – as if that is the only aspect of ‘the Resistance’ anarchists might find difficult to accept.
It is now a year after the bloody incursion of Hamas into Israel. Apart from discourse, the accomplishments of the Resistance so far are: Hezbollah has launched ineffectual rockets that have only inflicted significant damage on a Druze village, Iranian leaders are busying themselves with making appeals to the West to reign in Israel, militias in Iraq attacked a couple of US military bases in the country early on and then fell silent, while only the Houthis seem to have taken Nasrallah’s “Unity of Fronts” seriously. They succeeded in disrupting global shipping routes and have carried out some unexpected aerial attacks on Israel. In the meantime, Israel has wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah, drops bombs on Lebanon on a daily basis, has regularly bombed sites in Syria without retaliation, and commits executions in Tehran. The Axis of Resistance and the Unity of Fronts are mere slogans that obscure the strategic dealings among political, authoritarian organisations and states with their own (often differing) interests. It’s delusional to see it as something else. And Israel is calling the bluff of ‘the Resistance’ with an exponential military escalation.
Israel’s massacres in Gaza, with the material support of the Western countries, are relentless. The apartheid regime in the West Bank and Israel has been built up for decades, leaving almost no oxygen to breathe for those living under its control. Faced with this bleak reality and an overwhelming powerlessness to put a stop to it, anarchists may be looking for an effective resistance (or rather, as it appears, an image of one). But if we want to fight against oppression, we can’t be content with any opposition. Choosing to join one authoritarian, militaristic system against another will not put an end to the horrors of this world – neither in this conflict nor in any other. It is neither inherently defeatist or a sign of privileged indifference to refuse to take sides between warring groups and states. That conclusion can only be reached if we would reduce reality to simplistic representations. Instead, by being open to complexity and specificity, anarchist action can be a liberating endeavor. It is here that we can find affinities, build relationships on a different basis, and muster the strength and courage – or perhaps, humility and passion – to attack. Anarchists find their effectiveness when they can undermine and destroy oppressive systems. We will not find it in a military prowess which, at the end of the day, produces more oppression and misery. And so those that have a spirit of their own and a memory of past rebellions will fight for another uprising.
From the northern coast of the Mediterranean, with a heavy heart and a soul on fire Early October, 2024
On December 8, 2023, the RCMP announced that they had arrested two Ontario residents, Matthew Althorpe and Kristoffer Nippak, and laid a number of charges against them stemming from their activities in various neo-Nazi projects in Ontario. In the first instance, the two men were charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group,” namely the Atomwaffen Division, an organization classified as terrorist in Canada. In its press release, the RCMP also mentioned two lesser-known projects: the Terrorgram Collective and Active Club Canada. The former is described as “a group of Telegram channels that share neo-fascist ideology and that produce and share manuals on how to carry out racially-motivated violence.” The Active Club is described as follows:
The Active Club Network are decentralized cells of white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups, which are active in many U.S. states, with multiple chapters in other nations, including Canada. The network was created in January 2021 and it promotes mixed martial arts to fight against what it asserts is a system that is targeting the white race, as well as a “warrior spirit” to prepare for a forthcoming race war.
Active Club Canada, of which the two defendants are members, sees itself as a regional hub of the Active Club international network.
On December 1, shortly before the arrests, Vice News published a detailed exposé by freelance journalist Mack Lamoureux on Kristoffer Nippak and his key role in the Active Club network in Canada, particularly in the Ottawa region. In his article, Lamoureux mentioned a regional chapter in Québec, but, until now, this local group has not been the subject of close scrutiny. This article aims to fill that lacuna by shining a light on the core of the Frontenac Active Club (FAC), currently the main “militant” neo-Nazi project in Québec.
On December 9, 2023, Frontenac Active Club activists defend their Active Club Canada comrades after their arrests, calling the charges against them “fabricated political accusations.”
What Are Active Clubs?
Actives Clubs constitute a decentralized network of local groups rooted in white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology. They represent a renaissance of the “white nationalist” movement (sometimes referred to as White Nationalism 3.0), picking up where the white power currents of the 1990s and 2000s and the alt-right movement of 2016–2020 left off and promoting a structure with no formal leadership. The origin of the movement is generally attributed to American militant Robert Rundo, who previously founded the Rise Above Movement (RAM) in California, in 2017, when the alt-right was at its zenith. RAM’s stated purpose was to physically attack enemies of the white nationalist movement.
Robert Rundo, founder of the Active Club network.
In line with this, the main activity of the Active Clubs is training in various martial arts techniques in preparation for the coming race war, deemed inevitable based on a perceived “white genocide,” effectively the deliberate replacement by means of “mass immigration” of the majority-white populations by non-white populations in Western countries (orchestrated by a nebulous elite generally presented as a cosmopolitan “international Jewry”). Active Club members unreservedly subscribe to this “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and are deeply rooted in contemporary neo-Nazi counterculture, for example, worshiping Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, as well as advancing a negationist interpretation of the Holocaust and World War II. They are, of course, steeped in a violent imaginary imbued with antisemitism, racism, misogyny, homophobia/transphobia and a visceral hatred of inclusive and egalitarian social movements—both liberal and radical—which are generally sweepingly categorized as “communist” (hatred of communism is a consistent reference point and a core value).
There is evidence of an Active Club presence in thirty-three US states and at least twelve countries, probably more by the time you read this. According to Vice News, there are at least eleven local Active Club chapters in Canada, including the FAC, which is based mainly in the Greater Montréal Area.
Despite his legal setbacks, Robert Rundo remains an emblematic figure in the movement, and Southern California still seems to be its epicenter, with a gathering of Active Club chapters expected there in August 2024 (the first such event was held in San Diego in August 2022). Rundo has his finger in a number of pies, including distributing Will2Rise (W2R) clothing, whose colors are often worn by Active Club members as a nod to their mentor.
This Active Club Telegram account links to the Will2Rise and Media2Rise projects, both hosted by Robert Rundo.
Where Does the Frontenac Active Club Come From?
The Frontenac Active Club was formed in early 2023 (the Telegram channel was created on February 16) and is the direct descendent of the local White Lives Matter (WLM) group, which we wrote about in 2022. One of the group’s two leaders mentioned in that article, Laval’s Raphaël Dinucci, would become the mainstay and motive force of the FAC. Dinucci immediately forged links with the movement’s Ontario chapters, while gathering a core group of five or six militants who formed what is now the FAC.
The Frontenac Active Club Telegram channel was created in February 2023. It now has nearly eight hundred subscribers.
We know that the FAC still maintains virtual links with other Canadian Active Clubs, notably with the group that was the subject of the RCMP raids, as well as with southwestern Ontario group Nationalist-13 (13 = AC, for anti-communist).
The Frontenac Active Club is close to the Southern Ontario–based white supremacist group Nationalist-13. Front and center, Raphaël Dinucci.The hand signal that Frontenac Active Club members like to reproduce, the Kühnen salute, is a neo-Nazi sign of recognition.
The group’s activities are centered in the Greater Montréal Area, with its members scattered across the south shore (Saint-Hubert, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu), the north shore (Laval), and as far away as Lanaudière (Rawdon). There also seems to be a handful of members/sympathizers in the Québec City area, but they hardly constitute a section as such, since their activity last year was limited to stickering and a few social outings in the Capital.
Most of the Frontenac Active Club’s activity in the capital city consists of putting up stickers and taking photos. Here, Raphaël Dinucci poses in August 2023.A quiet outing at Taverne Urbaine 1500 in Québec City in December 2023.
To foster the racist and misogynistic fraternity spirit that underpins the movement, membership in the FAC is limited to white men.
The group’s Twitter/X account was created in April 2024. Raphaël Dinucci also has a personal account.
(This platform, under the leadership of billionaire Elon Musk, has [re]become a safe space for neo-Nazi and supremacist individuals and groups, reversing the previous administration’s purge. It’s also a space where misinformation and hate speech have free rein, with virtually no countermeasures, to the degree, in fact, that it seems pointless for us to maintain a presence there.)
What Do They Do?
True to form, FAC members train quite regularly in martial arts—unevenly from member to member—usually in a public park near you, particularly on the outskirts of Montréal (Longueuil, Laval). Their other main activity is to showcase themselves on their Telegram channel, posting group photos documenting their activities. Last April, members of the core group photographed themselves posing after a workout in Mackenzie-King Park, in Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood, across the street from a synagogue and a Jewish school and a stone’s throw from the Montreal Holocaust Museum.
Frontenac Active Club members training in Mackenzie-King Park, in the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district, Montréal, April 22, 2024. From left to right: Mathieu Grenier, Martin Brouillette, Shawn Beauvais Macdonald, and Raphaël Dinucci.
Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, whom we had suspected was in contact with the Active Club, turned out on this occasion, confirming our suspicions. There’s nothing to indicate that Beauvais MacDonald had been a regular member of the group before this year, but it’s clear that neither he nor his cronies have any problem with the baggage he brings with him. Indeed, recently, Beauvais MacDonald appears to have taken on an increasingly central role in the group, representing it in a friendly boxing tournament against the Nationalist-13 Nazis and providing his personal contact information to people who want to get in touch with the FAC.
Shawn Beauvais MacDonald and Raphaël Dinucci wearing t-shirts from Robert Rundo’s Will2Rise project in April 2024.
The appalling ignorance of the group’s members is matched only by their extreme fetishization of a cult of the body that clearly reflects the toxic masculinity traditionally imposed in far-right circles. Overall, the FAC seems like nothing more than a social club for Nazi rejects, with its members organizing weekend nature hikes (Mont Gorille, Laurentides, or Montagne Noire, Lanaudière, for example) or a game of badminton at Laval’s Carrefour Multiport, generally followed by a beer at some nearby bar.
Frontenac Active Club nature outing on May 14, 2024. Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, center, face not obscured.Martin Brouillette and Mathieu Grenier of the Frontenac Active Club sparring in November 2023.Posturing and sparring on Mont Royal, July 2024. Center, Shawn Beauvais MacDonald.Raphaël Dinucci holding his group’s flag during an outing at Mont Gosford, in the Eastern Townships, in June 2023.
Along with its physical activities and ostentatious social media presence, the group also hopes to raise its profile around the city, taking a page out of the WLM playbook and heavily stickering in Greater Montréal and several other localities, including Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, home of FCA member David Barrette.
A Frontenac Active Club sticker in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, where David Barrette lives, in May 2023.Frontenac Active Club militants are particularly fond of this sort of staging, where they hold up a group sticker somewhere. In this case, Bromont in May 2023.Another Frontenac Active Club sticker in Montréal’s Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie district in November 2023.
As for public mobilization, Raphaël Dinucci and David Barrette had the curious idea of showing up at a demonstration against drag queen story hour and the queer and trans community, in Sainte-Catherine, on April 2, 2023. It didn’t go well for either of them; Dinucci was beaten and then arrested by police, while Barrette was charged with assault (dropped last spring). In a similar vein, FAC activist Martin Brouillette sent explicit threats to the organizers of the « Nous ne serons pas sages » demonstration last March, under his pseudonym “Martin Leblanc.” He failed to follow up on his threats.
David Barrette, aka “NatSocSiD,” or here “SuperFrenSiD,” boasts of his “exploits” on the Discord platform, in the wake of Frontenac Active Club members’ intervention on the sidelines of a transphobic demonstration in Sainte-Catherine on April 2, 2023.David Barrette, aka “SuperFrenSiD,” recounts his trials and tribulations in Sainte-Catherine on April 2, 2023.David Barrette, aka “NatSocSiD,” recounts his setbacks on the Undernet platform.Martin Brouillette, aka “Martin Leblanc,” explicitly threatens the organizers of the “Nous ne serons pas sages” event in March 2024.
A June post on the group’s channel shows member Mathieu Grenier in France, hanging out with nationalist militants from the Marseilles region.
Where Does the Frontenac Active Club Fit in the Far-Right Ecosystem in Québec?
Whether under the Active Club banner or its previous moniker White Lives Matter, it’s clear that this small core of neo-Nazi militants hopes to carve out a niche in Québec’s far-right milieu.
The FAC falls, first and foremost, within a North American white nationalist and neo-Nazi tradition, representing the most radical fringe of the alt-right and its historical predecessors. It also draws upon key North American conspiracy theories (“White Genocide” and the Great Replacement), including embracing the moral panic around freedom for sexual and gender minorities. It’s worth noting that WLM/FAC activists were spotted protesting when the Covid health measures were in place, and then from spring 2023 onward were found on the margins of transphobic activities organized by the usual suspects from the local complosphere. The FAC also maintains links with the Canadian Active Club network, including, as noted earlier, the neo-Nazi groupuscule Nationalist-13, and with the Diagolon network, primarily on Telegram in the latter case. During its recent “Canadian tour,” Diagolon stopped in Montréal, where its members fraternized with the boys from the FAC.
The Frontenac Active Club and the group Nationalist-13 recently took part in a friendly neo-Nazi boxing tournament. Note that Shawn Beauvais MacDonald is described in this publication as FAC’s “champion,” with his Telegram account listed as the group’s contact.Militants from the Frontenac Active Club and Nationalist-13 got together in Ontario during the week of August 5, 2024.Frontenac Active Club militants had the opportunity to fraternize with members of the Diagolon network in Montréal on August 3, 2024. Shawn Beauvais MacDonald appears to have become a key member of the group, speaking here in the first person.
FAC members also flirt with “arrow-sash” fascism. For example, they have participated at least once in the horrifying “Saint-Jean de la race,” organized by Alexandre Cormier-Denis’s ethnonationalist Nomos-TV propaganda channel. For the past few years, these festivities have taken the form of a Nomos live transmission on June 23, followed by an intimate fascist-fest. Raphaël Dinucci was present at the 2022 edition in Québec City (at Bar Le Duck), hanging out with members of the neo-fascist group Atalante and Sylvain Marcoux’s neo-Nazi Parti nationaliste chrétien (PNC),with whom FAC has been on friendly terms since the WLM days. We have good reason to believe that Dinucci was also present at this year’s edition of the Nomos Saint-Jean event, held for the second year running in Montréal at Lux Média, André Pitre’s “reinformation” project. (Beauvais MacDonald made an appearance last year.)
The key thing is that these neo-Nazi “militants,” who imagine themselves playing a leading role in an imminent race war—as white race crusaders, obviously—are an integral part of the far-right ecosystem in Québec. Although they remain relegated to the margins, they unquestionably play a role, if only as a foil for other far rightists who can take the opportunity to portray themselves as “less worser than.” While they may not be united on every issue, it’s important to understand that all the groups and currents mentioned in this article and in other recent Montréal Antifasciste material (from the Nazis 3.0 of WLM/FAC through the Nouvelle Alliance ethnic nationalists to the transphobic conspiracy theory adherents, the Nomos cryptofascists, and the wacky national socialists of the PNC) occupy a specific space in a single ecosystem, where they tend to reinforce each other.
It’s also important to remember the key role played by certain figures in the mainstream media (need we even name them?) in normalizing the far right—by repeating as often as possible that it simply doesn’t exist.
Who Are the Frontenac Active Club Hard Core?
Group photo of the Frontenac Active Club taken in Martin Brouillette’s Rawdon garage in January 2024. Left to right: Martin Brouillette, Mathieu Grenier (kneeling, “Free Rundo” t-shirt), David Barrette (standing behind Grenier), Steven Khazanov, and Raphaël Dinucci (front, “HTLR” t-shirt).
Raphaël Dinucci
Telegram: @Raph131 @adamm1313 Address: 5346 Pauzé, Laval QC H7K 2M5
Raphaël Dinucci is most likely the founder and primary mover of the FAC. He first appeared on our radar in 2022 as co-administrator of the White Lives Matter Québec Telegram channel, using the pseudonym “Whitey,” alongside Yannick Lachapelle, alias “Nord-Est.” Together, they formed the hard core of that short-lived group.
Raphaël Dinucci’s known Telegram profiles.Raphaël Dinucci’s current personal Telegram profile.
From the outset, Dinucci has distinguished himself by his intense activism, particularly on the streets of Laval, which he covered with stickers and graffiti.
We understand that this silly little goof turned twenty-three on July 22, 2024.
When the article titled White Lives Matter: Neo-Nazi Project Has a Québec Franchisecame out in March 2022, Yannick Lachapelle disappeared into thin air, and Dinucci found himself alone. We know that he went about building links with Ontario members of WLM and the Active Club, and that’s when he had the idea of upping his game and founding the FAC.
Dinucci takes a selfie for the Frontenac Active Club’s Telegram channel, quoting Belgian Nazi Léon Degrelle.Detail of Raphaël Dinucci’s tattoo: a wolf figure superimposed on the Tyr rune.
Dinucci appears in almost every photo of FAC activities and is in charge of public relations for the group, whether getting together with members of the Drummondville-based PNC or attending the various editions of Nomos-TV’s aforementioned annual “Saint-Jean de la race,” a major gathering of the fascist far right in Québec.
As mentioned above, he was present at the rally in Sainte-Catherine on April 2, 2023, with David Barrette and Sylvain Marcoux (PNC), where they unfurled a banner reading “Sales pédos hors du Québec” [Dirty Pedos Out of Québec], which was torn out of their hands after a few seconds.
He lives with his father in Laval.
David Barrette
Telegram: @NatSocSiD Address: 863 rue Saint-Jacques, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu
David Barrette has been a hyperactive keyboard neo-Nazi for years, primarily under the handle @NatSocSiD (he has several others) on numerous virtual platforms, including Telegram, Discord, and the Undernet chat network’s #Montreal IRC server. He’s also active on YouTube, BitChute, TikTok, and several other platforms. He was a member of the WLM group in 2020 and, along with Dinucci and other sympathizers, naturally transitioned to the FAC at its inception.
Ladies, who’s going to be the lucky one?
His activity and involvement with the FAC are limited by a chronic ankle injury. However, this did not prevent him from accompanying Raphaël Dinucci on an “in real life” adventure in Sainte-Catherine on April 2, 2023, which resulted in his arrest on assault charges (withdrawn last March, for reasons unknown to us). We believe these legal setbacks have dampened his enthusiasm for political activism, but he remains very close to the FAC’s core group.
David Barrette finds himself in a sticky situation in Sainte-Catherine on April 2, 2023.
David Barrette lives in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and works in Montréal for the information technology company Globotech Communications, which specializes in Web hosting. The information we have gathered leads us to believe that he uses his privileged position within this company to clandestinely host neo-Nazi and white supremacist sites and services on the company’s servers.
Profil Instagram of David Barrette, alias NatSocSiD.
Barrette’s employer would undoubtedly be interested to know about his employee’s extracurricular activities and may even be interested in scrutinizing the servers under his supervision.
Globotech Communications :
sales@globo.tech/support@globo.tech / abuse@globo.tech / NOC@globo.tech Telephone : (514) 907-0050 or 1 888-482-6661 (Note that Barrette receives messages requesting support and is likely to filter them; it is, therefore, advisable to write to several addresses to ensure that the message reaches the appropriate people.)
We first got wind of this sinister character last March, when Nous ne serons pas sages—a grassroots group formed to counter the anti-LGBTQ backlash and the CAQ government’s so-called “Comité des sages”—contacted us to share violent and hateful threats received from a certain “Martin Leblanc.” The latter said he wanted to “meet up” so that he could “remove pedophiles and trans people from this world,” and that he would “meet them on Fullum” (the location of the Committee’s demonstration). In another equally violent message he said he was “a fascist, violent, ready to clean house,” and that he had “already spit on Jews and gays” and would like to “continue [his] journey.”
We easily found a “Martin Leblanc” on Telegram (“My Ancestral Calling” channel), with a profile whose white supremacist character leaves no doubt (Hitler homage, etc.). His profile photo shows him in a gym with walls that are lined with neo-Nazi symbols and a flag from the FAC; this is the same gym seen in some of the photos posted by the group on its own channel.
Martin Brouillette in his private gym in his garage at his Rawdon home. À noter, le tatouage d’un faisceau (symbole du fascisme) sur sa nuque et l’arrière de sa tête.Martin Brouillette in his private gym in his garage at his Rawdon home.Martin Brouillette boasts that he built the gym in his garage during the pandemic.
This profile enabled us to find his real name, Martin Brouillette—his Facebook account has the same profile photo as the Telegram account of “Martin Leblanc.” On it, he bluntly describes himself as a “fascist” in his bio. (By the way, Facebook’s bots seem less and less able to recognize neo-Nazi or white supremacist posts or even to note profiles that spell out “fascist” in plain text and display hateful content. All of this goes undetected in this AI Brave New World).
Martin Brouillette’s Facebook account.
Photos posted by Brouillette on his Telegram channel tell us that he trained at a private martial arts club in Saint-Charles-Borromée (Joliette), whose managers were evidently unaware of his activism (see the update below). In the same way, we were able to determine that his private gym, where he invites his fascist buddies to roll around on the floor, is located in his garage on chemin Bélair in the municipality of Rawdon.
Martin Brouillette, a member of the neo-Nazi Frontenac Active Club, poses at a private martial arts club in the Joliette area.Martin Brouillette, a member of the neo-Nazi Frontenac Active Club discreetly displays his colors inside a private martial arts club, unbeknownst to the Sensei and other club members.
Update: Following the publication of this article and the steps taken to contact the managers at Karaté Kanreikai Joliette, we have been assured that they have taken the necessary steps to exclude Martin Brouillette from the dojo for good. This decision is to their credit.
Shawn Beauvais MacDonald
Telegram: @FriendlyFash
Holy fuck! to use a well-worn phrase. This drunken idiot is actually involved in every wrong thing, so much so that at some point the other Nazis will have to realize that he’s toxic, and that everything he touches turns to shit. In any case, he has no notion of operational security, and his trivial Nazi life is an open book, which sooner or later exposes his equally trivial comrades. What could we possibly say about this piece of shit that we haven’t already said a hundred times?
As noted, since 2023, we’ve suspected Beauvais MacDonald of playing some role with the FAC, whether a key one or on the margins, but we had no proof. Last April, however, he began posting photos with the group on his Telegram account, after which the group decided to make him a poster boy on its own Telegram channel. Recently, he has been an increasingly central figure in the group. It’s worth noting that his arrival on the scene coincided with the jiu-jitsu training session outside of a synagogue in Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood mentioned above.
Shawn Beauvais Macdonald is now, quite literally, a central figure at the Frontenac Active Club.Shawn Beauvais Macdonald poses with Frontenac Active Club comrades in Montréal in July 2024.
Incidentally, it seems that Beauvais MacDonald has recently become even more of a loose cannon. We’re told he’s been seen more than once threatening members of the public who recognize him (whom he obviously presumes are the famed “antifa”). What’s more, he seems to have hooked up with young Sandrine Girardot from Châteauguay, who gained public attention last March for painting hateful graffiti in that town, including on the building she lives in. She has also posted a series of completely insane publications and videos on her social media accounts, the latter showing her and Shawn Beauvais MacDonald verbally assaulting passers-by with invectives and racist and homophobic insults in various neighborhoods and in the Montréal metro, as well as shouting their admiration for Adolf Hitler and throwing ridiculous Nazi salutes.
When we publicly reported this neo-Nazi tryst, Beauvais MacDonald responded with explicit threats:
It’s as if we asked a conversational robot to produce a threatening message dripping with toxic masculinity, as one would expect of a forty-year-old steroid-driven neo-Nazi salivating over an obviously mentally fragile twenty-three-year-old woman.
Mathieu Grenier
Mathieu Grenier uses the alias “@matthewattic” on Telegram. We don’t know much about him, apart from the fact that he has red hair and was once involved in Montréal’s (very short-lived and essentially virtual) Proud Boys group. He recently took a trip to Marseille, where he socialized with local fascists.
Steven Khazanov
Khazanov uses the alias “@stvjms” on Telegram. He lives on Montréal’s South Shore and has participated in several FAC activities over the past year.
His profile picture on Telegram shows him training in the outdoor facilities of Parc de la Cité, in Saint-Hubert. He resides at 3133, rue Ovila-Hamel, in Saint-Hubert.
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So as not to hinder our investigations, we have chosen not to include all the information we have in this article. We do, of course, continue to collect information on active members of the Frontenac Active Club. If you have any information about these or other individuals connected with or involved in the group, please write to us at alerta-mtl@riseup.net.
