Comments Off on Action Against the Arms Industry in Solidarity with Palestine
Oct152025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Early this morning, autonomous activists in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle recovered a life-size replica of an MK-84 bomb made of papier-mâché and set it on fire near the Port of Montreal, on Notre-Dame Street between Dickson and Viau. The intervention of the fire and police services disrupted traffic.
The MK-84 is one of the most devastating bombs in existence. Measuring 3 meters and weighing approximately 2 tons, it is the deadliest bomb on the market, with a blast radius capable of killing up to 1 km around its point of impact. During the first year of the genocide alone, “Israel” dropped more than 14,000 bombs on the Palestinian people. This bomb is shamefully manufactured by General Dynamics, which has a subsidiary in Repentigny.
The action echoes the most recent bombings by the genocidal entity “Israel” in violation of the ceasefire. There will be no peace as long as Zionist forces occupy Gaza! Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
This symbolic action is part of the Week of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.
The campaign to isolate Nouvelle Alliance (NA), led by various components of Québec’s anti-fascist movement, has finally borne fruit. First with the events surrounding their failed May 19 rally, where the nationalist identitarian organization showed its true colors by physically attacking anti-fascist activists, and more recently with their attempt to organize a large pro-independence demonstration in Québec City on September 20. This initiative attracted hundreds of independentists who acted to oppose and isolate Nouvelle Alliance, preventing NA from marching.
These events have alienated most of the key pro-independence forces active today, from the Mouvement des étudiants et étudiantes indépendantistes (MEI) to OUI-Québec, including the very centrist Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, which generally favours a big-tent approach. Even the door to the Parti Québécois, which had long remained ajar, is increasingly closed to them. The more this particular far-right organization exposes itself (or is exposed), the more solid the cordon sanitaire around it. We consider this to be excellent news.
That being said, this closure on its left flank is leading the young organization to increasingly turn to the right for support. Nouvelle Alliance recently crossed another symbolic line in its rightward drift—a troubling and very dark line to cross.
By organizing its October 4 “Perspectives nationalistes” in Trois-Rivières, with François Dumas of the Cercle Jeune Nation as a guest of honor, Nouvelle Alliance is literally opening the door to fascism. To be clear, this is not simply another conference but, rather, a quasi-mandatory political training session Nouvelle Alliance members.
What Is the Cercle Jeune Nation (CJN)?
Jeune Nation, which later became Cercle Jeune Nation, was founded in the mid-1980s by two students at the Université de Montréal: François Dumas and Rock Tousignant. Jeune Nation was inspired by two French organizations, both linked to Nazism and fascism by their history and affiliations: Jeune Nation, active in the 1940s and 1950s and Ordre Nouveau, which brought together several factions of the radical far right in the late 1960s, giving rise to the infamous Front National. Jeune Nation—the Québec version—was, thus, inspired by the French neo-fascist “revolutionary nationalist” movement, in particular by its intellectual leader François Duprat.
Beyond CJN’s core concerns, it also revered Abbé Lionel Groulx and fiercely opposed (non-white) immigration, which, it was argued, would dilute both the French Canadian “race” and the “French fact” in Québec.
An excerpt from the text “Quelques jalons pour l’histoire d’une organisation nationaliste de droite au Québec,” by François Dumas, Cahiers de Jeunes Nation no. 2 (July 1992). Dumas reveals his strategy of not explicitly identifying himself as far-right in public, while privately acknowledging that he is, a strategy adopted in full by Nouvelle Alliance
The Cercle Jeune Nation advocated a philosophy of “no enemies on the right,” which led them to invite all right-wing and far-right nationalists to gather under their banner. This approach also characterized the Fédération des Québécois de souche (FQS; founded by neo-Nazis, it should be noted) and its newspaper Le Harfang, to which Roch Tousignant, co-founder of the CJN, still contributes today. This collaboration is reflected to this day on the Le Harfang Telegram channel, where the content of the CJN blog is regularly reproduced.
Originally, Nouvelle Alliance saw itself as a vehicle open to all separatists and defined itself as neither right-wing nor left-wing. It is clear that this ambition has been abandoned, due to a total lack of left-wing support. NA is now a united front for Québec’s far right, from Alexandre Cormier-Denis to the Cercle Jeune Nation, including white supremacist boneheads like David Leblanc and Catholic secularists who protest against Muslim street prayer. This is very similar to the “no enemies on the right” principle.
We know that a number of early members of Nouvelle Alliance have defected in recent months in response to the leadership’s drift toward the far right. As to those remaining: it is becoming increasingly difficult for you to claim that you don’t know what is happening.
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Could this be the same François Dumas, from Outremont, who was the subject of this brief 1972 article in Serviam, the newsletter of the Parti de l’unité nationale du Canada (PUNC), the successor to the “Canadian Nazi” Adrien Arcand?
Comments Off on Edmonton Scotiabank Doors Glued and Windows Spray Painted
Sep032025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Early in the morning of August 23, the Heritage Village Scotiabank branch (111st & 23ave) in Edmonton had its doors glued shut and windows spray painted with the message “SCOTIABANK FUNDS GENOCIDE”, calling out the bank for its illegal investments in Elbit System, Israel’s largest privately-owned weapons manufacturer. Elbit provides up to 85 percent of the land-based equipment procured by the Israeli military and about 85 percent of its drones.
To any inconvenienced by the actions taken to disrupt the flow of weapons, consider moving your money to a credit union that will not invest it in genocide.
It is all of our obligation to impose material costs on all entities that enable and profit from genocide. Let no bank or branch be allowed to carry on with business as usual while they profit from the slaughter of Palestinians. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Take action, take care.
Depuis 1947, le peuple palestinien lutte contre l’occupation et la colonisation de ses terres par l’entité sioniste (connue sous son nom colonial ”Israël”). Alors que la création de cette entité sur des terres volées est facilitée par l’ONU, les Palestinien·nes, dépossédé·es et déplacé·es de force dans des territoires de plus en plus grugés par l’entité sioniste, ne se laissent pas faire et résistent à l’envahisseur. Alors que Gaza était assiégée depuis près de 20 ans, la résistance a culminé le 7 octobre 2023 dans un coup de force. Déterminé à ne tolérer le moindre écart de conduite, l’entité sioniste en a profité pour accélérer ses politiques et pratiques génocidaires contre le peuple palestinien avec la complicité de ses allié·es. Bombardé·es et affamé·es délibérément par l’entité sioniste depuis deux ans, les Palestinien·nes à Gaza luttent pour survivre et continuent de résister, tout comme les Palestinien·nes en Cisjordanie et à Jérusalem-Est qui font face à une accélération des attaques des colons et du vol de leurs terres.
Pendant que les Palestinien·nes sonnent l’alarme et implorent le reste du monde à arrêter cette violente machine de guerre qui a déjà fait des dizaines de milliers de martyrs, les gouvernements, incluant le ”Canada” et le ”Québec” enchaînent des déclarations vides de sens sur le « respect du droit international » et la fausse « solution à deux États », tout en continuant à supporter l’entité sioniste financièrement, militairement et politiquement, et en refusant d’imposer quelconque sanction. L’entité sioniste, armée par ses complices occidentaux et impérialistes, est bien décidé à prendre le contrôle complet de la bande de Gaza et à anéantir le peuple palestinien. L’armée d’occupation commet des massacres jour après jour en direct dans l’indifférence. Lorsqu’ils en parlent, les médias invisibilisent la réalité sur le terrain : une occupation militaire et une colonisation brutale de par l’entité sioniste, et une lutte de libération historique d’un peuple contre des puissances coloniales qui assujettissent le monde entier.
Cela fait deux ans que les peuples solidaires de la libération de la Palestine protestent partout dans le monde, en rupture avec leurs gouvernements complices. Les actions se multiplient : manifestations, campements, graffitis, occupations, actions de perturbation et de sabotage, flottilles, caravanes et marches mondiales pour briser le blocus. Continuons nos actions pour mettre fin au génocide en cours et soutenir le peuple palestinien dans sa lutte de libération, pour la justice et la dignité !
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Du 6 au 12 octobre 2025, D4P et la CLAC invitent tous·tes et chacun·e à s’organiser avec sa communauté en vue de provoquer, déranger et perturber pour visibiliser notre refus collectif à la complicité au génocide et rappeler la légitimité de la résistance, sous toutes ses formes, en Palestine et ici.
Alors que la violence et la déshumanisation des vies palestiniennes est devenue honteusement normalisée, la résistance en devient d’autant plus légitime et nécessaire ! Confrontons nos gouvernements à l’insignifiance de leurs actions et à leur complicité active ! Ciblons les profiteurs de guerre, où qu’ils soient dans la vaste toile de complicité : qu’ils produisent des armes, des outils d’intelligence artificielle, des fonds de pensions ou des services d’investissement ! En groupe d’affinités, en comités de quartier, avec nos associations étudiantes, dans nos lieux de travail, attaquons partout, par l’éducation populaire, les manifestations, l’action directe et notre mobilisation généralisée.
Pas de paix tant que Gaza saigne : notre devoir est la résistance, par tous les moyens!
* Cet appel à l’action fait écho à celui lancé le 20 juillet 2025 par six groupes politiques et organisations de résistance à Gaza qui nous demandent d’escalader nos actions pour accentuer la pression sur nos gouvernements complices.
Comments Off on “Israel” terrorist, media complicit
Aug192025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, August 18th, 2025 — it’s with a broken heart and rage in the stomach that autonomous militants targeted Quebecois media tonight, denouncing their biased coverage of the genocide of the Palestinian people, in particular the recent massacre of the Al Jazeera team in Gaza by the Zionist occupation forces. Tonight, we honour our martyred siblings Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohamed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa of Al Jazeera, Sahat Media journalist Mohammed Al-Khali, Saad Jundiya, and the 262 other journalists who have been killed in this inhumane affront against the freedom of the press. This autonomous action to redecorate the office of the Montreal Gazette (MG) was also in response to the call from the Palestinian resistance, published on July 20th, 2025, calling on international activists to escalate the pressure to open channels of humanitarian aid.
For the past two years, Quebecois media has been providing heavily biased, one-sided, and dehumanizing coverage of the genocide in Gaza. Their editorial framing presents a false symmetry of violence, erasing the fundamental colonial context: the Zionist Entity, “Israel,” has been an expansionist occupying power since 1948, and Palestine an occupied territory. Thr vocabulary chosen by Quebecois journalists has also been extensively documented as being biased in favour of “Israel,” which receives a far more empathetic treatment than the Palestinian victimes, who are treated with distance and coldness. Finally, in the face of the ban imposed by “Israel” against international journalists entering Gaza, Quebecois media have obeyed, without calling the ban into question whatsoever, and none of them have judged it necessary to hire a Palestinian correspondant to document the daily massacres. On the contrary, Quebecois media had offered an exclusive platform to Au the genocidal Zionist authorities, including the higher-ups Tsahal. And yet, no Quebecois media has invited any representatives of the Palestinian resistance to speak.
Tonight, MG was targeted in particular because they represent one of the most powerful propaganda tools of the dangerous and genocidal Zionist ideology. Tribune of choice of the fasho-zionist in chief of the municipal governments, Jeremy Levi, MG spews terrible articles and doubtful chronicles with the goal of encouraging the most sadistic cognitive dissonance of the 21st century. The daily paper has been denounced by the organization Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East at least two separate times over the quality of their coverage of the student encampments in solidarity with Palestine, and more generally for their pro-Zionist biases in their coverage of the genocide in Gaza. In addition, MG is a part of the large Postmedia. Network family, which also owns the National Post, a collection of mediocre pseudo-journalistic texts. It is therefore unsurprising to see MG’s editorial line staunchly in favour of Zionist ideologies. Indeed, the primary stakeholder in Postmedia Network is Chatham Asset Management, an American speculative investment fund known for its proximity to the Republican party, also known to be the power bottom of choice for the tyrannical and genocidal ambitions of Netanyahu. Not only should we thusly consider MG as foreign media, we should also not be surprised when it’s coverage takes so many liberties with basic journalistic integrity when it’s leaders flirt openly with modern fascism.
What will it take for the media to listen to the people and begin to cover the genocide in Gaza to the height of the principles of journalistic integrity to which they claim to adhere? Earlier this week, militants occupied the offices of La Presse and Radio-Canada, without being offered adequate coverage of their critiques against them. Only exception being a mediocre editorial at La Presse from François Cardinal hiding behind a false sense of neutrality to dodge his active role in the normalisation of the genocide in Gaza. It is becoming more and more clear that Quebecois media don’t want to hear anything about the demands and legitimate protests of the people, and that it is only through economic damage that they will understand that they are standing on the wrong side of history.
Comments Off on Report-back of Anti-Fascist Action on the 19th of May 2025
Jun112025
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On the morning of “Patriot’s Day”, a day where Nouvelle Alliance (a québécois fascist and nationalist group) usually holds an annual show of force, we proved ourselves able to humiliate and claim victory over them. This group tried to assemble itself in front of a statue of Dollard Des Ormeaux, a figure of nationalist mythology whom Nouvelle Alliance tries to rehabilitate glorify and rehabilitate. Every year, they try to have an aesthetic gathering and bring in new members to rehabilitate their own image, tarnished by their venimous discourse and hideous hatred for others.
The few members of Nouvelle Alliance’s fighting core, numbering at barely twelve, met up early in a corner of Parc Lafontaine in order to march onto the the place where they plan to honor their martyr Dollard Des Ormeaux. However, we were better prepared and ready to face them. Whilst a group held the fort on the grounds the fascists aimed to occupy, a welcoming committee made it’s way to make it known that this was anti-fascist territory.
These neo-nazis, still believing strongly in Might Makes Right, did not hesitate to charge our line of anti-fascists and to start throwing hands and feet aided by reinforced gloves. The lil-leader (truly small of stature) François Gervais enjoyed LARPing as a commander ordering around his little troops and attempting to give us orders.
Nouvelle Alliance, far from the medias and university campuses, showed their true colors: raw hatred and a thirst for violence. Their attemps to denigrate us were of an almost absurd level of machismo: including nice quotes like “they sent a gang of faggots” and “there are so many women with them, [a fight] isn’t their place.” In accordance with these values, the only woman of the group stayed far off behind them in order to film their attack, whilst we sticked together in solidarity.
Our counter-attacks frustrated their advance and angered the side in front of us who expect us to give up and to fold in front of their supposed virile strength. The fear in their eyes were not lost by us, and we recognized the hesitation of many of the members of the group to continue fighting. Despite the adversaries’ determination to crack our skulls in, we were courageous and did not falter in responding in kind with our own fists, hands and sticks. None of us even had the idea to flee and it took police intervention to break up the brawl. Our strikes, rallied together by solidarity for our comrades, allowed us to slow down the fascists during a decent number of time: enough for our comrades holding the fort to come to our aid. Thankfully for Nouvelle Alliance, the polce arrived as our comrades were joining us, and the former did not hesitate to show their preference for their fellow fascists by standing by to defend the fascists whilst we were given no choice but to disperse from the park.
The massive victory of the libertarian left on this day was thanks to the unity within the diversity of tactics put into use. Our spirit of combativity and our physical counter-attacks against the fascists kept them away from the place of the Celebration. The Celebration gave popular support and legitimacy to sideline the fascists. Without the former, Nouvelle Alliance would have trampled over the efforts to set up the Celebration and would have inserted themselves into the public space: endangering the Celebration to the point where it would not have been accessible, familial and safe. Without the latter, we would not have shown the legitimacy that we actually have, and the police would have had every excuse to divy up the space and to falsely equivocate the fascist margins and popular anti-fascist resistance. We could freely fill our reclaimed space with joy and solidarity which sprouts from the diversity of tactics, unity within the struggle and unyieldingness against the fascist destruce forces. Continue to massify the struggle and continue striking fascists in the face.
We are witnessing the most documented genocide in history in Palestine and the consolidation of a fascist regime in the United States. Many of us are wondering what to do about it. Here’s a conceptual framework for understanding what’s going on and how we can respond. This synthesis draws upon material from Kelly Hayes and her Organizing My Thoughts blog, the thinking of Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie of Interrupting Criminalization, Ejeris Dixon and his podcast Fascism Barometer, Scot Nakagawa’s The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook blog, Anne Archet’s blog flegmatique, the YouTube channel Thought Slime, and Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, among other sources.
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Some Basics
Fascist movements, parties, and regimes can be recognized by:
an authoritarian trajectory aimed at dismantling democratic structures, eliminating dissent, and maintaining their leader’s power.
blatant lies that do not undermine their support.
a propensity for instrumentalizing crises or creating them out of thin air to enrich themselves and to restrict civil liberties, including freedom of movement and assembly, the right to demonstrate, freedom of the press, and the right to a fair trial.
idealized representations of race and nation, articulated in terms of purity, unity, and loyalty.
a desire to dominate and/or eliminate marginalized groups (women, migrants, 2LGBTQIA+ people, Black people, Indigenous people, religious minorities, people with disabilities, the poor, autistic people, etc.) that takes the form of dehumanizing rhetoric and repeated attacks on their fundamental rights.
a conviction that inequalities do not stem from social conditions but are natural and biological, and that this hierarchy is entirely legitimate.
references to a fictional past where all of the above was allegedly the case.
a fetishization of violence as the response to the humiliation of failing to entirely dominate marginalized groups.
a dual objective of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Fascism can seize state power through elections, a coup d’état, or a combination of both, as in the case of the Trump administration, which won the election and used its ascension to power to carry out an “administrative coup”—the illegal usurpation of congressional power and various state department powers by Elon Musk and the DOGE.
Once in power, fascism uses a well-known operative approach: criminalization. It passes laws that make certain activities criminal and deploys the police, the justice system, and prisons against the people who engage in them. For example, it criminalizes:
giving or receiving certain types of care (abortion, gender-affirming care, and possibly care for people with autism and people with disabilities. . .).
providing information (by transforming the definition of pornography so that the laws sanction any book dealing with queerness, by transforming the definition of antisemitism to include any denunciation of the genocide of the Palestinian people, by arresting lawyers who give legal information to migrants. . .).
simply existing on its territory (the mass revoking of visas, cancellation of status, criminalization of the homeless. . .).
Beyond laws, criminalization is politicized to designate entire groups of people as threats:
trans and intersex women are a threat to cis women in sports and more generally.
demonstrators are a threat to the rest of society.
migrants undermine job security and the housing market and threaten the working class.
Muslims threaten national security.
These threats are nurtured by fascist narratives and presented as existential threats to the nation’s future, thereby:
dehumanizing targeted groups.
pre-emptively stripping them of their fundamental rights.
portraying them as “others” who must be violently controlled, punished, and eliminated.
using them as scapegoats for all the evils of capitalism and fascism.
It is through this process of criminalization that fascist regimes create popular consent for the violence deployed against certain groups (physical and psychological violence, disappearances, forced labor, denial of care, murder. . .). People are made to believe that:
those target by hatred are not victims but are being punished for their crimes.
violence is both justified and completely normal.
those targeted would have been left in peace it they hadn’t committed a crime.
However, what is defined as a crime continuously grows.
This process also exists in so-called liberal democracies, which have developed expansive judicial and prison apparatuses. Fascists need the infrastructure and the legitimization that liberal democracies readily provide for the industrial-carceral system to function.
Keep in mind that:
police and prisons are a legacy of slavery and colonization.
Indigenous peoples in Canada have been the targets of genocidal violence.
their dances, rituals, and languages were criminalized.
they have suffered mass sterilization, forced displacement, and far-reaching abuse in residential schools.
Fascism is not so much a break with liberal democracies as a form its panic takes. As a result, the fascism currently consolidating in the United States and taking shape in Canada and Québec is characterized by:
panic in the face of recent advances in social justice, which they call “wokeness,” and which threaten their domination.
panic over the climate crisis and the efforts to mitigate it, both of which threaten access to the resources that underpin their dominance.
a tense alliance of Christian fundamentalists, a racist and sexist grassroots movement, a political elite, and ultra-rich big tech oligarchs.
Here are a few other important facts about fascism:
The fascists want us to waste our time. They will tell all sorts of lies so that we spend hours trying to prove our point, deconstructing their rhetoric, and clarifying facts. Then the next day they completely change their tune forcing us to do it all over again.
For fascists, certain (mythical) truths are more important than reality. If reality doesn’t agree with their truth, reality is wrong. Their relationship to reality is substantially undermined, so reality won’t convince them that they’re wrong. Reality has no bearing on their truth.
Above all, fascists want power. That’s what motivates them. They will adjust their rhetoric and values as much as is necessary to acquire and maintain power.
Fascists want survival of the fittest, based on a cartoonish Darwinian vision of evolution. They want to dominate. As they see it, anything that keeps them in power is justified. Their domination proves them right, and that’s all they need.
Fascism is not the work of a few outsiders hovering above the population. People participate, cooperate, and then become acculturated to fascism. It becomes their reality, their way of understanding the world.
How to Deal with Fascism
Historically, state apparatuses, opposition parties, the justice system, and the mainstream media have all failed to prevent the rise of fascist regimes. The neoliberal elites who run democracies may appear to oppose fascism, but faced with an increasingly unlivable world in which it becomes impossible to sustain both capitalism and liberal democracy, they too will adopt increasingly fascistic policies. For neoliberals, the criminalization and/or abandonment of ever-larger groups of marginalized people will be articulated as a matter of pragmatism and inevitability, while fascists will present it as the desirable return of a violently unequal natural order. In short, don’t expect the support of the neoliberal elites.
Popular organization is the best form of resistance. If the normalization of police, prisons, and mass surveillance has made this effort more difficult, presenting these tools of control as necessary, even natural, there are nonetheless multiple avenues for collective resistance.
Where to start:
Openly resist the consolidation of fascism. Clearly identify what is happening in the United States, Palestine, Canada, and elsewhere. Talk about fascism with those closest to you. Don’t let it be surreptitious. Force it out into the open.
Act locally against events organized by fascist groups. Attack them in every possible way. Physically prevent them from spreading their hatred.
Call bullshit what it is. Don’t get sidetracked by their lies. Don’t waste your time arguing with them. Don’t get caught up in their way of framing the situation. Bring the discussion back to what they do, to the horrors they commit, to the hatred that drives them.
Above all, don’t immediately fall into line if fascists come to power. When faced with authoritarian power, people tend to anticipate what a repressive government would want, and immediately cooperate, to make sure they don’t anger those in power and to protect themselves. This anticipatory obedience tells the regime what compromises people are willing to make and enables it to go much further much faster. This way of adapting harms everyone. It’s essential not to reflexively obey.
Maintain solidarity. Fascism normalizes human suffering and the jettisoning of groups of people designated as negligible or insignificant. Fascists want us to fall back upon our survival instinct, to get caught up in our personal preoccupations, to be isolated and weak. Solidarity is our strength.
We must build and maintain collective people’s power: the power to keep our communities safe; the power to prevent any of our own from being disappeared; the power to make sure everyone has food. We must begin by exploring all the ways in which we can participate in building this power, for example, by working to:
block fascist advances (e.g., by fighting anything that increases the scope, capacity, resources, and power of the prison state and fascist movements, such as building new prisons, militarizing borders, new identification systems targeting certain groups, etc.).
break their alliances and links with local groups and organizations (e.g., links between workers’ unions and organizations representing the police, links between the police and far-right militias, links between the mass media and transphobic activists, etc.).
minimize the impact of their policies (e.g., build and support a strong community network, self-help groups, secure communications networks, community defense infrastructures, gathering spaces, etc.).
build bridges between the communities affected (e.g., trade unions, women’s groups, anarchist gangs, anti-colonial movements, abolitionists, disability rights activists, etc.).
develop resources (e.g., organizations dedicated to sharing the history of struggle, transformative justice organizations, as many spaces as possible where we can gather, debate, digest all of the available information, have block parties, organize workshops, conferences, and marches, etc.).
To explore this issue further, I suggest the zine Block and Build: But Make It Abolitionist by the Interrupting Criminalization organization. Then it’s a matter of determining what makes sense for us, what we’re able to do, and how we understand our social context and the overall situation. For this, I recommend the zine Making a Plan, also an Interrupting Criminalization publication.
It could start with a union, a local chapter of Food not Bombs, a group that organizes people’s assemblies, a housing committee, a group of friends who make engaged art, a women’s group, and so on. All of it is relevant. these groups must:
develop a common language and an overall assessment of the situation.
coordinate in a decentralized way that encourages autonomous action as part of a larger whole.
develop a security culture commensurate with the level of risk.
prepare for repression by setting up a support system in advance.
Then, when the time comes, it will be possible to fight a fascist regime on a large scale thanks to:
a large enough mass of people committed to noncooperation, people who forget to deliver a letter or to forward an e-mail, who slow down some construction project, who don’t remove books from the shelves, who continue teaching history to children, who sabotage bureaucratic processes, who give false information to the police, who continue making music outside and at night, all of it to disrupt the smooth functioning of the regime.
diversity of tactics, including mass demonstrations, a general strike, industrial sabotage, alternative health care networks, etc.
If we join forces to fight fascism and the criminalization process that underpins it, anything is in our reach.
In the run-up to Journée nationale des Patriotes 2025, celebrated on Monday, May 19, this year, the ethnonationalist organization Nouvelle Alliance (NA) called its second annual commemoration of Nouvelle France settler Adam Dollard des Ormeaux at the monument in his honour in Montreal’s Parc La Fontaine. On May 20, 2024, the far-right group had a similar gathering at Dollard’s monument (the year before that, NA activists had gathered at Pied-du-Courant, in the southeast of the city, to pay tribute to the Lower Canada Patriotes). The folkloric Dollard des Ormeaux is not, it must be stressed, the hero that NA and reactionary nationalists of its ilk insist on glorifying.
One of the posters seen around the Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood in May 2024, in the days before the commemoration of the Patriotes.
Did You Know?
Dollard des Ormeaux is not the “saviour of New France” that nineteenth-century “historians” make him out to be.
He was a young French adventurer who tried to steal furs from the Iroquois. The idiot ended up trapped in Long-Sault.
He refused to negotiate with his enemies, which led to the revolt of his Huron allies, and that worked out badly for him and his companions.
Some versions of the story claim that he built an improvised explosive device that detonated where he was holed up, thereby guaranteeing his defeat.
Rather than being the courageous saviour of the colony that Lionel Groulx portrays him as, he is more of the OG imbecile of French Canada, a pillar of self-sabotage, rendered a heroic figure by nationalist scribes in need of foundational yarns.
Also, Fuck Nouvelle Alliance!
Fed up with some fifty identitarian nationalists with stone-age ideas traipsing around Montréal with impunity, concerned citizens and people from the neighbourhood, along with members of community organizations, anti-racist activists, and trade unionists mobilized in recent weeks to organize a “People’s Festival Against Fascism” in protest.
The poster for the People’s Festival Against Fascism that appeared around Montréal in the weeks leading up to the event.
The main goal of this festive gathering was to occupy the area around the Dollard des Ormeaux monument in order to denounce the growing influence of the far right, in general, and the ambitions of Nouvelle Alliance, in particular. The celebration was a great success in its own right, by our count, attracting between three and four hundred people to the park between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. We salute the tremendous effort made by those involved, and are reassured to see that citizens of Montréal and of Québec generally are ready to mobilize to confront the recent wave of normalization of the far right in public discourse.
A number of articles have been published in the media over the past few days, the majority demonstrating a flagrant lack of understanding of Nouvelle Alliance and its strategy. While we welcome the mainstream media’s growing—albeit belated—interest in Québec’s far right, it is clear that their attention to this area is still leaves something lacking, and that for a variety of structural reasons, they generally ignore the considerable efforts our collective has made over the past few years to shed light on this subject.
Here, then, is a detailed insider’s account of the events of May 19, 2025, that we hope will shed light on elements that have been overlooked or simply glossed over by the media and other key observers.
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Leading up to the Gathering
On the evening of Sunday, May 18, the day before the commemoration, Nouvelle Alliance posted a series of characteristically austere photos on its social media accounts, saying: “the Patriote song [Tex Lecor, 1968] will be sung at the foot of the Dollard des Ormeaux monument.”
Nouvelle Alliance publication on the evening of May 18, 2025, the day before the Dollard des Ormeaux commemoration.
Given that Nouvelle Alliance was certainly well aware of the popular festival scheduled to take place at the foot of the monument at the same time as their event, this made it clear that they planned to occupy the contested space.
How they planned to do that became clear on Monday morning at around 8:00 a.m., when a contingent of a dozen or so people, made up of part of the NA core and a few goons, who were possibly recruited for the occasion, gathered at the opposite end of Parc La Fontaine. This contingent, dressed in black, moving in military formation, and wearing combat gloves and mouthguards had clearly come looking for a fight.
Eliott Labrie Laplante, a member of Nouvelle Alliance’s core group, has never been able to deal with his manhood being called into question! Here, several hours after the morning’s confrontation, he’s still sporting his reinforced gloves.This previously unknown individual, identified as Dany Ayotte from Québec City, was particularly active in the morning’s physical confrontation. Here he is still wearing his reinforced gloves not long after.
This small group soon began marching toward the Dollard Des Ormeaux monument, with the clear aim of physically dislodging the popular rally organizers who were setting up and, we presume, taking control of the space “by any means necessary.”
Fortunately, alerted by the previous day’s publication to the possibility of violence, a few autonomous activists mobilized in the early hours of the morning to confront them and prevent a cowardly attack on citizens taking the opportunity to advance a vision of an inclusive and welcoming Québec. There was a physical confrontation in the southeast section of Parc La Fontaine, during which NA members made full use of their combat gear.
It’s clear that the Nouvelle Alliance core group arrived anticipating—and savouring—this sort of confrontation. This new combative approach, which until now we hadn’t associated with this group, stands in stark contrast to the image of clean-cut middle-class hipsters that the group has promoted for several years. It will be interesting to see for how long NA can maintain this ambiguity. Engaging in hand-to-hand combat with left-wing activists will complicate efforts to carve out a place in mainstream politics by infiltrating the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois.
Once an SPVM intervention ended the confrontation, the NA members who had taken part in the assault were held by police at a distance from the monument where two rival events were scheduled to take place.
It’s worth noting that the prevention of NA’s plans as a result of the confrontation enabled the organizers of the popular festival to quietly set up their six tents, hang numerous banners around the monument, and go ahead with the convivial, family-friendly event. We salute the courage of those who blocked NA—whose violent impulses are now obvious—to protect their community and, ultimately, guarantee the success of the event.
A Festive gathering in Parc La Fontaine
By 10:00 a.m., it was party time, and antifascist sympathizers began to gather in growing numbers. Litres of coffee were served, there was face painting for children, lively music rang out across the park, and impromptu soccer matches added to the fun. The atmosphere was decidedly festive!
One of the banners surrounding the monument [Neighbours welcome/fascists out].Hundreds of hot dogs were served.A number of tables were set up in the tents.
Participants in the popular festival chanted anti-fascist slogans to drown out Nouvelle Alliance’s tedious speeches.
The same cannot be said of the experience of the small band of identitarians gathered around NA, who were unable to get close to the monument and found themselves facing off with the police for quite a while.
Nouvelle Alliance activists slink away from the police cordon.
Unfortunately for Nouvelle Alliance, real life isn’t a school yard and announcing your event first isn’t enough to reserve a space, especially when it’s to spread hatred of others disguised as love of your nation.
The nationalist group’s militants and its sympathizers were forced to set up on the sidewalk about fifty metres from the Dollard des Ormeaux monument, held at bay by a large police presence and the several hundred people who attended the festival against fascism. Disappointed and looking dejected, the Nouvelle Alliance militants and their sympathizers tried, rather feebly, to hold their commemoration in spite of everything, but were drowned out by the popular festival’s music and antifascist chants.
Nouvelle Alliance commemorates its ghosts on the sidewalk.
Speaking of sympathizers, we should mention the notable presence of David Leblanc, a neo-Nazi bonehead well known in antifascist circles, since he likes to take photos of himself giving the Nazi salute (he was notably active with Soldiers of Odin Québec). We also mentioned him almost exactly one year ago, since he was also present at the Nouvelle Alliance commemoration on May 20, 2024.
Bonehead Dave Leblanc has a bad cramp in his arm.Leblanc (from behind) having a good laugh in May 2024 with NA members, here with Émile Coderre.Dave Leblanc’s presence went unchallenged at the Nouvelle Alliance event in 2024; seen here holding the Carillon Sacré-Cœur alongside fellow neo-Nazi Shawn Beauvais MacDonald.
At the time, the identity group’s leaders claimed that they couldn’t control who participated in their events, as they were public activities, and that they hadn’t known the ugly truth about David Leblanc. What excuse will the cryptofascists of Nouvelle Alliance come up with this year? Knowingly and without raising an eyebrow, they allowed a loud and proud neo-Nazi to walk alongside them all day, even shaking his hand and chatting with him.
Bonehead Dave Leblanc stands next to Nouvelle Alliance leader François Gervais, giving an interview to Alexandre Cormier-Denis, on May 19, 2025.Neo-Nazi Dave Leblanc marches with Nouvelle Alliance, May 19, 2025.
It’s hard to imagine that some people still doubt Nouvelle Alliance’s ideological position.
Another sinister character who reappeared for the second year running was Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, the main organizer of the Frontenac Active Club, who was again spotted prowling around the Nouvelle Alliance gathering. After arriving alone this time, he was joined by two others and left shortly afterwards.
Beauvais MacDonald was part of the Nouvelle Alliance commemoration in 2024.Shawn Beauvais MacDonald returned in 2025, but left shortly after this meeting at some distance from the festival. Were these people acolytes? Cops telling him to piss off? Who knows?
Perhaps the most significant appearance at the NA commemoration, however, was that of Alexandre Cormier-Denis. Cormier-Denis, whom we’ve already talked about (and will have more to say about very soon. . .), had announced the week before that he would be taking part in the NA commemoration and invited his supporters to join him. Cormier-Denis, it should be remembered, is the main host of the far-right “reinformation” project Nomos.TV, which stands out for its ethnic nationalism and its profoundly racist and Islamophobic statements. His extreme positions led to him being disqualified from presenting a brief to a parliamentary commission on immigration in 2023.
To give you an idea, here’s a sample (from dozens of examples) of Cormier-Denis’s positions (on immigration, “rewilding,” the future of patriotism, etc.), which clearly align with those of Nouvelle Alliance, since they appear to constitute a mutual admiration society:
Cormier-Denis’s presence clearly shows that the social project proposed by Nouvelle Alliance resonates with the worst of Québec’s fascist and fascist-adjacent elements. François Gervais, president of Nouvelle Alliance, readily granted him a live interview lasting several minutes, in which we are treated to a confused and subjective description of the current period, in which antifascists, “Bolsheviks,” and progressive independentists are lumped together.
François Gervais en entrevue avec Alexandre Cormier-Denis pour la chaîne Nomos.tv.
Anyone who thought that Nouvelle Alliance was above the racist rhetoric of Cormier-Denis and his acolytes was clearly wrong. Nomos and Nouvelle Alliance are one and the same movement.
Once the dreary NA speeches were over, their “commemoration,” which lasted at most twenty minutes—compared to an hour last year—turned into a sad and solemn little march (not a smile to be seen), at around 12:30.
The Nouvelle Alliance fools on parade.
Surrounded by dozens of cops, around fifty sympathizers of this groupuscule marched along Rachel and Saint-Denis Streets, toward Carré Saint-Louis, the starting point for the annual Grande marche des Patriotes, organized by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste (SSJB). Along the way, the ethnonationalists, still led by their president, chanted reactionary and exclusionary slogans like “Patrie, Nation, Tradition,” as well as classics like “le Québec aux Québécois” [Québec for Quebeckers]. It’s worth noting that these slogans echo those of the French far right. For example, the neo-Nazis of the Comité du 9 Mai (C9M), who marched with impunity in Paris a few weeks ago, regularly chant, among other things, “Europe, Jeunesse, Révolution” [Europe, Youth, Revolution].
Same cadence, same delivery, same content: it’s clear that that’s no coincidence. In addition to its Québec precursors, NA is inspired by the worst of the European far right (identitarians, royalists, revolutionary nationalists, etc.), and that’s worth noting.
Meanwhile, the People’s Festival Against Fascism was in full swing, and a good time was had by young and old alike. More than five hundred hot dogs were served, and the games and music continued for several hours after Nouvelle Alliance’s departure.
Once again, we applaud the extraordinary effort of the organizers and congratulate everyone who chose to spend part of their Monday promoting and defending inclusive anti-racist values.
There was music.We danced!We redecorated the Dollard monument.Between three and four hundred people came over the course of the day.Numerous flags, including the Pride flag, waved above the anti-fascist festival.
Many progressive pro-independence activists were also present, including members of the Front pour l’indépendance nationale (FIN) and OUI Québec, who held up a poster produced for the occasion: “L’indépendance du Québec sera antifasciste” [Québec’s independence will be anti-fascist].
The Patriote tricolour was also waving at the anti-fascist festival!
At Carré Saint-Louis
Nouvelle Alliance’s misadventure wasn’t over. The fun continued when they arrived at Carré Saint-Louis at around 1:00 p.m. and attempted, as they have in the past, to parasitically attach themselves to the annual Grande marche des Patriotes organized by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste. To their dismay, they were not welcome—for the second time that day!
Unlike last year, the SSJB had stopped to consider who it partnered with and made the judicious decision to inform Nouvelle Alliance’s leaders in advance that they would not be welcome this time. However, there’s what you say and there’s what you do, and on the ground, the SSJB leadership’s position did not prevail. Instead, the SSJB tried to negotiate a compromise, allowing Nouvelle Alliance to participate if they agreed to put away their banners and flags. Like last year, however, the NA militants failed to keep their word and did, in fact, display their colors as soon as the march got underway. Luckily, the presence of a small (but solid!) progressive pro-independence contingent put an end to that.
OUI Québec militants and comrades from the Front pour l’indépendance nationale (FIN) joined forces to prevent Nouvelle Alliance from joining the main march, sealing NA off. After a brief hesitation, during which the progressive independentists courageously held the line, despite being outnumbered by NA activists, the police intervened to separate the two sides by, quite literally, pushing the progressives out of the way.
An anti-fascist contingent at prevented the identitarian groupuscule from joining the main body of the Grande marche des Patriotes.
The entire SSJB march took place without the toxic presence of Nouvelle Alliance, the latter marching a hundred metres behind, completely surrounded by the SPVM.
Progressive independentists sealed Nouvelle Alliance off from the Grande marche des Patriotes.
We’d like to congratulate OUI Québec and FIN for having the courage to stand up for their anti-fascist principles despite the pallid support of the march’s organizers. Over the years, we’ve often criticized the contemporary independence movement for its complacency toward the far-right groups that pollute its ranks. Let’s give credit where credit is due: OUI Québec’s recent strong stance offers hope for the future of the sovereigntist movement.
Unfortunately, not all sovereigntist groups are created equal, and the ludicrous presence of the Action socialiste de libération nationale (ASLN) at the Grande marche des Patriotes proves the point. The latter, whose rapprochement with Nouvelle Alliance we recently exposed, joined their new comrades for the duration of the march. Friendly handshakes were exchanged, and a few jarring red flags were seen amid Nouvelle Alliance’s sea of blue. This situation marks a turning point in relations between the ASLN and NA. Until recently, the two groups had kept their rapprochement under wraps, but now their alliance has come out into the light of day. Despite their ideological differences as to the ideal future for Québec, it would seem that their reactionary social positions provide sufficient common ground. The rest of the pro-independence camp be warned: support for either of these two groups is support for their conservative, anti-migrant, anti-diversity, anti-woke, and fundamentally reactionary social project.
An image that sums up the whole sordid affair: Nouvelle Alliance leader François Gervais, flanked by neo-Nazi bonehead David Leblanc, gives an interview to ethnic ultranationalist fanatic Alexandre Cormier-Denis for the far-right reinformation channel Nomos.TV, while Billy Savoie and the Stalinist ASLN bozos cackle in the background.
Conclusion
As we have seen, Nouvelle Alliance has become increasingly visible within a far-right ecosystem, from which it foolishly believed it would gloriously emerge to infect the rest of the sovereigntist movement with its nauseating ideas.
It’s about time the mainstream media got its facts right, rather than buying into the mendacious propaganda being spewed by Québec’s far right. It’s a pity, for example, that newspapers readily publish the whimsical nattering of commentators who are either confused or acting in bad faith, such as secularism activist Nadia El-Mabrouk, who, in a letter published in Le Devoir on May 23, admits that she was unaware of Nouvelle Alliance (and, therefore, couldn’t possibly understand the nature of its project and its discourse) but, nevertheless, defends its presence in the broad sovereigntist family, as well as encouraging us to embrace dialogue and universal love.
Fortunately, the new generation of sovereigntists doesn’t share this blindness, as is evidenced by the position taken by OUI CVM, which loudly and clearly denounces this new reactionary alliance and everything it represents.
The struggle for Québec’s independence is a very complex issue, and anti-fascists of different stripes certainly disagree on the desirable outcome, but whatever happens in Québec in the future, we make this promise today: fascists will NEVER rule here.
Bonus tracks :
Leading Nouvelle Alliance activist Émille Coderre, whose problematic past we’ve discussed in the past, and whose entry in the PQ and the Bloc we’ve noted several times, makes a hand gesture widely seen as code in contemporary white supremacist movements. Way to go, guy!
The article we published about the Frontenac Active Club last August seems to have seriously hampered this neo-Nazi-inspired group.
After being barred from the gym where he was training, Martin Brouillette, from Rawdon, contacted us to ask us to remove his name from the article . . . for the safety of his family. Obviously, his family has nothing to fear from anti-fascists; the problem lies with Barette’s white supremacist activities and his stream of inflammatory rhetoric on social media. At this point, however, we see nothing to indicate that Martin Brouillette has continued his neo-Nazi activities . . . apart from the fact that he still proudly displays his fascist tattoos alongside photos of his children on his Facebook page.
The other members of the group have disappeared, and posts on the FAC Telegram account have largely dwindled to republishing content generated by other groups in the Active Club International network and some affiliated neo-Nazis in English Canada. On May 3, FAC members took part in a visibility action in Toronto organized by the white nationalist (neo-Nazi) network formed around the tiny groupuscule Nationalist-13, along with some thirty acolytes from the general area and from elsewhere in Canada.
As for the group’s leader Raphaël Dinucci, from Laval, he didn’t directly react to the article, but the FAC leadership has shifted, and he has gradually faded from view, eclipsed by Shawn Beauvais MacDonald. The latter is notorious, both for having been part of every recent Québec neo-Nazi project (Alt Right Montréal, Atalante, White Lives Matter, you name it, he was there) and for having been central to each organization’s self-destruction!
Despite his “Friendly Fash” sobriquet, he has continued to do what he does best: being as detestable as a human being can be. On weekends, for example, he can found wandering around by himself on av. Mont-Royal or boul. Saint-Laurent, wearing ostentatious Adolf Hitler clothing and hanging out on various terraces, book in hand, hoping for a run-in with antifascists; that hasn’t worked out for him (we’re not complete idiots, after all). Beginning a few months back he started having company. He has taken the very young, extremely racist Sandrine Girardot under his wing and into his home. (We’ve mentioned Sandrine in the past.) Recent posts about the relationship this forty-year-old neo-Nazi militant is having with the young Girardot (twenty-four) strongly suggest that he can add scumbag and predator to his CV.
Now, let’s get to the main subject of this article: David Barrette, from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
Unlike the other members of the Frontenac Active Club, who are known for their online discretion (with the notable exception of Beauvais MacDonald), David Barrette tends to go to the far limits of depravity in his online hate speech. He praises Hitler, argues that the shape of the skulls of different “races” indicates different degrees of intelligence, and mocks police murders of racialized people; nothing is too racist (or too Nazi) for Barrette. With Facebook’s moderation standards now virtually non-existent, Barrette is free to post his Nazi rants on a daily basis with no fear of repercussions.
It’s also clear that the police and the courts in Québec aren’t really interested in combating online hate speech. Proof of this is their total inaction in the face of clear and repeated infractions—and, of course, the cringeworthy botching of the case against Gabriel Sohier Chaput, aka “Zeiger.” At the risk of repeating ourselves, it is, as always, perfectly clear that responsibility for fighting the rising tides of racism and fascism lies with the community as a whole, both those aligned with militant anti-fascism and others who wish to take concrete action.
We were shocked recently to see Barrette take a further step in his online violence. In a recent post, he wrote: “Fuck your optics, I’m going in”—a clear reference to the phrase posted by the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018, shortly before he killed eleven Jews—which might reasonably suggest that Barrette is preparing a similar sort of massacre. Shortly afterward, he followed up this message with “I’m joking,” and, given that nothing happened, it is likely that he was “joking,” but a “joke” of this nature (especially coming from an unapologetic antisemite) can’t be taken lightly.
We made it perfectly clear in a previous article that David Barrette poses a constant threat to our communities: he has attacked a pro-LGBTQ+ rally; he spreads hate speech online as easily as other people breathe; he has a history of violence that is well documented in his criminal record (more on that later). Therefore, publicly claiming that he is preparing a mass shooting is obviously a red flag, regardless of whether or not he’s “joking.” Even those who work in the area acknowledge that predicting mass shootings is a near-impossible task. Given his extreme Nazi views, Barrette clearly raises plenty of red flags. Furthermore, he hasn’t confined himself to the virtual world; not only has he attacked a LGBTQ+ protest, as mentioned above, but he has joined the Frontenac Active Club. We think the community should be aware of him and take the potential threat very seriously. Above all, we think it’s important to draw all of this to the attention of his employer GloboTech Communications (or simply GloboTech).
Barrette is very prolific on the IRC chat platform, where he and a few other losers spend their days talking absolute crap. In Barrette’s case, this means talking about his love for Hitler and his hatred of racialized and LGBTQ+ people. At one point, he wrote: “I have an Arab colleague and I like him.” We can only imagine how strained this working relationship must be. All the more so, given that he has also written: “I talk to Jewish women, Black women, Arab women. . . . I tell them openly that the goal is to deport [millions of] people like them” Believe it or not, this is one of his more coherent posts amid his hallucinatory a hate-fueled Nazi ramblings.
Brief comic relief interrupted this incessant stream of hate on IRC last month, when Barrette accidentally posted a picture of his dick in the #montreal group’s chat room. The reactions were priceless:
We’re aware that a number of people involved in the struggle against the circulation of hateful ideas have contacted GloboTech, the company that employs David Barette. Oddly, the company seems to very committed to protecting this neo-Nazi: as soon as his name is mentioned, whether on the phone, by e-mail, or via the chat service, company representatives suddenly go silent.
Recently, comrades informed us of David Barrette’s lengthy criminal record, which suggests that he may be a violent repeat offender. An overview of his criminal record shows that he has been convicted of death threats and causing bodily harm, threatening to burn or otherwise damage property, conspiracy, breach of probation. . .
We are unable to determine whether or not the various domain names managed by Barrette—for example, the domains national-socialists.club and freespeech.club belong to him—are hosted by GloboTech, since they’re hidden behind Cloudflare.
That said, we discovered something very interesting in the MX records (Mail eXchange, a list of servers that are allowed to send e-mail on behalf of a domain name). Barrette included one of Globo.tech’s IP addresses in the list of servers accepted for national-socialists.club and freespeech.club. Only GloboTech’s administrators would know whether or not the websites (one of which is clearly Nazi in character) are hosted on their servers, but the MX records show that Barrette at least intended to use Globo.tech’s servers to send e-mails from his sites.
Globo.tech’s management seems to think they can remain neutral in this situation, but there’s no such thing as neutrality, even less so when it’s used to protect a Nazi who attacks LGBTQ+ demonstrations, spreads hate online, and alludes to preparing a mass murder.
When GloboTech protects David Barrette, the company becomes an accomplice, all the more so if its inaction allows him to use its resources to spread hate. GloboTech can’t go on playing ostrich for much longer.
Last February, the Poubelle Alliance Facebook page, which takes great pleasure in satirizing the identity group Nouvelle Alliance, which we’ve written about on several occasions (notably here and here), revealed alleged links between NA and the Action socialiste de libération nationale (ASLN, formerly the Parti communiste du Québec).
It was already clear that this groupuscule was from a section of the left we weren’t all that thrilled with: retrograde and ossified in its thinking, nationalist, anti-woke (in plain English, reactionary) and, true to the red-brown tradition, uncritical of autocratic regimes. After leaving Québec solidaire to throw its support behind its Parti québécois “comrades” Péladeau and Lisée—see “Le Parti communiste appuie… le PQ” (Journal de Québec, 2018); “Des communistes séduits par PKP” (La Presse, 2014)—the party’s youth wing seems to have fallen under the Stalinist spell, rehabilitating Enver Hoaxa, prime minister of Albania for over forty years, and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
A quick look at the ASLN’s website and recent communications (including attempts at memes that could only be described as complete crap) is enough to reveal the deeply cringe-worthy nature of this tawdry trifle, both in form and content.
Folkloric portrait gallery on display during an ASLN “training camp” last February. On the right, the always relevant Joseph Stalin. Yikes.A sampling of the ASLN’s avant-garde memetics.
The exact nature of the ties between the ASLN and Nouvelle Alliance has been somewhat fuzzy, but we now have enough to allow us to hypothesize. While it might seem strange that a group that claims to be left-wing, however reactionary it may be, would actively extend a hand to activists on the far right of the political spectrum on the basis of a shared aspiration for Québec’s independence. However, we now have tangible proof of this rapprochement.
On March 24, the ASLN posted an invitation to a “Colloque des patriotes” to be held in Desbiens, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, on May 3–4, featuring a “debate” between ASLN and Nouvelle Alliance “leaders.” ASLN’s “leader” Billy Savoie subsequently promoted the event and the debate, promising to confront Nouvelle Alliance’s “nonsense”—that and a lot of other noise.
As we see it, holding a debate with ethnonationalists effectively legitimizes them, and any openness to them indicates a willingness to engage with their toxic ideology.
Beyond that, it’s questionable that the ASLN actually holds any positions that would actually challenge Nouvelle Alliance’s “nonsense” or even provide the basis for an interesting and relevant “debate” (spoiler alert: expectations are low). Here’s Billy Savoie’s response to a comment on the post announcing the colloquium:
The “leader” of the ASLN, Billy Savoie, explains here to an internet commenter that his organization’s communism is not radical-left… We can only agree.
Anti-woke nationalists deflecting attention from their reactionary essence by including a few tokenized people of color. . . on that basis, the difference from Nouvelle Alliance is hard to see. Fans of the Parti Québécois, Catholics, and opponents to “mass migration”; it’s more like the communist ASLN is trying to outdo Nouvelle Alliance in backwardness to carve out a niche for itself in the nationalist/independence scene. . . all the while waving a red flag.
It’s fairly evident that wanting to nationalize multinationals—if they’re foreign—and support PMEs—as long as they have the nationalist stamp of approval—has more or less become a typical communist feature. Communism that doesn’t aspire to abolish oppressive systems has already gone off the rails, but to declare oneself a communist and nationalist, while proposing social policies largely in line with those of a far-right group is nothing more than toxic red-brownism.
The ASLN, it would seem, is playing directly into Nouvelle Alliance’s hands, legitimizing its orientation and giving it yet another platform to promote its narrow vision of the French-Canadian nation.
Nouvelle Alliance has always claimed to be neither right nor left, despite its clearly reactionary platform and its many fascist-adjacent and full-blown fascist sympathizers! Whatever its leaders may say, the ASLN seems to be bending over backward to give a group of right-wing activists a platform to amplify their message.
Nouvelle Alliance’s activists increasingly find themselves in situation where the only people still willing to talk to them are people who are clearly confused (to say the least).
Given this obvious rightward drift, the shine is coming off of the ASLN, its activists are finding themselves personae non grata in pro-independence circles, and some of the group’s founders have disappeared from its publications.
Could it be that kissing up to the far right has created tensions within what is allegedly a left-wing organization? Might it be that other members of their central committee understand who really benefits from this grotesque rapprochement?
One of the “leaders” of the ASLN, Sébastien Paquette, greets the “leader” of Nouvelle Alliance, François Gervais.
Bonus track :
Billy Savoie, who is apparently a high school teacher, gives his Secondary 5 students readings by Alexander Dugin, infamous for being the ideological conscience of Vladimir Putin and as the founder of the National-Bolchevik movement.
