Montréal Counter-information

From Montréal-Antifasciste

On May 19, anti-immigrant protesters descended on the U.S./Canada border following a call by Storm Alliance, one of Quebec’s main far right organizations. Due to the Safe Third Country Agreement between the Canadian and U.S. governments, over the past 18 months the border in Quebec, especially at Roxham Road near Hemmingford, has become a major crossing for refugees fleeing the Trump regime. One consequence of this is the far right seeking to turn this human drama into a political flashpoint from which to profit. This was the third time that Storm Alliance had mobilized to the border in this way, and the third time antifascists and antiracists from Hemmingford, Montréal, and the Eastern Townships mobilized to counter them.

Between one and two hundred showed up on each side on the 19th. As has happened previously, the antiracist forces successfully secured Roxham Road, to ensure that the people crossing would not have to deal with a racist mob. There were workshops, children’s activities, and an overall festive and “chill” atmosphere there, with support of people from the area.

Given the strong antiracist presence at Roxham Road, Storm Alliance once again switched their plans to a fallback position at the nearby “official” border crossing at St Bernard de Lacolle. In order to mount a counterpresence there, antiracist forces needed to divide themselves. St Bernard de Lacolle is much more difficult terrain for our side, partly due to the highly policed and militarized nature of an official border crossing, with law enforcement clearly operating to support the far right forces (who had acquired a permit, and who have been consciously cultivating this friendly relationship with the police for over a year now). Police prevented antiracists from blocking Storm Alliance, and allowed the latter to gather and demonstrate directly in front of the buildings where refugees were being held after having crossed at Roxham. Despite the fact that the primary objective – Roxham Road – remained impervious to the far right, people on our side who attempted to also counter them at Lacolle were left feeling deflated and discouraged by the end of the day.

It was in the context of the day’s events, though – both at Roxham Road and Lacolle – that we became aware of a new figure seeking to exploit the border situation for their own political capital…

Faith Goldy, Far Right Wannabe-Superstar

Faith Julia Goldy-Bazos, more widely known as Faith Goldy, describes herself as a “Catholic Nationalist for Christ the King & Country.” In fact, she is one of Canada’s most prominent white nationalist internet personalities.

On May 19, she traveled from Toronto to the Hemmingford/Lacolle area; she claims she was there to report on the antiracist presence, perhaps as hype leading up to her own anti-immigrant protest she had already planned for June 3^rd (more on this below). She first went to Roxham Road, where she was rebuffed by the antiracists, at which point she was apparently informed by police that an anti-immigrant protest would be occurring at Lacolle(which is only 15 minutes away). Making her way there, she however arrived a bit too early, and instead got a nice greeting from the antifascists who had gathered at that location in the hopes of blocking Storm Alliance.

Goldy, an inveterate self-promoter and internet personality, livestreamed this encounter. The video, which shows her being ejected from the demonstration, subsequently went viral in far right networks, the theme of an “innocent” middle class white woman being “assaulted” by antifascists (of different genders) resonating strongly in anti-immigrant and right-wing milieux.

All of which also made us wonder: Who is this creep? Where is she coming from politically? What are her connections? What are her plans?

So Who Is This Scumbag?

Since 2015, Goldy became well-known as the host of “On the Hunt With Faith Goldy,” a video report on Ezra Levant’s far-right zionist Rebel Media website. Typical shows had themes like, “While migrants rape their way across the continent, where are Europe’s men?” (January 29, 2016), or “Trudeau teams with Soros on refugee scheme” (December 15, 2016). It was Goldy who promoted various conspiracy theories about the massacre at the Quebec City mosque in January 2017, continuing to spread misinformation long after it had been debunked by mainstream media outlets. Later that year, she accompanied Proud Boys founder (and at the time her colleague at Rebel Media) Gavin McInnes to the West Bank, where she called for a “crusade” to “reclaim” (i.e. ethnically cleanse) Bethlehem, also tweeting selfies of herself posing in a “deus vult” hoodie emblazoned with the crusaders’ cross, with the caption “in hoc signo vinces” (“in this sign you shall conquer”).

A complete catalogue of Goldy’s racist, Islamophobic, and sexist bullshit, would require a stronger stomach to compile than we have (though you can see some more examples here). As time went on, Goldy only became more outspoken, championing views that were noxious even to a fellow-racist like her boss Ezra Levant. While Rebel Media was ok with her devoting a show to “white genocide” in June 2017, things came to a head in August as Goldy traveled to Charlottesville, VA, to report on the racist protests and antifascist counterprotests as a “journalist” embedded within the far right. As the Winnipeg Free Press reported in the wake of the clashes, “In the course of her dispatches, Goldy argued the events in Charlottesville were evidence of a ‘rising white racial consciousness’ that was going to change the political landscape in America. She also went to great lengths to laud the 20-point ‘meta-political manifesto’ composed by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, a document that included calls to organize states along ethnic and racial divides and celebrates the superiority of ‘White America.’ Goldy described Spencer’s manifesto as ‘robust’ and ‘well thought-out.’”

It was the backlash against her sympathetic interview with Robert “Azzmador” Ray of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer – during which the two can be heard basically agreeing with each other about everything, in what can only be regarded as an exercise in mutual admiration – while in Charlottesville that led to her termination at Rebel Media. At one point in the interview, Ray (who was filmed chanting “gas the k*kes” throughout that weekend) asks Goldy some light-hearted questions about her employer’s Jewishness:

Azzmador: And I just had one question for you, and my listeners would not forgive me if I didn’t ask you it.

Faith Goldy: Oh, I’m waiting for it, baby.

Azzmador: Okay, it’s an easy one.

Goldy: Yeah.

Azzmador: Have you ever seen Ezra Levant mix meat and dairy?

Goldy: [laughs] I’ll tell you that if you — and this is something that he agrees with — if you ever offer him free bacon, it’s free — free bacon — anyway…

Laughter.

Goldy: No, I think he keeps kosher, but I don’t know. But I will say this: Ezra Levant knows where I stand on a lot of issues, and he has afforded me a tremendous amount of freedom.

She was fired shortly thereafter.

Since parting ways with Rebel Media, Goldy has attempted to make a career for herself as a white nationalist Internet personality, doing nothing really but network with other far right Internet figures, generally appearing on their YouTube shows. In December 2017, she was interviewed by alt-right youtuber Colin Robertson (“Millennial Woes”), during which she recited the white supremacist fourteen words (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”), stating that she did not believe doing so should be seen as controversial. On the neo-Nazi Red Ice show, for instance, as detailed by the AWM blog, she has claimed that “racist” is a “term of oppression” used against whites, that white Canadians are victims of systemic oppression, while also returning to the subject of defending her use of the “fourteen words”. In an interview earlier this year with white supremacist YouTube blogger Ayla Stewart, Goldy recommended the book For My Legionaries, by Corneliu Codreanu, who led the Romanian Iron Guard, a fascist movement every bit as bloody and anti-Semitic as the German Nazis. (When it was subsequently pointed out that For My Legionaries includes calls to eliminate “the Jewish menace, ”Goldy backtracked slightly, tweeting “It’s now come to my attention that there is a disturbing line later in that book and I wish to state for the record: I do not endorse it.”) She regularly shares social media posts from European far right groups such as Red Ice and Generation Identity, as well as videos of herself hammering on the theme of white people becoming a minority facing genocide around the world.

Within Canada, Goldy has continued to work with other strains of the far right. In early March, she filmed herself disrupting an antiracist presentation by Michael Capello at Trent University, “It’s Okay to be (Against) White(ness).” More recently, Goldy participated in the tiny protest against the White Privilege Conference Global (WPC Global) held at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she stood alongside members of the Sons of Odin, the Soldiers of Odin, and similar groups. While there, she was interviewed by white supremacist Ronny Cameron, to whom she explained why she favors racism, or as she puts it, “in-group preference,” “which is actually psychologically, sociologically, natural.You see it in birds, you see it in humans. Europeans, through the Enlightenment, and the cancerous thought that came therein, had that bred out of them, and now they’re being preyed on…”

On March 20, Lindsay Shepherd’s Society for Open Inquiry at Laurier University – one of a number of campus groups which promote racist and transphobic organizing under the guise of  “freedom of speech” – attempted to organize a speaking event with Goldy, which was cancelled when someone made the correct move to pull the fire alarm (literally). A month later, on April 30th, the same group tried to hold another Goldy talk – this time with Ricardo Duchesne, a University of New Brunswick sociology professor and perhaps Canada’s most important white nationalist intellectual – at the University of Waterloo, but that one was cancelled when the university tried to get the organizers to pay over $28,000 for security. So instead, Goldy spent April 30^th making her first livestreaming trip to  Hemmingford, Quebec, where she tweeted a series of photos of refugees crossing Roxham Road into Canada, along with herself denouncing the entry of so many people – as she put it,“Maybe we should look after our own before becoming the battered women’s shelter and boarding house for the world.” (Staying classy, huh, Faith?)

Following up on her April 30 visit to the border, Goldy announced that she would be organizing buses to bring protesters to Roxham Road on June 3^rd. As the rally’s Facebook event page explains:

CANADA IS BEING INVADED BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS!

Since PM Trudeau sent out his #WelcomeToCanada tweet to the world, over 50,000 illegals have entered Canada.

Of those who have illegally entered, over 20,000 have done so by foot across Canada’s southern border, which has been erased without a democratic mandate.

THERE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION: MAKE THE ENTIRE BORDER AN OFFICIAL PORT OF ENTRY.

With this, RCMP officers would be relieved of their bellhop duties and CBSA could get to work turning away illegal migrants.

Goldy subsequently returned to the border on May 19, to great hilarity, as detailed above. The video she shot of herself being spat on and having her camera knocked greatly increased the profile of her June 3^rd plans, including within the local far right.

Goldy had called her demonstration at Roxham Road without consulting with the Quebec racists who have organized similar protests in the Hemingford/Lacolle area repeatedly since early 2017. Despite this, individuals from the Quebec far right have reached out online, indicating that they would be willing to work with her and coordinate a bus from Montréal as well. This includes those who were in charge of security at the May 19 rally at the nearby Lacolle border crossing, most notably Sylvain Lacroix (formerly of the Front patriotique du Québec, which he left following a bad breakup with FPQ official Marie-Elaine Boucher). At the same time, Maxime Morin and Guillaume Beauchamp of the far right video channel DMS, came out with a video targeting certain members of the Montréal far left for harassment, claiming they were involved in the alleged “assault” on Goldy. Goldy has promoted this video, which is no surprise, even though DMS’s support for outright neonazis, and participation in the leaked neo-Nazi “Montréal Storm” Discord logs, have been well-documented.

Goldy is significantly more brazen in her racism and her affinities with neonazis than most Storm Alliance or FPQ spokespeople. However, over the past year, we have witnessed an incredible amount of openness, and even enthusiasm, from anti-immigrant activists in Quebec, to work with even hardcore fascist and neonazi elements. Racists, fascists, and neonazis, have repeatedly (i.e. Sept. 30, Nov. 25, 2017) marched alongside Storm Alliance, despite the latter’s protestations that they are not really racist. As such, an alliance with someone of Goldy’s ilk is certainly possible.

Goldy, like the Storm Alliance, is exploiting the situation at Roxham Road to further her white supremacist “Catholic nationalist” political agenda. Thousands of people are indeed crossing as the Quebec Bar Association has pointed out, “illegal immigrant” is not a legal category. There are two main reasons for these crossings, which do indeed make for sensational headlines, and provide an opportunity for the far right to peddle its toxic wares. The first reason is that the Trump Administration in the United States is abolishing legal protectionsthat have allowed people fleeing dangerous situations to live in the United States for years now. The second reason is Canada’s hypocritical “Safe Third Country Agreement” with the U.S., which obliges people who wish to receive refugee status here to cross irregularly rather than at official border crossings.

Referring to these people as “illegal immigrants” is a verbal trick to imply that refugees are doing something wrong or are in fact criminals. It is not the migrants entering Canada who represent the crisis, but rather the racist policies of governments on both sides of the border – and of far right activists like Faith Goldy and the Storm Alliance scum – which seek to make these people’s lives as insecure and precarious as possible.