Statement of Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en and Their Resistance Against Colonial Aggression

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Feb 282020

Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), February 27, 2020 – Montréal Antifasciste declares our complete and unconditional solidarity and support with the people of the Wet’suwet’en nation in their ongoing resistance to Canadian colonialism, as well as with all those who have taken action in support of the Wet’suwet’en following the invasion by the RCMP. While there have been blockades across the illegal country of “Canada”, we would like to specifically mention those established by members of the Mohawk Nation in Kahnawake and Tyendinaga, the latter of which having been attacked by the colonial police on February 24th, the former currently under threat of another colonial injunction.

We are an antifascist group, and as such we often end up focusing on people who the mainstream of society consider marginal losers, at best. Yet we do so knowing, as the poet Aimé Césaire explained, that fascism bears a direct relationship to colonialism. Writing about Europe and the rise of Hitler, Césaire noted that the crimes of Nazism were simply the crimes the European powers had inflicted on colonized peoples, come home to roost. This is true here in Canada, where the far right builds on a history of colonial violence against oppressed nations around the world, but first and foremost against the nations of people who are Indigenous to these lands.

We note the role of far right activists currently trying to organize vigilante groups to attack blockades, as they did in Edmonton last week. We see their rhetoric in social media, where they make open threats of violence. We are reminded of 1990, when former police officers and right-wing media stars established vigilante citizens’ groups which worked alongside the tiny Quebec Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Indigenous people, and most especially Mohawk people, at the time of the uprising. It is in light of the enormous potential for such entitled, “politely Canadian,” racism and violence that we understand our antifascism and our anticolonialism.

For those of us who are settlers, we are also painfully aware that we cannot fool ourselves. The “left” in this country, like in all settler-colonies, is historically compromised and complicit in colonialism. This is a legacy that we need to fight against within our own ranks. When dreams for a socialist independent Quebec are based on planned hydroelectic dams on Indigenous land, when some “Canadian progressive” tradition that was compatible with genocide is invoked, when a provincial NDP government sends in the cops, we need to be clear in our rejection. Remembering 1990 once again, we recall how some on the “left” rallied against the Mohawk nation, or condemned both the Warrior Society and the Canadian State as somehow “equally criminal”. Again, we reject this legacy.

For those of us who are settlers living on stolen unceded land, we will endeavour to understand and to live up to our responsibilities, and call on our various comrades and communities to do the same, in standing in solidarity with anticolonial resistance, and learning how to do our part to sabotage the ongoing genocide taking place on these lands.

Full Solidarity with Indigenous Resistance!
Against Fascism, Against Colonialism!

Raf Stomper’s Trial in Montréal: A Losing Proposition… Except for the Man at the Center of It

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Dec 132019

From Montréal Antifasciste

Montréal, December 12, 2019 — Today is the fourth and final day of the trial of the recognized leader of Atalante Québec, Raphaël Lévesque (alias Raf Stomper), at the Palais de Justice in Montréal. Lévesque is charged with mischief, breaking and entering, and criminal harassment. The charges arise from a stunt Lévesque and six other Atalante militants pulled on May 23, 2018, at the Vice Québec office.

We haven’t been all that interested in the trial up to this point. All we’re seeing is a court circus out of all proportion to the action that led to the charges. We are entirely aware of the fact that our perspective on the issue will differ from that of the media (which is a party to this little affair), the “justice system,” and the generally held liberal position of Québécois society. That’s why we thought it wise to explicitly formulate out position [for additional information, media can visit https://montreal-antifasciste.info or contact us at alerta-mtl @ riseup.net]

We think that the almost political character that this trial has taken on because the media was the target plays right in to the fascists’ hands. It would have been better if, from the outset, this action had been treated as what it was (a weak example of political theatre that would be quickly forgotten), rather than turning to the criminal justice system and shining a spotlight on Lévesque, giving him the attention he craves.

Furthermore, the substance of the case is very debatable and the outcome far from certain. Whatever the verdict may be, we see the whole exercise as a losing proposition. If Lévesque wins, he comes out of it vindicated and energized, which, one would suspect, will mean that he and his band of cretins repeat this sort of action in the future. If, on the other hand, he is found guilty of criminal harassment and/or mischief, jurisprudence that further reduces the playing field for legitimate direct action is established, not just for the right but for the left as well. Put differently, the state ends up with a new tool for suppressing opposition, whatever its source.

On the other hand, if the media reports about the trial from the first few days are accurate, it’s obvious that the judge fell face first into the trap the fascists had laid for her, in spite of the mass of evidence accumulated about the true nature of Atalante: depoliticization, even “de-demonization,” which is the desired outcome of the entire ruse.

The Palais de Justice is not a favourable terrain for the antifascist struggle. We’re not proposing a dogmatic blanket refusal to ever engage on this terrain, and don’t reject the possibility of using it if specific gains are possible, although the likelihood of this is extremely limited, but we certainly don’t believe that we should count on the courts to win this war, or even any important battle. The courts only exist to ensure one thing: the liberal order, i.e., the necessary conditions for the reproduction of state and the capitalist system that supports the systemic inequalities that our movements are working to eliminate.

We believe that the anti-racist and antifascist struggles must, first and foremost, be conducted daily in our living and working environments, in our communities, and in the streets, with constant information campaigns and the promotion of the values that motivate us. However Raf Stooper’s trial ends, the struggle will continue. Montréal Antifasciste, its allies, and its sympathizers will continue to track, expose, and generally disrupt the lives of the fascists from Atalante and all those who advance political projects based on inequality and exclusion—until we win!

¡No pasaran!

Messe des Morts: Neo-Nazi Pascal Giroux Gets a Beating

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Dec 132019

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On Friday, November 28, the black metal festival La Messe des Morts took place at Théâtre Paradoxe. Three neo-Nazis were spotted on site or had announced their intention to be there on social networks. One of them, Pascal Giroux, received quite a beating upon leaving the theater.

Pascal Giroux is openly a neo-Nazi militant since the golden age of boneheads in Montreal. Recently he had joined the islamophobic group Soldiers of Odin, and he participated in all their actions, until their dissolution in 2018. In pictures, he can be seen wearing a Section Saint-Laurent shirt and an SOO hoodie, posing in front of a Black Sun flag and protecting the house of neo-Nazi Phillipe Gendron in 2018, during an anti-racist demonstration.

Antifascist and black-metal communities are vigilant and there will no longer be any safe space for Nazis. Fred, Maxime, William, Joey, you are warned.

Montreal is antifascist.

Varennes: An Atalante Nazi on Rue Sainte-Anne

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Dec 112019

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Vincent Cyr, resident of Rue Sainte-Anne in Varennes is a dangerous neo-Nazi and member of the organization Atalante Quebec. Vincent sometimes boxes in Parc de la Commune with his Nazi friends. He regularly participates in Atalante’s activities in Montreal.

On the night of Monday, December 11, 2019, 1000 flyers were distributed on his street, in his neighborhood, at bus shelters and in front of key locations in the town. Because people like him hide and the population needs to know.

Hunt Nazis, wherever they are!

signed: some south shore antifascists

Debunking Atalante: Not Nazis But… Yeah Actually

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Dec 052019

From Montréal Antifasciste

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

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

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

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

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

///

It seems as if they “doth protest too much”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not nazis, but…

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

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

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

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

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

///

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

…

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

Alexander Liberio : Metalhead, Nazi… Christian Orthodox Seminarian

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Nov 242019

From Montréal Antifasciste

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

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

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

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

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

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

///

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uncompromising Nazi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christianity as a prized tool of fascism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclosure of the Evidence

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

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

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

///

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

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

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

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

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

///

Uncovered links :

https://devpost.com/iamneuromancer/

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

https://soundcloud.com/neuromancerwintermute

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

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

https://soundcloud.com/alexander-liberio

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

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

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

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

https://www.hts.edu/news_180913_1

https://hts.edu/news_190926_2

https://eadiocese.org/photos

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

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

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

Solidarity with antifascist prisoner David Campbell

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Nov 132019

From Montréal Antifasciste

David Campbell is an antifascist comrade who has been imprisoned for events that unfolded at the protest of a New York City far right event on January 20, 2018.

The event, “A Night For Freedom,” was organized by the misogynist and racist activist Mike Cernovich with the participation of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and the white nationalist Canadian podcaster Stefan Molyneux. It was part of an ongoing process of consolidating an “alt lite” political scene: i.e. racist, misogynist, and full of conspiracy theories and race and gender pseudoscience, but not actually neo-Nazi.

At the protest, a brawl broke out in which a 56-year-old intoxicated alt-right man was knocked unconscious. During the brawl, a police officer, unannounced, threw David to the ground breaking his leg in two places. With no other arrests made on either side, the officer alleged that David had stalked, punched, and strangled the alt-right party attendee, and then tried to strangle the officer himself. These fabrications went on to be circulated by right-wing media which were quick to smear David as an “antifa thug.”

The initial charges were dropped after surveillance footage failed to back up any of the above allegations. However they were replaced with a more vague and heavy-handed charge of Gang Assault. Gang Assault makes any group of three or more people involved in a fight legally responsible for each other’s actions, and carries a steep mandatory minimum of 3.5 years.

After almost two years of legal maneuvering, David took a non-cooperating plea for a sentence of 18 months in a local facility in order to avoid a trial and a much longer sentence in a facility far away from his friends and family. During this period, the Manhattan DA inexplicably offered much more lenient plea deals involving only community service to a number of far rightists arrested and charged in a separate but very similar case about ten months after David. No justification for these disparate outcomes has been given by the Manhattan DA. The arresting officer in David’s case has not been held responsible for breaking David’s leg and lying about David’s actions.

A lover of language and the arts, David was two weeks away from moving to Paris to study French translation the night of his arrest. It was his commitment to antifascism and his community that brought him out to the protest that night.

As he has put it in his own words:

“I’m an antifascist, and I’m going to jail for it. It’s a long, complicated story. In a nutshell, I was arrested at a protest against the alt-right in NYC last year. A brawl broke out, and I got caught up in it. A cop tackled me from behind, broke my leg, and lied about it. Tabloids smeared me as a thug and the DA charged me with gang assault, a vague and draconian law. […]

“It’s doubtful that any amount of public pressure can get me out of jail, but no matter what happens to me, the precedent for responding to this sort of repression needs to be set. Trump is stacking the courts, both high and low, with unqualified right-wing judges. Legislation proposing penalties in excess of 10 years in prison for those deemed antifascists, often simply defined as protesting while wearing a mask, is being regularly advanced in both state and federal legislatures. If this is what they do to me, a nerdy, normal-ish young everyday antifascist in 2019, then you can be sure that much, much worse is coming, and possibly for you—unless you make it clear now that this is unacceptable behavior from any government agency in an ostensibly free and fair society. Call bullshit on this. Even if you don’t like me, agree with me, or approve of my tactics, call bullshit on this case, for all our sakes.”

David will serve 12 months of an 18-month sentence at Rikers jail. One thing people can do to help him is to write him a letter; David reads and writes English and French, and has specifically said that he would love to receive articles in French (these cannot be cut out of a magazine or newspaper, but can be printed from the internet). Check out his support website https://freedavidcampbell.com for a guide on writing to David or other prisoners, and for more about David and his interests and thoughts.

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

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Nov 072019

From Montréal Antifasciste

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Scrubbed Twitter Account (too little too late)

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

Confirming the Neo-Nazi Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

///

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maxime Bernier’s PPC and the Far Right

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Oct 182019

From Montréal Antifasciste

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Oct 102019

From CrimethInc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To keep silent is to be complicit.

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

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

See you in the streets.

Tools

Endorsements

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

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

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