Last night some anarchists visited the Sidewalk Toronto office on Parliament Street. Their cheerful paint job needed some touching up to remind everyone that for all their land acknowledgements and “consultations”, sidewalk is a sinister force in our city [tag reads “Fuck Off Sidewalk”]. There are plenty of reasons to oppose sidewalk. Indigenous elders have criticized their tokenistic consultation of First Nations (hey, why not just remediate the stolen land and give it back, anyways?) Their aggressive proposals for data collection, private police forces and cashless stores are all pretty dystopic. and we can bet that their “affordable” housing stock will be nowhere near attainable for those who need it. ...

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] ...

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. ...

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. ...

Recently, we went on a nighttime stroll and removed some Google Nest and Amazon Ring doorbell surveillance cameras from a couple residential streets. These products, which one can easily spot at night by their blue or green ring of light, are popping up more and more in Montreal and elsewhere. The cameras can store recorded video on the cloud for up to 60 days. It’s been well documented that Amazon is using Ring to build a private surveillance network, fully integrated with police departments, under the guise of combating package theft. ...

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

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.” ...

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

Over the past several days, motivated by an international call for transit fare strikes, the fare distribution machines in several metro stations were disabled by blocking the debit/credit card readers and coin slots. The STM is continually hiking fares and deploying squads of wannabe-cop “inspectors” to harass, fine, and assault people over $3.50. Currently, the STM is even seeking to give its inspectors expanded powers to detain and arrest people and access police databases. Every effort to maintain and expand policing of people’s movements deserves to be met with resistance. Fortunately, there is no shortage of inspiration from around the world, above all the ongoing revolt in Chile. ...

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. ...

...

Early one snowy November morning, we visited the office of DPL, the company subcontracted to put in place the concrete formwork for the new migrant prison in Laval. We are lucky: the headquarters of DPL (situated at 370 rang Rivière Bayonne Nord in Berthierville) is also the home of Pierre-Luc Désy, president of DPL, his wife Christiane Désy, who is DPL’s administrative staff, and their children. ...