Definitions and Characteristics As an organization that initially emerged out of experiences activists had trying to shut down far right demonstrations and events in Montreal, Montréal Antifasciste has focused on movements and organizations that promote exclusionary beliefs and policies more drastic than the “mainstream” right-wing agenda. This is obviously not a theoretically rigorous approach, just a pragmatic one, and we are aware that there are many circumstances where it might not be appropriate. Furthermore, for reasons having as much to do with capacity as anything else, we have not publicly targeted movements that currently engage in little or no public activities in our city – for instance, the anti-abortion movement or the broader Catholic Right – even though we try to keep them on our radar. ...

What: Multi-City Day of Action Against Migrant Detention When: October 3, 2019 Where: Pan-Canadian & international Over the past two years, there has been an active struggle against the construction of a new prison for migrants planned for Laval, Québec. Opposition to this project has included many groups and tactics, each fighting in their own way for an end to Canada’s border and prison regimes. The anti-detention committee of Solidarity Across Borders has participated in this struggle by organizing demonstrations, workshops, press conferences, a declaration against the prison (now signed by more than 80 groups), and temporary occupations of the construction site itself. But despite sustained and widespread opposition to this project, initial construction of the new Laval migrant prison recently began. ...

The first gun control law passed in Canada was given royal assent in 1886. It applied only to the Territories, inclusive of what is today Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The scope of this legislation would make even Trudeau blush. Section 101 of the North-West Territories Act made it illegal for anyone to own, use, transport, buy, or sell any firearms or ammunition for any purpose without the express written permission of the government. The law remained in place until 1905 when Saskatchewan and Alberta became provinces. The reasoning behind this bill, passed into law by the conservative Macdonald government, was to stamp out all remaining dissent against the Canadian state, especially by the Native and Métis inhabitants of the Territories, who in those days comprised the majority. Even with the leaders of the North-West Rebellion all brutally executed or exiled, the heavily-militarized North-West Mounted Police roaming the countryside, and the majority of the First Nations population corralled onto tiny reserves, the federal government felt the need to fully disarm the wild West. From that year on, the history of gun control in Canada has been a long history of the state disarming the people at the first flash of discontent. ...

On August 24, 2019, a small anti-immigrant demonstration was held at the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing. The event was coordinated by the Groupe de sécurité patriotique (GSP, literally translated as “Patriotic Security Group”) and supported by an assortment of far-right fanatics, including a well-known neo-Nazi who traveled from Ontario with other Canadian ultranationalists to team up with our local “patriots.” These demonstrators, who obviously adhere to an alternative version of reality rooted in various conspiracy theories (including the so-called “great replacement” of the Québécois/Canadian/Western/White populations by means of a “mass immigration” plan that is supposedly orchestrated by the “globalist elite” at the UN; this is the exact same racist theory that inspired the Christchurch and El Paso mass murderers), had called for a gathering at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle in order to denounce the arrival of immigrants and “illegal” refugees into Canada [i] . ...

Our societies are heavily dependent on violence to function. While states will attempt to hold a monopoly on violence and constantly find new ways to legitimize their use of force, people struggling against domination can also use violence to confront the hierarchical systems oppressing them. While debates around violence and tactics seem to be revived every time someone decides to fight back, the necessity of physical attacks on power cannot be ignored. So, what is violence exactly, and how does it function in the world?

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info The video being unfortunately already in the possession of the SPVM, we decided to create a little remix. August 24th, 2019. Downtown Montreal. A crowd spots two off-duty cops from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal outside a bar. From the nearby Station 21, they spend their shifts harassing and brutalizing poor and marginalized people in the area. Off-duty, they have no guns, no tasers, no radios to call for backup. Let’s see what happens when they have no badge to hide behind. ...

“This sets a very disturbing precedent. It is a huge concern for everyone in Quebec when a company uses the courts to silence critics. We remember Barrick Gold’s legal harassment of Éco-societé for publishing Noir Canada. And we see a clear connection: Canadian mining companies like Barrick Gold contribute to displacing people who then end up in immigration detention centres. We won’t be silenced, there is far too much at stake,” said Jane Doe of Solidarity Across Borders. ...

On the night of August 12th, 2019, three members of Atalante Quebec were attacked. Atalante is a small group of fascists whose members have taken part in numerous attacks in recent years (starting with the knife attack at the Coop L’Agité in Quebec City). The group takes inspiration from CasaPound in Italy and Bastion social in France in an attempt to revive fascist ideology. Its members are antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic and colonialist. They shall not pass. ...

Join us for the first of a series of public actions in opposition to the new Laval migrant prison! These actions will take place on Thursdays at noon at various locations, culminating in a multi-city day of action on October 3rd. The new Laval migrant prison is part of a $138 million investment into Canada’s migrant detention system under the National Immigration Detention Framework (NIDF), a new policy announced in 2016. The NIDF provides for the construction of two new migrant prisons along with expanded carceral technologies to supervise and control migrants outside these facilities. ...

Many of us in the environmental movement share a dream of a free society, in which people live together, caring for the land they inhabit. We imagine such a community as an autonomous zone, existing independently of the colonial, capitalist system we oppose. I am pleased to report that I now write these words from exactly such a place. I now find myself by the shore of Parrott Lake, on a territory belonging to the Sun House of the Likhts’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. The exact place where we now camp was a Wet’suwet’en village site for many generations. In subsequent waves of colonial violence, the Wet’suwet’en were driven from this ancestral home. Now they have reclaimed it and are building a new village, which is be a place of cultural revitalization, of learning, of healing, and of stewardship of the land. ...

The second edition of the “Vague bleue” (Blue Wave), a marginal social movement drawing in the xenophobic and Islamophobic dregs from the national-populist milieu , took place on the 27th of July in Trois-Rivières. Since the first edition that took place in Montreal on the May 4th , Montréal Antifasciste has documented the individuals and groups that took part in the xenophobic protest, including its “security” contingent, who is little more than a collection of cranks fantasizing about beating up antifas . ...

Since the article “Unmasking Atalante” came out in December, we’ve produced two follow-up articles concerning, respectively, the “influencer” Heïdy Prévost’s and the folk band Folk You , two cultural (or metapolitical) phenomena at the periphery of Atalante. It is difficult to precisely measure the impact our work might have on the morale and activities of this neofascist group, but we have noted fewer public outings in recent months, and those that did occur appeared to involve the same small hardcore group of militants, with the exception of a recent photo-op in Montréal, where clearly every possible sympathizer was mobilized for the occasion. ...