Sunday, January 24, 2010

Double Standards? Our Take on the Postering At the University of Calgary

Our readers will remember that we had posted a request regarding posters that had been placed in the University of Calgary advising students that a member of the Aryan Guard was a student there. We had requested, and the group that put them up (Anti-Racist Action Calgary) agreed based on our explanation, that they be removed. We didn't expand on the reasons here at the time, but we will do so now.

The posters contained information that unfortunately resulted in someone suffering harassment who was not the subject of the flyering campaign but who by coincidence matched a lot of the details found on the poster. As the group who put the posters up used this website as a source and included our url on the poster, this young woman contacted us with her concerns. We then looked up the email of ARA Calgary and explained the situation. While we made the request on behalf of the innocent young woman, ARA Calgary agreed that the appropriate action would be to end the postering campaign until changes could be made.

That, we believe, is something else that separates groups who oppose racists from the racists. When groups on our side learn that something like what occurred to the young university student happen, we do our best to help. The other side wouldn't care.


Sorry "Black Sonnen" (who is definitely not Natalie... nope, definitely not... ha!). No rift, but thanks for playing. We've some lovely parting gifts for you though.

Now, though the postering campaign ended (and there's no reason to think that a modified postering campaign might not be started again later), it still did catch the attention of Paul Fromm (we include excerpts below from his Stormfront post):



The campus of the University of Calgary has been blanketed by an inflammatory poster harassing and targetting a second year female student who has been an activist in the Aryan Guard [You mean the gang who's members assaulted a Japanese woman, attacked the home of two anti-racist activists not once, not twice, but three times, pipe bombed the home of a rival racist gang and tried to attack a Calgary transit worker?]. The group doing this is Anti-Racism Action, Calgary, apparently in conjunction with a website called Anti Racism Canada [Anti-Racist Canada, thank you very much Paulie!], which is run by anonymous people, although Richard Warman's legal documents seem to appear up there even before the printer's ink seems dry on them [What are you trying to say?]


ARA-Calgary, some of whose circle assaulted peaceful marchers at last the March 21 White Pride Parade in Calgary, has been headed by a perennial Communist Party of Canada candidate Jason Devine. He ran most recently in the 2008 federal election in Calgary East, piling up a mere 323 votes and finishing dead last just 20,988 votes behind the Conservative winner [Uhm, people in glass houses, Paulie…]...

The Anti Racism Canada website has been featuring and baiting [Pot calling the kettle black here, we thinks] Miss Sonne [Not her real name] for several months, publishing her pictures and emphasizing that she is a university student [Yes, she is. We need to provide accurate information to our readers, Paulie].

This postering technique seems based on Richard Warman's strategy announced in a speech by the same name to a conference sponsored by the ARA inToronto in August, 2005 -- "Maximum Disruption : Shutting Down the Neo-Nazis By (Almost) Any Means Necessary."

In 2006, a motley band of about 25 ARA, flying the flag of communist Cuba, arrived in a bus that an ARA sign thanked Richard Warman for paying for [Guess the Nazis didn't get the joke], and demonstrated outside the Port Credit townhouse of Paul Fromm [Freedom of speech and assembly Paulie. Were you physically attacked or did they merely hurt your feelings?], Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression who had clashed with Warman as he defended many of Warman's victims in Sec. 13 Internet tribunals [And a bang-up job you've done there, Paulie; a half eaten cheese sandwich would have been less of an embarrassment as an advocate]. The ARA twice leafletted Mr. Fromm's neighbours making wild and defamatory remarks. This is a tactic used by homosexual radicals called "outing" -- denouncing a person in front of his co-workers or neighbours in an effort to get them to ostracize, exclude or hurt that person. Warman later denied paying for the bus, but, signifcantly for such a litigious person who sues people who criticize him, as far as we know never sued the ARA for their supposed misinformation [Or maybe he doesn't really care about the insignificant, and sort of funny, stuff like you do?].


Well, the righteous anger unleashed by Paulie's post! It could be summed up in this post by Cydonia:


Sadly, Cydonia is quite incorrect. The posts we've made here are perfectly legal and contain accurate information concerning our subjects (we never wrote anything about flattering though). As public figures who have willingly made themselves targets and who court public attention, we are fully within our rights to profile their membership on these pages. We also challenge our detractors to find anywhere on this blog where the ARC Collective suggests anyone be harassed or assaulted. In fact, when some of our readers suggest such a course of action take place, we refuse to print their comments and have warned that calls for violence will be not be tolerated here.

But let's assume Cydonia is correct and that we've violated the law in some way. Then perhaps she (we assume Cydonia is a she based on past writings) will equally condemn her own forum moderator OdinPatrick for doing exactly the same thing:

Protesters tracked down by 'neo-Nazis'

When protesters prevented an American writer and speaker who calls himself a "race realist" from speaking at the Lord Nelson Hotel on the night of Jan. 16, they hardly expected to be tracked down by members of a large white supremacist website.

Some protesters, and at least one person who was at Jared Taylor's speech just to observe, have had their personal information posted on stormfront.org, a white supremacist website. Some have even had pictures taken of their homes.

Brad Religion (the last name is a pseudonym he commonly uses) and his roommate Aaron both live at a Halifax house they call Woozley Farm. The two were at the Taylor protest and have had quite a bit of their personal information placed on the Internet since that time, including pictures of their house.

"A lot of the information was already on our myspaces or what have you," says Aaron, referring to the popular social networking site. "The biggest thing was having one of the Nazis in town come and take pictures."

Sean MacGillivray is the site administrator and moderator of halifaxlocals.com, a website where some of the protesters are members, and he has been in contact with the moderator of stormfront.org. He was told the supremacists took the pictures to try and protect themselves.

"(It was) all done under the premise that they can avoid these places because an unruly mob might come storming out of the building and randomly beat them," says MacGillivray. "It's preposterous."

MacGillivray says it's unlikely that the information was posted on stormfront.org to protect the site's members.

"The obvious underlying reason for posting this information is that some wing nut, who might not even have an account, is going to get hold of that information and do something violent. That is the part that has my users scared. That is the part that's really, really insidious."

The moderator of stormfront.org accused two reporters of trying to set him up and refused to talk to them.

Mark Black is the member of halifaxlocals.com who brought the stormfront.org accusations to light.

Black sometimes works as a freelancer for The Coast and was at Taylor's attempted speech to see if he could write a story about the event. He was only present to observe, but was later accused of being a protester.

Black has a Myspace profile with a plug-in called spyspace that allows him to see who has visited his profile and where they were linked from.

"I saw a link from stormfront.org and thought 'that's weird. Why would my Myspace be linked from stormfront.org?'" says Black.

That's when he found the thread accusing himself, along with Brad and Aaron, of assaulting Taylor.

Black joined the site to clarify the events of that evening. His assertion that he was not involved in the protest was accepted, but he was then accused of being an accessory and accomplice.

Black has since made his Myspace profile private in an effort to protect his friends and family from being associated with the situation.

"I'd rather my parents not get a call in at three in the morning calling me a commie," says Black.

None of the accused have contacted the police yet.

Aaron is opposed for ideological reasons, saying that the police "enforce the laws of an illegitimate system."

Brad agrees with Aaron on ideological basis, and adds that, at this point, there is nothing the police can do about the matter.

"What would we go to the police about at this point? Neo-Nazis have become very effective in knowing what lines they can and can't cross in terms of legality," says Brad.

"The most the police could do at this point is say 'when they do something illegal, call us.' The unfortunate part of the matter is that it's not much good to call the police when there's Nazis at the door with baseball bats," says Brad. "At that point, it's too late."

As for harassment and intimidation:

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, Cydonia.

We'll leave our readers with one last reason why people at the University of Calgary, a multiethnic institution, should care about Natalie "Sonne." Regarding the tragedy in Haiti, Natalie posted this on her Facebook profile:

UPDATE (January 25): We've received information that there ae new posters up on campus. If anyone has any pictures, we'd be interested in seeing them.


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope Natalie likes the new posters!

Anonymous said...

Did they start postering on campus again? There are are posters plastered everywhere.

Kurt Phillips said...

Sounds like they have started postering again. We're curious to know what they look like.

Anonymous said...

They credit you guys for some info and have some images and comments from her facebook page, though her face is mostly hidden. They seem to be generating a lot of attention.

Kurt Phillips said...

We were sent a copy. Looks like the screen shots come from Blood and Honour forum and Twitter.

Anonymous said...

I would say she doesn't deserve it, but I would be a liar. How many false identities is this girl going to make before WN's start questioning her?
You cannot tell me it is the norm for someone to make a false account, go on Stormfront and talk as if you live in another country, be outted, and not criticized or banned? If so, that just shows that they set themselves up for these 'rats' in their group.

Anonymous said...

Seriously... I'm considering making a fake "Natalie Sonne" account myself!

Anonymous said...

The NUTV story actually won't air until Feb 13th. But yes, they are covering it.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure many are interested in your reactions to the criticisms made at FD against you. I wonder, too, whether it might be worth comparing their own treatment of Marie Gentes, who complained to the CHRC about some of their posts

Kurt Phillips said...

We're not sure our truth about the claims they're making will be able to compete with the fiction they've created. In a perverse way it's sort of a marvel to watch. They live in a paranoid parallel universe that we simply can't fathom. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.