Guest Article: Schism in Edmonton Reactionary Yellow Vest Protest

I admit that I haven't been following the various reactionary Yellow Vest protests in every community where they are occurring unless something jumps out at me (like the participation of former Aryan Guard member and supporter Tom Trenerry and Dara Graham respectively). So on January 5 when the Yellow Vesters arrived at Churchill Square and the Edmonton Legislature for their weekly whine, I didn't pay all that much attention other than to note that their numbers had declined.

Seems I missed something rather significant as the individuals counter protesting observed and have kindly shared with ARC. Seems that Ryan Dean is continuing to be a glorious dumpster fire:

On January 5th, there were two rallies planned for Edmonton. The first was at the Legislature and the second was at Sir Winston Churchill Square. A few days before, we became aware that Ryan Dean (Odin's Heathens/Canadian Infidels/III%/PATRIOT PRIDE CANADA WIDE) was planning a counter-protest for the Churchill Square event because of an apparent issue with Stephen Garvey and the National Citizens Alliance (NCA).

We sent a small fraction of our group to scope out the Legislature rally because we had decided to focus our organizing on counter-protesting the Churchill Square rally. Some stayed a safe distance back while another group of us tried to get a bit closer to hear more clearly what was being said and to get a sense of the size of the crowd. We were immediately confronted by someone from the rally who greeted us with homophobia, misogyny, and a question about a permit. When the cops came, he claimed we were invading his space.

We didn't make it much further before being met with a police line and a line of Nouns of Odin [NOTE: "Nouns of Odin" is a term I'm definitely using this in the future!]. There was probably a dozen or so rally attendees who stopped paying attention to the speeches and focused their attention on us. Three yellow vests approached us from behind, holding up anti-UN and pro-pipeline signs. When the cops told them they needed to approach the rally from the other side, the approaching yellow vests became annoyed.

We stuck around for a few more minutes before deciding to leave and organize for the Churchill Square event. The Nouns of Odin/Canadian Infidels quickly declared this a victory over Antifa.

Upon arriving at Churchill Square, we were surprised at how few people were there. Stephen Garvey, someone in a yellow vest, and a handful of cops.

A few more yellow vests and even more cops showed up, but the event seemed to be running very late.

Our numbers were greater and the decision was made to block the Square's Happy Wall. Garvey and Friends had changed the message on the wall to read "Broke No Jobs". While this is a fair point, it was being said insincerely by fascists for the sake of whipping their yellow vest fodder into a frenzy. The message on the wall was changed to "No Hate".

We also decided to take a different approach for this counter-protest. Someone made bingo cards containing predicted talking points and conspiracy theories. Instead of trying to drown out Stephen Garvey and the liberal cast of people he invited to speak, we let them talk so that we could hear their points in order to mark our bingo cards. We made noise too, of course, but it was much less constant than past counter-protests. 

Garvey engaged in some theatrics. He produced a plunger and suggested that everyone needs to become a plumber in 2019 because Canada has become a clogged toilet. He repeated the same points many times and we eventually yelled at him to wrap it up and move along because we still had some unmarked spots on our cards. 

A man was invited to the podium to speak. He spoke to the counter-protest and told us the communists were not going to protect LGBTQ rights. He also bragged about how many of his fellow United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters members (Local 488) he was able to bring out for the yellow vest side. He then said that the movement had become contaminated and that he could no longer take part. The man speaking then walked off with the Nouns of Odin. 

This, it turns out, was the counter-protest orchestrated by Ryan Dean. Reading the notifications on the event page reveals the problems Dean has with Garvey: 1) Garvey thinks Canada should accept more Syrian refugees; 2) Garvey has an interest in the Muslim Brotherhood which was somehow shown by him inviting a Muslim Student Association to an anti-Islam rally; and 3) the NCA has ties to a neo-Nazi. This is especially interesting since the Soldiers of Odin was founded by a neo-Nazi and the now defunct/renamed Edmonton branch has close ties to C3 in Edmonton, who Dean has called cop callers and snitches.

In a post on PATRIOT PRIDE CANADA WIDE, we can see that Dean also has a problem with Garvey being a politician.

Those who have followed the trajectory of the Soldiers of Odin in Edmonton know that they are now called the Wolves of Odin/Canadian Infidels due to the founder of the Soldiers of Odin giving them the choice of politics or the Soldiers of Odin. While Tyson Hunt, the head of the Edmonton chapter, said he was choosing Soldiers of Odin over politics, other Canadian branches believed too much damage had already been done. In an interview with Vice, Hunt claimed he was happy to leave the Soldiers of Odin because he started to question that group's racism. 

I can't say for certain what we witnessed when the yellow vests splintered at Churchill Square, but it seems to be two neo-Nazis fighting over who will get to use the yellow vest protestors as resources to bolster their numbers.

A reminder that "Huck Greg" (or "Greg Huck") is one of Ryan Dean's (convicted on domestic assault charges) more recent pseudonyms:

• Ryan Dean Is Genuinely A Clown

None of this is entirely surprising as racists are often also misanthropes in general who can't even stand each other.

We'll see where all this leads to. If past is prologue, it will probably result in further fracturing amongst the already fractured groups which will further result in more (but smaller) groups that, in turn, will also fracture.

And these people believe they are leaders of men.

"White Nationalist" Travis Patron Trying To Book Room For Speech at University of Toronto

While ARC has been critical of the mainstream media in the past for not looking deeply enough at the ideology of the far right, it has been doing a better job of late. One journalist who I've found has been consistently good though is Stewart Bell who wrote the following concerning the reactionary Yellow Vest protesters and their calls to murder politicians, particularly Prime Minister Trudeau:

Facebook reviewing comments about killing Trudeau on Canadian ‘yellow vests’ page. https://t.co/43gBbUEqpf

— Stewart Bell (@StewGlobal) January 8, 2019

It is clear that there is a toxic hatred of the political left, immigrants, refugees, FNIM, Quebecois, Muslims, Jews, people of color, homosexuals, and other groups based on a mountain of evidence gathered here and by such groups as Yellow Vests Exposed. We've also witnessed how groups such as the Soldiers/Wolves of Odin, Northern Guard, Proud Boys, and other groups as well as individuals profiled on this blog -- John Marleau, Dara Graham, Thomas Trenerry, Paul Fromm, and Joey Deluca to name a few -- are attracted to this toxicity and in many cases are using the reactionary Yellow Vests protests to promote their own bigotry.

We can add another person to that list:

I've written about Travist Patron and his Canadian Nationalist Party in the past. Much like the Islamic Party of Ontario that the right-wing is currently in a panic about, the CNP is so fringe I'm not sure that they will manage to even get the necessary signatures to become a registered political party, though this isn't to say they don't have support on the far right:

Still, they are a rather pathetic bunch who have spent a great deal of time desperately trying to be relevant:

People who have actually looked at the platform, such that it is, of the CNP view it for the joke that it is:

When he has attempted to hold meetings, they have been failures. They have either been cancelled such as this planned Toronto event that never happened....

.... turned into a farce as occurred in Winnipeg....

..... or had very few people bother to show an interest:

But don't think continual failure and humiliation is going to thwart Travis Patron, would-be fuhrer leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party:

Like the Islamic Party of Ontario, there is absolutely no danger of the Canadian Nationalist Party achieving political power. Also like the Islamic Party of Ontario however, it is worth keeping an eye on Travis Patron's vanity project since the rhetoric coming from himself, his "party", and his supporters could pose a danger to individuals and vulnerable groups influenced by his extremism.

Is Travis Patron an extremist? Well, one has to ask one's self why a person who wishes to serve in government is so secretive about his "party's" real views and membership:

Yeah.... you sort of failed there Travis.

For example, Patron et al have some pretty regressive views of the LGBTQ community that he is considering enacting:

Far Right Losing Collective Mind Over Islamic Party of Ontario Attempt To Register As An Official Party

Imagine that a political party has emerged which condemns secularism and the separation of church and state, promotes the recriminalization of homosexuality, strong censorship of what it deems to be blasphemous, adherence to strict gender rolls, and which advocates the for their religious views to become the law of the land. In Canada, that has been a reality since 1987 when the Christian Heritage Party emerged.

A year after it came into existence, the CHP won 102,533 votes in the 1988 federal election. Since that time support for the CHP has declined; after temporarily losing official part status they won 10,110 votes in the 2000 election while their lowest vote tally with party status was 15,284 in 2015. Still, the party remains and will likely run in the next federal election on this platform, choice portions of which I've included below:

In general, most Canadians recognize the CHP and other similar religious based parties that have come and gone as being on the political fringes with no real chance of attaining power on their own. Of course this doesn't preclude other groups and individuals who hold similar views from influencing mainstream political parties:

• Ford’s closeness with controversial evangelical pastor is problematic
• Stephen Harper’s Covert Evangelicalism
• From 'Bible Bill' to Stephen Harper, the evolution of faith-based politics
• Tanya Granic Allen Defends Past Online Comments On Muslims, Gay Marriage
• Double standard: REAL Women of Canada play their true card

Still, political parties such as the CHP are generally ignored as being rather irrelevant.

Such is also the case for the relatively new Islamic Party of Ontario, a group so fringe that it barely has an online presence:

Not yet a political party, should they ever run candidates the Islamic Party of Ontario will have likely even less of an impact than the CHP has in Canada; I can't imagine the IPO breaking 1000 votes in all of the province. That said based on what little there is online their positions are as extreme as that of the CHP. One thing that is certain is that the current leadership (and perhaps only member) of the IPO is a fan of what Doug Ford has done in the province of Ontario already:

Basically, a social conservative party that is similar to that of the CHP. In fact if you were to replace "Bible" with "Quran" in the CHP platform and vice versa for the the limited amount of information on the IPO, they would be almost indistinguishable. 

However this hasn't stopped the far-right Islamophobes from losing their shit:

Goldy's claim regarding the founding of the IPO may not be true as I
remember a news article that predate Goldy's and Loomer's stunt by a
few months.... though damn if I can find it now.

I might note here that of the 82 people who were following the Islamic Party of Ontario Twitter account, fully half of them appear to be conservatives and right-wing nationalists who oppose the fringe party including Goldy....

.... and Georgeanne Burke who has been featured twice on the blog:

• Anti-Omar Khadr Rally Planned For July 16 on Parliament Hill: An Examination of One of the Organizers
• Georgeanne Burke, Islamophobia, and Ties to Conservative Party of Canada

There is also this woman who has followed the account and who has posted and retweeted some rather incendiary comments:

Two are of special concern. Islamophobe Eric Brazau has created a caricature of a Muslim extremists that he has been using spread his hatred; Ms. Forbes re-tweeted a video in which he makes incendiary comments without questioning the source:

In another tweet she suggests that she is ready to use violence to oppose not just the political party but Islam in general and a desire to join the virulently Islamophobic III% militia:

I might also mention that she's okay with Dara "Nazi Mom" Graham and her involvement with the reactionary Yellow Vests Canada protests:

I can't help noticing that a video lasting several minutes has been edited to include only 8 seconds.

Now all of this would be the reaction that one might expect from the equally fringe far-right. Unfortunately, enablers in both the media and politics have decided to magnify the issue for their own rather cynical purposes.

First Tarek Fatah who writes for the "Toronto Sun" wrote a hyperbolic article about the founding of the fringe party (not the one he linked to in the screen shot below). A man who appears to treat every Islamophobic conspiracy theory with credulity, Fatah also couldn't help injecting himself into the story: