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:

State of the Far-Right: We Must Remain Vigilant

After the humiliation the far right faced not only in Toronto this past Saturday but also in Washington D.C. on Sunday (to add insult to injury, the organizer of the failed D.C. "Unite the Right 2" rally was emasculated during a podcast by his father), anti-racist and anti-fascist activists are rightfully celebrating as their hard work made all of this happen. The far-right racists, Islamophobes, and antisemites are a fractured movement right now and it really is hard to see how they coalesce in any significant way to hold the mass rallies they envision in an attempt put on a show of strength, though I don't doubt that they will continue to try.

It is important however not to be lulled into a false sense of security:

"Fantastic banner drop"? "Operation"? Jesus, this is a far cry from Barbarossa.

ID Canada (formerly Generation Identity Canada) did a banner drop on the same day as the failed WCAI-organized rally in the Don Valley River Parkway in Toronto. I don't no the city, but those who do suggest that it was likely the bridge connecting Riverdale Park East and West. Based on photos posted to their Facebook page, it looks like a little over a dozen ID Canada members were present:

Is it just me, or does this look like if could be a great cover photo for a magazine named "Incel Quarterly"?

ARC has already established that ID Canada is tied to a number of individuals and groups in Canada of concern:

....Shawn Beauvois-Macdonald who is/was connected to La Meute and who participated in the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally (he may hold a position of leadership within ID Canada), "Katrin Kujo" (real name Kate Ollers) who participated in Ronny Cameron's anti-Muslim event in October, and "Winston Smith" (real name Jesse Sanderson) who also participated in Cameron's event as well as being busted hanging "alt-right" flyers at the University of Toronto. 

More recently, ARC published a story that identified Athan Zafirov as the leader of the Montreal chapter of ID Canada. Zafirov is also known as "Date" on the leaked Discord chat logs and was a frequent guest on the Canadian alt-right podcast "This Hour Has 88 Minutes" which shut down soon after the identity of "Zeiger" as Gabriel Sohier Chaput was published. Other co-hosts of the podcast were exposed later:

• Bad Times For Canadian Alt-Right Podcasters: This Hour Has 88 Minutes Co-Host Exposed
• This Is the Man Who Ran Canada’s Biggest Neo-Nazi Podcast

ARC has been able to identify least two individuals participating in the ID Canada banner drop on August 11:

Tyler Hover has been identified as the leader of ID Canada and, in spite of his age, has a long online history of promoting racism and violence through Stormfront and other social media:

The second individual, despite not getting a clear look at his face, is believed to be Mark Stewart:

We need to be aware of the activities of such groups as ID Canada who, for example, continue to place their stickers in public places in cities where they have members and supporters in an effort to grow their numbers. However we have to be even more concerned that so-called mainstream political parties are trying to stoke the artificial "white anxiety" fears of some Canadians in a cynical effort to gain real power:

Maxime Bernier has always been quite popular amongst members of the far-right whom this blog keeps an eye on. Prior to the disastrous WCAI rally in Toronto, Ronny Cameron and Proud Boy member Tim Kelly spoke well of him while trashing Andrew Scheer who defeated Bernier in the Tory leadership race:

The following Sunday, Bernier endeared himself to the far-right even more when he decided to dig up Kellie Leitch's play list:

Woman Who Verbally Attacked Jagmeet Singh Tied to Rise Canada

ARC's readers are already well aware of the incident in which a woman verbally attacked NDP leadership candidate Jagmeet Singh at an event in Brampton, ON. Of course the woman isn't named, but activists were able to figure out who she was pretty quick:

Jennifer Bush has been a frequent attendee at a number of anti-Muslim events including those held in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto and is suspected of being involved in the anti-Muslim protests of the Peel school board. Ms. Bush also looked familiar and while I initially couldn't place her, a journalist was able to make the connection.

Bush, along the dude who tore apart a Quran at a Peel Region District School Board meeting in March, and Ron Banerjee, participated in an event hosting then Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch who was at the time stoking fears of Muslims for fun and profit.

UPDATE 2: She also appeared at a protest at a Mississauga where she and the Rise Canada crew harangued children:

Fallout from the Kellie Leitch Presentation in Brampton

First, before I continue to far, I will be writing about the events that took place in Toronto, Brampton, and Calgary on April first, though in the meantime we direct our readers to the CBC which covered the event in Toronto.

So, it's been a rather eventful week in Canadian politics.

• Video shows Kellie Leitch at meeting with controversial critics of Islam
• Kellie Leitch didn't know anti-Islamic group was part of Brampton event, campaign manager says
• Kellie Leitch Campaign Says It Rejects Anti-Muslim Group Now Promoting Her

ARC broke the story that Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate was courting a group in Brampton that included Ron Banerjee and Rise Canada. I'll talk more about Banerjee and Rise Canada in a moment, though I would be remiss if I didn't note that Ron must be feeling at least some heat in that he deleted both the video from YouTube and the article promoting Leitch on the Rise Canada website:

Good thing I saved a copy I guess.

But the reality is that there were other items in the video that I should also have focused on:

Rise Canada and Other Islamophobes Celebrate Their Islamophobia At Toronto Mosque

On February 17, Ron Banerjee, Eric Brazau, Sandra Solomon, and other Islamophobes protested in front of a mosque in Toronto. As of Saturday the Toronto Police Service claimed to be investigating the protest as a possible hate crime.

And since Banerjee was kind enough to provide video of the event, this writer decided to provide our readers with the pertinent excerpts interspersed with Banerjee's tweets and screen shots from the Facebook profiles of some to the other participants.

Yep, this writer made a video:

Yeah, it isn't great; poor production value, editing, and all that (including a rather unfortunate lapse in memory regarding the year that we are currently residing, as the first text page has the date that the rally took place as 2016 rather than 2017 UPDATE: fixed). It's my first time so cut me a little slack. But we think it provides our readers with the general tone of the protest as well as the bigotry of at least some of those involved in the protest:

Meir Weinstein and Ezra Levant, unsurprisingly, thought the protest was supper kool:

Though they wouldn't have needed the excuse be hateful towards Muslims, Banerjee and co. were reacting to M-103, a private members motion condemning Islamophobia.

Actually, lets, post the full text of the motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making, (ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities, and that the Committee should present its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That's it. And it is similar to the wording of another Liberal motion condemning the rise in antisemitism around the world:

a) there has been, in the words of the Joint Statement issued following the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on January 22, 2015, “an alarming increase in Antisemitism worldwide,” including the firebombing of synagogues and community centres, the vandalizing of Jewish memorials and cemeteries, incendiary calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, and anti-Jewish terror; 

b) this global anti-Semitism constitutes not only a threat to Jews but an assault on our shared democratic values and our common humanity; 

Therefore the House: 

a) declares its categorical condemnation of anti-Semitism; 

b) reaffirms the importance of the Ottawa Protocol on Combating anti-Semitism as a model for domestic and international implementation; 

c) reaffirms, in the words of the Ottawa Protocol, that, “Criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, and saying so is wrong. But singling Israel out for selective condemnation and opprobrium – let alone denying its right to exist or seeking its destruction – is discriminatory and hateful, and not saying so is dishonest;” 

And the House further calls upon the government to: 

a) continue advancing the combating of anti-Semitism as a domestic and international priority; 

b) expand engagement with civil society, community groups, educators, and other levels of government to combat anti-Semitism and to promote respect, tolerance, and mutual understanding.

That motion condemning antisemitism was, rightfully, adopted unanimously.

So it would make sense that M-103 would be similarly accepted. I mean, given that this motion will be voted on in the aftermath of what appears to be a likely Islamophobic mass shooting resulting in the death of six men as well as numerous assaults on Muslims and vandalism of their places of worship, who could possibly have a problem this this non-binding motion?

Right?

Nope. People are losing their shit. Or to be more specific, demagogues such as Kelly Leitch and some other Conservative Party leadership candidates as well as Ezra Levant and his merry band at "The Rebel" are ginning up fear that this, I once again stress, non-binding motion will take away people's free speech, become an anti-blasphemy law, and impose sharia on Canadians:

Except this happened in 2015.

And despite the efforts of reasonable Conservative such as Michael Chong and rather valiant efforts by some media outlets such as the CBC, "Globe and Mail," "The National Post," and Global to inform the Canadian public as to what M-103 is and what it is not, the folks who are inclined to believe Muslims are hiding under their beds and in their closets ready to jump out one day to dress their women up in niqabs and force feed them kabobs are having none of this rational discussion and have fully embraced the crazy:

In the meantime, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid who tabled the motion spoke about the death threats she has received ("The Star" also covers these threats and sexually demeaning insults) as a result of her motion as a reason why she would not remove the word "Islamophobia" from the motion as requested by the Conservative Party. She has since been offered police protection.

You know, threats (as well as other lovely comments) like these posted yesterday: