Suspect in Attack on Muslim Woman in London, ON Arrested

In our previous post we had mentioned that, at least at the time of publication, there had not yet been mention of the assault on a Muslim woman in London, Ontario on any of the usual sites we frequent. However we completely forgot about one and, sure enough....

III% Canada is a quasi-militia movement in Canada ideologically aligned with the American-based movement. And part of that ideological alignment is virulent Islamophobia as evidenced by the reaction of III% Canada members to the assault:

Muslim University Student Falsely Accused of School Stabbings; Islamophobes Continue to Run With the Claim

A little over a year ago we posted an article regarding a planned Valentine Day massacre in Halifax that the police managed to prevent before it started. The three individuals (one of whom killed himself as the police closed in) had social media presences that included allusions to the Columbine murderers and, of interest to this blog, replete with National Socialist iconography.

Whether or not Lindsay Souvannarath, Randall Shepherd, or James Gamble actually subscribed to the Nazi ideology who's symbols were found on their Facebook and Tumblr accounts or merely were attracted to the darkness associated with symbols is yet to be determined. But there is one person who is certain what was responsible.

Islamic jihadists.

Wha???

We wrote about Ms. Walsh in relation to Ron Banerjee's "Rise Canada" where she was listed as the Atlantic Regional Leader (she did not respond to our query concerning the factual nature of the claim). What became abundantly clear though through our research is that she loves the Conservative Party and Ezra Levant and really hated the Trudeau Liberals, the CBC, and Muslims.

And when the news about the Halifax murder plot broke, Ms. Walsh was convinced, despite the lack of any evidence to support her claim, that the suspects were motivated by Islamic extremism:

Anyone familiar with mindset shouldn't be surprised. In the Islamophobic echo chamber where real journalism is dismissed in favour of fringe "news" that supports the preexisting prejudicial narrative, there is always a way to spin a story to implicate the hated "Other."

So, when these fringe websites suggest that Trudeau is a Muslim convert and thus a traitor who needs to be (a) removed from office, (b) executed, (c) both, or that ISIS is coming across the Mexican border, or that Obama is funding ISIS, or that Muslim-Canadians all subsist on welfare, or there is an effort to implement sharia law in Canada, or any other insane conspiracy theory where Muslims are front and center as the villain, these people believe those stories because they are already inclined to believe them. When mainstream news publications proved evidence which disputes the conspiracies, that evidence is dismissed and the mainstream journalists are accused of being, "in the bag for the jihadis"

Which brings us the sad story of Dunbarton High School in Pickering.

On Tuesday, a 14 year old girl with a history of mental illness slashed a number of students with a knife before being stopped by a teacher. Thankfully none of the injuries, described as “Band-Aid-type cuts," were very serious. It was later learned that the young woman taken into custody was suffering serious depression and was suicidal based on posts found on her Tumblr account. It seems that she had been crying out for help for some time:

PEGIDA Canada: "We're Not Racists" (UPDATED)

Earlier Sunday PEGIDA Quebec participated in a protest against Bill 59 and were met by anti-racist and antifascist groups. When one is challenging groups such as PEGIDA Canada the accusation that the membership and supporters of similar groups hold racist views is countered by the statement that, "Islam is not a race." In our view, there's a lot of parsing of the terminology going on here, however when we refer to the views held by the membership and supporters of groups like PEGIDA Canada who target Muslims we usually refer to them as bigots to avoid that argument. That term is challenged as well, as PEDIDA Canada suggest they are not against Muslims, but are in fact opposed to Islam. That claim is frequently made on the PEGIDA Canada Facebook group page, examples of which follows:

Not found on the PEGIDA Canada page, but on the page of a member.
More on Diane Hunter in the update at the bottom of the article.

Really?

A second statement found on the Facebook group's page also makes a similar claim lamenting the accusation of racism, but the underlying message seems clear enough to all who can read it:

We decided to take a closer look a PEGIDA Canada to test their claim that they are not in fact racists or bigots. Though we will inundate you, our dear readers, with screenshots from the PEGIDA Canada Facebook page that dehumanize Muslims (foreign, immigrant, refugee, and Canadian citizens) and which celebrate violence against Muslims (and anti-racists for that matter), we really could summarize the collective will of the members and supporters of PEGIDA Canada with this single post:

Yeah, they are racists and bigots, though we don't think this will really come as a significant revelation to many.

Ron Banerjee, André Drouin, and Rise Canada

We had mentioned in our previous article that we were working on a new story. In fact, it's a story that sort of fell into our laps, though initially we didn't quite realize how significant it would turn out to be:

Before being sent the above unsolicited link we had been aware of Rise Canada though we didn't pay it a lot of attention as it was yet another Islamaphobic project of Ron Banerjee:

Ron Banerjee holding pamphlet

We've discussed Banerjee on the blog in the past. He styles himself as the director and spokesman of Canadian Hindu Advocacy, a virulently Islamaphobic "group" which is, for all intents and purposes a one man show. Banerjee attended last summer's Ford Fest where he was heard shouting homophobic slurs at protesters, one of whom he appears to have physically assaulted. And he is occasionally found in the company of the Jewish Defence League. 

While he has been able to snooker some into believing CHA is actually a legitimate interest group representing Canadian Hindus before his behavior gives him away as a fraud, most people who know of Banerjee know him as a self-promoter with limited influence. 

So with this in mind we generally ignored Rise Canada since it seemed simply to be just another one of Banerjee's delusions of grandeur. We didn't even bother looking at the website which we assumed would be as devoid of content as that of CHA.

However one of our members did eventually decide to take a look, again assuming there wouldn't be much there. 

That assumption turned out to be incorrect. What we did find took us on a rather interesting ride.