Two of the candidates disavowed the SoO and claimed they had no idea who they were or what the group was about. The third candidate however refused to go along with this narrative (though to be fair the two other candidates may have been genuine) and said he knew exactly who the SoO were. For his troubles, he was booted as a candidate by the party:
The Edmonton Nouns of Odin, because of the negative press, was ordered shut down by the original chapter in Finland and leader
Tyson Hunt went on to rebrand as the Canadian Infidels/Wolves of Odin/Odin's Infidels.
Really, Hunt had a really hard time sticking with a name he liked:
Eventually Hunt and his gang merged with Ryan Dean's twosome as the Clann with Hunt apparently the public leader though Dean certainly maintains control of the group:
The most infamous of their recent activities, especially in light of the murders in Christchurch, New Zealand two months later, was the decision of Hunt, Dean, and two or three other to
harass members of Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton:
Now that the background information has been provided, on to the purpose for this article.
Ryan Dean likes to create social media pages -- Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram primarily -- to disseminate particular brand of noxious propaganda and to make it appear as if there is more support for the hatred he and other members of the Clann espouse. One of his recent efforts is on Instagram:
As of last night when I grabbed the screen shot, there were 44 followers; that number hadn't changed the last time I checked earlier today. Among the 44 who decided to give Dean a follow was this fella:
And who is David Egan you ask?
This guy:
As Dean has been posting on Instagram fairly frequently since creating the site a couple of days ago, Mr. Egan may be seeing images like these come up on his feed:
Of particular interest are the posts supporting Faith Goldy and Students For White Civilization who promote some variation of the identitarian "great replacement" conspiracy that in part motivated the Christchurch murderer:
Most concerning are the posts targeting anti-racist supporters in Calgary and Edmonton. On these posts there have been comments left by both Tyson Hunt and Joey Deluca of the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam who marched in Edmonton last week. In one post Deluca writes "they need to die" in reference to an activist and in a brief exchange with Hunt claims that they have addresses of anti-fascists:
Now if I'm to be fair, there is a chance that UCP candidate for Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview David Egan may have followed Dean's Instagram profile because Dean also followed him; I don't know whom followed whom first:
When I checked Mr. Egan's Facebook profile with my sock puppet, one in which I only add extremists who along with far-right groups I keep an eye on, I found that Mr. Egan and the sock had well over 100 "friends" in common including many such as Rick Boswick and Georges Massaad who have been frequently profiled here on the ARC blog:
This also raises more than a few alarms. As I would like to give Mr. Egan the benefit of the doubt it has become sort of clear that extremism within the UCP during this election appears to be a feature rather than a bug:
And so on....
Aside from Mr. Egan, a list of over 30 current and former UCP candidates raise the question of what kind of vetting the party does and what kind of government they would be should they win the Alberta election on April 16.
