White Supremacists in Canadian Military

Long time readers of this blog will know that we have discussed white supremacist/nationalist who are either active members of the Canadian military or who wish to enlist. As a reminder, might we suggest these articles:

• More Trouble For Boneheads Planning on Attending Calgary Rally
• Paulie Plays Fast and Loose With the Truth
• GermBrit Comments on ARC

There are others that we've learned about who we haven't discussed here on the blog (for example, Bruce comes to mind) but in many of those cases we have forwarded the information to the DND.

So it really shouldn't be much of a surprise for the military to receive this kind of intel:

Canadian Forces warned of possible infiltration by white supremacist group

By DAVID PUGLIESE, The Ottawa Citizen June 18, 2012

OTTAWA — Canadian Forces intelligence officers have been warned that a U.S. white supremacist group is expanding into this country and that military members could be attracted to the organization.

Officers with the National Counter-Intelligence Unit were told about the expansion of such groups into the Canadian Forces, as well as the attraction these groups have for members of the Forces, during a meeting of specialists looking into hate crimes and extremists movements. “Many of the conference speakers and attendees were aware of serving or retired DND/CF members that are part of these groups,” the counter-intelligence summary report from January 2011 pointed out.

Rodney King Dead at 47

Twenty-one years ago I was in high school when the video of Rodney King being beaten by members of the LAPD made international news.

I had already been following news stories about racist groups in Canada and the United States. The Heritage Front had started making headlines and was fast becoming the most influential hate groups Canada had experienced since the Saskatchewan Klan of the 1920s. In Saskatchewan, Carney Nerland of the Aryan Nations had just killed a First Nations trapper, Leo LaChance (he would later be convicted of manslaughter). In the United States, Years before that, neo-Nazis affiliated with Ton Metzger's White Aryan Resistance had murdered Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw; W.A.R was subsequently bankrupted as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1990 because Metzger's influence was proven to be a key factor in the murder.

However, it wasn't until the beating of Rodney King made headlines that I came to understand that systemic racism was pervasive in institutions that were supposed to be color blind.

Rodney King wasn't a saint. He himself admitted that he struggled with demons and in one of his last interviews he stated that he would always struggle with sobriety. In other words, he was as human as any one of us. But the assault he endured on March 3, 1991 did serve to make very public a reality that primarily Black men had been systematically targeted because of their ethnicity.

We here at ARC hope that Rodney King finds the peace that he struggled to find in life.

Congratulations Dr. Dawg

Our friend and fellow blogger Dr. Dawg has won his appeal:

Baglow v. Smith

Dawg has also been awarded costs.

The case will now proceed to trial.

Response to the Demise of Sec. 13 in "Maclean's"

Earlier today, we were contacted by "Maclean's" and asked about our take on the demise of Sec. 13. We responded as follows:

We think that the government was incredibly short sighted in their decision to eliminate Sec. 13. It was a useful and cost-effective tool in the effort to eliminate some very vile, hateful, and potentially dangerous rhetoric online and in the public sphere. Now we have only the criminal code which, in a few cases, is like using a machete when a scalpel would have been more prudently utilized. 

Those individuals and groups who were called before the Human Rights Tribunal and who were found to have violated Sec. 13 were not innocent lambs who were victimized by Big Brother. They were people and groups who were causing real harm in their communities. Their words did result in harm, and I don't mean hurt feelings. People's homes were vandalized. People have been assaulted. And these criminal acts had, in many cases, began with the dehumanization of fellow Canadians for no other reason than their ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation. 

The people who are celebrating this are the extremists on Stormfront and VNN and a host of other racist webforums, but as we wrote on our blog they should consider that now there is only the criminal code and the penalties are more severe than anything Sec. 13 dished out. It should also be noted that racists aren't content with only Sec. 13. Paul Fromm, for instance, has said he and his group will next focus their attention on the criminal code sections regarding hate crimes.

We get the impression that the "Maclean's" in which Sec. 13 will be discussed is coming out this week. We don't expect that our entire response will be published, or if any of it will be for that matter, but if it is we thought we'd include the entirely of our response here.

And as for the responses from the boneheads, we present a small selection:

Paul Fromm: Campus Alternative and "Countdown"

We continue to receive photos and documents from our readers as we proceed with our project to document the history of the early racist movement in Canada. A few days ago, we received the following message:

I saw your call out for old documents from the white supremacist movement, so I'm sending you pictures for two documents I came across that I thought might be of interest.They're anti-Edmund Burke Society/Western Guard flyers from the 1970s created by a Toronto group called the Revolutionary Marxist Group and feature good ol' Paul Fromm fairly prominently.

This is truly great stuff. Not a lot is known to us about what Paulie was up to after he left the Western Guard. We know that he began another short-lived group called Campus Alternative (membership numbers unknown) and publishing a newsletter called, "Countdown" but that was about it. This sheds a little more light on this period. The documents themselves we suspect are from 1973 or 74.

Sec. 13 Repealed

Not all that much of a surprise:

Conservative government votes to repeal sections on hate speech from human rights code

It still needs to pass through the senate, but we're sure that is likely a formality.

A bit short sighted, but not exactly the end of the world either.

We understand the boneheads might be very happy, but they should consider the fact that Sec. 13 and the CHRT were used instead of the criminal code in many cases.

Acts of hate speech are serious crimes that should be investigated by police officers, not civil servants, he said, and the cases should be handled by “real judges and real lawyers,” instead of a quasi-judicial body like the human rights commission.

Be careful what you wish for. ;)

Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 — June 6, 2012)

I first came across Ray Bradbury as a child on the Movie Channel. "The Ray Bardbury Theater" was an anthology based on his short stories. They were scary, eerie, funny, and filled me with a sense of awe about the mysteries of the universe that we never really think about. Later I devoured his short stories and novels. In fact, they were the first books I chose to look for and read when I was allowed to go to the, "grown up" section of the library. Ray Bradbury is who caused me to fall in love with books.

At 91 years old, it isn't a surprise that he passed on, but it still hurts. More than I had thought it would.

A few of my favourite childhood memories of Ray Bradbury:

They Got Him.

Luka Magnotta arrested in Germany

Dennis Mahon and the Canadian Connection

Dennis Mahon was convicted of
sending a bomb in the mail and
sentenced to 40 years in prison.

As we continue our project of gathering historical documents about the Canadian racist movement, we will also continue to comment on contemporary news stories related to that project, such as this story on American extremist Dennis Mahon.

On February 26, 2004, Don Logan of the Scottsdale, Arizona Office of Diversity and Dialogue, severely injuring him. After a 5 year investigation, Dennis Mahon, his twin brother Daniel and one other man were arrested on June 26, 2009 and charged in the mail bombing. On May 22, Dennis Mahon, who had been found guilty in February, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. At 61 years, he is likely to die in prison.

Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???

When we first heard that Luka Rocco Magnotta was the prime suspect in the murder and dismemberment of Jun Lin, there were a few things we knew for certain. Such as the fact that he was a gay pornstar who dated Karla Homolka once she was released from prison.

Except, as it turns out, we really don't know all of this to be a fact.

There is not any significant evidence he appeared in pornography, be it straight or gay. No evidence he was a model. No evidence that he date Homolka. Nothing other than what he, himself, has claimed.

And, if we are to be honest, the evidence that he was a, "White Nationalist" isn't exactly clear either.