Saturday, November 22, 2008

November Odds and Ends

Those of us who participate in gathering information and writing articles for Anti-Racism Canada have been very busy this month, though our business is more a matter of our rather full and hectic lives than anything the far right are up to. November has been filled with hockey practices and piano lessons for our children, vacations to Spain, and getting marks ready for midterm report cards.

It helps that the activities of the far right have been pretty low key too.

So, we thought we'd write a short blurb about what has been happening over the last couple of weeks.

Terry Tremaine was in the news again today as the federal court upheld the ruling against the former University of Saskatchewan lecturer in which Tremaine was found guilty of human rights violations. Tremaine is also soon to be on trial for criminal charges related to his online postings, primarily on Stormfront and his own website. This news was greeted with the usual reaction of the far right as Canadian Stormfront moderator "OdinPatrick" speculated on the faith of the presiding judge:

Is Judith Snider Jewish? She appears to be a "champion" donor for the Canadian JFSA (Jewish Family Service Agency)

Cue the conspiracy accusations. If our readers would like to know more about the trials and troubles of Terry Tremaine, they can go to a well researched article found on the website of our friends with the One Peoples' Project.


Some of our readers have voiced some concern about us allowing some posts by neo-Nazis to get through moderation. We understand and acknowledge these concerns, so we hope that we can explain our position on this issue. We feel that part of our mandate is to expose these cretins for the vile scum that they are. A dual goal is to punch holes in the myth of unity that the racist right try to perpetuate (with limited to no success). We feel that the few posts that we do allow to pass through moderation by the far right speak for themselves in both of these areas. Goodness knows that everything that is written doesn't reflect well on the racist right and, in fact, proves that these "people" are complete idiots. What self-respecting bigot argues with other racists publicly on an anti-racist website? They'd have to be complete idiots to do that, right?

Right, and hence the reason why we allow these particular messages to pass through moderation. We hope our readers enjoy the show as they tear themselves apart.

This actually brings us to the post of SS-88:

Bill isn't an informant. If you accuse him of anything accuse him of stupidity for claiming that he wasn't Exterminance during his trial. And he's the smartest of that bunch. The whole Aryan Guard is such a joke. From pictures of their illiterate leader having sex with someone who might not be White to the other shit they're involved with, they're a blight on the White Nationalist movement. They learned nothing from what we went through with Western Canada For Us and now they're paying the price.

"SS-88" is the username that Western Canada For Us founder Glenn Bahr used on Stormfront when he was active on the webiste before his own troubles with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the law. We have no idea if it actually is Bahr (who most recently posted 18 messages on Stormfront while Noble was in jail using "a1b2c3" as his online handle) but we do find it interesting that he used the language that he did. We know that Bahr was critical of Noble's decision to not hire a lawyer to defend him and we know that he has made some disparaging comments regarding the Aryan Guard. Even if it was not Bahr who posted the message on this website, it appears to have been posted by someone reasonably close to Bahr. In any case, we find this to be an interesting turn of events.

Speaking of the Aryan Guard, do you think that former member Thomas Trenerry still is holding a grudge against fellow former member John Marleau? Perhaps this picture taken from Trenerry's YouTube profile will answer that question:

Aside from this, there's really not much that is notable concerning the Aryan Guard anymore, indicating that they are a spent force on the racist right as of the writing of this article. Many members have left the group, others are in jail or are awaiting trials. Their web forum might as well have tumbleweeds blowing across considering the number of people who frequent it. In fact the forums had been shut down by their service providers for a time but was back up within a week. The service provider offered the following explanation when contacted:

Thank you for contacting us however we are already aware of this forum, the reason why it is not against our TOS is because we have already discussed it with them and they are not allowed to post any hate topics however we do not wish to stop them simply talking 'generally'. The hate websites are not hosted by us or in a connection with us so we are unable to control what they do on their website however we do regulate what they do on their forum.

If you do see any content which may be against our TOS please contact us again.
Thank you.
 
Rest assured, we will be watching.

Finally, we wanted to let our readers know that we are currently working on gathering information on Kevin Goudreau, a racist with delusions of grandeur. We plan on writing an article where Goudreau will be discussed, however the primary focus of the article will be on Alicia Reckzin, a former ARA member who's run-in with George Burdi led to his imprisonment. Unfortunately, Reckzin has appeared to have switched sides. Suffice it to say it will not be a pleasant story, but in the overall struggle, setbacks are inevitable.

Of course at this point we would urge anyone with information on the racist right to contact us. Just post a message and state that it is to be a private correspondence. It's hard to believe that we've been plugging away at this blog for almost a year now. Thank you, our dear readers, for making us the relative success that we've been up to this date.

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