Our readers might question why we would devote any print to John Beattie, a relic of a bygone era still desperately claiming relevance in the White Nationalist movement in Canada through his moribund British Peoples League. That is perhaps a fair question. Beattie has not been relevant since the 1989 rally he held on his property made national news and it could be argued that he has truly not been relevant since the 1960s when he founded and lead the Canadian Nazi Party. Interestingly, he has now denied there ever was a Nazi Party in Canada and that he was manipulated by the Canadian Jewish Conference into creating the group; the CJC had infiltrated the group in order to monitor the threat they presented.
On this blog, we first discussed Beattie in detail when he tried to organize a second event on property near Minden, Ontario where he has lived now for decades. The event again made national news, however unlike the 1989 concert and rally, the 2011 event was cancelled in large part because of the bad press and those who had committed to participating pulling out. Although we do discuss him from time to time in relation to other stories, we don't give the Beattie more print than he is worth and he isn't really worth much to begin with.
Then, a few months ago, he suggested that he was going to put forth his name as a candidate for deputy reeve in Minden. As a result we made a point of keeping more up to date on him than we otherwise would. It took him some time to scrape together the $100.00 registration fee, but eventually took the plunge and is officially a candidate:
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| Screen shot from Beattie's campaign website |
Now, much like when Don Andrews, Paul Fromm, and Tomasz Winnicki ran for municipal office in 2010, we really don't necessarily expect Beattie to be particularly successful as a candidate. He himself might not think he will win either, but in many cases winning the election is less important than rehabilitating one's reputation. Beattie has engaged in quite a bit of revisionism of late. Of course the first example is his claim that the group he founded and fronted in the 1960s, the Canadian Nazi Party, was really just a CJC plot to bring about hate crimes legislation (Beattie even claims this "revelation" is what resulted in the folding of the CLC into the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs). And, like other unreformed bigots, he claims that he isn't racist but is simply proud of the accomplishments of his British forefathers.
The msm seems somewhat skeptical:
We at ARC don't much care for racist revisionists and unlike the muddled Beattie we have a better understanding of how the Internet works.
For example, when the folks on the largest racist webforum in the world caught wind of Beattie's candidacy....
.... we were reminded that John Beattie too used to post on Stormfront until quite recently.
Beattie has two accounts on Stormfront, both of which were of his real name. In total, Beattie posted 141 message on Stormfront during a nearly 10 year period between October 8, 2003 and March 9, 2013 which is hardly prolific but not exactly the behavior of a merely curious visitor either.
The content of these posts? We have a lot of screen shots here if our readers are interested, but we thought we would post a few of the choice examples in this blog entry:
The content of these posts? We have a lot of screen shots here if our readers are interested, but we thought we would post a few of the choice examples in this blog entry:
It should be further noted that while has hasn't posted on Stormfront in a little over a year, his association with the hate site continues. For example, a few months ago he did an Internet radio interview with former KKK Grand Wizard, convicted felon, and founder/owner of Stormfront Don Black:
We imagine that Beattie might not be very comfortable with people knowing about his online activities.
Or maybe he doesn't care? Who knows how he'll spin this?
That said, we do have a little something else Beattie might be interested in seeing.
We know that Beattie reads this blog, but we aren't going to show our hand quite yet. Come September though we suspect that John Beattie might be more than a little bit surprised.
We know that Beattie reads this blog, but we aren't going to show our hand quite yet. Come September though we suspect that John Beattie might be more than a little bit surprised.
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