It’s been a very busy Labour Day weekend in Ontario, especially on the anti-hate activism front. The ARC collective has put together an excellent summary, so I’ll just link to it here rather than re-cap it, but there is one thing that isn’t listed in that summary because the news just came out this morning: Hamilton is permitting infamous white nationalist and Holocaust-denier Paul Fromm to address city council on the issue of “free speech.”
Fromm, you may remember, has been repeatedly banned from Parliament Hill in order to — and this is a direct quote — “to preserve the dignity and integrity of the House.” And yet, Hamilton City Council sees fit to grant this literal Nazi the privilege of addressing council complaining that racists and homophobes might be denied their free speech.
That’s right. A neo-Nazi gets to address council to complain that a plan to prevent violent hate groups from using city space is a “Free Speech issue.” Hell, it’s not even a plan yet, city council has been dragging it’s damn feet on the whole issue all summer while the Yellow Vests and the Whichever-Nouns-of-Odin have been demonstrating, threatening and occasionally assaulting counter-protesters… often with the apparent support and assistance of the Hamilton Police Service.
Somewhat more ironically, city council has also accepted the delegation of self-described Yellow Vests founder Lisa Thompson, for the purpose of clarifying the Yellow Vests’ “position” and refuting that Justin Long speaks for the organization. Considering that Thompson spent her weekend posting (and then deleting) vicious homophobic harassment on a public anti-hate Facebook page and that she’s been witnessed physically assaulting anti-fascists, I genuinely doubt she’s going to be the voice of reason in the council chamber. (I do confess a certain morbid curiosity at her denunciation of Long, however; considering his public — and almost certainly insincere — condemnation of white supremacy and homophobia a few weeks ago I would be bitterly amused if her complaint is that he’s gone soft.)
Look, fascists gonna fash: They’re cowards, they’re scum, they’re deeply stupid and they jerk themselves off (possibly literally, ew) to the thought of hurting people. Fascist groups like the C3, PEGIDA, the Proud Boys or even the “fascism lite” Yellow Vests exist because the craven shitheels who join them long to hit back at a world they’re not intellectually equipped to understand. Hating brown people and queers and spreading conspiracy-theory bullshit about being replaced is just plain easier than being a functional adult who participates in a pluralistic society… and the ignorant chuds tend to accrete around a core group of opportunists who tell them what they want to hear.
This is why you’ve got to nip fascist groups in the bud. This is why you have to deplatform them, expose them and deny them the medium of ignorance in which they grow. I ran across a fantastic post from a couple of years back this weekend, written by George Godwin, explaining how neo-Nazis work and why it’s important to stop them while they’re still small. One statement he made struck me as being downright prescient regarding Hamilton’s situation: “You either deal with fascists the first fucking time they show their faces or they’re going to settle in and begin calling their pals to let them know they’ve found a nice, comfortable place to begin tormenting people.“
There’s a reason Hamilton is the hate-crimes capitol of Canada, and that reason is because the hate groups have been allowed to operate with impunity. And, it’s becoming increasingly clear that reason is because hate groups have been encouraged and empowered because of police complicity and tacit support for their activities.
During a protest against the Prime Minister’s attendance at the Labour Day Parade in Hamilton yesterday, RankAndFile.ca’s Kevin Taghabon noted a conversation between two HPS officers:
“Standing on the side of the dividing line between the two groups, two Hamilton Police Officers joked about trampling through the line. “This is where we need the horses, push them back” one said as the other laughed. “Funny, the one thing they’re useful for,” the second officer added. “And photo ops.” One officer, Young 1119, openly wore a “thin blue line” patch on his uniform.”
I myself have witnessed a number of police officers wearing such “morale” patches, and some of those officers have also worn patches associated with white supremacist tropes, specifically the emblem of “The Punisher”, from Marvel comics. Putting an explicitly anti-Black Lives Matter patch on an officer’s uniform is deeply problematic. Adding the emblem of a fictional vigilante which is associated with neo-fascist violence-fantasies… well that’s a signal, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a low-key signal to the hate groups that these officers are on their side.
And that’s an absolutely huge problem that Hamilton is going to need to face up to if there’s ever going to be any progress in reconciling the police, the city, and its marginalized communities.
Last week, the Hamilton Police Service held a meeting with hand-picked members of the LGBTQ+ community. It was, like the meeting held by Mayor Fred Eisenberger earlier in the week, a disappointing exercise in public-relations performance as opposed to a good-faith effort to reach out. Two attendees, Cameron Kroetsch and Graham Crawford later went on local radio to criticize the failures of the meeting and the police response as a whole; Chief Eric Girt would also go on the same show to defend his police force’s activity — or lack thereof. (Give it a listen, it’s an excellent interview with local radio host Bill Kelly, who’s increasingly becoming my go-to for analysis on Hamilton issues.)
As Crawford pointed out during his radio interview, there is an increasing sense that the Hamilton Police Service is out of control. Chief Girt alleged in the meeting that he cannot influence officers in tone or direction, which is deeply concerning. The impression I was left with was that HPS is either completely unguided and allowing officers to act out their own toxic, homophobic and anti-left biases… or that they’re being encouraged to do so by a police service which is itself toxic, homophobic and anti-left.
There is no question that decisions are being made to allow hate groups to operate with impunity. Decisions are being made to harass and arrest anti-fascist and anarchist activists. If those decisions are being made by individual officers operating without adequate oversight, then that’s a massive failure in the structure of the police service and a betrayal of the public trust. If those decisions are being made higher up, then it’s also a massive failure and a betrayal. Either way, it’s on Chief Eric Girt to take some goddamn responsibility for his police force… or to resign in favour of someone who will.
LGBTQ+ people, people of colour and all marginalized people in Hamilton are currently living in fear. Some of that fear is that they’ll be victimized by hate groups, but much of that fear is that the police will do nothing to protect them.
I had an argument about this with a now-former-friend on Facebook. He was sharing one of those feel-good propaganda articles about how a police officer gave someone a ride in a “rainbow” police cruiser and I pointed out that he was doing so literally while Boston Police were brutally suppressing queer anti-fascist activists protesting the so-called “Straight Pride” parade. He accused me of “ignoring the positives” and focusing on “a few bad individuals” and in any case “that’s the United States, not Canada. It’s different here.”
Well, no. It’s not all that different. And it’s certainly not something you can blame on individual bad cops, although individual officers must be held to account. It’s that the police as a class have a hugely problematic culture. You can argue about good cops and bad cops, but in the end the “good” ones protect the bad ones. (And believe me, I’m of the opinion that there ain’t a whole hell of a lot of “good” ones anyway.)
An individual officer might be a super-nice guy to hang out with, maybe he’s really sweet to his dog and his kids… but he’s participating in and helping to foment a toxic, racist and homophobic system. LGBTQ+ people and people of colour get the brunt of it, always.
And saying it’s different in Canada is just bullshit: It’s just as bad up here, especially for Native Canadians. Claiming otherwise is either appallingly ignorant or blatantly disingenuous.
Let me be absolutely frank: It must be super-nice to be able to look at a cop and see anything other than a faceless uniform to be feared and distrusted. What privilege to see a cop and not be afraid! But speaking as an LGBTQ+ person — and a comparatively-privileged white male LGBTQ+ person at that — it’s my experience is that all cops are untrustworthy. All cops abuse their authority, often on a whim. All cops are to be feared.
Are some of them okay? Maybe. But there’s an old metaphor about snakes in the forest: one kind is harmless, the other has deadly venom; both two kinds of snakes are identical to the eye but the harmless ones can be determined through careful study of their behaviour. Given that a mistake could be lethal, why would you make the effort to study behaviour when being approached by a snake? Wouldn’t you just learn to fear and avoid all snakes?
There’s a saying popular in anarchist and queer communities: ACAB. All Cops Are Bastards. If there’s one thing this summer has taught me, it’s the truth of that statement.
Posting feel-good cops-are-your-buddies rainbow-taxi-ride propaganda literally at the same moment where police were brutalizing queer activists in Boston; during a summer where police not only denied protection to the LGBTQ+ community in Hamilton out of petty spite and then turned their ire on the civilians who risked their safety doing the police’s job; on a weekend where Hamilton’s police chief went on air and outright denied any wrongdoing — going so far as to calling his critics liars! — over the HPS’ dereliction of duty… yeah, I’m not going to be happy about that.
And I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be calm about it either.
If someone tells me I should look at the police to see the positives, then my response is going to be: Where? When? Because I honestly have never seen it.
I’ve had friends harassed and arrested and jailed by the Hamilton Police Service this summer, whose only crimes were to be uppity queers who wouldn’t stay silent in the face of the HPS’ dereliction of duty, apparent collaboration with hate groups and the subsequent repression of anti-fascists. And the Hamilton Police Service has done all this while quite literally letting the hate groups assault people in front of them… and then they arrest the victims while the attackers walk free right in front of us.
Where were the good cops then? Where were the positives? Where is the damned justice? If we can’t rely on the police to protect us from hate crimes, then we’ll have to protect ourselves. And I doubt very much that the Hamilton Police Service is going to be happy about that… although in my more paranoid moments I wonder if that’s exactly the goal here: forcing LGBTQ+ activists and anti-fascists to use force to defend ourselves so that the HPS can crack down on us for doing so.
That’s how fucking broken things are with the police right now.
And if anyone in the HPS is reading this — and I hope they are — I have this to say directly to you: This level of distrust is your own damn fault. This is the degree of fear and hostility that your dereliction of duty and unprofessional behaviour as brought the LGBTQ+ community to. And a lot of us now doubt that it was accidental. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe that things have gotten this bad simply because the Hamilton Police Service is incompetent. As an old military adage goes: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is hostile action. And it’s been a lot more than three times, officers.
So yeah, maybe this makes me the asshole for saying it out loud, but All Cops Are Bastards and for our own safety marginalized communities can’t afford to think otherwise.
Prove me wrong.
