Pride 2019 Part 2 – Under Attack

Last week I wrote a blog post about titled Pride 2019 about the pressures on LGBTQ Pride celebrations this year and the context in which they occur. Near the end of that post I stated “So here we are, partway though Pride 2019. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re commodified and divided and we’re under attack by religious bigots, the alt-right and literal fucking Nazis… and we’re supposed to rely on the same police who have repeatedly broken the trust of our community to protect us.”

Yeah, I really hate being right. Four days after I wrote that, Hamilton Ontario’s Pride celebration was attacked. On the morning of Saturday June 15th 2019 a group of extreme-right wing religious protesters met up with a group of the neo-fascist Yellow Vests and the neo-Nazi Canadian Nationalist Party members who have been congregating at Hamilton Ontario’s City Hall every Saturday and then marched on the Pride celebration at Gage Park with the clear intent of violently disrupting the proceedings.

(I’ve mentioned the Yellow Vests before on this blog, and I’m planning an entire post on their history, their goals, and why they’ve got nothing to do with the French protest movement of the same name, but for now you’re just going to have to take my word for it — not to mention the extensive research of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network — and realize that these are Not Nice People. They are, in fact, violent and racist homophobes who represent a clear and growing threat to many Canadians, especially minorities.)

The united group of neo-nazis, assorted fascists and so-called “christians” marched into Gage Park unimpeded by any sort of police presence and were blocked by a group of anti-fascist counter-protesters who refused to allow them or their message of hate to reach the Pride celebration; an action which included stringing a large back banner to block the homophobic message on the signs. As is shown in a number of videos online — mostly posted by the fascists themselves as they brag of their “prowess” — the fascists and their compatriots quickly became violent and a general brawl developed. (I won’t include links to the fascists’ YouTube channels because I refuse to give them the traffic, but the Yellow Vests Exposed twitter channel has reposted unedited footage.)

Now, let face it: Fascists gonna fash. You can despise them for their deep-seated ignorance, their craven weakness and their snivelling submission to a philosophy of hatred… but you can’t really be all that surprised at it. For all their self-aggrandizing rhetoric of patriotism and masculinity, they are what they choose to be: Cowardly scum who prey on those they perceive as weaker than them. It’s just a simple fact of dealing with fascists, and I’m not surprised that their plan to harass a park full of LGBTQ families turned into sucker-punching outnumbered anti-fascists because that’s pretty much the limit of their so-called courage and puling “manhood.” They are the human equivalent of a toddler’s diaper blowout and while you can wrinkle your nose at the mess, you’d better to pitch in and clean it up quickly because time will not improve the situation.

(Let me make myself clear, if I haven’t already: I really don’t like fascists and Nazis, I don’t like them contaminating our communities and I don’t like the whinging appeasers who enable them. In fact, if you want to know the appropriate response to Nazis, fascists and their craven tactics, I heartily recommend reading Katherine Cross’ outstanding essay Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative.)

Even now considerable efforts are being made to identify various assailants from the videos; John Mark Moretti of Scarborough has, for example, been identified as the homophobic “street preacher” who punched a pink-masked antifa woman in the face (a woman much physically smaller than him, too). Anti-fascists also managed to identify the body-armour-wearing scumbag who operates under the self-appointed online nickname “Might Guy“, but whose real name is Chris Vanderweide of Kitchener and who was clearly recorded attacking people with his helmet (from behind, no less.) Considering how quickly these amateur sleuths were able to identify these jagoff clowns, it certainly seems that a loose collection of online anti-fascists is working much more efficiently to identify the assailants than the police have so far managed.

I remind you, by the way, that these videos were originally posted online by the fascists themselves as a boast. Some of the so-called “christian” group videotaped themselves chasing LGBTQ youth through the streets of Hamilton, screaming homophobic slurs at the “sodomites.” They want people to think they’re tough. They want to intimidate queers and people of colour. The swine see this cowardly behaviour as admirable and want other people to be emboldened enough to emulate them.

And that’s not really the problem, as disgusting as it is: The problem is that other aggressive homophobes will emulate them because three days later it’s become explicitly clear that the vicious shitheads responsible won’t be facing any real consequences for their violent hate crimes.

Now, I can hear many people asking “But where were the police? Why didn’t the police step in?” This has been a constant online refrain by timorous centrists, and I’ve got bad news for them:

As the above tweet demonstrates, the police chose not to intervene. Right now many community groups — including Pride Hamilton’s Board of Directors — are asking why the cops “took so long” to respond to the fascist presence (FYI, Pride Hamilton’s public statement on this issue opens a PDF doc) but the answer is entirely clear: The Hamilton Police Service both as a whole and as individual officers consciously decided to allow the fascists to start an altercation. And when violence broke out the inadequate handful of cops assigned to Pride just stood there and watched. The Hamilton Police Service just sent a message that, because Pride Hamilton had asked them not to have a recruitment booth at the park, they wouldn’t be protecting LGBTQ people.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: The Hamilton Police Service apparently knew that this was coming for days in advance and simply refused to prepare for potential violence. Certainly they didn’t make the slightest effort to curtail the fascist plan to disrupt what was supposed to be a family-friendly Pride celebration. And this course of action, whether an official policy of the HPS or not, was employed as a method of punishing the LGBTQ community for voicing its entirely-justified concerns about Police conduct.

Well, I guess those concerns were addressed on the weekend… and so much for the HPS motto “To Serve & Protect In Partnership with Our Communities.” So much for “police professionalism.” So much for the “public trust. “

Local politicians are now chiming in: Hamilton’s Mayor, Fred Eisenberger, made a characteristically weak and ineffective public statement claiming to be “disappointed” that there was violence (while, it should be noted, failing to condemn the fascists and in fact subtly implying that the LGBTQ community was at fault for not working closely with the police). Local NDP candidate and city councillor Matthew Green made a rather more on-point criticism of police inaction in the face of fascist aggression. Deputy police chief Frank Bergen refused to answer whether the conduct of officers on the ground will be investigated, (insert derisive noise indicating profound doubt here), made some pious noises about working with the Hamilton Pride community and then turned right around to blame the LGBTQ community itself for not respecting the “public trust” by working with the police… as though the police have remotely earned our trust, or as though the city’s fascist problem is one that applies uniquely to the LGBTQ community.

(You know what would work better than “working with the LGBTQ” community, Frank? Stop blaming the victims and get your police to work against the fucking fascists instead of giving them a free pass: They think they own Hamilton right now and because your useless fucking cops let them get away with hate speech and assaulting anti-fascists in the streets they are not far wrong.)

But of course, the cops and the politicians have their own priorities and the safety of the big bad anti-fascists, or even of the prosperous middle-class LGBTQ community, are obviously not high on the list: The political blame festival has already started and is now rushing forward under it’s own momentum while that whole openly-operating-fascists problem is going to be allowed to fester. In a just world, we’d be firing every one of the useless bastards and starting from scratch, but I doubt much will come of the current outrage: historically, the City of Hamilton is not a place where things get fixed. I certainly doubt that any of the police officers whose disgraceful dereliction of duty allowed this violence to happen will ever be held to account.

But the facts of the matter are clear: The religious-right hate-preachers linked up with violent fascist goons, approached the Pride celebration and in full view of smirking cops violently attacked the anti-fascists who tried to protect innocent families. They went up there with the full intent of either terrorizing LGBTQ families or picking a fight with their defenders, and the police did nothing. In fact, the cops “dispersed” the fascists by helping them retrieve their signs and then escorting them out of the park — despite the assaults no arrests were made — and they allowed the fascists to further attack and harass Pride attendees outside the park without making any effort to curtail their hate crimes. And now, of course, there’s the usual full-court follow-up propaganda press by alt-right trolls online trying to blame the victims and make the false equivalence that fascists and anti-fascists are “just as bad” and trying to claim that “antifa terrorists” are to blame for triggering the violence… as though the Yellow Vest and Canadian Nationalist Party bully-boys didn’t march up to the event wearing fucking body armour.

This is where we are in Canada right now: The cops are supporting and empowering hate groups out of petty pique that they’re being held to account for pulling shit exactly like this. The fascists are crowing online about the “victory” they’ve won and ordering bullshit tactical gear online and planning their next attack while their troll supporters cheer them on and blame the victims. We LGBTQ people have had yet another demonstration that politicians and police simply don’t prioritize our lives and safety. And the brave anti-fascist activists who put their bodies between violent thugs and innocent families enjoying Pride are villified in the media and left to tend their bruises and wonder how bad it will be next time.

Because there will be a next time. Every time the fascists are allowed to get away with it, every concession made to their demands, every act of appeasement guarantees that another such crime will occur. Because that is the way fascism works.

Next weekend is the Toronto Pride Parade, the single biggest event of Pride Month in Ontario. Just like the HPS, Toronto Police are sullenly resentful about being refused a space in Toronto’s parade where they can pretend to give a shit about the LGBTQ community. And the fascist and religious hate groups are apparently planning to try similar disruptions.

What will happen? And how many people will have to get hurt before the fascists are stopped? And since we can’t trust the police to protect us, how will we stop them?