An early Friday morning on the back porch in the Niagara, the sun is rising, birds are singing, the coffee is perking, the dogs are freaking out in the backyard because they’ve cornered another damn rat… it’s a fine late-summer morning. And yes, I said rat. It’s one of those things they don’t mention on the tourist websites, but the Niagara region has a serious rat problem in its urban areas. We’ve done everything we can — short of poison — to help remediate the rat problem in our neighbourhood, and we’ve still got to be vigilant that our dogs don’t eat the filthy things, because some of our neighbours do lay down poison and a dying rat can’t outrun a husky… “secondary poisoning by rat” being just one more thing I never expected I’d be worrying about in my early forties.
Of course, literal rats aren’t the only thing we’re apparently welcoming in the Niagara, we’ve got metaphorical ones too. (And the pulitzer for most obvious segue goes to…)
Earlier this week through the patient research of Atlanta Antifascists, it was revealed that infamous neo-Nazi Shaun Walker, the former leader of the National Alliance who served prison time in Utah for a series of hate-motivated assaults, was in fact living and working in Canada’s Niagara region… and that he was the chapter CEO for the St. Catharines branch of the People’s Party of Canada.
So… not a good look for Maxime Bernier’s PPC, which already has a serious PR problem because of their openly anti-immigrant rhetoric and their not-quite-concealed racism and homophobia. Walker, who describes himself online as a winery manager, was promptly expelled from the PPC for violating the party’s “non-embarrassment pledge” (I honestly can’t make that shit up) and local PPC candidate Allan DeRoo has been noticeably silent on the whole matter.
Walker’s expulsion from the party is… well, predictable. Even for a far-right political party, the presence of a literal Nazi with a history of violence is a bit much to tolerate in an election year — although I do have to point out Walker wasn’t expelled for being a Nazi, or even for having a violent past, he was expelled for embarrassing the People’s Party of Canada. And given the very low bar that the PPC has apparently set on bringing in embarrassing people, that took some doing. Perhaps Walker will find a more accepting welcome in Travis Patron’s Canadian Nationalist Party, where apparently being a Nazi isn’t a flaw, but a feature. Hell, Walker might even be able to become a candidate, not just an organizer, if he’s managed to get himself Canadian citizenship.
(In all seriousness, though, that’s actually one of three questions I have about Walker’s situation: First, how was a known neo-Nazi with a violent past and a criminal record allowed to reside in Canada? Second, is he now a citizen of Canada, and if so, what the fuck? And third, what winery does he manage, because I won’t be buying their product henceforth.)
The Walker situation over the past week demonstrates two important things: First, what happens when you provide an environment that welcomes fascists and neo-Nazis and other such scum: like the rats, they come crawling in. If you give them what they need to thrive — in this case tacit support and a ready-gathered group of people who are primed to be anti-immigrant (meaning, of course, anti-Muslim) anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-left in general, then the fascists will flock to your banner and co-opt your environment. To go back to the rat metaphor, if you leave a lot of garbage lying around the rats are going to show up and multiply… and that assumes you’re not deliberately feeding the rats (and frankly I’m of the opinion that’s exactly what Maxime Bernier is trying to do.)
The other important thing the Walker situation proves is that anti-fascist organizing works. The Atlanta Antifascists group discovered that Shaun Walker was operating in a Canadian political party and shared that information. Boom, Walker is out of the PPC within a couple of days. Anti-fascist research brought him to light and public scrutiny forced the PPC to throw him under the bus almost instantly.
(Just a quick aside — I have several friends who keep rats as pets, and while it’s not something I would do, I respect that choice. Pet rats are fine, it’s rats as vermin that turn my stomach. No insult to pet rats meant when I compare garbage-rats to Nazis.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you give them the space to move in, fascists will move in, whether it’s a community or a political party. It’s just as simple as that: Give the fascists an inch and they’ll take a mile. This is why we can’t give them that inch, and why people in Hamilton (and Portland, and so on) have been organizing so hard to deny them a public space and to refute — vocally and clearly — that they cannot expect to enter that space without resistance. Right now that resistance is succeeding through non-violent methods, despite repeated acts of fascist violence against the community.
This is a pretty short post, because frankly I’m getting into territory where I’m repeating myself and I’ve got a lot to do in order to get ready for family stuff this long weekend. We’re staying home again, but this weekend is likely to be a tough one in Toronto and Hamilton, at least for anti-fascists — there’s an anti-Pegida demonstration in downtown Toronto, the weekly counter-protest to the Yellow Vests in Hamilton, and apparently the YVs are planning something for Monday’s Labour Day Parade and picnic in Hamilton, too.
Stay safe, stay strong and remember — we’re winning this, even without police and political support. Every fascist de-platformed, every Nazi publicly called out and expelled from public life… that’s a win.
