anti-fascism – The Hungover Pundit

The Proud Boys are Terrorists

I’m taking a break from physio exercises, anti-inflammatory meds, way too much time spent in MMOs and the general malaise of eleven months of pandemic self-isolation and/or official lockdowns-of-debatable-effectiveness to weigh in on this.

As of 12:30 EST today, Canada has added the “Proud Boys” to it’s official list of terrorist groups. Also designated were the Atomwaffen Division, the Russian Imperial Movement and The Base, as well as a number of Islamist extremist organizations linked to Daesh. This official designation as “Idealogically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE) terrorist entities” gives law enforcement broader powers to investigate and charge these organizations as well as more tools to take down social media presence and place financial pressure on these organizations. Buy Proud Boys merch? That’s now a crime in Canada. Recruit for The Base? That’s a crime. Share videos from Atomwaffen or RIM? A crime.

(For a detailed breakdown of the far-right groups named, I highly recommend The Canadian Anti-Hate Network’s excellent post from earlier today.)

My thoughts about this are still developing and are somewhat varied, so this post is probably going to be all over the map, but I’ve always found writing to be a useful way of processing stuff, so here goes.

Thanking Kurt Phillips

In last week’s blog I mentioned that ID Canada, an “Identarian” (read: white nationalist) group claimed to have identified the author of the important anti-fascist blog Anti-Racist Canada. The extreme-right in Canada immediately began baying for “justice” against the alleged author, claiming that his unmasking was a “victory” and the start of a “purge of antifa”… and when fascist extremists openly start using words like purge, you can bet they’re riled up.

On Thursday, January 9^th, the person they’d identified as the author of the blog spoke up. It, he said, was true. His name is Kurt Phillips, and for more than a decade he’s been tracking neo-Nazis and hate groups and sharing that information with the public.

Response to the Fifth Estate Doc

So… New Year, new resolutions. Now that I’ve got my health issues under control(ish), my computer rebuilt and my phone replaced, it’s time to get the motor running and get back to the regular writing and publishing schedule that I’ve been intending these past few months. So here goes.

On Sunday, January 5^th, the CBC’s program The Fifth Estate ran a 23-minute documentary called Confronting Hate: How Antifa is Tracking the Extreme Right. In the documentary, CBC journalist Gillian Findlay interviews a number of antifascist activists, some anonymous, some not. It’s a pretty good look at what we do and despite some short-comings I think it’s worth the watch.

The Absurdity of Hashtag-Wexit

On Monday, October 21st, millions of Canadians went to the polls, exercised their democratic franchise, and sent a message to Ottawa with a resounding “meh.” Voter turnout was slightly lower than in 2015 at 65.95% of total eligible voters and the result was a Liberal minority government. The Conservatives did worse than they expected, the Bloc Quebecois did better, and the NDP managed to stay relevant and energized despite not having all that good a night in objective terms.

It was, in many ways, an absolutely normal Canadian election.

In other ways, not so much. The presence of the extreme-right “People’s Party of Canada” under Maxime Bernier revealed a vein of populism, racism and outright xenophobia that runs right through the Canadian political landscape. The PPC quickly became popular with Canada’s white-supremacist/fascist/neo-Nazi subculture who saw in the rise of a populist party a way to get their ideas into the mainstream political discussion. Of course, these fascist chuds very quickly convinced themselves that the PPC was the vanguard of the long-awaited populist wave which would rise up and sweep all the filthy immigrants, godless faggots and ANTIFA terrorists into the sea.

Clearly, this was not what happened… mostly because the alt-right goofs continue to ignore the fact that bots can’t vote.

The Morning After

It’s the 22nd of October and yesterday, of course, was Election Day. And of course, I stayed up until about 02:00 watching the results come in.

Long story short, it was clear very early in the evening that the Liberals would stay the government, but that they would lose their majority. It was a very tight race… and one which seemed to follow regional lines quite closely. For my part, I was mostly interested in how strong the Liberal minority would be, and seeing whether the NDP or the BQ would garner enough seats that they could make a deal propping up Trudeau. Both parties have enough seats that they can individually support the Liberals; it will be interesting to see whether the middle-of-the-road Liberals ally with the centre-left-progressive NDP or the progressive-but-separatist Bloc Quebecois. (My money’s on the NDP: openly allying with the BQ wouldn’t do much for the Lib’s popularity outside of Quebec.)