anti-fascism – Page 4 – The Hungover Pundit

Deplatforming Hate Speech

I had planned a quiet long weekend at the trailer with family, preferably without looking at my phone. Campfires, barbecue, mosquito bites, no wifi… the basic Civic Holiday weekend in Canada. Instead, and like the majority of people in North America, I was mesmerized by the appalling spectacle of two mass shootings in the US in under 24 hours. The first, of course, being the white supremacy-motivated domestic terror attack at an El Paso Walmart, the second a more ambiguously-motivated attack outside a Dayton Ohio bar, whose shooter had an online presence dominated by left-oriented posts but whose terrorist act seems to have misogynist and/or “incel” roots. Together, both shootings killed more than thirty people.

It’s revelatory, however, to note how the right and the left reacted to each shooter. The El Paso shooter’s racist manifesto was immediately declared a false-flag operation by conspiracy theorists who then blamed the left. When it was reported that the Dayton shooter was a leftist, the left withheld judgment until it was proven, then turned that knowledge into self-examination.

Don’t Feed the Trolls

This past Saturday, July 27th, was Chris “Helmet Guy” Vanderweide’s so-called “Rally Against Bullying” in Kitchener Ontario. It did not go as well as he’d hoped, and has been described in local media as a “fizzle.” This is because, despite the usual grandiose alt-right claims only about a dozen hate-group members attended the “rally.” Their numbers might possibly have been depressed because Helmet Guy had spent the previous week in an internet bitch-slap fight with the Nouns of Odin. In any case Vanderweide himself skipped his own rally for fear of breaking his bail conditions — which suggests to me that someone finally explained to him how bail conditions work.

Core Concepts 5 – Self Care

I’m going to admit it: after six weeks of the dumpster fire that is Hamilton politics since Pride, I’m starting to get a little shagged out. The drama continues this week, with Hamilton achieving the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of reported hate crimes in Canada. The Mayor was unavailable for comment… which of course sparked a wave of derision on Twitter.

Following that, the CBC ran a story on one of three separate complaints to the OIPRD regarding the police response — or rather, lack of one — to the attack on Pride. They mayor’s office released yet another boilerplate statement “Hamilton for All“, presumably not understanding that “all” is increasingly seen to include Nazis and Fascists.

On the Grave of Old John Brown

On Saturday, July 13th my partner and I woke up at seven in the morning, dressed carefully for the heat, packed sunscreen and filled our water bottles, and headed out on a drive to Hamilton’s City Hall to participate in the “Hamilton For Who?” rally in support of the city’s embattled LGBTQ+ community.

My partner and I went to the rally, met up with friends, listened to music, bought t-shirts, drank water, danced and generally had a good time, as protests go. We also flipped off the violently islamo- and homophobic “Yellow Vest” hate-group which was forced out of the City Hall courtyard by the presence of both the rally and the weekend-long “Camp Chaos Gayz” occupation; making it the first Saturday in months that the Yellow-Vesters haven’t had a city-sanctioned presence at City Hall… which was one of the things the rally had been intended to achieve. We followed up the demonstration with a visit to the Art Gallery of Hamilton with some friends, then an early breakfast-for-dinner date at a diner and drove home in the long summer evening, footsore and sunburnt and feeling very good about the day.

At roughly the same moment I had gotten out bed that morning, Willem Van Spronsen was shot to death by police officers during his attack on the privately-owned and -operated prison for migrants called the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Washington.

Cui Bono?

I drove across the Burlington Skyway the other day; the first really hot and humid day of the summer. The sailboats were out on Hamilton harbour, and as I drove up the long slope of the bridge I could see the other thing which defines Hamilton in my mind: the visible layer of brown haze trapped between the escarpment and the steel mills. I’ve always loved the sailboats, but it’s the smog that says “Hamilton” to me.

I find myself doing these posts on Hamilton because the situation is evolving — or rather devolving — on a day-to-day basis. When last I wrote about this, on Friday, there was a glimmer of hope. Ceder Hopperton was waiting on the decision as to whether they’d violated their parole, and police had admitted that the only objectionable action they’d taken was to speak at a public meeting; surely justice would prevail and Hopperton would be freed.