The Fallout from Reporting on White Nationalism in Canada

 

Journalist Rachel Gilmore published an investigation in The Tyee. The men she unmasked showed up to intimidate her in person.

The extent of Canada’s problem with far-right extremism stared me in the face on an ordinary Wednesday night.

I turned to leave a small music venue where my boyfriend had just wrapped up performing. That’s when I saw two men were standing between me and the exit, staring intensely.

I recognized them: they were Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald and Giulio Zardo, two members of the white nationalist active club that I had just unmasked in a piece published with The Tyee the day before. In social media posts, Beauvais-MacDonald has openly called himself a Nazi. He’s loud and proud about his hateful views, regularly posting videos from public places in T-shirts adorned with images of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi-era imagery.

In the photos I took of Beauvais-MacDonald that night, you can see that he’s wearing a pin with the Totenkopf skull — a symbol associated with neo-Nazis.

Active clubs are a growing problem in Canada.

These groups of white nationalists “focus on physical recruitment and combat training in preparation for eventual violent confrontation,” according to an internal government report, first reported by CBC News. The Tyee has also obtained a copy of this Public Safety Canada report.

“Compared to other countries, Canada appears to have a disproportionate number of Active Clubs, with more than 30 of the nearly 200 known global chapters existing in Canada,” the report notes.

Beauvais-MacDonald and Zardo are members of the Frontenac Active Club, a group that Montréal Antifasciste has done essential and extensive research on to expose in their home city.  (more...)

The Fallout from Reporting on White Nationalism in Canada