Decoding Canada's Far Right

That’s the title of a four page nothingburger in the Globe and Mail today (still only $6.30 at the Korean Extortionist’s in Wiarton).

Authors Shannon Carranco and Jon Milton treat us to a breathless recounting of the antics of several dozen semi-literate racist goobers who pretend to be gamers. Apparently that’s so they can piggyback on popular gamer websites with their coded secret messages. They use really cool made-up names like “Whiteknee,” “Axe in the Deep,” and “Dank,” and horror of horrors, they are recruiting on university campuses, especially at U of T!

I wonder how that’s going?

By page three of the expose, our would-be fascist revolutionaries are ready to actually organize a face to face with their internet fellow-travellers. They get together for a weekend of alcohol abuse and homo-social bonding at a cottage up north. They drink lots of moonshine (supplied by “Rusty,” a middle-aged Canadian Forces veteran), talk a lot of drunken shit, make really big breakfasts, and then they go home.

On the last page of this expose we come across the following disclaimer; “The chat room and its conversations exist in a digital world one step removed from reality, which can make it difficult to assess the threat they represent.”

Indeed.

So why is the Globe and Mail giving this idiot fringe four pages of free publicity? The white-supremacist fringe of the political spectrum is largely a media confection. It’s always a “growing threat.” When I was at the University of Guelph forty years ago they had a prof, Stan Barrett, who made a career out of researching the far right. Guess what? They were a “growing threat” then, too. And twenty years before that, when the Canadian Nazi Party tried to hold a meeting in Toronto’s Allan Gardens, four thousand protesters showed up and beat the would-be Nazis to a bloody pulp – but they were a growing threat…

As for those recruiting efforts at U of T, I have my doubts. Due to the next generation being way smarter than mine, I’ve had occasion to spend some time around the place, and l’m l00% certain the student cohort there have way more important things on their minds.

Surely the Globe and Mail could have found some more important issues to fill those four pages.