The Rise of the Alt-Right in Canada

Rebranding of the far-right online leads to material violence

A cluster of far-right lone wolf violence has swept over the United States in the last few weeks. Be it violence against women, Jews, political enemies, or people of colour, the pattern is one that is difficult to ignore. Although these events may be scattered across our neighbour to the south, many Canadians can’t avoid asking if that very same brand of violence can inspire events north of the border.

Last month, the Toronto Star reported that the RCMP has noted an increase in far-right violence in Canada: the “seemingly disparate attacks — like Justin Bourque’s killing of three Mounties in Moncton in 2014, or Alexandre Bissonnette’s slaying of six worshippers at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec in 2017, or the Toronto van rampage that killed 10 people earlier this year” do not originate from any singular, coherent source.

But in two of the Star’s three examples, court evidence and uncovered online activity have revealed that the Internet can be powerful in motivating far-right extremists to commit acts of violence. For example, after Bissonnette’s Twitter searches were introduced to the court by Crown attorneys, the Washington Post reported: “Bissonnette also appears to have obsessively visited the Twitter accounts of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, Fox News personalities; David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan; Alex Jones of Infowars; conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich; Richard Spencer, the white nationalist; and senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway. Bissonnette checked in on the Twitter account of Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the conservative news site the Daily Wire, 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting.”

In April, CBC reported on the misogynistic and “incel” (involuntary celibate) contents of the Facebook profile belonging to the alleged perpetrator of the Toronto van attack; the profile has since been removed. “Members of the incel community are active on online platforms associated with the alt-right, including 4chan, Reddit, and sometimes Facebook groups,” Maxime Feset told CBC in an interview.

It’s easy to focus on the rise of the alt-right in America and believe that Canada isn’t as bad and therefore okay. What we overlook with this form of denial is that the present state of America is a peek into the future of Canada. A potential future that is already becoming a reality and will only do so more swiftly if we don’t focus on bettering our history and civics education, so that citizens are better equipped to think critically and remain critical of those who have agendas based on profiting from hate and fear-mongering — whether they are members of the media, politicians, or business people.

The right has always existed in Canada through white supremacy and white nationalist rhetoric ­— examples include ethnic cleansing, genocide, and perpetuating colonial frameworks — but its recent rebranding as the alt-right has led to a surge in its popularity and platforming. A rebranding that is accessible to and palatable for impressionable, frustrated young men in any nation.

The CBC’s report on incels provides a working definition of the alt-right: “an umbrella term, coined by U.S. white supremacist Richard Spencer, used to refer to a movement that takes in elements of the far-right and white nationalism and has been associated with misogynistic and homophobic views.”

While acts of terror and their correlation to online proponents of far-right ideology are often disregarded as isolated incidents, the frequency of these events shows a trend that is proving dangerous to ignore.  

The use of the online free-speech platform Gab, by Robert Bowers — the alleged shooter in the Oct. 27 synagogue attack in Pittsburgh — prior to the attack as well as the stickered van of the accused MAGA bomber Cesar Sayoc exemplify the power of “ironic” jokes, talking points, and memes on the Internet.

It isn’t enough to classify these acts of violence as being perpetrated by the alt-right or even to acknowledge the role of the Internet in the rise of terrorist acts committed by far-right extremists.

Eco & Fascism

Many scholars and cultural critics fear the alt-right’s move towards fascism. Those familiar with the work of philosopher and semiotician Umberto Eco argue that there are growing trends around the world towards Ur-Fascism; these ultra-nationalistic trends manifest differently from one country to the next.

In his essay Ur-Fascism, Eco explains that the features of fascism “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” Eco tells us that no one specific person or group necessarily has to satisfy all of the conditions of Ur-Fascism to be a fascist. The following groups don’t have to act as a unit to satisfy the conditions of fascism:

• Anti-women groups
• Anti-socialist groups
• Anti-immigration groups
• Anti-liberal groups
• Anti-conservative groups
• Groups committing acts of street violence
• Men’s rights groups

The normalization and platforming of the rhetoric of those groups allows them to reinforce and support one another, regardless of whether any of the positions of one group contradict the positions of another. For example, the anti-liberal groups may be “for the people” while their anti-socialist and anti-labour partners dismantle workers’ rights. Contradiction can even take place within a single group; for example, anti-immigrant groups claiming that immigrants steal well-paying jobs yet they are also too lazy to add to the economy. Inconsistency and disingenuous arguments become weapons to fluster or troll opponents.

Sartre & Bad Faith

Hypocrisy is an easily observable tactic used by fascists, since they will often contradict themselves for the sake of gaining power. The lack of authenticity in the fascist pursuit of power is discussed through the concept of bad faith, developed by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and expanded upon with respect to anti-Semitism in his 1948 book Anti-Semite and Jew. “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies,” Sartre writes. “They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Sartre’s concept of bad faith is especially relevant today given the alt-right’s weaponization of the Internet; where better to participate in the formulation and spreading of disingenuous and inauthentic ideologies for the most lulz than the Internet? Any impressionable or vulnerable young person that stumbles into the corners of the Internet where these talking points come to life can’t contend against the Fortnite Twitch streamers, YouTube stars, Instagram influencers, 4chan threads, subreddits, and Gab profiles armed with post-truth non-facts. The sheer amount of content, let alone the anonymity and lack of censorship that is offered online, that reaches millions is a stark contrast to the days when the far-right in Canada was limited to poorly designed pamphlets and staticky radio stations. The Internet provides an environment for the signs, symbols, and language of the far-right to mutate and adapt to avoid detection and criticism; note that this isn’t because the far-right fears scrutiny uncovering inconsistencies, but because scrutiny infringes on the far-right’s ability to be platformed.

The rebranding of the alt-right online as champions of facts (not “feels”) and logic (not emotion) and as protectors of free expression has obscured for many the problematic nature of what underlies much of the far-right ideology. This rebranding is especially effective because those who may not be familiar with the symptoms of fascism, and the dangers and destruction that follow when left unchecked, are unknowing contributors to the far-right agenda because they defend their right to platform their ideas — even if they don’t necessarily agree with those ideas. That is to say, the complacency of these bystanders makes them complicit.

Eco & Newspeak

Eco warns that fascists use Newspeak, and that “[a]ll the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” He explains that “we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.” Common examples of online Newspeak used by the alt-right to dehumanize their ideological enemies include the following:

• SJWs (social justice warriors) used to criticize the left’s prioritization of social justice  
• NPCs (non player characters) from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) who are thoughtless placeholders wandering the Earth
• Libs (Liberals) used to encompass anyone to the left of the far-right
• Staceys refers to a nickname used by incels for women who won’t sleep with them
• Cultural Marxism refers to an anti-Semitic conspiracy that claims the Frankfurt school continues to kill Western culture
• The (((Triple parentheses))) are an anti-Semitic symbol used by the alt-right online to identify individuals or institutions that are Jewish, of Jewish descent, or related to Jewish people

The alt-right pushes the ideas that “leftism is liberalism,” when the two are not synonymous, and that “antifa is fascist,” when antifa literally means anti-fascist. The alt-right’s intentional misuse of language comes from the same online communities that motivate an overwhelming amount of deadly violence making headlines in North America with increasing frequency.

So do we actually need the RCMP to tell us the alt-right is getting a foothold in Canada? Looking back on the last decade, it seems better to tell the RCMP that they are late to the party. It would have been more prudent to tell CSIS that they should have been concerned with far-right extremism in 2016 instead of abandoning their efforts to monitor it.

Images by Tiffany Agliani/The Ontarion