Canadas New Far Right A Trove Of Private Chat Room

Shannon Carranco writing for The Globe and Mail

Dank told the online group that he was using his position as a student teacher to influence young minds.

These people are despicable.

The story goes on to tell the story of a Canadian Armed Forces member.

He also described an incident in Canada in which a Jewish military colleague complained that Rusty and other soldiers were being anti-Semitic. Rusty said he responded by arranging several handguns in the shape of a swastika on the Jewish soldier’s desk.

However, after looking bad in the media, the group decided they needed a rebrand.

A week after Charlottesville, SLUG2, one of the founding members of the chat room and a host of the white-nationalist podcast This Hour Has 88 Minutes, announced a change in tactics. “I personally want to ask everyone not to use swastikas or other obvious National Socialist imagery $&publicly$&,” he wrote to the group. “We are not changing any of our beliefs or opinions, just how we present publicly. Sorry.”

He was not alone in his call for circumspection. Many felt that the group, and the broader far-right movement, needed to appear less extreme if they were to gain widespread acceptance.

The posters carried a simple but provocative slogan: “It’s Okay To Be White.” The thinking behind that slogan was articulated in a post that appeared on 4chan, the image-based internet forum, which called for followers to distribute such posters as part of a co-ordinated North America-wide effort to spread white-nationalist propaganda. Participants were excited by how their dog-whistle campaign had gained such coverage: “Bigger and bigger papers are publishing. Like dominoes. Hopefully we’re just getting started.”

I remember when this story happened. The alt-right and Nazis are trying to use “softer” messaging to make their views more acceptable and mainstream. We can’t let them. Racism in all its forms needs to be stamped out.