How a new organization aims to monitor hate groups across Canada
Last week, the Montreal Gazette reported that one of North America’s most influential white supremacists was, in fact, a 30-something IT consultant living in Montreal. Known online as “Zeiger,” Gabriel Sohier Chaput had allegedly been producing media for neo-Nazi blog The Daily Stormer and organizing from his home for years. Montreal police have since opened an investigation into neo-Nazi recruiting practices in the city. The federal government views extreme right-wing activity as a growing domestic security concern (though, critics say, it may still not be taking the threat seriously enough).
Evan Balgord, a former political campaign manager and a research affiliate with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security, and Society, had been tracking Zeiger’s online activity for some time with other researchers. He’s recently written about extremist right-wing groups for Vice, Canadaland, and the Canadian Jewish News, and he says he’s found himself sharing information with other journalists working on similar stories.
“I realized there was a real sense amongst people who cover this issue that we didn’t have an organization like the Southern Poverty Law Center here in Canada,” he says. “Something well-resourced, official, and that could speak authoritatively on these issues in Canada.” So he teamed up with a set of legal experts, scholars, and anti-racism advocates, including Bernie Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress: as he announced on Monday, the result was the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an organization that aims to track and report on hate groups and right-wing extremist activity in Canada.
“I realized there was a real sense amongst people who cover this issue that we didn’t have an organization like the Southern Poverty Law Center here in Canada,” he says. “Something well-resourced, official, and that could speak authoritatively on these issues in Canada.” So he teamed up with a set of legal experts, scholars, and anti-racism advocates, including Bernie Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress: as he announced on Monday, the result was the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an organization that aims to track and report on hate groups and right-wing extremist activity in Canada.