In April of 2009, the US Department of Homeland Security released an assessment of right-wing extremism (RWE) aptly entitled âRightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitmentâ. Within months, it had been purged from virtually every intelligence and law enforcement database, a victim of conservative backlash and the related resistance to admit to the presence of extreme-right-wing activism (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2009). A similar reticence pervades the Canadian extremism debates. In fact, at the opening conference for Public Safetyâs Kanishka Project in 2012, several keynote speakers also denied the presence of any threat from âthe rightâ.
That terrorism associated with RWEs is largely absent from the public agenda in Canada is evident from even a cursory review of the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) website, for example. The list of âTerrorist Incidentsâ, while international in scope, includes only one right-wing terrorist incident: Anders Breivikâs horrific attacks in Norway in 2011. Until 2019, the list of âTerrorist Entitiesâ did not include any reference to RWE or white supremacist organizations. In that year, Blood & Honour and the affiliated Combat 18 were added. Additionally, none of the publications included on the ITAC site mention these extremist elements. In contrast, that the extreme right continues to represent a viable and active presence is clear from recent events in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, for example, where multiple RWE attacks, demonstrations and prosecutions have been recorded (e.g. Blood & Honour, White Nationalist Front and PEGIDA) in recent years. The BâNai Brithâs audits of antisemitic activity document white supremacist activity yearly. Moreover, looking to our south, indications from such bodies as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are that right-wing terrorism and related activities are far more common than those associated with Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, based on their analysis of the distribution of terrorist activities recorded in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), Webb and Cutter (2009: 448) conclude that
While many researchers and government officials focus on the transnational threat to the U.S., such as the perpetrators of 9/11, we argue that the historic pattern of terrorist activity in the U.S. is more locally-focused, home grown, and derived from political and social activism by U.S. citizens against other U.S. citizens.
Among this home-grown threat is RWE.
The attacks of 11 September 2001 shifted terrorism from the periphery to the centre of the public consciousness. What had heretofore been restricted to âfringeâ groups, or something that happened âover thereâ, suddenly appeared to be something much larger, much more threatening and much closer to home. However, one significant consequence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is that they drew attention away from the more typical white domestic terroristâsuch as Timothy McVeigh and members of RWE groups. Now the terrorist is defined by his brown skin and his Muslim religion (Chermak et al. 2010; Jaggar 2005; U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2009). Yet it behoves us, in the interests of domestic security, to continue to pay attention to the more traditional form of âhome grownâ RWE. RWEs continue to represent a distinctive threat to the well-being of Canadaâs diverse communities. This book aims to paint a picture of the contemporary RWE movement in Canada, providing an analysis of membership, distribution and activities during the time in which we conducted our fieldwork. In the remainder of this introductory chapter, we define what we mean by RWE and offer an overview of our theoretical and methodological approaches. This is followed by a historical overview of the RWE movement in Canada, and a summary of our observations of the make-up and distribution of the movement during the time of our fieldwork in Chapter 2. In Chapters 3 and 4 respectively, we unpack some of the key endogenous and exogenous factors that both inhibit and facilitate the development of and propensity for violence associated with Canadaâs RWE movement. We end with a discussion of strategies to defuse RWE in Canada, and an epilogue accounting for âpost-Trumpâ patterns of extreme-right activism in Canada. It is important to stress from the outset that the RWE movement is fluid and ever-changing. The bulk of our analysis derives from fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2015. A great deal has changed about the movement since then, as reflected here in our epilogue. Nonetheless, many of the core characteristics of both the nature and environment of RWE in Canada remain the same and remain critical to our understanding of the sustainabilityâor lack thereofâassociated with the movement.
Defining Right-Wing Extremism in Canada
In spite of the fact that RWE has not been the focus of much policy or academic work in Canada, there are myriad strands of substantive analyses of RWE within the broader literature. Among them: the links between terrorism and hate crime (Deloughery et al. 2012; Mills et al. 2015) and the related notion of âcumulative extremismâ (Bartlett and Birdwell 2013; Busher and Macklin 2015); RWE ideologies (Oaten 2014; Pollard 2016; Schafer et al. 2014); classes of violence associated with RWE (BĂ©rubĂ© and Campana 2015; Mulholland 2013; Petrou and Kandylis 2016); and comparative/international analyses (Mammone et al. 2012). By way of introduction, however, we restrict our comments to three central foci: definitions; RWEsâ use of media/social media; lone actors; and the contexts of the rise of RWE.
One of the first points of contention in discussions around far-right extremism revolves around defining RWE. The challenge is a reflection of the heterogeneity of the groups in question. Nonetheless, there is no shortage of efforts to define what is meant by âright wingâ extremism. A US team of scholars, for example, has adopted a broadly descriptive conceptualization of the term:
We define the American far-right as individuals or groups that subscribe to aspects of the following ideals: They are fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, and reverent of individual liberty (especially their right to own guns, be free of taxes), and they believe in conspiracy theories that involve a grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty, that oneâs personal and/or national âway of lifeâ is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (sometimes such beliefs are amorphous and vague, but for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and in the need to be prepared for an attack by participating in paramilitary preparations and training, and survivalism. (Adamczyk et al. 2014: 327)
This is perhaps an apt characterization of the RWE movement in the United States, but may not be as useful in the Canadian context. There is much less emphasis here, for example, on gun rights, ...