TOURING HATE CIRCUS BEHIND ANTI-SYRIAN PROTEST
Demonstration at Red Deer high school staged to stoke anti-refugee sentiment
A gang of bigots and yahoos descended Tuesday on Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School in Red Deer, mongering hate and nonsense.
Ostensibly, this was supposed to be a group of concerned parents worried about a violent incident at the school, supposedly carried out by a gang of Syrian refugees. The protesters claimed the Syrian boys had not been disciplined for their actions because of political correctness and cultural relativism. It was a lie, from start to finish. According to Red Deer RCMP, the actual incident began with a misunderstanding between two Grade 9 boys at a Red Deer skateboard park. A literal misunderstanding because one of the boys, a recent Syrian refugee with limited English, mistakenly believed the other boy had said something offensive.
The incident set off a series of frictions which culminated in a lunchtime brawl involving eight boys, including four Syrian refugees. A ninth non-Syrian kid — a former Thurber student who had been banned from the school property — also jumped into the fray. No one was injured. Police weren’t notified until the next day.
All eight Thurber students were suspended for five days, the maximum penalty under the School Act. Each will have to go through a readmission hearing before being allowed to return.
No one, says the school district, received special treatment because of religion or ethnicity. It was a garden variety schoolyard brawl, one Bruce Buruma, head of community relations for Red Deer Public Schools, described as a “dust-up.”
Buruma says there are just 14 Syrian students at Thurber, which has an enrolment of 1,500. Some are still struggling with English. Although they’re highschool aged, some have never attended school before now. It’s a big adjustment but, on balance, Buruma says integration has been going well.
Here’s the other lie. Those 40 or 50 “protesters”? According to Buruma, only two or three of them had children at Lindsay Thurber. Few were from Red Deer at all.
“Over 80 per cent of them were people from outside the community,” Buruma says. “The people who showed up have an issue with the Islamic faith. And they were happy to go with the misinformation they’d been given.
“Our kids felt unsafe all day, and that was because of these protesters.”
Who were these come-fromaway bullies, who travelled to Red Deer to harass schoolchildren?
They included members of the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam, Canada. Their Facebook page features a banner showing an armoured, sword-wielding, avenging Aryan angel standing on guard for Canada and a caricature showing a Muslim man with a long black beard, demonic pointed ears and the nose of a pig being kicked in the rear with the caption, “Get Out Of Our Country.” The message is not subtle. Also on hand was the leader of a Calgary-based federal fringe party, the National Advancement Party, which, among other things, wants to ban the production of halal and kosher meat in Canada.
RCMP say there were also at least five uniformed members of the Soldiers of Odin, a Canadian offshoot of a Finnish neo-Nazi vigilante group.
This was, in fact, a travelling hate circus inspired by fake news and viral lies.
And when the cameras stopped rolling, the hate clowns jumped in their cars and left town. This week Red Deer. Next week, wherever malice and political opportunism take them.
“The majority of these protesters were not Red Deerians,” says Red Deer Mayor Tara Veer. “I’m hard-pressed to see how this reflects our city when they’re not from here. This does not represent the Red Deer we know.”
Perhaps we should focus, instead, on the heroes and heroines of the day. The Red Deer RCMP, who tracked the social media commentary all weekend and prudently dispatched 30 officers to police the rally. The principal of Lindsay Thurber, Dan Lower, who calmly faced down the haters. And the brave students who stood up for their school and their principles despite the jeering of the adult bullies, who exercised their “free speech” by screaming insults at kids.
When it was all over, a group of Syrian students and a group of other Thurber students simply started playing soccer together, while two RCMP officers joined in.
And Wednesday morning, when Const. Derek Turner went back to check in on things, the soccer game was back on.
And maybe, says Buruma, this week’s events will be a wake-up call and a teachable moment for staff and students — about the reality of fake news, the dangers of a social media hoax and the need for the school community to overcome differences and stand together.