What resurgence of hate groups in Quebec?

There’s hardly much support here for the extreme right

In a recent article, Ottawa-based human rights lawyer Richard Warman was quoted as saying that the ultra right-wing group Atalante Québec was part of a resurgence of right-wing hate groups in Québec.

Pardon moi? A resurgence? As I recall, the last time there were right-wing hate groups in Quebec, and in Canada, worth worrying about was in the 1930s.

Atalante Québec is a nasty piece of work. Its slogan “to exist is to fight against what denies my existence” carries images of street violence. However, a few thousand people give its Facebook page a like. Not quite a mass movement.

Better known and more moderate, despite a core of members with more extreme views, La Meute made the news last week when its leader, Sylvain Brouillette, said the group’s manifesto was inspired by the CAQ’s program.

François Legault was not pleased. “I don’t like La Meute’s discourse. It’s borderline racism. I would prefer that La Meute does not like me.”

Replied Brouillette: “If we’re borderline racist, so are you Mr. Legault.”

Oh dear. The kids are fighting.

Québec City-based La Meute has approximately 45,000 members on its Facebook page and yet, when they called for a big march in Montreal on July 1 against illegal immigration, the event drew 300 protesters, including Storm Alliance sympathizers.

Storm Alliance Canada, whose goal is “to protect Canadian culture and the rights of the People,” has 2,553 members on its Facebook page. Please note the word “Canadian.” Not Québécois. Many of these movements claim to be federalist.

Last but not least, Soldiers of Odin Québec, a vigilante group cum community organization (they feed homeless whites only) that just so happens to oppose Muslim immigration, is at war with the Canadian chapter of the organization, in a replay of federal-provincial politics.

This is pretty much the lay of the land as far as organized right-wing hate groups in Quebec at the moment. Quebec, unlike Ontario, the United States, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy and even Sweden, does not have an extreme right-wing political party. And Montreal does not have an alt-right poster girl like Faith Goldy running for mayor.

So, again, I ask, are we living through a resurgence? A resurgence of what?

I tried to contact Richard Warman directly, but he is not easy to reach. Instead, I turned to my library for help. History is my favourite subject.

The 1930s were dark times in Quebec as in the rest of Canada, and the world, especially for Jews.

Canada even had its own self-proclaimed “Canadian führer,” a sad little French-Canadian man called Adrien Arcand who founded several anti- Semitic political parties as well as a Nazi-inspired organization called the Blueshirts, a poor man’s copy of British aristocratic fascist Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts.

Like Mosley, Arcand was jailed for most of the war. When he was released, no one cared for his theories anymore.

Arcand, writes Le Devoir’s Jean-François Nadeau in his 400-page Adrien Arcand, führer Canadien, was not a Québécois nationalist. He was fascinated by the British Empire. He identified with Anglo- Saxon culture, and English was the lingua franca of his anti- Semitic and anti-communist movements.

Arcand looms large in history books and prejudiced minds. As the only Nazi leader in Quebec, he gets the spotlight, but he was a minor player. He never had more than 1,500 devotees.

The last time there was a violent radical group of consequence in Quebec was in the 1960s and ’70s, but the Front de libération du Québec did not indulge in racial hatred for racial hatred’s sake. It was a post-colonial extreme-left-wing terror organization that included anglophone members. One Nigel Hamer, an engineering student at McGill, belonged to the Libération cell responsible for the kidnapping of James Cross.

But even that was still a long time ago. Thankfully, much has changed. Resurgence? What resurgence?