Troubling anti-refugee movement is growing in Canada
Canadians’ warm reception of Syrian refugees has become a feel-good story for the nation. When Donald Trump declared that he would ban all Muslim immigration to the United States, many juxtaposed his vitriol against the large numbers of Syrian refugees being taken in by Canada. Images of Canadians welcoming Syrians into their homes and communities have been contrasted positively with the protests and violence of groups like Pegida, the anti-Islam and anti-immigrant movement spreading across Europe. (Pegida is the German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.)
But we miss seeing some important things, blinded by the glare of our own sunny ways.
An online Care2 petition asking the government to “stop resettling 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada” has garnered almost 50,000 signatures, accompanied by comments such as “terrists (sic)” and “If the Liberal Government wishes to increase the number of refugee’s (sic) to Canada, BRING IN THE CHRISTIANS. I don’t think Mr. Trudeau will as he seems to be dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood.” Calgary schools have been defaced by anti-Muslim graffiti, most recently two weeks ago. In January, a group of Syrian refugees attending a welcome event in Vancouver were attacked with pepper spray. Antiimmigrant groups have organized demonstrations in Canada; Pegida Quebec’s march in Montreal on Feb. 6 was shut down by activists.
And right-wing European demagogues have been invited to Canada to share their fear-mongering. On March 10, the Jewish Defense League (JDL) — identified as a “violent extremist organization” by the FBI — is hosting British politician Paul Weston in Toronto for an event claiming to reveal “the threat of radical Islamic immigration and the erosion of our freedoms.”
Weston is currently the leader of Pegida U.K., launched earlier this year by former English Defense League leader Tommy Robinson. In the U.K., Weston is perhaps best known for a viral video rant in which he proudly labelled himself a “racist,” and declared that Islam is a “thoroughly savage religious and political ideology.” “Islam is Nazism incarnate,” Weston announced at a recent Pegida U.K. rally in Birmingham, to an audience of protesters waving signs proclaiming “Trump is Right.” Never mind that in the current climate of anti-Muslim suspicion in Britain, it is the Muslim population that is increasingly under attack: London police reported that there were 816 assaults on Muslims in the city between July 2014 and July 2015 — a 70-per-cent spike from the year before.
In 2010, Weston warned that the U.K. was being “colonized” by immigrants from countries such as Bangladesh, resulting in the “ethnic cleansing of the English.” One can only marvel at the chutzpah of complaining about the reverse colonization of the U.K. by Britain’s former colonial subjects. In fact, a 2014 Ipsos Mori poll found that Britons, like Canadians, tend to vastly overestimate the size of their country’s immigrant and Muslim populations: for example, while Muslims comprise 5 per cent of the British population, those surveyed thought it was 21per cent. (And the numbers are similar in Canada.)
Hysterical accounts of dangerous Muslims and invading immigrants drastically skew the perceptions of a majority made to feel under siege. It is not entirely surprising that Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik cited Weston’s writings in his anti-multiculturalism manifesto.
We ought to pay attention to the resonance Weston’s anti-Islam screeds appear to be finding with an apparently expanding segment of the Canadian population. The Facebook page of Pegida Canada (dedicated to “stopping the Islamization of the West” and “preserving and protecting our Christian-Judeo based culture”) is accumulating support at a worrying pace: from 5,500 “likes” in September to more than 11,000 today. Pegida Canada is one element of what Maclean’s Magazine’s Martin Patriquin has described as Canada’s “angry, radical right”: the “growing number of extremists lashing out publicly at Muslim immigrants.” A 2016 study by academics Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens found that right-wing extremism in Canada is “more extensive and more active than public rhetoric would suggest,” comprising at least 100 active groups — many of which are linked to like-minded European and American organizations.
In a secret briefing last September, CSIS flagged Canada’s burgeoning anti-Islam and anti-immigrant movement as a security threat. And according to the Chief of the Sûreté du Québec’s division of investigations on extremist threats, the majority of the service’s active files deal with the extreme right. However, Canadian security agencies have been far more publicly vocal about the dangers of “Islamist terrorism” — lending state legitimacy to the narrative of Muslim threat driving anti-immigrant activism.