Quebec City police brace for showdown
Anti-Islam group plans to rally on Sunday; counter-protest organized
Quebec City police are confident they will have enough officers on the ground to avoid a Charlottesville-like confrontation Sunday when opposing groups on the right and left of the political spectrum carry out simultaneous protests in the provincial capital.
La Meute — an extreme rightwing, anti-Islam group — has already sent its “security department,” supposedly former police officers, to talk to the Quebec City police and obtain the necessary permits to demonstrate against the policies of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Philippe Couillard “in the face of the scourge of illegal immigration.”
Leaders of La Meute are urging its members not to give in to taunts and insults from counterprotesters and engage in physical altercations.
At the same time, a group called Action Citoyenne Contre La Discrimination (Citizen Action Against Racism) is joining ranks with Bienvenue aux réfugié.es to hold its own protest to “block hate and racism.”
By Thursday evening, some 290 people said they would be demonstrating against racism in Quebec City, while another 1,000 expressed their interest, even though no one knows as yet where the demonstration will take place.
“We want to make sure this demonstration happens in an orderly fashion,” said David Poitras, a spokesperson for the Quebec City police, adding they are paying close attention to information circulating on social media about the intentions and numbers of the two opposing groups. “We’ll have the necessary people to make sure it doesn’t degenerate.”
But coming just one week after the violent clashes with white supremacists in Virginia — which saw one of them drive into a group of counter-protesters, killing a young woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring 19 others — some observers believe Sunday’s events could easily degenerate.
“That fascists and anti-fascists fight is practically normal,” said Maxime Fiset, a Quebec City resident and former member of the extreme right who now works to counter extremism with the Montreal Centre for Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence.
“In Charlottesville, the violence would not have happened without James Fields, a kind of lone wolf, plowing into protesters with his car. But it’s the kind of thing that happens on the margin because this movement serves as an incubator for violence. Even if La Meute’s means are not extremist, their ideas are.”
That someone on the margin could spark a violent confrontation is just one possibility, Fiset said. After Charlottesville, the far right is motivated, and the left is angry.
Alexandre Bissonnette, accused in the attack on a Quebec City mosque in January, appears to have been another such lone wolf.
But other groups could also join in, Fiset warned.
Atalante, another extreme rightwing group based in Quebec City, has sought to disrupt previous, otherwise peaceful demonstrations.
With several members from military backgrounds, it is currently setting up a fight club in Quebec City called Falange named after the fascist group under the command of Spanish general Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. And on Monday, it put up signs around the city that said “remigration” — to push migrants out of Canada.
The fallout from Charlottesville
It’s the kind of thing that happens on the margin because this movement serves as an incubator for violence. Even if La Meute’s means are not extremist, their ideas are.
has already hit Quebec in other ways.
Several Quebecers have been identified among the white supremacist protesters at Charlottesville on Saturday featured in Vice News footage, including one prominent member of La Meute.
Five images taken at the demonstration were posted on the anti-Pegida Quebec Facebook page with a caption suggesting they are all from Quebec.
“Nazi wanted: do you recognize a neighbour, an employee or a coworker in these photos?”
The two identified on Thursday are Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald, reportedly in charge of recruitment for the English-language Facebook page of La Meute, and Vincent Bélanger Mercure, who was photographed in close proximity to Fields, the man now charged with murder.
Sylvain Brouillette, the spokesperson for La Meute, did not reply to requests for an interview Thursday. But he has tried to distance the group from the violence, posting that it is neither white-supremacist nor racist. Beauvais-MacDonald has since been “suspended” from La Meute, pending an investigation of his participation in Charlottesville.
Beauvais-MacDonald, for his part, took to Facebook to respond to the anti-Pegida post.
“These people are idiots who drive forward the globalist media narrative set to silence anyone who is right of centre,” he posted in English.
Quebec City politicians, meanwhile, have come out against La Meute, starting with Mayor Régis Lebeaume, who in July called them and other groups “extremely toxic.”
Anne Guérette, a candidate for mayor who, despite not wanting to name any group earlier in the day, held a second news conference Wednesday to say: “We condemn all racist groups, including Atalante and La Meute.”
Despite its attempts to portray itself as inclusive and only against radical Islam, members of La Meute were instrumental in having the project for a Muslim cemetery in St. Apollinaire rejected, while anti-all-Islam comments are rife on its private Facebook page, pitting Islam against Western civilization and equating Allah with Satan.
One clan leader of La Meute posted a comment the night of the mosque shooting that wondered who the “bold killer of Muslims” was, suggesting it could have been people enraged by Islam, passing on a message.