Anti-Muslim blogger charged for hate crime
Mississauga man known for angry video rants
A self- described “journalist & social commentator” known for posting angry video rants attacking Muslims and a range of other targets has been charged with committing a hate crime.
Kevin J. Johnston, a 45- year- old resident of Mississauga, Ont., posts videos on his website freedom-report. ca and to various social media platforms, and at one point had his accounts suspended by YouTube and Twitter.
Though he carried on fights with various public figures ( and even ran for mayor of Mississauga in 2014) he focused much of his attention on schools, which he accused of “indoctrinating” students with Islamic ideology. In one video, he offered a bounty — first $ 1,000, later increased to $ 2,500 — to anyone who filmed a Muslim student in a Mississauga school “spewing hate speech during Friday prayers.”
In another, he said Liberal MP Iqra Khalid could get shot for introducing a motion condemning Islamophobia in the House of Commons, and said he’d be there to witness it “with a big, fat smile.”
On Monday, Peel Regional Police announced Johnston had been charged with one count of wilful promotion of hatred, a Criminal Code offence with a maximum penalty of two years in jail. The announcement said the charge “stems from a lengthy investigation into numerous incidents reported to police ... and concerns information published on various social media sites.”
Peel Region Sgt. Josh Colley said police compiled a document of Johnston’s activities and sent it to the Ontario attorney general’s office, which has to sign off on any hate crimes charge.
Colley declined to say what specifically led to the charge, but said in general it was “using social media sites to convey a hate message.”
In addition to Freedom Report, Johnston helps run a website called the Mississauga Gazette, which describes itself as an independent community newspaper but is occasionally used for his inflammatory rants. One of them viciously attacked Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, saying she was turning the city “into a dangerous Islamic war zone” so Muslims could “kill her son just for being gay.”
Crombie later said she filed a hate- crimes complaint to police over the post, which was later taken down.
The Post was unable to reach him for comment.