OUR OWN NEO-NAZI HISTORY
In 1993, white nationalists rioted in Ottawa, writes Bernie M. Farber.
It was a cool evening in Ottawa on May 29. The weather, however did nothing to cool the fury of a white supremacist hate rock concert held that evening in the downtown area.
RAHOWA, or “Racial Holy War” banged out a set of racist, anti-Semitic hard rock sounds that whipped the crowd of a couple of hundred mostly young skinheads and Nazi wannabes into a frenzy.
They heard racist lyrics like: “These boots are made for stompin; and that’s just what they’ll do; and one of these days these boots are going to stomp all over Jews.” They sang using the “N" word: " N---r, N---r, N---r, OUT OUT OUT.” The young thugs were primed for action.
Following the concert, lead singer George Burdi, the youth leader of the white supremacists, and its adult mentor, longtime neo-Nazi Wolfgang Droege, led their followers out on to the Ottawa streets, towards Parliament Hill. It was no surprise that many counter demonstrators, mostly young people from Anti-Racist Action (ARA) and “Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP)" confronted them.
The white supremacists chanted “Sieg Heil” and gave Nazi salutes. This was the tinder needed: It turned into a full-fledged riot in the shadow of the Peace Tower. Burdi and Droege charged at the counter demonstrators. People were injured. Burdi was convicted of assault causing bodily harm. It was the largest most violent neo-Nazi riot in modern Canadian history.
This sounds very reminiscent of a similar riot last weekend in Charlottesville Va., where a couple hundred white supremacists confronted counter demonstrators. Here, too, there was violence. Sadly one young woman, Heather Heyer, there to express her opposition to the Nazis, was killed when a car slammed into the anti-Nazi marchers.
The difference is that the Ottawa riot occurred on May 29, 1993.
I have spent the last week responding to media inquiries about the “emergence of white supremacy” in the United States and Canada, as if this were a unique phenomenon. Far from it. What we witnessed last week in Charlottesville had its precedents in our own nation’s capital.
In fact, since the end of the Second World War, there have always been peaks and valleys of white supremacist activity in Canada. Immediately after the war, the fresh evil of Nazism silenced its growth for a short period of time.
However, by the mid 1960s, white supremacy made a small but important return. John William Beattie and David Stanley became leaders of what they called the “Canadian Nazi Party.” Their numbers were infinitesimal but their impact was devastating. A short publicized appearance by Beattie, Stanley and less than a dozen followers wearing Nazi uniforms in Toronto’s Allen Gardens erupted in a counter demonstration led by Jewish Holocaust survivors, trade unionists and hundreds of others. The Nazis had to be led away by police. That movement withered and died.
There were minor eruptions of white supremacy in the years that followed but it really wasn’t until the hateful antics of anti-Semitic school teacher James Keegstra and the recently deceased Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in the mid-1980s that we saw a real peak here again in Canada.
Zundel and Keegstra helped spawn the new look of neo-Nazism in a group calling itself the “Heritage Front,” possibly the most successful fascist grouping since before the Second World War. It in fact took the combined efforts of CSIS, police and anti-racists to finally shut down the Heritage Front.
The lesson for us is that hate can be muscular. Unlike this week’s disgusting words from U.S. President Donald Trump that seemed to defend the Nazi rioters, government leaders must speak out forcefully against hatred. It was only nine months ago, in November 2016, that white supremacist hatred made an unwelcome return to Ottawa with a spate of incidents in which a youthful offender, clearly motivated by white supremacist ideology, scrawled cruel and hateful slogans on synagogues, churches and mosques.
But here is the good news: Ottawans — from government and faith leaders to ordinary citizens — reacted with their own expressions of solidarity and love for the victims. Today we see the same across Canada and the United States. White supremacy may be back but decent folk from all walks of life are speaking out.
Peaceful but passionate responses against hate are, in the end, the real and only antidote to ensuring that hateful white supremacy is once again eliminated — at least until next time.