Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale would like you to believe that so-called “right-wing neo-Nazi extremism” is an imminent threat to Canada, while conveniently ignoring groups that have attacked Canadian soil.
That is not to say that people with racist and neo-Nazi beliefs don’t organize. The ungainly reality is that they do, and they’ve been responsible for numerous hate crimes throughout Canada.
Yet if these organizations were such a national threat, Goodale could count on Canadians to name a few. Yet most Canadians can’t.
As Goodale points out, the only Canadian casualties that can be attributed to neo-Nazi or white supremacist ideologies are on an individual basis.
“They may have behaved themselves as singular individuals doing very evil deeds but they were inspired by something and largely that relates back to what they saw on the internet,” said Goodale.
They’re people like Alexandre Bisonette or Alek Minassian. They’re individuals who turn their twisted ideas into the real world and wreck havoc on the lives of the innocent.
However, individual’s who are inspired by the internet to commit horrific crimes are an entirely different matter from organizations funding and promoting attacks on Canada.
On a daily basis millions of people are exposed to the same content that both Bisonette and Minassian used to fuel their killing sprees, but only an astronomically small percentage of them ever act it out.
That’s simply because people with violent intentions will always try to find some way to justify their actions.
The reality is that these individuals were not inspired by “what they saw on the internet” but instead, they looked at the internet as a way to validate their plans.
Goodale conveniently points to ISIS’ and Al-Qaeda’s use of the internet as a tool for recruitment but fails to recognize that both of those groups are international terrorist organizations with funding, weapons and the explicit intent to kill Canadians.
The Minister must be entirely deluded if he thinks ISIS’ open calls for terrorism in Canada or the group’s Amaq News Agency are equivalent to watching Ben Shapiro or sharing incel memes online.
The fact is that ISIS has organized and launched real attacks on Canadian soil, including the 2014 attack on Parliament Hill and have claimed responsibility for the Danforth shooting attack by Faisal Hussain.
There are numerous other tangible organizations that I could point to that have, or continue to operate in Canada.
Before 9/11, the largest terrorist attack ever committed was planned by the Khalistani terrorist group Babbar Khalsa on Canadian soil with the help of the International Youth Sikh Federation. The Air India 182 Bombing lead to the death of 268 Canadians, 27 UK citizens and 24 Indian citizens.
Or how about the Marxist extremism of the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) who used bombings, kidnappings and murder to secure its ideology in the 1960s?
I’m sure the minister is concerned about left-wing extremism as well.
I think Goodale is acting on the politically motivated pressure of groups like Anti-Hate Canada and other “social justice” activists who seek to create false boogeymen to justify increased government clampdowns on the fundamental freedoms of Canadians.
We live in a dangerous world and Canada is under threat. There’s no doubt about that, but Goodale does no service to Canadians by propping up fake monsters when there are already so many lashing at our feet.
Even his own ministry, the RCMP and Canada’s intelligence can’t seem to agree on the scale of so-called right-wing extremism in Canada.
“Within the broader context of extremism in Canada, the number of right-wing extremists who promote or are willing to engage in politically-motivated violence is extremely small,” read one email by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Even the Public Safety Canada website doesn’t have any neo-Nazi groups named on its terrorist entities list. So what exactly is the minister going on about?
If Goodale thinks the solution to stopping individuals like Bisonette and Minassian is to control what people are allowed to view or read on the internet, he’s wrong.
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