Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore - Unmasking white nationalists across Canada (feat. Evan Balgord)

00:00:00.000 Hello, I'm Rachel Gilmore, your least favorite person's least favorite journalist now more

00:00:10.540 than ever. Welcome to Bubble Pop. This is the live show weekly where we talk about some

00:00:16.540 of the biggest headlines and juiciest news tidbits so you don't have to doomscroll. Just

00:00:21.620 a reminder that if you want to support the show, you can do so on Patreon, Substack,

00:00:25.580 YouTube, as well as anywhere that you like to listen. We also, while we're live for the final

00:00:30.400 10 minutes of the show, tend to take audience questions and we prioritize super chats for those.

00:00:35.820 So if you want to make sure your question gets asked, obviously with some caveats, okay, if you

00:00:40.280 come in here asking some nonsense, I'm not going to waste our guests' time with it, but you know,

00:00:45.520 you can use that super chat function and there's a very good chance that we will be taking your

00:00:49.660 question. We also usually have time for some free ones too. So don't be shy, drop those questions

00:00:54.860 in the chat. All right, let's get into it. It has been a tough week for the white nationalists.

00:01:03.040 First, a little over a week ago, I published a piece unmasking where the Frontenac Active Club

00:01:08.520 had been training unbeknownst to the gym owners. So just a quick reminder for the uninitiated,

00:01:17.180 Active Clubs, these things that these guys are a part of, are a growing problem in Canada.

00:01:23.260 These groups of white nationalists, quote, focus on physical recruitment and combat training in preparation for eventual violent confrontation, according to an internal government report first reported on last week by CBC News, and I also got my hands on a copy of it.

00:01:39.100 That report also said that, quote, compared to other countries, Canada appears to have a disproportionate number of active clubs with more than 30 of the nearly 200 known global chapters existing in Canada.

00:01:54.560 So that's something.

00:01:57.040 Anyway, with the help of Elizabeth Simons from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, I also identified Julio Zardo, a then coach at the gym, as a member of this active club.

00:02:08.280 The former Olympian had given the group access to the facility outside of normal business hours.

00:02:14.000 According to the owners of the gym, Zardo hid the true nature of his club from them.

00:02:19.440 After we published this investigation, the gym's owners took swift action to address the issue,

00:02:24.880 ensuring Frontenac Active Club no longer had access to their facility.

00:02:29.100 They also fired Zardo.

00:02:31.680 Then Zardo and Sean Bobay McDonald, a guy who openly calls himself a Nazi

00:02:36.800 and is also a member of the Frontenac Active Club,

00:02:40.220 showed up in person to my boyfriend's show

00:02:43.300 at a small local music venue.

00:02:45.360 They stared me down until I acknowledged them,

00:02:47.680 then tried to intimidate me about my work,

00:02:49.960 asking when the next story was coming out

00:02:51.880 and dropping the name of a gym that I used to go to,

00:02:54.960 implying they'd stopped by sometime.

00:02:56.940 Clearly the fact that I had unmasked them,

00:02:59.820 it made them a little upset.

00:03:01.900 But I won't stop.

00:03:03.620 And neither will the folks at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network,

00:03:06.360 whose researcher, Hazel Woodrow, just dropped the first story from a huge investigation

00:03:11.180 identifying people who use the white supremacist dating site called White Date. See, in late

00:03:17.180 December, a badass hacker in a pink Power Rangers costume shut down the dating website live on stage

00:03:24.600 in Hamburg and published the users on a public interface called okstupid.lol. It's very fun if

00:03:31.540 you want to spend some time going through that. Believe it or not, 86% of the users of White Date

00:03:38.500 were men. Shocking. Anyway, anti-hate has dug into this leaked information to unmask Canadians

00:03:47.520 using this dating site. They shared their findings with CBC News, which had been doing a parallel

00:03:53.200 investigation, but I want to give her full credit here. Hazel has identified more than 190 users of

00:04:00.660 this website on her own. One of those users, whose name Anti-Hate and CBC News published earlier

00:04:06.620 this week, is Royal Canadian Air Force Major Tristan Armstrong. CBC News published some

00:04:15.000 other names of the users of the website this week too, including, I don't have the element here,

00:04:22.580 so I'll just tell you about it. Oh wait, is this it? Yeah, so they published the same name as well,

00:04:29.060 And also published the name of our friend, Sean Bobay McDonald, who, once again, tried to intimidate me last week.

00:04:38.060 Here is a further reference of, you know, this guy's whole deal.

00:04:42.180 A clip that I found of him during my investigation.

00:04:56.360 Apologies, didn't mean to put you through that twice.

00:04:58.480 But ladies, can you believe he's single?

00:05:02.280 Anyway, as I already mentioned, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network's Hazel Woodrow has identified nearly 200 Canadians on this website.

00:05:09.180 And today, Evan Balgord, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, is joining me on the show to talk about all of this.

00:05:18.400 Evan, welcome to Bubble Pop.

00:05:21.600 Thank you.

00:05:22.540 Thank you for being here.

00:05:24.260 Sorry I made you listen to that SBM clip twice.

00:05:26.380 Was that extremely distressing?

00:05:27.680 I actually had not seen that one before.

00:05:29.220 That was loud.

00:05:29.760 It's true.

00:05:30.640 I know.

00:05:31.380 I know.

00:05:31.940 I just, weird behavior.

00:05:34.240 But anyway.

00:05:35.760 Okay. 0.71

00:05:36.300 So first things first, I want to congratulate you guys on this huge investigation into White

00:05:41.260 Date.

00:05:41.620 It's so good.

00:05:43.300 I gave some context, obviously, in that very long intro I just did, but I would love it

00:05:48.540 if you could walk me through how you guys went about uncovering this information and

00:05:52.840 doing this investigation.

00:05:54.940 Sure.

00:05:55.020 So, I mean, other organizations like the CBC had sort of big tools that they could run this data against.

00:06:01.160 We didn't.

00:06:01.920 We did it.

00:06:02.200 We did it old school like we do all our investigations.

00:06:04.220 So we we had a list of 500 to 600 people who had simply wrote that they were from Canada on the on the white date site.

00:06:15.660 And Hazel went through them, you know, like one at a time.

00:06:20.060 And when we're dealing with that much data, I mean, this took weeks.

00:06:22.580 right and when you're dealing with that much data you're looking at um things that jump out

00:06:27.620 immediately so very extreme rhetoric or somebody says that they have a job that's of some public

00:06:33.860 interest or some public importance or sometimes just extremely weird ones um kind of jump out as

00:06:39.460 well or ones where wait some of these people are weird oh oh yeah the majority of the profiles are

00:06:45.380 like deeply unhinged right yeah um yeah it's not great um so i mean of the people that that we look

00:06:54.020 at and identify and where we're going to be identifying a number of like people of some

00:06:58.340 position of public trust um in the coming days uh but there's so many that we we can't possibly

00:07:05.220 write a profile on on like 190 people right like it's it's just not possible so there's a lot of

00:07:10.180 people are going to be leaving on the cutting room floor here um but you know there's so many uh

00:07:16.420 neo-nazis that'd be well known to you know any anti-racist community um and have been reported

00:07:21.780 on and widely identified as neo-nazis or white supremacists for a very long time um including uh

00:07:27.220 your friend who showed up to intimidate you right including evaders like kevin goudreau uh and and

00:07:32.660 many other names that people who are in the know would be like oh that guy again yeah he's in here

00:07:38.000 So the ones who are left, the ones we paid attention to the most were the people of public

00:07:43.560 importance. And that's where we focused. And, you know, we made the identifications a number

00:07:48.560 of different ways. Some of these people just told way too many personal details about themselves in

00:07:53.180 this white supremacist dating website that we could match to other people's public personas

00:07:59.260 elsewhere. Or, you know, sometimes they signed up with an email account that was just like literally

00:08:05.520 their first and last name. And that gives us a very strong starting point to go from, obviously.

00:08:11.760 So, you know, the net result of all of this, we figured out, oh, there's some guys from the

00:08:16.280 Canadian Armed Forces in here. And I think that's where we will start with our investigation.

00:08:21.940 And CBC agreed, you know, the whole time we were looking at this data.

00:08:26.400 I convinced the CBC producer that this was important to cover and newsworthy. That's a

00:08:30.840 bit of the background story here. We were going through the data, identifying people with some

00:08:34.880 public importance and i was i was telling cbc like yeah you guys should probably cover this you know

00:08:39.720 we found this and this and this and this and this and they were like okay yeah we're interested

00:08:43.420 not to say they weren't already because there was a journalist on that team who was already

00:08:46.580 interested in the data and pouring through it to be clear but um uh you know sometimes it takes

00:08:52.380 some convincing of the higher-ups i can tell you that from uh my uh my time in mainstream news

00:08:57.680 trying to report on extremism so you know it's just uh it's a gigantic bureaucracy of the cbc

00:09:03.940 Yeah. Right. With multiple layers of, you know, having to convince folks of things.

00:09:09.480 So I don't hold that against this particular team or the producers, but we can get into a bigger talk of why the CBC is a little dysfunctional.

00:09:15.980 But yeah, if you want to.

00:09:19.240 Yeah. But I do also want to highlight just for the audience, because I know you guys are often too humble to do it yourselves.

00:09:24.520 Like, just so you guys know, often the Canadian Anti-Hate Network is doing, like, the bulk of the identifications and, you know, the unmaskings that CBC goes on to report on.

00:09:35.880 And obviously, CBC does really hard work as well.

00:09:38.320 And they have a platform that is essential for covering this stuff and amplifying it.

00:09:43.000 And it's not to reduce the work that those journalists do because it's essential and important.

00:09:47.540 But I want to make sure that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, particularly, it's often like a single woman, you know, like one or two women who are doing this work old school, without resources, without the number of tools that CBC has access to.

00:10:02.920 And, you know, they bring this stuff to CBC.

00:10:05.540 And I, you know, a little bit of a, I would make a recommendation to CBC that they give anti-hate more flowers in their reporting.

00:10:14.180 But that's just me.

00:10:15.720 I'm sure you'd be too humble to say that, Evan.

00:10:17.840 But, you know, I just want to make sure that we take that moment here today because Hazel

00:10:22.860 did incredible work on this, and she deserves all of the credit for the work that she did.

00:10:29.900 So anyway.

00:10:30.420 She absolutely does.

00:10:31.080 Yeah, no, I mean, thank you so much.

00:10:32.880 She absolutely does.

00:10:33.800 Of course.

00:10:34.300 I can say, you know, in the CBC story, the way they said it, they did their own investigation.

00:10:39.320 Yeah, it was in parallel to ours.

00:10:40.640 It would be fair to say they did their own investigation and found the things that they

00:10:43.560 found.

00:10:43.860 um but yes i mean we we also we did that too yeah for sure so um i wanted to ask you a little bit

00:10:54.520 more about the actual guys and we we touched on this a little in your initial answer but you know

00:11:00.880 the nature of the guys who are using this website because one thing that i'm seeing trotted out by

00:11:05.200 it's you know by the guys who they always go into gaslight mode when they get exposed or when

00:11:10.200 we're talking about these things. And what they've been saying is, oh, is it that wrong for white

00:11:14.520 people to want to date other white people? Like, you know, other folks have preferences. And I

00:11:19.940 wanted to ask you, like, is it believable that someone could use this website and not have white

00:11:24.380 supremacist beliefs? Like what kind of users are on here? Yeah, I mean, you'd have to be really

00:11:30.900 dense. Because when you go on, you know, white date and use it, for example, when you when you

00:11:37.180 create a profile, you can choose from a list of conspiracy theories you believe in, including 0.82

00:11:41.620 like, you know, the, uh, the, the great replacement theory that, um, Jews and immigrants are behind 0.96

00:11:46.700 trying to, uh, essentially like eliminate the, the white race by replacing them with, 0.93

00:11:51.820 you know, immigrants and what have you. Um, that was the same conspiracy theory that, 0.96

00:11:56.300 that motivated, uh, uh, that motivates terrorist attacks and stuff, right? Like it's free.

00:12:01.000 yeah yes um so you could also select from a drop down what are your ideology what's your ideology

00:12:08.580 your ideologies right and your options would include things like national socialism and fascism

00:12:12.940 so wow it's right it's it's pretty obvious there's several people who chose to use profile pictures

00:12:18.340 that were unmistakable neo-nazi uh imagery you know there's no not defensible at all and and

00:12:25.500 then the profiles themselves so we have all of the bios you can read all of the bios

00:12:29.220 and um of course some of them are quite wild some of them are explicitly racist um so

00:12:36.000 it's it's kind of unmistakable right uh i would find it very extremely difficult and hard to

00:12:42.900 believe that somebody would sign up for the site without um being in though of of what it is about

00:12:48.080 and you know when you read the kinds of people who are signing up you get uh you get a variety

00:12:54.700 You know, you have people from many different walks of life in terms of socioeconomic status.

00:13:01.640 You know, you'll get quite a diverse array of kind of employment.

00:13:08.000 You'll find different people are looking for different things.

00:13:11.220 You know, in some cases, it is single men looking for multiple wives or partners.

00:13:17.680 Yeah, that's like not uncommon.

00:13:20.000 I mean, start with one, guys.

00:13:21.640 like if you can't even get a single partner like it was like i i want uh i want a virgin but if

00:13:29.160 you're not a virgin you could theoretically be like the third you know like in a multiple partner

00:13:34.680 relationship stuff like that oh my god and then we had the uh very strong uh bent of christian

00:13:42.600 white supremacists um where uh you know it has all the white supremacist stuff but um

00:13:48.840 um with just a christian flavor to it there's plenty of that uh and then you had uh the esoteric

00:13:55.560 weirdos uh who believe in all sorts of uh weird philosophy which of course you know overlaps

00:14:01.980 heavily with the uh conspiracy theory um scene and wellness you know alternative wellness scene

00:14:07.980 so you had all sorts of people we had members of the canadian armed forces we had um teachers

00:14:14.300 lawyers, real estate agents, people who, you know, are in the C-suite for energy extraction

00:14:22.020 industry companies. And, you know, as we work on fully firming up and validating all of that

00:14:29.700 and lawyering everything, we will be, you know, talking about these people who are in

00:14:34.540 positions of public trust or public interest. Yeah. And that kind of brings me to one of the

00:14:41.260 things that we were that I was really excited about and I'm sure you guys are excited to be

00:14:46.120 able to uh share uh which is this little sort of scoop of one of the suspected names and uh

00:14:55.160 obviously anytime you're identifying uh someone or you know drawing inferences and you know it's

00:15:03.300 extremely important to be careful with the language we use so um you know we're gonna try to be very

00:15:10.220 delicate in this conversation it's not something that's normally done live so um we're going to be

00:15:15.900 really careful here but you guys obviously you found more than 190 names of canadians on this

00:15:22.780 website there's a drip drip drip coming that i'm sure will make a lot of these guys very nervous

00:15:28.220 um and today you are telling us about something that you found we found yeah so yeah could you

00:15:35.420 let's put it that way. We started five minutes late because I was on a call with a lawyer right

00:15:40.500 up until right up until we went live, essentially. And, you know, that is part of our due diligence

00:15:44.840 in publishing. It's not enough for us to be on, you know, x.com or blue sky and, you know, behind

00:15:51.660 an anonymous account and say so-and-so is so-and-so. I'm not slandering people who are

00:15:57.240 like, you know, there are citizen journalists out there who do a good job, but we are a lot

00:16:03.860 of people's favorite target. And we have to, and more than that, though, we do this publicly with

00:16:08.220 a nonprofit that people generously donate to. So we have to hold ourselves to a very, very high

00:16:13.360 standard of account. So what I can say about this, though, is we identified or we found

00:16:21.700 an acupuncturist in Surrey, British Columbia, who in his public postings

00:16:31.220 has many, many, many, many details that would match up to a user that we found on white date.

00:16:42.500 Details like the kind of medicine that they practice, traditional Chinese medicine and

00:16:49.560 acupuncture. The specific list of activities and hobbies that they are interested in,

00:16:59.660 including a particular kind of fishing, Muay Thai, several other things. And both this user

00:17:07.200 of weightdate.com and this Surrey acupuncturist also seem to share a family history, specifically

00:17:14.360 sort of, um, the political orientation of, of their parents that they disclosed, um, and some

00:17:19.480 health things, uh, uh, with one of their parents that they disclosed. So there's, there's many,

00:17:23.600 many overlapping, um, points of data, um, between this, this person in British Columbia and the

00:17:30.780 profile, including of course, uh, that the profile and white date said that they are in Surrey, uh,

00:17:36.800 British Columbia. So I don't know if you want to, we can talk a bit about the kinds of things that

00:17:43.360 was posted by um this profile because they are wild and there's some things in there that i think

00:17:50.800 are are interesting to talk about in terms of how they view uh gender roles uh patriarchy submission

00:17:57.780 and um and how that sort of is a big part of of white nationalism and how it sort of replicates

00:18:05.240 itself because white nationalists see they want to create an ethnostate uh for white people um

00:18:11.680 But they're very, very concerned with white birth rates and having white children.

00:18:16.040 So the whole control over women's bodies and women needing to reproduce the white race is a big part of that. 0.72

00:18:25.300 And you'll see that in, if you want to go through some of the quotes and posts, you'll see that in some of it. 0.90

00:18:31.720 Yeah. So just, are we comfortable with me pulling up the image of this individual?

00:18:36.680 You want to pull up the OK Stupid profile? You can do that. 0.98

00:18:38.740 yeah i the only elements i have have his photo alongside it is that i just want to triple check

00:18:45.380 i think with the careful caveat um that i will say is that the photo is of the individual um

00:18:51.620 that appears to share many of the same data points with the wait date user um and yes we

00:18:57.780 can take a we can take a look at it okay i'm gonna pull it up so this is the profile evan

00:19:05.940 yeah and it's and it's long um so he was the the the person who created this this account on white

00:19:13.600 date was the only canadian in the data who ended up talking to uh the hacker's chatbot so this is

00:19:20.880 really interesting the hacker set up a chatbot that would send messages um to these to these men

00:19:27.220 and try to get more information out of them um and uh this profile red knight had sort of several

00:19:34.260 exchanges with the chat bot that were quite lengthy. He wrote very, very, uh, very long

00:19:39.580 responses. Um, and for anybody out there who's in the dating world, don't write responses this long

00:19:46.040 to short messages. Um, you know, you're going to get ignored pretty quick unless you're chatting

00:19:51.640 with a chat bot, in which case keep going. Right. So I'm going to pull up my own, my own little

00:19:59.660 copy here of some of his, his quotes, Rachel, do you want me just to go through a few

00:20:04.100 interesting ones? Do you want to pick some out? Oh, you go to town. I mean, the one thing that

00:20:08.320 I found really interesting was this individual said, I have volunteered for local conservative

00:20:12.340 candidates knocking on doors. I always find it to be a matter of public interest when folks

00:20:18.340 subscribing to certain ideologies get involved with federal or municipal or any level of politics,

00:20:24.960 because I just think that that's an alarming development where folks can, you know, it's

00:20:32.220 first step towards codifying hate is like getting involved with politics um you know infesting

00:20:38.940 politics with these kinds of hateful ideologies seeking to create a world where it's permissible

00:20:44.460 in politics to hold these ideologies etc etc and the end point of that is codified hate so

00:20:49.900 that to me always sticks out obviously this is just a volunteer role um but yeah i found that

00:20:55.740 interesting um i uh i'll i can pull this down and and we can just chat about the the quotes that

00:21:01.660 you found as well so talking about the political side of it too like we have no indication from

00:21:07.740 this this user's posting or responding to the chatbot that they're like deeply politically

00:21:13.920 connected or that they're doing this as sort of like an organized thing with other people

00:21:17.940 but in in the space in like the white nationalist space you know you're very correct in that you

00:21:24.160 You know, there's a type of white nationalist who believes in becoming politically active and goes out and tries to do that because it furthers the ideology and the worldview.

00:21:35.560 And this user in particular has some very self-aggrandizing posts.

00:21:43.240 I think it would be fair to characterize as self-aggrandizing.

00:21:45.620 um like comments that uh and i'm paraphrasing not directly quoting here but that they're they're

00:21:52.460 they're trying to do things in the health and medicine space to keep them at like the biological

00:21:56.520 age of like 18 to 25 and we've seen this elsewhere in the alternative wellness space with like the

00:22:02.280 you know the uh the eccentric you know billionaire types and stuff but he's trying to keep himself

00:22:09.220 in this like ideal biological not actual age because he needs to have a long life so he can

00:22:17.060 accomplish all the things that he needs to accomplish including like i'm trying to scroll

00:22:21.140 through my quotes here um i might not have made it made a oh here it is through uh uh

00:22:39.160 he okay uh he believes the implementation of his life's purpose will require that he lives a very

00:22:44.820 long and powerful life that purpose is to catalyze not only the regeneration of a true form of western

00:22:50.360 civilization but for that what revitalized civilization to be stronger more dominant and

00:22:55.240 sovereign than ever before think indo-european ancestor culture reorganized and renewed along 0.61

00:23:00.240 both scientific and spiritual cultural lines for the conquest of the stars right so all right 0.98

00:23:09.420 Yeah, I would, in my opinion, this person is a little full of themselves.

00:23:13.360 Yeah, it sure sounds like it.

00:23:16.340 You know, one thing that I found interesting out of these IDs that, and you mentioned this earlier, is there are these individuals who seem to hold somewhat trusted positions in their communities.

00:23:31.640 And I guess I wanted to ask you, I mean, you mentioned that this is a theme that there are there's multiple people that that you guys have found that that hold positions of public trust in some capacity.

00:23:45.600 Could you tell me a little bit about that? Like, what is the danger of that?

00:23:49.020 And I mean, I feel like it's maybe obvious, but it would be helpful for you to just kind of spell that out.

00:23:53.960 yeah the one that's um kind of heartbreaking to me uh be the teachers you know there's there's

00:24:02.260 there's some teachers in the data and I don't just mean like university professors I believe

00:24:05.480 there's two I want to say two elementary age teachers in the data um although I'm not positive

00:24:13.500 the second one potentially their high school or something but but there's two like teachers of

00:24:16.980 children in the data I just don't have in front of me uh that's the one that concerns me the most

00:24:22.100 I don't, I don't know if everybody's going to have the same measure of which ones of these are

00:24:25.280 the most, uh, newsworthy. I mean, certainly the, the people in Canadian armed forces are most

00:24:29.220 newsworthy. Um, the person that we identified as a major in the Royal Canadian air force,

00:24:34.580 for example, is, is working on that very big, expensive, um, project buying like the, or

00:24:40.520 figuring out the next generation of fighter jet, right. Uh, the Naval reservist, um, that we, uh,

00:24:46.560 also identified uh and again army stuff is or navy stuff in this case is a little confusing for me

00:24:53.700 to understand but you know the as best i can understand what their role is um they would

00:24:59.080 have access to some very sensitive equipment and data um on a destroyer and um that's concerning

00:25:09.260 to me a little bit i don't think that this guy could press a button and shoot a missile or

00:25:12.920 thing like that but it's still just concerning to me that uh that some of these people are out here

00:25:17.540 uh among the rest of us the teachers the teachers kind of break my heart um other people that we may

00:25:24.660 be able to report on um there is and i think this is sufficiently not identifying that i can say it

00:25:31.340 until we kind of do the rest of our uh go for comment and everything and lawyer it but i believe

00:25:36.880 that we found a lawyer um who is sort of currently uh facing review for allegations of of sexual

00:25:44.920 harassment under assault um and in one case uh you know we believe we actually found another

00:25:50.120 individual uh who works in a tech industry um who has been convicted of of producing and holding

00:25:58.040 child sexual assault material um so kiddie porn um so there's a lot of like not great stuff that's

00:26:08.780 uh that's in this data um the goal here of course in recording on this is

00:26:15.260 there there needs to be social consequences and and we've talked about this before you know that

00:26:21.700 when somebody decides to like do activities or take part or network with white nationalists

00:26:27.440 white supremacists or neo-nazis they're getting something out of it like they're getting some

00:26:31.560 sort of sense of community um and purpose and fulfillment out of it it's very twisted but like

00:26:38.560 they are um and that they may not be getting somewhere else and there's you know it's like

00:26:45.660 a scale of like you know what are the push factors into somebody engaging with this what are the pull

00:26:51.200 factors pulling them away from stuff like this and we believe that uh creating social accountability

00:26:56.440 and making it clear that you know you you can't have two lives you know where in public you try

00:27:04.420 to appear like a totally normal person and then in private you're connecting and helping to sustain

00:27:10.500 some kind of white supremacist movement um those things are in conflict with each other and when

00:27:15.600 you when you de-conflict those things when you make it you know obvious and clear to the public

00:27:19.840 these people are engaging that activity oftentimes they curtail their behavior because they are

00:27:23.980 afraid of those social consequences of engaging that kind of behavior. Yeah, and that's actually

00:27:30.560 something I wanted to dig into specifically. I'll just quickly mention, we've clearly broadened out

00:27:36.800 this conversation at this point beyond the individual who we were unmasking, but well,

00:27:43.480 you were unmasking, but I just want to let the audience know that I personally also reached out

00:27:50.800 the individual with a request for comment on i believe wednesday afternoon um and have not heard

00:27:56.800 back and i believe uh the canadian anti-hate network has also sent similar requests for comment

00:28:01.760 um i don't know if there's any update on that but i just wanted to make that very clear that

00:28:05.920 uh you know we've given this i i've given this individual an opportunity to respond ahead of

00:28:10.800 today's podcast um and uh they shortly thereafter made their instagram account um private right so

00:28:20.800 we can take that as a pretty strong indication that they um received our respective requests

00:28:25.680 for comment yeah okay um but i wanted to press on about the uh importance of this work and like why

00:28:36.160 we do it you know um you know you're talking about how it's it's not really cool to live this double

00:28:41.840 life um and that was certainly something i heard after i unmasked the uh gym coach in the last

00:28:47.200 week with the help of Liz, your colleague. And, you know, I heard from people who knew him that

00:28:54.780 like, you know, it felt like he was sort of living a double life. And I think it's, you know,

00:29:03.020 you kind of touched on this, but I would love to hear from you because the one of the bits of

00:29:08.400 backlash that I always find to be a bit of a red flag whenever someone says this, but they'll be

00:29:12.660 like, oh, so you're just doxing people. Why are you just doxing people? I don't know if you can

00:29:16.440 expand a little bit more on why this is something that uh is important to do as a form of investigative

00:29:23.360 journalism well let's take it a step further right because people say like oh hey you're calling just

00:29:27.980 conservatives racists and things like that no we've we've never reported on anybody just for

00:29:32.880 being you know like you know somebody's racist uncle around at dinner table like you should the 0.99

00:29:36.580 amount of shit that we see every day of like just awful racist stuff like that doesn't meet our bar 0.99

00:29:43.060 for reporting on something you know somebody has to be involved in some kind of organized hate 0.99

00:29:48.160 movement for us to take a serious interest in them and we report on people primarily based on

00:29:54.240 you know how concerning is it what they are connected with so we've been doing a lot of

00:29:59.000 reporting on the active clubs because if you look you know internationally um just since uh like

00:30:05.080 january there's like three more series of like violence or arrest associated with the active

00:30:09.180 clubs there was a weapon seized in germany there were a series of what looked like racially

00:30:15.300 motivated assaults in uh sweden i hope i got that right and there were um people arrested

00:30:24.480 uh on weapons charges but who were allegedly um putting together some kind of network uh that

00:30:30.820 would have the uh capacity to like target high profile individuals in the united states

00:30:35.740 so in the active clubs here you know while we don't have them plotting to do anything quite

00:30:41.800 like that uh yet i hope um they are connected to this broader network uh that does engage in that

00:30:49.080 kind of um behavior um they uh use language and rhetoric here which is very damaging and

00:30:57.560 detrimental to like a multicultural democracy you know when they call for certain groups of people

00:31:02.760 to be um ethnically cleansed removed from the country or genocided um as a canadian and somebody

00:31:09.200 who's like proud to be a canadian because i really like the charter rights and freedoms

00:31:11.800 i don't think it lives up to all its promises but i i love that document and and and that's

00:31:16.060 what makes me proud to be canadian you know i don't think that groups like these can be tolerated

00:31:21.680 for like the long-term um health and well-being of this of this country and they'll get all

00:31:27.300 hyperbolic and say that we're calling for them to be killed and stuff that's just absolute 0.99

00:31:30.580 ridiculous bullshit right yeah uh what we want is for them to stop you know uh i would prefer to do 0.99

00:31:37.060 that without uh without any criminal charges being laid i prefer to do that without a counter protest 0.99

00:31:41.140 at all i wish they would just stop today and we can all just move on with our lives right yeah

00:31:45.700 well because like what's the logical extension of what they're advocating for if these you know

00:31:51.060 viewpoints and ideologies of white supremacy become normalized in society does it follow

00:31:57.860 that you know people can run for office holding those ideologies if this is within the Overton

00:32:02.660 window the acceptable socially acceptable speech within our society and if individuals holding

00:32:07.780 those ideologies are then able to be elected to public office does that mean that we can then

00:32:12.260 accept laws that you know are based on white supremacist ideologies which are inherently

00:32:17.060 going to be discriminatory and harmful to individuals who are non-white and I just like

00:32:22.180 I think you have to follow that logic to its end and not just blind yourself with the idea that free speech doesn't have implications for, you know, untethered free speech, including hate speech, doesn't have impacts within the context of the social contract under which we all operate.

00:32:43.760 um but yeah i actually had some audio um that i wanted to pull up from uh alex brand who is

00:32:53.200 a vice president of the active club second sons canada um he's one of the individuals who was

00:32:59.060 photographed in the gym photos um that i had reported on last week as well but um he actually

00:33:05.460 with all of like the strategic prowess of a villain in a bad movie likes to just like go on

00:33:11.420 about why these tactics actually work

00:33:14.780 to disrupt white nationalist organizing and recruitment

00:33:19.240 and why unmasking names is effective

00:33:23.340 in terms of disrupting these movements and hate.

00:33:25.900 So I'm just gonna play this

00:33:27.480 and then I would love to get your reaction to it.

00:33:30.440 A lot of people fear law enforcement

00:33:32.480 or repercussions from the state.

00:33:35.640 In my experience, the much more threatening element

00:33:39.560 is actually non-state actors uh so it's the anti-hates the cbc uh random antifa

00:33:48.600 they will do much more damage to your life for being part of an organization like this

00:33:53.080 than the police will and the reason for that is because you're not doing anything illegal

00:33:57.640 um so it's only social pressures or cultural pressures that really do a lot of damage to

00:34:04.040 people who take part in this yeah so what's your thoughts on what he just said there

00:34:11.320 first off um i i've listened to the longer clip and and and times they've talked with us before

00:34:16.600 um first thing i just want to say is it based on a faulty premise right they they think that they

00:34:21.640 are beyond the reach of law enforcement because they think that they are not committing any crimes

00:34:25.480 and they are incorrect right like uh the statements that have been made by their two

00:34:29.080 leaders jeremy mckenzie and alex friend are are contrary to criminal code section 319 subsection

00:34:34.680 2 the willful promotion of hate and in an obvious and egregious way right like yeah um

00:34:42.440 the fact that they haven't been charged is is a huge problem and it shouldn't be on us to like

00:34:48.360 make criminal complaints we know that they are monitored by law enforcement and national security

00:34:52.120 so why haven't charges come down the pipeline right we actually know in in nova scotia a pretty

00:34:57.480 good idea why that's happening with jeremy mckenzie it's because the police of jurisdiction

00:35:01.160 in his area that are charged with the investigation um into him for uh hate speech um uh don't have

00:35:09.160 the the resources or the or the expertise really to uh like they haven't done a case like this

00:35:15.240 before i'm not saying they're incapable of it they haven't done one before and as a result you know

00:35:19.720 we made our criminal complaint against i made my first criminal complaint against jeremy mckenzie

00:35:23.320 in 2021 uh to the wrong police fair enough we made it to the correct police jurisdiction in uh

00:35:30.440 in august 2024 uh and and that investigation is is languishing right um what needs to happen in

00:35:37.440 my opinion is the rcmp as an organization as a whole the integration integrated national security

00:35:43.160 enforcement team and then the rcmp as a whole need to put resources into these local police

00:35:48.260 jurisdiction office specifically to target um cases that they can't otherwise handle and and

00:35:53.940 like in the case of this mackenzie's hate speech right and vrend is even worse you know vrend has

00:36:00.420 gone so far as i'd say there's even a possibility of prosecuting under section uh 318 which is the

00:36:07.700 advocation of genocide so i'm sorry that's a long that's a long tangent i actually have that audio

00:36:12.420 if you want me to play it a friend um i think it's probably the one you're thinking of so folks just

00:36:17.140 Just to give you a sense of the kind of speech we're talking about, this is Alex Brand speaking in a Twitter space.

00:36:23.680 I'm just going to go off here for a second.

00:36:25.220 When we take back this country, when we take back this country, it's going to be no apologies. 0.98

00:36:31.080 And when we're done taking back our own countries, I'm coming back to fucking India to finish the job the British should have done 200 fucking years ago. 0.98

00:36:39.740 That's my fucking life's mission is to, oh, oh, nobody belongs anywhere. 0.99

00:36:44.980 I guess you don't belong here. 0.99

00:36:46.420 and this time it's not going to be oh we're bringing you trains and we're bringing you 1.00

00:36:50.280 technology no it's going to be we're bringing you fucking brimstone and hellfire to scourge you from 0.99

00:36:55.800 this fucking planet that's what i'm going to do whenever we take back our country that's where 1.00

00:37:00.900 i'm at now with you fucking indians you don't deserve to exist on this fucking planet yeah 1.00

00:37:06.880 is that the clip you're thinking of i mean it's it's one of many one of many yeah pull up for 1.00

00:37:12.740 um but yes i mean like in my opinion you know that's that's a call to genocide and i think

00:37:18.920 that's a pretty reasonable opinion to hold about that um and it's not even a call to just like

00:37:24.740 genocide a group of people from your particular country that is a call for like just to

00:37:29.580 destroy the existence of a group of people um so yes that is the kind of content that i'm 0.95

00:37:35.340 talking about there's another member of their group uh a woman who uh i think it would be fair

00:37:41.320 to say on x.com literally incites hate crime says i want to see more of this happen or this looks

00:37:46.660 great let's go and do that when they share clips of hate crimes occurring so um yes what they are

00:37:53.140 doing in some cases is illegal they are correct that they haven't faced charges so far that doesn't

00:37:58.800 mean that they won't but further to our previous what we were talking about previously the social

00:38:04.580 consequences. Yeah, they're afraid of those because when you expose a bunch of guys that go

00:38:11.820 to like a white nationalist conference in Vancouver, for example, we have pretty good

00:38:16.660 indications that that is disruptive. They might try to put on a brave face, but, you know, people

00:38:22.520 stop showing up to their whites only workouts. People delete all their social media accounts,

00:38:27.740 even after putting on, you know, a brave face about all of it. People are less likely to show

00:38:33.580 up because they know that this is a possible, and in some cases, even a probable outcome of joining

00:38:39.560 a white nationalist or white supremacist group, is that their mom's going to learn about it,

00:38:44.200 their employer's going to learn about it. They can't do that. And of course, they try to draw

00:38:50.440 an equivalence here with anti-fascism. Why do Nazis mask up? Nazis mask up because they want

00:38:56.780 to avoid social accountability from their communities and the public as a whole.

00:39:01.260 anti-fascist mask up because they want to avoid uh being specifically targeted by those neo-nazis

00:39:07.200 uh and other racists or what have you that they are demonstrating against so these these are

00:39:13.220 markedly different things the necessity of that when someone like me publicly reports on them

00:39:18.620 with my face and then they show up yeah very much so and alex friend uh i i'm i i do hope i'm

00:39:26.940 remembering this correctly because i tried to find this clip the other day and i couldn't so

00:39:29.920 i do apologize if somebody fax me checks me on this but he said something along the lines uh

00:39:36.120 that made me have the impression um that they were strategic in how they communicate what i

00:39:41.660 interpret to be death threats where they will say things like you know when we take power or

00:39:47.580 whatever we're going to put you on trial and execute you things like that right when they

00:39:51.160 use that kind of language they think that this is not what the police would consider a death threat

00:39:55.980 I don't know if they're correct or not about that one, honestly, but it is a threat, but they,

00:40:00.320 they believe that they have found this sort of loophole for threatening people because they're

00:40:03.500 talking about a hypothetical future. Let's parse what they say though, for a second, when they say

00:40:07.680 things like that, they're saying when we take control, you know, when we, when we run the 0.64

00:40:12.060 country, uh, we're going to put you on trial and then execute you. That's not a trial, right? Like

00:40:18.480 there's no trial. There's no due process. If the outcome is already being determined that you are

00:40:23.640 going to be killed. So this is just a death threat. And they regularly engage in this kind 0.97

00:40:29.460 of language, talking about a hypothetical future. And when we talk about the danger that they are,

00:40:33.160 when they talk about their hypothetical futures, it's always talking about killing people.

00:40:39.080 Just a normal hobby to have, I guess. You know, I wanted to ask you, and I want to make sure we

00:40:46.080 still have time for audience questions. I don't know how hard you're out is. Normally we go for

00:40:51.140 an hour, but, um, you know, if, okay, cool. I'll, I'll still try to keep us to time. So I don't

00:40:57.560 abuse your generosity too much. Um, but you know, I wanted to quickly touch on, you know, obviously

00:41:04.180 what happened in the last week. Um, it's, it's almost awkward to ask you about it. Uh, you know,

00:41:11.440 with these, uh, uh, you know, Sean Bovey McDonald and Julia Ozardo showing up to try to intimidate

00:41:18.080 me for my journalism. I know it's difficult to speak about this from an analytical expert

00:41:23.340 perspective when you're literally talking to me. But I was wondering, like, if you can take,

00:41:29.320 I guess, the emotion out of who you're speaking to for a moment. And just tell me a little bit

00:41:35.580 about what it tells you that, you know, they're this emboldened, that they're comfortable. You

00:41:42.240 know, I know that Adelante in 2018, another far right group showed up to the vice offices to try

00:41:47.740 to intimidate journalists for um reporting on them in montreal um but this was on it wasn't in

00:41:55.940 an office it was at an event uh where i was spending like my private citizen time so i i am

00:42:02.660 curious about like whether this tells you anything about the mentality of this movement where they're

00:42:07.660 at was this a one-off from a rogue guy or is this a sign of a more broader emboldening yeah

00:42:14.880 let's put it in context for for a moment and talk about other things that are kind of of a similar 0.56

00:42:20.860 nature that have happened um so we've had second sense canada showing up uh in their fascist black 0.75

00:42:29.520 shirt outfit um to be outside the offices of like cbc uh drop abandon says you know cbc hates white

00:42:35.900 people we've seen them go to like town hall meetings to kind of look scary and intimidating

00:42:40.540 and these are all practice runs right we see them um uh we see other groups doing doing marches and

00:42:48.300 things like that but you're right those are all very public displays we saw the example of of some

00:42:52.860 of the montreal um bad guys you know showing up the offices of at the long to try to intimidate

00:42:58.100 a vice journalist you're right though what what occurred to you was in my opinion an escalation

00:43:03.520 uh we haven't the thing it reminds me most of is is actually when uh when i believe it must

00:43:13.360 have been blood and honor uh went to the home of an anti-fascist activist and beat him with a hammer

00:43:19.120 um you know that was one of the instances i can think of where where white supremacists have in

00:43:25.960 canada approach somebody in their in their private time in their like in in in a private space now

00:43:33.400 like in that instance i'm glad to say that's that's obviously more extreme than what than

00:43:42.320 what occurred to you but yeah yeah yeah but if i'm looking at all of the things that have happened

00:43:47.360 that sort of remind me of of what had happened to you that that is among the list um and more

00:43:54.240 than that it's the uh targeting of family members is also an escalation and a crossing of the line

00:43:59.500 And actually, you know what it reminds me the most of is Bubba Pollack going to the hospital room of a person who's trying to harass his father to, like, you know, deliver flowers.

00:44:12.380 Right. And these guys said they were just there with big smiles and just to say hello or whatever.

00:44:16.840 No, the message is one of, like, attempted intimidation.

00:44:19.620 It's a statement that we're here, we're out, we're bold, we're proud.

00:44:23.900 So it is an escalation.

00:44:29.500 And I'm sorry that that happened. You know, it's not, it's, it's not comfortable. Um, and

00:44:36.380 you know, I, I don't know that they're going to face any consequences for it right now,

00:44:43.080 but it, it's on the record. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. Um, you know,

00:44:51.480 and one thing that I thought was really important to highlight before we move to audience questions

00:44:55.460 is, you know, I wanted to talk to you about specifically the way that Western Standard

00:45:00.920 talked about, you know, my reporting. And it also touched on you guys. And it touched on this,

00:45:09.540 like, I don't know, I just to me, that was a really important moment. Because personally,

00:45:15.160 I find it very interesting how the Western Standard, the Juno News, the Rebel News, these

00:45:20.820 these news outlets that sort of have one toe in the extreme and one toe in the mainstream and

00:45:28.200 can kind of launder narratives to a broader audience than these guys themselves, these

00:45:34.100 groups can do. I find that to be significant and important in terms of their role in exacerbating

00:45:43.720 this issue in our society um so western standard did a piece on my story um and they platformed

00:45:53.160 uh second son's alex friend who you guys heard some quotes from earlier you know those those

00:46:00.440 clips that i played implying that there was some kind of conspiracy to do journalism but not only

00:46:09.080 do they do that but they also did not provide that context right that i i showed you guys earlier

00:46:16.120 about the specific beliefs that alex friend has stated that he holds so specific to the individual

00:46:23.720 that they were quoting instead they let him just say quote no active clubs advocate for the use of

00:46:31.800 violence the whole point of them is to provide productive outlets for the dissatisfaction that

00:46:37.880 men have with the current state of society and we do not engage in violent behavior because that

00:46:42.920 doesn't benefit us so they quoted him saying that and did not include any of the context of

00:46:51.960 that specific same guy's quotes that i played for you on this podcast today i wanted to ask

00:46:58.120 you what impact reporting like that from outlets like western standards western standard um have

00:47:05.720 on these movements and on the ecosystem of white nationalism in canada yeah first fact check alex

00:47:13.480 friend calls for violence frequently right like we played it on this podcast yeah that's one of

00:47:18.920 many many many examples you could choose um so there's actually an even interest more interesting

00:47:23.960 backstory behind that western standard story so there was a spaces call hosted by uh joanna evanson

00:47:31.720 or Blonde Bigot on Twitter that Vrend was on and others.

00:47:36.800 And Vrend actually talked about,

00:47:38.020 he believes there was a wide range of conspiracy

00:47:39.940 done by, I don't know, the saucer people or CSIS

00:47:43.340 or the Midnight Vampires or whatever

00:47:45.080 to give us or coordinate the release of the report

00:47:50.380 or something like that.

00:47:51.040 It was-

00:47:52.160 This is the report on active clubs

00:47:54.040 that I showed you guys in the intro

00:47:56.700 that it was just an internal government report

00:47:59.800 on active clubs in Canada that specifically mentioned Second Sons and Frontenac and others.

00:48:05.960 Yeah, this was just a case of, like, regular journalism happening.

00:48:09.340 There wasn't, like, a crazy conspiracy behind it.

00:48:13.680 Right, but on the Spaces call.

00:48:15.740 So Alex Friend is talking about his conspiracy theory about this.

00:48:19.460 And specifically was just, like, we really need media that's, I'm paraphrasing here,

00:48:24.960 but like media that's on our side but to like be a bit more courageous in platforming us etc so

00:48:29.960 like he literally asked and named western standard and juno and some others i i believe going off my

00:48:34.920 best recollection here but he pointed out outlets of that nature and said that uh they they really

00:48:42.000 need coverage from them and specifically around painting this conspiracy theory uh specifically

00:48:47.620 that we're talking about uh like not even a day later you know i'm getting a media request from

00:48:53.380 the uh the western standard about this and then the article comes out and the article um i'm

00:48:59.460 looking at the quotes from it maybe they they got them all from friend directly uh you know maybe

00:49:03.300 they themselves were in the live stream maybe somebody in the live stream told them they should

00:49:08.220 cover it um i don't know um but what they ended up doing was was being stenographers here for

00:49:17.720 white supremacists and neo-nazis right and and very specifically like when you hear about the

00:49:23.540 dominion society which is another group of white nationalists that's kind of connected to this

00:49:27.160 and and active clubs and everything talk about what they want to see what they want to do

00:49:31.720 they really want these outlets like you say with one foot in the extreme and one foot in the

00:49:36.380 mainstream to cover their stuff because they want to launder their ideas to a wider public

00:49:40.980 uh they want to recruit individuals all of that and these outlets should know that this is

00:49:49.680 occurring right like they have every reason to know that this is occurring um and that they are

00:49:55.500 doing pr for these white supremacist groups um and and yet they choose to do it i also want to

00:50:01.600 just like this is a bit of an aside but i think that it is an important one uh not gonna name

00:50:05.680 specific names here because i don't have my notes in front of me but we're talking about these

00:50:08.840 outlets and similar people commentators for them um in the wake of the the tragedy at tumbler ridge

00:50:17.920 right where that that shooter killed a number of people first off i want to say the the primary

00:50:23.620 victims here of course are the people who were shot their families that community that hurt's

00:50:29.060 going to be built by them forever um and that is an absolute tragedy right while those bodies are

00:50:36.640 still warm. We have people in Canada using that tragedy to spread hate towards the entire

00:50:42.620 transgender community. And in ways that a BC human rights tribunal just found constitutes hate

00:50:48.720 speech, by which I mean, they are denying the existence of trans people. They are saying that

00:50:54.120 all trans people are mentally ill, more likely to be violent, that they target children. These are 1.00

00:51:00.220 all hallmarks of hate um under canadian law and jurisprudence several of these commentators for

00:51:06.620 some of the outlets that we have described in the wake of tumblr ridge uh engaged in what i believe

00:51:12.300 is uh fair to characterize as criminal hate speech towards the transgender community and it is

00:51:18.900 disgusting to do that in the wake of dead children um so i know that's a bit of an aside but it's

00:51:26.320 something that I feel very strongly should there should be consequences for and I doubt there will

00:51:30.560 be yeah I think it speaks to the editorial decision making of individuals who work at certain you

00:51:38.120 know publications I'm not naming the specific ones again because I don't have uh notes in front of me

00:51:43.760 either on like who said what but you know it's a it speaks to the kind of framing that you're

00:51:50.560 going to get. You know, we talk a lot on this podcast about the idea that, you know, we're all

00:51:55.680 human beings who are doing journalism and it's impossible to be fully neutral, fully objective

00:52:02.740 in light of the fact that we are literal human beings. And, you know, I think as a result of

00:52:09.640 that, it sort of behooves us to have honest conversations about the perspectives and

00:52:15.820 ideologies that drive the editorial decisions that are subjective that do end up made

00:52:21.180 in every single newsroom and every single journalistic outlet. From people who are

00:52:27.340 doing it in good faith, who it can be helpful for individuals consuming news information

00:52:33.100 to be able to contextualize someone's reporting and then kind of fill out their information diet

00:52:39.180 with other sources that maybe kind of plug the holes that exist in someone like my reporting,

00:52:43.740 to having a full understanding of, you know, whether someone might have more hateful or

00:52:50.620 discriminatory motivations that are coloring the editorial choices that they're making and

00:52:54.360 therefore the information that they're conveying. So if we operated the same way that they did,

00:52:59.680 you know, with the infrastructure that they have, this level of scrutiny that we're put under,

00:53:03.100 we'd get sued out of existence. But we haven't been like eight years of doing this work because

00:53:07.220 we hold ourselves to the highest ethical and legal standards in our reporting, always try to do our

00:53:11.640 best in good faith and we make a rare rare error you know we correct it immediately and transparently

00:53:16.780 to the best of our ability those are the basic ethics we provide the opportunity for people to

00:53:20.620 comment etc because it's both an ethical and a legal responsibility to do so a lot of these

00:53:25.100 outlets i would think it would be fair to say do not hold themselves at least in my opinion do not

00:53:29.560 hold themselves up to the same level of of ethical and legal responsibility that we do and if there

00:53:35.000 was if we had a competing infrastructure, by which I mean a lot of money, law firms who would

00:53:42.200 advance some cases and that are dubious, you know, not that we'd want to do that, but just like,

00:53:50.380 let's just say lawyers who take swings, right? If we had that kind of infrastructure

00:53:55.020 on the progressive side of this equation, on the anti-racist side of this equation,

00:53:59.640 we'd take them to the bank you know and evan i actually did want to ask you i mean um do you

00:54:06.420 have an update at all uh on the funding you know i i remember you mentioned to me recently that uh

00:54:13.100 carney's liberals were actually uh you know ending certain uh programs or or grants that

00:54:20.140 would therefore have the end result of cutting funding to groups like yours that are doing this

00:54:25.040 essential work so um i just wanted to give you the opportunity to share if there's any update

00:54:29.400 on that or if this is still something that you guys are facing uh coming down the pipe this

00:54:34.760 potential uh hit to your funding at a time when your work is so crucial yes i mean our government

00:54:40.120 funding is up as of uh all our current grants uh and or have ended uh by the end of this month

00:54:47.480 um that doesn't mean we shut down by the end of this month you know we we don't solely operate

00:54:51.560 on on government grants um and we have plenty of runway to to find additional funding but again we

00:54:58.840 we're, we're just like permanently under-resourced and overworked. You know,

00:55:02.360 there's, there's three or four of us in any given time and we're supposed to

00:55:06.340 cover this stuff for all of Canada, right?

00:55:07.920 Every other country has more resources in this space,

00:55:10.580 more resources to its watchdog organization than we do. No.

00:55:15.440 So the, the, the, the Carney government has not earmarked any other funding

00:55:20.640 for anti-racism or anti-hate since we last spoke.

00:55:23.860 um but uh in terms of what we're doing you know i think that there are several uh family

00:55:30.960 foundations that may step in to uh bridge the gap uh for us or become a very significant source of

00:55:37.460 funding for us um and i'm not going to name any names because that's you know that's in progress

00:55:42.840 but you know very very grateful that so many people have have recognized and appreciate the

00:55:46.660 work that we do and have stepped forward to try to address um that need that we have right now

00:55:51.640 but right now we are playing a game of looking at months and runway and how long do we have until

00:55:55.880 we can have new major funding commitments come through um so it's tough and you know we to date

00:56:02.160 have received no support from this government no indication support is going to be coming

00:56:06.180 from this government and that has nothing to do with the with the fake news that uh you know

00:56:13.480 people say about like dei or anti-racism or us when i talk to folks in government about that when

00:56:19.020 people are trying to like contact government and get our funding pulled or anything like that

00:56:22.080 uh the people in government you know aren't aren't unintelligent you know they can they can take a

00:56:27.780 look at what's happening in the space and it makes so far i've seen it make absolutely no impact on

00:56:32.220 their decision making in fact the opposite it's sort of like that classic like you know if you're

00:56:37.340 catching flack you're over the target situation so some of the hate and conspiracies that are

00:56:41.380 being spread against us actually helped me make fundraising pitches um yeah you know you know

00:56:48.420 make lemonade or whatever. But no, there's been nothing more coming from this government. We

00:56:53.640 obviously would very much like to see something coming from this government and have been

00:56:57.800 advocating for that and would help them make decisions and put that together if there was

00:57:03.860 any movement on that side. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for that, Evan. I appreciate the update

00:57:09.240 because I think it's important for the public to know that these things are going on because there's

00:57:13.300 a lot of people in the chat who are talking about how well they really want to support your work

00:57:16.340 and they appreciate your work.

00:57:17.460 And I figured they might want to know

00:57:19.520 that their elected officials

00:57:23.540 are making certain decisions

00:57:25.280 that might negatively affect your work.

00:57:28.140 So yeah, more like the absence of effort.

00:57:30.640 Absence of decision.

00:57:31.800 Yeah.

00:57:32.060 Yeah.

00:57:33.700 So folks, I want to turn to audience questions.

00:57:36.920 We're already five minutes over the time.

00:57:39.540 So I don't know if Evan can stick around

00:57:41.780 for maybe 10 more minutes

00:57:43.500 just to give people an opportunity

00:57:45.960 to ask some questions.

00:57:48.360 I'll give you guys a minute to drop those questions in the chat now.

00:57:51.760 If you have them, we'll be prioritizing ones that use the super chat function,

00:57:55.240 but I'll do my best to get a bunch of free ones in here too.

00:57:58.920 While people do that, Evan, folks probably want to keep up with you guys

00:58:03.960 after they heard you speak for the last hour.

00:58:05.860 So how can they do that?

00:58:07.880 Anti-hate.ca.

00:58:09.360 Right now, we're kind of running a pledge campaign.

00:58:12.500 And how it works is you can go to pledge.anti-hate.ca,

00:58:15.320 or there's a link on our homepage, a pop-up that'll come up. And what we're asking people to do is to

00:58:21.700 commit to take action in their local community. We're not going to direct or tell you what to do.

00:58:25.440 That's not our role in this. You can tell we're overworked. But we do provide some guides and

00:58:29.860 toolkits and resources to help you get started in your local community if you want to take

00:58:34.240 meaningful actions against hate and racism. And that would also put you on our email list. And

00:58:40.220 when we have a big, important breaking story, we'll send you that. We don't publish as much

00:58:44.880 as we used to because we focus on our big investigations. So I promise being on our

00:58:47.940 email list is not going to overwhelm you or be a waste of time. It'll be interesting stuff.

00:58:52.940 Awesome. Okay. We have a question here from PD Lemon E who says, you mentioned that there are

00:58:59.860 far more men than women on white date. Does that ratio seem accurate? Was the Canadian Anti-Hate

00:59:05.980 Network able to link accounts held by women on white date with women in Canada?

00:59:09.860 Yes. So I think the number was 86% men, 14% women, which I think is pretty bad numbers. I don't know 0.80

00:59:17.060 how that measures up to like, I don't know, a Tinder or a hinge or what have you. I don't know

00:59:21.400 how that measures up, but it's not a good ratio. Yes, we were able to link accounts to women and

00:59:28.900 some of the people in public importance that I believe we'll be reporting on, a couple of them

00:59:34.240 will be women. Again, because we need to go through every single due diligence step and 0.99

00:59:39.160 verification i can't give a name right now but that one of the teachers that we were talking

00:59:43.720 about was a woman we also found somebody we believe was a uh uh like a like support staff

00:59:52.140 at a shelter so like a social worker um and and their trajectory if it is indeed this person is

00:59:57.260 interesting it looks as though that you know they had a role um as a as a social worker and then it

01:00:03.220 looks like covet happened and they kind of became conspiratorial and then some years later they end

01:00:08.140 up on white date. So, I mean, I can't say one thing definitively led to the other, but here 0.89

01:00:12.080 are things that happened in order. Another woman we found had been part of Aryan Nations and says

01:00:20.980 she still very much holds those beliefs. So this would be a pretty extreme neo-Nazi group. So yes,

01:00:27.240 there are women that we will be reporting on should we be able to do every level of our due

01:00:31.860 diligence. Distant Tranquility wants to know, is there any way we can volunteer directly for

01:00:38.080 the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. I super appreciate that. I don't want to be dismissive of that. Like,

01:00:46.420 I really, really, really appreciate that. The issue comes down to our capacity again, you know,

01:00:51.200 being only three or four people and working really hard in these investigations. We don't have,

01:00:58.180 you know, we don't have a plan. We don't have the time to engage people meaningfully like that.

01:01:05.380 If we could expand, one of the positions I would love to hire for if we had all the money in the world would be a community manager where we could more directly involve folks like you that want to help.

01:01:14.860 As things are right now, we very much take tips from the public if something is discovered that needs a light shone on it.

01:01:22.620 We read everything that we get.

01:01:23.980 We can't follow up on everything, but that's a way you can help.

01:01:26.840 But also, if you sign the pledge and then check out our guide, 40 ways, even more so than we need help, things need to happen locally in communities to take a stand against racism and hate.

01:01:38.340 So there's many things that you can do. And I'd say if there's not a group in your area, start one.

01:01:42.960 Somebody wrote us back right after the pledge thing, and I thought it was the sweetest thing in the world, how they were going to start a book club and started discussing Timothy Snyder's book on fascism

01:01:51.860 and use that as a way to get people together to galvanize like anti-racism organizing locally

01:01:57.980 where they lived. And I just thought that was a beautiful, creative, lovely idea and really

01:02:02.400 appreciate people taking their own initiative on stuff like that. Awesome. All right. We got a

01:02:07.100 super chat here. And I also just want to acknowledge we got a bunch of just generally

01:02:11.000 supportive super chats without questions over the course of the interview. So thank you to all of

01:02:15.940 you who sent those. They're really appreciated. Michael Palin wants to know, I live in Saskatchewan.

01:02:21.440 what orgs should i be aware of out here i don't know if you have those off the top of your head

01:02:25.200 evan um sorry i mean i'm sure that uh michael if you want to send me an email i will give you a

01:02:32.000 better answer because we it's a lot of stuff at one time um yes you will like i can definitively

01:02:38.000 say that yes you will um it's very likely you have one or more active clubs out there and active

01:02:42.480 clubs of course are those whites only workout groups that um preparing for what they see as

01:02:48.960 as like an inevitable and necessary use of violence to enact their worldview, defend themselves, 0.71

01:02:53.680 attack their opponents, in some cases, enact a political agenda. I can say I would be very,

01:02:59.300 very surprised if you didn't have an active club there, but I would have to check my notes. But

01:03:02.620 please send an email if you want to follow up. All right. Zwarhal, thank you so much for the

01:03:08.140 super chat. He wants to know, with so many young men being recruited by hateful influencers,

01:03:13.040 what should be done to protect them?

01:03:16.940 I mean, that's a million dollar question.

01:03:26.140 I'll tell a story.

01:03:27.380 Let me tell a story as a partial answer to that question.

01:03:31.520 I got an email from a high school student

01:03:34.540 who they and their friends

01:03:38.700 had been looking at the Dominion Society of Canada,

01:03:41.920 which is a white nationalist group that likes to talk about remigration which is a euphemism

01:03:47.280 for ethnic cleansing they mean removing people who aren't white and the right kinds of european

01:03:50.580 from canada but you know there's a lot of sort of far-right talking points that this uh that this

01:03:56.360 this student emails me with um but instead of agreeing with it or going along with his friends

01:04:03.240 you know you can tell that he's read some some stuff and he's using some far-right language and

01:04:07.920 conspiracy theories but but he writes us just like asking the question like is it true you hate white

01:04:12.780 people right so it enabled me to have a dialogue with this student where i took a long time writing

01:04:19.760 this this email response because i was just i was just so touched that that somebody reached out

01:04:23.460 like that and talking about you know adding nuance to things by which i mean they say that

01:04:31.680 immigration is to blame for crime and um let's focus on that right like danger and crime and

01:04:39.720 violence right and i posed him a question because i'm like okay let's think about this for a moment 0.85

01:04:45.360 like like a sociologist what factors go in to a crime rate or violence happening right and i said

01:04:52.720 let's presume for the moment this is not even true either this is just a thought exercise but let's

01:04:56.920 presume for a moment that the number one determinant of how much crime is in an area is the opportunity

01:05:02.620 that people have in that area or socioeconomic status that they have in that area are their jobs

01:05:06.840 can do they feel like they can get ahead in life is their education and i said if so if you have a

01:05:12.360 young man and his parents came from somewhere else in the world as immigrants and the government

01:05:19.160 policies at the time didn't support immigrants very well let's say their their father had you 0.50

01:05:22.540 know a skilled a skilled job or was a doctor or something but they come here and they don't have

01:05:28.940 that level of economic opportunity because there just weren't supports in place for them to have

01:05:32.620 that and as a result they grow up less affluent their kid grows up less affluent not a great

01:05:38.600 neighborhood not a lot of opportunities and that kid goes and does a crime right my question to him

01:05:43.660 was are we going to blame the fact that you know that they they're socioeconomic class are we going

01:05:50.440 of blame the fact that they're an immigrant. They're like, what's responsible in this narrative

01:05:53.920 life story of somebody's life? What is responsible for the crime having happened? And like, this is

01:05:59.740 just a thought exercise, because there could be a million other things. But I tried to introduce

01:06:02.500 to this student just the idea of, if somebody is selling you a simple answer, like immigration is

01:06:08.500 the cause of all of the problems, they're lying to you. Because, you know, there's people who spend

01:06:13.180 their entire lives weighing and trying to determine how much of something is determined

01:06:17.300 of something else in sociology, for example. And the answer is always that it's just incredibly

01:06:22.000 complicated. And so, so that's what I tried to convey to this, this student. I had a positive

01:06:27.300 response to that. And I really liked that. And, and they had some follow-up questions and we

01:06:32.160 corresponded. So I think that that is part of the answer. It's, it's really, when we talk about

01:06:38.580 media literacy, it's often quite vague. I really think that part of media literacy, you know,

01:06:42.940 teaching young people to be like intellectually curious, but also just like not to take an easy

01:06:46.960 answer and to recognize that things are actually quite nuanced and complicated could be a protective

01:06:51.540 factor. And then the second answer I would give is that we have all of these hateful influencers.

01:06:59.600 The more sort of progressive or reliable influencers that we have, like our friend 0.78

01:07:06.520 Rachel here, the more places other people can come for their info entertainment, right, where

01:07:11.740 they're learning with the news of the day in a nice digestible format. The progressives have been

01:07:15.520 slow to jump onto that whereas the the far right and the new nazis and stuff took up so much of

01:07:20.160 that space so early on but i don't know do you think the pendulum's swinging on that at all

01:07:24.360 rachel do you see more folks like you out there i think so i think that uh you know because

01:07:29.780 one of the uh i think one of the most helpful things is having people who are also like trained

01:07:36.020 journalists on there because they they can provide that sort of reliability of information

01:07:40.920 And I'm definitely seeing more newsrooms show an openness to adopting this, if not, you know, definitely individual journalists.

01:07:49.920 So that's been nice to see. It's still slow going.

01:07:53.780 The reality is there's a lot more money on the right because they tend to be defending moneyed interests like, you know, billionaires not having to pay more taxes and things like that.

01:08:02.700 So, you know, there's not a ton of money to be made out there.

01:08:05.080 Like right now, I'm probably one of the more prominent voices and I'm not exactly I still can't afford to put a down payment.

01:08:10.920 on any kind of house. So, you know, it's, it's not, um, a get rich quick scheme if you're doing

01:08:16.540 it from a more progressive perspective, that's for sure. But I do think that we're seeing more

01:08:21.580 people adopt these tools as a means of storytelling, which I think is really

01:08:25.220 important. You have to meet people where they're at. Um, and then there's one last super chat

01:08:29.540 question here. And then I think we are definitely well over time here. So I'll quickly take this

01:08:34.440 one. Um, and it's honestly just kind of, you can give like a quick answer. It's a big question,

01:08:39.880 But they said, Skeet Sayers says, why do these idiots not understand that diversity is a good thing? 0.99

01:08:46.740 Which is, I think, a deceptively big question, but I don't know if you have any kind of quick answer to it. 0.99

01:08:52.440 I'm going to give a long answer to this.

01:08:55.640 It's the thing that strikes me all the time, and I don't think we think or talk about a lot about groups like the Dominion Society and Second Sons,

01:09:03.000 when they're saying that they want like an ethonationalist country or that people can't

01:09:10.560 get along or that there's certain groups in society that are inherently violent or criminal

01:09:14.480 or can't get along with others is it's just such a defeatist worldview. You know, if you look at

01:09:22.280 the whole course of human history and evolution, we can also talk about like social structures,

01:09:27.080 evolution of how we relate to each other, the new media that we have. And we are constantly evolving

01:09:32.140 when it comes to like our social evolution as a species and multiculturalism is is part of that

01:09:38.800 of course you'll find tons of examples from history but but the globalization is huge and

01:09:42.740 then the multiculturalism is a big thing and there's they have such a defeatist worldview

01:09:47.540 about it even though it's it seems like a relatively uh new widespread thing in human

01:09:51.940 history and i just think that's a little embarrassing for them because they're just 1.00

01:09:55.120 like these people we can never get along with and i'm like well yeah maybe because assholes like you 0.98

01:10:00.180 right that like make it harder for us to get along with each other because you're constantly 0.98

01:10:05.080 spreading hate um diversity of course is a wonderful and beautiful and lovely thing

01:10:10.700 i couldn't imagine what my life would be like and my own development would be like if i hadn't 0.90

01:10:15.420 met all the varied groups of people and people that i've met through through my entire life i

01:10:19.920 think i'd be so much so much poorer for it um but why don't they get the diversity is a good thing

01:10:25.880 some of them don't have any positive experiences with it right you know some of them did not grow 0.98

01:10:31.880 up around other groups of people or might have had one or two negative experiences or just fucking 0.92

01:10:35.540 look at the propaganda of of awful things happening that are blamed on groups of people 0.78

01:10:40.100 right like they've been propagandized to just look at video clips short video clips of like

01:10:44.360 a crime occurring where the perpetrator might be an immigrant or something like that and it's like

01:10:48.380 yeah a lot of crimes happen every day a lot of crimes don't have that kind of a perpetrator

01:10:52.300 but such a spotlight is put on to try to paint a narrative that all members of

01:10:56.680 some group are violent or dangerous or whatever. And, and unfortunately,

01:11:01.000 like with new media, it's just, it's just very effective.

01:11:05.120 Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. That was really nice, Evan.

01:11:09.060 And I think we're going to have to wrap things up.

01:11:12.340 I did want to quickly pull up one resource before we fully stop this live

01:11:17.440 stream,

01:11:17.740 just in case there happens to be anyone listening or watching this who has

01:11:22.120 someone they love who is involved with these groups or getting increasingly radicalized. Or

01:11:28.300 if you're someone watching who's a member of these groups, like there is help for you to get out.

01:11:33.580 It's a lonely, difficult way to live your life. And there are so many resources and programs out

01:11:40.420 there. You can find several of them under Public Safety Canada's Prevention and Intervention

01:11:47.040 Programs page. They're listed by region with contact information and everything you might

01:11:51.980 read. If you're watching on video, I have them up on screen. But if you just search Public Safety

01:11:57.080 Canada Prevention and Intervention Programs, you should be able to pull it up. So I just wanted to

01:12:02.840 show those so that people know that there is help out there and you don't have to keep living this

01:12:09.600 way. They do incredible work. Also, I just add they follow social worker ethics, right? So like

01:12:15.000 it's like talking to a doctor or a therapist or what have you, um, if you want to talk to them

01:12:19.340 about anybody on a confidential basis. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, Evan, thank you so much

01:12:24.860 for your time today. This is a really great conversation and I'm so grateful for the work

01:12:28.840 that all you guys do and special shout out to Hazel this week for her badass work on the white

01:12:34.320 date investigation all right thanks rachel thank you for listening to this week's episode of bubble

01:12:46.400 pop i'm rachel gilmore your least favorite person's least favorite journalist if you enjoyed

01:12:50.800 this episode consider subscribing on youtube patreon sub stack or wherever you like to listen

01:12:56.000 you can also find me on tiktok instagram twitch and blue sky i'd like to give a special thank you

01:13:01.520 to Hans Vivien Wenzel for making the incredibly groovy music for Bubble Pop. You can find more

01:13:06.300 of his stuff on Spotify under the artist name Hans. That's a lowercase h with an exclamation

01:13:11.840 mark. Thank you again for spending this time with me. This is my dream job. I know I say that every

01:13:17.100 week, but that's because it's true every week and I couldn't do it for one second without your

01:13:21.620 support. So thank you and I'll see you next time.

01:13:31.520 You

Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore - March 13, 2026

Unmasking white nationalists across Canada (feat. Evan Balgord)

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