Acknowledging that Canada’s hate groups exist

Good assessment and commentary on Canada’s right-wing hate groups by Amarnath Amarasingam and Ryan Scrivens:

The results of a three-year national study published last year — involving interviews with Canadian law enforcement officials, community activists and current and former right-wing adherents, triangulated with analyses of open source intelligence — suggested that the foundations of hatred are complex and multifaceted, grounded in both individual and social conditions that strengthen and weaken the movement. Understanding these conditions, from a policy perspective, will provide us with a starting point to counter right-wing extremism in Canada.

Some of the factors that strengthen the hate movement include: Canada’s history of racism; a political climate of intolerance that arises from time to time (for example, during Quebec’s Charter of Values debate); media (mis)representations of particular minority groups (for example, Muslims depicted as terrorists after 9/11); and a weak law enforcement response to hate groups. In many respects, it is Canada’s national political and social climate that enables bigotry and hatred to exist in the country, a climate that provides right-wing extremists with a backdrop against which they can recruit new members and spread their radical beliefs.

On the other hand, factors that weaken or destabilize this already unstable movement include a general lack of ideological commitment in hate groups and infighting and transiency within them, as well as strong and visible law enforcement response in certain localities, resilient communities and the presence of an antiracist movement. In other words, hate groups in Canada are generally unorganized and lack the ability to strategize and sustain themselves, and law enforcement officials who put pressure on these groups are generally successful at dismantling them. This is particularly the case when antiracist movements and communities work closely with law enforcement and share intelligence on hate groups or their adherents.

It is difficult to know exactly what the policy response in Canada should be to right-wing extremism, but, in general terms, we need to acknowledge that hate groups do exist in Canada and that they do pose a threat to the safety and security of our communities. Coming to terms with this is a first step in developing policy initiatives to resist the radical right. Discussions about counterterrorism or counterextremism policy cannot focus solely on jihadism. The Trump administration has rightly come under criticism for its decision to cut federal funding for organizations that are fighting right-wing violence, such as Life After Hate.

Second, we must directly exploit the strengths and weaknesses that are inherent in hate groups and their environments in order to disrupt their growth and sustainability, through an approach that includes individuals from different sectors of society. In other words, policy initiatives must include the voices of key stakeholders who have unique insight into right-wing extremism, including law enforcement officials, community activists and former right-wing extremists.

Information about Canadian hate groups is fragmented. Law enforcement officials, for example, may have one important piece of information about a particular hate group while community activists or former extremists may have another. Policy initiatives must bring these stakeholders together to develop effective responses to the threat from the radical right in Canada. We mustn’t look at the violence in Europe and the United States and complacently conclude that we are somehow immune. We are not.

Source: Acknowledging that Canada’s hate groups exist