Canada’s Racist Movement: A History of Violence
Public attention to Canada’s racist movement swells in the aftermath of events like Charlottesville and the Quebec City mosque attack, but it has long been there, lingering in places like Stormfront, run by former Klansman Don Black
By Stewart Bell Global News
Posted August 20, 2017 11:29 am
ATF agent John Osburg with weapons and flag seized in 1981 from Canadian and U.S. racists planning Operation Red Dog, a coup on the island of Dominica.
On the Canada section of the U.S. white nationalist Internet forum Stormfront, you can buy “Not Muslim/Jewish” buttons as well as t-shirts that read, “Stop Immigration Now” and “It’s not illegal to be white … yet.”
“Diversity is a code word for white genocide,” reads a post in a thread titled, “Canada is over.” Another post seeks recruits for an Ontario group called the White Nationalist Front. “Long live the white man. Sieg heil,” a post reads.
Public attention to Canada’s racist movement swells in the aftermath of events like Charlottesville and the Quebec City mosque attack, but it has long been there, lingering in places like Florida-based Stormfront, run by former Klansman Don Black.
As a hate crimes investigator in Ontario and B.C., Terry Wilson has probed the Canadian franchises of groups like the Hammerskins and Volksfront. “These are well-organized, internationally-connected hate groups,” said the retired police detective.
Violence is central to far-right beliefs, said Wilson, a former member of the B.C. Hate Crime Team. “Most, if not all, far right groups believe that violence is the way to start racial holy war, which will restore the white persons’ position as the rulers of the world.”
Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege (right) with Aarne Polli.
During the 1920s, Ku Klux Klan chapters opened in Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and in the ‘70s, the Western Guard rallied around slogans like Keep Canada White, Jews Out and Hitler was Right.
Inspired after meeting former Klan boss David Duke in Louisiana, Wolfgang Droege and James McQuirter resurrected the Canadian KKK on Toronto’s Dundas St. in the early 1980s under the motto Racial Purity for Canadian Security.
To advance their goal of a white Canada, Droege and McQuirter helped organized a coup d’état, joining forces with Black and a team of mercenaries to overthrow the government of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. “Our purpose was to make a lot of money for white nationalist circles,” McQuirter said.
Undercover Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents infiltrated the plot, codenamed Operation Red Dog, and arrested Droege and Black as they were loading weapons onto a ship in New Orleans. McQuirter was arrested in Canada.