Is Stephen Harper's Past Coming Back to Haunt Us?

I'm a book junkie. I read voraciously, mostly non-fiction, and political. I haunt used book stores, rummage sales, etc., hoping to find something I haven't read. At a library sale this week I picked up a copy of 'Contenders: The Tory Quest for Power', which was still in it's plastic wrap. Never opened it had that new book smell, though it was written in 1983.

I haven't read it yet, but as I do with most new acquisitions, I went right to the index, looking for familiar names. There were three references to the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper's old haunt, so I was curious what the authors might have been saying about the NCC in 1983, before it went mainstream and "legit".

Apparently, they were already actively involved in reshaping the Tory Party, and ran an aggressive campaign against Joe Clarke, a Red Tory, and someone they felt was taking the old PC Party to the left. In a bit of deja vu, they launched an ABC campaign (Anybody But Clarke), promoting right-wing options like David Crombie and John Crosbie.

All of this fit in with articles I've already written, but what struck me was the fact that the authors lumped the National Citizens Coalition in with Flesherton and the anti-Communist movement of Ron Gostik. Anyone not familiar with 'Flesherton', it was at one time the leading distributor of anti-Semitic material in the world. Not the town, which earned a bad rap because of it, but the hate movement that was operating from there.

This was debated extensively in the Ontario legislature, one example here. Don't be confused by the debate, where those asked questions, actually answered them. I've linked to Ontario legislature debates under Mike Harris, where NO QUESTION IS EVER ANSWERED. Only partisan nonsense. Much like what passes for debate in the House of Commons today under Harper.

Mike Harris on steroids.

But I remembered that the NCC was once considered to be, not only from the far-right, but also an alarmingly racist organization. They were actually behind the infamous "boat people" campaign, a humanitarian effort to rescue those fleeing Vietnam.

You can listen to the podcast of the campaign here. Very disturbing. Stephen Harper was only a member of the NCC then (joined in 1980), though he not only stayed with the group but eventually ran it.

Jeffrey Simpson has an interesting column this week about Harper's past, with a suggestion that he no longer holds those views. But I would argue some of that, especially when it comes to healthcare. Harper says one thing but clearly means something entirely different. However, that's for another story.

I can't help thinking that Simpson may be trying to suggest that Ignatieff is no different that Harper, so we should go with the devil we know. Read between the lines.

Stephen Harper and Far Right Causes

I have already written of Stephen Harper's involvement in a right-wing vanguard group called the Northern Foundation, and what is compelling about articles written of the group in the early 1990s, is that Harper is always considered to be from the 'far-right'. We're not talking right-wing conservatism, but far right causes. This was before he became a household name.

Howard Goldenthal, formerly a writer with Toronto's Now magazine, describes the foundation as a "clearing house" for right-wing groups and ideas ... The foundation's organizing pamphlet, "Standing up for Canada's Silent Majority" confirms that goal. It bemoans the fact that conservatives fought — "and mostly lost" — single issue battles in the 1970s and 80s and "laments ... what has become normal': ... turbans in the RCMP, destabilizing immigration, government funding to radical feminist and homosexual groups ... " (1)

"‘The Northern Foundation was established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group [pro-white]. . . lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper ... " (1)

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (2)

"...The foundation's magazine [The Northern Voice] carries a half-page ad in every issue for the Phoenix, a pro-white South Africa magazine, and regularly solicits support from members on special causes, from property rights to English language rights. Attacks on homosexuals and homosexual rights are frequent ..." (1)

Jeffrey Simpson mentions none of this in his piece.

But I want to focus on the immigration policies, something that has come to light recently with Jason Kenney using his Parliamentary budget to fund raise an effort to exploit the immigrant communities. (Please join this group to stop the rebranding of Canada. I'll post a petition soon)

When the Reform Party was being created, one of the players in the early days was Paul Fromm, a well known neo-Nazi. No, this is not guilt by association, but I mention it only to highlight the Reform Party's immigration policies. Policies written by Stephen Harper and cribbed from the National Citizen's Coalition Handbook. (see William Johnson's Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3)

Fromm started two groups. Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR) and Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE). Being reminded that the NCC once promoted racism, I took another look at Shofar (anti-racist website) and what they had to say about Fromm and his connections to the Reform Party. I have mentioned in previous posts that in exchange for getting Peter Brimelow to speak at a Reform convention, Fromm was allowed to sell memberships at a table outside the main room.

But what I missed the first time around was that the Reform Party was also able to recruit members at Paul Fromm's events (an activity he claimed was "brisk"):

On June 13, 1991, several Heritage Front members attended a meeting of Paul Fromm's Canadians for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR) where Overfield from the Reform Party set up a table to sign people up for the Party.

... it is interesting to note that the policies of both groups stem from the idea that minorities are receiving unjustifiable special treatment under current Canadian legislation.

... The attraction of Reform for Overfield and like-minded persons, he said was that it was strictly white bread, 100 percent white Canadians, really anti-immigration; there was really no difference between those people and them.

Another interesting bit of information from the site, was that Paul Fromm reprinted the Reform Party immigration policies verbatim in his own literature.

The Proof is in ... Well ... the Proof

It's easy to discount Harper's involvement in these right-wing causes, as Dr. Debra Chin says:

Mr. Harper would eventually "officially" break-away from this group. Indeed, it would be unfair to Mr. Harper, to continually link him ideologically to a group that he may have simply sought to explore, in his process of political exploration and outreach. However, upon closer examination, the substantive policy direction of the Conservative government, appears to be emphatically driven by the expressed agenda of the Northern Foundation. This includes massive cuts to programs aimed, for example, at advancing the status of women; and protecting minorities from institutionalized discrimination.

I agree, because the immigration and foreign aid policies that the Harper government (the official name of Canada now), follow the agenda of groups like C-FAR and their attack on human rights groups, those of CAFE.

"Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society…It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff." (Stephen Harper, BC Report, January 11, 1999)

Harper government closes Human Rights Commission offices

Canadian Human Rights Commission closes Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax offices
NEWS / Public servants say closures part of Harper's anti-rights agenda

Harper government closing Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) offices

In a speech Stephen Harper made to Institute for Research on Public Policy, in May of 2003, he referred to multiculturalism as a "weak nation strategy" and:

To ensure that Canada is "never again" perceived as a potential source of threats, Harper called for a "long-overdue" reform of our refugee programs. (3)

This fits in with what Lawrence Martin wrote in his book Harperland, that Stephen Harper doesn't view the world as a global community, but as a "Clash of Civilizations"

Let's look at what his government has done to de-fund immigration and foreign aid:

Immigrant settlement funds cut for Ont.

Immigration services cuts wrong

Cuts hurt immigrant services

The Cost of Closing Canadian Embassies in Africa

Liberal women blast Stephen Harper’s ‘shell game’ on foreign aid

Tories target foreign aid to tame deficit (why not fighter jets and corporate tax cuts?)

Stephen Harper is diminishing Canada's international reputation

Africa hears more reasons to do less

The bulk of Canada's foreign aid is now going to Afghanistan to fuel a war and pay private security firms.

And this brings me to Jason Kenney and his new fundraising campaign. Headines will be all about his abuse of taxpayer money (like abusing taxpayer money under Harper is news), but we should look at their exploitation of immigrants.

When Kenney was running the Canadian Taxpayers Federation he spoke out against any money going to immigration services or multiculturalism. Stephen Harper supported groups that opposed immigration and human rights and while in office has substantially cut funding to both.

Kenney's campaign is about trying to win a majority on the backs of immigrants.

But given the massive control that Stephen Harper has been able to secure with a minority, why is having a majority so important? What more can he do to us? He has erased our borders and sold us out to the Americans in a series of aggressive trade deals.

He has isolated us from the international community and severely damaged our ranking in the world?

What's left? Remember that Stephen Harper used to look more like the image at the top of this post, before he used taxpayer money to hire an image consultant.

Something to think about.

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, Pg. 100-107

2. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 121

3. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, Pg. 19-24

How Will Harper's UN Loss Affect the Immigrant Community?

I always find it interesting when I read how the immigrant communities are now supporting the Harper government.

The Reform Party was notoriously anti-immigration and Stephen Harper has referred to multi-culturalism as a "weak nation strategy".

But they realized that if they wanted to make any gains outside of the West they would have to at least publicly, tone it down a bit.

You could still buy C-Far memberships at their conventions, but c'mon. They allowed one Asian woman in that room full of white faces. That was progress.

But despite their exploitation, we've learned this week that India voted against Canada's UN bid. That's significant after Harper dancing there and all.

But then refusing to answer questions, smashing cameras and roughing up the Indian Press, didn't exactly win them friends.

But when they suffer such a defeat on the International stage, this could have a snowball effect. There were reasons for that rejection and since many immigrants maintain ties with their homeland, will they see the Harperites in a different light? A natural light?

Canadian Constitution Foundation: Follow the Money to Racism?

In 1971 a student newspaper, the Ubyssey, ran a story about a university professor who had made some seemingly racist comments to a local paper, resulting in calls for his dismissal.

A stormy controversy involving charges of racism against a history professor has erupted at the usually placid University of Western Ontario. Things came to a head Wednesday night when professor Kenneth Hilborn invaded a students meeting discussing demands for his dismissal and was involved in a scuffle with one of his denouncers .

The demands for the firing of the tenured professor arose from an article he had written, which appeared in the London Free Press. In this article Hilborn attacked those who support what he termed "terrorists" in South Africa . He said that the best way to end the apartheid system in that country was by a process of "erosion" . This could best be accomplished, the article went on, by increasing the prosperity of the white ruling class in South Africa . (1)

One of the first rules when covering a story is to follow the money, and in following the money to the Canadian Constitution Foundation*, one of their financial backers is Professor Kenneth Hillborn, an early Reform Party member who was (is?) on the president's counsel of the National Citizens Coalition**. He was also involved with a group called the Canadian South-African Society.

"The 300 members of CSAS (Canadian South-African Society) were mainly from large corporations, but there were also academics, churchmen and a Quebec Superior Court judge. One of these is Professor K.H.W. Hilborn of the University of Western Ontario on London. He was on the board of directors and is a regular contributor to the right-wing foreign affairs magazine 'International Conservative Insight.' He is one of the people honoured in the Northern Foundation's Northerner magazine, and is on the president's council of the National Citizens Coalition. A recent member of the Reform Party, Hilborn hopes Reform foreign policy will be fleshed out with all this orientation towards the likes of the ANC (Nelson Mandela's party) with it's strong Communist component ... foreign aid should go only to countries not practicing socialism ..' (2)

The Northern Foundation was a vanguard group set up to establish a network of far-right organizations, born out of Reform's decision to allow extremists to join their party.(3)

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (4)

What the Canadian South-African Society, of whic Hillborn was a member, did, was defend apartheid in South Africa:

"(CSAS) was founded to bring together Canadian and American subsidiary business interests in South Africa ...Their profit levels are high - often twice their returns in companies ventures in Canada - due to their ability to pay low wages and almost no benefits to black labour.' (that's what this was really about)
"Most of the thirty member board are from Ontario ... a few were from the west ... one of these was Norman Wallace of Saskatoon ... a founding member of the Reform party ... He set up Eagle Staff Import Export Ltd. to further business ties with South Africa.

"Wallace created considerable controversy in 1987 when he and others involved in a group called the Indian Business Development Association put up money for a South African tour for five Saskatchewan Indian leaders ... intended to give the Pretoria regime a public relations weapon - using aboriginal conditions in Canada to demonstrate the Canadian government's hypocrisy. (5)

Besides being a staunch defender of South African apartheid, and defender of whites to make money, Hillborn has also, like the CCF, been an advocate for "free speech." He has had a long association with people like Paul Fromm***, and his book; The Cult of the Victim: Leftist Ideology in the '90s, can still be purchased on Fromm's C-Far website. In fact Paul Fromm wrote the preface.

Hillborn has also fought diligently against the rights of First Nations, which has earned him a spot on the Nizkor list of those associated with hate groups.

In 1997 when there was a move to make the title of "Masters' more gender neutral, Hillborn spoke out against it.

A second motion was also passed which, if accepted by Senate, would allow current Western masters degree holders the option to change their degree to a magisteriate. "It's a non-existent word for a non-existent problem," said Kenneth Hilborn, Western history professor and Senator. "[Magisteriate] is not in any established dictionary. It's feminist clap-trap." (6)

"Feminist clap-trap". I like him already

I do support the right to free speech and academic freedom on campus, but it's important to expose the money and power behind many of these organizations, like the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who back up the Reform-Alliance Conservative movement.

Is their fight for freedom of speech part of an advocacy group that would allow organizations like C-Far to attack our immigrant communities? Many of the groups that fell under the Northern Foundation umbrella were actually neo-nazi. Will this open the door to overt anti-semitism?

There was a reason for the adoption of human rights commissions, and people like John Carpay, Ezra Levant, John Weston and even Dr. Hillborn, need to understand what they were. These ridiculous lawsuits and constitutional challenges threaten to change who we are as Canadians.

It's time to start fighting back against groups like the CCF.

Footnotes:

*The Canadian Constitution Foundation was the brainchild of Reform-Conservative MP John Weston. He stepped down as the head of CCF to run as an MP, and Reform-Alliance-Conservative insider, John Carpay has taken over the reins. "The Ontario Health Coalition described the CCF as an “extremely right-wing” legal advocacy group that uses the Charter of Rights to promote a conservative agenda, including the end of medicare. "In 2005 Weston talked to the Calgary Herald about his counter intuitive approach to the Charter, which has typically been praised by the liberal-left and attacked by the political right. “It’s here, there’s not much point in wishing it weren’t. Now, we need to make it mean what it is supposed to mean,” Weston told the Herald. “Conservatives must reclaim it for conservative values.” "To that end, the CCF and Weston fought the federal Liberal government in the courts, challenging the Nisga’a Treaty ... The CCF is also funding a class action legal challenge to medicare in Alberta and an individual action in Ontario."" (7)

**The National Citizens Coalition is a rather secretive right-wing advocacy organization, heavily financed by corporations. They were initially established to put an end to Canada's medicare system. Stephen Harper has been a member for three decades and has served as both it's president and vice-president.

***Paul Fromm was a Toronto high school teacher who was fired when a video surfaced of him at a Hitler's birthday celebration giving a Nazi salute to a Confederate flag. He was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at Reform Party assemblies.

Sources:

1. UWO Prof Attacked as Racist, The Ubyssey, University of British Columbia, November 23, 1971

2. Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 104

3. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 115

4. Harrison, 1995, Pg. 121

5. Dobbin. 1992. Pg. 100-107

6. Fighting for an option to be no one's master, By Kevin Gale, University of Western Ontario Gazette, March 21, 1997

7. New MP profile: West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky's John Weston. Vancouver Sun. October 18, 2008

Stephen Harper's Radical Roots With Paul Fromm

The above video is rather long but early into it you can hear Mr. Fromm speaking of a so-called Mexican invasion. To be honest I hadn't heard of such a thing until Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper 'put a stop to it'. I just thought that before discussing the relationship between Stephen Harper and Paul Fromm you might like to see and hear from the man who has been described by the media as "one of Canada's most notorious white supremacists".

Since the Harper Reform Conservatives have given us permission to delve into the lives of politicians, going as far back as possible, I've started posting little nuggets from the PM's past that should shake free a few skeletons.

It has been said that Harper is very secretive about his past, giving strict instructions that no one in his party discuss it. Well, I'm not in his party, just an ordinary Canadian with legitimate concerns about the roots of his ideology.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when Stephen Harper and Paul Fromm met, but by 1987 they were, if not friends, at least acquaintances with mutual friends. During the founding of the Reform Party, he played a fairly significant role by arranging to have author and journalist, Peter Brimelow, speak at their convention. As reward, Fromm was allowed to set up a table in the hall, where he distributed literature and sold memberships to his anti-immigration organization C-FAR.

I'm going into Peter Brimelow's story in a separate post, but his book Patriot Game: Canada and the Canadian Question Revisited, is said to have been one of the motivations behind the formation of the new party. After reading it, Harper and his buddy John Weissenberger, another Harper patronage appointment, were so enthralled with the book that they bought ten copies and gave them to friends. (Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada by William Johnson ISBN 0-7710 4350-3, 2005, Pg. 52)

So when Paul Fromm said that he could get Brimelow to attend the convention, Harper must have been beside himself. Both Fromm and Brimelow were anti-immigration activists who supported each others organizations: C-Far for Fromm, V-Dare for Brimelow.

The person who may have been instrumental in introducing Fromm to our current PM, was Leigh Smith, an early Reform Party member.

"The Reform Party under the watchful eye of Preston Manning and Stephen Harper housed former Western Guard (an infamous Toronto-area hate group launched in the 1960's) members like Leigh Smith, and Wolfgang Droege."

In the book 'Web of Hate', we learn, while discussing Don Andrews: "In February 1967, he (Andrews) and two other men, school teacher Paul Fromm and University of Toronto student Leigh Smith formed the Edmund Burke Society ... Along with Communism, which it loathed with a vengeance, the Edmund Burke Society opposed immigration, sex education, welfare, homosexuality, abortion, big government and Pierre Trudeau." (Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network - Author: Warren Kinsella Toronto : Harper Collins, 1994 ISBN 0-00-255074-1 Pg. 207)

Mr. Kinsella goes on to say that when the Society was reformatted into the Western Guard, both Smith and Fromm left feeling that it was becoming too extreme. "... Smith, who moved to Ottawa and later became involved in Preston Manning's Reform Party" (Pg. 208)

Therefore, it could very well have been Smith who introduced Fromm to Harper and subsequently Peter Brimelow.

However, there was another connection with Harper and the Northern Foundation he helped to create with Brimelow, Gairdner and other extreme right-wing conservatives.

"The Northern Foundation was established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group . . . lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper ... " Their goal was in part to discredit the anti-apartheid movement. (Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7)

and

From Wikipedia: "In the late 1970s, Fromm also founded Canadian Friends of Rhodesia to support the white minority rule regime of Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front. In the mid to late 1980s, Fromm's organizations were involved in advocacy on behalf of South Africa's apartheid regime, and opposing the movement to impose economic sanctions on the country .... In the late 1980s, Fromm was an active member of the Reform Party of Canada."

Paul Fromm would move in and out of the Reform/Alliance Party. (He joined the Alliance in 2000 to help get Stockwell Day elected as party leader) Expelled for his racist views, after they had passed a motion to allow fringe groups, was a smart move. However, it begs the question, why Fromm and not Brimelow, or William Gairdner?

After an "... anti-Semitic column by former Texas KKK Grand Dragon Louis Beam Jr. (in one of the neo-nazi publications) the August 1992 issue carried a lengthy account of Wolfgang Droege's involvement with the Reform party. In late February 1991, Bill Dunphy exposed in the Sun the fact that Droege and four other Heritage Front activists maintained memberships in Toronto area Reform Party riding associations. Immediately thereafter, Reform Party leader Preston Manning ordered the group expelled." (Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network - Author: Warren Kinsella Toronto : Harper Collins, 1994 ISBN 0-00-255074-1 Pg. 243)

"The expulsion enraged the Heritage Front, which saw the Reform Party's policies as very similar to, if not indistinguishable from, its own. How could a party that went on record opposing immigration policies that "radically alter" Canada's ethnic make-up turn around and shun a group like the Heritage Front, Droege asked, when the Heritage Front supports the very same approach? Privately, spokesmen for B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress admitted that Droege had a good point." (Pg. 243-44)

Later Fromm and others would suggest that Stephen Harper knew of the neo-Nazi elements in the Party yet allowed them to stay. In fact Paul Fromm continued to speak at Northern Foundation conferences.

Naturally Harper denied this, but really, how could he not have known?

Sunshine Boys and a Flash in the Pan

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The Toronto Sun became famous for their 'Sunshine Girls', and in 1972, under pressure from female readers, they introduced their first ever 'Sunshine Boy'.

Over the years, the daily Boy has featured the likes of Mark Messier, Rod Stewart, Ravishing Rick Rude and Mike Tyson. Besides, of course, the best Toronto has to offer. (1)

In 1980 one of those Sunshine Boys was James Alexander McQuirter, whose picture was published under the name Jim. "He'd like to find himself a seat on Parliament Hill," read the caption under his photograph. (2)

According to former colleague Robert Smith: "I worked with Jim McQuirter, the only Canadian Klansman to become a Toronto Sun "Sunshine Boy" We nicknamed him "Media Man," after a song by the 1980's band Flash in the Pan*". (3)

McQuirter would go on to lead the Canadian chapter of the KKK but it was a long journey.

Wolfgang and Jim

James Alexander "Jim" McQuirter was born in May of 1958, the eldest of five children, to a middle-class family in North York. At the age of 14, he began reading hate literature, that he tried to share with fellow students at York Mills Collegiate, hoping to convert his peers. His parents were less than impressed and forbid his discussing racial issues at home, so he took to streets to find kindred souls.

In 1975, when just 16, he met Wolfgang Droege and the two became instant friends.

Recalls Droege: "McQuirter was a very smart fellow. He was young, articulate and intelligent. Very capable, with a lot of ideas. We met, and we started to form a close friendship. (4)

McQuirter joined the Western Guard while still in his teens and describes his decision to get involved in far-right causes:

James Alexander McQuirter was attracted to Don Andrews's organization while still in his teens. His background was different from that of his fellow Guard members, many of whom seemed to have inherited their fascist leanings from their European families or experiences ... [and claimed to have come from a "liberal, middle class" home in the Toronto borough of North York. At "about 14 or 15" years of age McQuirter, through his own readings, became convinced of the inferiority of blacks and Jews and started to try and win his friends at York Mills Collegiate over to his beliefs: "I was always a conservationist. When I was going to high school, I was interested in the whales and seals. Then I started reading about some of the population statistics of the white race. We're a dying species. I used to talk to other conversationists about this, but they weren't interested — it was all racist stuff to them. But at the time, I wasn't a racist. I just thought, well, gee, everything should be protected.**

So I was forced to look at different groups, so-called right-wing fanatical groups. I was interested in what they had to offer, what their solutions were." McQuirter's parents apparently did not take too kindly to their son's new ideological bent, and he was told by his parents not to talk about the race question at home. "Today, I don't see any of [my parents] very much," he said in one newspaper interview. "Let's say they don't agree with me." After he graduated from high school, McQuirter spent four years in the Canadian militia [then] joined up with Don Andrews "... the Western Guard was the only game in town," McQuirter explains. Andrews was instrumental in fleshing out the style and substance of the young McQuirter's right-wing politics. 1 remember McQuirter coming to my house in the early days when he was about 18," recalls Andrews. "He used to come into my back yard and we would discuss organizational and political things. McQuirter didn't really know how to speak to the press all that much because he didn't have much background knowledge on political, international and other racial matters. So we would chit-chat and I would give him some pointers on how to answer some questions."" (4)

But McQuirter and Droege would eventually become disillusioned with Don Andrews.

We had the same feelings about Andrews. We felt he was trying to play this role of dictator and that he was not interested in working for our race or the advancement of our race. He just wanted a group so he could be the boss of it. He just wanted to be a mafia don." Andrews, not surprisingly, rejects this criticism: "A lot of Germans have an attitude problem when it comes to the right wing. They want to be in charge of everything—and, if they were, they would just go and lose it a third time." He pauses. "He got to be buddies with McQuirter, who wanted to do all sorts of wild things. Wolf assisted him in that." (5)

McQuirter certainly did want to do all sorts of "wild things".

In September 1976, Wolfgang Droege, John Ross Taylor and McQuirter attended David Duke's International Patriotic Congress of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in New Orleans, and the plan was hatched to start their own Klan.

Footnotes:

*The band also became a flash in the pan




**Sher believes that McQuirter may have fabriacated the conservationist story since it
is a favorite argument of the American Klan

Sources:

1. THE FIRST BOY AND MORE, Toronto Sun 25th Anniversay, August 27, 2008
Nationalist Party of Canada

2. White Hoods, By Julian Sher, New Star Books, 1983, ISBN 0-919573-13-4, Pg. 13

3. Bayou of Pigs: Not Your Average Caribbean Cruise, Bob's Beat, Nationalist Party of Canada

4. Sher, 1983, Pg. 83-84

5. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg. 211

Wolfgang Droege and "Militant Conservative Activism"

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

After spending four years in Canada, and now a teenager, Wolfgang Droege was getting restless. His mother had remarried and started a new family, and maybe he felt that he didn't fit in:

Wolfie continues the story in his thick German accent: "I came to Canada when I was about 13 years old, in 1963. After living here for about four years, I went back to Germany. I thought I could maybe make a go of it there. I got a trade, working in a hotel, but I had a difficult time adjusting. I had become used to the Canadian way of life and Canadian values. In Germany, you know, there is much more discipline. Much more is expected of you. As a result I was kind of rebellious. Because of my rebellious attitude, I refused to cower before the people who were supposed to be my bosses. I had a difficult time." He sips at a Coke. "Then I tried to join the army. But they told me it would take about half a year for me to get in. There is a certain period you have to wait. I had no support from my family in Germany because they all felt my place was in Canada. For that reason, I came back to Toronto at the end of 1967 and lived with my mother and my stepfather." (1)

While in Germany Droege's neo-Nazi leanings became more obvious, and under the influence of his father and grandfather, his views on Jews and non-whites had grown even more extreme. At the time the far-right party of Adolf van Thadden, was making headlines, and Droege offered his services. He must have felt like one of Hitler's aids.

Virtually everywhere they campaign, the scene is the same: Helmeted police, chanting, angry demonstrators, occasional scuffles, the din of derisive "Sieg Hell" and "Nazis out!" Not since the 1920s, when the Nazis were reaching for power, has a German political party provoked so much tumult and violence as the far-right, ultranationalist National Democratic Party. Chancellor Kiesinger, admitting that the N.P.D. is not purely neo-Nazi, describes it as "extremely harmful." Judging from the intensity of the oratory directed against the N.P.D., there are times when it sounds as if it were the party in power.

There is, of course, no danger that Adolf ("Bubi") von Thadden, 48, the party's aristocratic, articulate leader, will sweep into power—or anywhere near it —in next Sunday's general elections; after all, there are but 30,000 card-carrying members. (2)

It's probably safe to assume that at least some member's of Wolfgang's family were among those 30,000.

Back home in Canada he drifted a bit, working at the International Nickel Company in Sudbury, until a lay-off brought him back to Toronto.

"Of course, by that time, my family was pressuring me, telling me I had to get a trade. They told me I had to do something with my life. So, as a result, I got involved with the printing trade." (4)

He found work as an offset press apprentice at Ready-Set Business Forms in Don Mills, while still living at home with his mother, brother, stepfather and three stepsiblings. Not an ideal situation for a rebellious young man.

But fuelled by his experiences in Germany and an interview on a Canadian station with George Lincoln Rockwell, then leader of the American Nazi Party, he was ready to jump into the neo-Nazi movement with both feet.

Rockwell had laid it all out there. The white race was the "master race", the Holocaust was a hoax and homosexuals should be gassed. He also stated that the real enemy was Communism, and that many Jews were traitors to that cause.

All of the things Wolfie would have heard as a boy, being read the stories of Julius Streicher and the 'Poisonous Mushroom'. He was now on a mission.




About the time of Droege's transformation, there existed a Nazi movement in Canada. Adrien Arcand, a Montreal journalist who called himself the Canadian Fuhrer, published many anti-Semitic articles and established a party that was anti-Communist and promoted the deportation of Jews. On November 14, 1965, he gave a speech in Montreal, which was attended by Gilles Caouette, future Social Credit Party of Canada Member of Parliament, and son of David Réal Caouette, who would later become the federal leader of the Socreds.

Arcand died in 1967, when in Toronto the movement was just getting started, under the leadership of William John Beattie. He created the National Socialist Party, formerly the Canadian Nazi Party, marking a re-emergence of organized neo-Nazi activity in Canada. Beattie held rallies that often turned violent, but he also enticed many to join the cause, including Wolfgang Droege.

Vilim Zlomislic and the Western Guard

In the fall of 1974, while having a few beers at a bar called Maloney's in downtown Toronto, Droege met a man he had heard a lot about: Donald Clarke Andrews.

Born with the name Vilim Zlomislic in 1942 in the Serbian region of what was then Yugoslavia, Andrews came to Canada at the age of ten. As a youth, he was an excellent student who liked to read. He attended Ryerson Polytechnical Institute under a scholarship and, in his spare time, volunteered with various social democrat groups.

Certainly doesn't sound like a man who would become involved in far-right causes, but Andrews became a victim of the Baby Boomer revolution, that demanded societal changes. This culminated in the Civil Rights movement in the United States and our own rights revolution in Canada.

The Conservative Party were in the process of ousting their leader, John Diefenbaker, and replacing him with the more progressive thinking Robert Stanfield, while the Liberals chose a young "radical" named Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

Times were changing and not everyone wanted to change with them. In February 1967, Donald Clarke Andrews, and two others, school teacher Paul Fromm and University of Toronto student Leigh Smith, formed the Edmund Burke Society, named after an arch-conservative British parliamentarian.

Along with communism, which it loathed with a vengeance, the Edmund Burke Society opposed immigration, sex education, welfare, homosexuality, abortion, big government and Pierre Trudeau.

The Burkers infiltrated left-wing groups and they organized dozens of counter-demonstrations whenever leftists were gathering to protest something. Often, brawls ensued, such as one bloody encounter between the Edmund Burke Society and Viet Cong supporters in April 1968, and another with anti-war protestors in May 1970. Andrews, who delighted in such conflicts, called the violence "militant conservative activism." Some members of the group were convicted of bomb threats, break-ins, thefts, arson, vandalism and countless assaults. At the start, the Burkers were singularly devoted to the anti-Communist cause. By 1968 or so, however, the group's official organ, Straight Talk, was describing the African people as "completely primitive" and describing the Holocaust as an "allegation." (3)

In February 1972, the group decided to change their name to the Western Guard and expanded its list of enemies to include Jews and non-whites. This new direction caused Paul Fromm and Leigh Smith to resign, and while Fromm got back in, Leigh Smith moved on to join Preston Manning's Reform Party.

"It's been a painful thing in my life. I should be proud of what I did, but I have a hard time feeling good about it.... I was and am a conservative and a right-winger. But I wasn't a racist." (3)

But the group's new direction, brought in new members, men who had been associated with John Beattie's Canadian Nazi Party, like John Ross Taylor, Jacob Prins and Martin Weiche. And their publication, Straight Talk, began calling for a "a white Canada" and featuring articles like: "Race is the Real Issue," "White Power," "Mongrelization of Toronto," "Negroes Massacre Whites," "Race Pollution," and "Canada—A White Man's Country." They also grew more anti-Semitic with references to "the jewdicial system" and referring to Jews as the instigators of international communism. (3)

It was at this time that Wolfgang Droege, encouraged by what he had heard about the Western Guard, decided to learn more about them.

Droege recalls his 1974 meeting with Andrews at Maloney's Bar: "I came up to him and said: 'Are you Don Andrews?' And basically we engaged in a conversation. And then we became friends. We talked a lot about politics, but we became more social friends. Shortly thereafter, he was trying to get me involved in the Western Guard, which I did. I was an activist, and I was promoting the cause. My whole life, from that point on, was devoted to promoting the cause. I was always racially conscious, but I just hadn't made any contacts. But that night I contacted someone who I realized was very conscious racially and that was Andrews."

Andrews laughs at the memory. "He probably heard me pontificating at the bar. His views were similar to mine. He seemed like an intelligent, middle-class guy. He went on to be an integral part of our operation. He did have the intellect, plus the bully factor—he was one of our strong-arm guys at the time." (3)

And Droege Would soon meet someone who would move him even deeper inside the far-right.

Sources:

1. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg. 205-206

2. Echoes from an Unhappy Past, Time Magazine, September 26, 1969

3. Kinsella, 1994, Pg. 207-209

Youth For Western Civilization

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The group, Youth for Western Civilization, is a spin-off of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists; both spin-offs of Young Americans for Freedom, and all connected to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  In fact, YFC is financed by the Institute through their Campus Leadership Program. The financing must be substantial, since when they made their debut at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), they were actually one of the major donors of that year’s event.

YWC was created to perform stunts that the seemingly more respectable Republican youth groups might shy away from.  Or as they say at the institute:  "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans ..."  (1)

For instance, they  held a muffin sale at several campuses, where the price of the muffin was determined by your race.  Whites paid $2.00, Asians: $1.50, Latinos: $1.00, Black/ African American: $0.75, Native American: $0.25 and Illegal Immigrants FREE.  Obviously this an attempt to incite, as whites are penalized just for being white and illegal immigrants get a free ride, while everyone else is subsidized. 

However, many of the actions of WYC are more dangerous, as they go after what they call "liberal" professors.  One who had been targeted by the group, was being harassed to the point where he emailed a friend stating that he had a gun and knew how to use it.  YFC hacked into his email account, took the message to the public and the professor was fired.  He shouldn't have said what he did and the university was right to let him go, but these are the kinds of activities that the group engages in.

Retired university professor Michael Yates says he's glad to no longer be in academia.  "At least I did not have to face the nasty right-wing students who spy on their professors and do the bidding of the professional witch hunters who spew hatred on radio talk shows, and television programs."  Others are not so lucky.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

When the South Park cartoon depicted the prophet Muhammad as a bear, or at least as someone dressed up in a bear costume, the show's producers began to receive death threats.  This prompted Seattle artist Molly Norris, to establish an Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, in protest of censorship.

The Muslim religion does not allow depictions of the prophet, anymore than Christians would tolerate Jesus drawn in a disparaging fashion, or Jews, Abraham.  It's blasphemy.

To Youth for Western Civilization, this was a perfect opportunity to stir up a bit trouble, so they promoted the artistic endeavour on several U.S. campuses.  It was petty and mean, but that's what defines them.

The Marcus Epstein Affair

Thomas Tancredo is a former Republican congressman and now the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization.  In his younger days, he was a member of Young Americans for Freedom, and was rewarded with a job in the Reagan administration.  Tancredo ran for President in 2008, under the new Constitution Party banner, on an anti-immigration platform.  An outspoken critic of immigration and multiculturalism, he has earned a reputation as a bigot. 

Marcus Epstein is the executive director of Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC, an immigration panel at CPAC, financed by YWC, discussing the imminent demise of the white race.  “No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization. (2)  Stephen Harper, in a 2003 speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy, claimed that "multiculturalism" was "a weak nation strategy", and to ensure that Canada is "never again" perceived as a potential source of threats, he called for a "long-overdue" reform of our refugee programs. (3)

Epstein also runs Pat and Bay Buchanan's The American Cause, another group established to end non-white immigration.  Says Buchanan:  "The central objection to the present flood of illegals is they are not English-speaking white people from Western Europe; they are Spanish-speaking brown and black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean." (4)

Founder of the National Citizens Coalition, where Harper has been a member for more than three decades and once acted as its President, Colin Brown, when asked why letting in Hungarians fleeing communism after the Soviet crackdown was justified, but letting in Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism was not. “I think the Hungarians have made marvelous citizens, but the bloodlines run the same way. We all come from Europe so they fit in. You wouldn’t know if the people next door to you are Hungarian or not. They don’t all go and gather in a ghetto.”

All those involved in the conservative movement, on both sides of the border, sing from the same hymnal.

Back to Epstein. 

Not exactly white himself, but Korean-American, he writes for Human Events, The American Conservative, The Washington Examiner, the anti-Semitic Taki's Mag, and racist/anti-immigrant site VDARE.  He also claims that he is not a racist, and yet according to the Washington Independant:

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.” ... He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine. He’s under a restraining order to stay away from the couple involved, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund. (5)

A Circle of Hate

According to the Anti-Defamation league, YWC has many ties with White Supremacists. 

Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) may have standing in the mainstream conservative world but from its inception, white supremacists have enthusiastically embraced the group.  In April 2011, YWC received direct help from white supremacist Jared Taylor,who runs the racist magazine American Renaissance. Taylor and YWC joined forces that month to create a fund-raising packet that Taylor mailed to his supporters on YWC's behalf. Taylor is a strong supporter of YWC because of his own racist convictions. He introduced race as a crucial issue in his fund-raising letter for YWC by writing, "Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society—language, religion, class, ideology—it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the western world faces in the 21^st century." (6)

ADL is also concerned with YWC's founder, Kevin DeAnna, who Taylor says  "knows how important our cultural identity is" and "has agreed to continue our struggle on college campuses throughout the nation and dedicated himself to reaching our children and grandchildren."

DeAnna is also linked to Richard Spencer, who runs a site called Alternative Right.  Spencer writes articles for Taylor's American Renaissance and The Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic and racist publication, and is the executive director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank. Spencer once remarked, "I'm very lucky to be friends with Kevin DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization. I think this group is extremely important for our side." (6)

The H.L. Mencken Club for Mice

H. L. Menken (1880-1956) was an American author best known for his satirical essays on the famous Scopes Trials (evolution), which he referred to as the "monkey trials".  Though not really a racist, he was an elitists, who scorned a democratic system that allowed lesser men to rule their superiors.  He was also critical of Roosevelt's New Deal.

The H. L. Mencken Club came into existence in 2008, and according to their website is "an organization for independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right."  The Club hosts an annual conference that attracts speakers and guests from around the world, including paleoconservative Peter Brimelow, Pat Buchanan of The American Cause, YWC's Kevin DeAnna and his friend Richard Spencer.

If these people represent intellectuals and academics of the Right, then the Right is in serious trouble.

Peter Brimelow has a Canadian connection through the Reform Party, now called the Conservative Party of Canada.  He is an author and former right-wing journalist for Conrad Black's Financial Post and William Buckley's National Review.  In his book The Patriot Game, he attacks Quebec, bilingualism, the Canadian flag and the Canadian national anthem, which he sees as pandering to Quebec.

According to a college friend, after Stephen Harper read the Patriot Game, he became so enthused that he went out and bought ten copies to give to friends. (7)  I've read the book and in many ways, it formed the basis for much of Harper's and the Reform Party's philosophy.

Brimelow was an acquaintance of Canada's Paul Fromm, who founded the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), which opposes foreign aid to Third World countries.  Fromm was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at a Reform Party assembly, in exchanging for getting Peter Brimelow to speak.

Brimelow, along with other speakers at the H.L. Menken conference, Paul E. Gottfried and Steve Sailer, operate V-Dare, an anti-immigration, pro-white hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Centre covered the inaugural event in 2008, where much of the talk was about "how the GOP could regain power by more fervently courting the white vote."

[Said Brimelow]  “The way to win is to get white votes. If [Republicans] did that, even without actually cutting off immigration, they could continue to win national elections for quite a long time.”  Look at Alabama ... with whites only comprising 65 percent of the electorate, they’re in worse shape than American whites generally. Yet McCain easily won that state, in large part because of support from 88 percent of white voters  ...  It seems like an implicit thing that everybody in the South understands how things are and they all vote Republican."

Brimelow even suggested that McCain should have said that Obama was the affirmative action candidate. “It would have been so easy. All he had to do is get up and say it.”

Fortunately, I think McCain had a bit more class.

Most of these groups who use terms like "Western", really mean "White".  When you trace their funding, they all dip from the same pool, promote each others think tanks, and organizations, and deliver the same message.

This was the message that the Reform Party presented and it did not disappear when they bought out the rights to the Tories.  It's still there under the surface.  The media just no longer covers it.

Sources:

1. My Right-Wing Degree, By Jeff Horwitz, May 24, 2005

2. CPAC Immigration Panel: Readying the Fight to Save the GOP and White America, By Brian Tashman, Right-Wing Watch, February 11, 2011

3. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, p. 19-24

4. Into the Mainstream, By Chip Berlet, Southern Poverty Law Centre

5. Tancredo, Buchanan Bruised by Racist ‘Karate Chop’, By David Weigel, The Washington Independant, June 2, 2009

6. Youth for Western Civilization:  Ties with White Supremacists, Anti-Defamation League, May 23, 2011 

7. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3