A banner bearing a phrase coined by one of America’s most famous white supremacists hung over a busy Calgary street one August weekday.
The image popping up around the internet is the only thing that remains. And that might have been the point.
The banner that hung over Macleod Trail used a phrase penned by white nationalist and convicted felon David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the phrase, known as the 14 words, “a rallying cry for militant white nationalists.”
White nationalist social media channels that claim to be in Alberta shared the images on Aug. 8. The originating post appeared to come from a nascent group called “Wild Rose Active Club” with a quote from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Those images and posts are then used as recruitment propaganda, according to one man with inside knowledge of the modern neo-Nazi movement.
“They’ll put these (banners and stickers) up and then they’ll take an image of them, and that image can live online much longer than the sticker,” Peter Smith, researcher and investigative journalist with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said.
“So you can have one guy put up 100 fliers in a small town, you take the 10 best photos and then suddenly — as far as the world is concerned or anybody looking who’s interested — you have a presence in small-town Alberta or you have a presence in Saskatchewan and you have a presence in Manitoba.
“It could be one guy on a road trip, but the image of that presence is created.”
Community members tell Global News someone removed the banner the same day it was put up and another impromptu banner was put up in its place, calling out the racism.
The Calgary Police Service hate crimes unit confirmed to Global News they are investigating the incident.
And when bylaw officers went to the city-owned pedestrian overpass after one person filed a complaint with 311, the banners had been removed.
Let’s get physical
Wild Rose is one of many so-called athletic clubs that have been spreading through North American in recent years.
Barbara Perry, director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University, said this latest iteration of neo-fascists have refined their tactics and strategies to appeal to young, lonely isolated men.
“It bills itself as a place for young white men to go and network and train in physical fitness,” Smith explained.
Perry said she’s seen these extremist groups recruit in the online gaming community.
Videos on social media of active clubs show calisthenics and combat training.
“They very much understand that it’s often the need for belonging, the need for community that draws people to any collective, to any movement,” Perry said.
That in turn offers a space for socialization and action, which can turn into radicalization, Smith explained.
The decentralized movement of active clubs was started by Robert Rundo, who is believed to be in self-imposed exile in Serbia, Smith explained.
Rundo ran a variety of white power street gangs like the Rise Above Movement (RAM), a kind of street enforcement against growing Black Lives Matter protests.
“He developed the idea of the active club to be a network as opposed to a group of anybody who shares their ideology of whites first white unity mentality, like a kind of open embrace of neo-Nazism and their symbols,” Smith said.
“Anybody can start one of these groups and have their propaganda, their images pushed out through Rundo’s larger online (social media) channels.”
But Canada’s active clubs are coordinated by the Vinland Hammerskins, an older, white-power gang “with a very long history of violence,” Smith said.
“In Canada, they were not inactive, but extremely quiet for almost two decades. And it wasn’t until the emergence of the active club and me actually showing up and attempting to join as as a fellow neo-Nazi that revealed (Hammerskins) involvement.”
The decentralized structure allows Rundo and other figureheads to claim ignorance and plausible deniability.
“For him, it’s white nationalism 3.0. (Version) 1.0 was the skinhead movement of the 80s and 90s, 2.0 was the alt-right movement, which attempted to be a clean-cut face on white nationalism, and (3.0) is what he calls the ‘cultured thug,’ which is a person who is trained, physical, deadly, but still reads, still engages with the philosophy of their movement,” Smith said.
The alt-right trademark uniform of polo shirts and khakis were seen on Proud Boys and at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, trying to don an approachable image to white nationalism. Racist skinheads’ uniform was more outwardly intimidating — shaved head, combat boots, bomber jacket, neo-Nazi and white power tattoos — and the Southern Poverty Law Center said it’s an “immediately recognizable icon of hate.”
A thorny rose
On social media, Wild Rose said its goal is to “take public space and own it indefinitely, without conceding or capitulating.
“Everyday (sic) you see a piece of pro-white propaganda in your daily commute is a win,” they wrote days after posting pictures of the banner.
Wild Rose, along with a local White Lives Matter (WLM) group, have also been actively protesting events like the “Reading with Royalty” drag queen event at the Louise Riley Public Library on July 30.
The group’s social media channel started in January regularly quotes Adolf Hitler and other fascists.
One image included stickers saying “stop white replacement,” the white supremacist version of the Celtic Cross, a Nazi armband and a balaclava.
On Sunday, a declaration of their purpose appeared.
“We stand for a rat-free Alberta and operate on our own terms, as free Aryan men.”
Vermin including rats has long been used by white supremacists and Nazis as a racist analog for Jews.
Research done by Smith, Perry and others show that while the groups may dissolve, often due to internal conflicts, the propagation of the ideas is the most pernicious part of the modern white nationalist movement.
“Groups like the Proud Boys, for example, who were designated as a terrorist entity, dissolved, but then, you know, popped back up in different forms,” Perry said. “I think the danger there is that it’s typically the most strident, the most extreme who will stay and rebuild something else.”
“Rundo and the Hammerskins are not part of the same organization, but they exist in the same network,” Smith said. “They have the same connections and long after active clubs are done, long after White Lives Matter has faded from memory, these networks and these personal connections will remain, and that is what will continue to feed the movement.”
A national and local threat
In 2015, Perry and the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism published a national study of right wing extremist groups in Canada. That paper’s conservative estimate showed Alberta was home to about 15 per cent of the country’s extremist groups.
A follow-up study is expected to be released this year, and she said the number of groups has nearly tripled since then.
“We’ve seen a growth in groups. We’ve seen a growth in membership. We’ve also seen an increase in sort of individuals coming to the movement… consuming those narratives that they are finding online,” Perry said.
The most recent public report on the terrorism threat to Canada, published by Public Safety Canada in 2018, noted the federal government “remains concerned about threats posed by those who harbour right-wing extremist views.
“The threat of violence from any individuals, including those holding extreme right-wing views, may manifest in terrorist activity or other forms of criminal violence,” the report reads. “However, while racism, bigotry, and misogyny may undermine the fabric of Canadian society, ultimately they do not usually result in criminal behaviour or threats to national security.”
CPS Const. Matt Messenger said the hate crimes unit became aware of Wild Rose and WLM earlier in the year, as complaints flooded in about WLM stickers spotted around the city.
Messenger said, while the stickers broadly included messages of hate, posting stickers or hanging banners alone doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal offence under the Criminal Code.
Hanging a banner on a city-owned overpass without a permit would only break the city’s Temporary Signs Bylaw.
But instances like this can fall under the definition of a hate incident, he said, and when connected to individuals can create a history of hateful acts that the judicial system can consider if crimes like assaults were committed.
“If they were to act on it and we could prove that the crime they committed was motivated by that hate or bias, we would investigate it as a hate crime,” Messenger said.
Messenger urges anyone with information about these or similar incidents to call the CPS non-emergency line at 403-266-1234 or anonymously to Crime Stoppers.
Action & Reaction
The incident came only days after a controversial essay that promoted anti-immigrant and mysoginistic senitment was awarded $200 in gift cards by the government. Online, WLM said the author S.Silver should be rewarded “for speaking so much truth.”
Perry called the banner hanging a “bold move.”
“It’s a very strong symbolic move for the movement that they felt emboldened to do that,” she said. “It says something about the politics of the day in Alberta when it felt like that was something that they could get away with, without any backlash, without any reaction.”
Perry also pointed to the misogynistic message the banner contained: the directive to control women’s reproductive rights.
“This is a real slap in the face to people of color as well as women,” Perry said.
On Tuesday, Wild Rose posted another photo of their propaganda around the city’s Beltline neighbourhood. It appears to be one of the first public appearance of their ersatz logo: a skull wearing a hardhat crossed by a wrench and a sledgehammer.
“Wild Rose Active Club has been out on the streets spreading the word and removing any signs of liberalism posssible (sic),” the post read.
It urged sympathizers to take a stand against “degenerate behaviour and white replacement.”
The resurgence of neo-Nazi sentiment is a stark reminder 77 years after the Holocaust.
The CEO of the Calgary Jewish Federation said all Calgarians must “stand united to condemn all forms of hatred fully and unambiguously,” especially after a marked rise in race-based hate in the first two years of the pandemic.
“There must be no place in Calgary, Canada, or any civil society, for the white supremacy and hate that David Lane sowed to take root. This sign, and its ‘white replacement’ conspiracy theory message, perpetuates hate and fear amongst not only the Jewish community, but all marginalized groups,” CJF CEO Adam Silver said in a statement.
Both Perry and Smith say an equally bold response to brazenly racist messages is to meet them where they are: in the streets and on social media.
“Community organizing and things of that nature is, I believe, the most important thing when it comes to combating the far right, fascism, hate movements,” Smith said.