Tag: Zundel

Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective: The Far Right Continues to Embrace Anti-Democratic Ethnic Nationalism and Authoritarianism (With Northern Alliance Cameo)

It has been an interesting week in the news. Donald Trump attacks traditional allies including Canada (specifically the Canadian prime minister) and his supporters in this country eat it up. Some of them have openly advocated for the invasion of the country to remove the Liberal government by force. Others

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Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective: Man Assaulted by Finnish Neo-Nazi Group Linked to the Soldiers of Odin Dies

Our readers who have been following ARC’s series on the Canadian branch of the Soldiers of Odin are aware that the group originated in Finland and was founded by Mike Ranta:

Prior to founding the Soldiers of Odin, Ranta, an avowed “White Nationalist” and neo-Nazi, was and still is a member of the Finnish Resistance Movement:

Ranta, who was convicted of a 2005 racially-motivated attack against two immigrants, admits readily to being a neo-Nazi — “Yes, I am” — but insists his ideology and membership in the Finnish Resistance Movement has nothing to do with the patrols. 

“Just because I am, as the founder or whatever, it doesn’t mean the whole group are (neo-Nazis)… We’re just a street patrol group, so why are people making it into something else?,” Ranta argued.

Since the publication of the above article, Ranta has been convicted of aggravated assault and given an 18 month suspended sentence for his attack on a man and woman.

Soldiers of Odin Canada, founded by Manitoba resident Joel Angott, was authorized by Ranta’s original Finnish chapter to begin operations in Canada:

This past week, members of the Finnish Resistance Movement assaulted a man during a rally. That man later passed away as a result of his injuries:

FINNISH MAN DIES AFTER BEING ASSAULTED BY NEO-NAZISPosted on 17.9.2016 by mikael 

A Finnish man, Jimi Joonas Karttunen, that was assaulted by neo-Nazis from the Finnish Resistance Movement (FRM) Saturday the 10th of September has died of his injuries. The news was first given by his father Kauko-Vesa Karttunen in a Facebook post on Saturday and the identity of the man has since then been confirmed by other sources, including an old school friend that Kaivuri has talked to. The assault against the 28 year old Karttunen happened during a demonstration by FRM in the center of Helsinki. Karttunen was assaulted from the back by members of FRM and hit his head as he fell on the ground, after he had expressed his dissent to the protestors. 

What is clear so far is that the victim was hospitalised shortly after the attack due to severe head trauma and remained in intensive care for several days. He was released from the hospital on Thursday but began to suffer from intense headaches again on Friday and called the emergency services. When the emergency services arrived he had already lost consciousness and was proclaimed dead on Friday at 10 PM. 

FRM released a video of Karttunen lying on the ground next to a pool of blood on Sunday the 12th of September. In an accompanying text, the organization said they had to ‘discipline’ some people who challenged them, effectively confessing members of the group were behind the assault. Several pictures connected to the article show known members of the organization, giving an idea of which people were present. 

The police have, nonetheless, been reluctant comment on the events to mainstream media outlets (1,2,3,4) and refused to verify whether a causal relation between the death of Karttunen, but confirm that the case is under investigation. Meanwhile, in a post on their website, the Antifascist network Varis has connected names to the faces visible in the pictures published by FMR. Several of the whom have a record of violence against people of colour, queers and political opponents. 

Kaivuri will participate in all efforts to bring the attackers to justice and we will continue to update as the situation develops.

The FRM propaganda video of the aftermath can be seen at about 2:06:

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Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective: Examining Soldiers of Odin Claims to Have "Purged" Membership of Racists

The media attention focused on the Canadian branch of the Soldiers of Odin has grown increasingly intense the past couple of weeks and the leadership is starting to feel the heat:

The last article is of interest since it indicates that as the public has become more aware of the group, the less inclined the public is to support them despite their efforts to appear as a benevolent and charitable organization:

But because of the group’s name, they’re being forced to strike down misconceptions that they are a fringe group looking to keep Canada white. 

“That’s just misinformation that’s been brought over from other countries,” Agnott said. “What they do over in Finland and in Europe, they have all sorts of different issues altogether. That’s not really what we are. We’re an independent charter of Soldiers of Odin; we’re a community watch group.” 

But this bit of information isn’t widely known in Canada, and it’s led to the Soldiers of Odin Canada to be shut down in one instance where they tried to hold a fundraiser.
On Aug. 27, the Saskatchewan chapter tried to hold a barbecue fundraiser for STARS Air Ambulance. 

Mark Oddan, communications lead for STARS in Saskatchewan told the CBC, when the Soldiers of Odin approached the organization to see if they would attend the fundraiser, STARS declined to attend. 

“We didn’t know who this group was and then did some research and thanked them for their interest and their support, but we declined their invite and said we cannot accept any funds from them as their values are not aligned with ours,” Oddan said.

Of course the claim to being an independent chapter sort of flies in the face of statements by Canadian SOO leaders that chapters need the approval of the parent chapter in Finland that was founded by an avowed racist to operate.
ARC was interviewed by a number of the journalist who have written articles about the SOO and we hope that we have been able to provide some decent background on the group and the membership. One of these articles was published later this past week and contains some points that we would like to address:

The blog Anti-Racist Canada (ARC) — an anonymous group that says it is concerned by racist movements — has been tracking SOO Canada mostly via social media since at least March of this year. 

An ARC representative, who identified themselves only as ‘nos’, questions why public statements by people like Angott decrying racism don’t seem to match with the activity of its members in private and sometimes secret Facebook groups. 

ARC has also pointed to social media connections between SOO members and members of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

We’ve actually already written about the link between SOO members and supporters to the Hell’s Angels in an earlier article, however we are currently collecting information for a follow-up article which we hope to publish some time this week.

Angott himself, ARC notes, was Facebook friends with Ingrid Rimland, wife of notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. 

When asked about this, Angott told SooToday he had received a Facebook request from a profile with that name but that he did not know who that person was, who Ernst Zündel was, or that holocaust denial “was a thing” and he has since unfriended the account.

While we can’t categorically refute Angott’s claim that it was Ingrid Rimland who added him as a friend that he didn’t know who she was when he added her, we believe this claim could be questioned given:
  • Angott has been very careful about who he has added as a friend on his Facebook profile (believe us, we’ve tried to add him but he seems a bit skittish for some reason) so it doesn’t seem realistic that he would add Rimland whom he claims not to have known.
  • Why would an 80 year old woman seemingly randomly add some guy as a friend who lived in Gimli, Manitoba?
  • As “Holocaust revisionist royalty” through her own efforts as well as her marriage to Ernst Zundel, people who are inclined to agree with her views would be more likely to request her friendship than the other way around, though we should hasten to add that there’s nothing yet that indicates that SOO Canada founder and president Joel Angott has denied the reality of the Holocaust himself.
  • If Ingrid Rimland slipped through the cracks, that would be one thing. But how might he  then explain the others we’ve found who have ties to racist groups?
So either Angott is naive, or there might be something else to this. We should however note that he has indeed unfriended Ms. Rimland.

Angott said that over the summer Soldiers of Odin purged some of its Canadian members for having racist views, and has deliberately distanced itself from racist groups. 

“We’ve slowed down on accepting members until we’ve fully checked them out and fully vetted them. We did have some people with ulterior motives come into our organization. We weren’t as vigilant as we should have been with these types of people. We did some research, back checking on who they are and what they stand for and we have released people that didn’t have the values that our organization carried (because) they were racist,” said Angott.

This brings us to the crux of the issue. Angott claims to have purged their membership of individuals possessing racist views.

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Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective: Soldiers of Odin: Canadian Media Paying Attention

We don’t usually refer to ourselves as “media” though in the absolute sense, we suppose we are. We run a niche blog who’s members have a realistic understanding concerning our national exposure. Still, we like to think that at least on occasion we’ve been able to punch above our weight by breaking a few stories before the msm have.

As far as we know, we were amongst the first, if not the first, “media” source that began covering the entry of the Soldiers of Odin onto the Canadian scene. However since we began, there has been some really good journalism focused on the SOO. Not too long after our first exposé, Vice published a story by Mack Lamoureux who was able to infiltrate a meeting by the Alberta chapter of Soldiers of Odin. And last week, CBC’s Samantha Craggs wrote what we would regard as a pretty hard hitting profile of the SOO and the group’s efforts to organize in the city of Hamilton.

Some members of the SOO took notice, including co-leader of the Saskatchewan chapter of the Soldiers of Odin:

In the article, the national president of the Canadian Soldiers of Odin, Joel Angott, claims that the group is opposed to racism:

The presence in Hamilton is informal right now, with about eight or nine members getting organized, said SOO national president Joel Angott. There’s a lot of interest, but potential Hamilton members are being carefully vetted. 

SOO members do neighbourhood patrols, Angott told CBC Hamilton in a phone interview from Winnipeg. Right now, its Hamilton plans focus on cleaning up local parks. 

He denies that the group is anti-immigration, or anti-Muslim, although the group’s bylaws lament the government “accepting refugees from countries that hate us” and “letting illegal aliens into this country and giving them the ability to vote and drive.”

Denying that the SOO is not anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim sort of flies in the face of what is routinely posted on the various provincial Soldiers of Odin chapters’ Facebook pages however. For example, here are a few from the British Columbia chapter group page:

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Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective: Former Green Party Candidate and 9/11 "Truther" Also Denies Holocaust

We would like to introduce our readers to Monika Schaefer, a three time (and perhaps four time) federal Green Party candidate in the Alberta riding of Yellowhead:

We first came across Monika Schaefer a few years back when Arthur Topham published an open letter penned by Schaefer to Green Party leader Elizabeth May regarding Schaefer’s belief that the 9/11 attacks were a “false flag” operation:

Now, anyone being promoted by the likes of Topham in regards to this particular conspiracy theory is likely going to have some other suspect views. Ms. Schaefer confirmed this when she referenced, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as if it is a legitimate primary document rather than the plagiarized fraud it has been proven to be time and time again:

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Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective: The Heritage Front: The True Story in Race Traitor

KOBO: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/race-traitor-the-true-story-of-canadian-intelligence-service-s-greatest-cover-upAmazon: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Traitor-Canadian-Intelligence-Services-ebook/dp/B00JA05FYM A few years back, we posted a link to Elisa Hategan's novel, Race Traitor. While it was a work of fiction, it was still very obviously based on her experience in the Heritage Front as well as her subsequent defection and testimony that ultimately helped take down

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