WARNING: This story contains descriptions of racist online content targeting Jews, Muslims, the 2SLGBTQ+┬аcommunity and others.
In an Ottawa courtroom on Tuesday, federal Crown prosecutors played three videos downloaded from social media by RCMP in 2020 тАФ videos the Crown contends were created in part by Patrick Gordon Macdonald, an alleged neo-Nazi terror propagandist who lives in the capital with his parents.
All three videos depicted people in skull masks and combat fatigues carrying firearms and flags, their faces covered and blurred. All three videos asked viewers to join Atomwaffen Division, a now defunct right-wing extremist group that was branded a terrorist organization in Canada in 2021.
Narrators with modified voices and subtitles spewed┬аracist stereotypes and calls┬аfor violent action, while aggressive and ominous music blared at an almost uncomfortable volume┬атАФ a stark┬аdifference┬аfrom the otherwise calm and┬аquiet┬аproceedings.
Macdonald, 27, is on trial in Superior Court. He’s┬аcharged with participating in the terrorist activity of Atomwaffen Division by helping produce the videos and other images, facilitating terrorist activity┬аand inciting hate against identifiable groups for one or more terrorist entities, including Atomwaffen Division and the neo-Nazi James Mason.
He’s alleged to have done it in 2018 and 2019, when he was 21,┬аin Ottawa, the nearby eastern Ontario city┬аof Belleville┬аand Saint-Ferdinand, Que., south of Quebec City in the Appalachian foothills, among other places.
He has pleaded not guilty. The allegations against him haven’t been proven.
RCMP laid the charges in 2023, after Vice News published a series of articles investigating the identity of Dark Foreigner,┬аthe screen name of someone posting hateful images and video on the internet.
Videos posted on social media┬аin 2019
One of the videos played in court Tuesday тАФ which an RCMP officer testified was posted on a public channel called Terrorwave Refined on the social media site Telegram in 2019 тАФ shows people in skull masks tossing the Hebrew Bible, the Qur’an┬а(Islam’s central religious text), a book on philosophy and a Pride flag into a bonfire.
Between shots, text panels taking up the entire screen call for viewers to “purge the weak” before a swastika appears.
In another video RCMP said was posted on Terrorwave Refined in 2019, hateful rhetoric written to appeal to white nationalists in Ukraine accuses “treacherous bureaucrats” of being controlled by Jews.
And in an┬аecho of the Holocaust, it says national socialists have the “final solution for the traitors of Ukraine and the rest of the world.”
A third video posted to the channel in 2019 shows skull-masked people moving through a wooded area and shooting firearms repeatedly.
Closer to the end, the flags of the U.S., Israel and Europe are shown on the ground, being drenched in an accelerant and then set on fire with a torch, interspersed with shots of people with firearms storming a building in tactical formation.
The video includes an offensive ethnic slur against Jews.
“Join us or perish with the rest,”┬аthe narrator screams. “Stay tuned shooters,”┬аis the last text panel to appear.
OPP were looking into Dark Foreigner┬аin 2018
In addition to the videos, court was shown the cover art for a new edition of a book written by Mason, a prominent neo-Nazi. It depicts two faces тАФ one obscured by a skull mask with red dots for eyes and holding a rifle, and the other, appearing to be┬аMason, also with red dots for eyes.
A swastika painted with stylized red blood spatters appears in the background.
Macdonald sat quietly in court as the videos and images┬аwere shown, as he has┬аsince his trial began Monday.
Late Tuesday, the trial heard that the hate crime unit of the Ontario Provincial Police was looking into Dark Foreigner’s online activity by screen capturing everything they could find┬аin April 2018.
This was before the videos were posted, and before Dark Foreigner entered the public eye through Vice’s reporting. The trial hasn’t yet heard what became of the OPP’s efforts.
Judge rules hate crime prof an expert
Also Tuesday, Justice Robert Smith ruled that Barbara Perry can be declared an expert witness for the trial. She’s a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and director of its centre on hate, bias and extremism.
Perry was asked to write a report for the trial on right-wing extremism in Canada and beyond, neo-Nazism/neo-socialism, Atomwaffen Division, Mason (who is himself labelled a terrorist entity in Canada)┬аand the fascist concept of accelerationism┬а(to accelerate the collapse┬аof liberal democracy through violent racial conflict and replace it with┬аa white ethnostate).
Atomwaffen┬аDivision’s goal was to pit communities against each other by sowing chaos and┬аfear, and to encourage targeted violence┬аagainst minorities by lone actors or “at best” small cells in order┬аto evade law enforcement, Perry┬аtestified.
Mason, meanwhile, is considered a founding father of accelerationism and leaderless resistance, she added. He believes in targeting perceived┬а“losers” for recruitment тАФ “ostracized outsiders who don’t have a place to belong or who have grievances about their lives,”┬аPerry said.
The trial continues.
