Right-Wing movements have been keeping underground these days due to heavy government pressure. The largest of these organizations still exist in Canada but with little impact and low enrollment. Bernie Farber, director of the Ontario Region Canadian Jewish Congress, said “the hate group leaders have emerged as experienced organizers and understand the method of ‘preparing the soil’ before the seeds of hate grow”.
The Heritage Front was founded in Toronto in 1989 and has been peaking at 2,000 members. It had experienced financial difficulties and leadership problems back in 1995 with the infiltration of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The group’s leader Wolfgang Droege was imprisoned for assault and possession of firearms. The group’s newsletter “Up Front,” which has not appeared since Droege’s imprisonment, has reappeared at his release in 1997 under the title “Heritage Front Report.” Incidents of propaganda leaflets have been found in Vernon, BC, and new recruitment has risen from students at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario.
Resistance Records was run by George Burdi. The record company supplied racist and anti-semitist music to Canada for years. The establishment was closed down in September 1997. Burdi was also the leader of a now defunct racist group called the Canadian Church of the Creator, and was lead singer of the neo-nazi band RAce HOly WAr. He is now serving a prison sentence.
The Klu Klux Klan first came to Canada at the turn of the 20th Century. There are many groups in the United States that are the same but go under different names. They have a strong following there with each group ranging in the thousands. In Canada, they have a small following and are a marginal organization.
The Northern Hammerskins have been establishing groups all over Canada in the past decade. Canadian neo-nazi skinhead groups such as this one usually are anti-American, anti-black, anti-homosexual, anti-immigrant, and in favour of bringing back the death penalty. They are described as “short on philosophy and long on violence.”
The Aryan Blitzkreig organized a rally outside a motel, housing Roma refugees, in August 1997. It took pace in Toronto and this white supremacist group was sporting Nazi and other right-wing logos. Five adults and two young offenders were charges with willful promotion of hatred. The human rights organizations in Toronto are cautioning another rise in organized hate groups in the area and are trying to prevent it in any way.
Douglas Christie, legal council to alleged Nazi war criminal Inne Finta and holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel, organized a Canadian Free Speech League in BC. He also has a newsletter that he publishes and distributes. His meetings take place in Victoria and Vancouver, and a controversy has been building that these facilities are used to promote hatred. Doug Collins, a retired columnist accused by the BC Human Rights Commission of writing racist and anti-Semitic articles, appeared as a guest speaker at one of Christie’s meeting in 1997.
