Remember those fascists over at the SSJB Youth Wing and the Jeunes Patriotes du Québec? Well, it looks like they’re not entirely alone, as there’s a new group of right-wing extremists, and I’m not talking about Maxine Bernier’s half-hearted attempt at a comeback. These happy fellows are members of the Milice Patriotique Québecoise and seem to be well-acquainted with members from the RRQ and the rest of Québec’s backwards facing minority, which seem to have a fetish for death and destruction. If you listen to these people, they will tell you the Canadian Forces are preparing to invade Québec, slaughter the innocent, rape the land and inflict a genocide against the French. I thought it was a joke, but it seems to be somewhat legit.
Above is a video they put out, demonstrating their ability to play soldier. They are very good at playing soldier, my guess is that they’d put most 10 year-olds to shame with their impressive knowledge of crawling, running, kneeling, pointing, map-use and camouflage colour-coordination.
On a more serious note – do these people pose a threat to our society? A recent CBC Montréal story indicates that the group itself is purposely vague about who they feel threatened by, though its website and ‘promotional’ videos make it pretty clear they feel threatened, oddly, by the supposed presence of CSIS infiltrators and equally aggressive Anglo-extremist groups. Here’s a link to the Anglophone Patriots of Quebec, 17 members. And this is the seemingly dormant blog of the Defense Association of Anglophone Quebec. The MPQ also refers to a letter put out by the ‘Anglophone Assault Group’ which apparently sent a letter to Le Devoir in 1996 listing the sovereignists they intended on assasinating. The only reference I could find on Google was a reference in an article published in 1996 in Protem, the Glendon College newspaper (Glendon in a bilingual liberal arts college associated with York University).
All told, it seems as though this whole sordid affair is little more than a bunch of grownups feeling threatened by ‘the other’ and resorting to childhood fantasies of war, heroism and all that other shit. I can’t imagine these organizations are anything more than loose affiliations, but still – it makes your skin crawl.
The question is how best to respond to organizations of this type – extremist nationalists of any variety base their entire public image on the pretense of directed aggression against a self-described minority and the societal ideal of an individual willing to risk their lives in defense of the defenseless. But when the threat is imagined, there’s no limit to defensive posturing, no act nor preparation too extreme. In essence, it’s a carte-blanche for self-perpetuating extremism.
So I guess the bigger question is why these groups are reported on in the first place? I’ve always been critical of major anglophone media outlets in Montréal for covering the activities of the separatist fringe – drawing attention to them will only increase the fear, and the fear is ultimately baseless since these organizations have about an ice-cube’s chance in hell of carrying out a military action in defense of the people of Québec. Again, there’s no threat.
