The following defines a number of key concepts. It will be followed by a forthcoming analysis of the convergence of the far right with mainstream politicians and parties in Canada and the growth and spread of fascism.
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Hate Groups
Organized hate groups advocate the creation of culturally and "racially" homogenous societies by the forcible movement of people to "home lands" or outright genocide. Individual, institutional and organized racism are not only offensive and dehumanizing but restrict access to services, employment and other human rights. Racism is thus not only detrimental to the primary targets of racism but to society in general. Comprehensive projections and preventative measures must therefore be developed to protect individuals and groups from racism, ethnocentrism and religious intolerance in each and every manifestation.
HATE CRIME
A hate crimes is a criminal offense committed by an individual or individuals against a person, property or public order because of skin colour, ethnicity, religion, place of origin, sexual orientation, ability, or gender. Some community groups are seeking an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada to include gender, sexual orientation and ability as protected grounds. Statistics show that the most frequent victims of hate violence in urban centres are gays and lesbians, followed by Canadians of African and South Asian descent and Jews. However, there are a large number of attacks on aboriginal peoples that go largely unreported. Verbal intimidation, assault and vandalism are the most commonly reported types of hate crimes. Hate crimes are designed to create terror, mistrust and the breakdown of social institutions. Hate crimes can have an especially devastating emotional and psychological impact on their victims. Failure to provide legal and other remedies can lead to isolation, increased vulnerable and self-destructive or socially destructive anger.
WHITE SUPREMACY
Modern white supremacy is based on two fundamental untenable beliefs. The first is that there are biologically distinct human "races" which can be scientifically ordered in a hierarchy of morality, intellectual capacity, culture and civilization. In this view, the "white race" of Northern Europe is morally and intellectually superior to all other "races" and the "white race" is primarily responsible for human civilization and science. As a result, all other "races", i.e., Asian, African, American, et cetera, are inferior and is responsible for all moral and social decay. It is therefore the moral destiny of the white races to bring civilization back to the world.
The ideology of modern white supremacy thus draws from the same well of hate as Nazi ideology which is, in turn, based on the scientifically bankrupt concept of "race" and the so-called "race science" of the nineteenth century. To be a racist, or a "racialist", is to believe in biological reductionism and a necessary program of separation, or genocide. The political agenda of white supremacist group is to seize power and to replace democratically elected governments with fascist dictatorships. White supremacist group plan to accomplish this objective by precipitating a "racial holy war", destabilizing democratically elected governments and seizing state power.
The second fundamental basis of modern white supremacy is that the Holocaust - the Nazi policy of genocide - did not occur. If Jews, gypsies and the "unfit" died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, their deaths were not part of any genocidal policy that was devised by Hitler and his followers, but the result of famine and disease. The purpose of denying the Holocaust is to resurrect national socialism and legitimate Hitler.
Realizing that fascism and racism are presently more or less unpalatable to the majority of Canadians, white supremacist attempt to conceal their real agenda by calling themselves Canadian patriots, or friends of freedom. They claim they are not fascist but think that Hitler was a hero who received unfair treatment by the Allies. They demand to be publicly identified as simply favouring "preserving European heritage" and maintaining "traditional" (i.e. Northern European) sources of immigration. When, for example, leaders of the Heritage Front are interviewed by the mainstream media, they repeat over and over that they are "not racist" but "just love their own race"; they are not racist but "racialists"; they are not violent but want to protect themselves from attack and they recruit bright articulate university educated students to create a more acceptable public veneer of respectability. Unfortunately, there are enough gullible reporters to perpetuate the myth that white supremacist groups are just exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and that racists are just one end of the spectrum with anti-racists being at the other.