White nationalism appears to be experiencing a resurgence both in the United States and here in Canada — this time with one key difference. In times past, white nationalism hovered on the fringes of North American democratic life. Today, it has worked its way to the very core of the world’s strongest democracy — the United States.

Part of this process has been a brazen exercise in rebranding. In the 1990s, groups that supported neo-Nazism in Canada repackaged themselves as the ‘Heritage Front’ to make their ugliness more palatable. More recently, Richard Spencer, a well-known American white supremacist, coined a new term — “alt-right” — to pare down the sharp edges of his fanatical white supremacist ideology for public consumption.

The extreme right-wing online portal Breitbart News has embraced both Spencer and the new lingua-franca of white supremacy. Today, Breitbart stands at the nexus of American public life; its former CEO, Stephen Bannon, is now the chief advisor to President Donald Trump and sits on the National Security Council.

In other words, the former head of an operation producing extremist right wing piffle under mile-long headlines (“Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture”) now sits at the helm of the new U.S. administration. And to put an even finer point on an already sharp knife, Bannon presents himself publicly as an anarchist in power. In 2013 he compared himself to V.I. Lenin: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Yesterday their target was Jews, or people of colour. Today it’s mostly Muslims on the receiving end — but their victimizers are not the malingerers of yesterday, but the power-brokers of today. Yesterday their target was Jews, or people of colour. Today it’s mostly Muslims on the receiving end — but their victimizers are not the malingerers of yesterday, but the power-brokers of today.

Even during the halcyon days of the Heritage Front, no one could have conceived of such a situation. And while the Heritage Front certainly upset our multicultural applecart here in Canada — with hate-filled white supremacist demonstrations, ‘hate rock’ concerts and some limited violence — it never gained much ground. In 1995, CSIS — fearful of the threat the Heritage Front posed — embedded an operative into its heart that ended up bringing down organized hatred for a long time.

But the dream never died. Many susceptible young people, disillusioned with life as they experienced it, always saw in white nationalism a door to change. Yesterday their target was Jews, or people of colour. Today it’s mostly Muslims on the receiving end — but their victimizers are not the malingerers of yesterday, but the power-brokers of today.

Couple this movement of the marginal to the mainstream with efforts by certain Canadian politicians to target Muslims for partisan gain, and you have a process of demonization in overdrive.

So it should not surprise anyone that a young and vulnerable racist might have absorbed the hateful rhetoric coming out from the mouths of powerful people, leading to a murderous attack on Muslim worshipers in Quebec City.

We need strong tools to deal with this new eruption of hate. Canada, unlike the United States, distinguishes in law between hate speech and free speech. Police and intelligence agencies need to redouble their efforts to use the law to stifle expressions of hate that can lead to violence.

We especially need to look at using our human rights laws as tools for education. Three years ago, the federal government repealed S.13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which provided much-needed regulations limiting hate provocation on the internet. It’s time to consider bringing it back, with necessary changes to ensure it’s being used for education rather than punishment.

The new Trump order in the United States is one where racism and bigotry have moved from the margins to the mainstream. Now, more than ever, we need to shield ourselves against murderous hate-mongering. Failure to do so is not an option.

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