By Jeff Shantz

Earlier this week we reported that antifascist mobilizations had caused two Vancouver venues to cancel planned talks by far Rightists/white supremacists Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern hosted by the University of British Columbia “Free Speech Club” (FSC). We can now happily report that the FSC’s third attempt to host Molyneux and Southern in Vancouver has been thwarted despite their efforts to move it underground to a secret location.

Antifascist mobilization kept the focus and pressure up throughout, contacting venues and tracking down the final secret location. In this the UBC Students Against Bigotry played key parts (even as they maintained a unique position toward other antifascist organizing locally).

This final cancellation comes only hours after a fascist in Aotearoa (New Zealand) shot up two mosques in Christchurch killing at least 49 people and injuring dozens more in a targeted assault on Muslim people. Clearly even the fascists in Vancouver could figure out that holding an event with those particular speakers in this time frame was not a wise idea.

Especially given that the garbage spewed by Molyneux and Southern was taken up by the Christchurch shooter. Notably the fascist killer posted a “manifesto” online entitled “The Great Replacement,” the same title used by Southern for one of her videos, a reference to far Right fictions of “white genocide” peddled by many white supremacists.

Despite these cancellations we remain ever vigilant for any future far Right events in Metro Vancouver. Their hatred and brutality have no place here or anywhere and its should now be certain to people in Vancouver that any platform for these characters is a platform for brutal violence.