Sylvain Brouillette, spokesman for the right wing group 'La Meute', speaks to reporters before walking in silence to the legislature, Sunday, August 20, 2017 in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

I recently wrote a piece about La Meute — the ‘wolf pack’ — a group that purposely defies explanation. Its public face is that of a pro-Western group concerned with matters of immigration, free speech and religions extremism of all sorts.

The hidden side of La Meute — which lives on the group’s private Facebook page — is singularly obsessed and much more hateful.

Take this gem written in early 2016 by Johane Cayer, a member of La Meute’s council. Pig’s blood — lots of it — is all that’s needed to prevent the building of mosques, she wrote. “It must drip into the soil so that it becomes unclean/impure for the construction of a mosque … but pig’s fat and piss are available at your local butcher … LOL!!!” She also said the idea of Muslims running around “like chickens with their heads cut off” as a result of said drenching has her “aching with laughter.”

This is the true, hidden face of this group — one obsessed with the “vermin” and “cancer” of Islam (to cite two frequently-used epithets) and dedicated to near-daily barrages of veiled threats, conspiracy theories and diatribes targeting the religion.

Its executive often boasts of its purported 45,000 members, and the number of active and retired military members (I counted 228) and former and current law enforcement officers in its ranks. La Meute promotes its public face — but takes refuge in its private hate.

And La Meute’s public face is enjoying a public relations bonanza right now. The group’s rally against Quebec’s Liberal government attracted 200 people to the streets of Quebec City last weekend. Cleverly, La Meute members marched in space shared with more outwardly extremist groups like Storm Alliance and out-and-out racist groups like Atalante — making La Meute seem positively moderate by comparison. And despite the modest turnout, the media was everywhere.

“Our far right image is gone, replaced by ‘the identity right’,” wrote Stéphane Roch, La Meute’s chief of operations. “The media is starting to open its eyes.”

Roch is right. If La Meute is enjoying a certain sheen of legitimacy these days, it’s in large part due to a mostly credulous press.

Covering groups like La Meute is crucial. But ignoring or minimizing its rhetoric only normalizes La Meute’s existence and obfuscates its true aims. Covering groups like La Meute is crucial. But ignoring or minimizing its rhetoric only normalizes La Meute’s existence and obfuscates its true aims.

Over the last year, much of the coverage of the group has glossed over its demonstrable hatred of Islam, instead presenting La Meute’s members as a bunch of hardscrabble rogues deeply troubled by religious extremism.

Last December, the CBC published a 1,700-word piece about La Meute. First, credit where it’s due: Journalist Jonathan Montpetit was the first to write extensively about La Meute, thus providing an introduction to the burgeoning group. He had good access to its leadership and delved into its history and structure — all valuable information.

Yet the piece draws no attention to the hate and vitriol rampant on the group’s private site at the time. Nor is there any mention of how, despite public declarations to the contrary, La Meute’s executive and many of its members make no distinction between Islam and the Islamists who commit bloodshed in its name.

Yet there it is, plain as day. “Muslims, you are lying to us,” Roch wrote in August 2016, over a blood-spattered background. The conversation in which Johane Cayer mused about using blood to desecrate would-be Muslim holy sites was available to anyone with access to the private page until early last October, when it suddenly disappeared.

There are dozens of similar references to the use of pork dating back to the group’s founding in 2015 — along with unfounded claims that Muslims themselves were responsible for desecrating their own holy sites to drum up public sympathy. There are numerous references to the Muslim prophet Mohammad as a pedophile and rapist. Montpetit’s contention that “La Meute leaders tightly monitor its Facebook page, deleting any hint of violence or overt racism” is proven false simply by typing the word ‘pork’ into the group’s Facebook page search field.

The media coverage in general also has served to inflate La Meute’s relative size and importance. Just about every news piece I’ve read — CBC News, Radio-Canada, Montreal Gazette, Huffington Post, Journal de Montréal, La Presse — makes mention of the group’s formidable size, ranging from 40,000 (CBC) to 60,000 (Radio-Canada) members.

On its face, it’s an impressive number — roughly the population of Cornwall, Ontario. Yet a closer look at the list suggests a considerable number of these people have been become La Meute members without their knowledge.

Save for one notable exception in Canadian Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, everyone I spoke with whose name is on the list didn’t have a clue that they were part of the largest far-right group in the country. Over 4,000 La Meute members have added names to La Meute’s secret Facebook page; one member alone — the girlfriend of one of the group’s co-founders — had added over 600 people. One wonders whether the 40 known biker gang members or hangers-on listed as members are actually aware of the fact. Regardless, La Meute is probably far smaller than its own media coverage would suggest.

Covering groups like La Meute is crucial. But ignoring or minimizing its rhetoric only normalizes La Meute’s existence and obfuscates its true aims. Privately, many La Meute members are willing, even proud, to demonstrate their hatred of Islam and Muslims. We should indulge them publicly — very publicly.

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