Trust a “professional” news outlet to turn a tragedy into a farce. At the time of this writing, six people are reported dead, and eight more are wounded, after a shooting Sunday night at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec mosque in Québec city. Initial reports stated that a man by the name of Mohamed Belkhadir had been taken into custody as part of a shooting duo, but police later cleared him, stating that he was a witness who’d been attending the prayer service. It now seems that the attacker was a 27 year old Québec native by the name of Alexandre Bissonnette, who wound up turning himself in to police custody.

This didn’t stop The Daily Beast from going off half-cocked, however. Following the attack, the parody Twitter account Reuter New Braek [sic] tweeted out the following information:

Reuter New Braek is an obvious troll account – it even says so in its Twitter bio – which follows the spirit of the comedian Sam Hyde, who has satirized the media by reporting himself a domestic terrorist on multiple occasions. The underlying bite of the joke is that the mainstream news agencies are constantly seeking out the Great White Defendant (examples include portraying Zimmerman as a “White Hispanic”, and Erderly’s shoddy reporting for Rolling Stone), while ignoring the far more frequent attacks which happen in the other direction.

Reuter New Braek is a parody in the same style as The Onion, not a fake news source intended to mislead. But that didn’t stop Daily Beast reporter John Green from jumping on a story which fit the narrative he wanted to push:

Furthermore – as if to exacerbate his sloppy, unethical journalism – he later tweeted out more information about me and Forney, showing that he’d gone to the work to find out more about us, without ever trying to confirm his initial source.

The Daily Beast later amended their article with the following statement:

Editor’s note: This piece originally stated that Reuters reported the names of the assailants. However, the information came from a Reuters parody social-media account. We regret the error and have deleted the information.

But not before several others, including The Ralph Retort and Heavy, had beaten them to the punch.

John Green went on a witch hunt, and Forney and I were the victims. Thanks to his reporting, our faces are showing up on Google searches for the crime, along with the false accusation that we are White Supremacists – which is a prosecutable offence in Canada, thanks to our Human Rights Tribunals which have undermined Canadians’ right to free speech.

On the one hand I had a good laugh about it. Last night I tweeted out: “Time to come clean: David Aurine is my twin brother, left handed, works with Antifa, wasn’t raised by wolves like me.” That is because I accept the risks that come with writing under my own name, and I have made my peace with God. Domestic terrorist threats from Antifa are part of the job. To paraphrase Professor Jordan Petersen, who has also come under fire from these same Social Justice thugs, I can’t imagine any other way of living my life aside from pursuing virtue as the answer to all the suffering that exists in the world. So if you ask me whether I regret saying the things I have said – how can I regret speaking the truth to the best of my ability?

In recent months, the mainstream press has been riling up violent left-wing agitators and encouraging them to do violence against dehumanized targets on the political right. There is the case of Richard Spencer being assaulted in Washington DC; Lauren Southern having rocks thrown at her; and recently the taxpayer supported Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s program Marketplace equated Ezra Levant’s Make Canada Great Again shirts to White Surpremacist and NeoNazi movements – despite the fact that Mr Levant is Jewish.

Incidentally, Levant has also been a victim of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal; he was once prosecuted for the Thought Crime of being a Conservative.

The greatest irony of all of this is that (according to what we know at present) the man behind the shooting was, in fact, the exact sort of Great White Defendant that John Green was looking for – and that Matt Forney and I have been the loudest voices ringing the alarm bell that something like this was going to happen! According to Heavy, Alexandre Bissonnette’s facebook page showed him liking Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen (a conservative Québécois politician), the Israel Defense Forces, and United With Israel – but it also shows him liking the radical-left NDP party, their previous leader Jack Layton, and the Parti Québécois of Université Laval.

We have both stated that the Alt Right has become a beacon for idiots who don’t have any principles, and simply want to troll for trolling’s sake. Four years ago they would have become Social Justice Warriors, but now that the right is winning ,they’re joining us, while bringing the same toxic behaviours which are rampant in Antifa.

Neither Daily Beast nor John Green has responded to either myself, nor to Forney. They have not provided an apology for calling us White Supremacists, and exposing us and our families to danger. While he and I are used to these sorts of smears, it doesn’t change the fact that they are smears – and if it had been somebody else who’d been targeted they might have lost their jobs, or even worse.

For these reasons we are in touch with counsel, and are considering our options. This isn’t just yellow journalism – this borders on criminal incitement and harassment. This sort of behaviour from “reputable” news sources cannot be allowed to continue. It needs to stop.

Thank you to everybody who has tweeted, written, and recorded videos about this; my apologies if I haven’t responded, it’s been pretty hectic. If you appreciate the work we do, or wish to help with this legal issue, we both have Patreon accounts, and you can also make a one-time donation to either or both of us. Unlike Mr Green, we don’t have billionaires paying us to promote their toxic agenda.

Matt Forney’s Statement is here.