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TOP STORY
The Canadian government paid $128,000 to a U.K. firm to monitor Canadian pro-Israel social media accounts, which framed many of them as “right-wing extremists” motivated by “anti-Muslim hatred.”
Among the activities highlighted as being evidence of rising right-wing extremism in Canada was “discontentment with pro-Palestine protests” and even the accusation that some federal politicians were “more dedicated to matters in Gaza than Canadian affairs.”
The monitoring was done by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. In early 2024, just a few months after the October 7 massacres, they were awarded a $128,268 Government of Canada contract for a project given the wordy title of “Digital Analysis Situation Room and Rapid Response Programming for Israel/Gaza-related Extremism, Hate and Mis/Disinformation in Canada.”
The result was a series of reports claiming that the Israel-Hamas conflict had inflamed “extremism, hate and disinformation” among Canadian right-wing extremists, and exacerbated “online harms” in the country.
“Several influential accounts, particularly on X, have taken a staunch pro-Israeli position since the attacks on October 7,” warned one such report
.
The report does not cite any of its sources, with the explanation that it is their policy to “not link to extremist content.” Readers are only told that “details of specific posts can be shared with select researchers upon request.”
One of the few exceptions is an Oct. 23 post from an obscure Facebook group entitled Turdeau/Liberals Are Destroying Canada.
“Israel gets attacked, they kill women children, innocent people, torture them, burning babies and more. Israel starts retaliating and Palestinians fill the streets of Toronto with Anti-Jew slogans,” reads the excerpted post, before adding, “Canada will soon be unrecognizable and filled with these religious extremists.”
The post is included as an example of an extremist post spreading the disinformation that “policing of protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict has been inconsistent.”
Some Canadian anti-Israel protests have featured calls for the destruction of Israel. This has taken the form of repeated chants of “From the river the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that explicitly describes the current borders of the State of Israel.
In less subtle instances, Canadian demonstrations have featured calls of “
” or
“armed resistance.” There has also been a pattern of demonstrations explicitly celebrating the October 7 massacres, both in the immediate aftermath, and
on the first anniversary of the attacks
.
On Oct. 7 of last year, one of Canada’s most active anti-Israel groups, Palestinian Youth Movement,
to “honour the martyrs of the past year.”
Nevertheless, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue deems it extremist to say the demonstrations are “protesting for the death of Jews and the Jewish state.”
The aftermath of the October 7 massacres has also cast scrutiny on the aid agency UNRWA. Despite receiving ample funding from the Government of Canada, the group has been repeatedly linked to Palestinian extremism, including an instance in August where the agency dismissed nine staffers for their alleged participation in the October 7 attacks.
In September, UNRWA
that a top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was one of its employees.
Nevertheless, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue concluded that any online post linking Canada’s UNRWA funding with the October 7 attacks was trafficking in right-wing extremism.
“Among the top performing tweets about the conflict that were shared among right-wing extremists in Canada in the month after October 7 2023 were posts claiming that Justin Trudeau had directly funded the Hamas attacks through
to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees,” it says.
Anti-Israel narratives were mentioned, but only as they pertained to right-wing sources. “Several Telegram channels associated with extreme right-wing content creators both hosted antisemitic material and amplified posts from influential international right-wing extremists and antisemites,” it wrote.
The contract with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue was
in a story this week by the new outlet Blacklock’s Reporter. The program was funded via the Digital Citizen Contribution Program, a new Liberal fund first pitched as a means towards “countering online disinformation.”
In the past few years, the Liberal government has leaned hard into the perceived threat posed by online “disinformation” or “misinformation.” This most notably took the form of the Online Harms Act, a tabled piece of legislation that broadened police powers to punish online speech, and even provided for preliminary detention of Canadians based on the suspicion that they may post hateful speech in future.
Although the Online Harms Act was killed with the January prorogation of Parliament, Prime Minister Mark Carney has indicated a willingness to return to the issue.
During the campaign, Carney declared that “large American online platforms have become seas of racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate in all its forms.”
He added, “my government will act.”
IN OTHER NEWS
Just one week after winning election, Prime Minister Mark Carney had his first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. Carney’s primary electoral pitch was that he would be a tough negotiator with the U.S. He even declared that Canada’s “old relationship” with the U.S. was “over.” Nevertheless, the meeting featured no shortage of coded abuse from Trump and even strangely obsequious praise from the new Canadian leader.
….
- Carney opened a press briefing with Trump by delivering the following: “I would like to thank you for your hospitality, and above all, for your leadership. You’re a transformational president, with a focus on the economy, with a relentless focus on the American worker. Securing the borders. Ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids. And, uh, securing the world.”
- Carney gesturing to the White House and saying that the official residence is similar to Canada in that it is “not for sale.” “Never say never,” responded Trump.
- Trump going on his usual rant about how Canada would benefit from U.S. statehood while Carney awkwardly smiled next to him. “It would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens, you get free military, tremendous medical care,” said Trump, adding that a United States encompassing the current territory of Canada is more “artistically” pleasing.
All the while, the visit didn’t yield any apparent changes to the status quo, with Trump saying that all of his existing tariffs on Canada would remain, and
that there was nothing Carney could have said to change that
.
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