News

Safer in a Viper’s Pit: A New Chapter in My Disturbing Saga of Online and Real-World Harassment

Aug 24, 2023

A random white male walks past a demonstration in progress. He stops, exchanges terse words with the protesters, digs up a loosely-sealed can of paint he is carrying in a shopping bag, and pitches its contents onto the demonstrators. The bulk of the paint lands on a black woman, prompting accusations of racism. A video that goes viral shortly afterwards is offered up as evidence. Although the clip doesn’t show what precipitated the incident or any possible justification for the assault, it clearly captures the moment the paint is thrown.

Within a couple of days of outcry, the man is charged with assault. The woman appears to be unharmed and vindicated by the police charges.

Since the incident involved violence at a local protest, I decide to go by the scene the following morning. Imagine my surprise when I spot the actual paint can used in the assault, discarded by the curbside.

After I post photos of the Valspar paint can and ask why the police had not collected it as evidence, the woman at the centre of the incident declares that my photo upset her more than the paint-throwing incident itself: “MOTHERFUCKING SELF-ABSORBED PIECE OF SHIT. I am literally more pissed off about this shit than the fucking paint throwing.”

I did not attend the demonstration and don’t have details of what transpired. But my presence, documenting a public incident that occurred on a public street in my community, is deemed more offensive than an actual assault.

Social media reports indicated that two people had been arrested at the demonstration, but not the paint-thrower, who was charged later. Planning to report on the incident, I contacted Toronto Police Service (TPS) media relations to inquire about the same-day arrests. They responded with an email listing two individuals charged with assault. One of them was Leon Emmett.

A Google search yielded several articles identifying Emmett as the owner of Hairy Tarantula, a popular downtown Toronto comic book and hobby store. The skullet and unruly beard were unmistakable– I instantly recognized him as a man who had been harassing me at rallies since the beginning of the year. His surname confirmed to me that he was the operator of a now-suspended Twitter account under the monicker Cryptic Catfist aka @LNemmett that had churned out defamatory comments about me going as far back as July 2021, and possibly earlier.

The irony of being accused of cosplay by a comic bookshop owner who likely sees himself as a bona fide “guardian” or “defender” of human rights is almost too much to bear.

But how did we get here?

Unraveling the Hairy Tarantula’s Tangled Web of Harassment

My first physical encounter with Leon Emmett happened on January 14, 2023, outside the Peterborough Public Library. Leading up to that day, I felt increasingly apprehensive because of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network’s public call to “ice out fake journalists”, a disparaging term I believe to be directed at least in part at me. Despite the fact that I have documented the Freedom Convoy and other populist uprisings throughout the pandemic, and notwithstanding my footage being used in mainstream media reports, people without a single byline to their name continuously belittle my gonzo journalism. 

It was the first large demonstration I attended in the new year. The last two events I’d covered in 2022 (in Brockville and Welland) were intense, frightening, and hostile due to so-called “defenders” profiling and targeting me. It is important to note that at each event, it was only a subset of counter-protesters who were laser-focused on my presence, accosted me non-stop, and tried turning others against me by repeating falsehoods spread about me online by their comrades and associates.

In Peterborough, I was followed around and blocked by flags, and at times felt forcibly confined. One of the instigators was CAHN contributor Collin Chepeka, the man who put out the call to “ice out fake journalists”. It was both frustrating and disheartening to see the smear campaign operate in real time, in real life.

An hour or so into the event, a group from Ottawa arrived, consisting of Joe Morin, Deana Sherif, Clayton Goodwin. A carload of GTA “defenders” also pulled up: Catherine Crockett (the driver, carrying a “go away #CarymaNgo” sign already prepared for me), former (?) Proud Boy Josh Chernofsky, Gisela McKay, and a man in an orange mask who I now know is Leon Emmett.

Three separate chapters/networks/circuits of “antifascist” activists who routinely harass me online, had converged.

Emmett, concealed by his orange mask, promptly got in my videographer’s face. He seemed almost excited to see us, and immediately launched into a diatribe of racist and misogynistic insults: “You’re a fucking nazi, fucking nazi cow, you’re both fucking nazi goofs.” “Trying to play your fuckin— Why don’t you call yourself a Palestinian, too? Why didn’t you bring that up? Is that who you are? Your race is who you are?”

I had no idea who Orange Mask guy was and why he behaved so aggressively, but I feared for our safety. I kept calm, even though the exchange made me uneasy. Along with targeting my ethnicity, the man cast aspersions on my decision to attend and document the event, but refused to point to anything specific that warranted such vitriol.

I felt vulnerable, and ended up filing a hate incident report with Peterborough Police afterwards. It is hateful to call a Muslim woman and a Jewish man “Nazis” with no legitimate basis whatsoever. Such casual use of slurs underscore a profound contempt for civil liberties (including freedom of association and expression) and a lack of ability to critically engage on matters of actual substance. They are lazy smears that put targets on our backs and justify further abuse.

There was something eerily familiar about the Orange Mask guy’s language, as he called me “Scooty”, “cartoon wrestling villain lawyer”, and “goofy”. It brought to mind an account that had been stalking and defaming me on Twitter for over a year, @LNemmett aka Cryptic Catfist. I filed the thought away as a mere suspicion because I had no other evidence to link him to the account.

Towards the end of the Peterborough event, my videographer was kicked in the groin by one of Orange Mask’s friends– Gisela McKay, a “legal observer” with the Movement Defence Committee. Since I posted a video clip of the assault, McKay and her friends have falsely claimed that she was pushed into traffic on the street– however, the video evidence shows no such thing. In fact, McKay’s own footage shows that she had started recording me and my videographer from across the road, before we even knew she was there.

When he noticed her filming, my videographer reciprocated. As a general rule, we only film if a scene (boring or not) piques our interest, or as a means of protection from physical attacks and false narratives.

Emmett and McKay stood together after the assault, gloating and flipping me the bird.

My next encounter with Emmett came several months later, on April 12, 2023, at York Mills Collegiate Institute. An assembly featuring a Stonewall activist and famous drag performer was being protested by Save Canada and Gus Stefanis of the Canadian Nationalist Party (the closest thing we have to a Neo-Nazi party). A handful of Toronto “antifascist” activists were in attendance: Catherine Crockett, Josh Chernofsky, Colin Hinz, Neven Peric, Zahra (fka Wesley Williams), and a man with a skullet and unruly beard whose identity was still unfamiliar to me (Leon Emmett).

Here he is at the tail end of a pushing match with Gus Stefanis:

He was the same guy who retrieved the trans flag for Zahra. A teenager had snatched it away and took off running after Zahra pushed 17-year-old protester Josh Alexander off a planter to address the crowd and was vociferously booed– the video of the booing went viral internationally. Zahra ended up going viral again at the 2023 Toronto Pride March; they paraded with their penis exposed, prompting outrage in conservative circles about children in attendance and whether that constitutes indecent exposure.

At York Mills, I also had a physical run in with Josh Chernofsky. Twice, he menacingly chased my videographer around. (It wasn’t the first time; four months earlier, in December 2022, he had chased him down the street, brandishing an umbrella as a weapon.) I stepped in Cherofsky’s path to block him and protect my videographer, and was violently yelled at. He was visibly shaking and running on adrenaline; I did not know whether he planned to strike me in rage. Police stood by at first, eventually intervening to move him away.

As we were leaving, Skullet Guy called out, “See you later, goofs”. In that moment, I recognized the voice as belonging to the Orange Mask guy I’d encountered in Peterborough. I asked if he was the same person; his mocking reply was that I looked “like a Nazi goof.”

I immediately informed officers who were in attendance, hoping they would identify him for my Peterborough police report. Unfortunately, Peterborough Police did not answer their phone to provide confirmation and TPS was not in a position to follow up on my complaint.

Our next encounter was April 30, 2023. I was downtown at Nathan Phillips Square, hoping to document May Day rallies. A group of protesters with a banner positioned themselves at the front of the parade. One man dashed behind a pole to put on a mask— this time, I recognized the skullet and unruly beard. My videographer walked over, only to be hit with an object. This was the first of three assaults to be committed against us by that group on that day.

The only person to get arrested was an Indigenous man, egged on by white antifaux activist Trevor Miller. For his part, Miller called me and my videographer “Trump supporters” and accused us of supporting January 6 riots in the USA while chanting, “You’re garbage. You’re nothing. You’re no one. No one likes you.”

Once again, I approached police about Skullet Guy and referenced the Peterborough police report, only to have my concerns about assault and criminal harassment dismissed. I was told I should leave if my presence was agitating people. No one in the crowd challenged the abuse and unfounded allegations being hurled at us.

I am rarely emotional in public, but I burst into tears on the street. I strive to remain objective and document events as they unfold, which means I try my hardest to keep emotions out of my reporting. But in that moment, I felt like a second-class citizen— the rights of white men to act like hooligans and attack me trumped my right to peacefully exist and document a public event.

The next sighting of Skullet Guy was in Uxbridge on May 28, 2023. Once again, he hid behind a pole upon spotting my videographer. One of the protesters remarked that he’d only put on a mask after we had arrived.

Unleashing Malice: Probing the Origins and Fallout of Intentional Online Harassment

It is hard to say how poison spreads, and who first infected Leon Emmett. As far as I know, I never interacted with him before he made me a target. I can only speculate as to his motives, which likely have something to do with his recurrent association with other antifaux activists who posted similarly-disparaging comments about me and/or who progressed to assaulting my videographer.

There is a tendency to confuse one’s willingness to engage with unpopular or contemptible views with unqualified endorsement of the same. A lack of regard for the importance of civil liberties is the fundamental problem, and leads to me being vilified. Emmett’s repeated references to cosplay and fandom also strike me as projection on some level.

Leon Emmett is yet another angry stranger who made dozens, if not hundreds, of malicious posts about me from an anonymous account. While it is impossible to track every occurrence of harassment I receive, both due to volume and the emotional toll it takes to read vitriol about oneself, my screenshots of Cryptic Catfist posts go back to at least July 2021.

The account used dehumanizing language in comparing me to a rabid dog, implied I am not a real lawyer or ought to be disbarred, and posted about participating in the Chinatown mob that blockaded my commercial unit to prevent me from interviewing Chris Sky. He coined the mean nickname ​”Sad Cryama”. He called me a “Nazi”, “fash”, “a wretched and malicious hag”, “a flaming bag of human trash”, a “daft nazi-loving cow”, “endlessly-malevolent scooter-cow”, an “attention whore” who “emits foul gasses”, “a grifter”, “menace” and “serial harasser”, a “nasty carnival act” and “muppetfaced clown”, declaring that my cameraman has a “#PunchableFace” and had “asked” to be assaulted.

He humiliated me even as he insisted that I needed to learn “some humility”, and proclaimed that I would “lose the law license she’s so unqualified to hold”, and he would “buy a keg for that celebration”.

Why would a total stranger attack someone he doesn’t know? What would embolden someone to hate a woman to the point he dedicates himself to destroying her name online and in person? What kind of justification could excuse such unprovoked verbal and physical attacks? Where does such malice and misplaced rage come from?

Asking these questions is no different than speculating as to why a passerby would throw a can full of paint onto random demonstrators.

I’ve stopped asking these questions.

In the end, what does it matter what a harasser’s motives are? Trying to figure out the why, implies the victim did something to cause her assault.

What counts is the impact. How we as a society– including law enforcement– respond to harassment. Whether we tolerate it, justify it, or turn a blind eye to it because it happens to people we consider political opponents or who express views we disagree with.

Reflections on the Continuum of Hate

A random white male passerby throws paints onto a woman of colour, and the social media biosphere explodes with outrage.

But what if the white man smeared that woman of colour with words?

What if the assault was prolonged, over two grueling years, consisting of harassment, cyber-stalking, hateful and defamatory slurs that form a consolidated effort to smear and destroy her reputation?

What if those ugly words are splattered all over virtual spaces and extend into real life? What if it embolden others to create vile sexual memes intended to degrade and dehumanize? To propose throwing milkshakes onto her? To blast electronic whistles to deafen her ears? 

Knowing that “punch Nazis” is a popular and rarely-disputed slogan among antifaux activists, it is scary to have that label falsely applied to me. Much less by people who benefit from the kind of privilege that a visible minority and child of immigrants could only dream of. I fear for my safety whenever I am in public, and particularly at rallies where protestors are amped up and looking for action. And there is no sweeter excuse for violence than the self-righteousness of people who resort to racist and misogynistic attacks while holding themselves up as paragons of virtue.

Sometimes I flash back to that May Day when I was bawling on Queen Street, a brown Muslim woman and her Jewish videographer surrounded by white so-called anti-racist, anti-fascist activists. Knowing I would feel safer in a viper’s pit.

Transcending the widening political divide means acknowledging that two things can be equally true:

Violence in the name of preventing violence is still violence.
Harassment by any other name is still harassment.

Leon Emmett’s next court appearance is October 11, 2023. His assault charge has not been proven in court.

Caryma Sa'd

Caryma Sa'd takes a no holds barred approach in her razor-sharp commentary; nothing and nobody is immune from criticism.

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