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The Complexities of Protest and Intolerance: Unraveling the 1 Million March 4 Children

Sep 21, 2023

This article is co-authored by Elisa Hategan, independent journalist. 

 

On Tuesday afternoon, I received a direct message from a radio broadcaster: “Do you expect there to be much of a turn out at the Million person protest? Seems to be a bit rag tag.”

They were referring to 1 Million March 4 Children, a nationwide protest billed as a “family-friendly and peaceful” march to eliminate Sexual Orientation Gender Identity (SOGI) policies, curriculum, and teacher resources. The event began at 9 am on September 20, 2023, in dozens of cities across the country; some places appear to have more local buy-in than others. On September 22, Billboard Chris and Save Canada are also scheduled to march past three public schools in Toronto.

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) describes the 1 Million March 4 Children as supported by a “big tent of far-right and conspiratorial groups, including Christian Nationalists, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, sovereign citizens, and anti-public education activists.” Then the unions chimed in. The Ontario Federation of Labour references the word “hate” eight times in its release. The Public Service Alliance of Canada says, “While these groups claim to be in support of ‘parental rights’, the protests are actually anti-2SLGBTQIA+ hate rallies.” Several unions have endorsed this perspective, encouraging members to counter protest and adopt tactics from CAHN’s Guide for Pride Defenders. 

In fact, Muslim parents with religious or cultural objections to LGBTQ+ “lifestyles” initiated the march, and their concept was quarterbacked (or hijacked, depending on who you ask) by secular parents who purport to hold no such reservations, instead feeling concerned specifically with SOGI in schools. 

There is a lot of hype surrounding these demonstrations, and emotions are running high online among protesters and counter protesters alike. Like every aspect of the culture wars, it is a challenge to distinguish between perception and reality.

Navigating the Culture Wars: The Canadian Anti-Hate Network’s Guide for Pride Defenders

For the past three years, as I waded deeper and deeper into Canada’s protest and conspiracy circuits, I discovered there is a degree of inevitable overlap between the two. As a result of documenting people behaving in politically extreme ways, sometimes with a satirical lens, I gained strong detractors on both sides of the spectrum. I get called everything ranging from “communist” to “Nazi” to “race baiter” to “white supremacist” by people seeking to discredit my name and reputation. I press on through the noise.

Since approximately September 2022, there has been a noticeable shift in the Canadian protest circuit; attention turned from vaccines and public health mandates to SOGI, resulting in sundry protests outside schools, school boards, and library drag storytimes. 

Nearly every anti-SOGI rally has been met with a counter protest since December 2022. In some instances, counter protesters far outnumber protesters (or “defenders”); other times, the crowds are evenly matched. Although nobody has been seriously injured to date, there have been small to medium acts of violence, including: a cup of coffee thrown at a teenager; the use of powerful electronic noisemakers at close range; forcible confinement by blocking movement with flags and banners; pushing and hair-pulling; umbrellas and poles doubling as weapons. 

Going by what I personally witnessed and know to be true, most (not all) physical harm has been inflicted or initiated by overly zealous self-styled defenders against protesters. What is perceived as rhetorical violence gets met with actual violence. This is not a popular point to make, but it is what’s happening on the ground in real life– at least in the protest circuit context. 

Everyone wants a license to fight in the streets, and this is their big ticket. 

A September 16 recording of a Zoom meeting with union leaders from across Canada was leaked on Twitter, revealing an organized effort to plan and orchestrate strategic counter protests against parents, family members, and others participating in the 1 Million March 4 Children. It is not out of the ordinary for labour groups to weigh in on social issues, and organizing is part of that. People are mistaken to see the meeting itself as proof of conspiracy. What’s significant is the framing of the issue as fighting “hate” and “fascists” in the street, and that being a desirable thing to do. 

The fact that 1 Million March 4 Children was spearheaded by Muslim parents got overshadowed by breathless references to “racists.” As is often the case, the overreliance on the tried and true, dependable smear of “far-right” and “racist” to discredit protesters, obscured what is perhaps a more inconvenient truth — the possibility that the racism, or at least the intolerance of others with differing beliefs, from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, might be coming from those loose with the racism accusations. Moreover, counter protesters could have a harder time justifying counter demonstrations if anyone was honest enough to call it “conservative Muslim organizing.”

Emily Quaile was a participant in the Zoom meeting who identifies herself as a “researcher at Carleton and my focus is fascism in Canada”. When she speaks about protesters, she repeatedly uses the word “fascists” – including stating that “fascists were indeed violent” during a protest on June 9, a statement that clashes with the day’s events as the authors of this article remember them. Emily references CAHN’s articles before switching back to fascists, aka the protesters in general, describing them as “fundamentally racist, they’re fundamentally anti-union, they are fundamentally queer and transphobic”.

I first learned about Emily after she was named as the “parent organizer” of counter protests on Broadview Avenue in Ottawa on June 9, 2023, mounted in response to Billboard Chris and Save Canada announcing a march past three public schools located on that street. Elisa and I attended to observe and document the event, along with my videographer. Emily referred to me and my videographer as “fascists” (one wonders if she has other words in her repertoire) and singled us out to be blocked with flags. She also distributed noisemakers, including to MPP Joel Harden.

At another protest on June 28, 2023, Emily Quaile blocked my path, deliberately created painful feedback noise, and signaled for counter protesters who then swarmed me. I was subjected to an electronic whistle at close range, and intense bullying by counter protesters yelling personal insults into their megaphones. These ambushes made me fear for my physical safety; at times, the jostling, swarming, and piercing noise aimed at my ears felt like a physical assault. 

To my knowledge, I have never met or dealt with Emily Quaile prior to these interactions. But Emily presumably knew about me long before I knew about her, and had her opinion poisoned by the ongoing smear campaign against me. Leading up to the June 9 protests, I took note of an anonymous Reddit comment aimed at Ottawa counter demonstrators: “This is a great time to remind everyone the lady with the red glasses, Caryma Sa’d, is NOT an ally.” No evidence was provided in support of this proposition, just a bald assertion by yet another nameless, faceless account. 

The tactics employed by Emily Quaile and her comrades at Community Solidarity Ottawa reflect CAHN’s playbook. The full length Guide for Pride Defenders includes the following instructions:

  • Use large banners and flags to create a barrier and claim space
  • Use loud music and whistles to disrupt the hate protestors’ verbal harassment
  • Bring and distribute earplugs to protect your hearing
  • Do whatever is necessary, reasonable, and proportional to defend yourselves if they escalate to more serious physical violence
  • Create a ruckus with amplified music, drum lines, and whistles to drown out even the loudest hate protestor
  • Take safety precautions to conceal your identity

In practice, these tactics can make demonstrations less safe. There is tacit acknowledgment that some strategies can cause harm (as evidenced by the directive to bring earplugs, for example), and the reality of creating barriers to claim space often infringes on other people’s freedom of movement in public.

Ironically, CAHN’s playbook encourages followers to “hold the line”– a movement phrase that is now heavily associated with the Freedom Convoy.

A particularly insidious aspect of CAHN’s playbook is the advice to identify individuals deemed “disruptive media”, and assigning someone to “monitor” these individuals and “inform” others. This stifles freedom of the press — while nobody is required to engage with any particular reporter, blanket bans for arbitrary or unjust reasons is inimical to journalism. In my case, this practice has also translated into the spread of defamation in real time.

I am targeted by smears specifically to discredit my nonpartisan work exposing good, bad, and ugly behaviour on the frontlines of the culture wars. CAHN and its contributors, for instance, frequently call on supporters to “ice out fake journalists”. Since Elisa and I published The HateGate Affair: Unmasking Canada’s Hate Industry, there has also been a concerted effort to mock and sabotage my pending application to the Canadian Association of Journalists. The charge is being led by a journalist who received an award for enduring online harassment; it is ironic that she is a perpetrator and inciter of online harassment against me, a fellow female journalist.

The Paradox of Tolerance: Debating Free Speech and Ideological Conflict in Modern Activism

Up until recently, you were allowed to disagree in the open, to oppose others through face-to-face dialogue rather than anonymous email campaigns and petitions to deplatform and cancel those you despise from afar. But this traditional viewpoint, which once formed the crux of the political and moral philosophies underlying liberalism, seems almost archaic to today’s radical activists. At its core, “antifascist” activism now appears to have become the antithesis of a laissez-faire approach to life.

The debate over whether to debate at all, had briefly replaced the basic tenet of open dialogue, before being itself displaced by the newer-yet idea that to enter in any discussion – or even acknowledgement of your political adversary’s humanity – is tantamount to “platforming hate”.

While still purporting to advocate for diversity and people’s right to choose who they love or how they present their gender, the conversation now centers around who should be excluded from the conversation. Who is considered vile, bigoted, and “fascist” enough, to merit being preemptively insulted, physically assaulted, and eradicated.

It is here, at the crossroads of tolerating those we judge as “intolerant”, that we invariably crash against a handful of thought-terminating clichés. These jingles seek to automatically dismiss dissent without debate, and to win consensus for exclusion through heavy-handed linguistic maneuvering rather than addressing the underlying problems that lead to conflict in the first place.

One such jingle is the expression, “If 9 people sit down at a table with 1 Nazi without a protest, there’s now 10 Nazis at the table.” This jingle has been used repeatedly online to justify that the very act of trying to understand your opponent’s grievances is a crime in itself. In essence, if you exchange any words with a “Nazi”, you too have instantly transformed into a Nazi, notwithstanding whatever the current definition of “Nazi” happens to be.

When Tom Morello, the socialist bandleader of Rage Against the Machine, tweeted the phrase earlier this year and encountered backlash, the New York Post described it as a mechanism to stop all conversation, via the implication that “those who politely engage with people who demonstrate hateful behavior are complicit in their bad acts.” 

On cue, the backlash to the backlash came from more proponents of circular reasoning, who capitalized on the outrage by adding their own illogical spin– that the only people who would have a problem with fascists being called out are, well, fascists. This is a spin on the classic, “What are you afraid of, if you’ve got nothing to hide?” — which has been used countless times to justify increased state surveillance and an erosion of civilian privacy and freedom of thought, association, and expression. 

Perhaps the most recognized thought-terminating cliché is philosopher Karl Popper’s Paradox of Intolerance. Mark Manson, author of the bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, sums up the paradox as “The idea is that it’s okay to be a piece of shit to someone because they, too, are a piece of shit.” To illustrate how it invariably devolves into a never-ending cycle of hostility, he writes:

Let’s say Person B decides that Person A’s behavior is intolerant and a threat to society. Person B then decides that it is morally correct to be intolerant of Person A and treat her like crap. But then, Person C strolls by and notices Person B being a totally intolerant assface to Person A. Person C then decides that it’s morally correct to be actively intolerant of Person B. But then Person D strolls by, and notices Person C being horribly intolerant towards Person B…

Indeed, the worst part of misreading Popper’s Paradox is that it justifies pre-emptive intolerance. Two opposing sides – let’s take Stalinists and Hitlerites – could draw equal inspiration from the idea that their side is right, and come to the conclusion that allowing their opponents any leeway of expression is dangerous. This line of thinking, when taken to its extreme end, could be used to justify atrocities– the idea that to prevent genocide, you must commit genocide first. To cleanse a country of seditious ideas, the wrongthinkers must be eradicated. To stop “fascists”, you must arm yourself and attack said “fascists” before they get the chance to attack you.

The fight, then, becomes to destroy the opponent rather than defeat their argument. Because for as long as there are disagreeable people asking uncomfortable questions, your ideology and its shortfalls cannot go unchallenged. By reducing opponents to a label or a slur, anything that person brings with them is automatically discarded as poison. 

It’s a quick way to get all your allies to reflexively disengage and not listen to anyone pointing out any fatal errors in their logic; to drown out the messenger’s questions with whistles, and shouting, and other weapons of choice. Ad hominem attacks, accompanied by grandiose virtue-signaling and hyperbolic references to unspecified genocides, is by far the most favoured strategy amidst far-left activists.

But who decides who is a “fascist”? And once the label has been cast, if your policy is to refuse to engage in debate with the “fascist” in front of you, how could that person ever defend themselves from preemptive punishment? How can activists who purport to defend freedom of physical and sexual expression, be so intolerant of freedom of thought and verbal expression? 

Many who swear by the Intolerance Paradox are likely unfamiliar with Karl Popper’s other writing, which conveys a different impression: “Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride, or laziness of mind.”

Cowardice. Laziness. Pride, the smug arrogance fuelling the conviction that you are right, have supplanted the need for self-examination . Why bother, when you’re fighting “fascists” and “Nazis”? By definition, you are a noble “antifascist” – those on the other side of your pointy umbrella, ear-splitting whistle, baseball bat or other weapon of choice, are subhumans who deserve whatever punishment your side decides to dole out in the name of human rights.

The result? Intellectual poverty and lots of it, as demonstrated by people’s inability to effectively articulate their position when confronted with evidence-based arguments. Why risk debating an opponent who might make you look bad or unprepared? Unwilling to risk losing control of the narrative, extremist activists often resort to open hostility or deferral to a higher, nebulous moral authority where their triumph — and their adversaries’ evildoing– is a foregone conclusion. 

What good could come from this? Writing off huge swaths of the Canadian population as conspiracy theorists, extremists, racists, bigots– what good will it do? Is there any benefit, social cohesion, peace-building between sectarian communities? Have any so-called “fascists” ever been deradicalized by a beating? Or by “reeducation” camps and struggle sessions? Or does abuse simply drive the behaviour further underground, feeding into even more extremist narratives of revenge? 

How do we get to a place where everyone is allowed to exist, when so many believe that political adversaries should be forbidden from communicating, or even peacefully advocating for their cause? What do you think will happen when you cancel, deplatform, intimidate, get people fired? Will those “fascists” suddenly vanish into that good night, or will they come back looking for a fight?

Making your political opponents fear you is not a victory. No matter what your “community guardians / defenders” might tell you, the use of intimidation tactics to scare others into not exercising their freedom of expression is not a win. In fact, it pretty much guarantees that your movement has already lost. 

Instructing your foot-soldiers to “ice out” journalists, to conceal their appearance and bring menacing objects to protests which could be turned into weapons, is an aggressive tactic that, at best, ensures limited short-term gains at the cost of long-term progress. It shatters trust in the community– the trust of parents in their school boards and children’s educators, while harming the kids left in this ideological tug-of-war. Do you really think you’re fighting for the kids, when you attack their parents by calling them bigots and extremists?

CAHN recently made a funding bid to the federal government for $5 million in taxpayer money to position itself as an “anti-hate watchdog.” They cited figures suggesting “10 to 15 percent of Canadians are consuming far-right content and believe in one or more far-right conspiracy theories.” The organization’s mandate includes countering whatever it deems far-right and hate promoting movements, but its strategies may, in fact, contribute to radicalization.

Long-term solutions can only be won when you realize that you cannot simply erase six million citizens out of the equation. You cannot brand millions of Canadians, including parents concerned about their children’s education and immigrants from culturally-divergent backgrounds, as racists, transphobes and religious extremists and expect no backlash or scrutiny. At the very least, you have to show receipts, rather than sharp objects. In lieu of receipts, aggression (no matter what noble cause it hides behind) will be seen for what it is– a desperate attempt to bludgeon your viewpoint across, rather than educate by example.

This article is co-authored by Elisa Hategan, independent journalist. 

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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