The article we published about the Frontenac Active Club last August seems to have seriously hampered this neo-Nazi-inspired group.
After being barred from the gym where he was training, Martin Brouillette, from Rawdon, contacted us to ask us to remove his name from the article . . . for the safety of his family. Obviously, his family has nothing to fear from anti-fascists; the problem lies with Barette’s white supremacist activities and his stream of inflammatory rhetoric on social media. At this point, however, we see nothing to indicate that Martin Brouillette has continued his neo-Nazi activities . . . apart from the fact that he still proudly displays his fascist tattoos alongside photos of his children on his Facebook page.
The other members of the group have disappeared, and posts on the FAC Telegram account have largely dwindled to republishing content generated by other groups in the Active Club International network and some affiliated neo-Nazis in English Canada. On May 3, FAC members took part in a visibility action in Toronto organized by the white nationalist (neo-Nazi) network formed around the tiny groupuscule Nationalist-13, along with some thirty acolytes from the general area and from elsewhere in Canada.
As for the group’s leader Raphaël Dinucci, from Laval, he didn’t directly react to the article, but the FAC leadership has shifted, and he has gradually faded from view, eclipsed by Shawn Beauvais MacDonald. The latter is notorious, both for having been part of every recent Québec neo-Nazi project (Alt Right Montréal, Atalante, White Lives Matter, you name it, he was there) and for having been central to each organization’s self-destruction!
Despite his “Friendly Fash” sobriquet, he has continued to do what he does best: being as detestable as a human being can be. On weekends, for example, he can found wandering around by himself on av. Mont-Royal or boul. Saint-Laurent, wearing ostentatious Adolf Hitler clothing and hanging out on various terraces, book in hand, hoping for a run-in with antifascists; that hasn’t worked out for him (we’re not complete idiots, after all). Beginning a few months back he started having company. He has taken the very young, extremely racist Sandrine Girardot under his wing and into his home. (We’ve mentioned Sandrine in the past.) Recent posts about the relationship this forty-year-old neo-Nazi militant is having with the young Girardot (twenty-four) strongly suggest that he can add scumbag and predator to his CV.
Now, let’s get to the main subject of this article: David Barrette, from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
Unlike the other members of the Frontenac Active Club, who are known for their online discretion (with the notable exception of Beauvais-MacDonald), David Barrette tends to go to the far limits of depravity in his online hate speech. He praises Hitler, argues that the shape of the skulls of different “races” indicates different degrees of intelligence, and mocks police murders of racialized people; nothing is too racist (or too Nazi) for Barrette. With Facebook’s moderation standards now virtually non-existent, Barrette is free to post his Nazi rants on a daily basis with no fear of repercussions.
It’s also clear that the police and the courts in Québec aren’t really interested in combating online hate speech. Proof of this is their total inaction in the face of clear and repeated infractions—and, of course, the cringeworthy botching of the case against Gabriel Sohier Chaput, aka “Zeiger.” At the risk of repeating ourselves, it is, as always, perfectly clear that responsibility for fighting the rising tides of racism and fascism lies with the community as a whole, both those aligned with militant anti-fascism and others who wish to take concrete action.
We were shocked recently to see Barrette take a further step in his online violence. In a recent post, he wrote: “Fuck your optics, I’m going in”—a clear reference to the phrase posted by the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018, shortly before he killed eleven Jews—which might reasonably suggest that Barrette is preparing a similar sort of massacre. Shortly afterward, he followed up this message with “I’m joking,” and, given that nothing happened, it is likely that he was “joking,” but a “joke” of this nature (especially coming from an unapologetic antisemite) can’t be taken lightly.
We made it perfectly clear in a previous article that David Barrette poses a constant threat to our communities: he has attacked a pro-LGBTQ+ rally; he spreads hate speech online as easily as other people breathe; he has a history of violence that is well documented in his criminal record (more on that later). Therefore, publicly claiming that he is preparing a mass shooting is obviously a red flag, regardless of whether or not he’s “joking.” Even those who work in the area acknowledge that predicting mass shootings is a near-impossible task. Given his extreme Nazi views, Barrette clearly raises plenty of red flags. Furthermore, he hasn’t confined himself to the virtual world; he has joined the Frontenac Active Club, and he physically attacked LGBTQ+ people at a protest. We think the community should be aware of him and take the potential threat very seriously. Above all, we think it’s important to draw all of this to the attention of his employer GloboTech Communications (or simply Globo.tech).
Barrette is very prolific on the IRC chat platform, where he and a few other losers spend their days talking absolute crap. In Barrette’s case, this means talking about his love for Hitler and his hatred of racialized and LGBTQ+ people. At one point, he wrote: “I have an Arab colleague and I like him.” We can only imagine how strained this working relationship must be. All the more so, given that he has also written: “I talk to Jewish women, Black women, Arab women. . . . I tell them openly that the goal is to deport [millions of] people like them” Believe it or not, this is one of his more coherent posts amid his hallucinatory a hate-fueled Nazi ramblings.
Brief comic relief interrupted this incessant stream of hate on IRC last month, when Barrette accidentally posted a picture of his dick in the #montreal group’s chat room. The reactions were priceless:
We’re aware that a number of people involved in the struggle against the circulation of hateful ideas have contacted Globotech, the company that employs David Barette. Oddly, the company seems to very committed to protecting this neo-Nazi: as soon as his name is mentioned, whether on the phone, by e-mail, or via the chat service, company representatives suddenly go silent.
Recently, comrades informed us of David Barrette’s lengthy criminal record, which suggests that he may be a violent repeat offender. An overview of his criminal record shows that he has been convicted of death threats and causing bodily harm, threatening to burn or otherwise damage property, conspiracy, breach of probation. . .
We are unable to determine whether or not the various domain names managed by Barrette—for example, the domains national-socialists.club and freespeech.club belong to him—are hosted by GloboTech, since they’re hidden behind Cloudflare.
That said, we discovered something very interesting in the MX records (Mail eXchange, a list of servers that are allowed to send e-mail on behalf of a domain name). Barrette included one of Globo.tech’s IP addresses in the list of servers accepted for national-socialists.club and freespeech.club. Only GloboTech’s administrators would know whether or not the websites (one of which is clearly Nazi in character) are hosted on their servers, but the MX records show that Barrette at least intended to use Globo.tech’s servers to send e-mails from his sites.
Globo.tech’s management seems to think they can remain neutral in this situation, but there’s no such thing as neutrality, even less so when it’s used to protect a Nazi who attacks LGBTQ+ demonstrations, spreads hate online, and alludes to preparing a mass murder.
When GloboTech protects David Barrette, the company becomes an accomplice, all the more so if its inaction allows him to use its resources to spread hate. GloboTech can’t go on playing ostrich for much longer.
