Shining a Light on Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, the Neo-Nazi from NDG

Since 2017, Montréal Antifasciste has regularly mentioned a local neo-Nazi named Shawn Beauvais MacDonald in its publications. However, we have never taken the time to devote a full article to him. As he has clearly never questioned his beliefs in the face of negative attention and continues to drag his carcass—usually decorated with neo-Nazi symbols—through the streets of Montreal, we decided to correct this oversight. This is all the more important now that we’ve learned of his recent attempts to infiltrate Palestine solidarity demonstrations and other spaces that should be safe, inclusive, and in solidarity with the groups and people whose destruction this individual seeks. Let’s be perfectly clear, Beauvais MacDonald is stridently racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic and, of course, crassly antisemitic.

What follows is a portrait of one of the Montreal area’s most visible and unrepentant neo-Nazis, who, in recent years, has collaborated in one way or another with most of Québec’s white supremacist and neo-fascist projects. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Beauvais MacDonald is not a once lost sheep, now back on the fold, but that he is to this day a white supremacist militant, ideologically fanatical, hardened, and irreformable. We hope that his case will be widely publicized, so that this despicable individual can never feel comfortable anywhere in our city.

[Note: Some of the information in this article has already been published in recent years.

Warning: this article contains racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic,
and antisemitic content].

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Shawn Beauvais MacDonald (SBM) first appeared on our radar in August 2017, in the wake of the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally, in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11–12, 2017. He was quickly identified as one of the Québecers who made the trip to Virginia to take part in this North American alt-right mecca, along with, among others, Gabriel Sohier Chaput, alias “Zeiger” (sentenced in September 2023 to fifteen months in prison for fomenting hatred against Jews) and Vincent Bélanger Mercure. SBM appears briefly in the Vice News reporting devoted to participants at “Unite the Right,” where he is seen shaking hands with the infamous “crybaby Nazi” Christopher Cantwell. Recall that on the afternoon of August 12, after several hours of often-violent clashes between various supremacists (neo-Nazis. KKK, etc.) and anti-racists/anti-fascists, James Alex Fields, a neo-Nazi associated with Vanguard America, drove his car into an anti-racist march, injuring numerous people and killing the militant Heather Heyer. This fateful event marked the beginning of the decline of the alt-right movement.

A subsequent analysis of the images captured during these events shows SBM at the torchlight march on August 11, chanting the anti-Semitic slogan “Jews Will Not Replace Us!” He was also spotted wearing a distinctive red baseball helmet in clashes the following day, during which, he later explained in an episode of the American alt-right podcast “Late Night Alt-Right,” he suffered an elbow injury.

SBM Never Misses an Outing. . .

We didn’t know it at the time, but we had crossed paths with him several times in the preceding months. Investigations into SBM after Charlottesville revealed that he had, in fact, been an active member of La Meute, the Islamophobic populist group formed some time earlier by veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces. For a time, it seems, he managed La Meute’s anglophone social media accounts. Notably, he was present for La Meute’s baptism by fire in Montréal on March 4, 2017 (the first in a series of Islamophobic demonstrations), which he attended with several other members of a small local alt-right group whose existence we were to discover only a little later (see below). On this occasion, he and a comrade found themselves briefly among the anti-racist counterdemonstrators. The two scumbags were encouraged to leave with a kick in the ass after having the bright idea to call the counterdemonstrators “race traitors.” He would later explain to his peers that his involvement with La Meute was primarily aimed at propagating his “race-based” philosophy and his ethnic (read: racist) nationalist vision.

In 2017, he also developed close relations with the Soldiers of Odin Québec (SOO), the regional chapter of an anti-immigrant network founded by a neo-Nazi, and the neo-fascist organization Atalante Québec, befriending Raphaël Lévesque, the group’s leader. He trained with the other members of Atalante at their private boxing club, “La Phalange.” Here are just a few of dozens of examples of his involvement with these groups during this turbulent period:

• On April 23, 2017, he played the tough guy, providing “security” for a Front patriotique du Québec demonstration, alongside a number of well-known boneheads, including the SOO’s Philippe Gendron and David Leblanc.

• On August 20, 2017, just a few days after the Charlottesville events described above, SBM again marched with La Meute in Québec City. It should be recalled that on this occasion, after having been trapped for several hours in a parking lot by the anti-fascist mobilization, the xenophobes were only able to parade briefly through the streets of the capital, under heavy police escort. It should be noted that by this time, the leaders of the Meute had told the media that SBM had been expelled from the organization, which was very clearly not the case.

• On September 30, 2017, he was spotted again at a demonstration near the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing organized the anti-immigration organization Storm Alliance.

• On November 25, 2017, he turned up with Atalante and the SOO on the ramparts of Québec City’s old city, on the sidelines of another xenophobic demonstration, this time co-organized by La Meute and Storm Alliance.

In 2018 and 2019, SBM took part in various Atalante visibility actions in Montréal, where the neo-fascist group unsuccessfully attempted to gain a foothold.

• In January 2018, he took part in a Atalante postering campaign in Montréal.

• He was identified at the May 23, 2018, Atalante disruption at the Montréal offices of Vice, whom the fascists accused of cooperating with the anti-fascist milieu.

• In December 2018, he was identified in our “Unmasking Atalante” article as a member of the Montreal chapter.
• On September 30, 2019, he distributed sandwiches in Montreal’s Quartier Latin and the Village. A few Atalante members posed in front of Berri Metro station and tried to intimidate customers at the L’Escalier bar, without much success.

In September 2019, SBM was identified, among others, in our article “Chasing Atalante: Where Do the Fascists Work?” where we revealed where he worked and studied. Thereafter, he seemed to distance himself from Atalante, possibly to avoid muddying the reputation of Raphaël Lévesque, who was then preparing for his trial in the Vice Québec affair. Nonetheless, he was part of the security detail that accompanied Lévesque to his court appearances.

It’s easy to imagine that SBM’s presence wasn’t unanimously welcomed in Atalante’s ranks, since he’s regarded in his own circles as a troublemaker whose rancorous presence alone often causes his comrades problems. Whatever the case, Lévesque’s trial didn’t go as planned (the assault at Québec City’s LvlOp bar cast a pall over the proceedings), and the Atalante project lost steam and fell silent at some point during the pandemic.

 

Alt-Right Montréal

In winter 2018, a leak from the “Montreal Storm” chat room, a local neo-Nazi alt-right group (ARM), led to the public exposure of the identity of Gabriel Sohier Chaput, alias “Zeiger” and several other members of the group, including SBM, who took part under the pseudonyms “Bubonic” and, later, “FriendlyFash.”

An analysis of these discussions quickly revealed that SBM was at the heart of the group and was one of its most active militants. During this period, he was probably involved in neo-Nazi postering campaigns, in particular pasting up posters produced by “Dark Foreigner,” Patrick Gordon Macdonald, a prolific graphic designer and propagandist now charged with terrorist activity by the Canadian justice system. The “Dark Foreigner” propaganda is notably associated with the reissue of the book Siege, by James Mason, considered the bible of contemporary neo-Nazi movements, and the activity of the Atomwaffen Division network, now designated a terrorist organization in Canada and a number of other countries.

SBM also promotes the identitarian group ID Canada (born of the same alt-right networks and modelled on the European example of Generation Identity and similar organizations), designed by racist activists as a more “socially acceptable” vehicle for promoting white nationalism in Canada. ID Canada stickers appear notably in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district, where SBM lives.

Under cover of the false irony that characterized extremist alt-right forums and message boards, SBM made absolutely unabashed and aggressive racist, antisemitic, and misogynist comments on the “Montreal Storm” Discord server. As if to confirm his involvement in this milieu, SBM turned up, on July 1, 2017, in Old Montreal, with other members of the Alt-Right Montreal group, including the alleged leader, Athan Zafirov, alias “Date,” to harangue an anti-colonialist demonstration.

During this period, he posted on Facebook under his own name and, later, under the pseudonym “Hans Grosse,” a reference to a famous Lufftwaffe pilot (and a character in the video game Wolfenstein).

In spring 2018, following the publication of a series of articles in the Gazette about Gabriel Sohier Chaput and the Alt-Right Montreal group (articles based in large part on the investigative work of antifascist militants), an aggressive postering campaign was organized in the NDG district to make the community aware of the presence of SBM and his comrade Vincent Bélanger Mercure. The next day, SBM was seen frantically tearing down posters bearing his photo and personal information.

During the 2019 federal election, SBM served as bodyguard for independent candidate in LaSalle-Ville Émard-Verdun, Julien Côté Lussier, an Immigration Canada employee who leads a double life as a white nationalist ideologue (he’s a spokesman for ID Canada, among other things) and a leading light in the local alt-right scene, where he goes by the pseudonym “Passport.”

 

The Pandemic Years

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, SBM could be found on the Telegram platform, where he still operates under the pseudonym “FriendlyFash.” At this point, his profile caption is “Meine Ehre heißt Treue” [my honour is called loyalty], an SS motto. SBM is active in the chat room of the local white supremacist group White Lives Matter Québec (WLM). He and other members of this group showed up at an anti–health measures demonstration in Montreal on January 22, 2022.

In March 2022, he turned up in the same chat room as another die-hard neo-Nazi, Sylvain Marcoux, discussing the hate speech trial of his former comrade Gabriel Sohier Chaput. He also promotes the “Active Club”» (AC), a direct descendent of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), explicitly affirming the need to develop some sort of militant neo-Nazi combat club in preparation for the coming race war. SBM had already expressed his support for RAM founder and AC spiritual father Robert Rundo. The Frontenac Active Club (the Québec section of the network) was born out of the WLM Québec discussion group. We know that the young Raphaël Dinucci, alias “Whitey,” who was undoubtedly directly influenced by SBM, is today the administrator of the Telegram channel WLM Québec and a leading activist at the Frontenac Active Club.

We have no direct evidence of SBM’s involvement in the Frontenac AC project, but it’s reasonable to infer it, if only on the basis of his past publications. He is certainly a kind of “godfather” to that scene. Another hint of his involvement came on April 21, 2023, when Frontenac AC stickers appeared in Montreal’s Village neighbourhood on the eve of an anti-fascist event being held nearby. On the evening of the event, SBM had the crazy idea of showing up alone at the Yer Mad bar, an establishment well known for its far-left anti-fascist leanings, no doubt with the aim of intimidating the clientele. Instead, he was aggressively removed by antifascists who arrived shortly afterwards.

Recently…

SBM has been seen regularly on the streets of Montreal in recent months, always wearing neo-Nazi symbols, including a totenkopf pin that he wears on the lapel of his coat collar. When he’s recognized, he usually reacts in an aggressive manner, taking advantage of his imposing physique, making hard eye contact, and generally behaving like a lunatic.

Recently, SBM has been spotted at demonstrations organized in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who are being targeted by the latest ethnic cleansing operation carried out by the State of Israel. It’s important to note that he appears to be there alone, walking through the crowd without interacting with anyone, suggesting that he has no real contact with the pro-Palestine movement. It was against this backdrop that he posted a lengthy antisemitic diatribe on Instagram after the October 13 demonstration in downtown Montreal. In fact, during the week of November 20, he changed his Instagram account name from “FriendlyFash88” to “Awakened_amalekite” (a biblical reference to the enemies of the Israelites).

He was seen again at the November 4 demonstration, and on that occasion was expelled by the demonstration’s security service at the instigation of anti-racist comrades. He was seen and confronted again on November 11, but then disappeared in the crowd. This is one of the motivations for producing this article: to communicate to the wider community and to the driving forces of the Palestine solidarity movement this neo-Nazi’s intention to infiltrate their ranks. It is out of the question that the movement’s adversaries be allowed to exploit the presence of this isolated bozo to demonize the entire movement. He must be immediately and systematically expelled whenever he attempts to infiltrate spaces of solidarity with Palestine.

Let’s be perfectly clear: Shawn Beauvais Macdonald was and is a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi. He can still be seen in public adorned with neo-Nazi symbols, so it would be completely unreasonable to believe that he’s reformed, and any claim to that effect should be rejected. There is no space for him in any inclusive space.

 

Let’s Increase the Pressure…

Since appearing on the radar of Montreal’s anti-fascist community, SBM has suffered a series of setbacks and inconveniences. First, he lost jobs when his participation in the Charlottesville protests was revealed. Posters exposing his activities were put up in his neighborhood. He was visited by antifascists at his home (2045 rue Elmhurst, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce). Then leaflets denouncing him were distributed at the Centre intégré de mécanique, de métallurgie et d’électricité (CIMME), where he was briefly enrolled in 2019.

SBM currently routinely trains at the Nautilus Plus in LaSalle (he used to frequent the Nautilus Plus downtown). Sympathizers regularly pass on information about him, particularly on the bus routes where he is regularly seen. Of course, we have no intention of leaving him alone. If you have any other useful information to share with us, particularly about Shawn Beauvais MacDonald’s current employment, please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

Fascists out of our neighbourhoods; no quarter for fascists!