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The racist, white supremacist foundations of the COVID denier movement image

The racist, white supremacist foundations of the COVID denier movement

The Progress Report
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80 Plays3 years ago

As the third wave of COVID-19 gathers steam the anti-mask, COVID denier groups have become more violent, more emboldened and are putting people in danger. We do a deep dive on the COVID denier movement with Kurt Phillips, the formerly anonymous author of Anti-Racist Canada and a founding board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. 

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Transcript

Podcast Introduction and Guest Highlight

00:00:00
Speaker
Hey folks, you're listening to the Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network, and just a quick message before we get into the show. We're one of several very good and excellent left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, and a new episode that I want to recommend on the network is episode three of Full of Chit Chat with Charlie Demers. Charlie welcomes Squamish Nation counselor, indigenous language revitalization advocate, as well as a whole bunch of other awesome things, Kalsilum, for an in-depth and inspiring conversation, and Kalsilum and Charlie are both incredible humans, and I really recommend the pod.
00:00:30
Speaker
And that's the kind of content you'll get at Harbinger. We're challenging corporate and liberal and conservative media dominance with a political point of view that you will not get anywhere else. Get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now, on to the show.
00:00:59
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skaigen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty Six territory. And joining us today is everyone's favorite Antifa informant. You may know him as Kurt Phillips. He used to run the website Anti-Racist Canada. He is the founder and then formerly anonymous author of that blog. And he is currently a founding board member of the Canadian
00:01:27
Speaker
Anti-hate network and while by day Kurt is a mild-mannered high school teacher in southern Alberta Kurt has been very busy for the past 20 some years chronicling hate groups on anti-racist Canada you know, not just chronicling them but like Telling the world who they are and Kurt has done Incredible and invaluable work over the past 20 years and it's an honor to have him on the show Kurt. Thank you for coming on the pod Thank you for having me

Impact of Doxxing on Educators

00:01:56
Speaker
So what's it like now to be a quasi public figure? You've done Canada land in your own, you know, under your name. Now you're on this podcast. You were anonymous for so long. What's it like being out in the open?
00:02:10
Speaker
Well, it's still kind of surreal. Um, you know, I would have been happy to have been anonymous for the entire existence of the blog until I turned into a beer appreciation blog, which is, you know, I was joked about wanting to do one day once all the bad guys were out of the way. It was kind of one of those pie in the sky kind of dreams, right? Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's been odd. It's a less, less uncomfortable now. So, you know, we're getting, getting used to it.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, and just for the folks who don't know, I mean, I can't remember exactly when this happened, but like the rebel and- I do. Yeah. When did it happen? Well, it really came down after the documentary, the Fifth Estate documentary on Atifah that I was a part of. They kind of highlighted my focus on
00:03:01
Speaker
on researching these kind of hate groups and individuals. And then the next day things were kind of blowing up and it wasn't their fault. It was something else that happened. A former friend released my name and
00:03:14
Speaker
Then my friend, Keon Bexte, got a hold of it. We don't say his name on the podcast. We refer to him as Mutant Caillou. Mutant Caillou is what we refer to him as. That is appropriate. Yeah. Did the mob, did they try and get you fired? Did your boss care that
00:03:35
Speaker
Like, what do you call, what do you do if you're trying to get Kurt Phillips fired? Like, do you know that this guy runs a blog called Anti-Racist Canada? I don't know. That's what they did. I mean, in their mind, I'm the leader of Anti-Fund Canada, the organizer of all of it. I mean, it's practically a step below George Soros, apparently. So yeah, I mean, my principal
00:04:01
Speaker
She fielded a number of calls. She was very supportive. So were my staff, people on staff. You know, central office were being harassed. I was told that they received more calls about this issue than any other issue. But from the sounds of it, very few of it was, very little of it was actually, you know, parents. It was people from outside the community.
00:04:22
Speaker
And if parents did call, they were generally just curious, like, what's this even about? I don't know what this is about. Is my son's teacher really the CEO of Antifa?

Hate Groups and COVID-19 Conspiracies

00:04:34
Speaker
Well, I got some of that. Like, what does this even mean? Yeah, so it was a strange event, because it was a Monday that everything was blowing up. And while I was at school, things were fine. I could focus on my teaching. And then home, like, wow, this is really happening.
00:04:50
Speaker
The first two weeks of January 2020 really kind of sucked, but things got a lot better. And so, I mean, we didn't have you on just to reminisce about your unfortunate doxxing. The reason why I wanted to reach out to you is that shit is happening, especially in the world of the people that you kind of chronicle. You know, in Calgary, we saw
00:05:14
Speaker
a person in a proud white Christian man shirt, assault someone in a wheelchair, and then assault their partner with a flag pole. We've seen numerous kind of anti-mask rallies get ugly. We saw Arthur Polowski, or not Arthur, his brother, get arrested at a rally in Edmonton.
00:05:36
Speaker
multiple police officers being assaulted, despite the fact that the social media accounts for Edmonton Police were calling it a peaceful gathering. You know, we've seen we've seen these anti-mask rallies take over like malls in Calgary. It really seems to kind of be becoming, I guess COVID, what I'm saying is that COVID is making us all crazy and it's making these kind of people even crazier. Is that fair to say?
00:06:05
Speaker
I'd say so. I mean, these are kind of groups that latch on to the next shiny object. And COVID right now is the shiny object. And it kind of keys into a lot of the conspiracies they already had. I mean, the fact the government is trying to kill us all off of vaccines, for example. Well, now there's a pandemic that we're encouraged to get vaccinated so that we don't get it. So for them, that's just the kind of culmination of their, I guess you want to term their prophecies,
00:06:35
Speaker
It just feeds into it. But I mean, they're profoundly paranoid. And if it wasn't this, it would be something else. One of the things I've seen is that they move from one topic to the next. So years ago, it was the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim. Then it became the Yellow Vest movement, anti-government. Then it was for a relatively short period of time and kind of associated with QAnon.
00:06:59
Speaker
save the children that were, you know, infested with pedophile Satanists to reading kids. And now there's the COVID and, you know, none of these really go away. They're always still very much a part of these kind of movements. But they just, I guess you could say they get added on to they just become part of a larger narrative.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like these people have a coherent ideology. They're like cult leaders, they're seeking self-aggrandizement, they're seeking followers, they're seeking people to kind of like puff up their egos and their own sense of importance. And so that's why, you know, I think you're entirely correct. And I don't think this point gets kind of made often enough in mainstream media, which is that like, the anti-maskers are just the like,
00:07:45
Speaker
anti-muslim folks from five years ago. They're just the yellow vesters from a few years ago. These people see a bright, shiny thing. They see it as an opportunity to kind of draw people in for whatever reason, something that's in the news, something that's hot, something that scratches an itch. And we've talked about this on the pod before too with other guests about
00:08:07
Speaker
the first instinct of conspiracy theories is often a correct one, right? The government or powerful people are doing bad things. Question authority. I mean, there's nothing wrong with questioning authority, really investigating.

The Dangers of Anti-Mask Rallies

00:08:20
Speaker
When I teach, I talk to my students about, you know, it's important to not take everything at somebody's word. I mean, find out for yourself, do the proper research, you know, do that research using legitimate sources, you know, not
00:08:36
Speaker
QAnon drops on 4chan or what it would be. I mean, that's where the danger lies. And you talk about a coherent set of political demands. I mean, there's nothing really ultimately coherent about this. The anti-maskers, just as they were when they were yellow vesters, just as they were when they were anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, what have you, they're all over the map. Some of them want all of them in between, right? So some of them want the
00:09:04
Speaker
the lockdown ended and everybody going back to work. Some want Trudeau and Notley and Harper and wherever, tried for treason. They believe there's some sort of conspiracy to vaccinate us and change our DNA and make us not fully human. The United Nations gets involved, kill off 70% of the world's population. And they truly believe this, even the stuff that is contradictory.
00:09:33
Speaker
On the one hand, vaccinations are going to kill us all, and some of these same people are saying, but the government's incompetent for not making sure we have appropriate vaccinations. So they don't even really listen to themselves.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, and while I initially kind of showed some kind of sympathy to the conspiracy theory folks out there, the people that we are talking about are people who are taking it too far, who are actually putting other people in danger, not only with their rhetoric, especially when it comes to the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant stuff and the anti-Trudeau stuff, that guy trying to bust down the president or the prime minister's door with his truck. But during the pandemic, an anti-mask rally is actually a danger to the public.
00:10:19
Speaker
like a real and present danger to get people sick and to have those people get sick and injured and die. And I think that the anti-mask rallies are unique in their ability to actually hurt people directly from their actions. And I think it's worth kind of just going over
00:10:38
Speaker
what the kind of form and function of these anti-mask rallies usually take? And maybe even just like, why are they so popular and why do they seem to have the biggest numbers in Calgary? And what does a usual, what are the, what are these, one of these weekly anti-mask rallies kind of look like? Well, first of all, you're right. They are weekly these days. Uh, you know, the Paloskis we're going to be talking about later, for example, um, they, they, this is, you know, they're like dogs of the bone at this point. They, they, they run these every single week.
00:11:05
Speaker
But usually they are relatively large gatherings of individuals, usually at City Hall, fully unmasked, no social distancing, speeches, comparing mask ordinances and bylaws to Stars of David and the Holocaust, really kind of unhinged rhetoric that
00:11:35
Speaker
a normal person would look at and think, well, this is insane. How could anybody truly believe this? If not the leadership, but certainly the people who buy into it, they believe it. Probably a lot of leadership as well does. Those people who put themselves out there as leaders, they get increasingly agitated. Now, we saw that when it was winter, of course, the protests
00:12:02
Speaker
they moved inside as well. So, Chinook Mall, for example, there were a number of events that occurred there where people very defiantly walked through the mall without masks, again, as a kind of in your face, do something about it. And when people challenged them, they were kind of descended upon by these individuals calling them sheep, calling them various names that they're not educated, they don't know the real story like they do.
00:12:31
Speaker
And again, you haven't watched as many YouTube videos as I have. You haven't watched as many YouTube videos as I have, sir. Yeah, no, it's ridiculous. I mean, yeah, you educate yourself with this random blog, which as a person who ran a random blog for a while, I mean, still.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah. And that's I think a useful kind of rundown of what it typically looks like. And that one through the mall was just especially egregious. I think there's another incident that's worth talking about before we get into the kind of like who these leaders, leaders are. And that's something that happened on March 20th that caught the attention of the province and that is where the man in the shirt
00:13:16
Speaker
with the words on it, proud white Christian man with multiple iron crosses on it, punched a person in a wheelchair. The police actually got this person. Here's the quote from the news report.
00:13:32
Speaker
Uh, it is believed the man in the wheelchair instigated the encounter both verbally and with the first physical contact, said police. However, the other man's response by numerous punches to the wheelchair bound man and subsequent, subsequent strike to the woman with the flagpole were beyond reasonable to stop any perceived threat or assault. Police have charged the man who wasn't in a wheelchair. It's very important to make that distinction. Uh, Milan Matusik, 65 with assault and assault with a weapon. So, uh, what do we know about this Milan Matusik guy?
00:14:02
Speaker
At this point, not a lot. I was asked if I knew who he was and to use somebody who's new to me. And I think that's the other thing we're seeing.

Denial and Racial Violence by Hate Groups

00:14:10
Speaker
This is that, you know, in the past, you knew the personalities, you knew the people involved. So, you know, thinking about the Calgary, when it first started the blog, it was originally designed to focus on, you know, the Aryan guard, which eventually morphed into blood and honor. You know, and then I realized, well, I could focus on the rest of Canada too, as much as I could.
00:14:29
Speaker
Um, you knew who they were. They, they, they, they were kind of regulars at these kinds of things. Now with the social media and, and, and the radicalization of.
00:14:39
Speaker
of people via social media, you get your, you know, the term boomers, you get your boomers who normally would maybe have nothing to do with this. They might, they might be your, you know, typical, quote unquote, crazy uncle who says ridiculous crap on, on, you know, a family get togethers and Thanksgiving, but you didn't take them seriously. And they didn't have a community at that time. People just kind of rolled their eyes and said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:15:02
Speaker
Well, now they could go online and find a community of people agrees with what they have to say. And that community now is also getting together in public. The individual they're talking about that was mentioned this, I'd never heard of him before. This was my first contact with him, not physical contact, but any knowledge of him. But again, he even became part of the conspiracy too, because the people who organized or were regulars at these events,
00:15:32
Speaker
They tried to claim that he was obviously an infiltrator, Antifa, because they're never violent, and that's really kind of important too. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways, and that's probably not the best way to put it.
00:15:49
Speaker
They truly believe that they are not violent. It's the others, the ones who are opposing them that are violent. And when you could point to the numerous examples of violence they engage in, there's always an explanation. It's, we're defending ourselves from the real violent people, or that person's an infiltrator. He's not really a part of us. There's always some sort of reason. And it goes back. I mean, this is something we've seen in the, when this was largely an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant movement.
00:16:18
Speaker
The tragedy occurred in Quebec City at the mosque, where six men were murdered. Initial news, of course, showed that he... They said, well, there are two people arrested, one person taking custody. It's always confusing at first. Then the real information comes out, or at least as much as you can. But they are people who are absolutely convinced that
00:16:42
Speaker
The shooter is, in fact, either a patsy, or was a false flag, or he was really the Muslims that did it, and this is just a matter of internecine violence, and one of their people would never do something like this. The individual, and I don't name, I try not to name these killers,
00:17:03
Speaker
but the individual in the van in Toronto, the person who's motivated, at least in part, by incel philosophy or philosophy. It's not a philosophy, it's bad fucking insanity. But they are still convinced he's a Muslim. It's just one of those people because he's got a name that's not conventionally, quote unquote, Canadian. They can't see beyond
00:17:27
Speaker
the ecosystem that they've created. And if they truly believe that they're opposing these evil forces, well, of course those evil forces are violent. They're never violent. They're reactive to the dangers against them and against Canada. And I think most of them will continue to do so. Well, he's an infiltrator. He's really not one of us.
00:17:51
Speaker
It's really easy for them to do that. They just accuse those who either they dismiss it as self-defense, and they tried to do that initially with this, or they claim that he was never really a part of their group in the first place, and he was just trying to discredit them.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes, I mean, this is a common one. I mean, with some absurd percentage of Americans believe that it was Antifa that stormed the Capitol in the United States, right? But I think we've hit on something that is, again, not covered very well by the mainstream media when they're talking about these anti-mask COVID denier events, and that is
00:18:28
Speaker
the connection and the relationship between organized white supremacy and organized white supremacist groups and these events. You know, it's a lot less socially acceptable for people to be ranting about Islam on street corners now, you know, post mosque shooting, post New Zealand, post everything that's happened. And so you're right. These folks move on to the next shiny thing. But at its core, there is this racist white supremacist and like obvious white supremacist kind of like backbone to this to this movement. Right.
00:19:00
Speaker
Again, I hate ascribing everything and all things to the evils of Donald Trump, but he continues to be such an influential figure in the circle, nothing in the United States and Canada and around the world for this kind of movement. When referring to COVID as the China virus or the Kung flu, we see the repercussions that already. We've seen a number of different examples of
00:19:21
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I mean...
00:19:36
Speaker
people of Asian heritage have been attacked. We've seen people murdered in the United States. We've seen attacks occur in Canada. So it really very much reinforces this idea of the other. This would never have gotten here if those people weren't here in the first place. So we see a lot of that too. Even in Calgary, some of these protests, by-law officers who are of Asian heritage, for example, fully Canadian, but Asian heritage,
00:19:56
Speaker
of anti-Asian violence, people being attacked, elderly,
00:20:03
Speaker
Um, they're accused of being Chinese communist spies now. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's this perception that unless you look like me, you can't really be fully Canadian. And again, as you said, uh, these, these, you know, white supremacy is kind of imbued in these and organized as well. Um, there are a number of different groups. Um, and you could find these groups on telegram where they congregate now. I mean, they're, they're being kind of shunted to the.
00:20:32
Speaker
the fringes of social media now, but you can still find them pretty easily. They have plans to infiltrate these groups and to move them in the direction that they want them to go into. For example, one group overtly equates the COVID virus with immigration and the need to have a closed immigration system.
00:20:56
Speaker
You know, those people coming in, but they're quite content with people from Europe coming in. So there's, you know, very overt in the racism. Yeah. And like the Proud Boys, you know, recently designated terrorist organization by the federal government here in Canada, there are frequent attenders of these anti-mask rallies, are they not?

Influential Figures in Anti-Mask Movements

00:21:14
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, you don't see them, obviously you don't see them dressed up like it anymore because they're an illegal organization.
00:21:23
Speaker
They don't want to get in trouble, but they're still there. People we saw dressed in Proud Boy accoutrements are still attending Calgary events.
00:21:35
Speaker
you know, and other events around Canada too. So we still see it. We see other groups too. So, you know, groups like the Northern Guard or Soldiers of Odin that still exist. We see these groups constantly. The Urban Infidels in Calgary, which might be the second dumbest name I've heard of these hate groups, beaten only by the Woke One's Rebellion, which I don't know who thought of that.
00:22:02
Speaker
Um, but yeah, we see these groups infiltrating all the timer and being, and, and quite often, you know, people like the Pulaski's use them as quote unquote security. Yeah. And I think that brings us, that's a fantastic segue into who these, uh, who the kind of key figures and the leaders of this are. And you, you mentioned the Pulaski's who you, who are the Pulaski's? What are their like full names? It's a brother. Uh, it's a brother duo, right? Who, what are their full names and like, where do they come from? What's their involvement in these events?
00:22:30
Speaker
Right, so Artur and David Polsky, they are in Calgary. Artur is a pastor street church, evangelical, religious, you know, some people would, you know, they're less charitable, might refer to as a cult. But they're certainly very, very conservative, to put it as a minimum. They're originally from Poland, Polish immigrants from Canada.
00:22:56
Speaker
They have been in the news for a number of years in different capacities. They first entered the spotlight by endorsing Rick McIver in his run for, I think it was, was it leadership of the- Leadership of the PC party against Prentice, I believe. Yeah. That's right. Yes, exactly.
00:23:20
Speaker
When people investigated, they found that they were virulently anti-LGBTQ. They were anti-choice, and they were pretty far to the right of mainstream Canadians. And they've continued.
00:23:37
Speaker
They are now using this as a kind of a cudgel. They basically have been opposed to the Calgary Municipal Government for years. They lost tax exempt status, for example, because they were using too much of their money that they did collect for political purposes to oppose same-sex marriage and those kind of things.
00:24:03
Speaker
They're very big haters of Nahid Nenshi as well, the Muslim mayor of Calgary. Yeah, and they mention that frequently. He hates Christians. He's the Muslim mayor of Calgary. And we need good Christian patriots, of which David is running for city council in Calgary. And they're very loud. I mean, if you've ever listened to them, their go-to is, we're going to sue you. We want to arrest you. We want them charged with assault.
00:24:32
Speaker
We could talk about it later, but there was that incident at the grocery store this past weekend where
00:24:38
Speaker
One of their members was showing the door essentially and they were screaming at the workers. They want the workers, the employees to be arrested. They're going to sue them for denying them service. And we've seen that in a number of places as well. So Polsky's are one group. They've also been very much involved in the anti-immigration movement. Back in 2017, June, Arthur was a keynote speaker at
00:25:06
Speaker
an event organized by the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam, which was held in downtown Calgary at the City Hall. Other groups that were involved, of course, WCAI.
00:25:21
Speaker
a Canadian combat coalition, soldiers of Odin, and the security was provided by the three percenters. So they're very much tied into this ideology. So their anti-mask, anti-vaccination rhetoric is also very much tied to their anti-immigration rhetoric, which again, ironic considering they are immigrants themselves.
00:25:45
Speaker
Of course, I mean, no one ever accused these folks of being consistent. Up next about the people that I think is worth our audience knowing about is someone who you may have seen recently, a person named Kevin J. Johnston. And the reason you may have seen him recently is that he was recently arrested for assault in Dawson Creek, B.C. The video itself
00:26:11
Speaker
Is it just an incredible L? Just to post your own L like that and to be like, yeah, this happened to me. I'm actually putting this out into the world for people to see is incredible. But why don't you run us through what happens there? We rightfully laugh at that because we look at that and say, how would you put this out? How do you think this makes you look good?
00:26:34
Speaker
But they really do, and his core supporters, they are convinced that proves that he was the victim of an assault and that he was simply defending himself. And soon, David, the poor manager of this business, he's going to be the one who's going to be sued and go to prison. They're convinced of this. So, yeah, I mean, it's laughable.
00:26:56
Speaker
the people who it's targeted to, they just look at him as more of a hero because of it. They are convinced that, yeah, he's fighting the good fight and he's fighting it for us. But yeah, so Kevin Johnson, he is again, another long term figure. He's originally from Mississauga. He was a perennial
00:27:14
Speaker
a candidate for mayor there, has a incredible heat on for the current mayor, Bonnie Crombie, incredibly misogynistic, racist. He first kind of crossed my radar when he tried to offer a thousand dollar reward to anybody who would film children, essentially, students, Muslim students specifically, at prayer during school hours.
00:27:43
Speaker
There was a controversy about, you know, Islam, you know, student-led prayer in schools, Muslims, you know, having prayer, prayer time. And, you know, never mind that Catholics and Protestants and Jews, they also can do the exact same thing and often do. But he was encouraging people to videotape children to provide him that information. He's been sued by a restaurateur in Mississauga.
00:28:12
Speaker
$2.5 million the judgment was for. The judge described some of the worst hate speech he'd ever seen. Just to jump in there, as a bit of a student of libel law, to actually get a $2.5 million judgment against you in a libel suit, you have to have said and done incredible things for a judgment of that amount to have
00:28:40
Speaker
too for a judge to actually levy that. That is not very common in Canada. And he still does. He still is referring to this individual as... He accused him with no... Obviously, there is no evidence because there's no evidence accused him of funding Islamic terrorists in Burma. And he still refers to this man as a baby killer. Again, it's incredibly harmful.
00:29:09
Speaker
This is a guy who's followed him in a mall, him and his children in a mall, harassing them there. He's relentless when it comes to this kind of stuff. And just to give some context for the event that we started talking about when we started talking about Kevin J. Johnson. So yeah, he was arrested for assault in Dawson's Creek. He went into this grocery store without a mask, obviously. These never wear masks and they just go in and they start harassing employees when an employee comes up to them.
00:29:36
Speaker
And he tried to buy some soap, but the person was like, I'm not taking your money. Get out. You don't get to buy anything from us. And he took the soap, put $5 on the counter, and walked out. And then the manager followed him out. He ended up punching the manager on tape, a tape that is literally showed to the camera on this video.
00:30:00
Speaker
of him getting arrested. The police show up, the police throw him in the back of the van to arrest him. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention he tried to citizens arrest the store owner as well as a random bystander who showed up. He's like, you're under citizens arrest. And the genuine look of shock on his face, like why aren't you arresting him? Like he's under citizen arrest. And they end up saying, no, I don't have to. We will be linking to this incredible L in the show notes. Okay, so there's, we've got,
00:30:29
Speaker
Kevin J. Johnson, we've got the Polowski brothers. Oh, by the way, it's running for mayor in Calgary now and has his own coffee company, which is egregiously racist, the brands that he's promoting.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yes, we won't repeat the name of that brand, but it is. He is a bad person who does bad things. And yeah, he's running for mayor. So, oh yeah, just as one further note on Kevin Day Johnson, this guy is everywhere. He was outside of the Grace Life Church in Edmonton a few weeks, like three or four weeks ago, which is the COVID church, the church that is refusing to abide by COVID health regulations.
00:31:07
Speaker
I mean, he's a fascinating figure. He's just an incredible, terrible person. How does he even get his money? Like, what does he seems to just travel around, like getting into people's faces, screaming, citizens arrest? Hard to say. I mean, I'm pretty certain that he does get a lot of donations in order to avoid the lawsuit. So a few, about a year or so ago, he had stated he was in the process of a divorce.
00:31:35
Speaker
At the time, I thought, well, it finally cut up to your life is falling apart around you. But I've heard from somebody that his partner's life is still very much on his side as well. It's just that, again, this is speculation. I don't know if that's for sure, but the speculation is that it's just to put any of his assets into her name so nothing can be collected on him.
00:32:01
Speaker
All right. All right. That's enough time on Kevin J. Johnson. Let's let's move on to someone who is a bit more on the woo side when it comes to this thing. Let's talk about Misty wind. What can you tell us about her? Misty wins. Interesting. She is somebody who years ago I actually wrote about on the blog or I read it out or somebody it's in my other writer. One of us wrote about her on the blog. She was a victim of a racial attack. So somebody wrote an anti
00:32:30
Speaker
native graffiti on a vehicle of hers. And she was a very sympathetic figure in that moment. Years later, looking at this stuff, thinking, why does she look familiar? Why does that name look familiar? And then all of a sudden, talking to the other members of my group, like, holy hell, that's her. But yeah, in terms of the woo, she's obviously anti-mask, anti-vaccine.
00:32:58
Speaker
But she's also Aboriginal. She is a Native person herself. And unfortunately, when you have things like that, they give... People like Johnson or the Pulaskis or the others we could talk about, it gives them the ability, at least in their minds, the ability to say, I'm not a racist. Look, there are Natives on our side. So she'll point to her or to Derek Story, who's another Ontario transplant who came along with
00:33:26
Speaker
with Johnson, kind of his mini me. So she's kind of been ubiquitous in these kind of movements as well. And she's brought in a lot of other people, kind of her mindset, this kind of, you know, new agey kind of, as you said, woo, that, you know, it brings in others who might not normally associate with the Johnsons, the Plowskis, but, you know, you have this kind of unholy alliance at this point.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, her audience is like anti-vax moms and people who want organic food. I mean, ironically, people who shop at Community Natural Foods, which is a place I actually used to work at when I was in my early 20s in Calgary. But the kind of person who shops at Community Natural Foods is someone who is kind of into this crystals and energy
00:34:19
Speaker
you know, anti vax anti anti chemicals, you know, anti GMO, that kind of that kind of rhetoric. And looking at the protesters who were actually at the grocery, I didn't think many of them were big natural foods purchasers.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely not. All right, so let's move on to some other folks. This is an interesting one. Ron Carboni and Chris Sokosia or Chris Skye is his pseudonym or what he most commonly goes by. Who are these characters? Well, they're from Ontario and they're remaining in Ontario, but they are coming out to Calgary
00:34:59
Speaker
for a protest and rally, and I think possibly this weekend, in fact. Sokosia is somebody who I guess he could say is the closest thing to a celebrity that the anti-mask movement has in Canada. He's appeared on Rebel, he's appeared on
00:35:16
Speaker
Alex Jones show. He's kind of all over the place. His family owns, it's called Sky Developers, quite wealthy. He's quite wealthy, though I don't know if he actually has a job. It seems like he's living off the largess of his family. And he's got some strange ideas. So he brags about flying overseas and flashing an exemption, which was fake.
00:35:44
Speaker
And he got caught eventually and another time, you know, was arrested and fined for it. He has, you know, co-parents who are upset with, you know, school shutting down in Ontario that he's establishing a private school. There will be no masks. There's going to be, you know, so just join with him in that. Kim Garboni, who I'll discuss in a moment, their latest scheme is claiming that
00:36:13
Speaker
Karboni now has, well, Karboni or Chris, one of the two of them, now has a patent or on the Canadian banking system, now control the Canadian banking system. So, patently ridiculous, but the poor believe this. I mean, again, as I said, they're the biggest things to celebrities that they have at this. Karboni, he is the leader, and as far as I know, sole member of the Republican Party of Canada.
00:36:42
Speaker
It's a non-registered political party that he is convinced will be his vehicle to become Prime Minister of Canada. He is somebody who, back in the 90s, was kind of known. He was scammed, a woman from, I think it was from Eastern Europe. He and she married, then immediately she left him. It was obviously an effort to, I guess, get citizenship, essentially, through marriage.
00:37:11
Speaker
He had traveled the United States. He was eventually kicked out. Weapons charges in the United States, kicked out as an illegal, you term an illegal alien or foreign alien is what they refer to him as. But he's in his biography claims that he went to the United States to work where he made his fortune, but then came back to Canada because his mother was sick and decided to stay in Canada because Canada needed him. But it doesn't take too long to see how that's not true.
00:37:39
Speaker
Um, he doesn't quite understand how the way that machine works. And you could take a look at his website and, you know, go back to when it first started, where he talked about how he was, you know, his, his income was something like, you know, you know, 65 to $75,000. Um, not the, not the multi-billionary claims that he has is with his own private jet. Um, and that he's just, you know, trying to make good for his family. Um, he's, he's found a grift basically, and he's kind of gone with that.
00:38:07
Speaker
And friend of the show, Mac Lameroo at Vice News, has written about Chris Succocia and Ron Carboni. Both Chris Succocia's, you know, when he was starting groups called Mothers Against Social Distancing, Chris Succocia does not have any children. Or this Succocia-Carboni scheme to
00:38:27
Speaker
copyright the term that would give them control of the Bank of Canada or whatever scheme they hatched.

Authorities' Failure in Enforcing Health Orders

00:38:36
Speaker
They're very funny. We'll include it in the show notes, because these people are truly dense. Like Sakocha and Carboni are like
00:38:45
Speaker
Uh, because they're removed, they're not in our like space and they're not in our streets kind of like breathing on people. It's a little safer to just kind of mock these people, but they are eminent, eminently mockable. But, but those guys though, is that because they've got a following, especially Chris, um, coming to Calgary, that will, I don't know how many more people that already a supporter of will coming out.
00:39:09
Speaker
You know, my fear is that, well, it drags more people from other parts of Canada, other parts of, you know, maybe British Columbia, because we're already seeing like, you know, Dawson Dawson city is in Dawson Creek, sorry, is in British Columbia. And we're already seeing our, our brand of COVID deniers, you know, branching out and moving to other areas at the invitation of COVID deniers there. Yeah.
00:39:33
Speaker
But I mean, beyond the rallies, these groups and these individuals have moved on to kind of a new form of activism, which, again, is incredibly dangerous. And we referenced it earlier. It's like they'll go to a grocery store or they'll go to a business and they will try to go in unmasked. They will get kicked out. They will videotape the whole scene. They'll have a bunch of people essentially start like a picket outside, like an anti-mask picket outside of a of a business or a grocery store. And again, this is
00:40:03
Speaker
The authorities have created a monster in my mind. I think it's worth having the conversation about just how poorly and how badly the police, the AHS, whoever is responsible for enforcing public health orders during a pandemic, just how badly a job they have done.
00:40:22
Speaker
And that they have created a monster by not actually enforcing the rules as they are written. And by treating these people with kid gloves and by letting them get away with weekly meetings that are in contravention of public health orders. And they've escalated.
00:40:39
Speaker
They've escalated to protest indoors. They've escalated to screaming at fucking grocery store workers. They've escalated to assaulting a store manager in BC. I cannot talk about this and not talk about just how poorly our political leadership, our law enforcement
00:41:00
Speaker
and our public health enforcement people have done in this context. What's your take on this whole issue and whether we've created a monster? I absolutely agree with that. The rationale, as I know it from the police, was at a time when it was very tense, they didn't want to escalate things. Their rationale was after things have calmed down,
00:41:26
Speaker
They get the names of the leadership and then they go to take and bring them their tickets at their residence, which has happened. I mean, the Polsky's Arthur certainly has received a number of tickets that he doesn't take seriously at all. He just uses that as more propaganda. Look how I'm being persecuted. The church is being persecuted. Look how Christians are being persecuted by this Muslim mayor. You know, it just feeds into that. So it hasn't helped.
00:41:53
Speaker
Not at all. I mean, it just feeds into the persecution complex, but nothing's done at the moment. And I've often wondered, and this is a very rhetorical question, and I think we know the answer, if this was not a group of mostly European-Canadian boomers,
00:42:16
Speaker
or Gen Xers, if you're in their 40s, I suppose. If it was a group of First Nations people's protesting pipelines, or if it was LGBTQ protesting for rights that they were being denied, would they be treated with kid gloves?
00:42:42
Speaker
belief based upon precedent is that they wouldn't be. No, it'd be a brutal instant crackdown. People would get arrested, the crowd would be dispersed violently, like all measures necessary that they would take would be taken in order to disperse a crowd of this nature if it was literally almost any other kind of protest. Exactly. And then I've looked at over the years,
00:43:04
Speaker
One of the claims, well, they're a large group and it could lead to an escalation that could get out of control. Well, okay, but the G20 events, when there were large groups and people were protesting peacefully there, you didn't seem to have any compunction about going in with Trenchants and
00:43:22
Speaker
You know, clearing out the space there, but you certainly don't want to clear a bunch of people out in the mall. I mean, let's have a bro hug. I am. I am not some friend of the police here, but I just simply do not believe that like that the, uh, the honey treatment here, like, yeah, bro hugs with the organizers.
00:43:39
Speaker
so that they'll all disperse calmly after their Chinook Mall protest. That has clearly failed because those motherfuckers just go to, they end up at another business in Chinook Mall and they start screaming at fucking workers who are getting paid $15 a fucking hour to get paid not enough money to have fucking Becky not wear a mask and scream in their face.
00:43:59
Speaker
It also does the it also provides him the idea that they are the police really secretly support them. They really are opposed to this as well. And like Brad Carrington, one of the other kind of gurus of this in Alberta and Calgary at the grocery store.
00:44:16
Speaker
when he's trying to calm Arthur or Polosky down, saying, don't worry that when the truth comes out, they will be on our side. And of course, the truth being that it's all a UN conspiracy to poison us and bring in, I don't know, Sharia law. I mean, whatever the argument is going to be at that point. But again, by treating with kid gloves and by not
00:44:40
Speaker
cracking down. I don't mean cracking heads together, but actually enforcing the bylaws. It causes them to really believe that, nope, they support us. They secretly support us, and they could justify it and say, they really want us to continue what we're doing.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah, whenever you hear a conservative talk about the rule of law, you can fucking laugh in their face because the rule of law clearly means nothing. And it means nothing because when it's the supporters, when it's the supporters of conservative political parties are not, are breaking the rules and having illegal gatherings, which is what these are. These are illegal gatherings. And this is how you get situations like the Grace Life Church. And this is how you get a situation where a bigger, badder, more infectious virus has shown up in Alberta.
00:45:27
Speaker
And it has gone off like fucking wildfire because our public health authorities and our political leadership were unwilling to stand up to these idiots. And we are going to face a third wave that is going to be worse than the second. And it's, it is a fucking tragedy and a wholly avoidable tragedy.

Closing Remarks and Call to Action

00:45:43
Speaker
All right. I think, uh, before I get too angry and too worked up, I think that is a good place to leave it. I appreciate you coming on the pod so much, Kurt.
00:45:51
Speaker
Uh, how can people follow along your work? How can they, you know, do you have a Twitter account, uh, you know, stuff to support if they support your, your general kind of project? Yeah. So if you want to follow what I occasionally do, I have the occasional snarky, uh, you know, Twitter feed on, uh, at arc collective. So you could find me. Um, I also write occasionally for the anti, uh, Canadian anti hate, um, sorry, Canadian anti hate, um, um,
00:46:21
Speaker
group. Canadian Anti-Hate Network, my goodness, it's been a long day. If you wish to donate to contribute to the work, certainly there's a donation spot there. We would love to have any assistance. Canadian Anti-Hate Network does great work. We featured their writers on our pod before. I just want to take the time to thank you again for all the work you do, Kurt. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
00:46:51
Speaker
Okay. Well, I want to thank everyone who's listened to the pod. If you want to support us, there's a very, very easy way to do that. Share this podcast with your friends. If you think if they've seen one of these rallies in the street, they want to know more word of mouth and sharing this podcast with your friends and family is literally the best form of advertising.
00:47:11
Speaker
The other thing, you know, and Kurt brought it up earlier, which is that, you know, we're a nonprofit, you know, we get by with the help of our supporters. We are 100% independent. And if you think that this is a media project that's worth your support, we really do appreciate it. And it's really easy to do. You just go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons. There's also a link in the show notes and you know, credit card, put your credit card in your five, 10, $15 a month, whatever you can afford really, really goes a long way.
00:47:40
Speaker
I'm also really easy to get ahold of if you think I missed anything or fucked up. If you have any notes, thoughts, or comments, you can reach me on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic FamU Communist for the amazing theme. Thank you for listening, and goodbye.