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This past weekend, someone in an angry crowd threw rocks (or gravel) at Justin Trudeau at an election campaign stop in London, Ont.

Afterwards, Trudeau told reporters on his campaign plane that someone had once thrown a pumpkin seed at him. Some of the rocks might have hit his shoulder, he said. He quickly grazed his left shoulder to indicate. When asked by Global Newss Abigail Bimman (who was seeking clarity on a troubling event) if it might have or actually did hit him, he shrugged his shoulders and asked does it matter?

It was just a little gravel, he said.

It absolutely matters.

It matters because its part of a terrifying series of physical and verbal vitriol on the election campaign trail that has seen the signs of candidates defaced with swastikas and obscenities, and their team members slapped and spit at.

It matters because the incident occurred in the same city that witnessed a terrorist attack that killed a Muslim family of four just three months before the election call was made.

It matters because the first thought for every BIPOC person across the country was Imagine if it was a Black or Indigenous or Muslim person that tried to physically assault the Prime Minister.

It matters because Im about to become the mobs next online target for calling this group of protesters what they are. Theyre not anti-vaxxer mobs, as Trudeau keeps calling them. These are not all people frustrated by the lockdowns and the pandemic. They are a manifestation of white supremacist hate.

Many of the protests following Justin Trudeau have been marked by the kind of extreme rage that became familiar in the U.S. during Donald Trumps presidency. Protesters have yelled Lock him up, Traitor, and piece of st. They have called for Trudeau to be hanged. They have verbally attacked members of his team and his security detail using racist and misogynistic language, the CBC reports.

This needs to make us ever more convinced of the importance of the choice in this election, Trudeau said on Aug. 29. Do we fall into division and hatred and racism and violence, or do we say no.

But its not as simple as saying no. This didnt happen in a vacuum, or because of the pandemic. Hate, too, is a virus and it grows rapidly if left unaddressed. And its been left unaddressed in Canada for far too long.

There is a link between the anti-vaxx movement and far-right groups that we need to talk about. (Note: the movement is separate from vaccine-hesitant people who have legitimate concerns.) An upcoming study by Amarnath Amarasingam, Stephanie Carvin and Kurt Philips for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue documents the connections, finding that anti-mask, anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination movements in Canada are predominantly propagated by the far-right. Some of the most vocal critics of lockdown measures and vaccines are leaders of far-right groups or political parties, including People Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier.

It is likely that many (if not most) far-right movements have latched on to COVID-19 conspiracy movements to lure anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists to their cause. This includes adapting their propaganda and attending anti-lockdown protests and events, the study says. Emboldened by this cause, the study wonders if the movement could return with previous far-right preoccupations with more vigour: the promotion of anti-immigration, Islamophobic and antisemitic views and policies.

The purple signs of the PPC, for instance, have been a common sight at the protests. This is a party that wants to force future Canadian immigrants to answer questions about Canadian values and societal norms in a face-to-face interview, repeal a non-binding motion condemning Islamophobia, and restrict the definition of hate speech in the Criminal Code. The party was founded in 2019 and in its submission to Elections Canada of 250 signatories, included a former leader of a U.S. neo-Nazi group and other far-right extremists. The same year, it ousted a candidate who was critical of the partys refusal to denounce far-right groups.

The party holds a shocking 8 per cent support in the race, according to one poll. It has recruited an almost full slate of candidates (312 out of 338 ridings). Bernier (who was also egged on the campaign trail and has condemned physical violence) won 12 rounds of the 2017 Conservative leadership race, losing by a hair in the 13th round to Andrew Scheer. Hes calling for a revolution to defend freedom.

So, yeah, it matters. It matters so much, and Canadian leaders need to stop being so cavalier and rote in dismissing it by suggesting that this is a minority that we shouldnt bow to.

These largely white groups of protestors that have followed Trudeau have an unfair privilege that has been afforded to them by all aspects of society: they largely get away with their hateful rhetoric and actions, and dont get called out or punished for it.

Condemnations are not a cure for what were seeing unfold on the election campaign trail. (Ive personally seen enough condemnations of hate to last a lifetime.) Erin OToole, condemned the disgusting act and called it political violence in a statement. That doesnt address the fact that race or racism dont appear once in the Conservative Party platform, or the fact that Conservative MPs have been stoking hate by refusing to even condemn it for the longest time. (Like that time they all voted against a non-binding motion against Islamophobia.)

The Liberals arent absolved either. Theyve been in power for six years and hate has grown under their watch. They couldve done more after the 2017 Quebec mosquethe first terrifying manifestation of white supremacist hate in the country. Instead, they chose to table online hate legislation, the one big thing communities targeted by hate have been demanding, the day parliament adjourned this summer. The government just held its first-ever anti-hate summits in July, after parliament was already over, so any pledges made there wont come to light for some time.

In the days since the rock-throwing incident happened, Trudeau has changed his tune and called it unacceptable. Perhaps this was a political calculation for sympathy votes or a realization that this was a way to differentiate his party from the Conservatives. Either way, it was, once again, a condemnation with no follow-up.

We need to see action, anger and arrests. (The London police say they are investigating the rock throwing.) Our leaders are quick to remind us that Canada isnt the U.S., but the same alt-right, extreme rhetoric is loudly echoing here today and has done so for years.

Unfortunately, even under the strictest of societal lockdowns, the spread of hate has continued.

According to Statistics Canada, there were an estimated 223,000 hate crimes in Canada in 2019, and the police only laid 1,951 charges, less than one per cent. This means that in Canada, youre more likely to be the victim of a hate crime in Canada than be hurt in a car crash (152,847 injuries in 2018).

We had a year of anti-racism protests by the Black community. The Asian community was targeted throughout the pandemic. There seems to be a surge in incidents against Muslim communities. And just this week, Prabhjot Singh Katri, a 23-year-old Sikh international student, was murdered in an apparent hate crime in Truro, N.S.

Racism and hate are serious problems in Canada and the leaders are encountering both on the campaign trail. A plan to address racism and hateand eradicate themshould be on the ballot. They should have been debate topics.

The absence of racism and hate in the 2021 election conversation is absolutely terrifying for a country that still refuses to look itself the mirror.

CORRECTION, Sept. 9, 2021:An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the word hate does not appear in the Conservative Party platform.

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Protesters threw rocks at the PM. It should matter more. - Maclean's

Brooklyn-based Utopia has picked up worldwide sales rights to Hayley Garrigus You Cant Kill Meme, a documentary feature which drills down on the political meme warfare enshrined by Donald Trumps presidential victory in 2016.

The acquisition comes just ahead of the films world premiere at Montreals Fantasia Film Festival this month. An on demand release in North America is planned for this fall, Utopia announced Monday.

You Cant Kill Meme explores the rise of political meme instrumentation, anticipated by a 2004 visionary non-fiction book by R. Kirk Packwood called Memetic Magic: Manipulation of the Root Social Matrix and the Fabric of Reality.

The film sees Garrigus interview Packwood and other figures in the meme magic world to trace the emergence of figures such as Pepe the Frog, originally a comic book slacker, and Kek, an Egyptian deity of darkness before dawn, in order to understand their centrality for alt-right advocacy. You Cant Kill Meme argues that these memes delivers an inside joke, triggers an emotional reaction and creates a sense of belonging.

What was learned in 2016 has now become standard practice, director-cinematographer Garrigus says in voiceover.

Alternating interviews with personal details about Garrigus research, the doc also studies a moment of meme magic when alt-right assertions about Hilary Clintons health condition transformed into a dominant political narrative. The assertion helped move the dial on voters intentions and meme Trump into power, according to the doc.

Packwood explains the emotional origins of meme culture in a sense of social inadequacy. You want to introduce some form of chaos to break down social hierarchy, he argues. Other interviewers are Billy el Brujo, a white-paint faced internet meme magic worker, and Las Vegas lightworker Carole Michaella.

Through conspiracy and confrontation, You Cant Kill Meme offers nuance in our cultural assumptions about meme culture, said Danielle DiGiacomo, head of content at Utopia. Utopia is ecstatic to transfix viewers with the films unraveling of modern-day internet communication, whose real-world implications are often oversimplified.

You Cant Kill Meme is produced by Samuel Gursky, Kerry Mack and Michael Beuttler, and edited by Beuttler and Garrigus, who spent three years working on the film. Its original music is composed by Tom Moore and Michael Beuttler.

Co-founded byRobert Schwartzman, Utopia is a sales and distribution company known for feature films includingEmma SeligmansToronto 2020 standout Shiva Baby, and Annabelle Attanasios 2019 SXSW hit Mickey and the Bear.

Upcoming Utopia releases include Sundance and New Directors/New Films 2021 selections El Planeta and Were All Going To The Worlds Fair; Dasha Nekrasovas Berlinale premiere The Scary of Sixty-First, in partnership with Shudder; and the Dash Snow documentary Moments Like This Never Last from Cheryl Dunn and Vice Studios.

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Alt-Right Meme Culture Documentary You Cant Kill Meme Swooped on by Utopia (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

As we view and read unending news stories about the devastation wrought by climate change (wildfires, historic flooding, super-heated waters killing fish, record heat waves all over the world), its worth noting that the State of Illinois recently missed an historic opportunity to cut pollution that is a major cause of this problem.

Climate scientists the world over are saying that we must reduce carbon pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels that power our heating, cooling and transportation sectors. Renewable sources of energy are available right now that would reduce pollution and improve public health, but clean energy legislation that would have helped us reduce our reliance on dirty fossil fuels recently failed to pass the Illinois State legislature. How could we have missed this opportunity to clean our environment?

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Supporters of dirty fossil fuels say we need a balanced approach to energy policy. The truth is that the Illinois power grid is out of balance now. Clean renewable energy only accounts for 8 to 10% of Illinois energy production. This percentage is woefully inadequate and shows that we are failing to live up to our responsibility to give future generations healthy air to breath. If we are to be responsible stewards of our environment, we must pass legislation that insures we use more clean, renewable energy (solar and wind) to power our state. Failure to do so is to make a future clean up much more difficult for our children and grandchildren.

The Illinois state legislature must act as soon as possible to pass clean energy legislation that will create good jobs and clean our air and water.

Mark Kraemer, Wilmette

As a frequent reporter of incidents to the Chicago Police Departments TipSubmit website (new.tipsubmit.com), Im frequently disappointed because nothing seems to get done. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Supt. David Brown seem to agree with what Brown said earlier this week, that the police cant solve crimes alone and need the public to work with us.

Yes, as reported on June 18 in the Sun-Times, the city for years sought security fixes at home where eight people recently were shot, ut nothing was done.

I can assure you this was not the only time a house was reported to the police for criminal activity and nothing was done. Though the narrative from City Hall is that residents dont report problem locations, thats certainly not the case in all situations. The four murders at that house might have been avoided had reports to the police actually been acted upon.

Michael Pearson, Englewood

All public schools require multiple vaccinations when registering children for classes. This is for the sake of protecting all children. If you dont feel your child should have to comply, send them to a private school. Its that simple.

Edwina Jackson, Washington Heights

Why does the media describe the ultra-right or alt-right as conservatives? What do they conserve? They certainly arent interested in conserving civil rights, human rights or our planet.

When House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joked about hitting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a gavel, he was not being conservative; he was pandering to his base, the Republican Partys motley crew of far-rightists, white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-fascists and advocates of violence. All those people whom the previous occupant of the White House helped his party solidify.

They should be described as far-right, ultra-right, or alt-right definitely not as conservatives.

Muriel Balla, Hyde Park

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Pass legislation that insures we use more wind and solar energy to power Illinois | Letters - Chicago Sun-Times

Neo-fascist fraternities that glorify violence and cater to bigots of all stripes have no place in Portland. Despite that fact, a local Proud Boys chapter has been meeting on a monthly basis at Mathews, a dive bar at 133 Free St.

A recent article in the Mainer (formerly the Bollard) by Chris Busby sheds light on the issue through an interview with former Mathews bartender Pat Hogan.

Hogan is a hero for refusing to serve these fascists, and for sounding the alarm about their organizing and recruiting activities. He lost his job over it, but he did the right thing. Mathews, on the other hand, deserves a general boycott by any self-respecting Portlander for continuing to serve as a meeting place for an alt-right hate group. In doing so, Mathews immediately put at risk any marginalized person living or working nearby, as the Proud Boys have a well-documented history of violently assaulting minorities.

The Canadian government has designated them as a domestic terrorist organization, and the U.S. Department of Justice has already begun prosecuting multiple Proud Boys members for their roles in the Capitol insurrection.

It is not hyperbolic to call them what they are: fascists, sympathizers and apologists. I hope our community can come together and confront far-right radicalism wherever it might rear its ugly head. And we should duly punish local businesses that provide space and resources for their dangerous activities.

If Mathews continues to host a far-right, violent gang, than why shouldnt the city of Portland revoke their liquor license?

Madison RaymondPortland

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Letter to the editor: Portlanders should boycott bar that's site for hate group meetings - pressherald.com

When people act like jerks on social media, one permanent response is to ban them from posting again. Take away the digital megaphone, the theory goes, and the hurtful or dishonest messages from those troublemakers wont post a problem there anymore.

What happens after that, though? Where do those who have been deplatformed go, and how does it affect their behavior in future?

Assistant Professor Jeremy Blackburn, Department of Computer Science, Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science Image Credit: Jonathan Cohen.

An international team of researchers including Assistant Professor Jeremy Blackburn and PhD candidate Esraa Aldreabi from the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Department of Computer Science explores those questions in a new study called Understanding the Effect of Deplatforming on Social Networks.

The research performed by iDRAMA Lab collaborators at Binghamton University, Boston University, University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany was presented in June at the 2021 ACM Web Science conference.

Researchers developed a method to identify accounts belonging to the same person on different platforms and found that being banned on Reddit or Twitter led those users to join alternate platforms such as Gab or Parler where the content moderation is more lax.

Also among the findings is that, although users who move to those smaller platforms have a potentially reduced audience, they exhibit an increased level of activity and toxicity than they did previously.

You cant just ban these people and say, Hey, it worked. They dont disappear, Blackburn said. They go off into other places. It does have a positive effect on the original platform, but theres also some degree of amplification or worsening of this type of behavior elsewhere.

More about Blackburn

The deplatforming study collected 29 million posts from Gab, which launched in 2016 and currently has around 4 million users. Gab is known for its far-right base of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, anti-Semites and QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Using a combination of machine learning and human labeling, researchers cross-referenced profile names and content with users that had been active on Twitter and Reddit but were suspended. Many who are deplatformed reuse the same profile name or user info on a different platform for continuity and recognizability with their followers.

Just because two people have the same name or username, thats not a guarantee, Blackburn said. There was a pretty big process of going through creating a ground truth data set, where we had a human say, These have to be the same people because of this reason and that reason. That allows us to scale things up by throwing it into a machine learning classifier [program] that will learn the characteristics to watch for.

The process was not unlike how scholars determine the identity of authors for unattributed or pseudonymous works, checking for style, syntax and subject matter, he added.

In the dataset analyzed for this study, about 59% of Twitter users (1,152 out of 1,961) created Gab accounts after their last active time on Twitter, presumably after their account was suspended. For Reddit, about 76% (3,958 out of 5,216) of suspended users created Gab accounts after their last post on Reddit.

Comparing content from the same users on Twitter and Reddit versus Gab, users tend to become more toxic when they are suspended from a platform and are forced to move to another platform. They also become more active, increasing the frequency of posts.

At the same time, the audience for Gab users content is curtailed by the reduced size of the platform compared to the millions of users on Twitter and Reddit. This might be seen as a good thing, but Blackburn cautioned that much of the planning for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol happened on Parler, a platform similar to Gab with a smaller user base that skews to the alt-right and far-right.

Reducing reach probably is a good thing, but reach can be easily misinterpreted. Just because someone has 100,000 followers doesnt mean theyre all followers in the real world, he said.

The hardcore group, maybe the group that were most concerned about, are the ones that probably stick with someone if they move elsewhere online. If by reducing that reach, you increase the intensity that the people who stay around are exposed to, its like a quality versus quantity type of question. Is it worse to have more people seeing this stuff? Or is it worse to have more extreme stuff being produced for fewer people?

A separate study, A Large Open Dataset from the Parler Social Network, also included Blackburn among researchers from New York University, the University of Illinois, University College London, Boston University and the Max Planck Institute.

Presented at the AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media last month, it analyzed 183 million Parler posts made by 4 million users between August 2018 and January 2021, as well as metadata from 13.25 million user profiles. The data confirm that users on Parler which briefly shut down and was taken off of Apple and Google app stores in response to the Capitol riot overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again agenda.

Regardless of what Parler might have said, publicly or not, it was very clearly white, right-wing, Christian Trump supporters, Blackburn said. Again, unsurprisingly, it got its largest boost right at the 2020 election up to a million users joining. Then around the attack at the Capitol, there was another big bump in users. What we can see is that it was very clearly being used as an organization tool for the insurrection.

So if banning users is not the right answer, what is? Reddit admins, for example, have a shadow-banning capability that allows troublesome users to think theyre still posting on the site, except no one else can see them. During the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter added content moderation labels to tweets that deliberately spread disinformation.

Blackburn is unsure about all the moderation tools that social media platforms have available, but he thinks there need to be more socio-technical solutions to socio-technical problems rather than just outright banning.

Society is now fairly firmly saying that we cannot ignore this stuff we cant just use the easy outs anymore, he said. We need to come up with some more creative ideas to not get rid of people, but hopefully push them in a positive direction or at least make sure that everybody is aware of who that person is. Somewhere in between just unfettered access and banning everybody is probably the right solution.

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Study shows users banned from social platforms go elsewhere with increased toxicity | Binghamton News - Binghamton University