As Pierre Poilievre stepped onto the stage to address the Canada Strong and Free Network conference in early May, some of the most prominent and important establishment conservatives in Canada were looking on.
So too was an increasingly notorious “Canadian nationalist” who advocates for the mass deportation of those he deems “foreigners” — which includes permanent residents and birthright citizens — from the country: Daniel Tyrie.
For Tyrie, attending the conference was part of “an important strategy”: one of humanizing his organization — and its ideas — in the eyes of some of the most powerful right-wingers in Canada.
Tyrie is the executive director of the Dominion Society of Canada, a group that advocates for a far-right policy known as “remigration.” The Dominion Society is proposing to remove up to nine million people — as much as 21 per cent of Canada’s current population — by deporting immigrants as well as revoking birthright citizenship.
The racist idea has become increasingly mainstream around the world in recent years, thanks to far-right European politicians and U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House. The concept has gained enough international support that its far-right proponents gathered in Porto, Portugal, in late May for a “Remigration Summit.”
Hundreds, including Tyrie, attended.
Researchers have called the remigration movement a form of ethnic cleansing, a parallel Tyrie denies. He’s also denied being a white nationalist. Despite his protestations, however, Tyrie has said in interviews that he’s “very clear about what a Canadian is.”
“All these groups that established Canada, this ethnic continuity that we’re talking about, these people can be called white people,” he said in a February interview with Candice Malcolm of Juno News.
Now, Tyrie says he’s hoping to use events like the Canada Strong and Free Network conference to normalize his ideas in Canadian politics.
“I’m just going to take a chance to get to talk to these people, to humanize the organization, because so many of these people, they think we’re, like, radical, unreasonable,” he told supporters on a May 7 livestream, the day he saw Poilievre speak at the conference.
Tyrie grinned as he acknowledged some of his online followers can be “feral,” which has led some to be “apprehensive” of him in these rooms.
“But it’s good to show up and be there in person, show face, have conversations with people and show them that we’re serious, we’re professional, we’re reasonable, we’re not going to back down on our ideas but we can actually work collaboratively with people, that we’re not just hateful, radical bigots,” he said.
“That we understand how the process works and our role in the greater system.”
According to Tyrie’s telling of the conference, some conservatives were buying what he was selling.
“But there have been some interesting people — some interesting, very nice people in and around political parties and other groups, media and so on — that have taken some time to talk with me, get to know me, get to know our ideas,” Tyrie boasted.
“In that sense, I think it’s been rather productive.”
That’s exactly why researchers who study the far right are voicing their concern that Tyrie was allowed to be in such a powerful room.
“The inclusion of remigration activists such as Daniel Tyrie into mainstream conservative spaces is unacceptable,” said Wendy Via, CEO and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
What is remigration?
“Remigration is at its core a call for ethnic cleansing of non-white people from a country,” Via told The Tyee in a statement.
The term was popularized by Martin Sellner, whom Via described as a “European former neo-Nazi” and the “de facto leader of the white nationalist Identitarian movement.” Austrian author Natascha Strobl, who wrote a book about Sellner’s Generation Identity movement, researched Sellner’s background and has said he was part of the “neo-Nazi scene” as a teenager.
On its website, the Dominion Society tells the public that to understand remigration, “you must first understand the great replacement.”
That is the baseless theory that white people are being deliberately “replaced” by a cabal through migration and growing minority communities. While different adherents to this racist conspiracy theory pin the blame on different groups for supposedly spearheading this “replacement,” Jewish people are often blamed for the supposed “plot.”
While the Dominion Society website makes no mention of Jewish people, it does assert that “the great replacement” is “not a conspiracy theory.”
“Heritage Canadians are being replaced — and it’s happening all over the world,” its website reads.
The solution to this, according to the group, is “remigration.”
Remigration, as a concept, is packaged to appear “reasonable to the average person,” the Canadian Anti-Hate Network wrote in an explainer piece on the issue .
It’s this packaging that makes the idea so insidious. It all…
Read the full article at The Tyee →
CA