Unpacking Right-Wing Extremism in "Multicultural" Canada : The Case of the Canadian Nationalist Front

Abstract

There has been a rise in Right-wing extremism (RWE) mobilizing within what is known as the setter-colonial state of Canada, with some groups espousing values and narratives grounded in White nationalist ideology which have led to instances of violence and harm against community members. These incidents of harm and violence occur in the context of the Canadian state's claims to inclusive multiculturalism, civility and benevolence. While there are many looking into the presence of RWE groups to document their existence, mobilizing patterns and tactics, very little analysis exists that offers a deep analysis into these groups and situates their political ideology within the broader context of the Canadian state’s governance logics. Therefore, to push the discussion on this topic further, this project looks at the specific case of the Canadian Nationalist Front's (CNF), a White nationalist group in Canada, and unpacks the discourse shared on their blog. Through dissecting the CNF's blogpost with a theoretical framework of analysis that moves beyond understanding this group as merely a fringe group which holds fundamentally different values than the Canadian state, I make links to the existing literature that demonstrates the parallels between the two. I argue that the racialized governance logics of White nationalist groups, like the CNF, are also shared in the settler-colonial logics of the Canadian state's border governance strategies. Further, I highlight the ways in which groups like the CNF ground their movements in the superiority of Whiteness, while using the state's claims of inclusivity and multiculturalism to justify their entitlement to hold these exclusionary ideologies while presenting themselves as victims of those that they "Other". Finally, I contextualize their discourse within the context of neoliberalism, which has intensified the harms of racial capitalism in a way that has also impacted the White working class and allowed groups like the CNF to use economic grievances to mobilize their movements.