This is hard to write.
I believe fact-based journalism is fundamental to democracy.
I don’t want to disparage the Canadian media en masse. That’s not my intention. I think the thorough, unfair demonization of the media by predominantly conservative and Republican politicians over the last six or seven years has contributed greatly to the ongoing degradation of North American society.
I don’t want to create difficulties for reporters, especially women, who undeniably have difficult jobs already. This isn’t about a single reporter or group of reporters. It’s pointless to assign blame to individuals when the failure is institutional.
That said, I think the truth about Jeremy MacKenzie and the media reveals a much darker truth about Canada.
The best way to tackle this story is chronologically. I’m going to keep the commentary to a minimum and present the facts for you to judge for yourself.
February 2020
As I wrote in my first post on this saga, MacKenzie’s first encounter with the media was in February 2020 at his one-man protest outside a speech given by Omar Khadr. Ignored by the mainstream media that were there that night, only one media figure talked to MacKenzie.
Camera light in his eyes, MacKenzie says he couldn’t see and didn’t know who he was talking to at the time. Even if he had, he wasn’t familiar with Gavin McInnes at that time.
That exchange with McInnes was more than enough for CAHN to publish, within days, a piece on MacKenzie on what was the first phase of their website. It held valid criticisms of MacKenzie’s historical comments on, say, the Nuremberg Trials.
I’ve already told you MacKenzie has admitted to saying some stupid shit, years back, that he regrets. It was recorded, so he’s aware he’s going to be haunted by and explaining it for the rest of his life.
Between 2020 and early 2022 CAHN published eight more times about MacKenzie.
Jeremy MacKenzie’s name did not appear in a Canadian news story until the first week of February 2022, after his arrest on those Nova Scotia charges laid by a cop being sued for malicious prosecution.
News of MacKenzie’s arrest was first published by CAHN as well - they get a remarkable amount of information from the RCMP, it seems - followed the next day by this story from Global News.
February 15, 2022
This is the week MacKenzie’s life really became problematic.
February 15, 2022 is the day after the Trudeau government evoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history. It’s also the day after RCMP made arrests at the Coutts, Alberta border blockade.
As he testified at the EA Hearings a couple of weeks ago, MacKenzie has no connection to Coutts. Why do I care? Because that is the truth. It is a fact and determining what those really are about MacKenzie is what I care about.
Feel free to educate yourself by reading MacKenzie’s testimony here, which begins on page 138. The Coutts questions begin on page 176.
The government of Alberta’s lawyers declined their opportunity to question MacKenzie, ceding their time to his defence lawyer.
So let me say this one more time, because it’s unreal how many media outlets are still saying and implying otherwise: Jeremy MacKenzie is not connected, was not directing or otherwise involved with the Coutts border blockade in any way, shape or form.
You’re forgiven, though, if you thought otherwise. You really had no choice.
On February 15, 2022 CAHN published a piece on their website tying MacKenzie directly to Coutts.
The same day the National Post, Saltwire and CTV Calgary all ran stories connecting MacKenzie to Coutts, quoting CAHN.
The next two days were devastating for MacKenzie. What happened to him that week has essentially destroyed his life.
The Ever-Elusive Elizabeth Simons
I received intel that the deputy director of CAHN is a fictional character. Sure, she is voiced by a real woman, but we don’t know who that woman is or what caused her to believe she has the right to destroy other Canadian’s lives through the media.
If “Elizabeth Simons” is concealing her true identity, we need to know why. What is she hiding? Is it a conflict of interest? Is it her lack of credentials?
Myself and others have now sent dozens of emails to reporters, asking how and if they verified Simons identity and credentials for their stories.
Not one reporter would respond. Perhaps they think they can hide from this forever, which they can’t and won’t.
As of today, despite asking regularly and nicely and after receiving plenty of credible evidence she is not, I have never received a shred of proof from anyone that Simons is the real name of a real woman.
It blows my mind how many people need to be reminded of this FFS, but you can’t phone a newsroom to give a reporter information or an interview using a fake name.
If you are lying about your name to media and thereby the entire country, you are committing fraud.
In the event that you are granted anonymity by the journalist and their media outlet, which is not nearly as easy as it sounds, that newsroom tells their audience, right in the story, that the subject being quoted is using a pseudonym and why.
That has never happened with Simons. Every media outlet in Canada has quoted her, verbatim, with zero qualifiers. This should be a simple question to answer, but not a soul will admit to meeting Simons in-person and gets angry if I ask.
What do they think they’ll accomplish with that? I’ll lose interest? Give up?
Lol.
The editor of Press Progress, which has also quoted Simons extensively, went to these lengths a couple days ago to tell me he hasn’t met her either…but snarks confidently anyway that’s she’s real and I’m “kooky”.
It’s adorable how hard Luke works to not say he has not met Simons... but insists she’s real.
So much hostility, immaturity and stupidity in response to a simple question.
As of publication, Luke has not provided any follow-up details of his supposed encounters as requested. Luke too will have all kinds of explaining to do when the truth comes out.
Remember, this is the way CAHN’s executive director responded when I asked him this question in October.
This is the way the Liberal government was promoting its affiliation with CAHN just a few months ago:
When Saltwater reporter Chris Lambie, who did not respond to my emails about this, quoted the mysterious Simons in Saltwire as saying MacKenzie and his friends “believe that civil war is imminent. They want civil war. They want to execute and try their enemies,” it had the desired, terror-inducing impact.
I can’t wrap my head around any how normal human being could announce that a Canadian resident, by name, wants to execute other Canadians, without a litany of evidence to back it up.
I never imagined Canadian media publishing something like that without having any either.
BTW, in Nova Scotia you have seven days from publication to file a defamation suit.
Saltwater quoted Simons, interviewed over the phone for that story, saying MacKenzie is "very anti-Semitic and very racist.”
Again, breathtakingly defamatory, presented as a fact without evidence. It’s even more disturbing that those words have been attributed to someone who very likely doesn’t exist.
“...he is a combat veteran who served 14 years and he was injured with mefloquine poisoning...MacKenzie — who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder...”
So just to add abuse to injury, Saltwire published personal medical details about a private citizen, a military veteran, provided by a third party without verification, stigmatizing MacKenzie’s mental health and that of thousands of other Canadian military vets in the process.
This is rock bottom journalism.
February 16, 2022
On February 16, 2022, Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, under pressure to justify his government’s use of the Emergency Act, made some damning public statements, particularly in respect to the Coutts arrests:
“The dangerous criminal activity occurring away from the TV cameras and social-media posts was real and organized…It could have been deadly...several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right extreme organization with leaders who are in Ottawa.” - Marco Mendicino, February 16, 2022, Globe and Mail
The same story adds,
“While Mr. Mendicino did not name any organization during the news conference, his spokesperson, Alexander Cohen, later said the minister’s remarks were in reference to Diagolon and recent comments made online by Mr. MacKenzie.”
So in other words, the only reason or excuse Marco Mendicino provided Canadians back in February for evoking the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history was… Jeremy MacKenzie.
February 17, 2022
Reporter Justin Ling took that one international the following day in the Guardian.
Now the whole world knew Jeremy MacKenzie was “probably” (wink-wink) the mastermind behind the plan to kill innocent people in Alberta, Canada.
Except he wasn’t and there wasn’t one.
Why is no one talking about this?
This is the Minister of Public Safety for our country. Holding him to account, even when it makes reporters look bad too, matters. A lot. It’s not happening.
Anyway, that day CTV National News got in on the juice as well.
“Mendicino appeared to double down on his remarks in Thursday’s House of Commons session, saying “there is an ideologically-motivated operation that we see in the rhetoric here that is meant to incite,” which was one of the major reasons the government chose to invoke the Emergencies Act, he said.” - CTV News, February 17, 2022
Why hasn’t a single reporter gone back to Mendicino for comment?
After destroying the reputation and life of a Canadian military veteran, with no criminal record, in the House of Commons life with a few sentences, what does Mendicino have to say about MacKenzie subsequently never being questioned by the RCMP or CSIS in relation to the Ottawa convoy or Coutts blockade?
For good measure, CTV included Simons as well, who the reporter says she liaised with by email about MacKenzie and Diagolon.
“…Simons said the fear of “encroaching communism” is rife amongst conspiracy theorist movements as an insult against government policies, but in neo-fascist and militia movements it stands for something else… “this idea of being opposed to communism in place of being opposed to Jews because it's a bit more palatable, goes back a long time.” - CTV News, February 17, 2022
What? What? The f*ck?
This woman, whoever they are, casually pulls a statement out of her ass about MacKenzie being a neo-fascist militant who hates communism, then says that must mean he hates Jews.
What kind of monster dreams up that shit?
“Simons pointed out there is a “massive contingent” of Diagolon members who are anti-Semitic and racist who likely use the term as the historically-derived placeholder for Jewish people.” - CTV News, February 17, 2022
“…who likely use the term…”
Another round of astounding statements left unchecked, with zero evidence, by a national news outlet.
Wrap this shit sandwich in the Calgary Herald, which dutifully also connected MacKenzie to Coutts that day and quoted CAHN.
Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Ri-
To recap, the week of February 14, 2022, Jeremy MacKenzie, with no factual, related evidence whatsoever, was wholly connected by the media and the Liberal federal government to the idea that MacKenzie was planning mass murder.
Since then, the message about MacKenzie maybe-probably being a murderer has been published online at least thirty times in about as many weeks, by every legacy media outlet in Canada, not including print editions and television and radio newscasts, which would put that number into the hundreds if not thousands.
Imagine being publicly, resoundingly and definitively connected to heinous crimes that didn’t even actually happen, because you met a guy once and took a picture with him before he was arrested.
As recently as November 9, 2022, a week after he testified at the EA Hearings about not being questioned or approached, ever, by RCMP about Coutts, CBC was still including reference connecting him to the arrests in their stories.
Spring 2022
MacKenzie did himself no favours at all, with the media or anyone else, when he was arrested in March for protesting outside the Nova Scotia public health officer’s home.
I’ve never said I think MacKenzie is perfect. It bothers me that he did that and I wish he had made different choices. Good news is I can feel that way and still respect the fact he is entitled to fairness and proper justice, at the very least.
April and May were quiet, save some kerfuffle after RCMP officer David Peck, currently being sued for malicious prosecution of another Canadian man, laid nine more weapons charges against MacKenzie.
In June, CAHN accelerated their “accelerationist” narrative regarding MacKenzie.
What is accelerationism and why should it terrify you? I don’t know and I don’t care. This shit is being made up by online cosplay superheroes looking for villains.
Predictably, the term’s roots go back to a mid-20th century science fiction dystopian novel, which predictably got some things right about the near to mid-term future so we better start using it as a Bible.
Today, if you Google the word, you get headlines from 2019 like Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world, and of course, Jeremy MacKenzie.
The Heat
I have been harassed online, predominantly by men, to the point of being suicidal at one point, for almost a decade.
So I sincerely sympathize with Rachel Gilmore over the harassment she says she’s endured, which she pins largely on MacKenzie. It’s not fun.
I do also have a few questions for her, though.
For example, about that time Pierre Poilievre slimed his way down an Ottawa sidewalk, posing for photographers alongside not MacKenzie, but a different Canadian soldier.
From Gilmore’s story dated June 30, 2022:
“Alongside him, helping to lead the crowd of protesters who were pushing for a permanent end to vaccine mandates, was a man in a bright vest named James Topp.”
Topp is an active army reservist facing multiple disciplinary charges under the National Defence Act, for publicly protesting the Canadian military’s vaccine requirement and subsequent discharge of hundreds of personnel.
Like many Canadians, I don’t agree with Topp’s position, but we also respect and value his right to peaceful protest and a fair trial. Oh, and dignity.
“A topic they didn’t appear to talk about, based on circulating clips, was Topp’s appearance on far-right figurehead Jeremy Mackenzie’s podcast for well over an hour one month ago.”
So this is a story about a politician who walked beside a guy who talked to MacKenzie “for well over an hour 🤭” a month before.
How in the Gossip Girl fck is that news, Rachel?
Keeping a Narrative Alive
A week later, in early-July, Gilmore publishes another story about the guy Poilievre walked down the street with the week before and who that guy spoke to a month before.
“It’s unclear why Poilievre “felt that he needed to” meet with Topp, said Stephanie Carvin, a former CSIS analyst who now teaches at Carleton University.
“But it definitely was a choice with consequences,” she said…”
Who in the hell in their right mind, nevermind a so-called security expert, claims a politician speaking briefly to another Canadian in public has made “…a choice with consequences”?!
When TF did Canada become about not talking to each other? What a stunning and frightening statement from someone supposedly charged with looking for real terror threats.
I do not want to live in a country where the media publicly condemns a politician for meeting with a Canadian who has an unpopular opinion.
Yet I do, apparently.
“In a statement sent to Global News, Poilievre’s spokesperson Anthony Koch responded to a request for comment by calling questions about Poilievre’s participation alongside Topp “disingenuous traps” and “unprofessional.”
I don’t want to agree with Pierre Poilievre. I loathe that man; I think he is pure human garbage, yet here we are.
In both of the above two stories, Global links to and cites, without explanation, anonymous Twitter accounts as sources.
“Topp is heard saying” in red in the first screenshot links to the same anonymous Twitter account embedded in the followup story as “receipts” on Topp and MacKenzie… speaking to each other.
I can’t see the “Tony Vyce” Twitter account because it blocked then attacked me by name for days after I first wrote about MacKenzie a couple weeks ago. It is almost definitely being ran by one of the lead thugs at CAHN and I think Rachel Gilmore knows which one it is.
I have to assume Gilmore knows who is operating that account because otherwise she’d be sourcing an anonymous troll for her news stories, which would be utterly absurd.
So my questions for Rachel Gilmore are:
a) Who is behind the pseudonym Tony Vyce account, and why is it being used as a news source in your work?
b) Do Gilmore and her editors agree with the account’s degrading, disrespectful and defamatory public assessment of me, because like Rachel, I wrote about Jeremy MacKenzie?
How and why was it okay for Global News to support, endorse and promote the viewpoint of an anonymous internet troll with a rich history of harassing people on the internet?
Fictional spokespeople and troll accounts: both have contributed to the media’s reporting on Jeremy MacKenzie, who tonight remains in jail.
At this point, you should be terrified of this Orwellian nightmare, not freaking Diagolon for FFS.
Don’t think for a moment that this can’t or won’t happen to you or someone you love, right out in the open in front of everyone.
August 2022
By the end of August, MacKenzie had been stalked and harassed by an obsessed fan-turned-RCMP-informant (the Saskatchewan Crown’s sole witness) for months, was buried under a non-stop media feeding-frenzy and hunted by some of the shadiest police work I have ever seen.
In my uneducated opinion, by this point Jeremy was having a nervous breakdown.
Only then did the absolute worst happen: Jeremy MacKenzie shook Pierre Poilievre’s hand.
Here’s how that horror show went down:
August 20: MacKenzie takes a pic of himself shaking Poilievre’s hand at a campaign event, then posts it on Telegram. Mackenzie says he predicted the backlash before hitting the Post button and wanted to test it, which I totally believe (however I have also encouraged MacKenzie to put his strategic communications skills to better use in the future 🤦🏻♀️).
August 21: Press Progress obediently puts out a story about the handshake.
August 22: the Halifax Examiner publishes an op-ed suggesting MacKenzie is a mentally-unwell former soldier who might be about to commit Nova Scotia’s next mass murder.
Yes, seriously.
August 23: Gilmore publishes her assessment of the Conservative Party leader having the audacity to shake another Canadian’s hand, while reinforcing all the Coutt’s connections.
August 24: that now infamous Diagolon photo first appears in the mainstream media in an iPolitics story, credited by Stephen Maher as “Provided”, alongside the first news story on MacKenzie’s Saskatchewan charges (incidentally, this story was also how MacKenzie found out about his Saskatchewan charges).
To me iPolitics seemed like an odd place for the story to break, but okay.
In the story Mubin Shaikh, a former member of the Taliban turned CSIS operative now considered an “expert in radicalization, de-radicalization and counter-terrorism” expressed shock that MacKenzie was able to travel to Ottawa for the February convoy, given his weapons charges in Nova Scotia.
“He faces a significant prison sentence, right? So why did they let him go to Ottawa? It’s not like it’s one firearm. It’s 13 charges. I can’t even recall somebody who’s been arrested with that many charges.” - Mubin Shaikh
I’m guessing the answer has something to do with the fact that in February, Mubin, MacKenzie was only facing four charges.
Another fact left totally unchecked in another news story.
“Shaikh says Diagolon, which has former and current Canadian Forces members, is much more worrying than most of the Muslim extremist groups that have been subject to harsher crackdowns.”
Labelling Jeremy MacKenzie and his meatball Canadian fan club as “….much more worrying that most of the Muslim extremist groups…” is… something.
It’s amazing, but also frightening, how many public figures have laid their credibility on the line over Jeremy MacKenzie being a murderous criminal mastermind. How many public figures have so much to lose if (IMO, when) the charges against MacKenzie fall apart and it becomes undeniable that sure, MacKenzie and Diagolon’s band of misfits aren’t bright and need to smarten up, but they’re not domestic terrorists.
The doubling down right now by public figures isn’t going to work - in fact it’s just going to make things far worse for them down the road.
Anyway, after iPolitics published theirs, Saskatchewan and other media picked up the story. Saskatchewan RCMP responded to media’s requests for comment on MacKenzie’s charges, but never issued a public release.
(At this point MacKenzie frantically started contacting Saskatchewan lawyers. Every single Saskatchewan lawyer told him “hey just don’t to come to Saskatchewan and you’ll be fine, they’ll never issue a national warrant for something like that.”)
Of course, all the media coverage that August week also included references to Coutts, quotes from CAHN etc., really driving home that MacKenzie narrative all over again into Canadian’s heads.
What a dumpster fire.
August 25: someone (can’t imagine who) posts an obituary for MacKenzie online.
MacKenzie spiralled downhill from there significantly. His alcohol consumption was too high, particularly when he was broadcasting. That was exacerbated by the suicide of his close friend and platoon mate about a week after the iPolitics story, in the first week of September.
Here We Are & the Media’s Silence Is Deafening
By the night MacKenzie made those drunken comments about Ana Poilievre on a livestream in the early morning hours of September 25th, it was too late for him and he knew it. Like I said, at times Jeremy really hasn’t helped himself and that night was another one of those times.
Frankly, I think it’s a blessing that MacKenzie was arrested two days later.
As terrible and brutally expensive and tragic as this has been for him, it was literally the only step left, at that point, that could put a stop to this madness. Every one of the structures and institutions tearing him apart was far more powerful than he was, even with a microphone.
He had no chance and they would have finished him if it had been allowed to continue. Without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, the goal was to see Jeremy MacKenzie kill himself.
IMO and that of all the legal minds of consulted is the vast majority of the charges are unsustainable.
The Saskatchewan case is a joke, with Saskatchewan RCMP currently investigating their own shitty, non-existent investigative work on it while MacKenzie sits in jail waiting for them to figure out how they’re going to cover their asses and nothing more.
It’s weird to me the Sask Party hasn’t figured out how to use this to demonstrate why they should have their own police force and F Division doesn’t need to be here anymore.
A provincial police force in Saskatchewan won’t be better, but I’m starting to believe it can’t be worse than what we’ve got right now, which is truly awful.
Not one Canadian media outlet wrote a story nearly as comprehensive on Jeremy MacKenzie’s testimony at the EA Hearings as what they wrote tearing him apart with far less evidence just a few months prior.
Not one.
The Halifax Examiner - you know, the one that published MacKenzie’s unredacted warrant and an editorial with his picture under a headline stating he was about to commit Nova Scotia’s next mass murder? - didn’t publish a single word about it.
Every media outlet in Canada buried MacKenzie’s testimony in consolidated stories on the day’s events at the hearings and hasn’t said a peep about him since.
CAHN actually wrote about something that is probably-sort of far more in their “anti-hate” wheelhouse and a hell of a lot more relevant to hate speech: Kanye West.
They all know what’s happened here is very wrong.
They’re praying to god it goes away and I’m here to tell every one of you it’s not going to.
You’re going to start seeing a convoy of buses and all the people I’ve talked about above frantically trying to toss each other underneath them. From what I hear it’s already well in the works. The blame is going to roll downhill from law enforcement, I know that much for sure.
I hope that when he gets out, Jeremy MacKenzie retains the best litigation lawyer in Canada and sues literally everyone. I hope he flies over the country and drops lawsuits from a plane, just blanketing this place from one end to the other.
This, IMO, is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen happen in Canada and it went down right in front of us. It cannot ever happen again. We can and should continue to combat narratives and organizations and yes, even dangerous individuals, but only after fully researching and being satisfied you know the truth.
Pay attention to who and what you’re listening to and reading. Researching this gong show has shaken my faith in the tenets of Canadian democracy, including the media, unequivocally. I really never wanted that to happen and didn’t believe it would - what a lesson this has been.
The truth is the only thing we need from reporters and their newsrooms and right now in Canada, we’re not getting it. This is all unsustainable and amends and reparations must and will be made, I guarantee it.
Call someone, anyone in power right now and demand Jeremy MacKenzie’s release from Saskatoon jail and then access to fair, just and due process, cause this is f*cked right up.
Have a great weekend,
