The Heritage Front
Groups such as the
Heritage Front often try to gain credibility by
running for political office or by aligning themselves with less extreme
individuals and organizations. In the case of the Heritage Front, such
connections have been noticed between the Heritage Front and
Paul Fromm,
and the Heritage Front and the Reform Party of Canada. Both of these
associations require explanation.
The Fromm Connection
Paul Fromm, a high-school English teacher in the Peel Board of Education
just west of Toronto, is a longtime Canadian White supremacist. He was
a strong supporter of Professor Philippe Rushton, whose theories on race
and intelligence caused a great deal of controversy at the University of
Western Ontario. Before his link to the Heritage Front, Fromm was
associated with the Edmund Burke Society (an anti-communist, anti-
immigration University of Toronto student group which he co-founded
in the 1960s); the
Western Guard (a White supremacist group which
evolved from the Edmund Burke Society); Countdown (a publication
started by Fromm in 1972 to promote his racist, anti-immigration,
anti-communist stance);
Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), an
organization founded by
Fromm criticizing Canada's foreign aid and
immigration policies); and the
Canadian Association for Free
Expression (CAFE, directed by Fromm and
Ron Gostick, a Canadian
distributor of extreme right-wing propaganda).
Fromm has held a formal position in the Social Credit party, has been a
Metro Toronto Separate School Board trustee, and in 1981 was elected as
treasurer of the federal Progressive Conservatives in Toronto. In a
newspaper interview after his election to that position, it was
reported that Fromm "'believes in restricted immigration, thinks the boat
people should have been sent to inhabit desert islands, and expresses the
belief that a supreme race of intelligent people 'is a good idea."
There was a public outcry, and Fromm was forced to resign from his
PC-Metro post. Since then, Fromm appears to have devoted most of his
time to C-FAR and to the Heritage Front.
Fromm's earliest association with the Heritage Front was
C-FAR's
co-sponsorship of the Front's December 8, 1990 Martyr's Day Rally
for
Robert Matthews, a member of the violent neo-Nazi group,
The Order, who died in a shoot-out with the FBI in 1984. In a videotape
of the rally, Fromm was shown saying, "We're all on the same side.
But we must know who the enemy is... We are quite right to honour
heroes here tonight." In later media interviews, Fromm denied
awareness of the
Heritage Front's views.
On September 24, 1991, in the Toronto City Hall,
Fromm and 12 other
White supremacists including
Wolfgang Droege and a member of the
Aryan Nations disrupted a meeting of the Mayor's Committee on Race
Relations as Native leader Rodney Bobiwash was lodging a complaint
with the Committee about the activities of the Heritage Front. As
Bobiwash was speaking, Fromm yelled "Scalp 'em!", and refused to
apologize. He and the other White supremacists were removed from
the meeting by police. The Peel Board of Education conducted an
investigation of
Fromm as a result of this incident, and recommended
that the Ontario Ministry of Education review his teaching certificate.
On April 30, 1992, the Peel Board reprimanded Fromm and warned him to
refrain from questionable activities. The League for Human Rights
strongly urged the Peel Board of Education to relieve Fromm of his
teaching responsibilities, and noted that "views such as those
held and expressed by Mr. Fromm... stand to poison the atmosphere
for students in a multicultural democracy." Fromm is still licensed
to teach in Ontario, and is still on the Peel payroll; however, after
the Ministry of Education review and the Board warning and reprimand,
he was removed from the classroom and assigned to teach adult
education courses.
Infiltration of the Reform Party of Canada
"There is no room for racists in the Reform Party of Canada," said
Preston Manning, leader of the Reform Party, on February 28, 1992.
This statement came after reports that at least four members of the
Heritage Front, and possibly up to twenty neo-Nazis, were involved
with Reform riding associations in Toronto. On March 11, 1992,
Wolfgang Droege, Nicola Polinuk, James Dawson, and Peter Mitrevski,
Heritage Front members (all of whom had gone to Libya in 1989),
were expelled from the Beaches-Woodbine Reform Party riding
association.
Polinuk and Dawson were to have become formal board members on
April 2. Also expelled was Al Overfield, the man who had recruited
them, who has associated with neo-Nazis for twenty years. Overfield
was responsible for Reform Party security, and had twice hired
Droege to help with security at Metro area appearances of Preston
Manning. In 1971 Overfield, along with
Paul Fromm and
Don Andrews,
was involved in a short-lived takeover of the Ontario wing of the
Social Credit Party.
Wolfgang Droege has denied that the
Heritage Front had a plan to
infiltrate the Reform Party. However, observers at Heritage Front
meetings have reported speakers' recommendations for White power
activists to get involved in more mainstream groups. Recent
allegations involving CSIS have suggested that the
Heritage Front had a vested interest in joining Reform.
Preston Manning announced after the 1992 expulsions that his party
would be launching an internal investigation into suspected neo-Nazi
membership in an attempt to determine whether other political parties,
groups or individuals were in some way involved in the recruitment of
racist members. According to Manning, "There is no way that anyone
who supports a racist position could at the same time support our
position on the Constitution, immigration or culture, because the
whole heart of our position is to strip racial criteria out of those
policy areas." However, it is interesting to note that the policies
of both groups stem from the idea that minorities are receiving
unjustifiable special treatment under current Canadian legislation.
According to
Droege, "...Obviously there are a lot of similarities
between the
Heritage Front and the Reform Party... but we take some
things a few steps farther." The League for Human Rights has called
on Manning, the Reform Party, and all political parties to
re-examine their policies and criteria for membership.
It is tempting to dismiss the interest of the Heritage Front in the
Reform Party as isolated. However, Zvonimir Lelas, recently sentenced
to jail for desecrating Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue in 1988, was also
dismissed from the Reform Party in March 1992, and a young member
named Mark Kreuzer was expelled from the Calgary West riding in July
of that year for distributing Holocaust denial literature. Kreuzer
retained lawyer
Doug Christie, notorious for defending White
supremacists, to fight the expulsion. These incidents point to a
tendency within some far-right groups to see the Reform Party as
their natural political vehicle.
In June of 1992, Michael Lublin, an Orthodox Jew who was the director
of community relations in Ontario for the Reform Party, resigned,
alleging widespread racism and anti-Semitism within the Party. He
also claimed that he had alerted the Party leaders of the
Heritage Front infiltrators in August 1991, and that these claims were not
investigated until the story broke in the press in February of the
following year.
The Reform Party's stance against 'hyphenated Canadianism', federal
funding of multiculturalism, and changes to the RCMP dress code
(e.g. allowing turbans), in part explains the attraction of groups
like the Heritage Front to the Party. Although
Droege condemns
David Duke's attempts to be accepted in mainstream politics, his
involvement with the Reform Party points to a similar search for
credibility, one which has led him from radical groups such as the
Ku Klux Klan and the Western Guard to the Heritage Front.
Droege's attempt to make a space for the Heritage Front in the Reform Party
was a bid to make his views more acceptable through their exposure
in a mainstream arena.
This bid having failed, the
Heritage Front now refers to the Reform
Party as the Conform Party, and criticizes its leadership while
maintaining that the membership is sympathetic to the Heritage
Front's position. The August 1992 issue of Up Front insists that,
"A significant number of active Front members, supporters, and
sympathizers" remain in Reform, some holding party posts. Since
the stunning success of Reform in the 1993 federal election, the
topic of Right-wing extremism in the party has become more
significant. According to leader Manning, Reform has redoubled its
efforts to rid his party of neo-Nazis, saying that there is no
room for hate in his brand of conservative politics. Several Reform
officials and candidates have been forced to leave the party for
offenses, including quoting Adolf Hitler in a public forum. It is
encouraging to see Reform aggressively root out hatemongers
within its ranks as the party seeks to change its image.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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