Carp residents decry far-right event Saturday night at local hall

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Many Carp residents were aghast that the Carp Agricultural Hall was rented out Saturday night for a gathering connected to the far-right group Diagolon.

Soon after word of the gathering spread, the Facebook page for the Huntley Community Association, which consists of Carp village residents, was filled with posts and comments decrying the meeting.

“It is disgusting that a hate group (was) given permission to use the Carp Agricultural Hall,” said one commenter. “This is dangerous and damaging to our community.”

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Also on Facebook on Saturday night, West-Carleton-March Coun. Clarke Kelly, who represents Carp, slammed the meeting.

“It has come to my attention that a group that promotes hateful and racist rhetoric hosted an event in Carp this evening,” Kelly wrote. “There is no place for such behaviour in West Carleton-March and I strongly condemn the presence of such a group in our community.”

Kelly wrote that Ottawa police was monitoring the event.

The Carp Agricultural Society, which rented out the space and runs the annual Carp Fair, which dates back to the 1860s, posted on Facebook Saturday night that it was “not aware of the group identity nor the intent of the rental.

“This rental in no way reflects our values or mission,” said the society’s post.

The gathering was billed as the first stop on a cross-Canada “Road Rage Terror Tour” featuring Nova Scotia-based Diagolon founder and podcaster Jeremy MacKenzie, as well as other speakers. A 2022 U.S. Department of State report called Diagolon “a Canadian far-right ‘extremist’ group.”

One Carp resident posted on Facebook about the meeting: “It is all very real… person at the gate denied it was a neo-Nazi meeting. About 30 vehicles in the parking lot… metal detector for people entering the venue.” A subsequent comment said the number of parked cars had grown to about 100.

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Another comment asked whether police were present and many comments queried why the gathering could not be shut down.

A member of Community Solidarity Ottawa, a watchdog group that tracks far-right activities, said in an interview that no protest against the gathering in Carp was planned, because the event’s location became known just hours before and due to safety concerns.

“It’s too dangerous to protest,” said the member, who requested anonymity because of concern for reprisals. “They are eager to fight people who oppose them.”

In 2022, Mubin Shaikh, a professor of public safety at Seneca College and counter-extremism specialist, told the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that while Diagolon “started out as a joke,” it was “made up of former members of the Canadian Forces, individuals with real combat training, with real capabilities and who have grown increasingly radicalized, especially because of COVID.”

Speaking before the Public Order Emergency Commission in November 2022, MacKenzie said of Diagolon: “There’s an aspect of, you know, firearms, supporting recreational culture and stuff, especially in Western Canada, but there’s certainly not anything resembling a militia.”

Promotional material for the gathering advised: “Do not bring weapons of any kind or you will be removed from the venue.”

phum@postmedia.com

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