Thank you to the honourable chair, distinguished members of the committee and my fellow presenters.
Many were dismayed over the course of the “freedom convoy” protest in Ottawa when they saw unambiguous hate symbols such as the Nazi swastika and the Confederate flag carried on Canadian streets. However, these were not the only hateful symbols observed by anti-hate experts.
Contemporary hate is not always as easy to identify as a Nazi swastika or a Confederate flag, and groups in Ottawa that displayed obscure, ambiguous and contextual hate symbols were able to do so with few noticing. This is by design, as the propaganda that many contemporary hate groups and movements deploy relies on a number of strategies to dodge moderation and avoid public censure. These include irony, humour, misdirection, mischaracterization, aesthetic choices and pseudo-scholarship.
Memes, in many ways, are the political flyer of the 21st century. They're easy to produce and share, and memes and the associated culture around them have become very important communication tools.
On social media, hate peddlers constantly come up with new memes, symbols and slogans to shroud their beliefs. Part of this strategy involves the appropriation of anodyne symbols and assigning hateful meaning. Many of these symbols, like the OK hand gesture or Pepe the Frog, utilize plausible deniability to deflect charges of hate and set the accuser up for ridicule.
This process was captured by a controversy that surrounded a specific meme during the convoy. In February, member of Parliament Ya’ara Saks spoke on the House of Commons floor about the “Honk Honk” memes going around on pro-convoy social media pages, describing it as a stand-in for the phrase “Heil Hitler.” The statement resulted in a deluge of mockery and harassment, attacking Saks for making what was characterized as a baseless accusation aimed at tarring all convoy supporters as Nazi sympathizers.
The vast majority of participants in the protest were not sympathetic to Nazism or fascism, but there were known hate group leaders and members present who were trying to capitalize on the moment. In certain contexts, “Honk Honk” does mean “Heil Hitler,” but from the beginning the symbol was designed to be a trap.
In February 2019, users of the infamous website 4chan began posting a variation of Pepe the Frog wearing a rainbow wig, red nose and bow tie that became known as “Honkler”. The meme was meant to characterize a sense of nihilism in the face of an absurd and dying society. That month, a user stated that “Honk Honk” was going to be the next OK hand gesture, and users were quick to connect the acronym to “Heil Hitler” and openly posted about their hope that the mainstream media and the Anti-Defamation League would take their bait and describe it as a hate symbol.
The memes that emerged from the “freedom convoy” developed independently from the anti-Semitic clown memes on 4chan. However, memes, as a medium, build upon existing imagery, and the “freedom convoy” memes were quickly contaminated by the visual vocabulary and content of the previously created, explicitly anti-Semitic examples.
After the events of the convoy, many supporters and participants are even more alienated and perhaps radicalized. The concern is that participants and supporters may now be finding themselves in increasingly extreme spaces online and off, where they may be encountering hateful material like “Honk Honk” imagery that celebrates the Holocaust. Because of the similarity between convoy memes and the content on more extreme spaces, the individual in question may be more receptive to the hateful ideas than if they were presented with unfamiliar visuals.
This is only one example that appeared in the convoy, which triggered an explosion of meme production in both extreme and mainstream spaces. Further, the convoy is only one place where such symbols appeared and developed. Memes and symbols that rely on ambiguity and plausible deniability can be found in a number of political communities and groups.
I wish to make it very clear that I do not advocate the criminalization of symbols like the “Honk Honk” meme. This would involve a massive violation of free speech and would be incredibly difficult to enforce, given the ever-changing nature of online communication and plausible deniability.
There are a number of organizations doing excellent work to address contemporary hate through research and education, many of which are represented here today, but when compared to the networks and resources that are available in Europe and in the United States, Canada’s infrastructure is lacking. The relative sparseness of existing educational, research and outreach infrastructure creates space for hate groups and movements to operate unnoticed.