On Facebook, Chris Saccoccia wrote that Hitler was “bang on, like he had a crystal ball into the future,” and referred to the “Jewnited States of America.”
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Canada’s answer to the anti-lockdown influencer phenomenon is a 37-year-old man with a particular distaste for both masks and sleeves.
The outspoken Chris “Sky” Saccoccia quickly found an audience in his rise to prominence, one that forgives, ignores or supports multiple bigoted and racist beliefs -- including Holocaust denial and debunked, anti-Black race science.
Originally featured in an interview with Ed The Sock, the ARC Collective was the first to take note of Saccoccia’s membership in a variety of far-right facebook groups, including posts supporting The Great Replacement theory in the now-defunct Yellow Vest Canada group.
Saccoccia managed to secure a fairly impressive following of people to his cause. His verified Instagram account reportedly had 250,000 followers until it was shut down last week. The company told Vice World News, this was due to his spreading of “harmful vaccine misinformation and content promoting widely debunked hoaxes.” Still active on Facebook and attempting to grow his brand on unmoderated encrypted apps, he’s currently touring the west coast of the country, posting footage as he goes.
Oddly enough, despite stepping in to host an episode of InfoWars, appearing on livestreams with the openly Islamophobic Kevin Johnston and the antisemitic Plaid Army, Saccoccia appears to have toned down his rhetoric in his rise to nominal notoriety.
A dive through his social media activity over the past several years shows a long-standing trend of bigotry and racism that antifascist activists have been pointing to since he burst roughshod onto the scene.
Saccoccia has made multiple statements that minimize and in some cases deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party. Beyond those messages alone, he’s also quoted directly from Hitler’s written work.
“For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim,” he wrote, sharing an excerpt from Ralph Manheim’s translation of Mein Kampf. “It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.”
Enthusiastic about the passage, he wrote below, “holy fuck 100% bang on. Like he had a crystal ball into the future.”
Source: Facebook
His other references to the “Hollocost” brings up noted Holocaust denialist and “gas chamber expert” Fred Leuchter. Leuchter is noted for his part in the trial of Ernst Zündel, a German living in Canada who was jailed over his spreading of falsehoods about the genocide. Leuchter was commissioned by Zündel to investigate the gas chambers used by the Nazis at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek. Unsurprisingly, his widely debunked report concluded that the “delousing chambers” were not used in executions.
“Yes, Jews did die during WW2, but so did every other religion,” Saccoccia wrote. “To have the world pay ransom… I mean ‘tribute’ to one religion indefinitely is ridiculous and by far the most effective hoax ever committed on humankind. And yes, I have been to the camps in German and seen the ‘chambers’ for myself.”
Source: Facebook
This falls in line with a variety of other statements from Saccoccia that focus on long-standing conspiracies of undue Jewish influence and power throughout the world. While in some comments he would make sure to indicate that his problem was specifically “Zionist Jews” and the state of Israel, that does not stop him from casting anyone of the Chosen People as complicit in the plot.
In other posts he quotes Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying on the United States for Israel during the 1980s, about how Jews should not be given high-security clearances. In the comments section of the same post he takes it a step further.
“The Khazar Zionist banker fake Jews had no problem sacrificing the Jews in WW2,” he wrote. “They will have even less of a moral dilemma to destroy all the Jews in Israel if they believe it will give them more wealth/power/control.”
Other posts accuse Jewish people of drawing swastikas and writing hate messages “all over New York,” because they “don’t have any real enemies they simply do it themselves,” and closing by calling it the “Jewnited States of America.”
Seemingly having never met a conspiracy theory he did not like, he also blames Zionists for pushing for legalized pedophilia, “just like out ‘Wynn’ in Ontario.” In January 2015, he blamed the Charlie Hebdo massacre on Israeli intelligence agents. He also pointed to a hostage situation the following day, citing the fact it took place in a kosher grocery store as all the proof he needed that this was a plot to draw France into the war in Syria.
“This time the Mossad Agents… er I mean ‘terrorists’ have taken hostages at wait for it… a KOSHER grocery store!” he wrote on his Facebook page. “Today there will be ‘no mistake’ on Western media that these ‘terrorists’ simply ‘hate jews’ and want to destroy Israel.”
Source: Facebook
Other strange cases of his antisemitism include calling out 80’s rocker of KISS fame, Gene Simmons. Channelling the disapproving mother from Detroit Rock City, he casts the band’s name as an acronym for “Knights In Satan’s Service,” and goes on to add “a prominent Jew leading up a band glorifying that they are doing Satan’s work, is propagating the “idea” that Jews are masters and we are their slaves.”
“Well, at least we know who he really serves.”
Source: Facebook
Somewhat surprisingly, Saccoccia is a member of a fairly diverse movement. Before this though, he was not shy about airing out his beliefs in biological essentialism, specifically when it comes to black people. Moreso, he’s accused Black Lives Matter groups of being either pawns or part of the US government.
He regularly refers to BLM activists as “subhumans” and has called it a “government-sponsored intelligence operation.” Anecdotally, I can say these sentiments towards the BLM movement are not uncommon in the anti-lockdown scene. However, Saccoccia’s previous comments go well above the already troubling norm.
Source: Facebook
“Africa is a collection of third world countries because Blacks lack the sophistication to make an advanced civilization. They aren’t ‘refugees’ they are just swelling populations living in poverty, being weaponized by the forces of communism who failed taking over with military means and now is using migration as their weapon of choice,” he wrote in response to a comment in 2019, adding later, “in a few thousand years while other races evolved, the Blacks and their low intelligence would not enable them to be on the same level.”
He also repeatedly casts Black people as having the lowest IQ score of all the races.
“The average Black has an IQ of high 70s to mid 80s, AKA mentally challenged,” he wrote in the same comments. “Which is why in the millions of years of human evolution, even though most of Europe and Asia and Africa were always at war with things always changing hands, races developed in specific areas… The problem for Black people, the more civilized we become, the less physical traits matter and the more intellect matters. This is why ‘advanced Black society’ does not exist.”
“But they make great athletes. Not so great ‘migrants’ though.”
Source: Facebook
In 2016, he shared a since-deleted tweet from Paul Joseph Watson, a British conspiracy theories and anti-immigration vlogger. The contents cannot be seen since Watson or Twitter have since removed the post, but Saccoccia’s caption hints at the theme.
“Because ‘Black Lives Matter’ these sub humans now feel they have the ‘right’ to ‘hunt’ ‘white people’ in groups because they have the full support of the Obama admin who wants as much civil unrest and race problems as possible.”
Saccoccia has clear issues with members of the LGBTQ2+ community. Expressing on a variety of occasions his thoughts that queer rights movements, and the LGBTQ people themselves, these comments are typically peppered with distance, outright hate, and repeated accusations of attempts to normalize pedophilia.
When sharing an article about how a Disney movie in March 2020, that features a lesbian supporting character, underperformed at the box office, Saccoccia was happy to draw a straight line between one character and the turnout.
“Imagine that,” he wrote in the caption. “Parents don’t like the idea of LGBT indoctrination after all.”
In one article he posted following an Israel Pride parade, he was happy to mix ample part trans and homophobia with more of his theories about the Jews
“When you [are] ‘wondering’ where all these ‘pro-LGBT’ and ‘transgender laws’ (designed to destroy the family unit and make individuals more dependent on the state) they all come from the same place, the ‘Jewish Community.’ Not because they ‘care’ about ‘equality' or ‘rights’ because they know it’s the most effective method to expand their control over the ‘Goyim.’” Adding after, “and because Zionists are the biggest pedophiles in the world, followed closely by the ‘Catholic' church.”
Source: Facebook
Other posts include calling a Black, gay television anchor a “pole smoker,” and continuously conflates pedophilia with homosexuality. At one point he demanded an explanation from “all you rainbow flaggers” about the pro-child rape group the North American Man Boy Love Association’s (NAMBLA) listing as a “gay rights” organization, ignoring the fact LGBTQ groups have repeatedly condemned it.
Saccoccia has no qualms about welcoming established racists and hate spreaders into the fray of his rallies. Kevin Johnston, Derek Storie, Pat King, and numerous other established far-right figures have attempted to catch a ride aboard his rising star.
While on one day in 2015 he saw fit to blame the pro-Israel media for vilifying Muslim people (“now you know why Muslims are blamed for everything”), more recent posts cast them as rapists and criminals.
“I get banned for saying ‘Muslims and child rape go together like burgers and fries,’” he griped in one post. In another, he complained about a women’s only gym that catered specifically to Muslims.
“I’m gonna open a gym and call it SWM fitness (Straight, White Male),” he joked to a commenter. “Only men of euro origin with DNA samples to prove they haven’t been ‘tainted’ in the last five generations.”
Source: Facebook
In another, he pointed to the murder of Christian passengers at the hands of migrants on a boat headed to Italy in 2018.
“Europe is committing suicide,” he said in the caption.
In the wake of the incel-inspired Toronto Van Attack by Alek Minassian, Saccoccia was happy to assume the perpetrator’s religion and infer a cover-up.
“It’s been weeks since our ‘Toronto Van Attack’ that ‘wasn’t’ terrorism. Funny still nobody can confirm the religion of the attacker. It’s almost like there is a coordinated cover-up. But no, Trudeau wouldn’t hide Islamic terrorism and cost Canadians their lives,” he said, adding that it had all the hallmarks of “Islamic terrorism.”
This was despite reports the month before that cited former classmates saying Minassian was uninterested in religion and politics.
Source: Facebook
Countless times Saccoccia has used his platform to malign various protected groups and repeatedly his followers have ignored it. While the founder of groups like Mothers Against Distancing and Back To Work is now having to face being removed from his biggest platform, Instagram, he has already seen videos go viral not just here in Canada, but throughout the international lockdown movement as well.
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The question references an attack on one of the first institutes studying gender and sexuality in the earliest days of Hitler’s rise to power.