After being found guilty of promoting a terrorist neo-Nazi group in December, a three day sentencing hearing will determine Patrick Macdonald’s punishment for his work as Dark Foreigner.
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
An image of Patrick Gordon Macdonald during a gala taken in December 2023 by photographer Paul Couvrette (left) and an image created by The Dark Foreigner (right). Source: Scottish Society website/Telegram
A hearing scheduled for three days starts in Ottawa on Wednesday, as a judge will determine a sentence for Patrick Gordon Macdonald, better known by his pseudonym Dark Foreigner. Macdonald was found guilty in December on charges of participating in the activity of a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity, and the commission of offence for a terrorist group, related to a series of three videos Macdonald helped produce.
The guilty verdict was handed down by Justice R Smith in an Ottawa courtroom as Macdonald had elected to have a judge make the ruling rather than a jury.
Smith found that the videos had two purposes: to “recruit new members” and to “promote” the Atomwaffen Division.
The trial revealed previously unknown details about Macdonald and his time creating propaganda for the group. This included revealing that a video claiming to be recorded in Ukraine was produced at a rural Ontario cement factory.
Comments during the trial also revealed that Macdonald had continued to make propaganda for far-right music and political projects under a different alias. The most significant being a contribution to a documentary produced by Will2Rise, a merchandise and media company piloted by neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, founder of the decentralized Active Club movement.
The Crown requested that Macdonald be held without bail, while Macdonald’s defence indicated they expected the sentencing to be quite long, pointing that their client has been on bail for the duration of the trial. Justice Smith ruled that Macdonald could remain out of custody until a bail hearing could be held.
Macdonald was previously released on bail after being arrested in July 2023. He entered a plea of not guilty before the court. The maximum sentences for his charges include life in prison, but the Crown has not indicated how much time they intend to ask for.
The defence proposed two arguments against the Crown. First, there is no evidence that Macdonald posted the videos for the Atomwaffen Division. Second, there were errors in the testimony of Dr. Barbara Perry alleging that Atomwaffen was a terrorist group before its designation as such by the Government of Canada in 2021.
Dark Foreigner’s identity was a long closely held secret until 2021 when Macdonald’s identity was uncovered by Vice World News. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) assisted Vice in uncovering images of Macdonald, as well as his social media footprint.
Multiple independent sources have told CAHN that Patrick Gordon Macdonald was at one time a member of the Ottawa Active Club.
Active Clubs are a global decentralized movement of white-only workout clubs with chapters across Europe and North America. A previous investigation by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network discovered that Active Clubs across Canada were being run at the time by members and affiliates of the Vinland Hammerskins.
The Atomwaffen Division was formed on the Iron March web forum -- a former digital home for fascist discussion, organizing, and propaganda creation. Using videos, websites, images, and books, AWD made overt calls for terrorism, mass murder, and genocide. Numerous networks make up the Iron March legacy groups, but none have received so much attention as Atomwaffen Division. In 2020, James Mason, author of the book Siege who was later given the same designation as AWD, announced the group was disbanding.
During the trial, prosecutors brought out several RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police experts and officers who found digital metadata and items in Macdonald’s residence they say link him to three propaganda videos produced for the Atomwaffen Division.
The Defence called no witnesses, instead challenging the digital connective tissue as inconclusive during their submissions to the court.
Atomwaffen was listed as a terrorist entity by the Government of Canada in 2021, but the charges relate to videos produced in 2019. As a result, the Crown had to prove that the organization was a terrorist entity at the time the videos were produced and published online.
Prosecutor Legault argued that even if the court were to not find that Atomwaffen was a terrorist organization during the time of the offence, that Macdonald and the other men in the footage recorded in St-Ferdinand, QC, and Belleville, ON, were, as they advocated for violence against numerous marginalized groups.
According to law enforcement, in April 2020, INSET received information on individuals allegedly involved in the activities of the terrorist group Atomwaffen Division.
Macdonald’s Ottawa home was the subject of a raid in March 2022, while a separate search took place in central Quebec in June of that year, also in relation to the Atomwaffen Division.
Two other alleged former members of the Atomwaffen Division, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe are awaiting trial on terrorism charges of their own. According to the RCMP, Althorpe and Nippak from Ontario are alleged to have participated in the creation of videos for the Atomwaffen Division (AWD).
Nippak is facing additional charges related to the creation of a series of manifestos and terrorism manuals for the Terrorgram Collective.
While most of the men charged in an alleged plot to seize part of Quebec have little-known public online presence, one of the accused’s social media shows an intense interest in guns and a proximity to the far-right.
In a two-day sentencing hearing, experts testified about the impact of Patrick Macdonald, the man once known as Dark Foreigner, and his work for the Atomwaffen Division.
“The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data on the use of [gender affirming hormone treatments] in pediatric patients … results from our exhaustive literature searches have led us to the opposite conclusion.”