Audio recordings of one tour stop has Diagolon influencers making Holocaust denial jokes, leading the crowd in an anti-immigration chant, and admitting that they have a political agenda.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Image of the Diagolon Flag. Source: Telegram
Inside the Carp Agricultural Hall, almost 40 minutes outside Ottawa, Ontario, a crowd of around 100 people waits to see leaders of the Diagolon community speak. The first act, Derek Harrison, walks on stage uncharacteristically dressed in a suit. After a short poetry reading, he calls out to the crowd for some audience participation.
“How would you guys like to participate in a bit of propaganda and scare the shit out of a certain audience,” Harrison asks a room filled with people who paid to hear him and a handful of other people influential in their community speak.
“They have to go back,” he begins the chant. The crowd follows.
The chant is a call often heard in the Diagolon community, and on their livestreams and social media, demanding that racialized immigrants – specifically people of South Asian descent and people from the Middle East – or even the children of immigrants, be forcibly and violently deported.
Costing between $60 to $100 a ticket, Diagolon’s leader Jeremy MacKenzie and his circle, including Derek Harrison, Alex Vriend, and Morgan Guptill, are on a cross-country tour promoting the network, selling merchandise, and connecting the typically online community in person.
Since its origins as a far-right group of content creators and livestreamers, Diagolon has emerged as a white nationalist network of predominantly Canadians but includes individuals from other countries. While it is not a formal group, and is instead a network of aligned individuals, it is nonetheless ideologically led by a handful of influencers with sway over the community.
Leaders of Diagolon have long used the defence that they are just comedians, portraying its content as a joke taken out of context by their detractors, and pointing to the absurdity of their name as proof (Diagolon is named after a joke fictional country). In a leaked audio recording, they now admit that they have a political agenda.
“It's funny, this all started as a joke,” Harrison told the audience. “Making YouTube videos, but then we got noticed, right? The Prime Minister had said our name in the House of Commons multiple times. So, we realized that we can move the needle in politics in Canada. So we decided to take it a little bit more seriously.”
Footage from the tour participants has shown Harrison, Vriend and MacKenzie in a variety of clothing from neo-Nazi groups. Most frequently pictured in a hat and glasses ordered from the Goyim Defence League, a virulent antisemitic organization that stages numerous protests and actions throughout the United States. Most recently a Canadian man was arrested after traveling to Nashville to protest with the GDL. During the protest, footage shows Ryan McCann striking a local bartender with a flag pole while other members of the GDL restrain the man.
While the GDL has been kicked off most major social and video-sharing platforms, the group created its own site to host content. Diagolon live streams have recently been added to the GDL website.
The GDL has been fundraising for McCann’s legal costs via the site GiveSendGo, and a link to the donation page appeared on Vriend’s channel on the social media app Telegram. At time of writing, the GiveSendGo page had raised over $7,000 for McCann’s defence.
The tour has also coincided with riots in Southport, England, after the stabbing death of three children, Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, during a dance class. The 17-year-old suspect has been reported to be the child of Rwandan immigrants, sparking demonstrations and violence. The Guardian reports that some supporters of Tommy Robinson and his English Defence League (which is now defunct) pelted a mosque with bricks in response.
Vriend, who often posts on social media about European nationalist movements as well as crimes attributed to immigrants, posted a video of a burning Mosque on his Telegram channel. On Twitter, he defended his attempts to “score political points."
“We all know if some White guy went on a stabbing spree against Black people, it would be used to justify all new manner of anti-White tyranny,” he wrote. “14 words.”
The 14 words are a reference to a white supremacist phrase coined from prison by convicted murderer David Lane. According to the Bridge Initiative, it is a slogan that has served as a rallying cry for white supremacists and neo-Nazis around the world. Invoked in numerous mass shootings and targeted attacks on minority groups including African Americans, Sikhs, Jews, and Muslims, the ‘Fourteen Words’ communicate the belief that the growth of minority communities poses an imminent threat to the existence of the white race.”
Other gear worn by Harrison, MacKenzie and Vriend on tour includes Vinland Battlewear sweaters, which they took pictures wearing while walking the streets of Tofino, BC. Vinland Battlewear is owned and operated by Josh Bruce, a man associated with the Vinland Hammerskins (VHS), the Canadian branch of a global white supremacist gang with chapters across the United States and Europe. Members of VHS were instrumental in forming the white-only workout group, Active Club Canada, which they began as a recruitment front.
Vriend has used his livestream to interview prominent neo-Nazis and white nationalists, including Andreas Johansson of the Nordic Resistance Movement, which was recently listed by the United States as a designated terrorist group. Other guests have included violent Australian National Socialist Thomas Sewell, and Thomas Rousseau, the founder of US-based far-right protest group Patriot Front.
Other footage released during the tour shows Vriend in a short clip raising his hand in what appears to be a Roman salute—the hand sign typically associated with fascism and Nazism. On Telegram, Vriend posted a screenshot of a Twitter account discussing the action, saying “Can't even wave to a camera anymore.” Pictures released on Diagolon-associated social media channels also show one tour attendee on stage in a full Nazi uniform at the Langley, BC event, though no context has been provided.
In Carp, Harrison added a plug for his upcoming children’s book.
“We talk about the culture and how it needs to change, but we need to provide things for the youth for them to be able to look at, and provide that change for them,” he said.
Harrison was followed on stage by Vriend, who started out mocking land acknowledgements—”I'd like to acknowledge absolutely fucking no one, because if I'm standing on it, it's my fucking land”— before he segued into an antisemitic joke.
“God it's hot up here. Could probably bake 6 million cookies up here right now,” Vriend says, referencing an antisemitic joke intended to cast doubt on the number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Diagolon’s rhetoric is often overtly militant and accelerationist, and community members have advocated for violence against 2SLGBTQ+ people, marginalized groups, and more. People of South Asian descent have been targeted in particular for derision. Beyond the phrase “they have to go back,” content created, shared, and reposted by MacKenzie, Harrison, and Vriend, cast South Asians as violent, dirty, and unwelcome in Canada.
A report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism documented multiple instances of this type of content being shared by the men, as well as it quickly being amplified by Diagolon supporters.
“Give me some guys and some weapons and we'll fucking get rid of them,” MacKenzie said during a June 2024 live stream. “We'll take them up. Get in the truck, you're going to the airport. ‘Make me.’ Okay, bang. Anybody else? Anybody else not want to go to the airport? Who wants to go to the airport? Show of hands, who wants to go to the airport?”
He added, “I only had to shoot one, see? Easy. And you wanted to keep them here and have thousands of people die over the next ten years. Jeez, what a terrible mathematician you are.”
When Ravi Kahlon, MLA for North Delta and the Minister for Housing in BC, denounced the tour stop in Langley on X, formerly Twitter, MacKenzie replied, “You’re not Canadian.”
The tour’s locations have been closely guarded secrets since it began, with a stop remaining in Nova Scotia. Participants purchase a ticket for the show and receive a general area where the show will take place, typically within an hour's drive of a major city centre. After one meet-and-greet reservation was cancelled, forcing them to hold the event in the venue’s parking lot, they began having attendees meet at a public place before travelling again to another location.
So far, the locations of each stop have included an agricultural hall, a public park, at least two Lion’s Clubs, rural community halls, and more. Several of the venues report being unaware of the nature of the events until after the shows have taken place. The mayor of Langley, BC stated in the aftermath of the event that they would be reviewing the booking policies of halls.
The events have been reported to be subjected to a large amount of security, including reports of personnel roaming the area, metal detecting wands, and searches.
Over two hours in length, the show was emceed by Bethan Nodwell, a woman who previously organized Canadian speaking tours with the far-right Member of European Parliament Christine Anderson. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network previously reported that Nodwell, during a conference call on X, identified herself as a white nationalist.
Alex Vriend came to the Diagolon community around 2020, but has become a central figure in the community. Previously responsible for creating multiple fake news stories that went viral online, to the point several were debunked by mainstream news fact checkers, Vriend began live streaming. He has begun to spend much of that time advocating for unity among white people and white nationalists, thoughts he echoed during the Carp event.
“What really scares the absolute shit out of these demonic scumbags is when you start coming together and you're like moving towards something bigger than yourself,” he told the crowd. “That's what they've tried to stop for so long. They've tried to anatomize you, they've tried to, you know, turn you into an individual that's disconnected from everyone around you.”
“The n-word for white people, pretty much, is nationalism,” Vriend said to the audience.
Derek Harrison, Alex Vriend, and Morgan Guptill did not respond to a request for comment. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network reached out to Jeremy MacKenzie and Sherif M. Foda, his lawyer, to provide him the opportunity to comment. MacKenzie did not reply, and Foda declined the opportunity to comment on behalf his client.
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