“The kind of garbage has no place in Canada. No one should face this abuse.”
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Left: Jeremy MacKenzie/Telegram; Right: Pierre Poilievre
Live streamer and Diagolon creator Jeremy MacKenzie was condemned this week by the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada after joking about sexually assaulting Pierre Poilievre’s wife.
“These men are dirtbags,” Poilievre wrote in a statement on Monday. “Frankly, like most Canadians, until about a month ago I had never heard of Diagolon and these losers. They are all odious.”
He adds that after becoming aware of the comments over the weekend he has been in contact with the RCMP to assess whether criminal charges should be laid.
“The kind of garbage has no place in Canada. No one should face this abuse.”
The comments came during the unrecorded after-show of MacKenzie’s Raging Dissident live stream, recorded by Twitter user John Thibeau. MacKenzie appears alongside Alex “The Ferryman’s Toll” Vriend and an American follower who typically calls into Vriend’s stream.
Content warning: Mentions of sexual assault.
TRIGGER WARNING for victims of sexual assault or rape.
— The Ocean Cowboy (@JohnEThibeau) September 24, 2022
I've heard Jeremy Mackenzie say a lot of depraved things but joking about raping @PierrePoilievre wife, WITH Morgan (@Morgan4Freedom), & targeting other women to exercise compete power over.
JM is rotten to the core. pic.twitter.com/zuASJ3eEIB
When the conversation turned to Poilievre’s wife, Anaida Poilievre, MacKenzie made jokes about her national origin and explicitly mentioned sexually assaulting the leader’s wife.
“People can attack my politics, they can call me names, they can protest my ideas and what I stand for,” Poilievre said in his statement. “But threatening my wife and family is appalling and I will not tolerate it. Leave my family alone.”
The current situation is not the first time MacKenzie and Poilievre have crossed paths. During a campaign stop in Nova Scotia, MacKenzie used a meet and greet to not only talk with the CPC leader but also to pose for photographs.
Shaking hands, MacKenzie captioned the picture on August 20, “Sometimes you just gotta tell em what's up.”
When national media picked up on the pictures, Poilievre reiterated that he denounces racism, adding that “I didn’t and don’t know or recognize this particular individual. Likewise, I can’t be responsible for Justin Trudeau’s many racist outbursts just because I’ve met him or shaken his hand.”
In Dartmouth NS today, a person federal security agencies say is a “key individual” associated with “ideologically motivated violent extremist” groups went to a @PierrePoilievre event and was photographed with the #CPCLdr candidate. Statement from Poilievre to @globalnews : pic.twitter.com/EE02wrbKfP
— David Akin 🇨🇦 (@davidakin) August 20, 2022
MacKenzie has appeared on live streams categorizing Poilievre as the best hope to “gut” the media. Despite this, he has told his followers that Poilievre, and the CPC writ large, are “part of the [World Economic Forum], no matter what he says.”
During the time the photographs were taken, MacKenzie and other members of the Diagolon network were also in a war of words with several journalists, including Global News’ Rachel Gilmore. Gilmore and numerous other mainstream reporters – the majority of whom are female, people of colour, or both – became the targets of a racist online harassment campaign, including physical threats.
MacKenzie and other streams from the “Plaid Army” streaming collective released statements and videos at the time telling their followers that members of the media “deserve to be hated.”
MacKenzie, a live streamer and accelerationist influencer responsible for the creation of Diagolon, has faced a series of legal troubles and negative publicity over the past year.
While no charges have yet been borne out in court, the former member of the Canadian Armed Forces is facing a number of charges in different provinces across the country. The most recent were for alleged offences in Saskatchewan, including four new charges, including assault, mischief and two new gun offences.
According to a statement from the RCMP on August 25, there is a Saskatchewan-wide warrant for Mackenzie’s arrest, though "no evidence he is in Saskatchewan." Based on his own statements and other reporting, it appears as though he currently resides in Nova Scotia.
MacKenzie did not respond to a request for comment from CAHN for this story, but told iPolitics he was not in Saskatchewan during the time an alleged “shooting party” took place – the supposed source of the charges.
He added that “a lunatic on a vendetta” is behind the allegations.
MacKenzie has also been charged with harassment and mischief related to a March 2022 protest outside the home of the province’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang.
Other charges from the same incident include intimidation of a health professional and making harassing phone calls. Another individual, Morgan May Guptill, a COVID-conspiracy activist and MacKenzie’s partner, has been charged with the same offences.
In January 2022, shortly before MacKenzie would travel to Ottawa to support the blockade protests that snarled the city’s downtown, police raided his Nova Scotia home. RCMP allegedly found five restricted firearms, prohibited magazines, body armour, and ammunition.
According to the search warrant and a statement by police, an investigation began “after a video was posted to social media of a man, in a business, waving a handgun around in a reckless manner and allegedly having an overcapacity magazine.”
Police said they determined the incident occurred at a business in Whycocomagh, Nova Scotia.
MacKenzie has since been charged with 13 firearm offences, including three counts of careless use of a firearm and three counts of unauthorized possession of a firearm.
“On January 26, as part of the investigation, police executed a search warrant at a home on High St. in Pictou,” the RCMP say in their release. “During the search, police located and seized five restricted firearms including rifles and handguns, one unrestricted firearm, prohibited magazines, ammunition, body armour, a duty belt with attached holster and magazine pouches and cellular phones.”
According to law enforcement, the suspect, “a 35-year-old Pictou man,” attended the Pictou RCMP Detachment prior to the search warrant execution and was arrested without incident. He was later released on conditions, which include that he does not possess any firearms, weapons, ammunition or explosive substances.
In February, at least two members of the Diagolon community were among those arrested in Coutts, Alberta during the region’s border blockades. The RCMP allege that a cache of firearms and body armour seized during the arrests were intended to be used against law enforcement if they attempted to disrupt the protests.
“The group was said to have a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade,” Alberta RCMP wrote in a press release. “This resulted in an immediate and complex investigation to determine the extent of the threat and criminal organization.”
Police note seizing 13 long guns, an unspecified number of handguns, multiple sets of body armour, high-capacity magazines, and a machete. One set of the pictured armour displays the white and black flag of Diagolon and MacKenzie previously appeared in a picture with Chris Lysak, one of the men charged in the plot to attack police.
"I was made aware someone unknown to us was handing them out (patches). I have no idea who they belong to," MacKenzie told CAHN at the time when reached for comment. "Our guy that makes and sells them sent them all over the country to anybody that wanted them, they could literally have come from anywhere. That's the truth."
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