A writer for both the Daily Stormer and Iron March, Gabriel Sohier-Chaput has been found guilty in a Quebec court for inciting hatred against Jewish people.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Gabriel Sohier-Chaput, also known as “Zeiger,” has been found guilty by a Quebec court, over two years after he was first charged.
Judge Manlio Del Negro read his decision in a Montréal courthouse on Monday: Sohier-Chaput is guilty of willfully inciting hate against an identifiable group for statements about Jewish people, according to independent news outlet No Borders Media.
Judge is reading highlights of his decision now. He begins decision with a quote from Erma Bobeck: "There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
— No Borders Media kolektiva.social/@nobordersmedia (@NoBordersMedia) January 23, 2023
Once a tech consultant living in Montréal’s Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie neighbourhood, as Zeiger, Sohier-Chaput and the collective works of precious few other writers contributed to the library of the openly fascist internet forum Iron March and have become standard ideological training manuals for a crowd of troubled young men with a thirst for violence. He operated completely in secret until exposed by the Montreal Gazette in 2018. Montréal Antifasciste, a collective of antifascist activists who assisted the Gazette in their investigation, have also published the definitive article on Sohier-Chaput and his activities within the modern fascist movement.
The defence reportedly argued that the between 800 to 1,000 articles written for the Daily Stormer were in fact satire, and not meant to be taken seriously. Sohier-Chaput also claimed that the racial slurs in the article had been added by his editor.
Only one article was brought into evidence by the prosecution over the course of the trial.
“Non-stop Nazism, everywhere, until the very streets are flooded with the tears of our enemies,” part of the article in question reads.
According to No Borders Media, Sohier-Chaput will be back in court on January 25 for sentencing arguments. He has been released under conditions, including limited access to computers.
Sohier-Chaput continued to find ways to make a name for himself alongside the ideological leaders of the most violent neo-fascists, and secured a spot on the editorial board of Andrew Anglin’s Daily Stormer. This noxious website has long been a repository for antisemitic, racist, and misogynistic material draped in false irony, and aimed at children. It would bring Sohier-Chaput to a larger audience, and it still serves as a home to his hundreds of articles.
Most Canadians have likely never heard of Sohier-Chaput, or his alias, but international white power groups not only admire him, they have made his books required reading for entrance, including those that have committed open and wanton acts of violence, murder, and terrorism.
In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center highlighted nine fascist groups in nine countries that were affiliated with or supported by Iron March until the site finally went down in 2017.
Not the least among these is the Siege community, named after the book of another prominent white nationalist figure James Mason, which encourages lone-wolf attacks and small cells of resistance rather than large collective militias. Sohier-Chaput served as editor for the third edition of Siege, receiving a personal thank you from Mason himself in the publication. The same adherents who treat Siege as the actionable blueprint for waging a guerilla war against the state turn to Iron March for their ideological and spiritual underpinning.
Besides the violence Sohier-Chaput’s words have inspired, his time as a content creator both on Iron March and the still online Daily Stormer was spent openly advocating for the elimination of what he viewed as the enemies of the white race.
Sohier-Chaput was on the run for two years, and the public does not know where he was -- or who was hiding him.
Whether it is his appearance at the deadly 2017 “United the Right” in Charlottesville, his failed attempts to sustain a Montréal fascist book club, his various podcast appearances, or the innumerable pages, posts, and PDFs that still bear the name Zeiger, he has been at the centre of pushing his own brand of the ideology forward into ready hands.
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This piece has been updated to include details about Gabriel Sohier-Chaput's upcoming court dates.
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