The Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Source: Unsplash
On Sunday, June 6, 2021, London police report that a vehicle struck five members of the same family as they walked along the side of a road, mounting the curb and striking them deliberately.
Nathanial Veltman of London, Ontario is facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for allegedly driving his vehicle purposefully into a Muslim family waiting to cross the street while out on a Sunday evening walk.
“Investigators believe that this was an intentional act and that the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith,” police wrote in their release. “There is evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate.”
Confirmed details beyond the initial press release are sparse, but witnesses at the scene report he was wearing a military helmet, laughed while he was arrested, and was wearing something that was reported to look like body armour. One witness alleges that he wore clothing with symbols that looked like swastikas.
If you have information about Nathaniel Veltman that you are willing to share, please reach out to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network at [email protected].
Viral Videos
Since then the man and his actions have provoked a variety of responses from the far-right and hate groups both inside and outside of Canada.
One since-deleted video on a YouTube account went viral after it posted footage of a group of Muslim women walking down a street recorded through what appears to be a window.
“Holy shit boys,” a voice says off-screen, “where’s Nathaniel Veltman when you need him?”
As a vehicle passes the women, unaware they are being filmed, the man recording chuckles.
“Oh there’s a truck right there,” he squeals. Buddy, you missed them. Back up.”
In another video posted to YouTube under the channel Halton Hills Heroes, a man says “it’s sad, but, uh, you know, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.”
“Canadians are rightfully getting upset about being out-populated in their own country by people from different cultures who don’t respect western values.”
Harrison, once a mayoral candidate in Georgetown, has a criminal history that includes a racially motivated assault on a shopkeeper in 1996. Ten years later he was brought before a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by lawyer Richard Warman for hateful and sometimes violent messages left online.
(Richard Warman is a board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.)
"Skinhead remember me?” Harrison wrote, according to court documents. “I’m the guy from Georgetown who got two years for thumping that n****r on Main street.”
Other explicit messages include "calling on all my white brothers to rise up and kill non-whites because god gave Canada to the white man,” and statements like "Jews make good lampshades."
Source: YouTube
Hateful Commentary
Canada First, a group of apostate Proud Boys who broke off to form a pro-Adolf Hitler accelerationist cell, took issue with the language used by white politicians.
“Every one of these ‘white’ politicians who went up on that podium and called this a ‘terrorist attack,’ ‘racist attack,’ ‘hate crime’ or anything other than a mental health issue, is no more than a traitor to his people and nation,” the group wrote on an encrypted messaging app.
“The Muslims have been committing terrorist attacks on western nations for a long time now, including using vehicles such as rental trucks and vans. When they do it, our treasonous politicians call it a mental health problem, when even a blind man can see it's a terrorist attack.”
A smaller channel, believed to be operated by members of the group, echoed this sentiment with its own commentary on the tragic incident.
“Our governments and police forces hate us,” wrote an administrator on a page filled with images and videos dedicated to Hitler and other white power figures. “When one of these Muslim swine kills our people they instantly say ‘it's too soon tell what the motive is,’ then two weeks to one month later they say, ‘it wasn't motivated by hate or terrorism, it's a mental health crisis.’”
The poster added that the case was categorized as a hate crime as soon as it was announced.
“We have no representation here anymore.”
Reactions To The #OurLondonFamily Vigil
The announcement of vigil allowed for the community of London to meet and mourn the loss also drew the ire of a gambit of neo-Nazis and prejudiced spaces. Rarely missing an opportunity to decry the treatment of Muslims, even in the wake of five senseless deaths, groups like No More Lockdowns used the coming vigil to score some cheap points on Facebook.
“The pandemic is officially over! Funerals, wakes, vigils are now allowed,” a caption from the page reads. “The pandemic cannot be over for some and not others. The hypocrisy is horrendous. No funerals for 15 months. But now 10,000 people allowed to grieve together? Restaurants and businesses still closed but tonight 10,000 people together is ok though?”
Source: Facebook
Another page, titled “Old Stock Canadians,” chose to focus instead on the comments of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s comment that “Canada is a place of racism.” While offering a perspective that does acknowledge racist individuals, the anonymous poster closed their lengthy argument with a dig at Singh’s origins.
“If Singh feels Canada is so racist, then leave and go back to where you came from. Oh, that’s right, you cannot go back to India because you are branded a terrorist there. Then you will have to go elsewhere and while you are at it, take the Muslims who think like you do with you.”
At the time of publishing, the post sits at over 220 comments, almost all of which agree with the sentiment.
Anti-Muslim activist Sandra Soloman, best known for tearing out pages of a Qur’an and putting pages on the windshields of parked cars outside of an Islamic Centre in Ontario, suggested that people meet to protest Islam in London.
“ISIS beheaded a girl just because she is a Christian infront of her parents,” she wrote in a status. “Is this hate crime or not jihadi Justin?”
Source: Facebook
Other posts from Soloman provoke responses that include a litany of stories involving crimes by Muslim men to justify their anti-Muslim positions.
Conspiracy Theories and False Flags
Like with any mass murder, there is no shortage of conspiracy theories calling the killing a “false flag.”
Dan Dicks, a west-coast based vlogger and anti-lockdown activist with a sizable number of followers (over 30,000 on Bitchute) and a history of working with white nationalists, refused to acknowledge the fact that London Police Services were the first to call the incident hate-motivated, instead pinning it on politicians, across two videos on June 9th.
“The latest evidence directly contradicts what the politicians would have you believe today,” Dicks said, referring to the fact that the accused asked a cab driver to call the police after the incident and that the accused’s friends told the media he was not racist. A friend of the accused also told CAHN Veltman's vehicle had steering issues.
Dicks suggests that the reason the accused laughed during the arrest is perhaps that he was aware it was unlawful and the police had already characterized him unfairly. He also pushes the idea the killings are a hoax perpetrated by the government in order to push through online hate legislation and kill free speech.
Source: BitChute
International Attention
Internationally, the story put Canada squarely in the view of far-right leaders and followers alike.
One channel, dedicated to distributing news to white supremacists, posted “white people are tired of being killed without reacting and have decided to react while adding that the media is “already ecstatic about having Muslim martyrs to mourn/promote, and having a white devil to convict of terrorism.”
One popular American neo-Nazi, recently revealed by antifascist activists as Christoper "The Hammer" Pohlhaus, simply posted the word “neat” under a link to the story.
Meanwhile, users of the internet imageboard 4chan are taking the killing, and the accused killer, in a few different directions.
While some on the notorious /pol/ board have given the accused the macabre title of “Saint,” an honorific bestowed on racially and hate-motivated killers like Brenton Tarrant, the man responsible for carrying out the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, or Dylann Roof, who shot nine people in a predominantly Black church in South Carolina.
Source: 4Chan
Others have chosen a very different direction.
“When I run a search for Nathaniel Veltman (the alleged perpetrator) I only get links to the news articles. No Facebook or Instagram pages, no LinkedIn profile, nothing,” said one Anon after claiming to be a London, Ontario local. “His name sounds really Jewy and with zero online presence I'm strongly suspicious that this is a glow op.”
“Once again Jewry is damaging relations between Muslims and the West,” wrote another after wrapping Veltman’s surname in the triple parentheses, a symbol online meant to indicate that someone is a Jew.
Debates over the accused’s “Jewishness” continue in these spaces, despite reporting in multiple other outlets and people close to the accused telling the Canadian Anti-Hate Network that he was raised in a strictly Christian household.
Source: 4Chan
The antisemitic casting of the accused as both a subversive Jewish character sent to further vilify the white man, while also placing him among the bloody pantheon of “saints” is tragically a standard operating procedure in these spaces.
This story was updated to include information about Craig Harrison.
