Canadian government 'foreign interference' paranoia ends universal free speech myth
Chrystia Freeland, who presided over the founding of RRM Canada, a NATO mechanism, meant to deal with 'foreign interference', speaking in Canada’s parliament in 2022. Image credit: Google/SCMP News.
Written by: Christian Shingiro
Access to Information Processing (ATIP) requests obtained by The Canada Files, and public Rapid Response Mechanism Canada reports on "disinformation", reveal the underlying objective of the pro-NATO capitalists in Canada and elsewhere in the collective west; crushing political dissent to their colonial foreign policy.
Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) Canada pushes common propaganda tropes against the ‘axis’ of Russia, Iran, and China, the debunked ‘democracy vs autocracy’ narrative, and the ‘threat to democracy’ that the ‘authoritarian countries’ point of view could pose if ever considered by the popular masses. Don't ask what they're thinking, just know they’re evil; their anti-colonial and anti-capitalist outlook versus the G7's colonial history notwithstanding.
The focus was on elections, and ultimately making sure that no anti-NATO, pro-Russia, pro-China, or pro-Iran candidate or party ever wins an election in any associated G7 state, and that "authentic, verified" information is always circulated during a national election or imperialist adventure (such as Ukraine or Taiwan). Just as now, with the CSIS-driven Chinagate scandal, the crushing of dissent or sympathy towards “enemy nations” is a key goal.
Many tools were discussed in their papers, including the use of the law to prosecute dissenters, thus ending any pretence of universal free speech that might have existed in the Western sphere.
Rapid Response Mechanism Canada and its origins
The G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, and by extension, Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, was formed at the G7 Summit in Charlevoix in 2018, about two years into the Russiagate farce. The stated goals, according to the Canadian Government, are as follows:
“Building knowledge and capacity to counter foreign threats at national and subnational levels within the G7 RRM and key partners”;
“Developing common data analytics tools and methods to identify foreign threats”;
“Supporting research to advance a common understanding and approach to foreign information manipulation and interference”;
“Strengthening the G7 RMM’s capacity for coordinated response to foreign threats”;
“Strengthening collaboration with other international organisations and initiatives, civil society, academia and industry to identify and counter foreign threats”;
“Communicating the work of the G7 RRM to G7 publics through annual reports on foreign threats to democracy.”
Internal documents circulated a year into the existence of RRM Canada reveal what these vague “areas of cooperation” mean in practice.
The "Threat to Democratic Elections"
A common theme that has turned up in these documents was a need to "protect the elections". Ukraine's 2019 election was one "test case", according to an internal RRM email, where many "Russian trolls" (Ukrainians opposed to the current regime) on social media sites had in fact supported Russia's side of the argument on the Ukrainian fascist coup government installed in 2014, the corrupt and illegitimate nature of the elections, and what happened with the MH17 crash (part 1, page 34). This was publicly denounced by the Canadian government at the time as "Russian Disinformation", a response which was a form of "reflexive control" (part 1, page 34), according to RRM Canada.
The government did this despite their admission that, "RRM Canada has no further information or current examples of this technique and we cannot attribute it to a particular actor at this time" (part 1, page 4). In other words, Canada had to interfere in Ukraine's elections because they believed Russia was already doing it, despite no evidence to that effect. There was domestic concerns about the malign "Foreign Influence" in Alberta’s April 2019 provincial election as well, due to the right populist rhetoric of wanting to secede from Canada, but, as usual, the document states, "though unaffiliated, at this time, RRM Canada cannot tie this small group of accounts to any foreign entity" (part 1, page 54).
The "Threat to The Rules Based International [White Supremacist] Order"
"This section looks at all measures employed by an adversary,...Diplomatic. The principal instrument for engaging with other states and foreign groups to advance values, interests, and objectives, and to solicit foreign support. The credible threat of force reinforces, and in some cases enables the diplomatic process." (part 1, page 81)
This is quite an ironic, and even blatant, form of projection, because when you look at the NATO pamphlet citation at the bottom of the page, it's actually a guideline for how American diplomats are supposed to view international relations, called Instruments of National Power, written by The Lightning Press. The tagline right underneath the publisher title on the top of the web page is Intellectual Fuel for The Military. You can't make this stuff up.
Another quite shocking example is the NATO pamphlet using an "adversary" example that they themselves explicitly supported: Saudi Arabia (and other gulf monarchies) spreading Salafism. In fact, during the war on Syria, they explicitly supported this endeavour, more explicitly, the extreme Wahabbi derivative, in order to fulfil multiple objectives at once:
Stigmatize Muslims and Arabs in the middle East;
Compare and contrast to make the white supremacist colony of Israel look angelic (hence the "only democracy in the Middle East" rhetoric) and;
Overthrow independent Arab majority governments (such as Libya [they succeeded] and Syria [they failed]).
The Legal "Democratic Response"
“The legality of an action is often not straightforward, but dependent on a certain interpretation of the applicability of a legal rule to a certain situation. Moreover, legal arguments are often accompanied by emotional messages that can support or undermine claims of legality…In dealing with the misuse of legal arguments by adversaries, governments should recognize the ambiguity of the law and develop the ability to anticipate different interpretations and possible challenges to their own position.” (part 1, page 98)
Loose and self-serving interpretation of the law resulted in the arrest of four leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, along with three Russians by the "democratic" Biden regime. The unproven allegations are that they took money from the FSB (the three Russians) and their political activity was meant to undermine “confidence” in the elections in service of “Russian Disinformation” by “pushing Russian Propaganda” (in other words, pushing a perspective on the war that resembles Russia’s, a political world view). This is banana republic stuff, but admittedly, a great way to deal with the “challenge to their position” that RRM Canada spoke about.
The current list of individuals from Russia being sanctioned by Canada for having, and stating publicly, the “wrong view on the war runs to about 1771 at the time of this writing, according to the Canadian government.
Naturally, Russian Canadian residents such as Madina Muslimova have been persecuted on this basis as well (2:05-2:36). CBC News made sure that the Russian Canadian resident victims of blanket sanctions uttered the acceptable ‘pro-Ukrainian’ rhetoric that they were seeking before trying to get the audience to sympathize with them (0:46).
However, CBC News ends up admitting that innocent people have had their assets frozen for months because the Canadian government is sifting through the applications for exemptions from the sanctions regime on a “case by case” basis, essentially checking if the families have ever supported Russia’s Special Military Operation publicly or privately (3:36-3:54), which is what many Russians are being sanctioned for to begin with.
According to the NATO hybrid threat analysis in the ATIPs, “Attribution is often a political endeavour by individual governments…it is often unlikely that governments will find conclusive evidence that provides credible and compelling proof of hostile intent, or be able to publish sensitive intelligence” (part 1, page 64). In other words, the subsequent actions that have been proposed, and even implemented, including the legal actions mentioned against political opponents of NATO never had, does not have, and never will have a factual basis or evidence in its support.
NGOs with "Marginalised Groups"
RRM Canada, in discussing the hyped up “foreign interference” threat (with no supporting evidence, by the way), mentioned the possibility of the “Malign actors” co-opting “women and marginalised groups” against the “democracies” (part 1, page 20). One wonders, if the NATO/Western “democracies” are so great, why do they have “marginalised” groups in the first place?
A Canadian think tank called the MacDonald Laurier Institute, a hardline, pro-NATO lobbying group, and a vocal public advocate of the “democracy vs autocracy” narrative, “foreign interference” narrative, and of NATO’s colonial foreign policy, was recently found, through their 2022 donations receipt, to have been getting support from a curious source: an Indigenous Non-Government Organization called the National Indigenous Brotherhood Trust Fund. For that year, they received $172,035, the largest among all three donors for that fiscal year:
Caption: The donation amounts correspond to the organisations on the same row of the spreadsheet (so the National Indigenous Brotherhood Trust Fund’s donation amount is in the first row).
Here you have an organisation, purportedly meant to serve a “marginalised group”, an outright colonised group, being co-opted to advocate for colonial intrigue. Another act of projection by NATO, which is shown to be quite blatant, and expensive.
The Unfortunate Truth
There is no evidence of Russia, China, or Iran interfering in the elections of NATO states or any other states. This has remained true throughout Chinagate. Internally, the NATO states all admit this basic fact. However, ‘Foreign Interference’ is still considered to be a threat because there’s the “unfortunate” possibility that the population might subscribe to the world view of the Russians, Chinese, and/or Iranians: an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial world view. Hence, the need to crack down on this “dangerous outlook”, which could only be the result of “foreign interference”.
And thus, the myth of universal free speech in the ‘great Western democracies’ has now officially come to an end. The Canadian government’s “foreign interference” panic, occurring even four to five years ago, should reveal that there are things you can publicly advocate for without being persecuted/prosecuted in NATO states, including Canada, and things you can’t. It is especially true in NATO occupied portions of the former Soviet Union (which still legally exists, according to the March 1991 referendum held across the USSR), such as Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which have banned public advocacy for communism, while glorifying white supremacist ideologies like Nazism.
States are instruments of class rule. Their primary role is to protect the ruling class from the class in opposition to it. The ‘oppression’ you see in socialist states like China, that are ruled by the working class, is crackdowns on NGO-funded insurrectionist movements supported by the CIA (including the NED and other front organizations). The paranoia against and attacks on people focused on opposing NATO and/or supporting the policies of nations such as China, Russia and Iran, is genuine oppression designed to protect the ruling class from threats to their power.
To those trying to fight the definitively suicidal path that comes with declaring war on two nuclear powers with a combined population of 1.6 billion (Russia and China), and a country with ballistic missile technology strong enough to wipe out entire NATO fortified military bases (Iran), keep these truths in mind.
ATIPs cited
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Christian Shingiro is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist. He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide "Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price".
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