Ottawa man found guilty on terror, hate charges

Article content

OTTAWA — A Superior Court judge has found Ottawa-area graphic designer Patrick Macdonald guilty on three counts of terror and hate-related charges related to the production of antisemitic propaganda for the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division.

Article content

Article content

Recommended Videos

Article content

Superior Court Justice Robert Smith found Macdonald guilty this week on all the charges he faced: participating in the activities of a known terror group, facilitating terrorist activity through the production of propaganda films, and promoting hate speech.

Smith wrote in his decision that Macdonald had “participated in producing” the videos and had “published images which wilfully promoted hatred against an identifiable group, namely Jewish people.”

Crown prosecutors alleged Macdonald, 27, used his skills in the production of several hateful videos and Nazi-inspired imagery, and linked him to the content and filming times and locations through metadata extracted from confiscated multimedia equipment, his telephone and bank records, and other items seized from his home.

Macdonald pleaded not guilty to all three charges. His defence attorneys argued the evidence was circumstantial and did not connect him to the political recruitment videos for what is now a defunct hate group.

Article content

Article content

The RCMP has called it the first case in Canada involving both terrorism and hate propaganda charges laid against someone accused of promoting a violent, far-right ideology.

Crown prosecutors had alleged Macdonald took part in the activities of the terror group from April 2018 to December 2019, in Quebec and Ontario, during the filming of the videos.

That was before the federal government officially declared the group a terrorist entity, but the judge independently determined that it was a terror group at that time based on expert testimony _ which the defence sought to have thrown out.

The videos, which were posted on the social media app Telegram on a public channel called “Terrorwave Refined,” contained violent and antisemitic messages and Nazi swastikas. They showed a small paramilitary force donning army fatigues and skull masks, shooting what appear to be automatic rifles, and burning flags and books.

Article content

An RCMP video analyst testified that there could have been eight to 25 individuals in the videos.

Set to ominous music and narrated by a digitally altered voice, the videos issued intimidating messages such as “purge the weak” and “burn, purge and start the revolution,” and threatened violence against Jewish people and bureaucrats.

The case followed a 2021 Vice Media article that identified Macdonald through confidential sources as the online social media poster going by the “Dark Foreigner” username.

Atomwaffen is known as an “accelerationist” group. Such groups seek to push society toward social collapse and then replace the government with fascism.

Over the course of the months-long trial, which was largely technical in nature, the prosecution said police found a draft letter signed by Macdonald on his desk written to the federal government protesting his travel being restricted.

Article content

In the document, submitted as court evidence, he confirmed his identity as the prolific social media poster known as “Dark Foreigner” and states that he became aware of the government travel restriction when he was blocked from travelling to Kyiv, Ukraine.

He argues in the document that his designs — which included masked individuals, blood spatter and neo-Nazi symbols — did not line up with his political views and that it should count as a form of artistic discretion under his Charter right of freedom of expression.

The court also heard police had found various objects inside his office ceiling, including an Atomwaffen pamphlet in Russian and a document that contained logins for various social media platforms that used the “Dark Foreigner” alias.

Justice Smith pointed to this in his decision, saying that hiding these items indicated he knew that the group’s activities were unlawful.

“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused knew that (Atomwaffen Division) was a terrorist group that advocated for the use of violence against various minorities to provoke a race war to create a Nazi socialist white ethno-state,” he wrote.

A sentencing date has not yet been set and may not happen until the summer, but the Crown is seeking to have his bail revoked and a hearing is set for April 22.

Article content