WARNING: This story contains descriptions and images of racist online content targeting Jewish people.
Patrick Gordon MacDonald has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for inciting hate, fear and division by calling for violence against Jewish people and other groups with terrorist propaganda images, memes and videos — all in an attempt to accelerate societal collapse through a hoped-for race war.
With three months of credit for the time he has already served, including two years out on bail living with his parents in Ottawa under strict conditions, the 28-year-old has about nine years and nine months left to serve. The federal Crown had requested that MacDonald be made to serve half of his sentence until be becomes eligible for parole, but Superior Court Justice Robert Smith declined the Crown’s application.
In April, Smith convicted MacDonald of all three charges he faced: participating in terrorist activity, facilitating terrorist activity, and inciting hate against Jewish people for one or more terrorist entities, including the now defunct Atomwaffen Division and the neo-Nazi James Mason.
Sitting in the courtroom gallery Monday, MacDonald looked down at his hands when Smith announced the sentence, but otherwise showed no emotion. His parents sat at the back of the courtroom, as they had throughout the trial that began last year.
The judge said MacDonald sought to “terrorize civil society,” and that the court “must impose a sentence reflective of the community’s moral outrage” at his crimes. They were planned over a long period of time, and encouraged others to commit terrorist acts, including the murder of Jews and others, Smith added.
He also noted that MacDonald apologized in court at his sentencing hearing, and that MacDonald said he renounced his views. He has also participated in counselling and done volunteer work for visible minority groups while on bail — showing he has the potential for rehabilitation.
Crown prosecutors had implored the judge to hand down 14 years for the “vile” crimes MacDonald committed, while his defence argued for six to eight years and 10 months of credit for time already served. Both sides have 30 days to decide whether to appeal.
In 2018 and 2019 — when he was 20 and 21 — MacDonald helped create three racist, hate-fuelled terror recruitment videos in Ottawa, Belleville, Ont., and Saint-Ferdinand, Que., among other places.
One video shows people wearing skull masks moving through a wooded area and shooting firearms. Near the end, the flags of the U.S., Israel and European Union are shown on the ground, being drenched in an accelerant and set on fire, interspersed with shots of armed people in tactical formation storming a building.
The video includes a slur against Jews. “Stay tuned shooters,” is the last text to appear.
Under the online alias Dark Foreigner, MacDonald also created dozens of images and memes calling for and commemorating acts of violence, and posted them on various social networks. He had accounts on Telegram — where his work was posted by administrators of the Terrorwave Refined channel — as well as X, DeviantArt, Instagram and more.
Reaction to the sentencing decision was swift Monday.
“Those who provide their skills to a terrorist entity, to produce videos to be sown indiscriminately among young and vulnerable minds reaching out on the internet, seek to reap a harvest of hate and division culminating in violence across Canada and internationally,” said a statement attributed to public prosecutions director George Dolhai of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.
“Today, Canadian law has made them accountable for weaponizing the internet as a tool every bit as lethal as the software used to produce guns in 3D printers.”
The Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith, which submitted a victim impact statement heard at MacDonald’s sentencing hearing in June, applauded the judge’s decision.
“This is a strong sentence and should serve as a deterrent to future would-be extremists,” Richard Robertson, the organization’s director of research and advocacy, is quoted as saying in a news release. “We applaud the police and Crown for their respective roles in bringing this hatemonger to justice.”
The decision is likely to be closely looked at in the ongoing prosecutions of three other Ontario men accused of affiliating with Atomwaffen Division (AWD). Last month, one of the men was convicted of participating in the activity of a terrorist group after trying to join the now defunct right-wing extremist organization.
Two others, Matthew Althorpe and Kristoffer Nippak, are scheduled for trial by a judge alone starting in January. Three of the eight charges in their indictment are the same as MacDonald’s: participating in and facilitating terrorist activity for Atomwaffen Division by participating in the production and filming of videos in the same locations (Belleville, Ont., and Saint-Ferdinand, Que.) and at the same time as MacDonald, and wilfully promoting hate against identifiable groups.
Althorpe is additionally charged with five offences relating to the Terrorgram organization on the social media site Telegram, including producing and publishing publications for Terrorgram that counsel people to commit terror offences, wilfully promote hatred against identifiable groups, and advocate or promote genocide.
Nippak is facing only one charge in the indictment for his alleged participation. Althorpe is accused of the same, and the remaining seven charges he faces alone.
The allegations against them have not been proven in court.
Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said in an interview Monday after the sentencing decision that AWD is defunct, but the white nationalist movement is “burgeoning” in Canada.
“While AWD has had its day and it was very, very extremist, there are still groups in Canada that are pursuing very racist ends, are organizing, and sometimes they’re doing so in ways that could be described as militant,” he said, citing Diagolon.
“Their rallying cries right now that people need to look out for are mass deportations now and ‘remigration’ … the argument that people need to be deported on the basis of their race of ethnicity,” he said. “So that’s the state of affairs in Canada right now that I think that people should be aware of.”
