Thread by @ARCCollective

1. Since I see that V4F plans an event in Ottawa and is promising a summer of protests, I thought this might be the time to talk about their relationship, or lack thereof, with Marcus Ray (aka Mark Chilcott).

cbc.ca/news/canada/ot…

2. Before I get to that I will begin with what might seem to be an irrelevant video of Chris Saccoccia (aka Chris Sky) berating his volunteers back in 2021.

Spoiler. Saccoccia is a really, really, irredeemably, terrible person

3. I bring this video up to make a point that Saccoccia is a narcissistic asshole.

And narcissistic asshole seem to gravitate towards other narcissistic assholes as he was working with Marcus Ray since at least October 2021.

4. It is no surprise that Saccoccia would work with someone who brought him more eyes (and people to buy his cheaply made t-shirts). But when more people began to pay attention to Ray's grift than they did to his grift, Saccoccia's response would be inevitable as well.

5. I combined the videos for the sake of thread brevity (it's going to be long as it is).

6. As an aside, it is sort of rich to criticize Ray for being unrealistic when Saccoccia himself genuinely seemed to believe the was in charge of the Bank of Canada.

vice.com/en/article/wx8…

7. Now while Saccoccia turning on Ray is neither surprising (they are both tryin to grift from the same pool of supporters) or necessarily significant it does show there is push-back from the right.

Among those groups include Police on Guard (PoG) and Veterans For Freedom (V4F).

8. We saw both PoG and V4F -- both groups were involved in the #OttawaOccupation in February -- disavow Ray some time ago, but now there are much more explicit call-out such as that from Dan Bulford.

https://twitter.com/BulfordDaniel/status/1537423624243748864?s=20&t=rZA1Nn1LQCeZCUXev2vkiw

9. reuters.com/article/factch…

10. As such it also shouldn't be a surprise to see Ray himself try to push back on the claims that he is a grifter.

While I can use a few videos in which Ray appears, I'll focus on this one starting with an introduction for Ray.

11. Now interspersed with these video clips I, going to include ones from V4F who recently also did a stream on Ray's claims featuring their intel chief Tom Quiggin.

12. As an aside all the revelations made by Quiggin can be easily found by anyone with an internet connection; one doesn't have to be an intel specialist.

That, and in general one should take Quiggin's claims about his CV with a grain of salt as well.

13. "The Far-Right and the Power of Uncritical Thinking"

anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fa…

14. These clips will not be in the order in which they were taken, so let's start with Ray saying he wasn't going to trash PoG and V4F while very much trashing both groups.

15.

16. Now much of the interview focused on the concept of "constitutional sheriffs" which is a far right movement in the United States tied to the militia movement and old Posse Comitatus movement.

splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…

17. Perhaps the most infamous incident connected to this movement occurred in the early 1980s.

pbslearningmedia.org/resource/c10fe…

18. Here Ray explains his concept of what he would like constitutional sheriffs to do in Canada in basically creating a breakaway society and parallel power.

Never mind that the Canadian and American political systems are different and this wouldn't fly in the US either.

19. Now in explaining why people are claiming his rhetoric has been violent, he suggests that people have it all wrong.

He is peaceful as a lamb and others have simply misunderstood him (he also engages in anti-vaxx conspiracy fear mongering).

20. I posted a thread that specifically dealt with one of his claims.

https://twitter.com/ARCCollective/status/1514459666406789122?s=20&t=rZA1Nn1LQCeZCUXev2vkiw

21. Okay. Fine.

But how does he explain this clip?

22. Even within the interview he conducted with the two women on June 11, it doesn't take long for people to post incredibly incendiary comments such as arresting the Prime Minister for... reasons.

23. Or arresting the RCMP for also reasons.

24. Also, and just playing Devil's advocate, but perhaps people are afraid because you are scaring the hell out of them with misinformation and lies, Mr. Chilcott?

25. Ray also laments that people are being so mean to him by suggesting he is a con artist.

26. Okay, so.... gotta ask what these are about?

27. Quiggin also discusses these law suits.

28. And again before anyone praises the brilliant intel gathering of Tom Quiggin, know that I found all this from a chair in my basement and this is who Tom Quiggin is:

vice.com/en/article/dpk…

30. Now a lot of the remainder of Ray's appearance focused on the usual conspiracy theories including the WEF and the delusion that there are 15 million people supporting him.

31. That the world will see the event that he is planning (Narrator: they will not).

32. Proving that he doesn't understand things work.

33. Basically suggesting protecting democracy by encouraging the military to remove the elected civilian leadership.

Because, that never goes poorly.

34. Struggling with basic math.

Hint, given the percentages he throws around Canada would have to have a population closer to 45 million people rather than 38.

35. Talking about a discussion about the WEF with @PierrePoilievre which shows what happens when craven politicians don't push back on wild conspiracy theories.

37. Suggesting they are helping the folks arrested in Coutts whose only crime was "protesting."

38. As an aside, whether one believes the charges or not, the four men still being held were not arrested for nothing as Ray/Chilcott claims.

cbc.ca/news/canada/ca….

39. So no, you don't have a lot of "smart" people folks.

40. And as much as V4F try to play the roll of reasonable dissidents, their membership and leadership are as prone to conspiratorial thinking as Marcus Ray is.

Such as false flag paranoia and the government controlling Ray to create a situation.

41. And that the government will use any incident that they help orchestrate in order to shut down the "freedom movement."

42. I could go on. For example, you won't be surprised to learn that Tom and his friend seem to believe that January 6 was a conspiracy to discredit Trump organized by the FBI and the Democrats, but I've sort of made the points I wanted already.

43. Now in future threads I'll write some more about Ray's connection to some sort of real estate situation and the interesting connections to the far right there, but at 43 tweets I think this thread is long enough.