1/20 A 🧵on Culture Guard's Kari Simpson & transphobia in BC's Convoy movement. It's no surprise that Convoyers attack drag events & rally against LGBTQ2S+ communities because the movement continues to be influenced by transphobic Christofascist "activists" like Kari. #bcpoli
2/ BC has many well-funded fundamentalist churches, spaces that voraciously defend traditional family values while they rally against progressives & the LGBTQ2S+ community. For orgs already in that space--like Culture Guard & Action4Canada--COVID is an opportunity to radicalize.
3/ Dr. Henry banned in-person religious gatherings in Nov 2020 as a new wave hit. A small # of churches defied the orders, including Riverside Calvary Chapel in Langley. "Concerned citizen" Kari was there to speak to media when police fined the church. (jccf.ca/wp-content/upl…)
4/ Kari Simpson is notorious for protesting LGBTQ2S+ rights & SOGI (sexual orientation & gender identity) education in schools while she demands society accommodate Christian values above all, often through frivolous lawsuits.
5/ Kari founded the Citizens Research Institute in the 1980s and fought to prevent schools from teaching "homosexual propaganda." Their Declaration of Family Rights is a bizarre legal notice that a child cannot be exposed to anything that portrays LGBTQ2S+ people as "normal."
6/ A @UBC MA thesis has a great synopsis of activities from Kari & others in the BC Christian far-right through the late 90s and early 00s against the @bctf's LGBTQ2S+ initiatives & for @Surrey_Schools's book ban. The thesis includes CFI's Declaration: open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream/p…
8/ In 2008, Kari told Christian fundamentalists: "Unless the churches in Canada and America wake up...they're going to find themselves in a very bad position...once a worldly sort of person wakes up to God's calling, then you have a warrior." (The org is a @splcenter hate group.)
9/ In 2011, Kari founded Culture Guard. Culture Guard aims to stop SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) education initiatives like BC's SOGI123 and incubate homophobic and transphonic Christian nationalism. They've also been fixated on PM Trudeau from the start.
10/ Kari and Culture Guard spent much of the 2010s protesting SOGI & LGBTQ2S+ rights, pandering to Barry Neufeld & Jordan Peterson, spreading Christian nationalism, and engaging in her numerous court cases and human rights complaints.
12/ After March 2020, Culture Guard added COVID disinformation to the menu. In 2021, Kari started the Canadian Voters Association (CVA), which aimed to "improve the governance of Canada." CVA project 300K repackaged Christofascim in an attempt to influence the 2021 fed election.
13/ FrontLine Canada is another a program of CVA. They made fake religious vaccine exemptions (Christians only) & ran Doctors on Tour, a disinformation parade that sent antivaxx MDs like Charles Hoffe, Stephen Malthouse & guests around BC. Events were almost always at churches.
14/ Kari & Doctors on Tour weaponized lower science literacy & worries around vaccines the same way Kari & Culture Guard weaponized fear of trans people: The gov't is coming for your children. Big Pharma coming for your children. They want you sick. Fight back. Save the children.
15/ Doctors on Tour became Justice for the Vaccinated (J4V) in September 2022. J4V is a national organization that portrays any health problem as a "vaccine injury" and features doctors who whip up disinformation. Same doctors as Doctors on Tour. More sponsors.
16/ Justice for the Vaccinated is supported by FrontLine Canada (actually Canadian Voter's Association), Stephen Malthouse's Canada Health Alliance, Odessa & Norbert Orlewicz's Librti platform, & the usual assortment of Freedom grifters. They still hate drag shows.
17/ Justice for the Vaccinated ended their tour in Nov 2022 & Kari Simpson has a new hobby: commentating on the Canadian Society for the Advancement of Science in Public Policy's* class action certification hearing for the far-right RoadKill Radio. (*CSASPP/SueBonnie-dot-ca)
18/ Kari is 1 person in a large movement. In this mix is the online trans moral panic, which gained more mainstream visibility in the mid-2010 & has spiraled into hysteria over the last few years, often in online spaces that also attract Convoyers (ie: antihate.ca/hate_tropes_fu…)
19/ The underpinnings of attacks against LGBTQ2S+ communities & Convoys are the same: far-right Christian conservatism. They aren't separate--they come from the same places & spaces. (We said a lot of things about Kari so hopefully she doesn't sue us like she does everyone else.)
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1/ Hey BC, did you know a bunch of antivaxxers & far-right extremists are trying to certify a class action lawsuit on your behalf? It starts today! Since this is being foisted upon all BCers, BCers have a right to see the twisted motivations and extremism behind the case. #bcpoli
2/ The Canadian Society for the Advancement of Science in Public Policy (CSASPP) aka SueBonnie[dot]ca is led by 911 Truther Kip Warner. He thinks a cabal of bankers, likely the Rothschilds, are responsible for 9/11. (Jews. He's talking about Jews. This is straight anti-Semitism.)
3/ CSASPP filed Notice of Civil Claim on January 26, 2021 against Dr. Bonnie Henry and the Province of BC. They claim the province did not meet conditions to declare a state of emergency under the Emergency Program Act, there was no emergency, and everything was a lie.
1/ Today was the much-anticipated Trudeau Must Go rally at Vancouver Art Gallery. Our Freedumb Fighter regulars made an appearance and participated in a march. The march was led by an individual in blackface chanting "Hang Trudeau." The crowd joined in enthusiastically.
2/ The march leader used their boa to mime someone hanging in a noose.
3/ This was probably the most violent Freedumb event in Vancouver to date. Instead of the usual "I love you!" love-bombing, counter-protesters were called slurs like "fa----t" and "c-nt" and sat through unhinged transphobic rants.
1/ On Wednesday, the Croatian Cultural Centre is hosting Let Freedom Reign with Christian nationalist Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson. The event is a mess of bigotries and Convoys, but let's look at anti-LGBTQ2S+ "activist" and friend to neo-Nazis Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson! #vanpoli
2/ This story is a bit dark and depressing, so a warning that this thread features neo-Nazis, trans- and homophobia, racism, and a whole lot of hate. As a palate cleanser, here is the time Laura-Lynn was felled by, um, a single sign at @SportChek.
3/ In 2020, Laura-Lynn spoke with neo-Nazi Paul Fromm at one of his CAFE events in Vancouver. His introduction of Laura-Lynn includes homophobia and support for anti-LGBTQ2S+ "activist" Bill Whatcott, with bonus racism and white supremacy against @theJagmeetSingh.
1/ A long thread on memes, extremism, #Diagalon, and the proliferation of hate across Convoy circles. At the #POEC, Jeremy Mackenzie claimed that Diagalon was a meme, as he has for months. The implication is that Diagalon is EITHER a threat OR a meme--memes aren't a threat.
2/ #Diagalon is both a meme country AND a threat. Meme-ifying extremism is not new--it really took off around 2014 with GamerGate and Trump. And the absurdity to those on the outside is what insulates memes. Silly cartoon frogs and clowns and baby talk can’t be serious, right?
3/ Mackenize & associates like Alex Vriend (The Ferryman’s Toll) are Extremely Online. They speak 4chan, the dot WIN network & subreddits that have been banned for years. The language is codified among the Extremely Online but it's not always recognizable as hate to the normies.