On March 21, 200 anti-racist Calgarians gathered with Anti-Racist Action Calgary to celebrate the international day for the elimination of racism. Traditionally, this day has been a call to action for Calgarians to confront the small but vocal neo-Nazi presence in our city. For the last two years, Calgarians with ARA have shown the world that out city does not tolerate racist gangs like the Aryan Guard by shutting down their white power counter march.

The "increase the peace" posse

By the time M21 activities got underway this year, however, it was pretty much obvious to everyone that neither the haggard remnants of the Aryan Guard nor the four-strong membership of the Western European Bloodlines (W.E.B.) were going to even attempt to put on a march.

Last year they failed to complete their parade. This year they failed to even start it.

All that was left to do, then, was to celebrate diversity, multicultrualism and have fun on one of the warmest and sunniest days of the spring. There were some speeches, there was some kicking of the hacky sack, there was a lot of mutual complementing on the quality of various disguises and masks. The cops did some wheelies on their moutain bikes on the steps of City Hall (warning: do not try this if you are a non-cop citizen or you'll find yourself quickly on the wrong side of the double standard!)

Of course we anti-racists didn't go completely unopposed. A couple of neo-Nazi did stagger down to City Hall to "represent" in a wholly disorganized way. Lets look at who this cream-of-the-crop of modern fascism was.

"Willis" (William Mettingen)
If you're 13 and hang out at the skate park you may recognize "Willis" as that creepy older guy who likes to buy cigarettes for underagers and "teach" them how to bare knuckle box. If you were at M21, you'll recognize him as the shirtless wonder who tried to assault a photographer with his skateboard...while 60 cops looked on. Needless to say, Willis got his point across on M21 -- and that point was that he's both violent and dumb. He's been charged with assault with a weapon and released on a $500 no-cash bail. At his hearing on Monday morning, Willis pitched a sob story about how he's not really a Nazi or racist and it's all just been one big mistake. Someone should tell Willis that if you cover yourself with racist tattoos, throw around the "seig heil" salute and assault people at an anti-racist demo while yelling white power slogans, no one is going to believe you when you say you're not a Nazi.

Layton Bertsch
It's a sad day when the best-spoken representative of your movement is Layton! Some in the media were lulled by his preppy sweater and soothing words, but ARA would like to remind everyone that at the October 14, 2007 anti-racist demo, Layton Bertsch assaulted an anti-racist activst with a bottle. Not very preppy!

Kat Hibler
Kat is a tragic case. A former girlfriend of Robert Reitmeier, the Calgary Nazi recently voted "most likely to inform on his comrades" by the local fascist crew, she travelled all the way to Calgary from Ontario to be part of the "glorious" white pride march. Seems she didn't get the memo from her pals that their event had been cancelled. Or maybe that was deliberate? Seems Kat isn't too popular with the local racists because she's Albanian... and that puts her "white credentials" in jeapordy.

But with opposition like that, it's pretty apparent that Fascism in Calgary is all but dead. M21 belongs again to us, the Calgarians who say 'no' to hate.

We call this one a win.

It is with great joy that today we announce the passing of the Aryan Guard.

Although the Guard only lasted three years, in that short time they managed to rack up an impressive list of failures and acts of epic cowardice and gross incompetence.

In just three years we have seen the Guard exemplify the 'virtues' of the 'White Nationalist' movement by attacking a diminuitive japanese woman from behind; organizing poorly-attended rallies easily shut down by anti-racist Calgarians; beating an unarmed homeless man nearly to death; getting arrested, time and again, for drug offenses; fraudulently advertising a non-existant reloctation subsidy programme; and even failing to keep up with the payments on their post-office boxes. It has been a legacy of incompetence mixed with violence as yet unparalleled in this city.

Most notable, however, was the Aryan Guards' unwavering commitment to hypocrisy.

While they preached 'family values', the Guard itself was rife with teen pregnancies and abandoned mothers -- most notably expemlified by Guard co-founder Kyle McKee who made an amateur pornographic video of himself and a married woman while his teen girlfriend was at home, pregnant with his child. Despite their alleged committment to 'unity' amongst 'white nationalists', the Guard revelled in in-fighting and bickering. They fostered a near gang-war rift between themselves and the Volksfront and came to blows with each other over the most trite subjects: the theft of a coin collection, the borrowing of a car, and, of course, girls. The passing of the Guard, in fact, can be directly attributed to Kyle McKee's attempted murder of a former Aryan Guard member over an amarous misadventure.

Certainly, there are many in Calgary who love to be able to take the credit for the demise of the Aryan Guard. The sad fact, however, is that there is only one organization that can rightfully stake the claim as the group that ran the Guard out of town: the Guard itself. Yes, many of us in the anti-racist movement put a lot of effort into monitoring, confronting and containing the Guard -- you know who you are -- and that work has been valuable. The pressure applied to the Guard on multiple levels, overt and covert, stymied many of their recruiting efforts, refocused their actions on more hardened targets and served, often, to fan the flames of internal dissent in the Guard that led, ultimately, to it's implosion. The lesson we take from the death of the Guard is that Fascism is an unstable ideology and that, as anti-fascists, it is our job to contain, restrict and apply pressure to groups like the Guard until they do, eventually, crack.

And so, to the Guard: good riddance. With the anchor of that organization gone, we can only hope that the angry and hateful and spiteful people it attracted will drift away and maybe, even, grow up. But if for some reason they don't, the racists of this city would do well to remember one thing.

We're still watching.