Right-wing influencers spread false claims about Montreal shooting

Police suspect Monday's Montreal shooter was targeting the head office of PornHub, not Montreal's Jewish community — but right-wing influencers and media outlets jumped to conclusions that fit their narratives anyway.

The Toronto Sun published an editorial wondering whether Jews were the target. Concordia University professor Gad Saad made similar insinuations, saying, "I warned the world repeatedly," without waiting for facts.

The shooter was a 25-year-old from Lethbridge, Alberta, who sent a violent anti-feminist manifesto to local media and adhered to incel ideology. The victims were a woman and two people from immigrant backgrounds — exactly the people far-right rhetoric consistently scapegoats.

This mirrors a pattern: the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting and 2018 Toronto van attack were both committed by men radicalized through right-wing online communities built on hatred of women. Misogyny remains a cornerstone of Canada's Conservative Party, from Pierre Poilievre's association with far-right figures to his party's rejection of progress made on gun control — efforts that began after the 1989 Polytechnique Massacre, Canada's worst single femicide incident, which also occurred in Montreal.

Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane and civilian Michael Mizrahi lost their lives because Canada's right wing refuses to address the hateful rhetoric it traffics in.