According to Radio-Canada<\/a>, the rally took place in Shawinigan\u2019s Veterans Park on Saturday afternoon. It\u2019s not clear who organized the event.<\/p>\n\u201cI condemn in the strongest terms the rally held in Shawinigan and the racist messages it conveyed,\u201d Premier Christine Fr\u00e9chette said on social media. \u201cLike many Quebecers, I was deeply shocked. Such statements are unacceptable and have no place in our society.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should never normalize or tolerate this kind of behaviour. Whenever hatred and racism manifest themselves, we have a collective responsibility to denounce them clearly and unequivocally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quebec Liberal Party chief Charles Milliard said on X: \u201cI unequivocally condemn this horrific gathering. Shame on those who spread a divisive message that in no way represents the openness of the Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois people.\u201d<\/p>\n
White supremacist groups \u201chave brandished racist messages in Mauricie,\u201d said Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.<\/p>\n
He said so-called active clubs such as Second Sons Canada \u201chide behind sports to recruit and normalize extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Active clubs are a decentralized network of white supremacist and neo-Nazi cells that recruit young men under the guise of mixed martial arts, physical fitness and self-improvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic security has clearly identified them as hate groups. Let us be unanimous and vigorously denounce this racism,\u201d said St-Pierre Plamondon.<\/p>\n
Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Yves-Fran\u00e7ois Blanchet said on X: \u201cThis garbage is a disgraceful display of racism and cowardice. Quebec can and must be better: a society enriched by its history of diversity, French, egalitarian \u2014 with a secular state that welcomes successful immigration in harmony. Hatred is not welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An apparently unsanctioned weekend rally in Quebec\u2019s Mauricie region at which 20 or so masked men held a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338,256945],"class_list":["post-706958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal","tag-racism-and-inequality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}