‘Salad bar extremism’ has come to Canada, intelligence report says

A caller benignant of unit known arsenic “salad barroom extremism” has travel to Canada, warns an interior authorities study obtained by Global News.

The word refers to attacks fuelled by a premix of views alternatively than a coherent ideology, said the report, which cited the caller Edmonton metropolis hallway shooting.

“While immoderate extremists are assessed to person a superior motivation, others are influenced by a operation of beliefs,” said the Strategic Threat Assessment.

“This improvement is occurring successful Canada,” according to the June 4, 2024, study by the government’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC).

Also called composite extremism, it is “driven by a myriad of messaging wrong mainstream societal sermon arsenic good arsenic extremist propaganda that is internalized by an individual,” it said.

“Variations of this phenomena person been referred to arsenic composite convulsive extremism, crockery barroom extremism, oregon mixed, unstable, oregon unclear (MUU) extremism,” the ITAC study said.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service released a redacted mentation of the papers to Global News nether the Access to Information Act.

The study partially focused connected a Jan. 23 onslaught astatine Edmonton metropolis hall. Armed with an SKS-style rifle, a gunman fired shots and lobbed incendiary devices wrong the building.

Prior to the incident, helium had allegedly recorded a manifesto that touched connected everything from h2o prime to the Gaza “genocide.”

“I’m conscionable bushed of seeing the tyranny and corruption taking implicit our nine and our lives … Inshallah [God willing], I volition win with my mission,” helium said.

Bezhani Sarvar, a 28-year-old Edmonton resident, was arrested astatine the country and charged with 8 offences. The RCMP aboriginal charged him with 2 counts of terrorism.

“In a video posted online earlier the incident, the accused laid retired a wide bid of apt grievances,” ITAC wrote successful its study connected “mixed extremist motivations.”

The connection evoked themes usually associated with ideological and spiritual violence, and blended them with ostentation and lodging issues, it said.

“The accused besides referenced further concepts not connected to convulsive extremism, specified arsenic society’s usage of phones and the promotion of steadfast choices and exercise.”

The study said that it was “highly likely” the onslaught was an enactment of home extremism and that it was the archetypal incidence of governmental unit successful Canada successful a decade.

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The Canadian authorities categorizes coercion arsenic ideologically motivated, politically motivated, oregon successful the lawsuit of groups similar the Islamic State, religiously motivated.

But increasingly, extremists bash not acceptable neatly into those boxes and person developed idiosyncratic worldviews that prime and take from disparate schools of thought.

“It is simply a inclination that we are seeing,” RCMP Assistant Commissioner Brigitte Gauvin, the caput of the nationalist information investigations, told Global News successful an interview.

“We are seeing accepted religiously motivated convulsive extremism, but we besides see, connected the different hand, a premix of ideologies, which doesn’t marque it little concerning,” she said.

“But I would agree, we are seeing much and much of a substance of ideologies and grievances that motivate radical to perpetrate convulsive acts.”

On July 2, 2020, a heavy equipped erstwhile service reservist, Corey Hurren, rammed his motortruck done the gates of Rideau Hall to “arrest” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A justice aboriginal called it a “politically-motivated equipped assault,” but Hurren’s motives ranged from choler implicit weapon laws and pandemic restrictions to his fiscal troubles and conspiracy theories.

Although ITAC said it tried to find the “primary driving factor” of extremists, convulsive groups tin straddle differing categories of extremism.

The Iranian-backed Palestinian violent radical that controls Gaza, for example, “blurs the line” betwixt spiritual and governmental violence, it said.

Because Hamas wants an “Islamist Palestinian state,” some spiritual and governmental extremists “could beryllium inspired by the existent conflict,” according to the report.

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