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The AIH Transcript for March 06, 2019

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

JD: Tonight:

CO: Butts, seriously, folks. In his much-anticipated testimony, Gerald Butts, the Prime Minister's former right-hand man, says neither he nor his colleagues applied pressure to the former Attorney-General.

JD: This money is no object. And that's the problem: because it's not physical money, the disappearance of 180 million dollars in investors' crypto-currency is proving even more difficult to track down.

CO: A northern light. For decades, the late Inuk musician Charlie Panigoniak was the voice of Nunavut — not just because of how he sang, but because of what he sang about.

JD: Far-right before his eyes. An encore presentation of Carol's interview with Patrik Hermansson — a Swedish student who worked as an undercover agent inside right-wing extremist groups.

CO: She's read a lot of fine print — but this was the finest. A Georgia high school teacher goes over every boring word of an insurance policy — and her double-checking wins her a single giant cheque.

JD: And...if you made a mistake, the answer was "Clear." Then you could start over with ease — because, by inventing the calculator, the late Jerry Merryman and his team made it so much simpler for all of us to divide and conquer.

JD: As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that knows he made our lives exponentially easier.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: SNC: Toronto Star journalist, QuadrigaCX: Latest, Jerry Merryman obit

SNC: Toronto Star journalist

Guest: Tonda MacCharles

JD: Gerald Butts' version of events stands in stark contrast to Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony. Today, the prime minister's best friend and former principal secretary responded to key testimony from last week — when the former Justice Minister and Attorney-General accused him, and other senior officials, of sustained and persistent political pressure on the SNC Lavalin file. But today, Mr. Butts said there was no intention on the government's part to apply political pressure to Ms. Wilson-Raybould. And that the end goal was to underscore the impact that a criminal conviction would have on the engineering giant. Here's part of what Gerald Butts said today.

SOUNDCLIP

GERALD BUTTS: Minister Wilson-Reybould’s preferred method of communicating complex and/or important matters is in writing — which I very much appreciate. Yet in all our texts and emails, which begin the summer of 2013, there is not a single mention of this file or anyone's conduct on this file until during the cabinet shuffle. I believe that if any minister is made aware of something they think is this wrong, I believe they have an obligation to inform the prime minister soon after they become aware of it. According to the former minister’s testimony, 11 people made 20 points of contact with her or her office over a period of close to four months. Four of these people never met with the Attorney-General in person. In my case, the Attorney-General solicited the meeting. That's two meetings and two phone calls per month for the minister and her office on an issue that could cost a minimum of nine thousand jobs.

JD: Gerald Butts, speaking earlier today. Tonda MacCharles is a senior reporter in Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau. We reached her in Ottawa.

CO: Tonda, you followed Gerald Butts testimony. He was unfailingly polite, respectful, collegial. But it seemed what he was out to do was to discredit the testimony and claims of Jody Wilson-Reybould. Did he succeed?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, I think that we'll have to wait and see how it plays out in sort of the broader public opinion. From where we sat today watching this, he certainly succeeded in a, not losing his cool. B, bringing texts, emails, notes he said he had of conversations, and brought his game face the way she brought hers. Only, in many ways they were very different. She was very clinical, very lawyerly — she's a lawyer. He was very respectful, but at times very kind of folksy and look, Lisa Raitt, you and I are both Cape Bretoners. You know we know how important it is to lose whole industries and the impact on people's lives if they lose their jobs. So you've got this stark contrast not just in their version of events, but also in how they relayed their story.

CO: What was interesting was that Gerald Butts said, and he got very philosophical, he said two people can experience the same event differently. That was his takeaway from the entire SNC Lavalin experience. And so what is he referring to?

TM: He's essentially trying not to call her a liar. He's trying to say look, yes, between our two versions of events there are some commonalities. But he actually sort of went a little bit further after that and to say that things didn't happen the way she said. They weren't the same event. And he sort of suggests that her experience of the events only became different after she was shuffled out of the job. And he suggests that it was sour grapes. That she was ticked off that she'd gotten moved out of what she called her dream job. And that suddenly she started seeing things in a revised light.

CO: And that was I think the centrepiece of perhaps what he was trying to accomplish was to say that they didn't know that this was a problem. That she was feeling this pressure — this inappropriate pressure — Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts did not know that was on her mind until they were shuffling the cabinet in mid-January, when she raised it. And he described he remembers very clearly distinctly how surprised both he and the prime minister were. Because he said that there was nothing else but the fact they would need to reshuffle the cabinet because resignations of Mr. Brison.

TM: Well, there's a there's a couple of problems with that evidence actually. One is that Jody Wilson-Reybould claims that she has very clear recollection of telling the prime minister directly that what he was doing was inappropriate. And she advised him to stop as her Attorney-General that her mind was made up. The decision was final as of September 17^th. And she claims that she went back and then told her staff to start taking detailed notes. And furthermore, you know it is interesting that nobody appears to have on the prime Minister's side of this have had any clue until, according to Gerry Butts, when the shuffle in January — the famous shuffle that seems to have cascaded down to where we are today — took place. When Justin Trudeau was moving Jane Philpott, Jody Wilson's friend, Jane Philpott was the one who raised and said oh oh, I think this is not going to go down very well. You know she's going to think it's because of SNC. And Gerry Butts testifies that's the first they all heard of it. So there's a discrepancy there. Did Wilson-Reybould only speak to Jane Philpott? I suppose that's possible. But I think you know Jody Wilson-Reybould has testified that people like her chief of staff Jessica Prince were fully aware of and apprised of her decision, and that it was final, and that she was feeling pressured. So hard to see why they're all so surprised.

CO: But a key thing that was revealed in this is that she was demoted to Veterans Affairs. What she never told anyone — I only learned today from Gerald Butts — was that she had been offered another portfolio: Indigenous Affairs. She was offered that, and she turned it down.

TM: Yeah, she was offered another job. And she tells Gerry But it seems, according to Gerry Butts’s conversation, in the texts after the discussion with the PM that she can't do that job because she spent her whole life fighting the Indian Act, and can't be responsible for implementing. Butts says that's when he started to become worried. And he warned the prime minister that if he was going to move her into a job she didn't want, he better be prepared for it to show up on the front page or to go public. And sure enough, it did.

CO: Interesting. But the core of this is whether or not she says that they were putting inappropriate pressure on her to make a decision about SNC Lavalin. And they have all these dates. They both agree on the dates that where there were meetings or encounters — but completely different descriptions of them. And in particular, one that he describes meeting her at the Chateau Louis for dinner. She met Mr. Butts to say I need everyone to stop talking to me about SNC Lavalin, that you're hounding me, and that was how she characterized it in her testimony. He says she was the one that asked for the dinner. They spent two hours talking about all kinds of things. And only the very end when they were leaving did she mention SNC Lavalin.

TM: He has no memory of her ever asking him to do anything to speak to his staff about stop anything. No, they have diametrically opposed accounts of the upshot of that meeting around as far as SNC Lavalin goes. He walked away saying it’s one of my best meetings ever. You know, dinner with a friend. And she testified that this was inappropriate.

CO: The Opposition is calling for inquiries, for the RCMP to be called, for the prime minister to step down, and on the other hand, you see people are saying this is a matter of he-said-she-said. So where is the truth? Where should Canadians be trying to understand this?

TM: I don't like the idea of political parties directing the RCMP to do anything, I don't like the idea of the government directing the RCMP to do anything, and I don't actually think that Jody Wilson-Raybould — given her own stated desire to run as a Liberal again, and remain in the caucus — is in the best position to judge whether or not lines were crossed. So you know what? I confess that it's a fascinating story evolving so quickly, hour of an hour. So far, I'm glad to see the Justice Committee do this work. I don't want to see it go behind closed doors. What this thing needs is sunlight.

CO: All right. We'll be following it. Tonda, thank you so much.

TM: Thanks, Carol.

JD: Tonda MacCharles is a senior reporter in Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau. We reached her in Ottawa. And we'll have more on this story later in the program, when we hear from Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

[Music: Jazz]

QuadrigaCX: Latest

Guest: Graham Cluley

JD: The plot doth thicken in the case of Canadian crypto-currency exchange QuadrigaCX. The original story of how the company lost up to 180 million dollars of clients' money went like this: the founder Gerald Cotten died suddenly in India. The pass-codes to the locked accounts died with him. But on Friday, however, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court heard from a third-party investigator that the locked accounts were completely empty — eight months before Mr. Cotten's death. Now, the court has granted the company an extension of its creditor protection deadline — to give it more time to find the money. Graham Cluley is a computer security expert who's been following the case. We reached Mr. Cluley in Oxford, England.

CO: Graham, what do these latest revelations mean for this story that everyone's been telling that this money was lost when Gerald Cotten died?

GRAHAM CLULEY: Well, I think there'll be many people who will say surprise, surprise. Because they were already rather skeptical about this story. It just seemed very strange that all this money had gone missing. And the CEO, unfortunately, had come to an untimely demise as well. But now it seems that these cold storage wallets have been empty for months and months as well. And so it's a real mystery. Where has the money gone?

CO: And now if you can just walk us through how Ernst and Young came to conclude this?

GC: Yeah, so Ernst and Young brought in some specialists. There are people who are really sort of experts in watching the movements of cryptocurrency. And although cryptocurrency does give you anonymity, there is this thing called the block chain — which records every single transaction which takes place. So you don't know what people might be buying, and you don't know who those people are. But you can see that money has moved from one wallet into another wallet. And by going through all that, which is quite a big process, they've been able to determine that there's nothing left inside these wallets — which, at the moment, no one is able to get into.

CO: Are there other wallets? If this block chain can reveal where the money has been moving, where does it indicate the money's gone?

GC: Well, that obviously is the next question is where has the money gone into if it's no longer there? And that isn't always possible to completely be certain about. I imagine there are investigators looking into that. But if they've been split up into many, many different wallets — and some of those wallets may have had money in them already — any money which has come out of those new wallets, you don't know whether that's the missing money or funds which were already stored in that wallet, if you see what I mean? So it's a way in which the digital currency can begin to be dispersed. And so I imagine there are investigators looking into this. But it's not necessarily trivial to track down where the missing cash really is.

CO: Well, it's not trivial the amount of cash, is it? I mean 180 million dollars is not chump change.

GC: Right, absolutely, it’s a huge amount of money. And you know whether you've lost 10,000 dollars through an investment or whether you've lost a million or more, you're not going to be terribly happy about this. And I imagine this will put off a lot of people from considering investing in cryptocurrency.

CO: Is there a criminal element possible in this? Is there a reason for the police to be called in?

GC: I think there are certainly reasons to be suspicious, aren't there? I think whenever a large amount of money like this goes missing it does appear if these researchers are right that it went missing months and months before this chap died. Then questions have to be asked us to well, where might it have ended up? And it may be that there's another wallet we don't know about yet, which someone has where it may have been stored. Maybe the company will stumble across it a bit like looking down the back of your sofa and finding a bit of loose change. But here we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. So it is possible that some sort of fraud has occurred. I mean obviously, there are many people who are currently out of pocket — potentially to a really large sum.

CO: Well this keeps going back to this man Gerald Cotten, a young fellow, Canadian, who had these secret to pass codes that he seems to have died with. That was why it's taken so long even to find out that these wallets are empty. And there are still…. I just was reading an article in Wired where they still refer to his death as an allegation. So many conspiracy theories around this, but what more do we know about him and what he was doing with his money?

GC: Well, it's unclear to us at the moment exactly what has happened. I don't blame the Internet for being suspicious regarding this. I think when we first heard that he'd died far away overseas very suddenly he was a young man, and he was the only one who had the passwords to unlock these things. It instantly begins to set off your spider sense a little that something suspicious may have occurred. Now it may not be that there's any conspiracy at all. But the internet loves these kind of things, doesn't it? And so it really tries to grab them and make the most of them. So I'm not surprised at all about that. They also need to investigate the company and the other people involved in the company because it's a very strange state of affairs that a company would be storing in so much money and only one person would have any mechanism for accessing it. You wouldn't get that a normal bank. If the bank manager died, you'd still be able to get into the bank vault and access the money.

CO: There are the people who had invested in this company and are wondering if they're going to see their money again. We spoke with one of those investors who lost thousands of dollars when the exchange closed down. What would you say to him and others who are perhaps still hopeful they might get their money back?

GC: Well, I have my fingers and my toes crossed view and I hope that something comes of it. I think there's a good chance they may not see their money, unfortunately. Let's hope this money is found. I've seen other companies have apparently offered rewards if the money is found because they don't want in the name of cryptocurrency to be damaged by this particular incident. But you know, I think it's possible we may not come across it. It may be lost. And we may never find out who has this money.

CO: Yikes! Graham, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

GC: Cheers. Nice chatting to you.

JD: Graham Cluley is a computer security expert who has been following the QuadrigaCX case. We reached him in Oxford, England.

[Music: Industrial]

Winnipeg home invasion

JD: On Sunday night, Jaime and Imelda Adao were attending a community concert when they saw they had a missed call. A Winnipeg police officer had left a message asking them to call him as soon as possible. Moments later, the couple learned their 17-year-old son, also named Jaime, had been killed, in a what police are calling a random home invasion. While they were out, a man broke into their house and attacked their son — who was at home with his grandmother. Last night, Imelda Adao spoke with CBC News at a prayer service in honour of their son.

SOUNDCLIP

IMELDA ADAO: Our boy is very loving, God-fearing, and is a very honest kid. I don't know how to explain it. But for me, he is a perfect son. It's like an awakening to our city. Not only in our city, but all over the world, that kids has a bright future. But in a glance, they will steal it. We need a safer place for our kids. I remember when we are campaigning before during the election, there’s slogan a slogan that we're always saying that we need a better and safer Winnipeg. But I cannot even imagine that my son will be an instrument on how we can show our city how our city was now. Because he's inside our house, and we parents knows that he's in a safe place because he's inside our house. But look what happened to my son. I don't know. No more tears coming out from my eyes. But I don't want that any other parent will feel this kind of unbearable pain.

JD: That was Imelda Adao, speaking to CBC News last night at a prayer service in memory of her 17-year-old son, Jaime Adao. The Winnipeg teenager was killed in a home invasion on Sunday. A 29-year old suspect remains in hospital.

[Music: Ambient]

Jerry Merryman obit

Guest: Ed Millis

JD: Without Jerry Merryman, math class would be a very, very different today. And for some of us, it may be impossible. The co-creator of the first electronic handheld calculator died last week. He was 86 years old. In 2013, Mr. Merryman told NPR about how the idea for the calculator was born at Texas Instruments.

SOUNDCLIP

JERRY MERRYMAN: It was late 1965 and Jack Kilby, my boss, presented the idea of a calculator. He called some people in his office, he says we'd like to have some sort of computing device perhaps to replace the slide ruler. It would be nice if it were as small as this little book that I have in my hand. Of course, it would have to operate on batteries. It would have to have some buttons to enter the problem. And it would have to have some neon lights or something like that to give you an answer. You'd have to think of something. Silly me, I thought we were just making a calculator, but we were creating an electronic revolution. It was a very intense effort. It touched many things that I am reminded of today. We used thermal printing. It was one of the earliest uses of rechargeable batteries. I remember winding the transformer in my garage for the little fist-sized transformer that you plugged in the wall and charged your batteries. So today, I see many reminders of that. If I push a button on it a cell phone, it certainly brings back memories of that intense effort in 1965.

JD: That was Jerry Merryman speaking with NPR's "All Things Considered" in 2013. Ed Millis worked with Mr. Merryman at Texas Instruments and was his longtime friend. We reached Mr. Millis in Dallas.

CO: Ed, first of all, I'm sorry for the loss of your friend.

ED MILLIS: Thank you very much. It's a big one.

CO: And when you hear him describe making the calculator, what comes to mind for you?

EM: Well, he was so modest about it. But he pretty well told the story. It was a simple story, albeit an extremely difficult one to achieve engineering wise. And I've known Jerry almost 50 years, as a matter of fact, and it seems like the bigger the problem or the bigger the challenge, the more enthusiastic he was about doing it. He was the perfect employee, I think. And something like this was just his meat.

CO: But all the comments being made about Jerry Merryman are about that he just he never saught the limelight. He didn't want a lot of attention. He was quite modest about all this. Is that your memory?

EM: Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah. Like not only modest. He was one of the funniest people you'll ever hope to meet. I had occasion to write a little bio piece for one of the TI newspapers some years back. I never had so much fun in my whole life talking to Jerry. I was rolling on the floor before I finished the thing. And he can take an incident and just make it sound terrific. Anyway, you know he started off at the age of 11 repairing radios at the local appliance store. He was hired at 11 years old.

CO: And this is in his town. And, apparently, another story is that he was so good at it, and so important to repair radios, that the police… he'd be in and seeing a movie, and they'd come in and get him because their squad car radios weren’t working.

EM: As a matter of fact, I heard that today. And I'd never heard that story, but I'm not surprised. When Jerry was working at the appliance store repairing radios, he'd walked into the boss's office, and there on the boss's table was it was a book called “Termins Radio Engineering”, and it’s the same book I used in college, as a matter of fact. And Jerry was about twelve at the time, and he says you know if I could learn everything in there, I'd be pretty smart. Well, the boss came in and saw him and talked to him and gave him the book. And Jerry I guess proceeded to learn everything in the book because he sure turned out smart on electrical stuff.

CO: But not just on education because this is interesting. He did attend Texas A&M University — never graduated. But that the first day he was there, he got into a slide rule competition and smashed the record.

EM: Yes, that's right. Yes, it was the highest score ever made at the time. And then he proceeds to destroy the slide rule business a few years later with the pocket calculator, which is some kind of irony there, I think.

CO: He had that all the other stories. And there's just so many of them. And quite clearly he had as you say quite a sense of humour. But he got some kind of a telescope he had at home to monitor the planets. And he figured out how to make a tuning fork for the piano in their house.

EM: Yeah, well that's nothing compared to his big one. This is his backyard project or whatever you wanna call it that just absolutely blew me away, and has for years. He was interested in everything, which is part of the problem, I think. But there was an English scientist named Henry Cavendish back in the late seventeen hundreds that put together a collection of lead spheres about the size of croquet ball took to measure that the gravitational constant. And it doesn't seem right, but if you hold two lead spheres near each other, they attract each other. Anyway, Jerry decided that he ought to repeat this experiment. And he made the equivalent — the same thing that Cavendish did in the seventeen hundreds — assembled in his kitchen… no, I guess it was in his den I think he said it was. Measured gravity, and came within 1 per cent of the National Bureau of Standards number when he did this. And I find that absolutely incredible. And he had more fun with that kind of stuff than anybody. But anyway, that to me was the highlight of the things that I've seen him do kind of off-the-cuff and not even bother telling people about it, I guess.

CO: Well, I was gonna ask you what you remember most about him? But I mean there's so many stories you've already given. But what do you think? What is his legacy that he leaves behind, do you think?

EM: I really don't know. He was so broad technically in all of his stuff. And such a nice guy — the kind of guy you ought to be around. In fact, I invited him to my birthday party of a year ago which, is just almost exactly a year ago. And it’s sitting on the table here I can see it right now, he brought me as a birthday present a model T Ford spark coil — which you probably haven't seen because you're way too young. But this is what made the spark plugs work on a model T and make the engine run. And he has a little note taped on the front of it that says, so I was now reaching middle age, which is a total lie. He says you may need a little more spark in your life.

CO: Wow! That's a great thing to look at and remember your friend with.

EM: Yes, indeed. I will remember him a long time. He's such a nice guy, and so is his wife, as a matter of fact.

CO: Ed, I really appreciate you sharing your memories of your friend with us. Thank you.

EM: Well, you're quite welcome. Thank you for calling me. I really enjoyed it.

CO: Bye-bye.

EM: Bye.

JD: Ed Millis is a friend of Jerry Merryman. He was in Dallas. Mr. Merryman — one of the creators of the calculator — died last week. He was 86 years old. We have more on that story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Lullaby]

Part two: SNC: Elizabeth May, insurance company prize

SNC: Elizabeth May

Guest: Elizabeth May

JD: Jody Wilson-Raybould says she was improperly pressured. Gerald Butts says he just wanted the former Attorney-General to have all the facts. As you've been hearing, the Prime Minister's former Principal Secretary testified this morning in Ottawa. He appeared at the Justice Committee's hearings into the Trudeau government's internal wranglings over the prosecution of the troubled mega-construction company, SNC Lavalin. Conservative Deputy Leader Lisa Raitt told Mr. Butts she was having trouble squaring his account with Ms. Wilson-Raybould's. Here's Gerald Butts' response.

SOUNDCLIP

GB: Can I just have a moment to answer this? And I think this is really important. I respect you a lot, Ms. Raitt. And we've known each other a long time — not so well, but we're both from the same part of the country. And, as is Ms. May, we could have a tarabish game if there were one more Cape Bretoner around this table. We grew up around the same time, in the same place. And we know what it's like to see a company or a community collapse. And can you imagine if when we were kids and the coal mines closed or the steel mill closed, the best explanation someone could give us was that someone thought about it for 12 days in Ottawa? And that's what concerns us. That is absolutely what concerned us. It was the first time the law was ever being used. And we just wanted to make sure that every due consideration was given to both options.

JD: So that was the Prime Minister's former Principal Secretary Gerald Butts, testifying this morning at the House of Commons Justice Committee. Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party. We reached her on the way to the airport in Ottawa.

CO: Ms. May, that wasn't a game of Tarabish we saw today. So what was the game?

ELIZABETH MAY: Well, I think it's deadly serious. And I think as I listened to Gerry Butts’s description of events, I was trying to figure out how what Jody Wilson-Reybould said, which I believed was absolutely true every syllable, how Gerry Butts testimony could fit knowing that what Jody Wilson-Reybould said was true. And what I came to feel was that it was plausible that with his being, as both her evidence and his evidence, he was massively distracted by NAFTA negotiations. He was out of the country for more than four weeks of what was transpiring — and especially through the rest of the afternoon with the evidence of the Clerk of the Privy Council that a lot of the inappropriate pressure that was being brought to bear on our former Attorney-General was coming from the clerk's office.

CO: It is interesting that the timeline is four months, isn't it? And one of the things he says is that boil it down, she said she had 20 calls or interventions to get her to change her mind. What comes down to about two a month. And so we heard from Sheila Copps last night saying as a cabinet minister, you get eleven phone calls an hour. So pressure is with hundreds of lobbyists. And he's pointing out there wasn't that much heavy duty pressure. It was just asking her to take independent opinion from perhaps Beverly McLaughlin.

EM: But that was all inappropriate. The reality of the structure — and this is fairly new to have a Director of Public Prosecutions — that job is one that must have prosecutorial independence in the decision making. When the Director of Public Prosecutions, in this case Kathleen Roussel, makes a decision, she sends something called a Section 13 note to the Attorney-General. Now this is a legal note in which the Director of Public Prosecutions says this is the evidence we have. And now that it's all before the courts, they can't really reveal what evidence they had. It would be most inappropriate to try to get it. But the Director of Public Prosecutions took months to put together a decision that this deferred prosecution agreement does not fit the facts that we have as evidence. It's not appropriate to use a DPA — deferred prosecution agreement — in the SNC Lavalin fraud and bribery charges. And so nobody can know what it was she said. But it was persuasive enough that our former Attorney General — who by the way, of course, Jody Wilson-Reybould is not just the politician, and not just an Indigenous leader — she's a lawyer. And she's actually worked as a prosecutor. So what she was doing wasn't fanning across the country to ask people gee what do you think? Is SNC Lavalin too big to jail? What she had to do was a legal analysis of whether the case put to her by the Director of Public Prosecutions was legitimate. Her own process of due diligence is one that I trust her to have done in very professional and thorough manner.

CO: But now was she demoted because of SNC Lavalin? That's what she says, that’s what she implies and states in her testimony. He said that they were shocked and surprised when she said that that was what she thought was the reason for it. Who's right?

EM: Well, we have a problem in that she was she was not able when she appeared before a committee to speak to things that happened between her accepting the position of Minister of Veterans Affairs and ultimately leaving the Cabinet. She was not released from confidentiality requirements of Cabinet. We all asked that she be released from that. And then today, the motion from opposition members of the committee that she be brought back to respond that was disallowed. So we still have a big gap there. But I think it's entirely plausible. And, yeah, I have a terrible tendency in politics to bend over backwards to be fair to everyone. But I think it's entirely plausible that the purpose of the cabinet shuffle was exactly it Gerry Butts said. It was we have to fill the position with Scott Brison. How do we do that? Oh, maybe we can move Jane here. Oh, that would work really well because Jody Wilson-Reybould, what a great choice for Indigenous services. If they had thought through what they were proposing, they would realize that someone who had fought the Indian Act her whole life was not about to take on the job of enforcing the Indian Act and applying its programs. At that point, they should have stopped. if their intention was not to get rid of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, who was refusing to supplant her own judgment to succumb to political pressure, inappropriate pressure to redirect a decision of the Independent Director of Public Prosecutions, then they should have backed up because they made a gigantic error. Certainly given the veiled threats that were laid down by Michael Wernick in his phone call of an hour-and-a-half duration on December 19^th — a phone call for which we only have Jody Wilson-Reybould’s evidence. Because Michael today at committee quite I thought it was bizarre said I wasn't wearing a wire. I can't tell you what I said. Well come on! Whatever he said was so bad that Jody Wilson Reybould said to him excuse me. This is like a Nixon-era Saturday night massacre. What are you saying to me here?

CO: But just finally, I mean this has been an enormous story. And does it actually come down to he-said-she-said? Is it two different people or different people's interpretations of events, and nothing much more than that?

EM: I think it's more than that. I don't think there's any doubt that inappropriate pressure was brought to bear on the Attorney-General. She has said she does not believe that the level of pressure which she experienced crossed the line to be a criminal offence under the criminal code of an attempt to interfere with the course of justice. That would be a criminal code offense. But it certainly was inappropriate. It certainly shows a culture within government that the Prime Minister's Office still has far too much power. That to say the power exerted in Justin Trudeau's PMO is much less than what was going on under Stephen Harper's PMO. So I think of it if we can make progress in finding lessons that are useful to learn in all of this is that we really have to curtail the notion that the Prime Minister's Office is a central agency with powers to lean on people because whatever it is it must be done must be done. And if a fix is needed, we'll figure it out. That's a cultural problem that predates this prime ministerial office. I still think we need an independent investigation. I don't think it's just a matter of a difference of opinion.

CO: We will leave it there, as always, good to talk to you, Ms. May. Thank you.

EM: Thank you very much.

JD: Elizabeth May is the leader of the federal Green Party. We reached her in Ottawa.

[Music: Ambient]

Insurance company prize

Guest: Donelan Andrews

JD: If you ask most of us what's in any of the "terms and conditions" agreements I've clicked "Yes" to, we could tell you, I guess, in brad strokes. There are first, the terms. And second — and this is key — there are what's known in the business world as "conditions". Beyond that really, I can’t say much because I'm not a qualified legal expert, and also, I've never read past those first sentences. But one high school teacher in Georgia recently discovered that it really can pay to read those pages and pages of legalese. In fact, it can pay quite well. We reached Donelan Andrews — at school, as you'll hear — in Thomaston, Georgia.

CO: Donelan, first of all why, were you reading this travel insurance contract fine print?

DONELAN ANDREWS: because after purchasing the insurance, I just wanted to make sure I knew exactly what was covered and what wasn't. I was particularly looking for identity theft information. That's about it. I wanted to be sure I knew everything that I had purchased.

CO: Where were you going? What was your trip?

DA: My trip is in September to London with six very close girlfriends. It's our 25th anniversary of travelling together. And we decided to go international this year.

CO: Uh huh, so you were reading through the fine print for everybody, or just that you wanted to know?

DA: Just for myself, yes.

CO: Now, is that unusual for you to do that?

DA: No, actually I am kind of a nerd about that. I always read contracts. I always read the fine print. And you know I even keep a hard copy of everything in a folder in a file cabinet. And I'm not ashamed of it.

CO: Well, we're going to reveal why you really shouldn't be aimed of it in the course of this story. But so what did you find at the bottom of the very last page?

DA: At the bottom of the very last page, it said if you have read this far in a contract, you are only one per cent of the population who actually reads through the end of a contract. And we want to change that. So you know once you read this, if you will email us at this email address your name and a phone number, someone will contact you within 24 hours with you know with a chance to win ten thousand dollars.

CO: So what did you do?

DA: I immediately sat down at my computer, and emailed them my name phone number.

CO: And what did you hear back?

DA: Well, of course, I thought you know what are the chances but someone has to win. And so the very next day, I received a phone call from SquareMouth, and Jenna Hummer — their PR director — said I had won. And I had a hard time believing it at first.

CO: That you'd won the 10,000 dollars?

DA: Exactly,

CO: And this is relevant because we can hear in the background the noise because you're at school, right?

DA: Yes, I'm at school and it's class change. I apologize. My door is closed, but they do get a little loud out there.

CO: I’ll ask you about that because they told you it wasn't just that the 10,000 dollars you were going to get. What else did they tell you that they're going to give?

DA: Well, part of the excitement was that they were also donating 10,000 dollars to a nonprofit called Reading is Fundamental, which is a nonprofit company that provides books and other reading materials to school systems. And so they donated that as well. But then when they found out that I am actually a teacher, they added another 10,000 that was not part of the contest. They did it just to be fabulous. And I work at two different high schools in my position. And so they have donated 5,000 dollars to each high school in addition to the Reading is Fundamental donation. And those two media specialists are now my very best friends.

CO: That's extraordinary! And so what message do you think that sends to all those students about reading the fine print?

DA: Both my principal and our school superintendent talked to the students about you know we have a literacy initiative here at the high school. And you know this is just a perfect example of why you need to read things. It's not just novels — it's anything that you get you know as an adult to. You need to read everything and you know read the fine print. And wow! It sure did pay off for me this time.

CO: But now, people have pointed out that… and we've done many stories about the terms and terms of service agreements that people don't read. And there's one study that says that it would take 250 hours a year to read all the terms of service agreements and contracts that we sign online. So I mean you can see why it's not just being lazy. It's a matter of like that’s a big investment.

DA: Right, but what I think is very important — and one thing I definitely noticed — is this contract that SquareMouth sent me was only seven pages long. It was written at an eighth grade reading level, in small paragraphs, and many breaks in between. They've eliminated a lot of the legalese, they've kept it simple, and I hope this will encourage other companies to do that. Because the average American you're right does not have that much time, and just they're going to assume everything is as it should be. But you know it may not. And this is really helpful to consumers.

CO: Well, the other part of this contest of getting the first person who got to this last part of it to win 10,000 dollars. It was supposed to run for a year. They didn't think anyone, in the end, would have read to the end. And that they're going to give the money to charity. But you won it in 23 hours after it started.

DA: I know! Isn't that funny? I guess they didn't realize that Donelan Andrews from Thomaston, Georgia — who has a degree in Consumer Economics from the University of Georgia — was adamant about reading all of her contracts. And you know I guess I won out on that. I think they were very surprised, you're right.

CO: So your nerdiness paid off.

DA: Exactly, and how fabulous is that?

CO: And what are you going to do with the money?

DA: Well, I'm retiring this year, after 25 years in education. And my husband and I are taking a trip to Scotland in June to celebrate not only my retirement, but our 35th wedding anniversary. And this money has just about paid for that entire trip.

CO: That is wonderful. That's just sounds like a great trip, and congratulations on that.

DA: Thank you. Thank you.

CO: And bon voyage.

DA: Oh yes. Thank you.

CO: Bye, Donelan.

DA: Okay. Bye-bye.

JD: Donelan Andrews is a high school teacher. And now, the recipient of a cash prize for actually reading her insurance contract. We reached Ms. Andrews in Thomaston, Georgia. And we have more on this story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Hip-hop]

Charlie Panigoniak obit

JD: In the 1970's, Charlie Panigoniak was one of the first to record and release music in Inuktitut. He was also one of the best. The Nunavut singer-songwriter died today. He was 72 years old. Mr. Panigoniak was born near Chesterfield Inlet — and played across the North. He was also a long-time broadcaster on CBC Radio. And although his recordings were treasured — people knew that the real gift was to see him perform live. Today, the musician Susan Aglukark told CBC North, quote: "From the moment he was on stage, he belonged on stage. He was a natural there. He could sing. He was a comedian...He had the audience enthralled as soon as he started." Unquote. And here is a taste of what you could expect at one of Charlie Panigoniak's shows. Here he is introducing and performing his song "I Miss My Girlfriend" — recorded live in Yellowknife.

[Music: I Miss My Girlfriend by Charlie Panigoniak/Inuit folk]

JD: That's Nunavut singer-songwriter Charlie Panigoniak — who died today at age 72.

[Music: Jazz]

Part three: Encore: far-right undercover

Encore: Far-right undercover

JD: "I'm not leading it. I'm dismantling it." On last night's program, James Hart Stern told us why he's taking over the National Socialist Movement — one of the biggest and oldest neo-Nazi groups in the United States. Mr. Stern is a black civil rights activist. He plans to destroy the group from the inside. It's not the first time we've covered a story like that. In 2017, Carol spoke to Patrik Hermansson — a Swedish graduate student who took a similar tactic. Like Mr. Stern, Mr. Hermansson wanted to infiltrate the extreme right. But unlike Mr. Stern, he did it undercover. Mr. Hermansson spent a year befriending, and then travelling with, key far-right organizers, first in the U.K. and then in the United States -- all the while, sending information to the NGO, Hope Not Hate. From October of 2017, here's an encore presentation Carol's conversation with Patrik Hermansson.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: Mr. Hermansson, welcome to As It Happens.

PATRIK HERMANSSON: Thank you.

CO: Why did you decide to do this — to go undercover into the world of the extreme right?

PH: Well, I’ve been active as as an anti-fascist for years, primarily through writing and taking pictures for an organisation in Sweden called Expo, and then I moved to London and was attempting to get in touch with similar organisations here. And I asked Hope Not Hate if I could help them out.

CO: Hope Not Hate is the organization that you were with when you decided to do this right?

PH: Yes, so I went undercover for Hope Not Hate, so they suggested I should go undercover in this London-based organization, and it seemed like the best way to do antifascism.

CO: A very risky way to do it. How did you do it? Was it easy to become a member — to infiltrate it?

PH: To become a member is not super difficult, but to get into the centre and to be part of vetting people and speaking at the conferences like I did, that takes some work. So it's basically you're spending a lot of time with them, being consistent with your identity so everything fits together, so you are believable.

CO: So how did you sell yourself? What was your way of talking your way into that centre? What was it that appealed to them about what you were selling?

PH: Several things, I think. So first of all, what we have to understand is that these groups are incredibly racist, so this idea that white people are better than other people is very ingrained, and part of the whole ideology. And then building on that, they believe that white people's origin is basically Scandinavia and northern Europe. So since I was from there I was considered like an attractive, good type of member that they wanted, because whiteness is not just about — it's not a binary. There are multiple levels of whiteness. You can be more or less white and I fit into the “more white” categories as I have blue eyes and I’m from Scandinavia and that helps.

CO: You were like the gold standard of white supremacy.

PH: Basically. And it's a bit of a scary idea, but it works to our advantage in this case.

CO: To your advantage to what? So who did you meet — some of the names we’ll know, some of them I guess we won’t — but who were the key players with whom you eventually made contact and earned their trust?

PH: Well, we started in London Forum, which is not publicly known, but it's one of the most influential far-right organizations in Europe, and then in the U.S. I was in touch with, and spoke at conferences organized by Greg Johnson, who was one big ideological leader of one section of the alt-right, book publisher and writer. Then I met with people around the Richard Spencer when I was the editor at his organization Alt-Right Corporation, his name is Jason Jorjani.

CO: And he's associated with Richard Spencer, and people will know Richard Spencer because he's the man infamous for his Nazi salute, and rallying people around him in a very, very public forum after Donald Trump was elected, right?

PH: Exactly. So I've been to several of his rallies around the U.S. this summer and met many of his top people.

CO: And when you met these men, and men who are almost exclusively what you met, what were their goals? What did what did you learn about their ideology and what their objectives are?

PH: The objective or what they're fighting against, is what they think is their destruction or the downfall of Western society, Western culture, or in some of the most extreme cases, the white race. So they believe that left wing ideology, mass immigration, as they say, feminism are threats that will undermine the Western world, and that's what they fight against. So they do that by trying to shift politics and culture in a way where white people are going to say they're better than other people, where it is basically a separation between races, as they see it, but also male and female. So women have very specific traditional gender roles and men have the opposite role.

CO: Women are expected to be in the home, having children and taking traditional roles, out of the workforce.

PH: Exactly.

CO: And white men are at the top of the heap. And so what did you learn as to how they would achieve these goals should they find themselves in a position to do so? What would they do with the people who they don't consider to be part of the world they believe should exist in Europe or the United States or Canada, I guess?

PH: A common way to argue for them is a repatriation, that's kind of the first step, so that’s sending people that are not white away — this include citizens as well.

CO: So ethnically cleansing those who are not part of the white race and sending them back, or in some in some instances they have used the word exterminate.

PH: In some cases they go so far, in some cases talk about a coming race war. Others argue that we will have to institute concentration camps in Europe and in North America again. So there are different ways to argue about this, but they’re are all kind of horrific ideas.

CO: And do the people with whom you met — did they all subscribe to these ideas?

PH: To varying degree — most yes. There are exceptions, but the most extreme ones that I hung out with during this year, basically all consider that each country should be inhabited by one people, as they say, and one people is defined by skin color.

CO: There's people like that Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi who is with the Daily Stormer, who states quite clearly the goal of the movement is to ethnically cleanse white nations of non-whites and establish an authoritarian government. And they also believe that Jews should be exterminated.

PH: Yeah, so anti-Semitism is a ripe through the whole movement, it goes through everything. Everything that is wrong about society, for them, is explained through different ideas of Jewish world conspiracies, and therefore they argue for those types of ideas you just explained.

CO: But this ideology of the extreme right, you could have learned from reading what they published They don't hide these views do they — especially not anymore, since they’ve become so, well I wouldn’t say popular, but at least almost mainstream. What did you learn that you didn't know by infiltrating their ranks?

PH: Yeah, it’s easy to get the impression that we did this just to get a collection of really horrible racist quotes, but that's not at all why we do this. We're out to understand these people, to understand how they recruit. What kind of people they recruit, and why those people connected with them? What they're going to do next? So their plans, and these plans they want to know in detail. We want to know where exactly, what cities and towns they are organizing in and so on. And we want to know this because then we can mobilize against it. So Hope Not Hate, which has released a report, also organize different types of grassroots movements and campaign movements across the U.K. and now soon in the U.S. as well. So those are always informed by the research that we do, and some part of that research is infiltration that I've done now.

CO: And you also witnessed some bizarre rituals. Can you tell us some of the things that you saw as far as how they do their I guess brotherhood bonding?

PH: Of course I guess you're are referring to the paganism part. It's like I said in the beginning, this idea of Scandinavia as the origin of the white race means that there are also very interested in Scandinavian culture, or some sort of caricature of Scandinavian culture — so the belief in the Asgardian gods like Thor Odin, so many meetings are opened with us drinking mead from a horn. And there are rituals where you pray to your ancestors and then drink mead from this horn which you pass around.

CO: I mean being Swede yourself, were there times that it was hard to stifle laughter or some reaction that would be betray you?

PH: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, many of the times I go to these meetings I'm horrified. But then there are some moments where you are laughing, and you have to really struggle not to laugh straight out when they blow a horn and those types of things because it's quite comic sometimes.

CO: You must have had so many kind of out-of-body experiences where you’re just watching yourself sitting among these people, but you said horrified, did you find that I mean, because you're hearing things that you just — yourself, your own beliefs, you are vehemently opposed to them. Were there times you were tempted to speak out and say, “No, I can't do this anymore?”

PH: Almost. I mean, there are times where you feel quite horribly frustrated. You want to really argue, you want to put your foot down, but you can't, you can't leave, you just have to sit down and smile and and agree with them when you just want to do everything to stop them. But you have to see that in the long term that we have a long term perspective of why we were doing this. We had a goal and that's to counter these movements in an efficient way, and to argue with them at the single meeting with 20 people it's not that. So you have to look further and then you realize it's worth it.

CO: You're listening to a feature interview with Patrik Hermansson. He's a Swedish graduate-student who spent a year undercover with the extreme right movement. And there's one thing about this this term that gets used — Alt-Right — this is alternative right that has been abbreviated to alt-right. Lots of people are opposed to using it including myself. I mean, it does seem to be a term that sort of makes it sound kind of palatable. And so what do you make of this debate about what kind of language we should use to describe so that it doesn't, I guess, normalize this as a political movement.

PH: It's a good question, and I've followed that debate and we bring it up a lot, in a report that is given out. And our take on it is that this is actually different. We could call them Neo-Nazi's just because it feels good, but it's not actually always correct. It's a different movement, it works differently. They have very different ways of recruiting. They see the enemy a little bit differently, and therefore it's important to distinguish between different groups. I think that if we put all these different far right groups, and the alt-right is a far right group, and just define them very simply as fascist, for example, or white supremacist, that's often brought up that they should be called. The problem with that is that they all become the same and they're not. And I really believe that we need to understand these people and these movements on a deep level if are supposed to counter them.

CO: But is it not true that Richard Spencer when he coined this phrase, and he's credited for having done that, he did it because he wanted to normalize the language. The goal at this point is to — as you infiltrated them, they're trying to infiltrate mainstream conservative movements to move conservatives toward these ideas — to make them palatable. What are they doing in order to make this, I guess put a face on it that seems acceptable to maybe a large group of people?

PH: I'm sure you're completely right. These groups are trying to become mainstream and they have tried strategies in how they're supposed to do so. Their strategies now involve, of course, to affect culture, and they use the Internet and social media primarily to do that. And one of the most common and famous ways are the memes, these humoristic pictures, I guess you call them. So they disguise a very hateful message with ironic or humorous overtone.

CO: Can you give an example?

PH: Well, Pepe the frog is probably the most famous one. So you have this little frog that looks cute, often painted as, you know, a Jewish caricature or Trump, it's a bit difficult to explain without seeing them.

CO: But they're essentially racist?

PH: It’s racist, but then there is irony often targeted against the left or something like that. And this provides a very comfortable way to express racism because you could always fall back and say “It was just a joke, it was just a joke.” But the thing with memes and things online is that you can always push it a little bit further, a little bit further. And then after weeks or months what you said yesterday and that was extreme a couple of months ago, then bacomes all right and doesn't seem so extreme anymore, because you've come up with something even worse.

CO: And how successful do you think, in your view of what you’ve seen, are being in sort of making it attractive, and kind of ironic, and something that just is attractive to a lot of people who may not have even looked at this before?

PH: Yeah, well you can say what they really try to do and what I think they have become quite successful in, is to become the rebels — to be the underdog. And that's attractive to young people, of course.

CO: And you also hear that from people like Milo Yiannopoulos, who says “Well, you are all wrong about this. This isn't some extreme group of racists.” He calls them “fun loving provocateurs,” “defenders of Western civilizations,” “daring intellectuals,” and this is quite attractive, especially on university campuses isn't it?

PH: Yeah, I mean University students are one of their main targets, and certain groups in North America are very big at university campuses and they’re racist organizations.

CO: When you were undercover during that time there were a number of things happened in that year. The terrorist attacks, the U.S. election, the Brexit vote. How did they respond? What were the high points for them in the events of the past year, or the year that you were there?

PH: Yes, of course Trump's election, that was of course important.

CO: How important? What did they see in that?

PH: They believe — or many people in alt-right — believe that they were playing a significant role in getting him into office.

CO: There's a lot of truth to that, isn't there?

PH: It's very difficult to measure, you can argue back or forth, I can't tell for sure. But anyway, that was a big motivator, for both the European and North American alt-right, because they felt that they had an influence on politics — that they could do something.

CO: And did they feel that — because there was a time that interview that President Trump gave in which he said that he denounced the alt-right. He disassociated himself from it. What reaction was there in those ranks when he did that?

PH: Yeah, and that’s the thing with Trump. So the whole movement goes back and forth between supporting him and being very disappointed in him. So we have those things like you said there, and we have to go intervention in Syria for example, making them very disappointed. But when he disappoints them when he disappoints them, it's usually blamed on some outside force, like the deep state or another Jewish world conspiracy. But then there are some moments where he's regained their favour and that’s for example, after Charlottesville, where he kind of equated the violence on both sides, saying that the alt-right and what he called the “alt-left.”

CO: And you were there you were in at the event in Charlottesville, and as a member of the extreme right. You were you were part of them, so looking at that from their side of it what did you see? What was that like to be there?

PH: It was a very tense day. I was right in the middle next to Spencer and his main people, David Duke cetera. So we were surrounded by police, and it's this large group of mostly very young men. They have shields, helmets, gas masks, goggles, some have fire arms. So they're clearly expecting violence and the language is extremely hateful. They talk about bloodbaths and Jews, and it's quite horrific. So of course they expected violence and there was violence, as well. But I wasn’t right where that happened.

CO: Were you there when the car drove into the alternative protesters killing a woman? Were you around for that?

PH: Yeah, so after the demonstration had been shut down, I kind of turn back to myself for a couple of hours, and just walked around town and I saw this counter-demonstration, and I stood there right on the corner when that car crashed straight into the front of that demonstration. And I didn't really understand it at first. I saw it kind of at the side of my vision and then it stopped right next to me in this crossing. I saw a shoe fly in the air, but it took me a couple of moments until I realized what happened, and that's when the crowd kind of erupts and panics and runs away. And it took a couple of moments I think for most people there to really figure out what happened unless you were further up the street and we saw it from the start.

CO: What was it like for you to be there?

PH: It was terrifying, of course. It came out of nowhere and it's so violent and gruesome, so that's a difficult experience.

CO: But do you return to their ranks afterward. How did they talk about what happened that day? How did they talk about that car event?

PH: I didn't meet them in person that evening but online — we are following them closely online in the forums and private chat rooms etc. — and they were obviously in panic, part of it because they didn't want their movement to look bad. But at the same time they supported this guy that did it. And they called Heather that died there, the most awful things — sexualizing her of course.

CO: There were some reports of people saying in the movement that she wasn't valuable anyways because she wasn't of breeding age, or she wasn't having babies, and so it’s no loss to society, right?

PH: Yeah exactly. They used all sorts of ways to justify it. And she wasn't valuable and it was it was her own fault and so on.

CO: How could you stay there? When you're in the midst of that, it just must be sick making.

PH: It is. Many times it is. And just like I explained earlier, when you are in these horrific moments and contexts, and people express themselves in certain ways and it's threatening, you just have to think of why you are there and what you're trying to achieve.

CO: And then when you heard President Trump's response to Charlottesville, where he said that all sides were responsible here, he didn't react to the violence, it was days before he even addressed the death of the woman and he, as you mentioned earlier, he said this alt-left was violent. How did the people you had infiltrated, how did they respond to President Trump's message?

PH: For them it’s a validation of their entire cause. So after that he really came back into favour again, people became more pro-Trump again from having being disappointed in him. So that really spurred the movement on as well. That's the type of comments that normalize these ideas.

CO: Do you think President Trump is of the same ideology as the man you met in that organization.

PH: No, I can't say that, that would be a stretch. I can just say that sometimes his language helps spur these people on — that’s no question.

CO: We're speaking with Patrik Hermansson, who spent a year undercover with the extreme right movement working for an NGO called Hope Not Hate. And do you have a sense since you said you were there to try and figure out how they organize, what their reach is, how they're going to recruit? Do you think you have the information you need to counter the movement or do you think that this is something that is far more powerful and fast moving than you initially thought?

PH: We have information about certain parts of the movement. We focused here on a few organizations but there are so many groups and they organized online. And we can't even estimate the size of the movement in an accurate way. So we've done what we can in one section of it, but it's so vast that you just one the infiltration cannot take it down the whole alt-right —absolutely not.

CO: And how did they feel about you. Have they tried to approach you since you have gone public with your report? I mean, these are people who advocate genocide, so do you have any concerns about your safety?

PH: Of course I have, but Hope Not Hate has done this for decades. They have very good insight into these movements and we have good connections with the police. So I don't feel personally threatened.

CO: Have you had any approaches — anything scary?

PH: Of course online people say all sorts of things, but that's expected.

CO: Has this changed you, yourself, personally?

PH: If anything it's motivated me. During this year I've had moments of a bit of political depression, and a realization that these people are very dangerous and that they organize very broadly. So that was scary. But now in the long term it's motivated me.

CO: You said in a few places were that as you listen to all this language, this hateful Islamophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynist language that eventually you heard so much of it, it almost became normal, you became kind of inured to it to some degree. Did that worry you?

PH: Of course. I've said that and I stand by that. It's very tiring to listen to these things in the beginning, but after a while it just becomes normal. There are very few things that would surprise me now or shock me now, and that itself I find it scary, because if a you can do that to me which is not super strange because I was so deep inside of it, but if it can do it to me, it can do it with society overall. And we can't let this type of language be normalized because it dehumanizes large groups of people. And that leads to violence against him.

CO: Is that possibly the most frightening thing about it, is how quickly and easily it becomes where people can say, “Well I don't believe in all this extremism, I don't support Adolf Hitler, but you know these people have something to say.”

PH: Absolutely. And so now we see a split here between the alt-light which is a bit lighter and the alt-right. And when we have this really extreme, racially motivated movement and then this little bit softer side of it, that softer side all of a sudden starts to look all right, and we can talk to them and they slowly become mainstream. So these two, quite separate groups, push the whole agenda together although they might not agree with everything.

CO: Very alarming and insightful report. Mr. Hermansson, I appreciate you speaking to us today. Thank you.

PH: Thank you very much.

JD: From October of 2017, that was an encore presentation of Carol's conversation with Patrik Hermansson — a Swedish graduate student who went undercover to infiltrate the far-right. You can learn more about Mr. Hermansson's story on the As It Happens website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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March 06, 2019 episode transcript

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