Paul Fromm (white supremacist)

Frederick Paul Fromm (born January 3, 1949), known as Paul Fromm, is a Canadian far-right political activist. Fromm has been identified as a neo-Nazi

Family

Fromm's mother is of French Canadian descent while his father is of German Catholic background. In the 1980s he was married to Daryl Reside who had been active in various far-right groups.

Political activism

In 1967, as a student at the University of Toronto's St. Michael's College, Paul Fromm co-founded the Edmund Burke Society with Don Andrews, Leigh Smith and Al Overfield and founded its student wing "Campus Alternative". The Edmund Burke Society was a right-wing anti-communist group that agitated against prominent left wing movements and causes of the period. The group's main focus was opposition to the New Left and other left wing tendencies that were prominent at the time and which the Burkers identified with Communism. In 1970, the group disrupted a speech by William Kunstler resulting in the Chicago Seven's lawyer drenching EBSer Paul Fromm with a pitcher of water. A melee between Burkers and Kunstler's supporters ensued and Fromm was knocked unconscious to the floor.

Fromm led a successful attempt by the Western Guard to take over the Ontario wing of the Social Credit Party of Canada. His success resulted in Ernest Manning intervening to place the Ontario organization under trusteeship in order to counter Fromm's activities.

As the far left waned, EBSers turned their attention to issues of race and immigration and became increasingly attracted to white supremacist theories. As a result, in February 1972 the group renamed itself the Western Guard. Three months later, Fromm was the opening speaker at a Western Guard banquet honouring Robert Miles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who became a leading ideologue in the Christian Identity movement. Fromm, Overfield and several others resigned from the Western Guard in May immediately after accounts of the banquet, and the existence of the Western Guard were made public in a Toronto Sun article. Fromm's departure left the leadership of the Guard in the hands of Don Andrews.

Al Overfield later became associated with the neo-Nazi group the Heritage Front through Wolfgang Droege and Andrews was arrested for his role in a bomb plot and founded the white supremacist Nationalist Party of Canada when his bail conditions banned him from associating with the Western Guard.

Fromm graduated from university with an education degree, and worked as a school teacher with the Peel Region Board of Education. He tried to distance himself for a time from groups that were visibly linked to explicitly racist and neo-Nazi beliefs. He founded "Countdown" which led to three organizations that attempted to make far-right views palatable to the mainstream.

Fromm was elected as a Catholic school trustee serving on the Metro Toronto Separate School Board from 1976 to 1978.

In 1979, he founded "Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform" (C-FAR) a "Canada First" group that opposed foreign aid to third world nations. Though C-FAR was founded specifically to address the foreign aid issue, it campaigns on a number of questions of both domestic and foreign policy including crime and punishment, multiculturalism, immigration and other issues. It sponsors lectures by well-knowns of the far right and publishes pamphlets and books mostly on racial and immigration issues.

In 1980, he founded the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE) which was created in opposition to the establishment of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. CAFE has been active defending the rights of accused anti-Semites, racists and Holocaust deniers against prosecution under hate crimes and human rights legislation.

The third group he founded was the "Canada First Immigration Reform Committee" which advocates reduced immigration, and opposes immigration by non-whites. These three groups still exist today and are still led by Fromm. Their membership and mandates overlap, and they are essentially a single organization for all intents and purposes. Fromm's leadership of these groups has given him some access to media, such as being invited onto radio talk shows and occasionally being quoted in newspapers or having a letter to the editor published.

Fromm also founded Canadian Friends of Rhodesia in the late 1970s to support the white minority rule regime of Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front. In the mid to late 1980s, Fromm's organizations were involved in advocacy on behalf of South Africa's apartheid regime and opposing the movement to impose economic sanctions on the country.

Fromm attempted to enter mainstream political activity by joining the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He was elected treasurer of "PC Metro", a network of 31 Toronto PC riding associations on April 15, 1981. He angered many people and embarrassed both the federal and Ontario Progressive Conservatives when a profile in the Globe and Mail quoted him saying that breeding a "supreme race" for intelligence was a good idea and calling for Vietnamese refugees to be sent to "desert islands" off the Philippines and Indonesia rather than be accepted into Canada where they would "upset the racial balance". His comments resulted in Progressive Conservative Premier William Davis being asked in the legislature whether he is willing "to tolerate such neo-fascist, if not fascist, ideas within the Conservative Party." Federal Progressive Conservative immigration critic Chris Speyer attempted to distance the party from Fromm's views saying his remarks "are entirely his and certainly don't represent the views of the party or the caucus." Federal PC president Peter Blaikie asked Fromm to resign from the local executive telling the press on April 30, 1981 "I'm not going to comment on the state of Mr. Fromm's mind. It's quite clear that that article, accurate or inaccurate, sets out a position which is clearly at variance with that of the party," and that the issue "has created some difficulty and embarrassment for the party," Mr. Blaikie said, telling a press conference that he had "in the interests of the party, requested his resignation" as PC Metro treasurer calling it "a question of party unity" and that Fromm had agreed to Blaikie's request.

He was an active support of right-wing Member of Parliament John A. Gamble's unsuccessful bid to win the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1983. Fromm's work with Gamble continued beyond the unsuccessful leadership bid and included work in the World Anti-Communist League. In 1993, Gamble was rejected as a candidate for the Reform Party of Canada because of his long association with Fromm and other racist activists.

In the late 1980s, Fromm was himself an active member of the Reform Party of Canada, but was essentially expelled in late 1988 when leader Preston Manning sent Fromm a letter asking him to "dissociate" himself from the party in October, 1988 following complaints by party members about the racist tenor of a speech Fromm made at a local Reform Party gathering. He was a candidate for the far-right Confederation of Regions Party in the November 1988 federal election receiving 258 votes in Mississauga East.

Open links to fascists

In the 1990s, Fromm spoke at several Heritage Front events, including a celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday. A video surfaced of him addressing rally and referring to Canadian fascist John Ross Taylor as a "hero". Taylor was one of two Canadian Nazis interned by the government during World War II. The video shows Fromm standing beside a Nazi flag during the Heritage Front's "Martyr's Day". The rally included shouts from the audience of "Sieg Heil!", "white power", "Hail The Order!" and "nigger, nigger, nigger, out out out". These types of incidents led to Fromm's dismissal from his school teaching job in 1997.

In 2000, a published report alleged that developer Martin Weiche, a former leader of the Canadian Nazi Party, was one of Fromm's major financial backers. Fromm has shared a stage with Holocaust denier David Irving, and has organized rallies in support of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. B'nai Brith legal counsel Anita Bromberg has said "Fromm is the one who has put himself out there most directly as supporting Zundel. He looks as though he's waiting in the wings." In 2004, Fromm was associated with David Duke's efforts to unite the white nationalists with the New Orleans Protocol. In the 2000s, he has tried to revive the display of the Canadian Red Ensign flag.

In January 2005, Fromm defended himself at a disciplinary hearing of the Ontario College of Teachers against charges including "failure to maintain professional standards; not complying with college regulations and bylaws; disgraceful, dishonourable, unprofessional and/or unbecoming conduct; and practising while in a conflict of interest." If found guilty by the college, Fromm could lose his licence to teach in Ontario. Following three days of hearings, further deliberation was postponed. The hearing resumed in April 2007.

Fromm has acted as an advocate for individuals on the far right who have been called before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Among those Fromm has represented is Glenn Bahr, the co-founder and former leader of Western Canada For Us, and Terry Tremaine, former University of Saskatchewan mathematics lecturer. In 2006, he represented the Canadian Heritage Alliance at a CHRT hearing in Toronto, and supported John Beck of the group BC White Pride at a CHRT hearing in Penticton, British Columbia. Fromm has been described as a mentor to younger "far-right extremists" such as Melissa Guille and Jason Ouwendyk.

Electoral activity

In 1976, Fromm was elected to the Metro Toronto Separate School Board. He was defeated in his 1978 attempt to win re-election. In the 1988 federal election, Fromm ran as a candidate for the Confederation of Regions Party in the riding of Mississauga East, receiving 288 votes. He was a candidate for the public school board in Peel Region during the 1997 municipal elections and received 827 votes, 10.39% of ballots cast, coming in last of four candidates. His name was the first on the ballot which may have allowed his vote total to be inflated due to the primacy effect in a four-way contest amongst independents.

Public opposition

Fromm has experienced a significant amount of public opposition over the years. His "Alternative Forum" meetings have been the targets of protests, and have been disrupted and occasionally shut down by protesters.

On August 19, 2006, Fromm's Port Credit, Ontario home was besieged by dozens of anti-fascist youth, who surrounded the home, challenging Fromm to come outside. Although he reportedly remained locked inside an upstairs washroom, approximately half a dozen neo-Nazi gang members were present outside his townhouse. Over fifty police officers were on call to protect Fromm and his neo-Nazi supporters. The area was plastered in flyers advertising Fromm's home address, and far-right political affiliations. The protest ended without incident.

Fromm scuffled in an elevator with members of the Jewish Defense League while on his way to an April 19, 2007 Ontario College of Teachers hearing into his conduct. The protesters claimed that Fromm shoved them while Fromm asserts that the JDL members lunged at him. Police arrested two protesters charging them with assault, assault police and obstructing.

Fromm has also been known to expose individuals to potential harm by posting personal information about them on the internet. One such occurrence was on stormfront.org . , where Fromm appears regularly, in which he commented on some personal emails, he had received from a person, which Fromm had forwarded to a friend on stormfront who posted them on the site. His friend, and head of the Canadian Heritage Alliance, Melissa Guille, attempted to identify the writer to the public by stating where the writer lived (she was not correct in the location however it was close enough that the individual could have easily been found, should someone decide to seek him out). Both Fromm and Guille had corresponded by email with that writer in the past (but not nearly as often as the 200 times stated).

See also

• Ron Gostick
• Doug Christie

External links

• ARA article on Paul Fromm
• One People's Project on Paul Fromm