Canadian agent provocateur speaks.

Notorious Canadian racist Grant Bristow has now corroborated publicly what THE NEW AMERICAN reported years ago: that he was a paid government agent provocateur, whose vicious diatribes and violent behavior were used to demonize conservatives and pro-lifers and to justify passage of oppressive "hate crimes" legislation. In our February 2, 1998 cover story "Radicalizing the Right," THE NEW AMERICAN described how governments prone to usurpation--our own included--have "a vested interest in creating an equally lawless controlled opposition" in order to justify cracking down on all domestic dissent.

Noting that in socialist Canada, "citizens can be sent to prison for expression or publication of certain 'extremist' political views or the dissemination of hate propaganda," we described Bristow's career as a co-founder of Canada's racist Heritage Front organization and a paid informant of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

While on the CSIS payroll as part of "Operation Governor," Bristow--a longtime drug abuser and former strip-club bouncer--was caught on video urging neo-Nazi skinheads to commit acts of violence, vandalism and arson. He was also involved in efforts to infiltrate members of the racist Heritage Front into Canada's populist Reform Party, which had upset the political equilibrium between Canada's establishment parties. He was also privy to an effort to frame Canadian pro-lifers for the 1992 fire-bombing of an abortion mill owned by Henry Morgenthaler, one of North America's most powerful abortion activists.

In an interview published in the September 2004 issue of The Walrus, a Canadian monthly, Bristow elaborates further on his officially sanctioned work as an agent provocateur. With the "knowledge and approval of his CSIS handler," reported a Canadian Press summary of the interview, Bristow coordinated and took part in a campaign "to harass key anti-racist activists at home and work." This eventually led to a May 1993 riot in which "police, anti-racist activists and about 60 Heritage Front members clashed in a wild melee in downtown Ottawa." (It's important to recognize that the hard left "anti-racist" groups include many radicals at least as violent as their "right-wing" antagonists.)

Following the 1994 exposure of Bristow's role as a mole and provocateur, Elisse Hategan, a defector from the Heritage Front, "told a Commons committee the front would never have been so effective without Bristow's work."