Dave Selvers Continues to Post Racist Propaganda Online
Dave Selvers Continues to Post Racist Propaganda Online
Representative of Local Jewish Community Aghast at Antisemitic Facebook Post
In 2019, one of the most high-profile news stories from Sault Ste. Marie involved a local crane company owner, Dave Selvers, and his online antics.
At the time, Selvers was helping to organize a local ‘Yellow Vests’ support group. His blog drew the attention of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, who highlighted a slew of crude and hateful comments Selvers had made about immigrants, people of colour, and women (among others).
Credit: Canadian Anti-Hate Network / Facebook (Dave Selvers)
The reaction was swift and overwhelming critical.
Comment sections on local news sites bristled with satisfaction that Selvers would face consequences and he drew several strong rebukes, including from Sault Mayor Christian Provenzano, Algoma Steel, Sault College, and Batchewana First Nation.
His blog was removed from the Internet.
Selvers ended up selling his crane company, with both vendors and his landlord vowing to sever ties with him.
Like most controversies, it flared up and then faded from public attention.
Although Selvers’s expression may have warranted criminal charges, it appears as though that never happened.
Efforts to locate criminal charges in Ontario’s online case system were unsuccessful and the Manager of Corporate Communications, Planning, and Research at the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service (SSMPS), Lincoln Louttit, couldn’t reveal details about potential investigations.
In any case, Selvers is at it again.
Credit: Facebook (Dave Selvers - July 12, 2022)
A Facebook post from Selvers in July of this year continues where his now defunct blog left off.
In response to the above post, a spokesperson for the Northern Ontario Jewish community is aghast. On the condition of anonymity, they responded:
“Anyone with any understanding of or concern with rising antisemitism will be very troubled by this post and by the comments. Clearly, Selvers is invoking the stereotyped image of the greedy Jew, and connecting that with being a merchant only invokes a centuries old antisemitic trope of the greedy Jew… Good people everywhere should be outraged by this post and by the comments. In fact, I have received messages from Jews and non-Jews who are shocked, hurt, and angry.”
The representative asked for Selvers and Dr. Bryan Dumanski - a local chiropractor who commented on the post - to remove their post and comment while issuing a public apology and committing to taking a course on antisemitism (which are offered by a range of Jewish organizations in Canada).
They also called upon Facebook to ban Selvers and improve the screening process for hateful content on its platform.
A formal complaint has been made to police.
The Manager of the Online Hate Research and Education Project of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, Etienne Quintal, says that the ‘Happy Merchant’ is considered “an explicit hate symbol,” something “unambiguously tied to the promotion of hate.”
According to Hatepedia, a website developed through the Toronto Holocaust Education Centre’s Online Hate Research and Education Project:
“Happy Merchant is an antisemitic meme depicting a stereotypical representation of a Jewish character with a large hooked nose, kippah, beard, and clasped hands. Happy Merchant is one of the most popular antisemitic symbols found online, and is often used to invoke antisemitic conspiracy theories. Its appearance is heavily inspired by historical antisemitic caricatures, notably those produced within Nazi Germany, and was pulled from a comic produced by an infamous white supremacist cartoonist who worked under the pseudonym ‘A. Wyatt Mann.’”
Reflecting a common thread of antisemitic hate propaganda, the meme suggests that Jews are a ‘powerful menace’ and exercise such power for nefarious ends.
Quintal also says that online extremists “use memes like this one in order to give themselves an aura of plausible deniability.” In other words, “they can claim it’s just a joke” or argue that “they didn’t realize the image was antisemitic.”
In addition to the ‘Happy Merchant’ meme, Selvers’s post includes triple parentheses that are usually characteristic of antisemitic hate propaganda.
Again, from Hatepedia:
“Three sets of parentheses, also known as ‘echoes,’ are used on social media and online forums and applied to words describing a person or people to communicate in a derogatory manner that they are Jewish. They’re also sometimes used to imply that a non-Jewish target is secretly or unknowingly Jewish. The meme began as a verbal indication of a subject’s Jewish heritage on far right podcasts, and quickly became textual through parentheses. Before widespread popularity, triple parentheses were an alternative to antisemitic slurs that avoided online hate speech sensors. Since becoming a well-known hate symbol, Jewish social media users have appropriated the triple parentheses as a positive symbol of Jewish pride.”
Dr. Dumanksi made an appearance in previous reporting on the 2019 controversy involving Selvers.
Around the same time, Dumanski and Selvers had advocated for violence online, suggesting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is treasonous and should therefore be executed.
In February of 2019, Dumanski was quoted in a story by David Helwig of SooToday. There, he shrugged off potential criticism, claiming that his advocacy for violence was warranted hyperbole and not to be interpreted literally.
“It’s just a benign blowing off of steam and bloody warranted,” he told SooToday.
When asked about Selvers’s recent post and his comment in response, Dr. Dumanksi said that the comment “blut gelt” - German for ‘blood money’ - referred to the reparations Germany paid to European countries in the wake of the Holocaust and Second World War.
He later referred to Selvers’s post as “quite disturbing and antisemitic” and supported a “quick rejection of toxic material like this.”
While not fully aware of the meaning of the post at the time, Dumanski added: “I did not create the pic nor do I post such rubbish…. I do not share in Mr. Selvers’s crazy antisemitic views and he definitely knows this as I share common ancestry.”
When asked for comment, Mayor Provenzano offered another strong rebuke:
I denounce antisemitism in the strongest possible terms. There is no place for this type of hateful ignorance in our community but it unfortunately exists and social media gives it a reach and platform that it doesn’t deserve. We have to stand strongly and collectively against it.
Louttit says the SSMPS “encourages anyone in our community to report any and all incidents of potential hate crime” and explained the types of incidents that could merit their attention and support:
“A hate crime is a crime motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, nationality, ethnicity, language, colour, religion, gender, age, mental or physical ability or sexual orientation of the victim. A hate/bias incident may include name calling, racial slurs or the distribution of material promoting prejudice, and is motivated by the same factors as hate crime.”
Louttit added that while expression may not surpass the threshold of hate speech prohibitions in the Criminal Code, the SSMPS can nonetheless “assist when people feel targeted by acts of discrimination.”