Montreal gym member allegedly confronted over shirt with Nazi symbols

The Gym du Plateau on Mont-Royal Avenue in Montreal. (Source: Google Street View)

A Montreal gym has publicly condemned antisemitism after a member allegedly wore a t-shirt bearing Nazi propaganda while working out and was confronted by another client.

The Gym du Plateau on Mont-Royal Avenue published a statement on its Facebook and Instagram accounts on Tuesday, stating, “Our gym does not tolerate hateful, violent, or discriminatory ideologies, including any form of Nazi propaganda or symbols. These ideologies are completely incompatible with our human, athletic, and community values.”

The statement came hours after a post on Reddit was published by the person who says he confronted the man who wore the shirt. The online post now has more than 400 comments.

CTV News interviewed the member who confronted the man with the shirt. He claimed that staff didn’t take the matter seriously when he brought it to their attention and said the gym could have taken stronger action by banning the man from the facility instead of just asking him to avoid wearing the offensive symbols.

Brandon, who asked that only his first name be used out of fear of retaliation for speaking out, said he immediately cancelled his membership after the incident.

“It made me feel, first, shocked that anybody would feel comfortable wearing that in public,” he said.

Shirt contained Nazi dog whistles, witness alleges

According to Brandon, there was a Totenkopf on top of the phrase “Never Lose Your Smile” on the back of the man’s t-shirt.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a New York advocacy organization that combats antisemitism, the Totenkopf is a neo-Nazi symbol bearing a skull and crossbones, and was a symbol used by Adolf Hitler’s SS paramilitary force during the Second World War.

“Following the war, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists resurrected the Totenkopf as a hate symbol because of its importance to the SS, and it has been a common hate symbol since,” the ADL says on its website.

The ADL adds that the phrase “Never Lose Your Smile” is a neo-Nazi dog whistle — a form of coded language that appears innocuous but carries a hidden meaning — that is “shared alongside antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric, as well as romanticized depictions of Hitler.” Such dog whistles are often used online to bypass social media filters.

CTV News has not been able to verify that the man wore those symbols on his shirt, however, the gym acknowledged in its statement this week that “the customer in question was immediately instructed to remove these items and to refrain from wearing such messages or symbols in our facility.”

“This incident involves a single individual and in no way reflects our gym, our team, or our community as a whole,” reads part of the statement.

The gym did not respond to interview requests from CTV News.

The man who wore the shirt appears to have deleted his social media profiles and efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Heated confrontation at the gym

On the day of the incident on Jan. 19, Brandon said he first alerted the front desk, telling a staff member about the shirt and showing him how the symbols are described by the ADL. But several minutes later, when he saw that man was getting ready to leave, Brandon confronted him near the entrance.

“I say, ‘Just out of curiosity, do you know what is on the back of your shirt?’ And he looks at me, and he says, ‘Yes.’ And I say, ‘You know what that symbol means?’ And he looks at me, he says, ‘What are you, woke?’ and I said, ‘No, what are you, a Nazi?’ And he said, ‘Yes. What are you going to do about it?’” Brandon recalled.

“And then he stood up because he was sitting down to put his boots on, and he started approaching me, puffing his chest. And I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m not going to fight you, but you can’t wear that stuff here.’ And he said, ‘Call the police.’ And then he left the gym. All of this was within earshot … right next to [the front desk].”

He said he asked the staff member to intervene, but was told “there’s nothing I can do.” He said he wanted to cancel his membership on the spot, but was told to do so via email, which he did.

“So all your life you’re told, like, if you are having an issue, speak to somebody in a position of authority, that’s what I do. And nothing happens during that whole thing. I just felt like I was crazy,” he told CTV News.

“I was really disappointed with how they handled it.”

Shirt’s symbols raise questions about new hate crime bill

The incident at the Montreal gym comes at a time when the federal government is trying to pass a law that would make it illegal to display symbols linked to terrorist organizations as well as the Nazi swastika and the SS bolts. A provision in C-9 would also prohibit “a symbol that so nearly resembles” those symbols.

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Evan Balgord, the executive director of Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said the Totenkopf is “unmistakable hate symbol” and that there is a need for greater clarity in the Criminal Code for “a very small number of symbols that have unmistakable meanings.”

At the same time, he said he’s not surprised by the incident at the gym. Balgord said the neo-Nazi and white nationalist movement “is the largest it’s ever been in this nation’s history” and that people associated with it are feeling “more emboldened and showing it more in public.”

“And all of us have a kind of community responsibility to make sure that those kinds of actions have consequences,” he said.

The bill is still being studied by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights amid scrutiny over what constitutes a hate symbol. If it passes in the House, the bill will be reviewed by the Senate.

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Frédéric Bérard, a constitutional lawyer and lecturer in the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law, said he hopes that the Totenkopf would be considered a Nazi symbol under the proposed law, but in its current form, there is some grey area.

“Clearly, the person that could be arrested and accused of wearing that symbol would probably plead, I assume: I had no clue, I didn’t know, I thought that was cool, I thought it was sarcastic, I thought it was, you know, whatever. And here, again, this is why this is so difficult to tackle the freedom of speech challenge,” he said.

“But if you take a look at the objective of C-9, I think that the court will have to take this into consideration, the fact that the objective of parliament here is sending a strong message this kind of hatred symbol, we don’t want that in Canada.”

That sentiment is what drove Brandon to write about the experience on Reddit on Tuesday.

“The fact that somebody feels comfortable wearing a shirt that is effectively wishing death to many other cultures is disgusting to me and I think it has no place in a polite society that we live in. I think that it stands against everything that this country stands for,” he said.

“I’ve been given a very privileged place in this life. I’m a white man, tall. I don’t feel threatened in many situations, but I know that there’s so many people that do and there’s so many people who in this situation, they would have liked to have spoken up, but they don’t feel safe doing it. The least that I can do is say something. I can take advantage of that privilege that I’m given and use it to do some kind of good.”