In what have proved to be prescient comments made during an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly on November 2, Canadian ex-extremist Daniel Gallant expressed his deep concerns about conditions being ripe for a homeland terror attack.
“A domestic attack here is inevitable,” Mr Gallant, now a respected anti-violence activist who set up a non-profit organisation called Exit Canada to help people disengage from extremist groups, said over the phone. “We’ve been lucky in that we’ve had several bombing plots foiled, mainly because we’ve had members of the Muslim community coming forward because when people are becoming radicalised, they don’t want [the whole community] to become tarnished and it’s not Islamic.”
But the confluence of various risk factors – including sophisticated and interlinked extremist groups with compelling social media campaigns that attract youth looking for meaning and identity in life – had created simmering tensions that were poised to erupt into terrorist action, he said.
“We have so many extremists interlinked now that there’s going to be no way of stopping them all,” he added. “There are crossovers that we are not even aware of… But the organised terrorist networks are more identifiable for authorities. So we are going to see more lone wolf attacks.”
There have been two terror attacks in as many days Canada this week: first a soldier died when he was run over by a radicalised man in Quebec and then a terrorist shot a ceremonial guard dead and sent federal parliament into lockdown in a separate incident in Ottawa early today (AEST).
Canada, which has joined military action against ISIS, raised its domestic terror threat level from low to medium on Tuesday.
Explaining why he predicted a home-grown attack, Mr Gallant said Canadian politics were also fuelling unrest, with Prime Minster Stephen Harper firmly aligned to the state of Israel and taking an increasingly hard line against groups that spoke out against his government’s anti-terror legislation.
In a follow-up phone interview with The Weekly today, Mr Gallant said the first attack had set the ball in motion for further terrorism. “Individual lone wolf attacks are much more effective [than organised plots] because they create more terror – so their goal is accomplished and the individual doing it is seen as a martyr,” he said. “[We are being told] let’s not get shaken by these attacks and that they are isolated but people are generally ignorant about the reality.”
More resources need to be put into prevention and intervention as well as tackling suspects who are already radicalised, he said.
Mr Gallant is an anti-violence activist, counsellor and researcher based in British Columbia, Canada. He uses his knowledge as an ex-right-wing extremist, who led a violent and criminal life following an abusive childhood but decided to turn his life around following the birth of his son in 2001, to inform his work in helping people disengage from extremist groups.
