The fragility of media personalities who are pro-genocide and self-proclaimed enemies of ‘wokeness’ is a sight to behold.
On April 9 I bumped into prominent right-wing Quebec media commentator Richard Martineau on Saint Denis St. so I asked him “What do you think about the genocide in Gaza?”. He didn’t want to talk about it, murmuring about waiting for pizza. Thirteen seconds after I asked the question Martineau snatched my phone, keeping it until I became ever more vocal in demanding it back. He then started mimicking me mockingly when I stuttered in asking a follow up question. Subsequently Martineau lunged towards my phone twice.
Martineau has done a half dozen radio segments related to the incident, portraying himself as a victim while lying about my initial tone, language of communication, my distance from him and the time between my question and him snatching my phone. He had a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) spokesperson on his program who labeled me an “antisemite” and Martineau claimed, “it’s a good thing I wasn’t wearing a kippah, otherwise that guy would have physically attacked me.” Another clip he produced was headlined “Richard Martineau attacked by a “crazy” known for the wrong reasons.
When Le Devoir literature critic Marie-Élaine Guay defended my intervention on her Facebook page Martineau went ballistic. According to Guay, Martineau and his partner Sophie Durocher, a prominent media commentator who was with him, “promote a discourse that fuels prejudice and, I’d almost say violence, against Muslims, feminists and non-binary and trans people. It’s them who harass and yet immediately when they face the same tactics they self-victimize. I’m 100% for his interventions in public.”
In response Martineau called Guay an “idiot” and “stupid” in a clip headlined “Pauvree Conne” (loosely translated to “poor bitch” or “poor cunt”). Martineau took aim at her employer, possibly seeking to have her fired. His attacks led to violent threats against Guay.
Martineau and Durocher are hypocrites. In the video Durocher immediately told me to stop filming because I didn’t have Martineau’s consent, prompting him to grab my phone. The media company Martineau and Durocher work for regularly questions people on the street and even at people’s houses. Two weeks earlier Durocher did a long interview with Rebel News journalist Alexandra Lavoie in which she complains about having been impeded from filming Muslims praying in public at a Palestine demonstration. In the clip Durocher repeatedly complains about blocking someone from filming in public and asking questions on the street.
In one of the radio segments Martineau’s colleague, Benoit Dutrizack, suggests I should be jailed for questioning Martineau. On Friday Le Journal de Montréal published a story about Martineau seeking to press charges against me headlined “Richard Martineau files complaint against a ‘madman’ who harassed him in the street.”
In response to the suggestion my questioning Martineau was illegal University of Montréal law professor Frédéric Bérard published a long post noting: “The street and the sidewalk are public places, where the expectation of privacy is almost zero; 2) Martineau is a long-standing public figure; 3) It is certainly not pleasant to be filmed for the purposes of an impromptu interrogation about one’s silence in the face of a genocide (especially when one has relentlessly attacked Muslims, after 700 columns judged essentially Islamophobic by a master’s thesis evaluated by a university jury), but the fact remains that this is in no way criminal.”
In a sign of the unhinged character of the right-wing media sphere amidst Donald Trump’s rise and 18 months of Zionists calling for greater repression, Martineau’s colleagues suggested what I did should be compared to an “active shooter incident”. On Monday Mario Dumont interviewed a self defence expert about the incident who repeatedly compared questioning a prominent media personality about genocide to an “active shooter incident”. The segment suggested violence was a legitimate response to my questioning Martineau.
On top of inciting violence, Martineau smeared me and others as a foreign agent. In an interview with Quebec Green party leader Alex Tyrell Martineau suggested I was a Russian agent, which Tyrell pushed back on. In response, Martineau told his listeners the next day that two police officers contacted him to say Tyrell was a “Russian agent”. While Martineau is clearly comfortable with lying, it would be scandalous if the police were engaged in this smear.
This media harassment is part of a broader campaign seeking to delegitimize and criminalize opposition to genocide. Palestine solidarity activists are labeled ‘antisemites’, ‘foreign agents’ and ‘supporters of Hamas’ as part of bid to muzzle opposition to Canada’s complicity in war crimes.
Asking public figures about genocide and Canada’s complicity is not a crime—it’s journalism. Reporters, human rights organizations and civil liberties defenders need to pushback against this McCarthyism and stand up for press freedom, peaceful protest and the right to challenge Canada’s foreign policy without fear of criminalization.
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