OPINION: Media Response to Thomas Zaugg’s Recent Mental Health Crisis Despicable And Unnecessary
Updated: Jan 16, 2021
By Alex Van Hamme
Recently an RCMP SWAT team was called to handle a tense standoff with Thomas Zaugg at his Saskatchewan home. Zaugg, who I once interviewed for Free Bird Media, is known for defacing the Toronto City Hall Cenotaph in 2019. He was reportedly making online threats from his residence and was also seen walking around his community armed with a crossbow and other weapons. After a standoff between Zaugg and authorities lasting many hours, Zaugg eventually was taken into custody by the RCMP and taken to a hospital for treatment and a mental health assessment. Charges were not filed against him at the time.
What I find greatly concerning about the incident is the way the incident was handled by the media, in particular an article published in the Regina Leader-Post by Mark Melnychuk. The article concerns me for two reasons. Firstly, Melnchuk was the only mainstream journalist to publicly doxx Zaugg, revealing his name and where he lives. Zaugg is a vulnerable person experiencing paranoia and a serious ongoing mental health crisis. He is known for being manic but not violent. Authorities have been dealing with him for years, and in the build up to the most recent incident the authorities were being made aware of the situation as it had been developing by multiple sources. Choosing to release those personal details about Zaugg was unnecessary, and potentially harmful to him. Although Zaugg is suffering from mental health issues, I do not find it far fetched at all to think that antifa thugs will come to his home to harass and possibly assault him if they know where he lives. Even Harvey Lonsberry, the mayor of his community where he lives, did not wish to identify Zaugg by name. In an age where mainstream media drones on and on about “hate” and anti-white identity politics, choosing to doxx Zaugg in such a way is not a demonstration of empathetic behavior, nor it is something I personally would ever do. It’s just a way to bully someone who is ill and also vulnerable.
What I find even more disturbing than this alone, however, is the fact that the article is another example of an ongoing trend of journalists working for mainstream outlets citing extremely biased and/or weak sources as experts on a topic or field to support their articles. They essentially do this to attack or bully certain individuals they have a personal or political bias against. This obvious media bias is overtly left-wing and progressive, and in this case, Melnchuk chose to cite Kevin Metcalf, a well known political radical with connections to antifa who has been arrested multiple times and was fired from the CJFE (Canadian Journalists For Free Expression) as a source for some reason. Metcalf himself is a character and I have had the very unfortunate experience of having to interact with him myself on multiple occasions. For example, here is FBM footage of Metcalf being arrested at a PPC rally where he was harassing people and blocking entrance to the building. I have witnessed authorities deal with Metcalf multiple times, and he always seems mentally unhinged. He was eventually charged with obstructing the police after other thuggish protestors were arrested at the rally for intimation and a list of other charges.
Melnchuk was made aware of who Metcalf was, his prior arrests, and his connection to extreme politics after his article was published, but did not respond to emails sent to him regarding the issue, or asking him to remove Zaugg’s name and address from his article.
Melnchuk’s article is just the most recent example of this problem of obvious far-left media bias dominating mainstream Canadian media. It uses the same basic technique that Emma McIntosh used to write an extremely dishonest smear piece on Free Bird Media and Cosmin Dzsurdza, where she referenced Evan Balgord to make the false claim that Free Bird Media was a far-right platform, or that we promoted people we interviewed such as Richard Spencer. McIntosh never bothered to communicate with me personally or respond to my emails explaining the inaccuracies or her article to her. She intentionally disregarded the fact that FBM was a Free Speech platform in her article and choose to portray us as “far-right” despite the majority of our content not focusing on the political right. McIntosh is particularly concerning because in her bio she describes herself as an investigative journalist interested in "misinformation and disinformation" in the 2019 federal election. However, despite this she is clearly producing dishonest propaganda (which has been piggybacked on by other sources, which is really the biggest problem, because that's how these journalists manufacture credibility for their nonsense). Despite labelling herself an "investigative journalist" she got the basic facts about FBM wrong, falsely claimed we promoted Richard Spencer (interviews are clearly not endorsements) and refused to have a dialogue or respond to the people she was writing about. Citing a biased source like Balgord in her article was how she gave the illusion of credibility to her article.
Balgord himself is quite a political dissident in many ways, and he and Metcalf are very familiar with each other. Both of them promote progressive far-left politics and are known associates with antifa.
For an more elaborate explanation on Evan Balgord and the grift of the organization he works for (CAHN), please read THIS excellent article by John Klein in the C2C Journal titled "The Wrath of KAHN". He goes into depth on the "anti-hate" network and discusses how statistics are manipulated to seem like the threat of certain demographic groups are an exaggerated threat in this country. He explains how CAHN tries to be Canada's SPLC, and how they target innocent individuals through their journalism.
Here is video footage showing Metcalf partaking in antifa violence at Toronto City Hall back in 2017.
My personal opinion as to the reason why people such as Metcalf, Balgord and McIntosh have absolutely no problem smearing, slandering and attacking people like Cosmin, myself or Zaugg is because we are all white men, and from the viewpoint of their progressive politics, we aren’t worthy of basic respect or human dignity. Politically and morally, they see us as not being a part of their team or tribe. I think that people like Metcalf, and the other cronies at CAHN, monitor white individuals with mental health problems because if those individuals eventually have an episode and become violent, this can be used to further bolster their manufactured narrative that cis white men are "Canada's real terrorists" and that "white supremacy is on the rise". I personally cannot see a journalist like Balgord, McIntosh, or Melnychuk posting the name and address of a non-white person like they did to Thomas.
People like Evan Balgord, Emma McIntosh and Kevin Metcalf are anything but objective. They are highly biased political activists bringing their far-left wing progressive politics directly into their journalism by citing each other and piggybacking off each other's work.
As a man of honour, I understand that people such as this exist and will always exist in society, but I feel absolutely no obligation to stoop to their level of behavior when it comes to media or politics. I prefer to keep my soul clean.