How would you respond if a cult with violent fantasies tried to make your town their HQ?
The town of Richmound, Saskatchewan, recently stated a few things Canadians could do to support it as it faces an unwelcomed occupation of a local school building by Qanon conspiracist Romana Didulo and her cult-like following of devotees, who have begun to issue death threats and otherwise cause chaos, public anxiety and disruption in the community. One of those things it suggested was that Canadians could write Minister Dominic Leblanc on behalf of Richmound as it faces this crisis. I took time this morning to do that and sent the following to the Hon. Mr. Leblanc.
Dear Mr. Leblanc,
I write today in support of the people of Richmound Saskatchewan who are facing a threat to their community in the form of the self-proclaimed ‘Queen of Canada’ Romana Didulo, and her devotees who have occupied an abandoned school there. But this letter is also an opportunity, through the case of Didulo, to raise concerns more broadly about the rise of right-wing extremism and the confounding new forms of anti-governmental and anti-societal “conspiracism” placing strain on Canada’s institutions and citizens today.
As a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, my dissertation research examines the ways in which misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theory rhetoric is impacting public policy discourse today, particularly regarding climate change and city planning. But it was through my experience as a public health professional in the Office of the Chief MHO for Vancouver Coastal Health during the covid-19 pandemic that I first came to hear about ‘The Qanon Queen of Canada” as she had begun issuing calls for the public execution of healthcare workers, who like me, had been involved in the pandemic response, and in particular Canada’s world-leading immunization campaign.
Today, two years later, the mayor and residents of Richmound are being hounded by Didulo and her cult-like band of followers, as she once again makes her ‘Royal Decrees’ and proclamations calling for the public execution of townspeople who have clearly seen her and her coterie for the public nuisance and risk they are. And while some may see her threats as hyperbolic, performative, and hollow, her track record of causing harm to people has grown over the past two years and should stand as evidence that she cares little for the harm she does to others.
One of the few academics who has been paying close attention to the case of Romana Didulo is Prof. Christine Sarteschi, of Chatham University. Prof. Sarteschi specializes in extremism, homicidal ideation, and recently has begun to examine the areas of pseudo-legalism and the sovereign citizen movement. Didulo presents a unique case study intersecting these concerns. Sarteschi describes Didulo in the following terms in a recently published peer review article[1]
Didulo is and remains one of the most active conspiracy figures currently operating in North America. No one else in Canada who expresses this kind of radical agenda has accumulated a similar sized follower base. Didulo regularly engages in stochastic terrorism: inciting speech used to encourage others to engage in violent acts (Sarteschi, 2023)
Evidence of the risk Didulo poses to the public begins with the firsthand accounts of how she treats her own devotees from those who have managed to break free of her thrall. As Sarteschi once again notes:
Didulo’s former cadres described “never-ending” abuse at her hands. They regarded her as dangerous. She threatened to kill them several times, including throwing one individual from a helicopter into a volcano (Sarteschi, 2023)
And then there is the growing list of people whose lives have been thrown into chaos after following Didulo’s decrees and orders and proclamations that they no longer have to pay their utility bills and mortgages — as the Queen of Canada has made sweeping promises to overhaul the monetary system, even introducing her own currency, and to release secret technology that will cure all diseases while she’s at it. In addition to detailing this in her recent paper, Dr. Sarteschi has kept a running tally of Didulo’s victims on her Twitter (X) account, where it seems almost weekly that someone posts that their electricity is being shut off, their phone being disconnected, or their home being repossessed, after they followed Didulo’s orders and claim their independence from corporations and disassociation from Canadian contract law.
When public utility staff or others then inform these people of the reality of their circumstances, they are often informed in response that they will face a military tribunal and likely be executed for crimes against humanity, or some variation thereof.
This has been happening, and appears to have gained momentum, for over two years now. And it has led me to question whether there is a double standard in the application of Canadian law and the resources of national security when it comes to right-wing extremism as opposed to progressive forms of activism, or if Canada’s current policies and laws just simply fall short of being able to process the new and disruptive forms of contention broadly referred to as ‘conspiracism’.
Canadians have become increasingly aware of the fact that since the early 2010s Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies began monitoring environmental advocacy organizations and First Nations opposed to oil and gas pipelines, positioning them as potentially violent threats to the national interest. CSIS even mulled over whether or not First Nations, like the Wet’suwet’en, could be classed as terrorists for opposing pipelines on their lands. When environmental activists suspended themselves from a bridge in Vancouver in 2018 it took only 35 hours for RCMP to bring them into custody for “mischief”. The Ottawa “Freedom Convoy” by comparison, a right-wing circus of anti-vaxxers and anti-governmental conspiracy theorists which included Romana Didulo (Seen there burning a Canadian flag) made life miserable for the businesses and residents of Ottawa for three weeks. Lastly, for years in Vancouver and other Canadian communities we’ve seen low-income residents, the homeless, and people who use drugs apprehended under the mental health act and taken into custody every day for saying something threatening or acting irrationally, menacing, or otherwise abnormal. Conversely, the covid-deniers, anti-vaxxers and conspiracists who have propelled the wave that Didulo now sits atop have clogged Canada’s court system with absurd pseudolegal gibberish and absurd sovereign citizen nonsense as they behave outside the norms of Canadian society. Like them, Didulo and her followers appear to say something threatening, irrational, menacing and certainly abnormal almost daily, as spending 15 minutes reading any one of journalist Mack Lamoureux’s articles or Sarteschi’s will attest.
Yet Queen Romana, who openly issues death threats and calls for the execution of public officials, healthcare workers, and Canadian citizens; Who tells her followers to shoot migrants; who convinces people like a confidence man that they don’t have to pay their bills and mortgages but should send her their Canadian dollars so that she can issue them “Loyalty Money”; who, like a spiritual huckster and medical quack, promises healing ‘med-beds’ to people facing grave illness; who has scammed and ritually and habitually abused her own devotees; and who has spread misinformation about vaccines, taxes, and other things to Canadians appears to have grown her following. She is putting lives at risk along the way, with very little interest or resistance from Canadian law enforcement as her bizarre cult-like rise causes “True harm” as another article by Prof. Sarteschi explores.
I implore you Minister Leblanc to please take the novel threats that Romana Didulo and other right-wing populist conspiracists present to the public seriously. As another article in Westpoint Military Academy’s Combatting Terrorism Center journal the Sentinel by Canadian researchers Amarnath Amarasingam and Marc Andre Argentino demonstrates, conspiracist movements that appear ridiculous and absurd and thus be dismissed by some as silly sideshows, can quickly evolve into violent populist phenomenon that have implications for safety and security.
I worry that failure to hold people like Romana Didulo accountable for their actions will only embolden other would-be charismatic conspiracists to emulate the model she has been allowed to develop over the past two-years which has now claimed Richmound Saskatchewan as its base of operations to the horror and dismay of its townspeople. If Canadian law-enforcement and government policies are simply not equipped to deal with these strange new forms of anti-government extremism, then I encourage you and your colleagues in the House of Parliament to take a closer look at this problem and update our laws and regulations and policies to reflect these new risks to the public.
Sincerely,
Wes Regan
PhD Student
University of British Columbia
[1] Sarteschi, C., (2023) The Social Phenomenon of Romana Didulo: “Queen of Canada”, International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation (IJCAM), DOI: 10.54208/1000/0006/002 https://www.ijcam.org/articles/the-social-phenomenon-of-romana-didulo