Paul Fromm (white supremacist)
Frederick Paul Fromm (born January 3 1949), known as Paul Fromm, is a Canadian far-right political figure with links to Neo-nazis though he denies being one himself. He is based in the Toronto area.
In 1967, as a student at the University of Toronto's St. Michael's College, Paul Fromm co-founded the Edmund Burke Society with Don Andrews, who would later found the racist Nationalist Party of Canada, and Al Overfield who later became a leader in the Heritage Front. The Edmund Burke Society was a right-wing anti-communist group which eventually became the white supremacist Western Guard Party. Fromm left the group in 1972.
Fromm graduated from university with an education degree and obtained work as a school teacher with the Peel Region Board of Education. He tried to distance himself for a time from groups that were visibly linked to explicitly racist and neo-Nazi beliefs and founded organizations that attempted to make similar views palatable to the mainstream. In 1979, he founded "Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform" (C-FAR) a "Canada First" group that opposed foreign aid to third world nations. Though C-FAR's was founded specifically to address the foreign aid issue it campaigns on a number of questions of both domestic and foreign policy including crime and punishment, multiculturalism, immigration and other issues. It sponsors lectures by well-knowns of the far right and has a line of pamphlets and books mostly on racial and immigration issues. The next year he founded the "Canadian Association for Free Expression" (CAFE) which was created in opposition to the establishment of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and has been active defending the rights of accused anti-Semites, racists and Holocaust deniers against prosecution under hate crimes and human rights legislation. The third group he founded was the "Canada First Immigration Reform Committee" which advocates reduced immigration, and opposes immigration by non-whites. These three groups still exist today and are still led by Fromm. Their membership and madates overlap and they are essentially a single organization for all intents and purposes. Fromm's leadership of these groups has given him some access to media such as being invited onto radio talk shows and occasionally being quoted in the newspaper or having a letter to the editor published.
Fromm attempted to enter mainstream political activity by joining the Progressive Conservative Party and became treasurer of "PC Metro", a network of Toronto PC riding associations in 1981 but was expelled from the party when he was quoted advocating belief in a "supreme race" and called for Vietnamese refugees to be sent to "desert islands" rather than be accepted into Canada. In the mid to late 1980s, Fromm's organizations were involved in advocacy on behalf of South Africa's apartheid regime and opposed the movement to impose economic sanctions on the country. In the late 1980s, Fromm was an active member of the Reform Party of Canada but was essentially expelled in late 1988 when leader Preston Manning sent Fromm a letter asking him to "dissociate" himself from the party. In the 1988 Canadian election, Fromm ran as a candidate for the Confederation of Regions Party in the riding of Mississauga East receiving 288 votes.
In the 1990s, Fromm spoke on a number of occasions to gatherings of the neo-Nazi Heritage Front, including a celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday, leading ultimately to his being fired in 1994 from his job as a school teacher. A video surfaced which showed him addressing the rally in a speech in which he referred to old-time Canadian fascist John Ross Taylor as a hero. Taylor was one of two Canadian Nazis interned by the government during World War II, the other being his leader Adrien Arcand.
Fromm has also shared a stage with Holocaust denier David Irving and has organized rallies in support of Ernst Zündel. In 2004 he was associated with David Duke's efforts to unite the far right via the New Orleans Protocol, which seeks to "mainstream our cause."
Recently, he has tried to revive use of the Canadian Red Ensign flag and his political events and rallies usually have the old Canadian flag prominently displayed.
Despite his claims of being a free speech advocate, Fromm has unsuccessfully attempted to sue the Canadian Jewish Congress among others for describing him as a neo-Nazi.
Fromm has also spoken out against interracial couples despite the fact that he has had a number of affairs with non-white women.