The Heirs to Ultra-Traditionalist Catholicism in the Battle for a Sovereign Quebec
Pictured above is the network of groups (orange), cities (pink), events (yellow), and individuals (blue) that relate to the connection between right-wing nationalist and ultra-traditionalist Catholic organizations in the Quebec province.
Though the secessionist youth movements of Quebec are alarming in their own right, what makes organizations like the Nouvelle Alliance, and its predecessor the Front Canadien-Français, truly threatening are their ties to the ultra-traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). Glitterpill analysts have identified a web that sprawls out from SSPX into the Quebec province, pulling in members of the Nouvelle Alliance as well as members of other far-right groups and ideologies. It is therefore vital to understand the role that SSPX plays in Quebec’s religious culture in order to understand the ethos and ideology of Quebec’s far-right nationalist extremists and activists.
The Society of St. Pius X is an international order that previously held canonical status with the Roman Catholic Church, but it took a much more radical, ultra-traditionalist view than mainstream Catholicism. The organization was founded in 1970 by the late French archbishop Marcel-François Lefebvre as a form of resistance to modernization, in response to the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s. As the group grew more radical and steadfast in its resistance to the diversification of the Church and the realities of life in the modern world, SSPX’s founding priests were all excommunicated by the Catholic Church. The group still maintains a facade of legitimacy in the public eye, which is crucial to how it has continued to garner support and attention, particularly in the United States and Canada. However, the organization promotes radical ideologies, including severe xenophobia, anti semitism, and a general resistance to secularization. In Quebec, specifically, SSPX is often paired with French-Canadian secessionist sentiments, as much of the radical Quebec youth movements are driven by a push against the “Anglicanization” of the province and of Canada as a whole.
The intersection between SSPX and French-Canadian nationalism began in the 1980s with the founding of the ultra-nationalist Quebec-based group, Cercle Jeune Nation (CJN). CJN was based on Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France, an organization which SSPX’s founder, Marcel Lefebvre, openly supported. The organization legitimized itself through the publication of a far-right journal, Cahiers de Jeune Nation. Though CJN itself was not aligned with SSPX, Editor-in-Chief of Cahiers de Jeune Nation Jean Claude Dupuis was a member of the Catholic order, and he infused the journal with SSPX’s anti-modern, vehemently anti-immigration, and xenophobic rhetoric. CJN crumbled in the 1990s under disalignment regarding the religious direction of the organization at the leadership level. However, it was the first in a line of organizations that would fuse the Quebec Sovereignty Movement with an aggressively traditionalist Catholic agenda, inherently flirting with and sharing members with the modern-day SSPX.
Later, in 2019, the Front Canadien-Français (FCF) was founded by a group of young men (many of them university students or recent graduates) in Quebec. FCF was only active from 2019 until 2020, when its high level of activity in Montreal resulted in an investigation by Montreal Antifasciste Info. The subsequent article fell just short of doxxing the group’s chief members, and brought its existence to a rather explosive end. However, before its dissolution, FCF cemented itself as a youth-led organization that viewed both French-Canadian culture and the Roman Catholic Church’s identity in the same way: as two sacred institutions falling victim to an erasure of tradition through the acceptance of evolving gender norms, secularization, and diversity. It was as though both the Church and French Canada were in need of the same restoration, and FCF hoped to come to both of their rescues in one fell swoop. This concept, fueled by a panic-driven apocalyptic mentality that is behind the ethos of many other radical right-wing, cult-like organizations, directly mirrors that which drove CJN, and which continues to intertwine specifically Quebec-based nationalist right-wing organizations with the Society of St. Pius X.
The conceptual ties between the foundings of FCF and CJN, thirty years apart, are significant because they showcase the pervasive attachment to the past and to a white, male, Catholic identity in Quebec, and the way that radical thinkers prey on this identity to attract new members and form new organizations. Though FCF failed as a legitimate organization, partially due to a scathing online exposé and partially due to a global pandemic, a new organization was born from it: the Nouvelle Alliance.
The Nouvelle Alliance is an identitarian, ethno-nationalist organization with a pattern of supporting Quebec Sovereignty Movement-related events and protesting general concepts that support a national Canadian identity in favor of the French-Canadian, anti-Anglican, Catholic identity that has been pervasive throughout the organizations discussed in this piece. It was co-founded in 2022 by Suleyman Ennakhili and Francois Gervais (current Nouvelle Alliance front-man) after the dissolution of FCF, the organization they both led. The two activists remain strong in their stance that the Nouvelle Alliance is not the brain-child of FCF, but rather a decidedly different and new organization — one that successfully recruits and organizes on public and private university campuses throughout Quebec on a large scale.
Many of the rest of FCF’s leaders, Gervais and Ennakhili’s close friends, followed them and joined the Nouvelle Alliance, as can be seen in the visual above. One other, still, has become a prominent member of Atalante, and one Jason LeBlanc has become a known member of the Society of St. Pius X. It was recorded in 2020, when the FCF gathered to pay homage to Lionel Groulx, an antisemitic cleric, that known SSPX member Father Daniel Couture expressed regret for not being able to attend. Such a record suggests that, at least for a point of time in recent history, the members of FCF were aware of and at least open to SSPX. And since they founded the Nouvelle Alliance, one of their close friends and past partners in leadership, LeBlanc, has publicly turned to SSPX.
While it is neither possible nor advantageous to speculate about a link between the Nouvelle Alliance and SSPX specifically, it is clear that a connection exists between FCF and SSPX. It is also clear that the same fearful, anti-modern ethos that surrounded CJN drew people to FCF, and it is at work again within the Nouvelle Alliance. Today, the organization is extremely active pamphletting and planning events at universities and in public places across Quebec. The organization has accomplished a high enough level of legitimacy and large enough sphere of awareness in only one year to warrant it public attention and monitoring. For the Nouvelle Alliance is not simply a radical youth movement that college kids are bringing home as a Christmas Eve dinner discussion topic. It is the heir to a generation of traditionalist anti-modern religious thought that is blood-bonded to a sense of French-Canadian nationalism that is entirely similar to the right-wing extremism that continues to stun the world with the quick speed at which it turns violent on the global stage.
