Factsheet: Faith Goldy

IMPACT: Faith Goldy is a Canadian right-wing political commentator who became popular due to her show on The Rebel Media. Goldy uses her social media platforms to promote anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic views while propagating the concept of ‘white genocide.’ She has publicly recited the white nationalist slogan, Fourteen Words.

Faith Julia Goldy-Bazos, or Faith Goldy as she is commonly known, is a Canadian right-wing political commentator and independent journalist from Toronto. In October 2018, Goldy lost her bid for Toronto Mayor, with incumbent Mayor John Tory being re-elected.  Goldy came in third with 25,667 votes.

A self-proclaimed “Catholic Nationalist for Christ the King & Country,” Goldy has become a social media celebrity through her work with Sun News and The Rebel Media. As of April 2019, she has 121k+ followers on Twitter and 98k+ subscribers on Youtube. On April 8th, 2019 Facebook announced it was banning Goldy from its platform.

She has used her social media platforms to promote anti-immigrant, far-right, anti-Muslim, and white nationalist rhetoric. The U.K. based anti-racism organization, Hope not Hate, describes Goldy as an “alt-right vlogger.”

Goldy was hired by Ezra Levant, founder of the Canadian media website, The Rebel Media, also known as The Rebel. The website has been described as “far-right” by articles in the Guardian and the Independent. At The Rebel, Goldy was given her own program called “On the Hunt with Faith Goldy.”

In August 2017, Levant fired Goldy from The Rebel following her appearance on a podcast for the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer. This podcast happened shortly after the deadly “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA on August 12, 2017, which consisted of white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Goldy live-streamed the rally and captured on video the exact moment James Fields drove into a group of counter-protesters and killed Heather Heyer. An article in The New Republic, described Goldy’s reporting at the rally as an “entire day fawning over neo-Nazis,” where she spoke “glowingly of ‘white racial consciousness.’” In a video aired for The Rebel Media following the attack in Charlottesville, Goldy reflected on the rally and spoke about what she deemed to be unfair treatment of the “alt-right” by the media and authorities.

A 2018 piece in GQ, described Goldy as “one of Canada’s most prominent propagandists of the ‘white genocide’ conspiracy theory.” In a 2017 interview with an “alt-right” Youtuber, Goldy recited the white nationalist slogan Fourteen Words, and stated, “I don’t see that that’s controversial.” In May 2018, Goldy was banned from the crowdfunding site Patreon due to her recitation of the slogan. She defended her actions, stating, “This is a simple statement of survival.”

While at The Rebel, Goldy made several anti-Muslim and anti-Islam videos. In one video titled, Islamophilic BBC attempts to normalize the niqab, Goldy asks, “Are we to feel compassion for people who wish to literally wear a facemask as these women are in the western court of law?” and, “It just couldn’t be more obvious how totally oxymoronic the idea of a feminist wearing a niqab truly is.” Goldy claimed that the BBC was “attempting to normalize the niqab” and “using taxpayers dollars to fund Islamist brainwashing.”

Another episode entitled, More Muslims = More Terrorism, aired following the Westminster attack in London. In the video Goldy claims that “the more Muslims there are in a given society, the more likely that society is to experience lawlessness, aggression, and terror attacks,” promoting the anti-Muslim trope that all Muslims are inherently violent. During this episode, Goldy also spoke with Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defense League (EDL).

In one episode Goldy discussed the alleged “rape epidemic” in Europe and asked if “American women are next.” She claimed that “after months of an open door policy to migrants, Germany has totally lost control and spun into crisis,” stating that it has led to a “huge influx of migrant sex attacks,” citing reports from FrontPage Magazine, the online publication of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. She called on governments and politicians to “stop lecturing us about what Islam isn’t, okay? How about we discuss what it actually is? Rape culture, misogyny, and victim-blaming are all codified in the Qur’an.”

In a video on The Rebel’s Youtube channel, Goldy claims that Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace, has turned into a Muslim town, expressing her discomfort with the appearance of mosques in the area. An article in Newsweek stated that in Goldy’s video of her trip to Bethlehem, she claimed that the city’s “Christian population has been ethnically cleansed.” An article in the Middle East Eye noted the video “generated a massive response from Christians and non-Christians alike, both refuting her claims…and expressing the harmonious nature in which people of all faiths live in the city.”

On June 21, 2017, Goldy gave a speech at The Rebel’s live event in Toronto, in which she called for a “counter-crusade” against Islam and Muslims, claiming “Islam and their global caliphate have never stopped fighting the war.” Goldy stated, “This is a holy war for Islam. They’re not just coming for our healthcare, right. They’re coming to break the cross.”

Goldy has promoted her right-wing views in public arenas by speaking at post-secondary institutions and public spaces such as libraries. Several of her speaking engagements have been met with counter-protests, demonstrations, and cancellations.  In August 2017, Goldy was removed from a panel event on free speech at Ryerson University following her participation in The Daily Stormer podcast. The panelists uninvited Goldy not for her appearance on the neo-Nazi podcast but because she didn’t ask “at least one hard question” while on the show.  

In 2015 Paul Joseph Watson, the editor of the conspiracy website, Infowars, and described by an article in the Independent as a “far-right commentator,” appeared on “On the Hunt,” where he and Goldy discussed “the rise of Islam in Europe: Sharia courts and no-go zones.” The “no-go zone” myth has been debunked in The Atlantic, Daily Beast, and Snopes. Watson had been on Goldy’s show multiple times.

In July 2018, Goldy was removed from PayPal “due to the nature of her activities.” She told her followers that she would be taking payments through Freestartr.

Updated April 15, 2019

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This factsheet is published in collaboration between the Bridge Initiative and researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University. More information about this project can be found here.