Paul Fromm

Frederick Paul Fromm (born January 3, 1949), known as Paul Fromm, is a Canadian white supremacist and perennial political candidate. He has described himself as a "white nationalist, a populist, a traditionalist, with libertarian leanings".

Fromm is the international director of the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens and is the director of several far-right groups in Canada, most notably the Canadian Association for Free Expression, Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform and the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee.

He has hosted a radio show on the Stormfront web site and has ties to former Ku Klux Klan members David Duke, Don Black, and Mark Martin, a white supremacist rally organizer in Covington, Ohio. The National Post newspaper described him as "one of Canada's most notorious white supremacists".

Since 2018, he has been based in Hamilton, Ontario, but he previously lived in Mississauga, Ontario, outside of Toronto, since the 1970s.

Biography
Fromm was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and grew up in Etobicoke in a devout Catholic family. His mother, Marguerite Michaud, was of French Canadian descent, while his father, Frederick William Fromm, was of German and Irish descent. His father enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. After the war, he qualified as a chartered accountant and worked in Colombia for an oil company. After Fromm was born, the family returned to Ontario where his father found work as an accountant with the provincial Department of Highways.

Fromm was an admirer of Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, but changed his views after coming across the writings of Barry Goldwater.

In 1967, as a student at the University of Toronto's St. Michael's College, Fromm co-founded the Edmund Burke Society (EBS} with Don Andrews and Leigh Smith, s well as its student wing "Campus Alternative". The Edmund Burke Society was a right-wing anti-communist group that agitated against prominent left-wing movements. The group would often disrupt left-wing rallies and events, sometimes violently. The group's main focus was opposition to the New Left and other left-wing tendencies that the Society associated with communism. In 1970, the group disrupted a speech by left-wing radical lawyer, William Kunstler, with Fromm climbing on stage and pouring a glass of water on Kunstler's lecture notes, resulting in the Chicago Seven's lawyer drenching Fromm with a pitcher of water. A melee between EBS members and Kunstler's supporters ensued, and Fromm was knocked to the floor unconscious.

With the support of members of the Edmund Burke Society, Fromm was elected president of the Ontario Social Credit Party in 1971, and was able to have other EBS members elected to the party's executive. Three Social Credit candidates in the 1971 Ontario election were avowed "Burkers".

As the New Left movement waned, Edmund Burke Society members turned their attention to issues of race and immigration and became increasingly attracted to white supremacist ideas. In February 1972, the group renamed itself the Western Guard. In 1972, after having lost the Social Credit Party presidency to James McGillvray, Fromm led a successful attempt by the Western Guard to take over the Ontario wing of the Social Credit Party of Canada. The national executive of the national Social Credit Party declared membership in the Western Guard "incompatible" with membership in the party, which led national Social Credit leader Réal Caouette to place the Ontario organization under trusteeship in order to counter Fromm's activities.

In May 1972, Fromm was the opening speaker at a Western Guard banquet honouring Robert E. Miles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who became a leading ideologue in the Christian Identity movement. Fromm, Overfield and several others resigned from the Western Guard in May 1972, immediately after the Toronto Sun published an article on the group, which included information about the banquet. Fromm's departure left the leadership of the Western Guard in the hands of Don Andrews. Fromm claimed in a 1973 letter to the Toronto Star that he left the Western Guard "because of a growing radicalization of its politics and the irresponsibility of some of its activities". Later, he denied ever having been a member of the Guard, saying he "never had any connection" with the organization. When confronted with his 1973 letter, he dismissed it as "a matter of semantics".

On August 4, 2008, Fox News interviewed Fromm in relation to the prosecution of right-wing Canadian author Mark Steyn. The Southern Poverty Law Center criticised Fox for identifying Fromm only as a "Free Speech Activist".

In 2010, Fromm organized small protests across the country against the admission of a group of Tamil refugees arriving on the MV Sun Sea. In August he led a small protest in Calgary with members of the Aryan Guard outside of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's constituency office which "so terrified the receptionist that she locked the door and would not accept Mr. Fromm's delivery of a letter until police arrived". He also organized a small protest with Doug Christie in Esquimalt, British Columbia, where the boat was docked and also led small pickets later in the month in Ottawa and Hamilton.