The Hongcouver | Telling whoppers: The many faces of Bradley Saltzberg, Vancouver’s Anti-Asian Catfish
Director of group opposed to multiculturalism uses fake identities to push views on journalists and politicians
In the documentary Catfish, a lovelorn Facebooker creates fictitious online personas to bolster a false impression of themselves and their popularity to outsiders, weaving a fake backdrop to their interactions in the virtual world.
It turns out that Vancouver’s political scene has its very own Catfish in the form of Bradley Saltzberg, director of activist group Putting Canada First and nemesis of multiculturalism and all things Asian.
Anyone with an email address and even a remote connection to the Vancouver civic arena will be familiar with Saltzberg, whose frequent correspondences rail against Asian encroachment on Canadian identity (the non-Asian part of it, anyway).
In recent weeks, he has set his sights on Meena Wong, the Beijing-born Hong Kong emigrant who is running for mayor of Vancouver as the candidate of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE). When I asked him about one of Wong’s policies, he refused to explain whether he agreed or disagreed with it, since a Wong mayoralty could only make Vancouver “more Asian”.
It wasn’t only Saltzberg. Lengthy emails from two apparently like-minded citizens started splashing into the inboxes of dozens of journalists, politicians and candidates.
Their names were Pascal Brody, and Paul Bradley. Peculiar phonetic similarities aside, their rhetoric hewed close: Brody highlighted Wong’s well known links to Toronto mayoral candidate Olivia Chow and warned: “Canadians of European Origin would be wise to note this potential leadership scenario”. Bradley thundered: “Just say NO to COPE and their anti-Canadian, anti-Canadians of European Origin agenda.”