Frederick Paul Fromm (born January 3, 1949) is a Canadian former high school teacher, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and perennial political candidate.
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".McIntyre, Mike. "Children seized over neo-Nazi allegations", National Post, June 10, 2008.
Fromm lived in Mississauga, Ontario, for several decades before moving to Hamilton, Ontario, in 2018.Atkins, Stephen E. (2009) Holocaust Denial as an International Movement ABC-CLIO. p.204
Early life and education
Fromm was born in Bogotá, Colombia, to Canadian parents and grew up in Etobicoke, Ontario, in a devout Catholic family."Burke Society says violence 'manly' way to fight Communists", Toronto Star, October 19, 1971. His mother, Marguerite Michaud, was of French-Canadian descent, while his father, Frederick William Fromm, was of German and Irish ancestry.McLaren, Christie. "Edmund Burke society founder Tory official backs idea of supreme race", The Globe and Mail, April 28, 1981.
His father served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. After the war, he qualified as a chartered accountant and worked for an oil company in Colombia. Following Fromm's birth, the family returned to Ontario, where his father worked as an accountant for the provincial Department of Highways, now the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario.
Fromm attended the University of Toronto, studying at St. Michael's College. He earned a bachelor's degree, a master's degree in English and a teaching qualification.
Teaching career
Fromm began working for the Peel Board of Education in 1973 and taught English at Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga.
In September 1991, Fromm attended a public meeting about race relations at which Indigenous activist Rodney Bobiwash of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto was speaking. Fromm called out "scalp them", prompting the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Native Canadian Centre and Toronto community-relations officials to call for the Peel board to review his employment. Fromm maintained that the remark had been misinterpreted and said that he kept his political activities separate from his teaching.
In 1992, members of the Peel board viewed a recording of a speech Fromm had delivered to the Heritage Front two years earlier. The board asked the provincial government to review his teaching certificate, warned him to end his involvement with racist organizations and urged the Ontario Teachers' Federation to formulate guidelines governing teachers' political conduct. The federation responded that professional-conduct requirements already existed and that responsibility for disciplinary action rested with the school board.
The board reassigned Fromm from secondary-school teaching to adult education in 1993. Its chair described the transfer as the strongest measure then legally available to the board and suggested that adult students would be better able than adolescents to challenge inappropriate conduct.
The Peel board dismissed Fromm in 1997 because of his continued involvement in white-supremacist activities. He subsequently faced professional-misconduct proceedings before the Ontario College of Teachers. Following hearings held between 2005 and 2007, the college revoked his teaching certificate on October 31, 2007.
White supremacist activities
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, as well as its student wing "Campus Alternative".Farber, Bernie and Prutschi, Manuel. "Paul Fromm" in From Marches to Modems: A Report on Organized Hate in Metro Toronto, Canadian Jewish Congress, 1997, pp. 16-26. 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.Johnson, Arthur. "Portrait of a racist", The Globe and Mail, October 1, 1979.
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."Ontario Socreds may have violated bylaws", The Globe and Mail, April 5, 1972Security Intelligence Review Committee, The Heritage Front Affair: Report to the Solicitor General of Canada, section 7.1, December 9, 1994.The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, The Heritage Front: Into the mainstream , 1994
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"."Edmund Burke Society doesn't exist", Paul Fromm (Letter to the Editor), Toronto Star, February 20, 1973 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"."Right-wing or Racist", by Lindsay Scotton, Toronto Star, October 8, 1983
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".Fox News Channel's 'Free Speech Activist' is Infamous Racist Activist , 7 August 2008
In 2010, Fromm organized small protests across the country against the admission of a group of Sri Lankan 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"."'White supremacist' puts a genteel face on racism" , National Post, August 15, 2010 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.
Mainstream and electoral politics Fromm graduated from university with a master's degree in English and an education degree. He worked as a school teacher with the Peel Region Board of Education from 1974 until his dismissal in 1997. He temporarily tried to distance himself from groups that were visibly linked to explicitly racist and neo-Nazi beliefs. He founded Countdown, which led to the creation of three organizations that attempted to make far-right views palatable to the mainstream. Fromm was elected as a Catholic school trustee in 1976, after an unsuccessful attempt in 1974, and served on the Metro Toronto Separate School Board until he was defeated in his bid for re-election two years later. His father, Fred, was also defeated in his 1978 bid for a seat on the board.
In 1976, Fromm founded the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), which opposes foreign aid to Third World nations. The organization also deals with other issues, including crime and punishment, multiculturalism and immigration. It sponsors lectures by far-right individuals, and publishes pamphlets and books, mostly about race and immigration.Shulgan, Christopher. "Will he be the next Zundel? With Canada's best-known supremacist deported, former teacher Paul Fromm is working to revive the far-right movement", The Globe and Mail, March 5, 2005. In 1981, Fromm founded Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE), in opposition to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. CAFE has been active defending the rights of accused antisemites, racists and Holocaust deniers against prosecution under hate crime and human rights legislation. Another group he founded was 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 mandates overlap, and they are essentially a single organization. Fromm's leadership of these groups has given him some access to the mainstream media, such as radio talk shows and newspapers.
In the late 1970s, Fromm also founded Canadian Friends of Rhodesia to support the white minority rule regime of Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front. In the mid to late 1980s, Fromm's organizations were involved in advocacy on behalf of South Africa's apartheid regime, and opposing the movement to impose economic sanctions on the country.Caplan, Gerald. "In order to maintain its continuing control in South Africa, the Botha government believes it is essential to maintain current economic and diplomatic support from abroad", Toronto Star, May 18, 1988.