All I wanted was a Pepsi. Just one Pepsi.

The City of Edmonton, Public Safety Canada, and the University of Alberta psychopathologize dissent via the Evolve Program

Last week when I put “unz.com” into the search bar, the first result that came up was not The Unz Review but instead a note asking me how I was feeling and encouraging me to seek help.

The Unz Review is probably most often visited by readers of Steve Sailer’s column.  However, it also publishes (or re-publishes from other sources) an eclectic mix of right and left wing commentators.  The writers range from Andrew Anglin, who can without fear of correction be described as a racist, misogynist anti-semitic homophobe (indeed he would not hesitate to describe himself in those terms) to Diana Johnstone, the elderly doyenne of left pacifism (if you want to understand why today’s left is more interested in painting rainbow flags on Lockheed Martin bombs than ending Western imperialism, there is no better place to begin than with her outstanding memoir Circle in the Darkness).  The Unz Review is the project of wealthy oddball Ron Unz, who also publishes his own original analyses there, including an idiosyncratic theory of covid origins.  Probably the most influential of his works has been an analysis of systematic discrimination against Asian applicants in Harvard admissions.

It’s no great mystery, then, why the Unz Review might end up on various badthought watchlists.  Still I wondered who was doing this particular watching and what they had planned for watchees like me who clicked on their ad.  To my surprise, a couple of clicks led me to colleagues at the University of Alberta. The Evolve Program is run under the auspices of the Organization for the Prevention of Violence, which in turn is funded by the City of Edmonton and by Public Safety Canada.

OPV’s Executive Director is Dr. John McCoy, an adjunct professor in Political Science at the University of Alberta.  One of its board members is Dr. Andy Knight, professor and past chair of Political Science at the University of Alberta.  I have never met Dr. McCoy, but I have met Dr. Knight several times at university events.  We nod amiably when we share an elevator.  I am not actually sure if he remembers me or is just being affable: this is a common variety of polite uncertainty on the three slow and erratically functioning elevators in our 15 story building which houses many faculty offices across many departments.

At any rate, I thought the easiest and most direct way to learn more would be to write these men as colleagues, explaining that I wanted to write something for my Substack about the program.  Dr. Knight has not replied to my query.  Dr. McCoy wrote back quickly, asking for more information about my plans.  I replied with a list of questions (below).  He then responded that he was going to “pass” on my request.  He suggested I contact Moonshot, though this entity is not listed as a “key partner” to OPV so I don’t know how they would be privy to its inner workings.  Moonshot is a worrying entity in its own right:  it “identifies, maps, and provides critical analysis on online harms across the globe. Working in over 30 languages, we combine cutting-edge technology with best-in-class experts from law enforcement, academia, cybersecurity and government. We provide clients with actionable insights on the fast-moving digital threat environment.”  If OPV is using its public funding to pay Moonshot for services, their website should say so.

I’ve now filed a Freedom of Information Access request with the province of Alberta, which cost me $25.  I am not entirely sure I’ve sent it to the right place – you had to choose from a drop down menu, and I picked “Public Safety”, but in fact the funding for this program comes from above and below the province level (City of Edmonton on the one hand, and federal on the other).  I’ve also filed a request with the City of Edmonton (another $25).  I’ll wait and see what comes from those before filing a federal request.

My guess is a major rationale for the City of Edmonton portion of the funding was the attack on its city hall in January of this year.  28 year old Bezhani Sarvar arrived with a gun and several Molotov cocktails.  His rampage was brief and ended, thanks heavens, with no injuries and no deaths:  alongside city employees, a class of first graders was visiting city hall at the time.  Canadian news coverage has been careful to emphasize that Sarvar mentioned his opposition to “wokeism” in videos posted to social media.  Sarvar was born in Aghanistan but has been resident in Canada since 2012.  His principal stated motivation was anger over the complicity of Western governments in Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Now, I must admit I too am opposed to wokeism and to the complicity of Western governments in Israel’s actions in Gaza.  So, well spotted evolveprogram.ca.  For its part, the Unz Review publishes many articles dedicated to exactly these two subjects.

However, I have my doubts about whether a sponsored pop-up asking if the world is “making you angry” will really do much to deter the kind of man (and, nowadays, the occasional woman hopped to the gills on synthetic testosterone) who amasses an arsenal and makes concerted plans to use it.   Maybe the value of the program lies elsewhere – perhaps precisely in rumbling the likes of me.

To be clear:  I’m a podgy 53  year old lady who feels like she’s in that shoes and cake scene from Marie Antoinette if she’s out of the house after 8 o’clock at night.  But there’s value for investment in targeting my demographic:  the average Canadian is 41 and greying fast:  the number of people between the ages of 15-64 relative to those over 65 has dropped from about 7 in 1980 to about 3.5 in 2020.  My guess is the readership of Unz skews very boomer. 

While this is not a demographic remarkable for its propensity to armed mayhem, the Unz Review’s dissidence along multiple axes inevitably trips multiple wires.  It publishes dissent that is usually characterized as “left” (opposition to Israel’s conduct in Gaza, opposition to funding a devastating war of attrition in Ukraine), dissent that is usually characterized as “right” (to EDI, to the racial reckoning, to gender ideology, and to feminism), and dissent that is “non-aligned” (to covid policy and about covid origins). 

Anyone who reads it, then, is politically bang out of order in one way or another.  Do our disordered minds therefore need intervention?  Institutional oversight?  In short:  are we just plain nuts?  Possibly.  On the other hand, the psychopathologization of dissent has a long and nasty history in totalitarian regimes.  The states of the Iron Curtain were notorious for it.  What does it mean when this kind of approach is deployed in Canada, and the people doing the deploying refuse to answer basic questions about it – even from people whom they might, to their faces, smile at regularly at work? 

Here are my questions:

(1) 

What is the list of sites and search terms that prompts the link suggesting the Evolve Program to pop up?  

I understand the principle involved -- if I put in "ski trip to Jasper" the first sponsored link would probably be to a hotel in Jasper.  I'm asking what are the inputs that prompt the Evolve Program link to appear.

(2)

What is the geographical range in which this pop up is operative?  Just Edmonton?  All of Alberta?  All of Canada?

(3)

How long has this pop up program been operating?

(4)

With what search engines is it working -- just Google?  Others?

(6)

What kind of data is being gathered in the other direction about how often the pop up is generated in response to searches, where those searches originate, and so on?  How specific is this reciprocal data and how is it stored and used by OPV?

(7) 

OPV is funded by the City of Edmonton and Public Safety Canada.  What are the amounts of funding from each source and what are the time frames involved in the funding:  when did they start and when will they end?