If you try to go to the website for an Alberta far-right group, you won’t read the anti-immigration views “Wolves of Odin” usually spout, but you will see the dating profiles of some cartoon wolves packing serious heat.
Instead of finding some conspiratorial ramblings about how Muslim immigration is a purposeful conspiracy to replace the “real” Canadians, you’ll learn about “Bigger_Woofer” who loves “when you mark your territory on your chest.” This little bait-and-switch website was posted on the Edmonton subreddit Wednesday and it promptly blew up.
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Brady Grumpelt is the man behind the Wolves of Odin’s new web presence. The Edmonton man told VICE that the idea was sparked when he saw men he thought were members of the Wolves of Odin “trying to pull their whole intimidation thing” in the Buckingham, a punk(ish) bar on Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue, where Grumpelt used to work. (Full disclosure: the Buckingham is one of this reporter’s favourite haunts in Edmonton.) A video posted to Facebook appears to show the group causing a disturbance in the bar on Friday, defacing some property, and arguing with the owner. Grumpelt said that while the owner of the bar, Ben Sir, is “lawful good and would never do anything like this,” he’s personally more “chaotic good” and decided to pull something.
The same day, former members of the group gained national attention for stalking the grounds of a mosque. The men are members of a Wolves of Odin offshoot group—they now call themselves the Clann and the Canadian Infidels—having left the Wolves of Odin only weeks prior.
“I saw what group they were and wondered if they had their domain. The dot com was taken but the dot-ca was not—so I thought to myself, I think I might take this and do something funny with it,” Grumpelt told VICE. “It took about ten minutes to kinda think it up. I thought, well it is wolves, so that works fairly well.”
“From that, I reached out to a friend who is better with computers and asked him to take this domain and turn it into a one-page furry fetish site.”
It took the duo a couple days to get it up, but they finally made it happen Wednesday. Now if you go to WolvesOfOdin.ca you’re treated to the profiles of “DoggyTreat69” who wants you to “cum bury your bone in my backyard”; “White_Power_Bottom” who “can’t wait for you to fill me up like a Twinkie”; and, of course, “Wolveso_Fodin” who is “not the smartest wolf in the zoo.”
While the site has amused at least a few thousand Albertans, some members of the furry community took to Reddit to discuss the implications of their fandom being used in this way. A user named Kawauso98 said that they “appreciate the joke and all, because fuck groups like this,” but that as “self-deprecating as we furries are, someone making fun of a hate group by making them out to be ’one of us’…feelsbadman.” A few other furries voiced similar complaints.
Grumpelt said that he’s talked to a few people in the furry community online about the website and even had a few offer up images of their furry personas to be put up on the site. He said he chose furries because of the obvious wolf connection, and meant no ill will.
“I can understand if people in that community are upset about it,” said Grumpelt. “I would just basically say to them, I don’t mean to upset you, I want the site itself to just be what it is and not be marginalizing the furry community.”
“I hope that members of the furry community are forgiving of me if they are mad at me, just know that I’m trying to do good overall.”
Weirdly, this isn’t the first far-right community with a wolf theme, nor is it the first to be spoofed by furries. Before “Wolves of Odin”—an obvious wolfy take on “Soldiers of Odin”—there was La Meute in Quebec.
A furry group called La Meute, which translates to “The Pack,” shares a name with the province’s large far-right anti-immigration group. So this group scooped up the Facebook page for “La Meute Officielle,” and promptly became the top “La Meute” search result on the site.
Speaking to VICE in late 2017, Mr. Wolfenstein, the activist behind the page, described the move as “a really different way of fighting back. It’s something we didn’t know we could use, to use our identities as furries to fight.”
If you scroll down to the bottom of Grumpelt’s site, a note suggests readers can buy the domain by making a $10,000 donation to the charity “Hate Free YEG,” which cleans up racist graffiti in Edmonton. There is also a Go Fund Me for the group. A rep for the charity told the Edmonton Star that the stunt and the suggestive photos of sexualized wolves with giant bulges “are decidedly off-brand for us.”
Grumpelt said that he hasn’t heard too much from the far right group, but had a few people call him up and say he’s an asshole or an idiot.
He might be used to that kind of reaction since Grumpelt launched a business selling gummy dicks in 2015. His “eat a bag of dicks” joke earned him a bunch of money and spotlight, including a profile from this reporter. He’s also launched an NES cartridge-shaped harmonica. Grumpelt told VICE he just likes “doing things.” But this latest thing is different, he said, because this one could actually do some good, whether it be raising awareness, raising some cash for a good charity, or fucking with a far-right group’s web traffic.
“I think they’re ridiculous,” Grumpelt told VICE. “I don’t understand the mentality of going into the mosque to intimidate people… To me, it’s a backwards way of thinking and they need to get over it, we’re in the 21st century.”
“At the end of the day I just wanted to do a little good and I just hope I don’t get murdered by a group of racists or an angry group of furries.”
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