This Viral Photo of a ‘Liberal Boomer’ is Missing Context. He Was Being Harassed by Far-Right Activists.

The latest example of viral misinformation disrupting Canada’s federal election involves a decontextualized photo featuring a retiree giving two middle fingers at a Mark Carney rally in Brantford, Ontario.

The man in the photo tells PressProgress the intended recipient of his hand gestures was a group of far-right activists with “F–k Carney” flags, Pierre Polievre banners and pro-Trump t-shirts who were aggressively harassing Liberal supporters as they stood in line to enter Carney’s campaign rally.

But the photo took on a life of its own after far-right social media influencers and right-wing media outlets baselessly suggested it showed a Liberal “boomer” displaying his contempt for the struggles of younger Canadians.

The Toronto Sun billed the out-of-context photo as a “defining election moment” while a British conservative magazine wondered: “Could this photo cost Mark Carney victory in Canada’s election?”

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Matt Janes, a Liberal supporter and the subject of the decontextualized viral photo, says it fails to show several “right-wing activists,” whom he describes as “convoy and conspiracy-theory types,” standing a few metres away heckling the line-up.

“They were taunting the people in line calling us names, like calling us pedophiles,” Janes said. “They were yelling with a megaphone, there were cameras everywhere and they were filming us and taking pictures of people in line.”

“I had never seen anything or experienced anything like that before, and I was just totally lost, totally dumbfounded.”

Other witnesses at the event and livestream videos independently reviewed by PressProgress corroborate Janes’ account.

One Liberal supporter named Keith, who is also involved in local LGBTQ+ community groups, said people in the line-up faced a torrent of homophobic and transphobic abuse.

“They were shouting obscenities at us,” said Keith. “They were shouting ‘pedophile’ and all that stuff, I heard them shouting the transphobic stuff.”

“It felt intended to intimidate, it was aggressive,” Keith recalled. “They all had their cameras out, they were getting super close to us, walking within five feet of us at times with their cameras like they’re going to catch some wild moment.”

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Videos from the event show several far-right activists and livestreamers approaching and filming Liberal supporters in line at close proximity as the far-right crowd shouts at them to get vaccinated, along with anti-LGBTQ+ slurs, anti-immigration rants and esoteric sovereign-citizen rhetoric.

One member of the group sported a t-shirt supporting Donald Trump while another wore a hat declaring Canada the “51st State of America.” Some of the group’s members are affiliated with a local “Freedom Fighters” group and have posted QAnon slogans and other conspiratorial content on their social media channels.

Janes’ photo was taken by a cameraman who works for a Toronto lawyer and social media personality named Caryma Sa’d. Video from another livestream capturing the exchange from a different angle shows that moments before the photo was taken, one of the far-right activists shouted into a megaphone: “There’s a lot of pedophile lovers here, ask Carney about Epstein Island.”

“This was not intended as a political statement,” Janes clarified, adding that he was “reacting in the moment to being harassed by these right-wing activists while I was waiting to see my prime minister.”

Janes said his hand gestures were aimed at Caryma Sa’d’s cameraman, whom he assumed was with the group of far-right activists calling him a pedophile — not at struggling Canadian Millennials or Gen Z.

“As that cameraman approached, I gave him the fingers. I flipped the bird to him,” Janes said. “My only intent was to tell those people to ‘f–k off,’ the whole crowd of them.”

On the Ryan Jespersen Show, Sa’d denied any affiliation with the far-right group protesting outside Carney’s rally but agreed the group was trying to “rile up or get into it” with Liberal supporters. A longer clip of the exchange aired on the program shows Janes’ spouse asking Sa’d’s cameraman if he works for an alternative right-wing media outlet, such as Rebel Media or True North. The clip that aired did not capture any of the events leading up to the incident.

Janes said he’s never heard of Sa’d before and is unfamiliar with her content, but remains at a loss to explain how social media users distorted his brief interaction with her cameraman into a statement about his views on struggling Canadians.

“I’m retired and I volunteer for a couple of charities,” Janes said. “I support different organizations in town, I support young people, I support women entrepreneurs, I’m not, like, an entitled boomer that’s trying to say ‘f–k off’ to the younger generation.”

“I have two kids,” Janes noted. “I know what type of things that people of that age are going through.”

“I would never think that.”

The 68-year-old says he’s now experiencing doxxing for the first time in his life, noting some charities he volunteers with are being “attacked, abused and harassed by these people.” A local brewery where Janes used to be a part-owner was forced to issue a public statement clarifying he is no longer involved with the company.

He’s decided to stay off social media and isn’t reading anything being said about him. One Rebel Media personality suggested his family should “take him for some cognitive testing,” meanwhile, far-right influencers have attempted to transform the retiree into a meme, creating satirical images of “Mark Carney Supporting Boomer” action figures and posing for photos with cardboard cutouts of Janes at Pierre Poilievre rallies.

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On Friday, Elgin–St. Thomas–London South Liberal candidate David Goodwin issued a public statement calling for an “end to the harassment of residents, small businesses and volunteer organizations” in the community.

“I strongly condemn the harassment that a small group of toxic ideologues has inflicted on Matt (and) his family,” the statement reads. It notes Janes and others had been targeted by a “small group of people” who “continuously spouted hard-right ideology, profanities and insults at those in line.”

Those standing in line at the Carney rally emphasized the group of far-right activists was especially fixated on pedophilia.

References to Mark Carney and “Epstein Island” allude to fake, AI-generated photos that have circulated online showing the Liberal leader and Hollywood actor Tom Hanks on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. Conservative third-party groups, including Canada Proud, have spent tens of thousands of dollars on misleading ads this election insinuating vague ties between Carney and Epstein, who was found dead while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

Jay Tomkins, one of the more vocal members of the group who also wore a t-shirt expressing support for Donald Trump, can be heard shouting at the Liberal supporters that they are a “bunch of clown pedophile protectors” and “like their kids getting diddled by queers.”

Tomkins is also affiliated with a local far-right group called “Freedom Fighters of Brantford,” which had a history of protesting local businesses that enforced mask mandates during the pandemic. He also has a prolific online history posting anti-immigrant, anti-vaccine and pro-Donald Trump content, along with conspiratorial content referencing the World Economic Forum and QAnon slogans.

Another member of the group, Larry Henley, has promoted anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown content, as well as conspiratorial content about 5G towers, fluoride and chemtrails.

“What did he do to the kids on Epstein Island?” Henley is heard shouting about Carney into a megaphone, later turning to the line-up of Liberal supporters: “You’re all here to protect the pedo.”

At another moment, Henley approaches the Liberal supporters and accuses them of being puppets: “You’re all globalist puppets. You’re all puppets for the Khazarians.”

According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, references to Khazar Jews or a so-called “Khazarian cabal” are often associated with conspiratorial narratives linked to QAnon and other far-right extremist groups.

“The conspiracy theory usually alleges that Israel is run almost exclusively by Khazar Jews, the ‘fake Jews’ from Europe who supposedly have nothing to do with ‘real Jews’,” Alex Newhouse, the deputy director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury, previously told the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

Another livestreamer at the event, Derek Noonan, is a frequent attendee of convoy events and previously organized a press conference on Parliament Hill celebrating the two-year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy, a celebration that later devolved into a confrontation with police.

Janes regrets reacting the way that he did, acknowledging he ended up giving the far-right activists the reaction they were surely looking for. That said, he never expected he would have to deal with doxxing and online harassment simply for attending a rally in a democratic country like Canada.

“Clearly one of their goals is to deter people from participating and so, for example myself, since this has blown up on me, I’ve basically retracted and am just trying to keep my head down, so my life is affected by all of this,” Janes said.

“It’s a really toxic environment for anyone who says or does anything that these people disagree with,” Janes added. “I was just an innocent bystander in this, but it could happen to anybody.”

“It’s a bad situation made worse by the Internet, by social media, and you know, I’m not sure what can be done about it – it’s just getting out of control.”