“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,” wrote George Orwell in his seminal novel, 1984, which was meant to be a warning of a dystopian future where critical thinking was verboten, and the public was told how to think.

For some commentators, it seems, Orwell’s novel is an instruction manual.

In his September 6 opinion column in The Toronto Star, Faisal Kutty, who goes by the moniker “the Muslim lawyer” on social media and who is a habitual disseminator of anti-Israel misinformation, engaged in textbook gaslighting when he claimed that “at least 100 white supremacist groups across Canada” are evidently readying for major riots, comparable to what was recently seen in the United Kingdom.

While any extremist elements in society should be vigilantly monitored, anyone who has not been living under a rock in the last year would immediately recognize that, when it comes to fanatical elements in Canadian society, “white supremacist groups” are hardly the ones wreaking the most havoc.

Across North American streets, pro-Hamas extremists have engaged in violence, harassment, intimidation, assault, vandalism, and more. But nowhere in his column did Kutty ever muster the fortitude or self-awareness to acknowledge these dangerous elements in society, instead effectively erasing them entirely.

But any Canadian who has paid attention, in particular since Hamas’ massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023, has seen it: anti-Israel and Islamic extremists marauding in shopping malls, harassing members of the public and government, blocking public roads to perform prayers, invading residential neighbourhoods, screaming terrorist epithets, attacking hospitals, and more.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In just over five weeks, Canadian and American intelligence agencies foiled two separate Islamist terrorist plots on Canadian soil. In July, father-and-son pair 62-year-old Ahmed Eldidi and 26-year-old Mostafa Eldid were arrested in Richmond Hill, Ontario, accused of planning a “violent, serious attack,” and in early August, 20 year-old Pakistani national Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was arrested in southern Quebec en route to the American border, where he is accused of planning a mass murder of Jewish sites in Brooklyn, New York.

Indeed, Khan was arrested the very same day that Kutty’s column was published.

In both cases, police say the accused were working to commit atrocities on behalf of the Islamic State, the extremist Islamic terrorist organization which – outside its own horrific massacres in Iraq and Syria – has committed multiple attacks in the West, including mass killings across Europe.

However, instead of recognizing the dangerous threat posed by these fanatics, Kutty’s column endeavoured to completely distract, and in a voice that can only be described as simultaneously condescending and sneering said: “what can be an easier target to blame for the housing crisis, degrading health-care system, social tensions and economic uncertainty faced by the average Canadian?”

Kutty’s shameless attempt at misdirection is so egregious that in a social media post, lawyer, journalist and political strategist Warren Kinsella, referring to the column, wrote “this isn’t an oped. It’s disinformation.”

Kutty ended his column by arguing that “The U.K. riots are a wake-up call for Canada. We must recognize the warning signs and take action to address the underlying issues that could lead to similar unrest here.”

In this sense, Kutty is right. There are indeed “underlying issues” which, if left unaddressed, could create widespread social unrest. But the bigger danger facing Canadians is not a “white supremacist” boogeyman, but the real, present and undeniable threat of Islamic extremism.