Discord takes down racist channel used by Quebec med school applicants
Discord, an increasingly popular social media platform based in San Francisco, has deactivated a controversial channel used by Quebec medical school applicants that was overrun by antisemitic and other racist messages, including threats of violence, The Gazette can confirm.
Hours after the newspaper reported last Friday about a virulent stream of hateful content on the 1,400-member Med serveur channel on Discord, the chat forum suddenly disappeared. The deactivation occurred following a statement by Discord spokesperson Jillian Susi that 'once we become aware of such (hateful) content, we immediately take appropriate enforcement actions, which can include banning users and shutting down servers.'
Quebec med student applicants immediately switched en masse to another server on Discord called 'ADMISSION MED QC 2024,' which had seen little activity since last year. That channel's membership has surged to nearly 700 members since last Friday.
The Gazette has learned that Montreal police have launched an investigation into the origin of the racist trolling on Discord, even in going so far as to share information with the RCMP and CSIS concerning some of the perpetrators. Officially, a spokesperson for the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal would neither confirm nor deny that it is conducting an investigation.
Dawson College, for its part, is carrying out its own probe into the antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous slurs on the since-deactivated Discord channel. At least one of the perpetrators of the inflammatory content on Discord is alleged to be a Dawson student enrolled in the enriched health science program and, until recently, a medical school applicant.
In recent days, most of the language on the revived Discord channel, ADMISSION MED QC 2024, is considerably less prejudiced than on Med serveur. However, one user — who goes by the handle HydroBeatz — praised Hitler on Sunday as a 'charismatic' orator and 'particularly engaging,' but that didn't mean 'my words are antisemitic. That's exaggerated.'
In 2024, some anonymous users on ADMISSION MED QC 2024 did engage in antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous and misogynistic exchanges.
At the same time, users last weekend alluded to The Gazette's coverage of the controversy on the revived channel. 'There are people who are snitching to the police,' a user named AimBot complained on Saturday. The previous day, however, a different user cited The Gazette article as well, saying they hoped the atmosphere on the revived channel would be 'respectful of everyone.'
Meanwhile, McGill University's medical faculty released a statement on Tuesday evening condemning the hateful epithets on Discord by some aspiring doctors.
'The McGill faculty of medicine and health sciences does not tolerate hate speech,' the university declared.
'Our university has equity, diversity and inclusion policies that state that hateful and divisive language will not be tolerated in our community under any circumstances. As for the unacceptable comments made on the platform referenced, to our knowledge no students admitted to our faculty were among the authors. Our policies and regulations allow us to act accordingly if this was to be the case.'
On Monday, Quebec Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry also denounced the incendiary rhetoric on Discord and appealed to both students and medical school applicants to come forward to assist in the investigation by authorities.
'The calls for violence and expressions of hatred in these exchanges are totally unacceptable in Quebec,' Simon Savignac, Déry's press attaché, said in a statement on Monday.
In December, Déry opened an inquiry into complaints of racist bullying from students at Dawson and Vanier colleges stemming from the Israel-Hamas war. Since then, some academic union leaders have accused Déry of political interference after she demanded Dawson justify the content of a French course with most of the material focusing on the Palestinian cause.
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