Latest news with #MAGA-affiliated
Toronto Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Sun
MAGA-affiliated musician Sean Feucht performs in Alfred after Gatineau concert is cancelled
The NCC had cancelled a permit for a concert at Jacques-Cartier Park due to "public safety concerns." Paula Tran Published Jul 26, 2025 • Last updated 22 hours ago • 3 minute read A photo of Sean Feucht before his performance at a Montreal church on Friday night. Photo by ALLEN MCINNIS / POSTMEDIA A MAGA-affiliated musician held a concert in a township just outside Ottawa on Saturday just a few days after the National Capital Commission cancelled a scheduled performance in Gatineau. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. 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Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account In a social media post on Saturday morning, Sean Feucht said he would be performing in an open field on the 'corner of Peladeau Road and Highway 17' in Alfred, Ont., a township 70 kilometres east of Ottawa. The performance was part of the Let Us Worship movement, where Feucht falsely claimed that Christians are being persecuted in Canada. The NCC had cancelled Feucht's permit at Jacques-Cartier Park in Gatineau on Saturday due to what it called 'public safety concerns.' 'The NCC decided not to issue an event permit following consultation with the Gatineau Police and due to concerns about public safety and security,' Valérie Dufour, senior manager of strategic communications for the NCC, said in an emailed statement. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Officials in other Canadian cities had also cancelled scheduled Feucht concerts, including Halifax, Charlottetown and Quebec City. The City of Montreal fined a local church for hosting Feucht on Friday evening, saying the church had not obtained a permit to organize the concert. The city also said the event contradicted Montreal's values of inclusion, solidarity and respect. Const. Brianna Babin of the Ontario Provincial Police's East Division told the Ottawa Citizen that officers were aware of the concert at Alfred and were monitoring it. She added that officers were also talking to Cedar Shade Campground and the Township of Alfred and Plantagenet about the event. The campground told the Citizen it wasn't affiliated with Feucht's concert. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'It's been very good for open communication in that regard, so we know what's happening. We have officers that are boots on the ground, like our road officers are doing patrols in the area,' Babin said. 'The thing is, with any type of big event like this …. for a big show, a big event, they would normally hire the OPP to come do traffic control, crowd control, security, that type of stuff. This is not the case for this one. It's not a paid duty (assignment), so it's just our road officers being aware and patrolling the area. 'The campground has hired their own security for the event. Should anything transpire, the OPP is aware of it and the surrounding detachment areas as well. We're all in the loop.' Babin said she couldn't give an estimate of how many people attended the concert as of 3:50 p.m. on Saturday. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I touched base with the sergeant around one o'clock, and he had let me know that the stage was set up, but there was nobody there at that time. Nothing had started filling up,' Babin said. 'Now I know the concert just started at three, so I don't know the numbers … If there's no reason for us to be inside there, then we wouldn't even know.' Feucht, an American Christian nationalist, has previously opposed abortion rights, COVID-19 public-health restrictions and the LGBTQ2S+ community. He calls himself a speaker, author, missionary, artist and activist. He unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the United States Congress in California in 2020 and has held prayer concerts against COVID-19 restrictions. His political views has grabbed the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, and Feucht was invited to the White House for a faith briefing in December 2019, one week before Trump was first impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Feucht is a Trump supporter, most recently calling on fans to pray after the president was diagnosed with a chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which an individual's leg veins don't allow blood to flow back towards the heart. This can cause blood to collect in the legs. With files from The Canadian Press. Join us! The Ottawa Citizen is hosting an exclusive food and beverage tasting event where you can try bites from some of the city's best restaurants and sample beverages from breweries and wineries. Meet the chefs and try their signature dishes with members of the Citizen news team. Learn more about Ottawa Citizen Best Restaurants and buy a ticket here . Read More Sports Columnists Sunshine Girls Toronto & GTA Toronto & GTA
Ottawa Citizen
3 days ago
- Politics
- Ottawa Citizen
Controversial musician Sean Feucht performs in Alfred after Gatineau concert is cancelled
A MAGA-affiliated musician held a concert in a township just outside Ottawa on Saturday just a few days after the National Capital Commission cancelled a scheduled performance in Gatineau. Article content In a social media post on Saturday morning, Sean Feucht said he would be performing in an open field on the 'corner of Peladeau Road and Highway 17' in Alfred, Ont., a township 70 kilometres east of Ottawa. The performance was part of the Let Us Worship movement, where Feucht falsely claimed that Christians are being persecuted in Canada. Article content Article content Article content The NCC had cancelled Feucht's permit at Jacques-Cartier Park in Gatineau on Saturday due to what it called 'public safety concerns.' Article content Article content 'The NCC decided not to issue an event permit following consultation with the Gatineau Police and due to concerns about public safety and security,' Valérie Dufour, senior manager of strategic communications for the NCC, said in an emailed statement. Article content Officials in other Canadian cities had also cancelled scheduled Feucht concerts, including Halifax, Charlottetown and Quebec City. The City of Montreal fined a local church for hosting Feucht on Friday evening, saying the church had not obtained a permit to organize the concert. The city also said the event contradicted Montreal's values of inclusion, solidarity and respect. Article content Const. Brianna Babin of the Ontario Provincial Police's East Division told the Ottawa Citizen that officers were aware of the concert at Alfred and were monitoring it. Article content Article content She added that officers were also talking to Cedar Shade Campground and the Township of Alfred and Plantagenet about the event. Article content The campground told the Citizen it wasn't affiliated with Feucht's concert. Article content 'It's been very good for open communication in that regard, so we know what's happening. We have officers that are boots on the ground, like our road officers are doing patrols in the area,' Babin said. Article content 'The thing is, with any type of big event like this …. for a big show, a big event, they would normally hire the OPP to come do traffic control, crowd control, security, that type of stuff. This is not the case for this one. It's not a paid duty (assignment), so it's just our road officers being aware and patrolling the area. Article content 'The campground has hired their own security for the event. Should anything transpire, the OPP is aware of it and the surrounding detachment areas as well. We're all in the loop.'
Montreal Gazette
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Cancelled across Canada, MAGA singer Sean Feucht is playing in a Montreal church Friday
U.S. evangelical singer and MAGA-affiliated activist Sean Feucht is expected to perform in Montreal Friday night, following a week of venue cancellations and last-minute changes across Canada. The event, part of his 'Revive in 25' Let Us Worship tour, will take place at Église MR, a Spanish-speaking church in the Plateau. It comes after all six of Feucht's previously scheduled concerts across eastern Canada were cancelled by local authorities, citing concerns over public safety, security, and community standards. Despite the setbacks, Feucht has continued the tour, relocating shows to alternative sites. Cities said the cancellations were prompted by 'heightened public safety concerns' and the potential for protests. Feucht's outspoken views on abortion, gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights has drawn criticism and been cited as a source of tension, though he has described the cancellations as a form of religious discrimination. 'If I had shown up with purple hair and a dress, claiming to be a woman, the government wouldn't have said a word,' he posted earlier this week. On Friday afternoon, Feucht claimed the pastor of the Montreal church had been 'pressured, threatened and attacked' for agreeing to host the concert. Then, in a follow-up post, he appeared to maintain that the show would still go ahead. 'This pastor and his church ARE NOT BACKING DOWN!!!,' he wrote. Earlier in the day, Feucht reported that his tour bus was struck by another driver in Quebec. 'The Quebec police on the scene were unbelievably kind and other driver acknowledged he slammed into our bus and somehow 'lost control,'' he wrote. The Let Us Worship movement began during the COVID-19 pandemic as a protest against public health restrictions on religious gatherings. Feucht, a former worship leader and political activist aligned with the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, has since gained a national profile in the United States and brought his message to Canada despite growing controversy. He has nearly 600,000 followers on Facebook. This story is developing. This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 2:47 PM.
Vogue
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
How Brian Wilson Invented Vibes
And that's just one record. If you've heard of any Beach Boys album—as opposed to their many hit singles—it's likely 1966's Pet Sounds, and what 'Good Vibrations' did as a single, Pet Sounds did as an album, setting a new high-water mark for songwriting, composition, and production, and setting off a kind of creative arms race with the Beatles. It's worth noting that the Beatles' legendary producer George Martin, so instrumental in shaping their sound, said that 'If there is one person that I have to select as a living genius of pop music, I would choose Brian Wilson,' while Paul McCartney famously called the first track on side two of Pet Sounds, 'God Only Knows,' 'the greatest song ever written.' (Bob Dylan, meanwhile, is on record as saying, about Wilson's studio prowess, that while he 'made all his records with four tracks, you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.') But while the handfuls of albums they released from 1962 to 1966 made them famous (and, along the way, sold the mythical view of California as a paradise of surfing, hot rods, cute girls, and, yes, good vibes to the world at large) and Wilson became the first artist who wrote, arranged, produced, and performed his own songs in the studio—bringing in armadas of the best session musicians and painstakingly instructing them not only in the exact manner in which he wanted their parts to be played, but also in (sorry) what kind of vibes he wanted them to channel—that very exactitude, aided by an increasingly dangerous pharmaceutical intake, essentially caused the creative immolation of the Beach Boys. (It probably needs to be said that the old bugaboo of intra-band 'creative differences' was brought to new and volatile heights within the band, the majority of whom wanted to keep mining their trademark sun-fun-girls sound all the way to the bank.) Reading the blue-chip obituaries and the tributes from so many musicians (Questlove writing that 'if there was a human being who made art out of inexpressible sadness... damn it was Brian Wilson' certainly got to the heart of the matter), it can be hard to remember that there was a time when Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were essentially forgotten by most of the people whose opinions mattered. After Pet Sounds, a string of vastly less popular albums—some of them containing breathtaking songs, with many of them favorably reappraised in later years—followed in the 1970s. But in the '80s and '90s, Wilson was essentially a hermit, beset by drug and psychological problems (and later living under the care of a psychologist who was eventually stripped of his license and issued a restraining order) and bitter feuds with band members (mainly his cousin, Mike Love, now MAGA-affiliated) who essentially ran the Beach Boys name—long the source of swoons, screams, and slack-jawed wonder—into the ground.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russell Brand's rape charges expose the devil's bargain between MAGA and "Christian" celebrities
On Friday, just shy of a year since Russell Brand was showily baptized in the River Thames, the UK's Metropolitian Police charged the British comedian-turned-MAGA-influencer with one count of rape, one count of oral rape, two counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent exposure. At the time of his 2024 conversion, Brand declared that he had repented of his past and that he would "acknowledge that I am in a battle against myself." A few days before this week's charges, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News that he had "surrendered to a higher purpose." So, for people outside the MAGA bubble, it's a little strange to hear Brand react to the charges by rejecting accountability, instead denying the charges with conspiracy theories so outlandish it's hard to buy that he believes any of it. "We are very fortunate, in a way, to live in a time when there's so little trust in the British government," Brand asserted in a response video on X. "We know the law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people, institutions and sometimes entire nations that will not accept and tolerate levels of corruption that are unprecedented." Even while he insisted that he now lives in "the light of the Lord," Brand insinuated that he's the victim of a corrupt conspiracy to frame him. The likelier explanation for the charges is that there's just a lot of evidence against Brand. A collaboration between The Times, The Sunday Times, and Channel 4, conducted over years, produced exhaustively documented allegations of rape and other sexual abuses. They spoke with hundreds of sources, including four accusers. They collected medical records, texts, emails, and internal documents from employers, all showing a pattern of alleged sexual abuse that is often frightening in its violence. The report came out in September 2023. Shortly thereafter, Brand was kicked off YouTube. He then swiftly joined the MAGA-affiliated Rumble network. In the next few months, he moved to the U.S. and got baptized, fully rebranding himself as a right-wing Christian timeline doesn't seem to have given Brand's new MAGA audience a single moment's doubt that he might have ulterior motives. On the contrary, his fans encouraged the conspiracy theory that paints him as a political prisoner and the charges as "a political prosecution," as Charlie Kirk complained. "We know you're innocent, Russell and this is clearly all politically motivated," insisted one fan. "They're willing to sacrifice Russell though because it will make others stay silent," said another. My favorite, though, might be the guy who replied, " It wasn't until you decided to clean up your life and find faith and peace that they decided you must be removed." This, of course, gets the timeline backwards. The accusations have been surfacing since 2006, when Australian singer Dannii Minogue first spoke out about Brand being a "vile predator." The big Times exposé came out in late 2023, but Brand didn't "find faith" until the spring of 2024. Not like any of the other excuses for Brand make sense. The MAGA followers talk a lot about how "they" are doing this to Brand, but it's forever unclear who "they" are. The journalists? Police? Four alleged victims? Hundreds of witnesses? Crown prosecutors? But MAGA would rather believe that hundreds of "they" are conspiring to take down a has-been comedian than accept the likelier explanation: Brand found Jesus just in time to get a new income stream and source of attention and validation, one he would have never settled for when he still had access to mainstream audiences. Religion professor Bradley Onishi, host of the "Spirit and Power" podcast, pointed out to Salon that there is "a long history of the evangelical subculture and the conservative Christian subcultures wanting to find mainstream legitimacy" by grabbing onto any celebrities they can claim are one of them. In the 90s and early 2000s, Onishi noted, evangelicals hyped everyone from U2 and Creed to Jessica Simpson and Katy Perry as "crossover Christian figures" who could sell the larger world on the idea that Christianity is hip and cool. Brand, however, represents a disturbing twist to this saga: the willingness, in the era of Donald Trump, of right-wing Christians to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel to get this validation. Not that many of them will engage with the actual allegations against Brand, lest their view of him as a godly man get disturbed, but frankly, the details are shocking even in the #MeToo era. One alleged victim said she was 16 when she first had a sexual relationship with the 31-year-old Brand. She says he orally raped her so violently that she started to choke, only escaping by punching him the stomach. Others report that Brand threatened them if they spoke out, a likelier explanation for the delayed reporting than a shadowy conspiracy by the all-powerful "they" against Brand. Brand belongs to a long line of celebrities who, because of scandal or simply falling out of fashion, have discovered the cash and ego-fluffing benefits of converting to the Church of MAGA. Roseanne Barr's TV comeback got derailed because of racist online ranting, so nowadays she spends her time on Tucker Carlson's show talking about her "conversation going with God." Carlson himself was a MAGA figurehead in good standing, but since losing his Fox News gig, he's taken to talking about demon possession and other topics that perform well in the social media feeds of the Christian right. Tattoo superstar Kat Von D got her Sephora makeup line canceled after anti-vaccination statements and marrying a dude with a swastika tattoo. Now she gets glowing write-ups in right-wing media about her conversion to Christianity. Mark Wahlberg got a whole lot louder about being a devout Catholic shortly after stories about his arrests for hate crimes resurfaced. Christianity emphasizes redemption, making it an attractive framework for a celebrity needing to rehab a bad image. In theory, however, there is supposed to be repentance before redemption. But this is the era of Trumpian Christianity, so skipping the part where you say you're sorry is optional. After all, Trump is treated not just as a fellow Christian, but something closer to a savior figure by the religious right. He has never said he's sorry to the victims of his fraud, or to the people he's lied about, or to E. Jean Carroll, who a civil jury found him liable for sexually assaulting. On the contrary, Trump's response to people he's harmed is to escalate the abuse if they speak out against him, which is why Carroll won a second defamation suit against him. Being a bully is admired in the MAGA movement. In MAGA Christianity, actual repentance would be dismissed as "woke." No wonder it was the perfect landing spot for Russell Brand.
