Medicine Hat man convicted of promoting hatred against Jews is back at it

By Jeremy Appel 

(AJNews) – A Medicine Hat man who was handed a conditional sentence for promoting hatred against Jews is back in court after continuing to publish anti-Semitic materials online in violation of his release conditions. 

Loki Hulgaard was sentenced to four months house arrest and two years probation in October 2020 after pleading guilty to promoting hatred in relation to a 2018 incident where he attempted to circulate currency with anti-Semitic slogans, such as “Zionist Occupied Government,” printed on it at a local grocery store.

As a condition of his sentence, Hulgaard had to undergo intensive counselling and remove troves of anti-Semitic literature he had posted online.  

The Medicine Hat Police Service was tipped off in July 2021 that Hulgaard was still writing anti-Semitic content, the Medicine Hat News reported. 

After executing a new search warrant on his residence, police found 3,000 pages of material circulated online that could be in violation of his court order, which led to him being charged with a breach, the News reported. 

Kurt Phillips, a researcher with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, told AJNews he was skeptical of the relatively lenient sentence Hulgaard received to begin with. 

Phillips said Hulgaard has gone so far down the far-right rabbit role that “it would take something incredibly intensive to get him out, because that became his world.” 

“He believed every single thing he was saying,” said Phillips. “It doesn’t surprise me that he’s back to writing.” 

If the breach ends up going to trial, Phillips predicts Hulgaard will “try to pull in every crank theory and idea you can imagine” in an effort to justify his anti-Semitism.  

Hulgaard attempted to reverse his guilty plea a month after his sentencing, but that effort was vacated in May, officials from the Court of Appeal confirmed to the News.  

Titles of his recent diatribes include Jewish White Genocide, Who Is the Jew?: The Jew Identifier Document and How (((They))) Ruined My Life: Autobiography of Loki Hulgaard.

In a statement, B’nai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn said Huulgard must face incarceration. 

“We appreciate the diligent work of Medicine Hat Police on the Loki Hulgaard file,” said Mostyn. 

“However, this is not a case about breaching a conditional sentence order. This is one of the worst cases of antisemitic propaganda we have ever seen in Canada.

“If the Canadian justice system cannot deliver real consequences for committed hatemongers, then it will fail to deter acts of violence against Jews and other communities.”

In addition to his conviction for promoting hatred, which carries a maximum sentence of two years, Hulgaard was initially charged with 13 firearms offenses after police searched his home in August 2018 and found four firearms — two which had their serial numbers removed — three over-capacity magazines and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. 

In exchange for his guilty plea, Hulgaard’s firearms-related charges were reduced to a single non-criminal count of improperly registering his guns after he changed his name from Brendan Dell in 2012 and failed to update his registration. 

Jeremy Appel is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter for Alberta Jewish News.