David Brett - New West Blogger and Agitator 

Let’s start with a bit of context. Since November, I’ve been working to raise awareness about Israel’s genocide in Gaza and our country’s complicity in the genocide. Part of the advocacy work was lobbying our government — at the municipal, provincial, and federal level — to take both symbolic and concrete actions to denounce Israel’s genocide and end our country’s complicity in it. At the municipal level, that meant lobbying city councillor to pass purely symbolic motions that acknowledged the horrors going on in Palestine and calling on our federal government to take action. Many city councils passed similar motions when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. 

At a few of the city council meetings, fellow activists and I noticed a man who was clearly hostile to us and our cause. We did our best to ignore him. Turns out that man was David Brett. He’d post clips of us at city councils and try to smear us. Since his blog had a tiny following, we continued to ignore him. 

After he posted his hit piece on me and my late father though, I decided to do a bit of research about him. And oh boy. 

But before I tell you about David Brett, let me take a minute to debunk his hit piece. Brett makes two accusations in his blog post against me and my family. First — that my father, Gamil Naguib, was at the center of a massive fraud scandal. And second — that I am calling on Canadians to take up arms. 

The accusations fall apart under the lightest scrutiny. 

Let’s start with the smear against my late father — that he was “at the center of a massive fraud case in the UK”. To make his case, Brett quotes and links to three newspaper articles that were written between 1993 and 1995. This massive fraud case did happen. And a man named Harold Glantz went to prison for it. But the last article written about the case, the one that was written in 1995 after the case was resolved, clearly states that my father, Gamil Naguib, was one of the victims of the fraud. 

In Brett’s blog post, he twists the earlier articles to make it seem like my father was the perpetrator of the fraud, instead of the victim. Either David Brett has poor reading comprehension skills or he’s simply mendacious. As you learn more about him, I think it will become clear which explanation better explains his blog post.

What about the second accusation? That I’m calling on Canadians to take up arms? Where did that come from? To make that accusation, he quotes a speech that I gave at a rally for Palestine at the Vancouver Art Gallery on April X, 2024. A fellow activist, Charlotte Kates, had recently been arrested for giving a speech in which he affirmed the rights of Palestinians living under occupation to resist the brutal occupation of their lands. In my speech, I reaffirmed what Charlotte had said: Palestinians, like every other people living under occupation, have the right to resist their occupation. As the UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese has stated multiple times, there is no ambiguity on this point: people living under occupation have the right to resist that occupation — including through military means. 

Of course, David Brett let his imagination run wild. Nowhere in my speech did I advocate for Canadians to take up arms… but that’s what he hears when an Arab Muslim Canadian affirms the right of a people living under occupation to engage in armed resistance. 

Brett’s motivations become clear when you do a bit of research on him and his friends. I wanted to understand Brett’s worldview a bit better so I looked through his blog to see what else is there. I was shocked, but not surprised, by what I found. 

Met Jim McMurty, one of the contributor’s to Brett’s New Westminster Times blog:

What does McMurty write about in his blog posts for the New Westminster Times? Mostly about Indigenous people. He tries to make the case that residential schools were not that bad and that no Indigenous children were murdered at residential schools. He claims they died of “natural causes” like tuberculosis. He doesn’t try to make any of his claims with grace though. 

To give get a taste of McMurty’s naked racism, take a look at some of his tweets:

Unsurprisingly, McMurty’s racism isn’t reserved for just Indigenous people. His bigotry extends towards Muslims as well: 

David Brett's association with Jim McMurty is definitely not a one-off. 

Here is Brett and his wife taking a selfie with Douglas Murray, a well known British media personality who made his name by peddling bigotry and racism:

And here is what Murray has to say about Muslims and Islam: 

Here is Brett echoing the racist myth that Palestine was a “rocky, swampy, barren land” before European Zionist arrived and made the desert bloom. 

And here is Brett using his blog to attack an Indigenous leader who spoke up for Palestine at a city council meeting. 

David Brett wasn’t the only person to attack that Indigenous leader because she had the courage to speak up for Palestine. A few days after Brett’s post, another man, Alistair James Henry, stalked the Indigenous leader online and threatened to sexually assault her child: 

With this background information about David Brett, his actions start to make sense. In his worldview, Indigenous people and Muslim people are savage, backwards, and inherently violent. That’s why a Muslim man couldn’t be an alum of a good university based on his own merits. It must be that his father stole money to pay to send his son to the “Ivey leagues.” And that’s why a Muslim man who stands up in front of a crowd and affirms the right of people living under occupation to resist their occupation is interpreted as a call to violence everywhere. That fits the worldview that Muslims are inherently violent.

I don’t want to give David Brett and his blog any more attention than this. But I do want to warn people from associating themselves with him. According to his website, he is the president and CEO of EnGold Mines. He also states that he is part of Simon Fraser University’s Mentors in Business Program and Venture Connections Program. 

If anyone is considering doing business or associating themselves with David Brett, I hope this article gives them some pause. Is it wise to associate with someone who’s racism is so naked?