Ezra Levant
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
Sure. Trudeau has announced that he's resigning, but not till March 24th. Now, he's resigning just days before he was having a caucus meeting where his own liberal MPs were going to demand that he resigned. So he's preempting them. But he's doing a sneaky move, Charlie.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
In a parliamentary system like Canada has, in Parliament, that's our version of Congress, the ordinary MPs, members of Parliament, can vote no confidence and bring the government down and force an election. So Trudeau has asked the Governor General, that's the King's representative in Canada, to dissolve Parliament. It's called proroguing.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
So not only did Trudeau not really resign today, he's kicked the can down the road almost three months, but he's dissolved Parliament so no House of Commons business can happen, no bills can be passed, no question period where people scrutinize the government, but mainly, Charlie... He's not letting MPs have a vote of no confidence.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
So in a way, he's suspended democracy just to give himself three more months of power and perks. So I guess one cheer, not two cheers for three cheers for what happened today.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
Well, that's part of it. The conservative leader in Canada is pretty good. His name is Pierre Polyev. He's pretty right wing. I mean, right wing in Canada isn't quite right wing in the U.S., but Polyev is excellent on economics and fiscal and monetary policy. He's gotten a lot firmer on immigration. Not Donald Trump firm, but better than any leader we've had in decades.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
He's talked about replacing the woke culture in our military with a warrior culture. And most importantly, in my mind, Charlie, Pierre Polyev has a Trump-like approach to partisan media. He calls out reporters in real time. He has... promise to defund our state broadcaster called the CBC. So I'm quite encouraged about Pierre Polyev. I think
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
The fact that he's strong and, you know, you could say the phrase alpha male, that's sort of part of it. But I think Trudeau has had so many scandals and so much corruption and he's been so badly behaved over the last months that his time was coming up. I mean, Trudeau has been polling so low. Last poll I saw put him at 16 percent. his party MPs are worried they're going to be wiped out.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
So they were going to vote to kick him out on Wednesday, Charlie. This is Trudeau just buying himself three more months and leaving on his own terms. He was going to be fired on Wednesday.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
It was the most important civil liberties moment in a generation in Canada. All of our federal political parties were think-alikes when it came to the lockdowns and forced vaccine mandates. There was a no-fly list in Canada. If you weren't jabbed, you could not fly. You could not get on a ship. In the second largest country in the world, you couldn't fly.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
It was very authoritarian, and we had a weak government.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
conservative and name only conservative leader back then who was cool with all this so who was there to fight for our freedom no professors no media no political party independent truckers on their own started a convoy to ottawa because they had been hit with a vaccine mandate which is crazy truckers are the most solitary workers other than maybe a lighthearted
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
lighthouse captain and to say that the truckers now had to get a jab to continue to work so all these truckers started this long convoy to ottawa and it just grew and grew and grew and soon it was 100 kilometers long and people came out just to view it with their own eyes It was the first real thing they saw in a year because of all the propaganda on TV.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
And because it was sort of leaderless and it was self-funded and organic, people saw this as the first real thing. And it started to embarrass Trudeau because they went to Ottawa. Now, Trudeau thought, uh-huh. This is my January 6th moment. I'm going to play the Democrat message track from January 6th. These are violent insurrectionists, domestic extremists.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
He tried all that, but it didn't work because the truckers were completely peaceful. They didn't storm any building. They had bouncy castles and hot tubs. And their niceness, their Canadian-ness shifted.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
shamed trudeau and he was starting to lose face so then he pulled the emergency ripcord justin trudeau brought in martial law he declared a national emergency we didn't even have that on 9 11 charlie this is the first time the law has ever been used and it put canada under a form of martial law
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
And he and his deputy, without any legal process, started seizing and freezing private bank accounts of anyone who they could find at this protest. Hundreds and hundreds of families suddenly, when they went to the grocery store, their credit cards, their banks were frozen. It was an outrageous violation of civil liberties. And who knows how far he would have gone. That was our moment.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
And I think Canadians looked into the abyss and said, whoa, what has happened to us, the true North, strong and free? And Charlie, if you look at the polls, that was when Trudeau started to fall. And the two and a half, three years since then. Yeah, that's right.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
And so that was the most terrible and wonderful moment in my lifetime in Canada when ordinary grassroots people stood up to Trudeau and stood up to the regime media. Charlie, all the media in Canada agreed with Trudeau on martial law. They agreed with demonizing these ordinary truckers. They wanted Trudeau to go further. They were happy to write the script the same way the Democrats did on Jan 6.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
So it was a moment where ordinary people, I would use the word the proletariat, because these were grassroots, ordinary, unfancy people. They stared down Trudeau. Trudeau blinked. And we are freer now because of it. By the way, last point.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
I mentioned that back then Canada had a conservative in-name only leader of the Conservative Party, and he told his MPs, you're not allowed to even meet with the truckers. Well, his MPs had a revolt, sacked him as leader, went to hang out with the truckers, and that's when the Conservative Party of Canada chose Trump. The real conservative, Pierre Polyev.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
So the truckers not only saved Canada from Trudeau, the truckers helped renovate and rejuvenate the Conservative Party. Pierre Polyev, who is set to have the biggest election win in Canadian history if polls hold up, he is the party leader because of the truckers, Charlie.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
Oh, yes. And I look forward to Pierre Palliev and Donald Trump working together constructively. Let's be honest, Trump and Trudeau hate each other. It is a mutual thing. And that would be bad for both countries, especially bad for Canada, because we're
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
the smaller partner in the partnership, but you put a thoughtful, Canada-first, freedom-loving, conservative in office in Canada and have him and Donald Trump have a heart-to-heart, you're going to get things done for both countries on trade, on border control, on national defense, on foreign policy. Trudeau is being pro-Hamas. Pierre Polyev is not.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
You're going to see our two countries become best friends again, Charlie. I'm very excited about it.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
It's rebelnews.com. We're based in Canada, but we do cover stories around the world that touch on freedom and censorship and globalism. So check out rebelnews.com. Thanks for the plug, Charlie.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
It's not. I mean, listen, we used to be part of the British Empire together, so we do have a history. It was called British North America, I think. But there are some differences that I think some of the enthusiasts are missing. First of all, a quarter of our country is French-speaking Quebecers.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
um i mean yet we have bilingualism in this country that might complicate things another thing is i think most canadians would probably be democrats places like alberta and saskatchewan a more right wing they'd probably go republican but i i don't know i think that uh you could see this as a new california now if we were to swap I'm joking.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
Listen, I don't think that's I think I think that's a fun thing to talk about and to daydream about. But the reality is, look, we actually have the world's longest undefended border. Now, Trudeau has made that into a problem. We're culturally very similar. We have a tight trade relationship. I think we have all the pluses of being one country with the pluses of being independent.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
I think that Canada can become great again and can be sort of like Batman and Robin. You guys get to be Batman because you got 330 million people, but we're Robin with 40 million people, but we are two separate things. I think getting Trudeau out of the way and getting back to common sense, I really think we're going to be your greatest ally and we're going to work together on projects.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
And that's where all the oil is, 173 billion barrels of oil in Alberta. And that's the thing. I don't know how that could possibly be hit with a tariff. I mean, that would be bad for America. We sell most of our oil exports, in fact, almost all our oil exports to America. And that displaces conflict oil from OPEC regimes.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
So we actually have a role to play in American energy security, which is why the premier of Alberta, Daniel Smith, is going to Washington for the inauguration. I don't know if you know that, Charlie, but Trudeau has been AWOL on this whole cross-border tariff thing. I think he wants to fight with Trump because he hates Trump. But the premier of Alberta, that's the most conservative oil province,
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
has been doing her best to keep the two countries friendly. Danielle Smith is her name. She's off to Washington, and I think that she's got the right idea. Keep the countries friendly. Keep the oil and gas and other trade flowing. Strengthen the border. She's gone ahead and set up sort of a provincial – National Guard kind of thing. She's got drones and cops. She's taking Trump seriously.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
And I think she wants Canada and the U.S. to be best friends, as do I, as do I think most Canadians. I don't think we want to join America, but we love visiting there. And as long as we're on good terms and cooperating for freedom, I think everyone's a winner.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
Well, March 24th is when he turns over the prime ministership to some other liberal lackey who's going to get crushed. I think that's the big one federally, but we're watching January 20th because we're going to see what Trump does to Trudeau. Is he going to put those tariffs in? On April Fool's Day, Trudeau is jacking up the carbon tax, which is going to make us less competitive financially.
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
compared to the united states which doesn't have a carbon tax so i don't know we're just waiting we're looking at our clocks and calendars waiting till trudeau leaves and we can get on with a freedom-oriented government under pierre paulieff we'll keep you posted charlie because you know canada can be a laboratory for bad ideas national health care woke ism but i think we can also be an inspiration for good ideas and i hope we get back on that track
The Charlie Kirk Show
America is Back, Is Canada Next?
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There's a battle between Tommy Robinson and the government of the United Kingdom over what is true.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, we only know what happened to Twitter because Elon Musk himself revealed that he sort of opened up his own kimono to show the world. I've got to think it was the same at YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram. They just haven't been as forthcoming. Elon Musk is very unusual that way.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And they're tracking, too, because today's 15-year-old in five years will be 20, and maybe he'll be a soldier then. And maybe at 25, maybe he'll be—think of, if you're tracking someone and all their conversations and all their networks and all their friends, and if everything they say is being recorded from their gestures to—and if it's all being backed up in big data in Beijing—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You're talking to a kid today, but in 20 years from now, you've got some dirt on someone. And I mean, TikTok is so addictive. Elon Musk said the algorithm, he felt it pulling on his mind. He had to shut it down. It's an amazing algorithm. It knows what you like almost more than you do.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And not just that- Maybe you forgot what you said in that phone call five years ago. How can it forget? It never forgets anything in some ways. And there is some reason to be terrified about it. I think Donald Trump has decided if there's going to be AI, let it be in America rather than in China.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Oh, it was a struggle session. Like a Maoist. Bloody Maoists, yeah. They were trying to put the hat on you and make you confess. Oh, definitely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Yeah, that didn't go so well. I mean, if I recall, your grants, you always... Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We did, yeah. Yeah. You know what? This is one of those cases where the people were on one side and the institutions were another. That's where crowdfunding works sometimes. Yeah, right. Where it's sort of an 80-20 kind of thing. I mean, transgenderism in sports is another example of that. All the institutions are on one side and the people are on the other. Trump— Like pipelines in Canada.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I think so. It's 80-20, by the way. And I think people— I don't think a lot of grassroots people think about government grants for scholarship and academia, but they could see that you were being punished for it in a way that was designed to hurt you. So severely normal people said, well, we're going to – we did crowdfund sort of a replacement for that. Oh, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Rebel News has met some colorful characters over the years. That's for sure. You're one of them. That's for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think you've— You guys have roused a lot of rabble. But I think that's healthier than the alternative, which is a conformity. In these controversial days, air it out. Hear it out. Let the both sides clash. And that's what YouTube was like.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We got rolling with what we called citizen journalism. I remember we called it that now.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I used to be with a real TV station called Sun News Network. There were 200 folks. It had real studios across the country. My studio in Toronto was a million-dollar studio with five people working in the control room. It was a real operation. And a billionaire named Pierre-Carlo Pelladeau put a ton of dough into it. But it was sort of euthanized by Canada's TV regulator, the CRTC. How?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, in the end, the TV network had to do deals with different cable companies. Will you carry it? What channel will you carry it on? How much will you charge customers for it? How much will you pass on to Rebel News? And all of these things are regulated. And so the regulator basically euthanized it and said, we're going to give you a few... Regulators turn into censors at the drop of a hat.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
They have a... Right, right, right. Especially with media, that's how you can kill it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And they killed Sun News. And I resolved that I would never put myself in a position where a government regulator could do that to us again. So we went all internet. We didn't try and do anything in a real TV or real radio environment.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
When I go to the UK, I see what our future will be five years down the road if we don't change course. Let me tell you what's terrifying about that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, yes, because I had a YouTube experience that I'm going to say saved my life maybe five years or almost 10 years earlier. Let me tell you the story really quick. I was the publisher of a print magazine called the Western Standard. You know, we would print it on paper and mail it out every two weeks. It's even hard to imagine such a thing existed now.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And this was when the Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad caused such a fuss overseas. I think that was late 2005.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So there were riots around the world. Over 200 people killed. And every mainstream media outlet panicked and refused to show it. The Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times. And so that actually added menace to it. Wow, they'll print anything. They won't show what these cartoons are like. They must be awful. No, in fact, they were pretty banal.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Nothing more controversial than what you'd see on the political cartoons in any major newspaper on any subject. Yeah. Yeah. So we had this little magazine called The Western Standard, 40,000 subscribers, based in Western Canada. And we were fortnightly, so we're not hot on the news. So I thought, okay, by the time we published, I thought, everyone else will have shown the cartoons.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So we're not going to go with, ta-da, here's what they are. We'll be more analytical. And we made the point you just did, not all Muslims hold that you can't depict Muslims. We did sort of a think piece kind of thing. The cartoon was not on the cover. It was tucked inside.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But by the time this came off the printing presses, it was clear we were the only people in the country that were going to do this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And our phones rang off the hook. A lot of people who called... at the time were Muslim, I would say, exiles who said, I didn't come to Canada to have Sharia law follow me across the world. I found that very encouraging. And mostly people just appreciated the fact that we let them decide. And we didn't show the cartoons saying we agree with them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It was more like a prosecutor puts evidence to a jury.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It was obviously news. Exactly. And if you're in the radio business, you paint a picture with your words, but when you have a printing press, you show it. So we showed it, and it was wonderful. But then the Alberta Human Rights Commission, which is a government agency— Another commission, by the way, that does nothing like what its name says it does. Exactly, exactly.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Because there's no such thing as the right not to be offended. That's a counterfeit human right. That's actually, you're torturing the language. That's a power to silence.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It's my right to control your tongue. We have the right to be offended. And just stop and think about that for a minute. In some parts of the world, you're not allowed to be offended by things. You're not allowed to express your outrage at things. You have to suck it up. In Canada, we have the right to be offended, not the right not to be offended.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Where does hatred come from? Because I was charged, I still to this day remember the wording of the law under which I was charged by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. And it is against the law to publish anything, quote, likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Very closely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, he hasn't indicated that he won't. Let me tell you what's terrifying about that. Likely to. So that's a future crime.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So how do you defend against a future crime? Now, there are some future crimes in our criminal code uttering a death threat, I suppose, is a future crime. Attempted something, something. But likely to what? Punch someone, that's very measurable. No, likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt. So you're going to do something that's likely to cause him to have hard feelings about himself.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And how do you measure that? And what's likely to?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And truth is not a defense. What's truth got to do with it? You caused him to have hard feelings about him.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I was... pursued for 900 days. And the apex of that was we managed to convince the interrogator for the Alberta Human Rights Commission to allow us to make a record of my interrogation. Now, we didn't say radio, so it was in my lawyer's office. It was on a Friday afternoon. And we managed to convince the interrogator to come to us. So we had set up—it was conspicuous. It wasn't hidden.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We had set up a camera. This was before smartphones. This was—I had never used a camera before. And we set it up in the room. So the interrogator comes in. She looks at the camera. You can see she's sort of hesitating for a second. But it's Friday afternoon, and we had been negotiating this meeting for months. So she just sits down, and she proceeds to grill me. Yeah, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And what do you think her first question was? It was, Why did you publish the cartoons? Now, the thing is, if anyone else had asked me that question, I probably did 100 media interviews. I would try and be the most reasonable version of me I could be. I would try and explain it. Separation of mosque and state. It's the central artifact in a news story. We have to talk this out.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I would try and be as reasonable as possible. I talked to a lot of Muslim folks, and I tried to say, no, please understand why this was. I was trying to appeal to their reason. But when the government asks you the same question, you can't answer in the same way. Because the government is not asking out of curiosity or out of intellectual growth. They're asking because something turns on it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Punishment turns on it. If you don't appease them and say the right answer, you will be punished. And so you can't answer the same way. And so I remember what I said. I said... because it's my bloody right to do so. And I'm not trying to convince you and wiggle through. I want my maximum freedom. And I recorded this on this video camera and I went home that day
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And I managed somehow to edit that video I'd never done in my life. And I set up a YouTube account. I'd never done that in my life. This was when YouTube was pretty new. There was no social media back then. There was no Facebook, no Twitter or anything like that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And I uploaded the video of my interrogation because I knew no one would believe me if I said a magazine publisher was just grilled for one hour about my political and religious views for publishing this. Crucial case. And people, that went viral.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The asymmetry. There were more than a dozen bureaucrats and lawyers for the Alberta Human Rights Commission coming for me. And the complainant, this radical imam, didn't have to pay a cent. And his complaint was so laughable, he cited as legal basis, he was citing passages from the Quran. He said he personally was a descendant of Muhammad and I had offended him.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And I thought, oh, for sure this is going to be thrown out. No, it was not. A dozen people, I mean, human rights is the middle name of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. They were anything but. I would have been flattened. I would have been flattened. But the internet saved me. Blogging was a thing back then. And PayPal was new. So that's how I funded my lawyer.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The Western Standard Magazine came to an end, as all magazines sort of did around then. So I didn't have the dough to fight this. Do you know what it cost you? You know what? It was close to $100,000. And that's in 2008.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It was fascinating to deal with them. They are so used to making deals with rational business people who say, there's no way I'm going to win here. Just pay it out and get it over. They offered me, they said, if you pay that imam, I think it was like eight grand, and give him a page in the magazine to write whatever he wants, we'll let you go. And they assumed I would take it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And any rational decision maker would have taken that deal. Instead of fighting, you're not going to win. Look at the law. It depends on what you mean by win. Well, that's right. And we can talk a little bit more about my friend Tommy Robinson and how, in a way, he is irrational, too, if the idea is to save yourself. Like, he was in court in the UK.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I sat there and I watched the judge say to him, will you take down that video? Shortly after you interviewed him, he put up a video on Twitter. A judge said, don't do it. Don't do it. He did it. He was brought before the judge. I'm switching gears now. And he was in the dock. And the judge said, I'm going to give you the maximum sentence.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
million times, the judge said, you take it down now, I'm going to lop months of... Silenced? That's right. And Tommy wouldn't bend the knee.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, I visited Tommy in Spain and came back with him on the flight because we thought he would be arrested the minute he landed. They waited a few days, and they picked him up strategically so he could not attend a rally. Oh, yeah. And let me talk about that moment just for one second. Tommy has flaws, but he also has within him a gleaming diamond that is rare. And let me tell you what that is.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The video had been seen 55 million times. The judge was saying... If you take it down now, you'll go home to your family months earlier. And I'll confess, I said to Tommy, I said, look, brother, you've had the most watched documentary film ever produced in the UK. That's the biggest win of all time. Take it down and don't be away from your family. And I said that to him as a friend.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I said, you have the biggest win you can, 55 million views. He said, no. Now it has over 150 million views, and the world is talking about it, including Elon Musk himself, who retweeted it. And see, the law isn't used to dealing with people who are not rationalizing, sort of maximizing the optimal outcome for reducing pain.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You're right. So they thought I was going to take the deal back in 2008 to let the Z-Mum have a page in the magazine rather than to fight a six-figure fight for three years. And with Tommy, they thought he would bend the knee and take that thing down. Instead, he said, no, I'll hold fast. And so he's still in the clink. By the way, they have him in solitary confinement.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
They cleared out the whole segregation block. He's the only prisoner in there. He's in his cell 21 hours a day. He's allowed out to have a shower. He's allowed out to ride a stationary bike and to sort of a homemade gym. The rest of the time, he is in isolation.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
A thousand people? Everyone has a social media following.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And by the way— So it means whatever the hell they want. A lot of his friends happen to be in him. Of course. I was scheduled to go and visit him on February 16th. Yeah. And I just got a letter from the prison governor saying, we understand you have a social media presence and we're not going to let you in. The trouble with that is these visitors, I mean, I'm interested to hear how he's doing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Do you know how he's doing? No. Well, I hear from his family, and there are some—and he's deteriorating. Well, yeah, no doubt. You cannot spend—it is a form of mental torture. It is—solitary confinement is how you punish a prisoner who's already in prison.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Now, they have him in a maximum security prison, too. There are murderers in that prison. I visited him once before they brought in this no visitors rule, and it was quite something to get through this labyrinth of doors. I met with him early, and he was in high enough spirits in the first month. Now he's in his fourth month there. He's got five more? That's right. And he's falling apart.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Here's the problem with banning visitors.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Not just that. The visitors want to visit for their own sake. I want to talk to him about certain things. I want to report back certain things on his health. But from his point of view, he needs the visitors to stay sane.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And he has certain visiting slots. His family cannot fill them all. His family is living a life. His kids are in school. He's like... And so there, I was in court when the judge meted out the sentence. The judge gave him the maximum sentence allowed by law to be served in solitary, no such thing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
In fact, he always says, put me in the ward, put me in the wing, and I'll fend for myself, and it's on you, prison. The prison are putting—the prison don't know what to do with him. Because you're correct to say in the UK— Yeah, because it's a civil offense, right? In the United States, you have different kinds of gangs in prison. There's the white gangs, the black gangs, the Latino gangs.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You go to a gang for protection. In the UK, by far the dominant gangs are the Muslim gangs. In fact, you convert to join. And the thing is, Tommy Robinson is a skeptic and a critic of Islam. And anyone who would put a knife into him would be a hero in the community forever. Yeah, right. And so there are some ways to imprison such a man, especially if he's a civil prisoner.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It's not a crime that he's in jail for. He put a video up. And let's get back to fact checkers for one second. Let me say this. The judge said, what you're going to put online is not admissible in court. I reject it as the truth because it was not admissible in court under these rules of civil procedure. Okay, fair enough, judge.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But that doesn't mean it's not true, and that doesn't mean it's not useful. And we don't all have to seek truth through a particular legal system where lawyers and judges determine what you're allowed to see and what you're not allowed to see. So what's happening is there's a battle between Tommy Robinson and the government of the United Kingdom over what is true.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And a judge says, in my courtroom, where Tommy did not have a lawyer, where he was sort of doing homemade law, you were not allowed to bring certain evidence into the trial, and so you're not allowed to put them in a different forum where you're more adept. A social media video. How is that anything other than a brutal fact check?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And when Tommy Robinson didn't accept it, solitary confinement, he'll serve nine months in solitary. I don't know anyone other than Julian Assange who's done that. And... There really is a two-tier. Where's the prison? It's called Woodhill. It's in a town called Milton Keynes. It's about a 90-minute drive from Heathrow Airport. And I'm still hoping to go in.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I wrote back to the prison governor just yesterday saying, look, I'll sign an NDA, which is obscene. Right, right. And this prison governor, who is she to say I can't say what Tommy said and I can't say what I see? But I want to actually put eyes on him. Especially outside the U.K., It's just unheard of. But I want to put eyes on him. I want to see what he's doing. Absolutely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And they are delaying and delaying. You know what? They would like him to die in prison. That would be a mistake. I think so. And what I've learned, my advice to him three months ago was, take the video down and don't go to jail for so long. Declare victory. But his victory is magnified much more by it. So they don't know how to deal with him.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I want to tell you one more Tommy story, and I know I talk about him a lot. No, no, I want you to. I go to the UK, and I know you do too. And I think we love it for similar reasons. It's the source of our language and our culture and our history, the source of our freedom. English common law. You know, I'm in love with the place. Yep, me too, absolutely. I can't get enough.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But it's also, my trips there, I call them a dystopian time machine. When I go to the UK, I see what our future will be five years down the road if we don't change course on matters like mass immigration that is not culturally. Net zero. What they call ULEZ, ultra low emission zones.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But you can also see what the dissidents are like. Tommy Robinson being one dissident. They had things there, people who call themselves blade runners.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Who go out with metal cutting saws, who take down those surveillance cameras in less than a minute. We don't approve of the blade runners. No, no, we absolutely don't. That's right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It's amazing to see. I mean, remember what Orwell said. if there's any hope, it's with the proles.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Tommy used to work for Rebel News back in the day. I mentioned we had some colorful characters. You name it, they passed the doors of Rebel News. You and Menzies, too. Oh, he's still with us. He's the best.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
How many times have you been arrested? Just once. Just once. You have to work on that. But I was arrested. I was on the street near my neighborhood. I live in a fairly Jewish— This is in Toronto?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Let me tell you what went down there, because it bothers me to this day. Every week, some Jews would wave Israeli and Canadian flags for the hostages who were being held by Hamas. in a Jewish neighborhood, on a Jewish street corner. It was an attempt to be positive. And they've been doing that for more than a year.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
A few months ago, Hamas supporters were driving all the way in from far away every Sunday on the opposite side of the street to have a counter demonstration with anti-Semitic signs, loudspeakers shouting insane, you know, from the river to the sea, swastikas. And then one day, They had someone reenact Yahya Sinwar's final moments. He was the head of Hamas, who was found in a chair.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So they brought this bloody chair and this guy with a... How was he killed? He was killed by... I don't know what finally did him in, but there was a drone video of his final moments. I see. So they were reenacting. It would be like reenacting a Hitler's bunker or something. And I just thought, this is crazy. And there were so many cops there. And I'm not particularly a fan of hate speech laws.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Yeah, right. But they're on the books. Yeah, they're appalling. And I don't know what more you need. So I went there just to take a pic. I didn't go there to counter protests. This is in my neighborhood. I saw it on social media. Had you been at those sorts of protests before? I had been to record because it's just astonishing. But that day, I was at home.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I had no plans to go because it's every single weekend. But I thought— are they really reenacting this Hamas moment? So I went there, and I said to the cops, I've got to take a picture of that. And the first cops sort of escorted me in, and when the Hamas types objected, they sort of pushed me out, which I didn't like.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Why do they protest if you can't take a picture of it? Protest at home. I was escorted away. I'm on the public sidewalk in my neighborhood. There's a wall of 30 cops between me and the Hamas types. And I'm sort of fussed because the cops pushed me away. But I'll never push a cop. I'm not that dumb. And then the top cop says, those protesters object to you being here. I said, I don't care.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
He said, your presence could incite them to breach the peace. Oh, yeah. He said, well, that's on them. That's for sure. Public sidewalk, my neighborhood. The cops said, if you don't leave now, I'm arresting you. I said— On what grounds? On your presence here is inciting them to breach the peace. Yeah, that's a crime. It is not a crime.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
In fact, I was not charged, but I was handcuffed, frog-marched to a police car, searched, put in the back of the police car, driven to jail, searched again, put in a cell. What was that like? Well, I knew it was BS. And my friend, my colleague, David Menzies— Were you mad at the cops? I was very mad at the cops who arrested me.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The ones who obeyed and handcuffed me, I'm not going to be mad at them. They were doing their job. When I was at the jail, you know, the guys in the jail had nothing to do with my arrest, so I was lighthearted. You know, I mean— And that's another thing about being in jail I've learned from Tommy Robinson, is you are at the mercy of these guards. You are at the physical mercy of them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
To me, that's the most terrifying thing about prison, is that they can do whatever they want to you. And what are you going to say about it? What are you going to do about it? Especially if nobody can visit you. That's right. Who can communicate. Exactly right. So... I knew I would be out in a matter of hours because they didn't actually charge me with anything. Right, right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I saw a courageous professor, and those words don't go together very often, standing outside the University of Toronto making the case for freedom of speech while people tried to shout him down. And in fact, Antifa types brought loudspeakers to blast white noise. And we had our cameras there, and we said, who is this? And doesn't he know that he's going to get squashed?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So you weren't worried particularly? No, because I had been through this five times with David Menzies. Right, right, right. Menzies walked up to— Tell us, tell everybody who Menzies is. Rebel News has some colorful characters. One of my favorites is a guy named David Menzies. He's in his early 60s. He wears a fedora. He's got an old-fashioned style.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
He loves old pop culture references from the 70s. The guy's a character. Mm-hmm.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
David, and how many journalists would dare cover that? Yeah, well, him. Yeah. David went up to... Our deputy prime minister at the time, Christia Freeland, on a public sidewalk at a public event. And it was about Iran. And the liberals hadn't banned a certain Iranian terror group. And so David, with his lanyard and mic, like there's no—everyone knew who he was.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
He went up to her and said, will you ban this group? And the RCMP swarmed him, pushed him against the wall and said, stop assaulting. Yeah, right. And they arrested him. If the cameras hadn't been there, we all saw that the police assaulted David. They said David assaulted the police. And they charged him with assault. When they saw that we caught it on tape, they let him go.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
David's been arrested so many times. During the pandemic, David went outside. a Christmas party where Justin Trudeau was going to fundraise with the Liberal Party. But this was when we weren't supposed to have Christmas parties. It was during the lockdown. No, you weren't supposed to have Christmas parties. And that was David's one question.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Why are you having a Christmas party when the rest of us are told not to? So David was waiting in the cold on the street with his cameraman for an hour for Trudeau's caravan to arrive. You know, COVID was genetically engineered not to infect important people, you know. Here's how this story ends. So everyone knows Menzies. He's very visible. He's got his camera. He's a cameraman there.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There's no doubt who he is and what his purpose is. He's waiting with the Toronto Police Service for an hour. They're bantering. They're all just waiting for the prince to arrive. Underage pulls up. They obviously radioed ahead and said, who's there? Oh, just Menzies.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The RCMP bodyguards for Trudeau jump out of the vehicle, go straight to David, and beat the daylights out of him, smash him against the wall, dump him on the ground, beat him, and then let him go. They don't even arrest him. They don't even arrest him, let alone charge him. They just beat him up. We're suing the police.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Our other reporter in Quebec, Alexa Lavoie, you know the trucker convoy, Rebel News, that was really our time to shine. The regime media were all on Justin Trudeau's script. This is the Maple Leaf insurrection. This is the January 6th moment for Canada.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It was huge. It was the time when people paid attention to Canada in an interested, focused way. But Trudeau tried to have the script being these are violent, racist people, fringe minority with unacceptable views. That was his exact view.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So we were down there just with our citizen journalists, just filming everything on our phones. And in that month, we had 400 million views and impressions, which is more than the average bunch of the CBC state broadcaster. I believe we helped stop the Trudeau narrative from taking root. Anyways, that trucker convoy was completely peaceful. Except one thing. There was one shooting.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There were probably tens of thousands of people in Ottawa, and there were echo events all across the country. Who was the shooting? Our reporter, Alexa Lavoie, clearly marked as a reporter, holding her cell phone, filming riot police and truckers. One riot cop with the RCMP takes out his riot gun at close range and shoots her in the leg.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Doesn't he know to bend the knee? And... And this was almost 10 years ago. It was 2016 in the fall, yeah. And we were citizen journalists just finding our legs. Rebel News was only born in 2015.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Her, the only person in the—and with the wadding and a huge bruise, and you can hear her screams of pain. And by the way, the police don't offer her help afterwards. They shoot her and go. We're suing the RCMP for that as well. We've discovered that that weapon is not meant to be shot at a person. Won't surprise you to learn. You shoot it into an area on the ground, and it releases tear gas.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And you only do that with that weapon if things are very escalated. If there's like a riot underway, if people are storming something, you do not use that weapon preemptively because there's a bunch of people chanting. So it was used inappropriately, both in terms of manner and time.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Is it a coincidence, and this is my conspiracy theory side, is it a coincidence that the only person in the country who was shot during the convoy was our reporter? And we complained to the RCMP, we're suing them, but we also complained to them. You know, the police have an internal complaint system. You know who they assigned it to?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You know where the RCMP officer was based who looked into this matter? You're not going to guess, but why don't you guess for fun? I couldn't tell. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The RCMP is part of Trudeau's outreach to the Haitian community in Montreal, has RCMP officers stationed in Haiti to teach them how to be cops. You can accept that or not, but that was where the cop who was going to do this investigation of the shooting of Alexa Lavoie, our reporter, was based. It's so absurd. So what's the status of that investigation? We're still proceeding.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Oh, the investigation?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
A whitewash. Yeah, of course. David Menzies arrested five times. Alex Lavoie shot. We brought our whole team to Montreal to cover the curfew. I don't know if you remember, but Montreal had a curfew. I think from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sick or not, jabbed or not, you couldn't leave your house. Now journalists were exempt, as if journalists are some higher class.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So we had a reporter who would go out and the police would hassle him. So then we sent three and the police will hassle them. And I said, damn it, we're bringing the whole team. So we brought 17 rebels into town. And I thought, well, I wonder if there's an Airbnb we could all fit in, because that's a lot of hotel rooms.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And I found an Airbnb, like a houseboat in the old port of Montreal, where we could all fit. It had room for 24 people. Summer, winter? When were you there? This was, I think it was the spring.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
That's right. And that was before the great— demonetization and cancellation of politically incorrect videos. It was the golden age for YouTubers. So things that were raw and interesting and real just zoomed on that channel. That all came to an end in early 2017 because all this bubbling, frothing conversation helped put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I want to double-check that. That's okay. But we were there to do reporting on the streets during the curfew because the cops had been pushing around our people. And we brought a lawyer with us. We're walking the streets at midnight, and we have a lawyer with us on the ground to engage with French-speaking police en français just to flex our muscles. And by the way—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The Montreal police had never seen journalists out and about because they're so incurious and so obedient in the regime media that they would never think to report on this absurd curfew. So we had a great night out. We did curfew reporting late at night. Then we all go to our Airbnb houseboat, and then we get up the next morning, and there's going to be a protest.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, wouldn't you know it, but the old Port of Montreal just happens to be the staging area for the police. So 50 police cars show up, and they find out that's where the Rebel News people are. So they seal off our houseboat with yellow police tape, and they come on our little houseboat and say, we're searching this place.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, and I was off the boat at that time, but our youngsters— Had you flushed the cocaine by then? Our youngsters know to say, where's your warrant? I'm so proud of our young people, and they all said, get a warrant. And the cops said, you're going to play that way. They sealed off our boat, and for the next 10 hours, no one was—they wanted to search every person and every room. For what?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It's not yet clear. I think they just wanted to... Yeah, yeah, of course. And we said, come back with a warrant. And I don't think they're used to being talked to that way. For 10 hours, they shopped this around Quebec to try and find a judge. And God bless it, they couldn't find a judge to give them a search warrant.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
That's the miracle of the story. That's for sure. Thank God. Now, we sued them, and they actually settled. They settled because they harassed a bunch of our people. They paid a bunch of our different journalists a certain sum of money. And then they wrote a letter, sort of a grudging, ironic apology. But it basically said, well, we didn't know who you were.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And you always had your journalistic rights. And we sued the Montreal police. They paid our people. The people who were roughed up, they arrested Menzies. Yeah, of course. And it took him to a crappy jail. Seems like his fate. Yeah, you know, Menzies, he's stubborn in a good way. And you don't want everyone in the world to be stubborn in a good way, but you want a few.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I always like to say he's one in a million. Pause. Thank God.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
He's actually a national treasure. There's only a handful of journalists... who are on the street. A lot of journalists just sit at their desk and Google. How about get out into the world? You never know what you're going to see. And that's the rebel style. We love to travel also. We're from Canada. We got a fella in Melbourne, Australia, Abiyamini. That was a real lockdown center too.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Yeah, right. Just about as crazy as Montreal and Toronto. That's right. But we travel. For example... Every year we go to Davos, Switzerland. That's this town that the World Economic Forum takes over.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It sounds super boring, doesn't it? World Economic Forum. That sounds like, you know, economists studying the world. Yeah. Sounds good. It's not. These are... The masters of the universe. I call them the VVIPs. Yeah. These are prime ministers, presidents, royalty, pop culture stars.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I call it a crypto government. Here's what I mean.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You have members of government, Chrystia Freeland, Mark Carney. These are the two leading contenders.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
They're both board members of the World Economic Forum. Justin Trudeau was a global young leader. And Klaus Schwab bragged, and I'm going to say it in this German accent, we have penetrated the cabinet of Canada.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And Silicon Valley woke up and said, we did that. And so you saw Facebook and YouTube and Google learn about community guidelines and throttling and boosting, something that has really been going on to this day.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Central metaphor intended. You've got to do it in that accent because he really is like a Bond supervillain. That's for sure.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I don't have a problem with rich people meeting to talk. Yeah, well, they're going to. But what do they do there? Here's why I call it a crypto government. Number one, a real government has an independent press. Just a scrutinized thing. The World Economic Forum, there's lots of journalists, but they pay to participate. So they'll never be skeptical or accountability journalists.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We go, but we are not allowed in. We're kept outside the security perimeter because we ask unvetted questions.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Yeah, yeah. Number two, in a real government, there's an opposition, and sometimes they rotate people through. that's a form of a check and balance. In a real government, there's a lobbyist registry.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I mean, it's a very high security place. It's hard to get there. They buy up every hotel room in town. So, we stay one town over and take the train. Right. So, it's isolated to protect. That's right. And so, we have to fly to Zurich, take three trains up, and we're not allowed in. So, we're just on the cold street. Where do you stay? We stay one town over called Closters.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We're in an Airbnb, typically. And they quintuple the prices that week. Of course. That week, more... The local airport, the private jet airport, they say that they make their whole year's money in that one week.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
They come in and it's such a small airport that they drop off the VVIPs, but then the planes have to go fly to another airport to park. And then they come and, like, it's an extra flight just to park the plane. I've never seen anything more carbon intensive. And then there's helicopters.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, they're against fuel, and they're against...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And so they're in their private jets, but you have to take public transit. I was in the streets of Davos two weeks ago, and I see a guy handing out energy bars. Like, there's a lot of kiosks and people giving away grab bags and goodies, and it's cold, so they give away hot chocolate and tea. So one guy's giving away energy bars, and people are flocking to it. But I notice...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I notice on some box he has, it says insect protein. Oh, yeah. So I said, who are you? What are you? And he actually talked to me for 15 minutes. His company's called Pumba. And if you know your Disney movies, there's a character that eats insects called Pumba. Right, right. But on this candy bar, it does not say the word insect anywhere.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
In the ingredients, in tiny print, it uses the Latin genus and species for the mealworm. Oh, yeah. It's ground up. It's like Adolphinus diaperinus or something. Sounds delicious. I don't think one in a thousand people, one in a hundred thousand people knows what that is. And he was giving them away, and he was saying... There's insect protein in it. But no one heard him.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I was there with my cameraman. I said, did you hear him? He said there's insect protein in it. And some people were repulsed by it. Others didn't care. They are doing creepy and weird things. Bugs are the right thing to do creepy things with. If you want to eat bugs, I'm not going to say don't. But don't sell it or give it away and hide it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There's a lot of strange things going on in the World Economic Forum.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Rebel News were sort of scruffy. I mean, I say the drawbridge comes down and these princes walk out onto the town, and we're there, these grubby peasants asking them questions. Out of the gutter. Two years ago, I think it was, we scrummed Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer. This year we scrummed Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock. BlackRock. They're fun. And we had a lot of questions.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We asked 70 questions. We walked and talked with Larry Fink for nine minutes, and we asked 70 questions. He answered zero. In fact, his bodyguard sort of pushed us a bit, and then Fink took out his cell phone, put it right in our face, click, click. I said, are you intimidating me? I'll tell you my name. It was so weird. Well, you haven't been on social media much, Ezra.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And Albert Bourla, we were asking real questions. Yeah, we were annoying. I'll grant you that. But real, like my first question to Larry Fink is, have you spoken to the president yet? Are you moving away from ESG? And are you going to come to his way of thinking like Zuckerberg did? I don't, I really am curious because Larry Fink is a real.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So it was a real question. And then I asked a bunch of questions. I said, are you putting your ideology above shareholder returns? Like, if you're making— That's the definition of ESG. Yeah. And those—that's a real question. And maybe I wasn't as—I was fairly polite. I said, Mr. Fink, et cetera. Why would he walk with us for nine minutes but not deign to give us an answer?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And Albert Bourla, the same thing. We said, when did you know that the vaccine didn't actually— Block transmission. You said it was 100% effective in the 90s, 80s, 70s. I said, when did you know? I asked him real questions, and my colleague Abiy Amini did too. The fact that we were on the street and not vetted disgusted these men.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Both of them had probably done 10 interviews that day, but the interviews were with... Trusted partners who had actually paid to attend the World Economic Forum. The idea that they would be in an unscripted moment and owe an answer to anyone was beneath them. That contempt, if you ask me what is the World Economic Forum, that's what it is.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
It's these masters of the universe who like to hang out with other masters of the universe and who have contempt to talk about humanity, but they actually hate people. And I've been going for four years.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
This is the place that came out with the think piece, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But let me say one thing. I've just spent 10 minutes criticizing the World Economic Forum, but I'll say this, and it's probably a compliment of Switzerland more than the World Economic Forum. There are hundreds of very well-armed police and military in Davos with big firearms. It feels extremely safe, by the way. They have never once tried to stop us from scrumming these VVIPs.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
As long as you don't touch them. Not that I would ever touch anyone. John Kerry, the former Secretary of State and Climate Ambassador, he walks around all the time. And he actually talks to us while we walk. Very interesting. And like all these VVIPs, Larry Fink had two sort of tough guys with him that pushed us a bit. But as long as you don't touch the VVIP, you can scrum them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The cops don't care. In fact, I think the cops get a kick out of it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, they've been politicized by their mayors and police commissions and all the way down. The police in Canada are becoming more political every day. In Switzerland, they would never do what they did to me or to Menzies or to Alex Lavoie, never do that houseboat raid. They actually are gentle police with a light touch there.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You know, I'd say 60% is Canadian, and then US and the UK after that, and then Australia.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
That's right. And then the UK, especially when we cover Tommy, because the domestic media in the UK, they're uniformly against him, which is strange. It is strange. Because so many ordinary Brits
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You know the city of Rotherham? Yeah. It depends on how you measure the size of the city and the counties, but 100,000 souls there. So about 50,000 are women. Take out the children and the old people. I don't know, is it 25,000 women of a certain age? 1,400 of them were raped. By rape gangs. And when I say raped, I don't mean raped once. Right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I mean raped every night for months or years by multiple men.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But these were working class British girls. Yeah, they don't count. And the rapists, over 80% of them were British Pakistani Muslim men. So you had the perfect storm. You had girls who were nobody's nothing. Oh, what are they? Slags. Slags. And then you had perpetrators. Oh, we don't dare mention them. Yeah. And so this went on for years, for decades even.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
A Google insider a few years back showed me some internal chats that they had in their company. There were more people at Google watching and talking and commenting and criticizing Rebel News than who worked for Rebel News. And we're a fraction of your size. So anything to touch your discoverability would be done – I wouldn't say a junior flunky. You're being too kind.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I saw an opinion poll about Trump's idea, his social media banter about Canada becoming the 51st state. Now, I think he just likes poking at Trudeau. I mean, Trump is a master of the insulting nickname. Yeah, he sure is.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
He's an entertainer, and he's a quick-thinking, mischievous fellow. So he met with Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago, and he detected certain— He didn't let him stay there that night. No, and he poked at him a bit. Yeah. The thing is, 10 years ago, you would have said to Canadians who want to join the States, I think Canadians would say, no, first of all, we're wealthier.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There was an important time when the average Canadian, on an individual basis, was wealthier than... Yeah, well, we've dispensed with that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There were a lot of things that... The Canadians would say, you know, we really like America, but boy, we're glad. We're good. But what's happened over the last 10 years on everything? Forget tangible things like money, mass immigration, crime. What about intangibles? What about a prime minister who took John A. McDonnell off our $10 bill, who says the country—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And he said those things in an interview with a foreign newspaper, nonetheless. It was the New York Times. Yeah. But not just that. Trudeau says we're a genocidal country. Yeah, right. The genocide continues. He says we're sexist, transphobic. He, in so many ways, he makes grand apologies all the time, but not for himself, for the country.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So you've had almost 10 years of him degrading and demoralizing and denaturing, cutting people off from our roots and our history and our culture and identity. And destroying the economy at the same time. So if you're a young man... And you want to buy a home and start a life and get a job. All of those things. A lot of young people live with their parents so well into their 30s.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Not because they're failure to launch. You can't buy a home in Canada. It's twice as much in the States.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But all of a sudden, when Trump says, would you like to join the U.S.? We'll trade in your dollars at par. There'll be no tariffs and you'll have a strong military. You know, you're a young man. And for 10 years, you've been told by Trudeau that your country means nothing. It's just a hotel.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And here's this strong, masculine guy who's commanding authority, and he truly is making America great again. And when he says that, it's plausible.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And the world is bending the knee to him, whether it's the Japanese prime minister or a Korean investor.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And we know that this goes straight to the top. Mark Zuckerberg pretty much confessed to that a few weeks ago when he said he was going to stop doing that. We know from some lawsuits in the U.S., especially during the pandemic –
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So is it a surprise that young men of all the demographics say, you know what, I'll take Trump up on that deal. I think it was 43%. I think 43% of young men, I'm going from memory here, said, yeah, we'll take that deal. And that's without a campaign. That's just based on a few tweets. Casual. Yeah, on Instagram. And there's many things to love about America.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
There's an amazing number of things to love about America. But imagine abandoning your history, your culture, your tradition, your borders, your institutions. That's how Trudeau has eroded in the country. Yeah. And I don't blame Trump for finding that weakness and shaking it. That's what you do when you're America first. And when you're negotiating.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I think that Mark Carney's ideas are 10 years too late. 10 years ago, carbon taxes, ESG, wokeism. And he made a little statement the other day saying he's for wokeism. In his mind, that means inclusiveness. That's not what woke means one bit.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Carney is a leader. Carney is smart and Carney is a doer. Like you don't get those – Chairman of Brookfield.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
He looks the part.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
From the White House to the FBI to the CIA, there was so many different government organizations, including to do with health, that were plugged right in to the back end of social media, trying to throttle people even like RFK Jr. Oh, yeah, definitely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I can't imagine any American candidate for president announcing their candidacy on a foreign network. Could you imagine Trump or Kamala Harris announcing they're running for the president of the United States on the BBC? But absurdly, Mark Carney announced his candidacy in New York City. I think if Carney takes over— Win. Win. He's going to win on March 9th. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And then he's going to do a deal with the NDP, and he will become prime minister until October without ever having won an election.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I'm also worried about foreign meddling. Carney is deep with China, communist China, and that's been a problem in Canada. There was the various CSIS, that's Canada's spy agency, saying that the Chinese Communist Party interfered in at least 11 electoral districts. Trudeau turned a blind eye to it because he was the beneficiary of that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
In fact, communist donors would come and make donations directly to the Trudeau Foundation. I'm worried about ties to China, and I'm worried about ties to Iran. And I just don't think that Canada is going to survive as a first-ranked nation if the Liberals aren't turfed this year. Are we a first-ranked nation now? We're clinging on by our fingernails.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And we're lucky that we're right next to America. Not only do we benefit economically, but a lot of their cultural discussions wash over into us. And I think—I mean, look what Trump has done on transgenderism in sports. He's just ended with a stroke of a pen. Gender-affirming care, too. Even small things like saying we're done with paper straws. I mean, I know that sounds small, but—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But what does it say about a country that abides that stupid rule that no one likes, but we just abided it. We just accepted it. What does it say about the nature of the character of 40 million Canadians? It says that we're willing to virtue signal at our own expense. And we saw that during the pandemic and the lockdowns when things went so hard in Canada. Yeah, that's for sure.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And it was an opportunity for people to... I'll show my righteousness by being a... a voluntary self-appointed enforcer.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And if you said anything that was contrarian about the pandemic, even things that are now accepted, like the likelihood that it came from the Wuhan Virology Center or Research Center, You would be demonetized, so you wouldn't be able to sell ads. You would be throttled in various ways. You would be suspended. That happened to us. We were growing at 8% per month.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The mask patrols who would come up to you and give you— Here's the thing, and I know the pandemic's gone now, but this said something about our character. We could have another one. Yeah. If you actually were worried about the virus, and you saw someone without a mask, you would walk away, you would run away, you would take your children and run.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
If someone with Ebola came into the mall without a mask, you wouldn't go up to them and say, hey, put on your mask. Well, you would if you were sacrificing yourself for the good of the planet. But there was an opportunity to... Be more virtuous than that person. But you have the point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I think this is what... I watched so many of those videos, and I myself was a bit of a mask not wearing a dissident. So I had a lot of encounters. And here's... It wasn't even virtue signaling. It was... I'm worried that if I didn't wear a mask, the rules would come down on me. There would be some consequence on me.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So if you're not wearing a mask and no consequences are happening to you, the world is out of joint.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I must... fill the gap and be the consequence to you to justify my cowardice. So it's not so much that I'm better than you. It's, oh my God, you're getting away with it and I didn't think I could. I better stop you from getting away with it because otherwise what's my excuse for being so submissive?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I got to tell you one last story. I know where time is of the essence. Do you know what the Amish are? Have you heard of the Amish? Oh, yeah. They're Christian from Europe. They speak German amongst themselves. They're like the Mennonites in Alberta. Yeah. They're very old-fashioned. They don't use modern technology at all. They don't drive. They don't have electricity.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
They don't have smartphones. They're farmers, very poor, and they keep to themselves. And they're pacifists. That's another thing you know about them. They do not want to engage in any disobedience. They keep to themselves. They're reclusive. There's a lot of them in Pennsylvania, and there's a lot of them in Ontario.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We heard about this from a friend of the Amish, that the Amish used to go back and forth between Ontario and the U.S. to visit the other colonies down there for dates, for family events. So every time the Amish would come back across the border into Canada during the pandemic, there was a border officer who would say— have you downloaded the Arrive Can app on your smartphone? Right, right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Now, for your American viewers, they don't know what Arrive Can is. It's a mandatory app, sort of spyware, that you have to give all your health details, all your vax details. You have to put it in this app on your phone, or you get a $6,000 fine. So the Amish, they don't know what download or app— they know what a smartphone is, they just don't have them— arrive, Ken.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So they would go, every time they would come back to Canada, every single person, including children, would get a $6,000 fine. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. But they're not on the internet. They're not on phones or faxes. They're really cut off. So years go by, and an Amish goes to the bank to get a loan for some livestock, and
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Not quite the stats that you described, but back in 2015, 2016, we were the largest YouTube news service in Canada. More than Global News, more than CTV. Those are massive billion-dollar companies. We were bigger. And then... bam, in January 2017, we were cut by 85%. And then they later just took it all down to zero.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And pledges the farm as the security. And the banker types in and says, I'm sorry, I can't give you the loan. There's a lien against your farm. Oh, yeah. And then another Amish passes away, wants to bequeath the farm to his son. Can't. There's a lien on it. You've got to sell the farm to pay the lien. Soon the whole community does this. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in tickets.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Now, it was a miracle we found out about this because they don't know what rebel news is. They don't follow the internet or watch TV. A friendly non-Amish neighbor heard them talking about this and heard it. So we helped, there's a charity called the Democracy Fund. I know you've spoken at one of the events before.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
The Democracy Fund has dispatched lawyers to help the Amish and to crack open these cases again and redo them. And basically, these were trials in absentia. The Amish were not there. And we're having some success at—it's hard to crack open a case once it's guilty.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Oh, yeah. But just stop for one second. The Amish, they're not hidden. They wear the black hats, and they're unique. They almost look like Orthodox Jews in a way.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And in Canada, they go on horse and carriage. Yeah. You know an Amish when you see it. And you can probably detect that they're not smartphone friendly. Yeah. How many people in the Canadian bureaucracy would have been involved from that first border agent to his manager, to his manager, to the court, to the prosecutor, to the judge, and then to convict? But I have never heard of a lien procedure.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
being put on, liens on all their farms. Well, that's what would happen if you didn't pay the tickets. I haven't met anyone else in the country who has had that happen to them. Oh, I see. Oh, okay. For an Arrive Can app. Yes, that is the ultimate way that the government gets their money. I've just never heard of that in the country. How many people were involved from that first...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But not one person... There must have been 100 people involved. Not one person said... What the hell are we doing? What are we doing? Not one person. Not one person. Now, I'm not saying that's Canada only. I bet stupid things happen in America, too. In fact, the Amish were persecuted in America. That's why they became politicized under the Biden administration.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
They started cracking down on raw milk. Yeah, yeah. And I think that the Amish realized their way of life was in jeopardy. And so a very un-Amish thing to do was they became political. And I saw... You probably saw the footage also of these horses and carriages with the Trump flags. I've never seen an Amish do that before. They must have thought this is do or die time.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
That's one of the reasons why Trump carried Pennsylvania, is because the Biden administration was an existential threat to the Amish way of life, including no connection to the government, just natural living. Very interesting, the contrast between America, but the Amish in Canada, they're being helped by the democracy fund now, so I'm pleased.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
We still have about 1.7 million YouTube subscribers, and I love them, and we'll always give them content. But we're not allowed to put a single ad towards them or get what's called a super chat. And we love Rumble, which is a free speech alternative. But really, Elon Musk has... not only saved free speech, but I think through that, saved America. How are you guys doing on X?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I mean, rebelnews.com is our homepage. And some of our talents are on Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter also. It's just rebelnewsonline.com. We're mainly operating in Canada. We have Avi Amini based in Melbourne, Australia.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But we love to travel to World Economic Forum, to when there was a big freedom of speech rally in Sao Paulo, Brazil, when the Brazilian government banned the entire Twitter app for everybody. We went down there. I've never been in a crowd of 100,000 people. Maybe it was 200,000 people. It was astonishing. And they actually were rallying for freedom of speech. I'm so glad we went.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So that's the kind of... kamikaze flight to Sao Paulo for one day to go to a rally and come back. We just went to Maui, not for a vacation.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
How's the wildfire reconstruction going? I want to know because I got some friends in L.A. who want a premonition of what's to come. It's been 18 months since the wildfires destroyed the town of Lahaina. 95% of the lots have not had a brick of reconstruction. They're just covered with gravel. But FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, has set up camps of tiny homes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
A year and a half into it, And there's all sorts of schemes to take the land and do other things with it. Low-income housing, environmental housing. Same thing's going to happen in L.A., obviously. It's heartbreaking. A year and a half later, no. So, I mean, Maui's a beautiful place. That city is... heartbreaking place. And over a hundred people died in that fire too.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And there was politics in that. So Rebel News, we love covering Canada. We love covering Trump. We have a reporter in the United Kingdom now, Sammy Woodhouse. She was one of those 1400 girls in Rotherham. She was the whistleblower. She was the one who rang the bell. She was the one who broke the silence and went to the newspapers. Sammy Woodhouse, moral authority, resilient.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
She's our new reporter in the UK. So Rebel News is here and there, but we also travel to find the news where we see it. Let me give you an anecdote. I went to the town of Dundrum, Ireland. I know you haven't heard of it because it's less than 200 people there. It's like a picture book. It's so beautiful.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And then the Irish government contracts with the local hotel to take over all the rooms and moves in 240 military-aged migrant men. And in one fell swoop, Dundrum is now a minority Irish village. No, just what is going on? Over there. In Ireland?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I mean, they resisted the British for centuries. They resisted domination, but they're welcoming it now. I don't understand it. They never colonized anyone. They don't have some repentance to do. They don't have to pay reparations to anyone. They're the ones, why are they doing this? I don't know. It's astonishing. I'm glad I visited Ireland while it was still Irish.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And I would say to anyone out there, go visit that beautiful country while it's still Irish.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Well, I mean, I love it. It doesn't make a lot of money for us.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But we have that kind of growth and engagement that we used to have back in the day at YouTube. And I hope Rumble continues to grow. Those guys have free speech on their mind, and they've— You know, they've got some big support. They're doing interesting deals, not just with social media, but cloud services. And I don't know, there's a lot of ways that censorship works. But I think...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
That's their strategy. Do you know how he's doing? He's deteriorating. That's another thing about being in jail I've learned from Tommy Robinson is you are at the mercy of these guards.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I think the government has to get involved with rooting... Here's an example. Elon Musk and his doge, they're going through and finding all these cases where the government has been paying regime journalists.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
I think it's actually closer to 30, and that's just through one particular program. And 99% of Canadian journalists are on that program. The CBC itself, the state broadcaster, is larger than... than all other media combined, all other news media combined.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
But that's the paying for a certain message. What is fascinating and terrifying is to see how U.S. government and now Canadian government money and U.K. funds so-called fact-checkers. For example, NewsGuard. Yeah, fact-checkers. I don't know if you've ever heard of NewsGuard. huge contracts with the U.S.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
Air Force for some reason, and they review any website and give it a rating, and that rating is plugged into browsers, and it basically says this is safe and this is dangerous. And it's purely political. I mean, they rate us every year. It's a BS exercise. They ask us— Questions about Trump, they ask us questions about transgenderism, and they ask us questions about vaccines.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
You can see they're pushing a very particular message track. And they censor us for our opinions, not our facts. These things are all funded by the government.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
And those are – I don't even think those are particularly acute crises. Those are sort of longstanding problems that it's not, oh, my God, we've got to snuff this idea out before this election, like the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
525. The War on Speech—and Those Who Dare to Fight It | Ezra Levant
So what you're talking about are big swaths of ideas – Right. And then there's the crisis ideas like the ones you just described.