EZRA LEVANT ｜ China copies Trudeau’s language about peaceful political critics
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.62006
Summary
The Hong Kong police have a new public relations wing, and they re using the same tactics as the ones used by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to demonize and demonize his critics. It s no wonder that Hong Kongers don t trust their own police.
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. I saw a story out of Hong Kong. Their police are no longer calling
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capitalists, you know, capitalist running dogs or enemy of the party. They're using Trudeau's
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language. They're calling them disinformation spreaders. It's quite amazing to see the Chinese
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police copy Trudeau's language. I'll take you through it. But first, let me invite you
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any government money. Please go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe. All right, here's today's
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Tonight, China copies Trudeau's language about peaceful political critics. It's August 16th,
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Hey, look at this story from the Hong Kong Free Press, one of the few voices left in that
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city that's not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. I recommend you follow them,
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by the way. The headline is, Hong Kong Police Force vows to quickly clarify rumors and misinformation
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with new public relations wing. Oh, well, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? Assistant Commissioner
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Chan Tung, who will oversee the public relations wing, told the press last Friday that misinformation
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and fake news were largely behind the deteriorating relationship between the police and the public.
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Really? So a police commissioner will now determine what is misinformation and fake news. And you see,
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that's the real reason why Hong Kongers fear and hate their police now. Not that they're enforcing
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Communist Party rules in a once free city. No, no, no, no, no. It's political misinformation. That's the ticket.
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It reminds me of the Ottawa police, who atrociously decided they weren't in the law enforcement business.
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They were in the propaganda and threats business, in the political business,
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in the demonizing Trudeau's enemies business when the convoy came to town.
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If the protesters at this point, you know, retreat and go home, are they going to be getting sort of repercussions
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down the road? Are you going to be sort of actively pursuing the people that you've been sort of documenting
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and filming who are still out there protesting? What are your plans after this, after the protest is over?
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Thank you. It's a great question. And the simple answer is yes. If you are involved in this protest,
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we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges.
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Absolutely. This investigation will go on for months to come.
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It has many, many different streams, both from a federal financial level,
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from a provincial licensing level, from a criminal code level,
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from a municipal breach of court order, breach of court injunction level.
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It will be a complicated and time-consuming investigation that will go on for a period of time.
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You have my commitment that that investigation will continue,
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and we will hold people accountable for taking our streets over.
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Yeah, that's not police work. That's political work.
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It's not the misinformation that makes us hate you.
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You stand with the communist fucking government.
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But evidently, the Ottawa police and Trudeau's approach to critics is a bit of a role model
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for communist China and how they're ruling over Hong Kong.
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The Hong Kong police force has rebranded its public relations branch and introduced a 24-hour mechanism
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The public relations wing, formerly known as the police public relations branch,
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held an opening ceremony at the police headquarters in Wan Chai on Monday.
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Local media reported Assistant Commissioner Chan Tung, who will oversee the public relations wing,
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told the press last Friday that misinformation and fake news were largely behind the deteriorating relationship
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Is that why Hong Kongers don't like their police?
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They're going to spy on you and censor you like Trudeau does.
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Like his proposed censorship bills going through Parliament do.
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Consequently, one of the wing's major responsibilities is to detect rumors early
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and proactively provide clarification as soon as possible.
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Since the beginning of the year, the police have worked with a tech company
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to introduce a 24-hour mechanism that monitors heated online debate
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The government here works with tech companies to monitor online debates.
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This is YouTube's so-called community guidelines.
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content that contradicts World Health Organization or local health authorities' guidance.
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So your local health politician, your local health bureaucrat,
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gets YouTube to suspend or delete your YouTube video if it contradicts the government.
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So China is doing that in Hong Kong now, not just on COVID, of course,
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Chief Superintendent of Police, Karen Tsang, said incidents that occurred in 2019
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when the city saw months-long protests and unrest showed that misinformation could cause profound and long-lasting devastation.
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That's how the entire Canadian establishment talks about the peaceful trucker protests and all its honking.
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Just a reminder of some of those beautiful moments in Hong Kong's peaceful uprising.
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He wants the British government to come back and rule us again.
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We don't want the Chinese government to rule us anymore.
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What's your message to people who call the old British government a colonial power that used to abuse the entire world?
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Simply we just want the British government to come back and rule us again.
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And so if you could send a message to Donald Trump, what would it be?
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Mr. Trump, we are very humble and powerless people in Hong Kong.
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And we know that when the Americans fight for their independence, they need to pay a lot, like for blood and life.
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And in any moment, if you can help us, like the American people and President Trump, please help us.
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And I would like to have this chance to thank President Trump that speaks things in Hong Kong for us.
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Because, especially a few days ago, he spoke with a lot of powerful people in different countries about Hong Kong situation.
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And thank you for him to help us speak out the situation in Hong Kong.
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Peaceful, beautiful, grassroots, organic, funny, heartfelt, millions of them.
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No, there was no misinformation or disinformation, but that's what the government says.
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Well, these days, it's anything that contradicts the politicians in power, right?
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Well, that's actually the exact same standard that Canada's government, the Trudeau's government, uses to condemn disinformation here.
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You remember, Trudeau's Department of Defense paid the University of Calgary to demonize critics of the liberal government as being in league with Vladimir Putin.
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They said that anyone who doesn't support Trudeau or tries to remove support for Trudeau is, by definition, part of foreign disinformation.
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But if the Canadian government can say that, why can't the Chinese government say that?
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And, of course, the most important thing to say as you're violating press freedom is that you support press freedom.
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The new head of the police's public relations wing said he disagreed that police actions taken against defunct news outlets, Apple Daily and Stand News, had led to a decline in Hong Kong's press freedom.
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But that's because those newspapers were getting in the way of freedom, you see.
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It made us more free to have those newspapers gone, you see.
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Quote, the police force is very respectful of both press freedom and the freedom of individuals.
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The only problem is that the law in both countries now covers peaceful political dissent.
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One of the saddest things in the world is to see Hong Kong, a beacon of freedom for a century, be absolutely crushed by Communist China, even though the hand, the fingers on the hand that's doing the crushing were the Hong Kong police.
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They were acting as an arm of the Communist Party in Beijing.
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I wonder how much longer until Trudeau's police copy China's police and raid Rebel News' office.
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In the United States, Joe Biden nominated someone to be their disinformation commissioner.
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It's when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious.
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By saying them in Congress or a mainstream output so.
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Disinformation's origins are slightly less atrocious.
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And I think that her quirkiness and the fact that she just wouldn't stop singing songs, that's actually, I think, the reason she was driven out of the job.
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But Canada is setting up a similar disinformation bureau.
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Surely designed in cooperation with Biden's Democrats.
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And there is no derision or opposition to the idea in Canada.
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Certainly not from the 99% of the media Trudeau is renting through his media bailout.
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And the United Kingdom is introducing the same idea, too.
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Your safety is what they really are caring about.
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A bunch of cops showing up at someone's house in the UK and arresting them for liking a Facebook post.
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Remember when we showed you this the other day when we talked to Lawrence Fox?
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The Scripture Police would realize how ridiculous this is.
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Because it's something he shared, then I shared.
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Because someone has been caused, obviously, anxiety based upon your social media page.
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It might not ever come back to freedom, I regret.
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But I could be talking about the UK or Canada, too.
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Hey, remember this shocking front page story in the Toronto Star a few months ago?
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People wishing for the deaths of the unvaccinated.
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Now, allegedly, these were tweets that the Toronto Star found online.
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But an investigative journalist showed that's just not the case.
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But no matter what their explanation was, the purpose, or the effect, rather, was clear.
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They hated the unvaccinated and wanted to whip up rage.
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The number one newspaper in Canada, measured by readership, the number one recipient of Justin Trudeau's bailout money, measured in absolute dollars, whipped up a hatred against the unvaccinated.
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Well, here's the Toronto Star just absolutely against anger.
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And the Toronto Star wants to get to the bottom of it.
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Just like OJ, he's going to find who the real killers are.
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Joining us now via Skype from Winnipeg to talk about this is our friend Spencer Fernando from SpencerFernando.com.
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The layers of irony, the layers of, I don't know, projection here are too many to count.
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What do you make of the Toronto Star calling for an end to anger after they whipped up so much of it, Spencer?
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Yeah, well, I mean, it's obviously very hypocritical.
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You know, if they at some point admitted, you know, if they said something like, look, you know, we've participated in a lot of this anger.
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You know, we put out a front page that was, you know, trying to whip up anger and, you know, really seems like hatred in many ways towards people.
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They may not describe it that way, but that's, I think, how many people took it.
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But, you know, if they said, okay, we admit our role and in part of being part of, you know, the country getting angrier, then I think people would be more sympathetic to them.
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They'd say, okay, you know, people are angry all over the place.
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But for them to just act as if they're just, you know, completely innocent victims, like, oh, what happened?
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We're so shocked that people are angry, but nothing to do with us.
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But for them to do that, I think, you know, a lot of people are just not going to be sympathetic to their – what they're saying now is because they don't have the credibility to say that, you know, they're not part of it.
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They pushed, you know, an attitude towards millions of Canadians.
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That was an attitude of, you know, hatred or dislike, very strong dislike.
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And when you put out a front page saying, you know, things like, oh, just let them die, you can't really get more dehumanizing towards people or more harsh towards people.
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So how do you think people are going to take that?
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People are just going to say, oh, that doesn't bother me at all.
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And they were doing that at the same time, of course, that Justin Trudeau was trying to run an election campaign on a very similar theme.
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You know, he originally – before the election said, oh, we're not a country that mandates vaccination.
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You know, he seemed to understand how divisive and dangerous it would be.
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But once he started to get a little concerned about his poll numbers and an election came around, then all of a sudden he totally flipped.
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And so the media should have been holding him accountable for that.
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And that's a big reason that so many people have lost a lot of trust in the establishment press.
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You know, I think there's another reason why people are skeptical of the Toronto Star suddenly calling for harmony and love.
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And it's because when they talk about hatred, they don't say, well, the hatred is in every human heart, perhaps even our own.
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And let's all try and bring back love in this country and unity rather than division.
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And, yes, we were part of the – they see not only are they failing to recognize their own role, but if you ask the Star, if you ask the CBC, if you ask Global News where the hatred and anger comes from, they will give a partisan answer.
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They will never say from partisans on both ends of the divide.
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They will always use it against their political enemies.
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And I notice a campaign, the Canadian Association of Journalists.
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I see Rachel Gilmore of Global News, the Toronto Star, literally asking the police to get involved in tackling people who criticize them.
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Now, I – Spencer, I'm sure you're the same way.
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If there is someone who's actually making a violent threat, absolutely the police should get involved.
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If the threat comes in person over the telephone or over e-mail, it doesn't matter.
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But I think what these folks are doing so often is conflating conservatives clapping back at the media,
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conservatives shouting back at the media that they felt shouted at them, conflating anger with threats and violence.
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When the Toronto Star and the Canadian Association of Journalists say, hey, police, get involved,
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I don't believe they mean just for the death threats.
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I think they mean anyone who's mad at us have the cops knock on their door like they do in the U.K.
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I think anyone who's making threats against a journalist against their life or hinting that they're going to hurt them,
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that's obviously unacceptable, and everybody should denounce that.
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Whether it's a journalist you like or dislike, that's obviously unacceptable, and the police should investigate that.
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It should be investigated, and people should not be fearing for their jobs.
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You put out bad reporting, you shouldn't fear for your life, not job.
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But the problem is, you can see what they're doing, is they're going to start saying, oh, well, okay,
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it's not just threats that are the problem, it's the criticism.
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And people who, they sow distrust in the media and sow distrust in the government,
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and that's what's leading to all these threats.
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And then they're going to say, well, to protect journalists,
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we need to obviously crack down on people who are too critical of the media or too critical of the government.
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And then they're going to push for legislation.
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And, of course, the liberals will be glad to oblige them, right?
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I mean, the liberals have been pushing in that direction already with online hate legislation.
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They're obviously expanding the definition of hate, keeping it very vague as well,
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which makes it easy for the government to interpret it in a very political and partisan way.
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They're taking a very legitimate issue, which is threats against the life of journalists,
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and then they're trying to take that and expand that and say, well, that's just a part of the problem.
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But that really, those people are just motivated by people who criticize the media.
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And so that's where I think they're going to go too far and they're going to push for,
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ironically, an environment that's far less free and really makes freedom of the press non-existent.
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You know, I couldn't help but notice that the Canadian Association of Journalists
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who weighed in on this matter, I think it was the exact same day where Salman Rushdie,
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the author who wrote the Satanic Verses that got himself a fatwa calling for his death,
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So this shocking event that should send real chills through anyone in the creative industry.
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The Canadian Association of Journalists didn't have a word to say about it for days.
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But they actually had nothing to say about Salman Rushdie being stabbed and almost murdered.
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It makes it a little bit hard to take them seriously when they're silent about the most egregious act of real censorship in our time.
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There's a senator from Alberta, appointed by Trudeau,
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and she wrote a whole series of tweets about how tough it is to be a journalist,
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I'm sure there's meanness in its gendered threats.
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There are lots of mean words and lots of insults, and it's very rude, and I acknowledge all that,
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and I don't think people should send emails like this.
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It's just someone who's really, really mad, clapping back at the government.
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In this case, a Trudeau-appointed senator who will be there for 22 years,
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and this lowly guy can't do anything about it, can't vote her out, can't hold her to account in any way.
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So all he has is the ability to holler at her in an email.
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And yeah, I don't like it either, but if you're such a political person as this senator,
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and there's no way to hold you accountable, and you're outraged that someone would be, you know, use mean language,
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I think if you're in the public sphere, you should be prepared to take heckling,
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and yeah, even swearing, even though we don't like it.
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Yeah, there's a little bit of, you know, people wanting to have all the benefits of something,
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So you see it, politicians are a good example, you know.
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Oh, yeah, you want a lot of power, so you get to legislate and control a large segment of the population.
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but how dare anyone criticize you or say anything bad about you or send you a media email, right?
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And so it's they want all the power, but they don't want the accountability or the downside.
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Look, you're a politician, you're kind of a minor celebrity in the country.
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We know celebrities have a lot of crazy people who say things to them,
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Now, I do want to clarify, obviously, I'm not talking about a death threat.
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Death threats should not be part of any job and are not acceptable,
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but you can see that they're trying to conflate two very different things.
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You know, angry people who are saying they're just venting their anger,
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and then there's people who are making specific threats, which is unacceptable.
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So we need to always make sure that there's a clear line between those two things.
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I agree with you 100%, and it's so frustrating for me
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because some of our reporters have actually been physically assaulted.
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And there was silence from the Canadian Association of Journalists,
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silence from Paula Simons, this liberal senator.
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Nothing to say about that because we're the wrong kind of reporter.
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But you say a mean word about Paula Simons or Global News,
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I mean, people say Rebel News is advocacy, and we have too many strong opinions.
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I think for the Toronto Star and these others to pretend that they're neutral,
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That's the reason people are angry at the media.
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That front page in the Toronto Star, that was not neutral.
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and they just don't like the political accountability.
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Do you think things are going to get worse in terms of censorship?
00:26:10.920
I think the liberals definitely want it to go that way.
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I think a lot is going to depend on the next federal election.
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You know, Pierre Polyev has been very strong on talking about
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how he's going to get rid of the censorship legislation
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So if the conservatives can win and they keep their promises,
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you know, you can never really fully trust anybody in politics.
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and obviously the NDP is trying to help them stay in power,
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then they're going to keep pushing in this direction,
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and the media just gets more and more like an arm of the government,
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and a lot's going to depend on independent media like ourselves.
00:26:48.080
Well, it's so great to spend some time with you.
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Folks, if you're not subscribed to Spencer's email,
00:27:07.800
Yeah, I had a lot of people say they were looking for,
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you know, not just, you know, one-time donations,
00:27:15.400
and looking for more long-form writing as well.
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Once every week, I do a long-form political newsletter.
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But I'm not going to stop doing my website as well.
00:27:48.740
All right, there you have it, Spencer Fernando.
00:28:09.640
They are paid bodies to hold signs and make noise.
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what they are protesting about if you talk to them.
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You're talking about these paid professional protesters,
00:28:26.420
I believe that at least one of the guys in Vancouver
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and some of them are paid with a few bucks and lunch.
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that's why the trucker protest had to be crushed,
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I should get out more and do more street journalism
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And they always say, well, talk to that organizer.