Andrew Lawton of True North joins me for a feature-length interview about the state of citizen journalism and politics in Canada, including the war on Hanukkah and the ban on Christmas decorations, and why we should all celebrate the holiday season in a non-politically correct way.
00:04:23.620In Calgary, the mayor, Jody Gondek, refused to light the Jewish menorah, saying it was divisive.
00:04:30.680And in some places, they banned the Jewish menorah and realized, oh, yikes, we can't just ban the Jews.
00:04:37.380So to compensate and equalize, they banned Christmas decorations as well.
00:04:43.600So I know I'm going on at some length about your offhand comment, Merry Christmas.
00:04:47.840But actually, I think the war on Christmas and the war on Hanukkah has never been this dire because we are afraid of standing up for Judeo-Christian values in the era of Islamic terrorism.
00:05:03.440It is, and I please don't take this the wrong way, but I'll say one constant throughout history has been that Jewish people are victims.
00:05:12.720And I don't mean that in the sense that their identity is victimhood, but I mean it's a constant through history that the Jewish people have been targeted by other people.
00:05:20.700Now, I'd say the real story of the Jewish people is their resilience and their survival and their thriving in spite of that.
00:05:27.700But why it's so dangerous when you look at the climate around is that this history of Jewish people being persecuted at every stage in their existence and being the number one victim of hate crimes in every statistic that's ever been looked at on this subject.
00:05:46.520Anti-Semitism always dwarfs other forms of hatred, but we have now made Jews the oppressors and Jews the majority and Jews are white Jews are all of the things that we've decided to vilify in the same way that many people mocked the idea that Harvard said Asians were whites when it came to affirmative action.
00:06:05.200We've now said Jews are whites, Christians majority when it comes to this oppressor-oppressy dynamic, and this is why the menorah, which is literally in Canada a symbol of a minority religion, is now treated the same way that so many of these Christian traditions have been.
00:06:25.040We've now decided that Jews are at the top of the pecking order, therefore we are okay, we are licensed to vilify them and start stripping away all of these aspects of their identity in the public square.
00:06:36.440And it's so disheartening. Now, I don't think we should do this with any group. We shouldn't do it with Christians. We shouldn't do it with Jews.
00:06:41.860But I think this is why the majority, and by that I mean the tyrannical woke majority, has been licensed to attack Judaism in this way that we've seen so explicitly this year.
00:06:53.640You know, you said so many fascinating things there. I think you're right about Jews sort of being a canary in a coal mine.
00:07:01.860You know, there's a philosopher in Europe who said where books burn, men will in turn burn, and I think he was right, and that was the Nazis had their book burnings.
00:07:11.240But there's another way of looking at it where Jews burn, Christians will burn as well.
00:07:14.820They go for the Saturday people first, then the Sunday people.
00:07:17.760I've been to Bethlehem. I've been to those formerly Christian cities in the West Bank.
00:07:24.740Egypt itself used to be a Christian country. Now it's maybe 10% Coptic Christian.
00:07:31.040The Christians in Iraq who were extirpated by ISIS and now the Iranian militia called Hashd al-Shabi.
00:07:41.820I think those who say, well, that's just the Jews, and the Jews are a bit much, and the Jews are a bit of a pain,
00:07:47.860and let's just buy ourselves some peace by voting for a UN resolution condemning the Jews, it never stops there.
00:07:55.420It never stops there. I think of terrorist attacks throughout Europe.
00:08:00.320Of course, there are attacks on Jewish institutions, but most of the terror attacks in Europe and even in North America are not on Jewish targets.
00:08:08.800They're just on Western targets. And I think in some ways Jews who, you know, are Jews a minority?
00:08:17.100Of course they're a minority. Are they a racial minority?
00:08:19.420I think most Jews are white, although there are darker-skinned Jews from other places.
00:08:23.520But I think that attacks on the Jews are rooted in that same critical race theory that you just talked about,
00:08:30.640putting the whole world into two camps, oppressors and the oppressed.
00:08:35.060And the oppressed can do literally anything against the oppressors, and it's justifiable.
00:08:39.660And I think that is a warm-up act for the war against the West generally.
00:08:45.220And look at us talking about critical race theory and the Jews and the war when I did want to talk mainly about independent journalism.
00:08:52.720But I think there is some connection between the two because were it not for social media and citizen journalists,
00:08:59.880I think we would be getting a very different coverage of that war.
00:09:04.960Listen, I don't want to talk just about the war and about Jews and Christians.
00:09:08.820If I can jump in there, and I feel it bridges the gap between this topic and where we wanted to go with on this,
00:09:15.660you mentioned in your introduction mainstream media's refusal to call Hamas a terror group.
00:09:20.540And what a fascinating display of inconsistency and incoherence.
00:09:24.720Because you may recall when the Canadian government listed the Proud Boys on its list of terrorist entities in Canada,
00:09:31.960the Proud Boys is officially a terrorist group.
00:09:34.220So the media used that as cover to say, OK, well, the terrorist group Proud Boys, the terrorist group Proud Boys,
00:09:40.160even when individuals were not associated with allegations of terror.
00:09:44.500And then you look at Hamas, which has the very same legal designation.
00:09:48.180It is an official terrorist entity in Canada.
00:09:51.600And CBC says, well, yeah, I mean, that's just the government's way of looking at it.
00:09:55.520That doesn't mean it binds our editorial guidance.
00:09:57.580And it's amazing how the appeal to authority only works when it fits the narrative.
00:10:02.940When it doesn't, they will ignore that and come up with their own parameters.
00:10:05.820And to go back to independent media, that's why I think independent media outlets are so important,
00:10:10.520because they have a lot more of a connection to reality and a lot more of a connection to,
00:10:14.640I think, how ordinary people see these phenomena unfolding.
00:12:17.860One of our alumni, Kian Bexty, has set up Counter Signal.
00:12:22.340You know, Western Standard has been revived by Derek Fildebrandt.
00:12:26.260They have some video and some written.
00:12:28.040I feel like there's a bit of a community forming in this enormous void that the media party, the mainstream media, has left open to anyone who's an independent thinker.
00:12:39.960And I don't know, I'd like your thoughts on the growth of this industry.
00:12:43.980I mean, between Rebel News and these other organizations I mentioned, there's probably a hundred journalists now.
00:12:49.480I mean, we've got, I think, 46 or something in our company.
00:12:52.620You add up all these different entities I've just listed, I think there's got to be a hundred journalists.
00:12:59.000And by that I mean producers and editors and people behind the scenes too.
00:13:02.360A hundred journalists working for freedom-oriented citizen journalism companies.
00:13:09.120That's more than work for the National Post, I'll tell you.
00:13:14.060Yeah, I mean, so you start your story, I think, in the independent media story in 2015, rightfully so.
00:13:21.320This is the collapse of Sun News, the birth of Rebel, and all of the other subsequent things that came about, and True North, and Counter Signal, and people doing it independently.
00:13:29.940I go much earlier than that, and I don't have a precise year and time, but I go back to the advent of the conservative blogosphere in Canada.
00:13:38.300I mean, you were one of the early adopters of this, and I think we're quite prolific at it.
00:13:41.820You had other people as well, our late mutual friend, Kathy Shadle, who had Five Feet of Fury, which still remains a phenomenal resource.
00:13:49.440And you had all of these others that were doing this.
00:13:51.580The difference between that 1.0 era of independent media in Canada is that you lost more money than you made, because you had to pay for web hosting, and you would sometimes get deplatformed, and you had to move somewhere else.
00:14:06.020And maybe you'd put a little tip jar, and you'd make a few bucks off of it.
00:14:09.680But it was something people did, and I did it as well for a time, because we liked it because we wanted to, not because there was ever a career and a job into it.
00:14:18.220And I think the turning point took place when people on the right, who had devoted so much effort into just getting politicians elected, realized that we cannot, what's the word?
00:14:31.080We cannot abstain from the culture war, and we need to start putting our money where our mouth is and supporting people who are telling these stories.
00:14:38.860Because the media has left, we know the media has left, we're always going to see this resistance from the media to the things that we care about, so we need to start telling our own stories.
00:14:47.600And I mean, in a way, it means that we professionalize something a little bit.
00:14:52.420I mean, it's still, I remember that just the Wild West and how much fun it was when you had these bloggers, and we were all sharing links to each other's stories.
00:14:59.600But it's not sustainable, because people have their own lives and their own livelihoods and their own family drama.
00:15:04.900And you also had some very nefarious actors that were trying to shut people down, either through human rights commissions or through lawsuits.
00:15:11.900And there was really no means to defend yourself in that period.
00:15:15.380So what happens, you know, with the advent of rebel, which is so important, is we start to see a business model form.
00:15:21.820And, you know, it was always very uncomfortable for me to make money in this world, because that's not why I'm in the world.
00:15:28.800I'm in the world because I enjoy it and because I want to be.
00:15:31.540But when I take the bigger picture view and take myself out of it, it's, I think, important that we do it, because we actually need to be able to compete with the people that we've been criticizing and complaining about on their turfs.
00:15:44.340And people in the left have always had deep-pocketed donors that have wanted to insist on left-wing narratives.
00:15:49.920And it's taken the right longer to do that.
00:15:52.660But I think that's why independent media is so important.
00:15:55.140And to go to where we are now, it's amazing that, you know, the rebels and the true norths and the western standards are in some ways criticized as being too establishment by some people.
00:16:05.920And I think the criticisms are silly, but what I think is important there is that independent media itself has grown enough that we now have the more scrappy, independent DIY folks that are doing what we were doing five years ago.
00:16:20.820And in five years, they're going to have built up these networks that are very large as well.
00:16:24.820And we've actually started this very incredible generational transformation.
00:16:35.920It just makes me have a hundred thoughts.
00:16:38.320I remember when, you know, Western Standard, the print magazine that I published was winding up and we were still fighting the Human Rights Commission that was coming for us for publishing the Danish cartoons.
00:17:49.080And with, you know, it's good to be skeptical.
00:17:50.820Now, I think everyone does so much of their life on their phone and the website, especially banking.
00:17:56.520People have a high level of trust with it.
00:17:59.320But it's not just the people now trust online commerce.
00:18:03.420It's that I think we've created a culture of political, journalistic giving in Canada that maybe wasn't there before.
00:18:13.420And fair enough, because everyone was used to getting TV for free, paid for by advertisers, or in the case of the CBC, paid for by the government.
00:18:21.340But that's the thing, is if you're not paying for it, then you are what's being bought and sold by advertisers, or in the case of the CBC, you are a target market for the government's point of view.
00:18:32.960So I think it's taken 10 years for a critical mass of Canadian freedom-oriented people to say, you know what?
00:18:39.460If I want there to be an alternative to the CBC and CTV and Globe and Mail, maybe I'm going to have to pony up 5 or 10 bucks a month.
00:18:49.460Because, by the way, Netflix and Crave and all those HBO and sports channels, they've also, quote, trained people to pay for subscriptions 5, 10 bucks a month.
00:19:01.420So I think you have a critical mass of Canadian people who are frustrated with the incumbent media, and they're willing to chip in because you can't save the world if you can't pay the rent.
00:19:13.840And, you know, we thought we could make money off YouTube ads, and there was a while that we were.
00:19:19.680You know, in 2017, we were on track to make $1 million just from those little click now, skip now ads on YouTube, and then they just took us down to zero.
00:19:29.460And so, you know, if you don't get any money from government, because you wouldn't take any, and if YouTube cuts you off because of their political censorship, what's left?
00:19:39.540Well, thank God, enough Canadians believe in it, and not just to support Rebel News, but true Northwestern Standard, Counter Signal, Spencer Fernando.
00:19:47.800I don't want to leave anyone out, but I think it's actually very encouraging.
00:19:51.980And instead of adopting a viewer-first model, the incumbents have taken a government-first model, and instead of trying to compete with you or me, or even non-political YouTubers, I think of J.J. McCullough, who's slightly political, but he's just sort of this independent content creator in Vancouver.
00:20:12.860He's a hoot, you know, he's just such a likable guy, very, you know, very viewer-oriented.
00:20:19.980Instead of trying to compete, the incumbents are all saying, shut down or throttle our competitors and give us free money.
00:20:29.440Like, it's just, they're not even trying to put their viewers first, they're trying to put the government first in their life.
00:20:36.820I think it's sort of sad, the stronger independent media grows, the weaker the incumbents are, and the more, instead of trying to fix things, they just whine to the government and say, give us another bailout, please.
00:20:47.740Yeah, and what you said about people thinking they were getting it for free, I think is very important, because every now and then I try not to engage too much in the stupid YouTube and X comments and all that, but every now and then you'll get a criticism of, oh, you know, you're beholden to your donors and your backers and your funders and all of that.
00:21:09.400The people that donate to us do it because they value the work that we're already doing and would otherwise do.
00:21:13.960But it's a ridiculous premise because mainstream media outlets are beholden to their funders as well, whether it's government or advertisers.
00:21:22.740And we just expect that they will put in adequate firewalls and guardrails in place to avoid it becoming an influence of content.
00:21:30.420But how you get your money is a business decision, and I think it's something that consumers will ultimately decide if they align with them.
00:21:36.460And I would say that the independent media funding model is a much better reflection of what an outlet should be doing than the traditional model.
00:21:47.020And one example I can give on this is our coverage at True North of the World Economic Forum.
00:22:41.740I don't know if their salaries are covered by that.
00:22:45.520So their coverage of that is being funded now by government subsidies and advertisers.
00:22:51.620And again, if there's a market for that coverage, great.
00:22:53.700But what makes you a more authentic representative of what your audience needs and wants, but having to finance on a more project-specific basis the work that you do?
00:23:06.460And I think that's a very revolutionary business model that doesn't need to be limited to independent journalism.
00:23:12.540You know, I'm glad you mentioned Davos.
00:24:09.900One of my favorites was when you talked to the man who would be prime minister, Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada and then Bank of England governor,
00:24:20.800who I think wants to be the successor for Justin Trudeau.
00:24:53.940Like everybody else, if I can think of it.
00:24:55.720Well, that was, and Mark Carney is a pretty clever fella, but I think my favorite one was when you actually went face to face with a banking CEO, I think it was Bank of Montreal, and you asked him a question I am certain he has never been asked before,
00:25:13.500which is namely about freezing the trucker's bank account with no judicial processes.
00:25:20.560Minister Freeland said during the Public Order Emergency Commission that you had wanted to call the convoy protesters terrorists to deal with their financing.
00:25:29.920So I would never call the convoy protesters terrorists.
00:25:34.020What was said was that in order for the banks to be helpful, there are certain protocols, and those protocols include a sanction where we can, in fact, help in that case.
00:25:51.460Otherwise, it's not our business to interfere in the affairs of anyone's finances, truckers or otherwise.
00:25:57.640One of the other banking executives on that call had pushed back a little bit and said that they didn't want the banks to be weaponized.
00:26:32.300Their companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars paying the World Economic Forum to be involved, to hobnob and make deals.
00:26:39.500So none of their questions are ever truly accountability-oriented.
00:26:44.140I mean, Albert Bourla, the Pfizer CEO that we scrummed, he does interviews all day long if he wants to, but they're always softball-scripted, gentle, loving questions.
00:26:53.720They're not uncontrolled surprise questions or critical questions.
00:26:59.160I'm looking forward to seeing you there in Davos, and I think you do good work there.
00:27:03.360Simply by being there, you're doing more work than our state broadcaster or the regime media.
00:27:08.640I think, though, that when we go to places like the World Economic Forum, you know, we're kept out of certain areas that citizen journalists aren't allowed.
00:27:21.760What's concerning me, Andrew, is as citizen journalists become more ubiquitous and bolder and there's a bit of a community forming,
00:27:29.740is that these institutions are then saying, well, you aren't real journalists.
00:27:34.280You're not trustworthy. We're going to block you from attending by denying you accreditation.
00:27:39.680Or if you manage to show up and manage to get one of our people being candid, we're going to throttle that on the Internet.
00:27:46.140We're going to have it fact-checked and called disinformation.
00:27:50.340So I think that they – I think some people are waking up to the threat to the incumbents of citizen journalists.
00:27:56.120And frankly, it can be hard to find your work or our work using a Google search or YouTube search because we're not promoted like regime media sources are.
00:28:10.040And that's not a theory. It's not a conspiracy theory.
00:28:12.040We have a YouTube media handler assigned to us by YouTuber named Coco Pinnell, and she, you know, is candid with us that YouTube suppresses alternative media and boosts what they call quality or trustworthy media.
00:28:27.440It's not a conspiracy theory. That's what they tell us to our face.
00:28:30.060Yeah, and the one thing that people need to realize is the value of discovery.
00:28:36.660And, you know, one of the reasons that Netflix is so great is that when you're scrolling around, you'll get access to a show that you had never heard of before.
00:28:43.100And the trailer looks interesting or you recognize someone's in it or there's just nothing else and you watch it and say, oh, wow, this is fantastic.
00:28:49.100And, you know, to use a self-indulgent example here, I did a few weeks back my first ever book event at a bookstore for my book, The Freedom Convoy, which came out a year and a half ago.
00:29:01.180And I say it was the first event because many of the bookstores in Canada wouldn't carry it.
00:29:06.820And, you know, the book still did very well.
00:29:08.640But it was interesting that there were people that had learned of it for the first time in December of this year because they walked past the bookstore and they saw it in the window and said, oh, there's a book about The Freedom Convoy.
00:29:22.100They walk in and they don't know who I am, but the subject grabs them because it was there.
00:29:26.660And that's what the government is banning.
00:29:28.800I mean, for now, yes, True North will be able to mail our list that we have and Rebel will be able to mail its list.
00:29:34.540Now, there are still challenges there if some of these mail service providers are pressured and Internet service providers are.
00:29:41.560But the issue is government trying to ban the discovery of new audiences and the ability of new audiences to discover the work that we're doing.
00:29:50.580And that's the inevitable outcome of a government policy that by its design, it's a feature and not a bug, manipulates algorithms and manipulates homepages.
00:30:47.700And that's what I mentioned that YouTube does.
00:30:49.720They de-boost sites they don't like and boost the ones they do.
00:30:53.140It's bad enough when YouTube is doing that.
00:30:56.100But Section 9 of C-11 gives the government through the CRTC the power to alter the, quote, discoverability of anything on the Internet for any reason at all.
00:31:08.980Now, they list for French language reasons or Aboriginal reasons or Canadian content reasons, but those are just examples.
00:31:16.240That's not an exclusive or exhaustive list.
00:31:19.120So by giving the government the power to alter discoverability, do you doubt for a second that they will use that power, which they just gave themselves, to boost CBC, Globe and Mail, and de-boost Andrew Lawton, and completely unboost Ezra Levant?
00:31:50.740We aren't talking about how terrible Canada is.
00:31:52.680If anything, we're being far more patriotic and talking about how great Canada is.
00:31:56.640But I don't believe for a second that True North will be the beneficiaries of this.
00:32:00.640And the reason that's very important here, and contextually why people need to realize this, is that they're going to be making these normative judgments about what type of Canadian content is available.
00:32:12.120And I've said, you know, if I basically come out as a disabled transgender lesbian and change the Andrew Lawton show, I bet it will be C11 compliant.
00:32:21.320When CBC did that one thing a while ago where Talking Tomato was lecturing the audience about colonialism, that'll be Canadian content.
00:32:29.560But anything critical of that will not be.
00:32:32.380Now, there's an easy answer to this, which is just let the companies, who are not perfect, but they have a pretty good sense of what audiences want to see, let the companies run their algorithms.
00:32:41.700If someone like you or I has an issue with the way YouTube is doing things, we can decide, hey, we want to use Rumble, or we want to start our own platform.
00:32:49.720But, I mean, again, it's going to be very interesting to see how players like Rumble are forced into this.
00:32:54.880If they don't play ball, are they going to be blocked?
00:32:57.860Will you as a Canadian not be allowed to go to Rumble because they've decided that they will not manipulate these algorithms to comply with the government?
00:33:05.780You know, and that's a great point about Rumble.