EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau’s immigration minister invites tens of thousands of migrants from Gaza — but don’t worry, Hamas will make sure they’re not dangerous
I ve been thinking about my brief interview with Ontario solicitor general Michael Kersner, and I have a few thoughts on his answers. I want to take you through it line by line, starting with what he said about anti-Semitism.
00:01:34.940The other side is the Solicitor General, the guy I interviewed on Monday.
00:01:40.160He's in charge of the police and the prisons.
00:01:43.740In Ontario, the Solicitor General is the minister responsible for the provincial police force called the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police.
00:01:52.020It's a pretty large police force, actually, with nearly 6,000 uniformed officers.
00:02:09.800There probably is no single person in Ontario, perhaps no other person in all of Canada, given how big Ontario is, more responsible for the policing in this country, with the possible exception of the commissioner of the RCMP.
00:02:25.720But in terms of the absolute chaos in city streets, Toronto has been hit the worst.
00:02:35.940In Canada, the University of Toronto is the largest university by far, and they have had an encampment there, a Hamas encampment there, for more than a week.
00:02:47.320There are massive street marches in Toronto by Hamas all the time, including one that disrupted a meeting between Justin Trudeau and the Italian prime minister.
00:02:59.200Toronto is the city where Jewish-owned stores, like the Indigo bookstore and Jewish-themed restaurants, have been attacked and vandalized by these Hamas hate marches.
00:03:11.080It's where Jewish kids have been beat up on the way to school.
00:03:15.480It's where, just this past weekend, gunmen pumped five rounds into a Jewish girls' school.
00:03:22.140All of that is a matter of law and order.
00:03:25.440The law being the prosecutors, the order being the police.
00:06:31.680I've been 34 weeks, almost every single week, to the rally of Bathurst and Shepherd in support of remembering the hostages who have been held against their will in captivity in Gaza.
00:06:51.640You've created a new normal where people can engage in low-level, permanent, anti-Semitic crimes, assault, threats, mischief, because you guys don't prosecute.
00:07:02.440But there you are on Twitter, though, so congrats for that.
00:07:04.780It's important that the Jewish community sees a person from their own community in the Ontario legislature standing up against hate every single day, who has the support of a premier who has called it out.
00:07:18.100Where are the other levels of government today who exercise the same voice that Premier Ford does, that we will not accept anti-Semitism?
00:09:27.020Am I supposed to be somehow mollified, satisfied with the carnage on our streets and university campuses simply because this guy said he's a really good Jew?
00:09:37.460How about being a really good Solicitor General?
00:09:40.500And that part about him going to the weekly protest in that, he mentioned Bathurst and Shepherd.
00:09:49.620It's actually where I did my Streeter interviews about Yara Sachs the other day, if you remember that.
00:09:53.820And every weekend for about an hour, I don't know, about 20 Jews gather in that shopping mall outdoors, and they wave Israeli flags and people honk their support as they drive by.
00:11:17.600It's a distraction from the fact that we have all the real laws we need right now to deal with the problem, and we lack the political will, as demonstrated by Kirzner.
00:12:05.980Everyone who willfully disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral, social, or benevolent purpose is guilty of an offense punishable on summary conviction.
00:14:45.220And of every single person in Canada other than Trudeau himself, I actually think Michael Kersner is the most responsible for what's going on in our city streets.
00:14:57.240It's happening in Vancouver and Montreal and Ottawa, too.
00:15:01.160But Toronto is the biggest and the worst.
00:15:03.600And it is literally Michael Kersner's job to enforce the law, to arrest lawbreakers, and then to hand the prisoners over to the prosecutors in the courts.
00:15:14.220The prosecutors in the courts can't do their job if criminals aren't arrested.
00:15:19.100You know, we hear about the George Soros district attorneys in the United States in places like San Francisco and Portland.
00:15:26.620Those are far left-wing prosecutors who are funded by Soros.
00:15:32.700And Soros has bankrolled DAs who drop charges against criminals, who don't ask for bail, who tell police not to bother to enforce laws like shoplifting.
00:16:08.200Oh, and expect it to get a lot worse very quickly.
00:16:12.100Did you see this insane news on Monday?
00:16:14.640Trudeau announced he is quintupling the number of people he is importing from Gaza along with their families.
00:16:23.680Trudeau's immigration minister says if you don't like it, if you're afraid of it, well, he doesn't want your vote, you Jew.
00:16:29.940But also here in Canada, with Islamophobia running rampant, anti-Semitism running rampant.
00:16:37.880And I think we need to estimate, because perhaps we've underestimated the damage that this has caused us as a country and the divisive politics that comes out of it.
00:16:52.280And I don't want the vote of someone that thinks that legitimate criticism of the Netanyahu government that I share equates to picking on Jews in this country and targeting them.
00:17:05.820If those people have that type of thinking, I don't want their vote.
00:17:08.680Oh, and they don't talk about Hamas being hostages, releasing the hostages anymore.
00:17:14.280I mean, for at least the first six months, Trudeau would say, Israel's really bad.
00:17:23.560They no longer even ask Hamas to release the hostages anymore.
00:17:26.940They say, actually, Israel is the criminal hostage taker.
00:17:31.360Look at this insane line by Mark Miller, the immigration minister.
00:17:35.180But we are all failing Gazans at this point.
00:17:38.080And I think that is something that we need to realize that they are under their it's probably the largest hostage taking right now in the world.
00:17:49.400And it is something that Canada can play a small role in it.
00:18:42.900You know, I've attended a number of these encampments supporting Hamas.
00:18:46.780And I think it's accurate to say many of them outright support Hamas.
00:18:51.100Others would say, no, they're merely pro-Palestinian.
00:18:53.220I think it's fair to say that all of them are anti-Israel.
00:18:57.180There's gradations, and different people have their different reasons for being there.
00:19:01.440But one of the things that has struck me, and I saw this when I was at Columbia during their encampment,
00:19:08.580is I was surprised how many young women are in these battlements.
00:19:13.360And one particular observation was young Asian women.
00:19:17.800And, you know, I've been to enough of these encampments now in different cities where it seems to be a trend.
00:19:25.060And I can understand if someone is of Middle Eastern heritage, there's a tribal instinct, you stand with your clan.
00:19:31.980And I can understand if people come from a radical background.
00:19:36.700But in my mind, young women, especially young Asian women, to stereotype, are, you know, peaceful, compliant, rule-following, scholarly, merit-oriented people who go to school to learn,
00:19:54.340go to school to better themselves, often they're children of first-generation immigrants who work hard and save up to send their kids to get a medical degree.
00:20:03.560Why are so many young women a part of these radical protests?
00:20:09.720Well, someone who's been thinking about this question a lot is our guest today.
00:20:51.040There's the Asian part, and then there's the female part.
00:20:54.120I think they both have somewhat different explanations.
00:20:57.600It is astounding that Asians are at all attracted to left-wing causes because the left-wing hates Asians.
00:21:04.980The left-wing says they are, you know, this terrible wannabe model minority,
00:21:11.800and all of the democratic left-wing policies like racial preferences are working in the exact opposite of Asian interests.
00:21:21.460Asians are successful academically, but they are being kept out of universities disproportionately to their qualifications
00:21:30.140in order to make room for far less qualified so-called underrepresented minorities, which is code for Blacks and Hispanics.
00:21:37.900But nevertheless, you have a very large percentage of Asian population in this country identifying with Democrats and with the left because that is the path towards elite status.
00:21:52.140The elites dominate our most highly high-status professions, whether it's in tech or medicine or the media.
00:22:01.200And so if you want to credentialize your children for admission to Harvard and whatnot, you're better off identifying as a Democrat.
00:22:12.880But the other part of the Venn diagram here is the female component, and that is partly the fact that females simply dominate more and more in universities,
00:22:23.300which explains why universities have become hostile to free speech and academic inquiry without any inhibitions from claims of safetyism.
00:22:34.320And, you know, this idea makes me feel unsafe, the more that the females dominate a university, the less it is dedicated to its core function of the uninhibited pursuit of knowledge.
00:22:55.760And females in general, on average, and there's obviously exceptions, are less prone to weigh costs and benefits, to follow rational policies.
00:23:09.220And I would argue that the great mass hysteria that we've seen on behalf of Hamas, and I'm going to be much more blunt about this than you are, Ezra,
00:23:19.760I think this is a movement founded in utter ignorance.
00:23:46.840One of the signs was fags for Palestine, i.e., a variant on the various queers for Palestine combinations we've seen at these protests.
00:23:59.940That in itself discredits this entire movement, because as we know, as has been said endlessly on conservative media, you try holding a gay pride march in Gaza or in Somalia or in Nairobi, you're going to get thrown off of buildings.
00:24:20.500You have Muslim countries that have death penalties for homosexuals.
00:24:26.600This is a movement founded in irrationality.
00:24:29.780Females dominate the growing irrational strain on our campuses.
00:24:35.180They dominate the various left-wing majors, the ethnic studies, the women's studies, the gender studies, the anti-white studies.
00:24:43.840So really, this whole thing is a match made in heaven.
00:24:48.740One of the things you said is, you know, safety is, you know, it's a feminine idea.
00:24:55.760That's why I find it odd when you have women, young women, siding with the violent revolutionary.
00:25:05.040I mean, you would think that would be terrifying.
00:25:06.380And also, I mean, maybe, again, I'm engaging in stereotypes here, but I just find it so hard to believe that a young woman would throw away 100 grand of her parents' cash and tuition to throw her lot in with these would-be Che Guevara's.
00:25:23.260Is it, you know, a theory that my friend Gavin McInnes, who's a bit of a wild man, says is that maybe these young Asian women are rebelling against their tiger moms and saying, you know,
00:26:15.960Well, I think that and I think you're absolutely right that this is ultimately and I think a lot of the sort of Jewish advocates in Congress don't get this.
00:26:25.380It's a mistake to characterize this hysteria as predominantly traditional anti-Semitism.
00:26:32.460It has very little to do with traditional anti-Semitism with the exception of the Muslims on campus.
00:26:38.500And let's be honest, Blacks also have a long history of fairly traditional anti-Semitism, of hatred for the Jewish landlords, hatred for the Jewish shopkeepers.
00:26:47.980We saw recently in the last couple of months a black student organization sent out on social media an extremely traditional caricature of Jewish power.
00:27:02.180But by and large, this is not motivated by the genteel wasp anti-Semitism of, well, Jews are just not clubbable.
00:27:09.420It's motivated by hatred of the West itself, of which Israel is now seen as the embodiment.
00:27:16.260This grows out of the current academic context.
00:27:22.400It's what's being taught across the board.
00:27:25.520It's very hard to find a humanities course today that does not take an extremely cynical, critical approach towards the greatest monuments of Western civilization,
00:27:35.780an approach I have to add that is completely fallacious.
00:27:39.360The West has nothing to apologize for.
00:27:41.620It is the beacon of tolerance and rights the world over.
00:27:46.200It has done nothing that is at all worse than what every other culture has done as far as genocide, expropriation, trying to wipe out your enemies.
00:28:20.160But to get back to the Asians, that what you see is sort of the docile would be medical students.
00:28:28.340It again, it is just the lure on campus.
00:28:31.480It is the lure of the oppositional and it is the lure in our culture to be affiliated with causes that are seen as anti-establishment.
00:28:42.580And it's an ironic impulse because the establishment today is the left.
00:28:47.500We just heard this from President Biden in his appalling commencement speech at Morehouse College, where he was.
00:28:54.900Reiterating the usual lies that he ran with to get into the White House and he's kept going since being in the White House, which is that this is a white supremacist country, that whites are mowing down blacks, that you have to be 100 times better to be if you're black to get a qualified position.
00:31:25.440Well, you know, I don't know if you felt this tension, Ezra, which is that these students should have no attention paid to them whatsoever.
00:31:35.200Ideally, now they're breaking the law when they're doing encampments.
00:31:57.900They only have the power that the university confers upon them, a power which they then turn around and use to leverage against the university.
00:32:25.980That night, they went and broke windows and doors at Hamilton Hall, calling in the mails, of course, because they need mails to be the muscle.
00:32:33.300But generally, it is a female-led cult movement.
00:32:36.980And I hated myself, in a sense, for going and being part of that huge media scrum to look at these people because it is a mutually codependent relationship.
00:32:50.140The best thing is to turn off the cameras.
00:32:52.380On the other hand, one can't resist covering them to get just their sheer idiocy.
00:33:01.440Like, you know, these students were walking for hours at a time around a very large greensward underneath the magnificent neoclassical Butler Library at Columbia, which has the names of some of the great Greek orators, philosophers, literate dramatists,
00:33:19.180sophocles, sophocles, virgil, cicero, homer, demosthenes, and underneath them are these robots chanting these idiotic chants for hours at a time.
00:33:32.600It is the absolute opposite of what students should be doing, which is, one, to absorb wisdom and beauty.
00:33:41.240And here they are engaged in the most mindless activity.
00:33:45.660I would think it would be embarrassing and simply boring to be hours around and they're getting sprayed with little water bottles by the females and given sunscreen and masks, the N95s, if they don't already have them.
00:33:58.900But, you know, my question to you, Ezra, I kind of think, and I haven't pursued this, but do right-wing demonstrators do these mindless, repetitive call and response chants, or is this really a function of the left?
00:34:12.720Because I'm trying to think, you know, we don't have that many right-wing demonstrators, but Tea Party or MAGA people, but MAGA, well, I guess we had the January 6th riot, but that wasn't really chanting.
00:34:25.620But I think that maybe that modus operandi is really a left-wing thing.
00:34:33.260You know, I've been to, I agree with there's not a lot of right-wing protests in Canada.
00:35:56.300And you're so right at Columbia that it's in this gorgeous, beautiful learning oasis with this classic architecture.
00:36:05.480And then these kids at the bottom, it feels like they're the peasant who picked up a pearl and threw it back into the sea, not knowing its worth.
00:36:13.480That's all I could think of when I saw these kids throwing away the $100,000 a year education they had.
00:36:19.520I did see a couple of normal kids who stopped to talk when they were so mad at their peers.
00:36:24.740I know you've got to go, Heather, but I just want to throw one thing to you.
00:36:52.620And there was an editorial board member of the New York Times, Shmeman, who wrote this nauseating encomium to the student protesters and how they're leading us towards a more righteous world.
00:37:08.320And they show that we can change things.
00:37:12.780They are right maybe once every 24 hours.
00:37:16.440The students at Tiananmen Square were right.
00:37:18.160But other than that, students have tended to be completely wrong.
00:37:21.300They simply don't know enough about the world to be listened to.
00:37:24.860And yet there is this whole ethic among older adults that, oh, this is what students should be doing.
00:37:32.140If you're not protesting, you're not really fulfilling your obligation as a university student.
00:37:37.360And that also is what's egging on these students.
00:37:40.020And that's just simply a complete misapprehension of students and ignoring the fact that they are utter dolts and ignoramuses.
00:37:50.640Xi Van Fleet, who is a Chinese-American woman who grew up in communist China and experienced the Red Guard and Mao's great purges and the four olds, old habits, old ideas.
00:38:23.260They don't know any lessons from the past.
00:38:26.240And if you can break them away from their parents and have them affix their emotions to a revolution, they're the most brutal and terrifying of all.
00:38:36.480They certainly were in the cancel culture extremes of the cultural revolution in China.
00:38:41.480And I think that's what's scary to me is to see how these mild-mannered, typically wealthy kids and luxury campuses can say blood-curdling things so easily, can affiliate with terrorist groups.
00:38:58.480Well, we've seen that throughout time, that young people are the vanguard because they can be weaponized.
00:39:04.460And, I mean, not to be rude about it, they're the dumbest people because they haven't learned, they haven't experienced, they haven't learned the lessons of the past.
00:39:18.800Well, you know, that's an interesting question whether this is something that we've seen throughout time.
00:39:23.780I would say that the empowerment of young people is something relatively recent.
00:39:32.500It's partly a function, at least in the West, of prosperity.
00:39:38.860Capitalism became so successful in the 20th century that for the first time in human history, adolescents had spending power, power that was served upon them by their parents.
00:39:50.360They didn't earn the money that they were spending.
00:39:52.280But there was enough wealth sloshing around in the culture that parents could confer credit cards or whatever on their children who then, you know, corporations spotted a new market.
00:40:23.240Because if you have spending power in this culture, you are powerful.
00:40:26.160But the idea that 100 years before that, that anybody would have paid attention to students, I think is very unlikely.
00:40:36.160The great German sociologist Max Weber wrote an essay on the mission of science in universities.
00:40:44.080And he said that a college professor should never adopt an explicit political position in his classroom because the power imbalance between the professor and students was so absolute.
00:40:58.180That is, that is, the professor had absolute power and students had zero power vis-a-vis the professor, that they would have no capacity to disagree or engage him and they would be basically under his thumb.
00:41:14.820So he presumed that students in a university setting were basically, you know, worthless.
00:41:22.580They were there to absorb the professor.
00:41:24.000It was only over the course of the 20th century when you had also the rise of consumer culture on college campuses where the students are the consumers and they're going around, you know, sticking their noses up in the air.
00:41:38.320If they don't have their extra virgin olive oil tasting bars I've seen at Yale University, this isn't the college dining room.
00:41:46.380They have extra virgin tasting oils, extra virgin olive oil tasting bars.
00:41:51.920It is that resplendent in superfluous wealth that students now feel like they have, they're entitled to set the moral and intellectual tone of a campus.
00:42:05.400That's a very new development and it's obviously an extremely unfortunate one.
00:42:09.860Yeah, I will note that in every protest I've visited, Columbia, U of T, UBC, I haven't been to a campus in the UK, professors are involved.
00:42:26.940And I think, so it's not just the foolish youth, it's not just the cult-like youth.
00:42:33.700I think in some cases it's professors trying to relive their own youth, it's professors who were always about the activism, the long march through the institutions.
00:42:46.260I see at University of Toronto that the professors are saying, hey cops, you're going to have to come through us first.
00:42:51.820And I don't know, I find it fascinating because as you point out, the administrations of all these universities are at least partially and somewhat significantly sympathetic and in agreement with the protesters.
00:43:06.260Like we all saw the testimony of the Harvard, MIT and Penn presidents in front of Congress.
00:43:13.520It was shocking to most people, including the Congress, how captured those institutions are.
00:43:21.260Last word to you, Heather, you've been very generous with your time.
00:43:24.480How is this all going to end or will it end?
00:43:29.960It's going to end poorly because these students are going every year out into the real world, which is simply remade in the image of academia.
00:43:39.400And they're bringing their left-wing convictions, they're bringing their hatred of free speech.
00:43:45.080We have the Biden administration, Canada's really bad in shutting down free speech.
00:43:49.080The Biden administration claiming to protect democracy by shutting down dissenting views because it's unsafe.
00:43:58.080We are eating away at the very foundations of liberal democracy.
00:44:03.320And, you know, I don't think anybody is really trying to correct these students.
00:44:08.420The faculty are guilty not only when they're out there actually protecting the students and smashing windows with them or chanting with them.
00:44:16.660They're guilty simply in what they teach.
00:44:19.080They have betrayed their mission of teaching students why they should be down on their knees in gratitude and awe before the greatest monuments of Western civilization.
00:44:29.540So I think unless, for one thing, nobody should give another goddamn dime to their college alma maters, none of them deserve it.
00:44:39.260There's maybe three in the United States who do.
00:44:42.180And so we have to absolutely defund the universities, but we also have to take on the anti-Western hatred and start defending the West against these phony charges of white supremacy and colonial settlerism.
00:47:02.840And a point I didn't really emphasize yesterday is these entitled kids, because they are the children of privilege, who are going to $100,000 a year school.