Rebel News Podcast - August 22, 2019


How many people watch The Rebel? How many Liberals? You might be surprised...


Episode Stats

Length

38 minutes

Words per Minute

170.28708

Word Count

6,598

Sentence Count

445

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

29


Summary

The CBC publishes a fake poll as political propaganda and then covers its tracks. Where are all the fact checkers now? I ll tell you where they are: in fact checking other people's facts, not their own.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, I take you through two fake news polls.
00:00:04.980 Maybe you caught them, but I wonder if you did, because the usual fact-check media critics,
00:00:09.460 well, they're silent because the fake news came from the left.
00:00:13.580 I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Before I get out of the way, can you do me a favor
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00:00:36.760 But we don't want you to have too big a discount because we still need your help.
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00:00:46.540 Here's today's podcast.
00:00:48.800 You're listening to a Rebel Media podcast.
00:00:51.960 Tonight, the CBC publishes a fake news poll as political propaganda
00:00:56.860 and then covers its tracks.
00:00:58.820 Hey, where are all those fact-checkers now?
00:01:01.680 It's August 21st, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:06.460 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:10.240 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:13.960 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it
00:01:17.840 is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:01:20.200 Oh, boy, did the CBC screw up the other day.
00:01:28.480 Huge factual error, clear attempt to interfere with an election.
00:01:33.000 Disinformation, meddling, fake news,
00:01:36.980 the sort of things they accuse others of doing.
00:01:39.240 The CBC has a series they call Fact Check.
00:01:41.820 By the way, they make this habit of checking other people's facts.
00:01:47.140 I wish they would check their own.
00:01:48.540 It's a sly move, this whole fact-check business,
00:01:50.980 because it pretends that they're a referee,
00:01:53.600 not a player in the ongoing game of political persuasion and manipulation.
00:01:58.380 Imagine the chutzpah of a government journalist
00:02:00.800 at the CBC state broadcaster setting himself up
00:02:03.980 as an arbiter of what's true or not.
00:02:05.960 And, yeah, it's exactly what you think it is.
00:02:09.260 Fact Check.
00:02:10.880 Andrew Scheer torques study in claim about the new NAFTA deal
00:02:14.300 by Jonathan Gatehouse.
00:02:16.140 Conservative leader's interpretation not accurate, says economist.
00:02:20.360 Fact Check.
00:02:21.820 Why Andrew Scheer's climate plan won't hit Canada's Paris targets
00:02:25.040 by Jonathan Gatehouse.
00:02:27.380 Fact Check.
00:02:28.680 Maxime Bernier's false claim about Canada's subsidized immigrants
00:02:32.300 by Jonathan Gatehouse.
00:02:33.640 Yeah, I'm starting to see a trend here by Fact Check.
00:02:36.780 The CBC really means liberal war room talking points
00:02:40.160 going out and discrediting the enemies of Justin Trudeau
00:02:43.020 by, I don't know, trying to dig up some economist somewhere
00:02:47.340 who disagrees with a conservative and calling that a Fact Check.
00:02:50.400 That ain't Fact Checking.
00:02:51.600 That's just arguing.
00:02:53.020 This is fine.
00:02:53.900 That's being a player in the game while pretending you're a referee.
00:02:57.660 You ain't.
00:02:58.060 I'll tell you about the CBC's Fact Checking error in a moment.
00:03:00.900 But seriously, I mean, isn't every journalist a Fact Checker?
00:03:03.720 I mean, I check my facts, and I try to show you that by putting on the screen
00:03:10.160 my primary sources for things.
00:03:12.400 I just showed you three pictures of the Fact Check on the CBC's website,
00:03:16.960 so you can check my facts in real time.
00:03:18.820 I hope.
00:03:19.980 Sometimes I just show you a headline, sometimes a chart,
00:03:22.220 sometimes a video clip of someone saying something or showing something.
00:03:25.160 That's the fun of TV.
00:03:26.560 As you talk, you can provide little factual proof points online.
00:03:30.180 Websites can link to an underlying fact.
00:03:32.380 Newspapers are a bit different.
00:03:33.820 You have to take their word for it that they quoted someone accurately.
00:03:36.740 Of course, they can show pictures in a newspaper.
00:03:38.640 My point is, what is a journalist who says they're a Fact Checker?
00:03:43.860 Well, it's just a critic, really.
00:03:45.140 I mean, half of the journalism I do is checking the facts on someone else.
00:03:48.840 Justin Trudeau say, I often check the facts on leftist media like the CBC say.
00:03:53.360 Aren't we all Fact Checkers?
00:03:54.320 And don't we sometimes disagree on which facts are facts?
00:03:56.980 And that's the fun of it.
00:03:57.860 That's the freedom of it.
00:03:58.980 I mean, the liberals say the conservatives have their facts wrong and vice versa.
00:04:02.260 And in the end, we need an election to sort it all out.
00:04:04.840 As in, there's no definitive answer sometimes because what's so often being argued about is opinion and interpretation.
00:04:12.320 So if the CBC fact checks me, they're probably just giving their opinion on my politics and vice versa.
00:04:18.380 Usually our facts are right.
00:04:19.540 But it's the opinions we quarrel with.
00:04:22.620 So let's fact check the government journalists at Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster just for a second.
00:04:28.280 The ones who have so much to say about conservatives.
00:04:31.260 Oh, and they love calling conservative media fake news, don't they?
00:04:35.520 Well, let's look at this.
00:04:37.380 You see this tweet?
00:04:38.220 NDP and PCs in dead heat heading into Manitoba election, polls suggest.
00:04:46.040 Whoa, is that true?
00:04:48.680 An incumbent conservative premier on the ropes and the rump NDP.
00:04:53.880 Those losers.
00:04:55.000 A party led by a leader who is, shall we say, a bit physical when it comes to the lady folk.
00:05:01.440 Yeah, call me a skeptic that they're tied in the polls.
00:05:04.300 Let me quote, despite leading in the polls since their election in 2016,
00:05:10.220 Brian Pallister's progressive conservatives have fallen into a dead heat with Wab Canoes' NDP
00:05:15.460 right at the beginning of the 2019 provincial election, reads the report out Friday from polling firm Converso.
00:05:25.220 Wow, it's a dead heat, eh?
00:05:27.880 Let me read some more.
00:05:29.420 Converso.
00:05:30.320 Poll placed PCs at 31%, NDP at 30%, liberals at 11%,
00:05:34.060 Queens at 6%, on the side of the 15%.
00:05:36.400 Converso.
00:05:38.380 The name you know in polls, Converso.
00:05:41.560 The name you trust.
00:05:42.880 I mean, it's got to be true.
00:05:44.740 Converso.
00:05:45.200 We all know Converso polls.
00:05:46.880 I mean, come on, Converso.
00:05:48.840 Yeah, no, it was fake.
00:05:51.320 Fake news by a pollster that, well, no one seems to have heard of before.
00:05:55.080 I mean, that's cool.
00:05:55.860 Even Gallup polls had their first poll once, they were new once, but to run a screaming headline
00:06:03.740 that the Tories were doomed and the NDP were in the lead by Converso, a polling company no
00:06:11.200 one seemed to have heard of.
00:06:12.040 Some people might be skeptical, might think that's fake news, because it was.
00:06:19.360 The very next day, Converso, the pollster in question, they admitted that they got their
00:06:26.040 numbers wrong.
00:06:26.960 Oh, whoopsies.
00:06:28.360 And so the CBC sheepishly changed their headline.
00:06:31.920 Look at what they changed it to.
00:06:34.100 The day later, pollster says there's a data issue with survey suggesting Manitoba PCs and
00:06:40.300 NDP are in a dead heat.
00:06:41.660 That's their second headline.
00:06:44.120 They deleted their first headline.
00:06:45.900 The original one was what I showed you in the tweet.
00:06:48.220 NDP and PCs in dead heat heading into Manitoba election, poll suggests.
00:06:53.520 Pollster says there's a data issue.
00:06:55.540 Yeah, that's the CBC state broadcaster trying to cover their tracks, trying to hide the fact
00:07:00.400 that they were in on it.
00:07:01.300 They ran with it.
00:07:02.020 They absolutely repeated and magnified the fake poll at a time of maximum impact.
00:07:07.980 And now they're saying, oh, yeah, you know that pollster guy?
00:07:11.060 Converso.
00:07:11.620 He says there's a data issue.
00:07:13.820 I'm sure there was a data issue, but there's a fake news issue, and that's the state broadcaster's
00:07:19.160 problem, isn't it?
00:07:20.320 They so lusted for this story, they didn't bother to check it because it was too good to
00:07:24.640 check.
00:07:25.680 They just really want to believe that the NDP is about to come back and the Manitobans
00:07:28.860 love the carbon tax and the Tories are done.
00:07:31.020 Yeah, no.
00:07:32.140 But sorry to ask.
00:07:33.480 I mean, I don't mean to be a stickler, but where's Jonathan Gatehouse's fact check?
00:07:38.780 Where are the self-righteous media critics and fact checkers?
00:07:43.120 Where's Snopes?
00:07:44.920 That left-wing fact-checking site?
00:07:46.740 They're so awful.
00:07:48.220 You know, there are some satirical sites on the internet, good for some laughs.
00:07:52.140 The other day, I showed you a quick clip from The Onion.
00:07:54.880 Well, there's a slightly Christian satirical site called the Babylon Bee.
00:07:59.540 It's pretty funny, you know?
00:08:02.020 But you know it's a parody, right?
00:08:04.000 Like humor.
00:08:05.300 They make jokes.
00:08:07.820 You know this one's a joke, right?
00:08:10.620 You know, I mean, that's a joke, right?
00:08:12.520 You can tell that.
00:08:13.720 Well, Snopes, the left-wing fact-checker, hates the fact that people click on these funny
00:08:18.460 conservative Christian jokes.
00:08:20.020 And so Snopes have literally taken to fact-checking the Babylon Bee.
00:08:28.760 Stories published by the Babylon Bee are amongst the most shared factually inaccurate content
00:08:32.580 in almost every survey of this research.
00:08:34.940 Yeah, mate, they're sharing jokes.
00:08:38.460 They know they're jokes.
00:08:40.260 You know they're jokes.
00:08:41.500 Look at this one.
00:08:42.760 Portland Police.
00:08:44.160 We wish there were some kind of organized armed force that could fight back against Antifa.
00:08:48.840 Now, you know that's a joke, but it's funny because real life is absurd as a joke these
00:08:55.140 days.
00:08:55.540 That's where the laughs come in.
00:08:57.200 I don't think anyone actually believed the Portland Police said that, but Snopes is literally
00:09:02.980 fact-checking those jokes out.
00:09:04.800 Hey, I just flew in from Toronto, and boy, are my arms tired.
00:09:10.000 Fact-check.
00:09:10.600 Actually, no, you didn't fly in with your own arms.
00:09:12.660 You flew in on a plane.
00:09:15.300 Yeah, it's a joke, buddy.
00:09:16.680 I love this response.
00:09:19.840 Snopes rates Babylon Bee, world's most accurate news source.
00:09:25.620 It's a joke, but I'm guessing Snopes fact-checked that one, too.
00:09:29.300 Hey, guys, maybe we can get Snopes to fact-check Star Wars or the Superman movies, because those
00:09:35.620 didn't quite seem right to me.
00:09:38.820 I suppose it's easier than, say, fact-checking whether or not, oh, I don't know, Jeffrey
00:09:42.180 Epstein, that pedophile financier, actually killed himself in prison.
00:09:45.760 You know, something that we can actually use a good fact-check on.
00:09:48.360 You keep going after the Babylon Bee.
00:09:50.040 So the CBC ran a fake news poll, and when it was revealed to be fake news, they faked
00:09:56.000 their own headline by pretending it was different.
00:09:58.300 They changed it to pretend they knew all along it was fake, and they blamed the pollster.
00:10:02.520 And yes, he deserved blame for the poll, but they were the fools who ran with it because
00:10:06.280 they loved what it said too much to check.
00:10:08.680 Fake, fake, fakety-fake.
00:10:10.360 But look at this, right after the bombshell last week about Justin Trudeau being convicted
00:10:14.200 of breaking the Conflict of Interest Act for pressuring the Attorney General to drop criminal
00:10:18.700 charges against his friends at SNC-Lavalin, like, that's a huge story.
00:10:24.340 Look at the poll that CTV released about corruption of Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford.
00:10:33.280 Exclusive new poll suggests voters haven't forgotten about patronage appointment scandal.
00:10:38.100 Huh?
00:10:39.340 More.
00:10:40.040 The poll given exclusively to CTV News Toronto shows 56% of respondents perceive the Doug
00:10:45.200 Ford government as being corrupt.
00:10:46.980 Hey, guys, it's an exclusive.
00:10:48.260 The poll was given exclusively to CTV, so they didn't actually commission it.
00:10:52.800 They just, you know, are running with it.
00:10:54.900 Someone gave it to them like the CBC ran with that Manitoba poll.
00:10:58.620 Also curiously timed, all these are timed to change the subject away from Trudeau breaking
00:11:02.980 the law.
00:11:04.540 Okay, fine.
00:11:05.320 I'll bite.
00:11:05.660 Who is behind this weird poll that was given to the CTV?
00:11:09.900 Who gave it to them?
00:11:11.400 Well, let's read the story first.
00:11:12.860 Here's from the CTV story.
00:11:14.720 The Corbett Communications Survey, given exclusively to CTV News Toronto, shows 56% of respondents
00:11:20.520 perceive the Doug Ford government as being corrupt, while 62% believe too many cronies of the Premier
00:11:25.960 have jobs in government.
00:11:27.620 Now, first of all, don't you wish someone might have actually asked these questions about Justin
00:11:31.200 Trudeau the day after he was convicted of breaking the law for corruption?
00:11:35.240 That would be a great fact check.
00:11:37.140 Let's check the facts and see what they are.
00:11:39.500 Did Trudeau really do nothing wrong as he continues to claim?
00:11:43.380 What do the public think?
00:11:44.400 Yeah, we can't ask that, though.
00:11:46.940 So who commissioned this poll?
00:11:49.060 Who?
00:11:49.440 Was it that same no-name pollster in Manitoba?
00:11:52.660 Converso.
00:11:53.420 It was too good to check?
00:11:54.920 No, no, no.
00:11:55.600 It was Corbett Communications run by this guy, John Corbett.
00:11:59.560 And he's got a lot to say.
00:12:00.640 He says,
00:12:01.040 Yeah, John, those are the things you put in your diary.
00:12:25.100 You don't tell people those things.
00:12:27.360 If you are professional, you don't say crazy things like that.
00:12:35.280 Non-biased, professional, independent, just the fact.
00:12:37.700 Yeah, you're a bit off, mate.
00:12:40.200 Not just crazy in a neutral way, like, I don't know, you believe in aliens.
00:12:46.060 You're partisan crazy.
00:12:47.980 You're extremely biased about politics.
00:12:50.740 You're a little bit mad, I think, which is exactly the one thing the public expects you
00:12:55.060 to be neutral on, or at least fair on.
00:12:58.520 But, hey, just keep pretending that the fake news is on the right or on the independent side
00:13:04.580 of the media.
00:13:05.060 Fake poll on CBC, fake poll on CTV.
00:13:08.060 Not a peep from the fact-checkers.
00:13:10.020 It's almost like they're part of an agenda.
00:13:12.420 It's almost like Justin Trudeau is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the media bailout
00:13:16.320 to rent these journalists and their pollsters during the election.
00:13:21.980 Stay with us for more.
00:13:22.960 Last year, the Netanyahu government refused entry to American citizen Catherine Frank and
00:13:46.020 my friend, Vince Warren, who had arrived on a human rights mission.
00:13:51.580 All of these actions do nothing to bring us closer to peace.
00:13:58.600 In fact, they do the opposite.
00:14:01.320 They maintain the occupation and prevent a solution to the conflict.
00:14:07.140 Fortunately, we in the United States have a constructive role to play.
00:14:12.120 We give Israel more than $3 million in aid every year.
00:14:19.060 This is predicated on there being an important ally in the region and the only democracy in
00:14:27.860 the Middle East.
00:14:29.900 But denying visit to duly elected members of Congress is not consistent with being an ally
00:14:37.400 and denying millions of people freedom of movement or expression or self-determination is not
00:14:45.360 consistent with being a democracy.
00:14:48.560 Well, she couldn't be clearer.
00:14:50.740 Somali-born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar does not believe that Israel is an ally or a democracy.
00:14:57.480 And she believes that its treatment of Palestinians is an occupation.
00:15:02.900 I present to you the face of the Democratic Party in the United States, quite recognizable
00:15:08.560 to those of us who have observed parties of the left in Europe be colonized by a combination
00:15:14.840 of hardcore left-wingers and Islamists.
00:15:18.620 You see this everywhere, especially in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.
00:15:22.760 Joining us now to talk about this unfortunate change in the U.S. Democratic Party.
00:15:26.700 is our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
00:15:30.500 Joel, nice to see you again.
00:15:32.240 Nice to see you, too.
00:15:33.400 You know, in some ways, the kookiest politician in the room, it's like a reality TV show.
00:15:39.860 Whoever says the kookiest thing often gets the camera time.
00:15:43.820 You see that with outbursts in the Republican Party, too.
00:15:47.040 The difference is when there's an outburst in the Republican Party, rogue candidates saying
00:15:51.740 embarrassing things, the party rushes to condemn them.
00:15:55.700 Sometimes they're thrown out, if possible.
00:15:58.040 They're fired from positions on committees.
00:16:00.380 I think of Steve King, who's made a few comments that can be interpreted in different ways.
00:16:05.740 He's been shunned by his own party.
00:16:08.680 The Democrats have done the opposite.
00:16:10.620 They haven't shunned Ilhan Omar.
00:16:13.040 They've made her a star.
00:16:13.820 Yeah, they've made her a star because she is a useful symbol to Democrats of a number
00:16:21.600 of different constituencies.
00:16:23.100 She's the first Muslim woman in Congress, along with Rashida Tlaib.
00:16:27.080 She's also African-American.
00:16:28.580 And she is also an immigrant.
00:16:32.640 So the ability of her campaign, I suppose, in 2018 and now her congressional office to
00:16:41.340 play that identity politics game has, in a sense, shielded her from criticism.
00:16:46.720 You'll note, for example, that when she and Rashida Tlaib complained that they were excluded
00:16:52.340 from entering Israel, they keep mentioning that they are Muslim women, as if that were
00:16:57.820 the reason they were excluded.
00:16:59.100 Of course, that's not the reason.
00:17:00.520 Israel has let something like 70,000 Muslims into the country to visit or whatever in recent
00:17:06.160 months.
00:17:07.580 I forget if it was months or years, whatever it was, but there was an interesting figure
00:17:11.380 on the Internet from a reliable source, a guy named Avi Meyer, who's worked in the Israeli
00:17:15.780 government before and now works for the American Jewish Committee.
00:17:20.140 But there's no doubt that Israel allows Muslims into the country.
00:17:23.020 Israel is essentially almost 20 percent Muslim.
00:17:26.840 What she's doing is distracting from the fact that it's her policy, her support for boycotting
00:17:31.400 Israel.
00:17:31.840 That's the reason she was excluded.
00:17:33.120 And I think the key fact about that is not only that Ilhan Omar supports a boycott of Israel,
00:17:37.860 the BDS movement, but that she ran explicitly in 2018 on a promise not to support BDS, on
00:17:44.840 a promise not to support boycotts of Israel.
00:17:47.200 You can even Google video of her telling her constituents, her would-be constituents, that
00:17:52.400 she finds boycotts to be counterproductive and would not be conducive to peace.
00:17:58.200 So she ran on that understanding.
00:18:01.260 And once she was elected, she decided to throw her office behind this idea of a boycott, even
00:18:07.100 though it is really not even a five percent position among the American electorate or
00:18:13.460 among congressional representatives of the country as a whole.
00:18:16.900 Boycotting Israel basically was soundly defeated in the House of Representatives, the Democratic
00:18:21.000 controlled House of Representatives, by something like 398 to 17.
00:18:25.680 So she actually represents a very, very marginal minority.
00:18:29.680 So to protect the, if I can say this, the idiocy of her point of view, she hides behind identity
00:18:35.540 politics.
00:18:36.080 Right.
00:18:36.640 Now, I think that's a good critique of Ilhan Omar.
00:18:39.520 For example, with Rashida Tlaib, it's worth noting that when she said, look, can you give
00:18:43.860 me a humanitarian exemption to go visit my grandma?
00:18:47.500 The Israeli government said, well, OK.
00:18:49.560 And then she said, well, I'm not going to accept that because I don't want to appear
00:18:54.680 to be a beggar or something.
00:18:55.660 Like it was a very strange excuse.
00:18:57.340 She preferred the ability to lecture Israel than to visit her own grandma.
00:19:01.740 Now, let's put aside those facts of the particulars of what they're arguing.
00:19:07.260 To me, I mean, the Democratic Party was historically the party of the Jewish vote, just like the
00:19:13.600 Liberal Party in Canada.
00:19:14.800 And I would even say the Labour Party to a large degree in the UK.
00:19:19.300 Parties of the left.
00:19:20.000 And in fact, to this day, many high ranking elected officials and then Democrats, party
00:19:28.480 officials, fundraisers.
00:19:30.800 I mean, I don't know what the ethnic breakdown is, but it wouldn't shock me if a quarter of
00:19:36.060 all the donations in the Democratic Party were Jewish donations.
00:19:39.440 It just wouldn't shock me at all.
00:19:40.720 The biggest donors, for sure, Haim Saban, even George Soros, though he wouldn't call himself
00:19:46.440 a Jew, he sort of doesn't like Jews.
00:19:48.560 Huge donors.
00:19:50.320 Why hasn't the residual Jewish membership of the party, the Jewish membership that might
00:19:56.880 have properly felt at home 10, 15 years ago, why haven't they said a word about this?
00:20:02.740 In the UK, Joel, you slowly see Jews in the Corbyn Labour Party saying, I've had enough.
00:20:08.660 I can't.
00:20:09.360 This is no longer the party for me.
00:20:11.000 Where are the American Jews and the Democrats, Democratic Party saying, I'm sorry, we've got
00:20:16.100 to fix a problem here?
00:20:19.020 Well, I think what's interesting is that if you talk to some of the Jewish people who remain
00:20:24.960 on the left, I actually had the opportunity to meet a young Jewish woman from the Labour
00:20:28.360 Party in the UK when I was in Poland earlier this year, and she had not joined the Jewish
00:20:34.880 members of the Labour Party who had left, even though she was deeply critical of Corbyn
00:20:38.520 and admitted that many of his policies were, in effect, anti-Semitic.
00:20:43.420 And I asked her why she didn't leave.
00:20:45.660 And I think there is a mental block for people who have become conditioned to seeing conservatives
00:20:52.200 as the enemy and conditioned to seeing Labour Party members or Democratic Party members or
00:20:58.740 the left in general as being on the right side of history, being on the side of the underdog,
00:21:03.060 being on the side of the poor, the weak, the oppressed, essentially being morally correct.
00:21:06.920 It's very difficult for them to make a shift even when the leadership of that party is against
00:21:14.080 them, is profoundly anti-Semitic and or at least tolerant of anti-Semitism.
00:21:18.900 And I think also for donors to the Democratic Party, yes, you also have to understand that
00:21:25.020 the nature of ethnic politics, certainly from a Jewish perspective, has changed over the
00:21:29.520 last half century.
00:21:31.340 It used to be that the Democratic Party was almost like a mutual agreement between various
00:21:36.640 different ethnic groups to pursue each other's interests, a kind of intersectional agreement,
00:21:42.280 if you want to put it that way, where, you know, Jewish representatives would essentially
00:21:47.060 convince African-Americans to be pro-Israel and African-Americans would convince Jewish
00:21:51.280 representatives just to support affirmative action and spending in cities on social programs
00:21:55.880 and things like that, which they wanted to do anyway.
00:21:57.380 But there was almost a support for each other's causes.
00:22:01.100 And the rise of the anti-Israel movement and the pro-Palestinian cause and the emergence of
00:22:06.220 Muslim Americans and the Muslim vote as its own unique constituency has really complicated
00:22:11.300 that because it's very hard to fit those two groups together, pro-Israel Jews and anti-Israel
00:22:15.900 Muslims, together under that old umbrella.
00:22:19.340 And that also dovetails with the emergence of some radical elements in the black community
00:22:24.500 as well in the late 60s, early 70s, which did complicate relations with the Jewish community,
00:22:29.100 talking about not just groups like Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, but others like it, which took
00:22:34.120 a third world perspective and adopted the line that many of the newly decolonized African nations
00:22:40.360 were taking toward Israel, which of course was being pushed by the Soviets, which was
00:22:44.060 anti-Israel.
00:22:44.900 So there was always a little bit of tension emerging, but with the arrival of this new
00:22:49.720 community, this new constituency, it became very difficult.
00:22:53.380 And so what many Jews have done, and pardon me while I wave these energy efficient lights
00:22:58.360 back on, you know, they made us install these things, I suppose to save the climate or something,
00:23:03.500 but they make work impossible.
00:23:04.500 The mentality of many of the supporters of the Democratic Party who come from the Jewish
00:23:12.820 community is not that they're pursuing interests that are of interest or that are central to
00:23:19.700 Jewish identity or what Jews are all about.
00:23:23.120 The new logic is essentially we want to be part of, number one, doing the right thing.
00:23:29.240 We want to be seen to do the right thing.
00:23:30.580 So some of it is virtue signaling.
00:23:32.300 And the other is also, and this is very profoundly, deeply rooted, I think, in the Jewish immigrant
00:23:37.120 psyche, but the idea that our success somehow in the West, our new success, because Jews
00:23:43.960 were discriminated against for a long time and excluded and forced to live in ghettos and
00:23:48.280 forbidden from owning land and joining professions and going to university, even in the United States,
00:23:51.820 there were quotas on Jewish attendance at Harvard and things like that.
00:23:54.040 There's a kind of nervousness about Jewish success.
00:23:57.780 There's a nervousness that if we are too visibly successful, then we become a target.
00:24:04.680 And I think that that's a perspective that is broadly shared, even if it's somewhat unconscious
00:24:10.100 within the Jewish community.
00:24:12.420 And so supporting the underdog, supporting redistribution, supporting causes other than our
00:24:18.320 own is actually seen as almost an insurance policy.
00:24:21.460 It's a way to assuage that insecurity.
00:24:24.180 And that's why Jews, I think, are one of the few groups that actually seems to regard
00:24:31.300 our own interests as lying in fighting our own interests.
00:24:34.980 In other words, the ultimate act of Jewish moral expression, we're told by Jews on the
00:24:40.080 left, is essentially Jewish self-negation.
00:24:43.020 Someone stood up at a Bernie Sanders town hall I was covering the other day, a Jewish woman
00:24:46.440 who said that she believed the highest moral virtue in Judaism was to oppose Israel.
00:24:51.700 That's not such a strange view to hear anymore on the Jewish left.
00:24:55.760 That is what they believe.
00:24:57.180 And it's because the success of Israel makes them nervous.
00:25:00.220 They don't want to be cast as privileged.
00:25:02.500 They don't want to be cast as successful.
00:25:05.020 They don't want to be cast as having something others do not.
00:25:08.240 And that puts them on the wrong side of the moral scale that has emerged as the basis of
00:25:13.300 intersectionality in the Democratic Party.
00:25:15.260 So there's a kind of self-preservation almost that's at work in the minds, I think, of many
00:25:21.080 Jewish donors.
00:25:22.100 Meanwhile, of course, they've left the actual interest of the Jewish community far behind.
00:25:26.560 That is to say, the actual continuity of the Jewish community.
00:25:29.700 Many of these Jewish donors to the Democratic Party would think nothing of spending millions
00:25:35.320 of dollars on a super PAC for a Democratic candidate, but would not spend money on Jewish
00:25:40.340 education.
00:25:40.860 I'm not speaking about all of them, but there are some.
00:25:42.900 They would not spend money on the education necessary to ensure that the next generation
00:25:46.180 of Jewish people knows what Judaism is all about.
00:25:48.780 We don't have very wealthy synagogues and so forth.
00:25:51.620 We don't have sort of centuries-old institutions like the church that will—and even that's not
00:25:56.300 looking so good lately.
00:25:57.020 But, you know, we don't have these institutions that stand forever.
00:26:00.980 I mean, synagogues are very vulnerable and often flimsy institutions.
00:26:04.680 They rise and fall.
00:26:06.100 They move around.
00:26:07.820 The essence of Jewish continuity is essentially education, but education is woefully underfunded
00:26:12.680 in the Jewish community.
00:26:14.400 And so that's essentially what's happening, is that people are, in their own minds, expressing
00:26:20.500 Jewish values by donating to the underdog.
00:26:23.940 They're also, in a sense, protecting themselves from being targets for their success, financial,
00:26:28.620 professional, and otherwise.
00:26:29.820 But, meanwhile, neglecting the essence, I think, of what it means to be Jewish.
00:26:32.920 And that's where you have conservative Jews basically saying—I don't mean conservative
00:26:37.160 in the religious sense.
00:26:38.020 I mean politically saying, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:26:40.140 If we're actually talking about the interests of the Jewish community, which are not completely
00:26:44.280 congruent with but overlap with the interests of the state of Israel, we do need to have
00:26:49.180 a strong and secure Israel because it's the final place of refuge for Jews to go if things
00:26:52.760 go badly and because it is our spiritual homeland.
00:26:55.380 We're patriots of the countries in which we live—Canada, the United States, and so on.
00:26:59.320 But we do face East when we pray.
00:27:01.220 We pray to Jerusalem.
00:27:02.800 And we care about the welfare of Jewish people in Israel.
00:27:07.460 Israel is central to our faith, and so we want it to be safe and secure.
00:27:10.780 And that is essential to Jewish continuity.
00:27:14.380 And I think that is something the conservative Jews basically weigh more heavily than these
00:27:19.460 other factors.
00:27:20.300 I think if you had to divide liberal and conservative Jews, it's that liberal Jews believe that the
00:27:24.320 threat to Jewish continuity comes from without, comes from attacks either from the left or
00:27:30.780 the right.
00:27:31.280 And conservative Jews believe that the ultimate challenge is within, that the major threat
00:27:35.180 to Jewish continuity is not so much without, but really is the failure to transmit values
00:27:39.760 from one generation to the next, which is why I think that conservative Jews tend to support
00:27:44.160 Republicans in this country because Republicans share traditional values and also believe in
00:27:50.320 a strong and secure Israel.
00:27:51.400 So that's a lot of words for you there, Ezra, but I think that really is what's happening.
00:27:55.940 Yeah, you know, I mean, what you said is very interesting to me because I'm conservative
00:27:59.340 and Jewish, but for our viewers who are not Jewish, I think everything you said there applies
00:28:04.280 to the new vogue on the left of self-hating whites or old stock Canadians, old stock Americans.
00:28:12.260 You know, not a day goes by where you don't see some celebrity say, I'm ashamed to be white.
00:28:18.680 I hate being white.
00:28:19.980 And I'm not a white supremacist in any way.
00:28:22.380 I mean, I think many white supremacists don't even think Jews are technically white.
00:28:27.460 But that same self-loathing that you described in the left-wing Jewish community, I see it
00:28:33.420 with people who are old stock Canadians, old stock Brits, old stock Americans.
00:28:38.160 And by that, I mean typically white, who are ashamed of their success, feel guilty for
00:28:45.520 their success, have been convinced that success must be because they exploited someone else.
00:28:51.680 And they've bought the line of white, in a way, they've bought into this line of white
00:28:56.920 supremacy by saying, yeah, I must have my power because I'm white.
00:29:01.320 So I hate that part about me.
00:29:03.020 I guess what I'm saying is the way you just described self-loathing Jews of the left, I see
00:29:08.140 the same thing in self-loathing non-Jews of the left who feel that to prove their moral
00:29:15.940 worth, they have to undermine any Western tradition or heritage or culture or religion or anything
00:29:22.080 like that.
00:29:22.580 I just think it's a shame.
00:29:23.580 And I think it's a result of too much ease, too much luxury, too much free time, not enough
00:29:32.020 hardship.
00:29:32.740 And so we throw things away too casually that actually took an enormous time and effort to
00:29:37.680 win.
00:29:38.600 Last word.
00:29:38.940 Yeah, I think that's true.
00:29:40.180 I think this indulgence in the idea of white privilege is something you can only do when
00:29:45.020 you're comfortable enough to do it.
00:29:46.620 I mean, I often joke also in a similar fashion that I'd be a socialist if I could afford it.
00:29:52.400 You know, this sort of thinking of redistribution and so forth is of some benefit to people who
00:29:58.520 have enough that they wish to protect by, in a sense, buying off the opposition through
00:30:02.780 their virtue signaling.
00:30:04.320 But for those who may be white but who are poor, it's of no use whatsoever because you're
00:30:10.780 not benefiting from whatever white privilege exists.
00:30:13.120 And you basically have the same struggle as everybody else does, except you have one strike
00:30:16.740 against you, which is that you cannot benefit from affirmative action.
00:30:19.560 You can't benefit from a presumption that your success indicates success for a broader
00:30:24.080 group of people.
00:30:25.900 And so you're right.
00:30:27.320 So to some extent, that mentality is born of comfort.
00:30:29.980 But I also think it's born of a kind of inherent logic in democracy.
00:30:33.860 And this is something that Alexis de Tocqueville warned about 200 years ago when he wrote Democracy
00:30:38.720 in America, which is that with increasing social equality, every small distinction becomes
00:30:45.380 intolerable.
00:30:46.140 And he foresaw this 200 years ago, that as social conditions become more and more equal,
00:30:52.580 people start to resent what few inequalities do exist.
00:30:55.920 And we live now in an essentially egalitarian society.
00:30:59.240 The difference, of course, is that there are mega wealthy people who have done very well.
00:31:03.460 And they will continue to do well because the best way to make money is to have money.
00:31:06.660 They have money to invest in new companies.
00:31:08.540 They're the ones who buy real estate.
00:31:10.360 And so they tend to do very well.
00:31:11.820 There's not a lot of downward mobility among the super rich.
00:31:14.120 So you are seeing a lot of very wealthy people emerge.
00:31:18.520 But poor people are no longer experiencing poverty as the same sort of phenomenon it was
00:31:24.160 before.
00:31:25.300 Victor Davis Hanson has written about this during the depths of the recession, going into a
00:31:29.380 community that was impoverished in California and watching people who are technically below
00:31:33.580 the poverty line, put their EBT card, their electronic benefit transfer card, through the credit card
00:31:39.660 reader and taking home consumer goods from the store and things like that, driving pickup trucks.
00:31:44.500 You know, the experience of poverty is different because our system of redistribution is actually
00:31:49.060 successful.
00:31:50.420 And so poverty is not experienced in quite the same way before.
00:31:54.240 We have a more equal society.
00:31:56.140 The lives of rich and poor are no longer as different, especially in the age of mobile
00:32:00.420 phones.
00:32:01.080 I mean, the homeless people in L.A., and I'm surrounded by them because we have 60,000 of
00:32:04.700 them, homeless people in L.A. have smartphones.
00:32:07.580 That means that essentially the way they're experiencing life is not terribly different.
00:32:11.940 I don't want to exaggerate the similarities.
00:32:13.620 I have a nice bed to sleep in.
00:32:15.060 I know where my next meal is coming from.
00:32:16.800 And I'm very grateful for that.
00:32:17.860 But essentially, there's a narrowing of the gap in terms of how life is experienced.
00:32:22.640 And poor people are experiencing a better quality of life than they once did in being
00:32:27.300 poor.
00:32:27.700 I'm not saying it's easy to be poor, but it's certainly not as difficult as it once
00:32:30.920 was.
00:32:31.960 And as a result of increasing social equality, small inequalities become intolerable to us.
00:32:37.740 And what's happened is that the new moral calculus politically, as a result of that,
00:32:42.760 is that if you have more, you are inherently under some kind of suspicion.
00:32:47.780 You are higher on the scale of privilege.
00:32:50.200 And so white liberals tend to feel very keenly that they are, in a sense, in the wrong.
00:32:59.080 They are on the wrong side of this scale.
00:33:02.220 They feel that they benefit from their skin.
00:33:03.920 They benefit, in many cases, from being wealthy.
00:33:06.860 And as a result, they have this problem to overcome.
00:33:10.900 There's a great piece about it by a guy named Zach Goldberg, who's a PhD student, who wrote
00:33:15.000 a piece at Tablet Magazine called America's White Saviors.
00:33:18.640 And he writes about how white liberals are the only population group in society that
00:33:23.940 care more about people outside the group than they do about people inside the group.
00:33:27.860 In other words, it's sort of a natural human thing to care about people who are like you
00:33:31.820 and to want them to benefit.
00:33:34.140 But white liberals do not.
00:33:36.180 And it's not just altruism.
00:33:37.460 It may, in a sense, be a form of self-preservation because there's a realization that if you are
00:33:42.040 perceived as having some kind of privilege, the way to defend yourself from any negative
00:33:46.340 action is to renounce that privilege.
00:33:47.980 So the act of renunciation is perceived as a form of political and social survival.
00:33:53.300 It's not just goodwill, although for many people it probably feels that way.
00:33:57.140 It's also a way of surviving.
00:33:59.520 And I think Jews felt this first because as this moral scale was coming into being, Jews
00:34:05.240 were the most vulnerable.
00:34:06.880 Number one, because we're just a small minority group, most of whose members in the West
00:34:10.260 happen to be white or light-skinned, although Israel, of course, is a country of many colors.
00:34:14.440 But the other reason is that Israel is such a stark success compared to the countries it's
00:34:20.060 surrounded by.
00:34:21.240 And so the illogic of privilege, of success equaling moral suspicion, that was applied to
00:34:29.780 Israel very early on, almost two decades ago, with the start of the Second Intifada.
00:34:34.020 The reason the left almost axiomatically embraces the Palestinian cause and reject Israel, even
00:34:39.180 though Israel is a tiny liberal democracy that upholds everything else the left likes, like
00:34:43.820 gay marriage and transgender rights and that sort of thing.
00:34:46.880 The reason they reject Israel is that Israel is successful in contrast to the other countries
00:34:51.720 around it.
00:34:52.320 And Obama said it best.
00:34:53.300 When he went to Israel in 2013, he said, it's not fair that the Palestinians don't have
00:34:57.060 a state.
00:34:57.720 Well, of course it's fair.
00:34:59.020 The Israel and the Palestinians got a state at the same time from the United Nations.
00:35:02.800 It's just that Israel built their state and the Palestinians didn't.
00:35:05.520 So you might look at that and say, it's completely fair.
00:35:07.560 They had the same chance to do it.
00:35:08.740 Israel decided to take that opportunity.
00:35:10.260 The Palestinians didn't.
00:35:11.500 The outcome is what's fair.
00:35:13.220 But what Obama and others on the left do is they look at the outcome and they say, well,
00:35:17.200 some have and others don't.
00:35:19.060 That means that those who have have an unfair advantage over those who don't.
00:35:22.960 They don't look at how that advantage was created.
00:35:24.620 Even though it was created justly, they see it as an injustice.
00:35:27.760 It's a whole notion of social justice.
00:35:29.380 It's a form of leveling.
00:35:30.760 Social justice is really just another word for making people absolutely equal in every
00:35:34.260 way.
00:35:35.040 And so these little distinctions of success and talent and hard work, in a perverse way,
00:35:41.420 they now appear to us as immoral, as the benefits of unjust privilege.
00:35:47.800 And so I think what you're seeing among Jews is also, as you point out, reflected among,
00:35:51.760 as you say, old stock white liberals, people who have who do have some claim to privilege
00:35:57.180 simply by virtue of their longevity in one place.
00:35:59.520 There's nothing really to be ashamed of about that.
00:36:01.260 No individual who can trace their family back two or three hundred years in Canada or the
00:36:05.480 United States has anything to apologize for.
00:36:07.440 They may have a few extra things to inherit and they may have a heritage and so forth.
00:36:12.760 And they're ashamed of it in a sense.
00:36:14.280 There's a sense of shame attached to it because it is something they have.
00:36:16.900 Others don't, even though it's just by accident of birth.
00:36:20.160 And the way to to resolve that privilege in their minds is to renounce it.
00:36:25.600 So the way that you basically make your own life easier is to renounce whatever privileges
00:36:30.440 you may have been born with.
00:36:32.320 And that's what's going on.
00:36:33.640 It is a similar process to what's happening in the Jewish community.
00:36:36.260 You're just seeing it much more acutely because Jews as a minority group, even though
00:36:39.820 most are part of the white majority group, feel the pressure particularly keenly.
00:36:45.500 Well, Joel, always an education to talk with you.
00:36:47.960 Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time today.
00:36:51.000 Yeah, sorry for being so long-winded.
00:36:52.380 No, no, it's very interesting.
00:36:54.440 And you've given me too many things to think about.
00:36:57.120 I tell you, we live in very strange days.
00:36:59.600 Thanks for being with us and helping guide us through it.
00:37:02.400 Yeah, sure.
00:37:03.220 You're welcome.
00:37:03.760 All right.
00:37:04.120 There's our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large at Breitbart.com.
00:37:08.000 Stay with us.
00:37:08.560 More ahead on The Rebel.
00:37:09.820 Hey, what do you think about those polls I showed you in CBC and CTV?
00:37:24.060 You know, anyone can be a pollster, I guess, just, you know, these days with online or
00:37:29.080 automatic phone call surveys.
00:37:31.280 And I don't begrudge startups.
00:37:33.000 I mean, we're a startup here.
00:37:34.000 But the absolute baloney of John Corbett being a crazy conservative derangement syndrome guy
00:37:41.300 and the CBC just faking it.
00:37:44.160 You know, I guess anyone can make a mistake, but only the left is so self-righteous and
00:37:48.960 has, fuck, jerk.
00:37:50.520 No, no, no.
00:37:51.580 Heal yourself first, fellas, before checking the facts of others.
00:37:55.480 Well, that's it for the show for today.
00:37:57.160 On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and
00:38:01.680 keep fighting for freedom.
00:38:02.620 Thank you.
00:38:14.000 Thank you.
00:38:14.800 Thank you.