So much left-wing lunacy, so little time. Kurt Schlichter drops by to give us his top ten list of liberal idiots for 2018. And finally, instead of reading your letters, I'll end the year with some final thoughts.
00:16:50.860It started to spread through Belgium and in Canada there and the U.K.
00:16:55.260So it's really taking on a life of its own.
00:16:58.900And, yeah, what started was one thing about tax in a particular issue with France has turned into, yeah, we're all fed up with this globalism, with you guys abusing your power, taking extreme pay to go out to dinner and spend tens of thousands on champagne.
00:17:17.280Well, you know, all of us are working really hard and paying a lot of taxes and can barely get by.
00:17:22.480So everyone's really taking no and it's really turning into something.
00:17:27.260And tell me, Martina, since you were on the ground with Jack in Paris a few weeks ago, when it came to those causing trouble, you know, the graffiti, the vandalism, the looting, you know, because you mentioned earlier that Antifa came along.
00:17:42.280And that's kind of typical whenever there's a mass gathering, even if it's a celebration of a sports team winning a championship, you know, you get the jackals and the hyenas joining in to cause trouble.
00:17:53.260But who did you see causing the lawlessness and the troublemaking?
00:17:59.100Well, you know, it's interesting because there was a bit of instigation and bottles being thrown at police.
00:18:05.740There was one instance where someone came up and started manhandling the police and took his shield.
00:18:13.340I think I reported on that where he was waving it up as like a trophy of I took the police's shield.
00:18:20.120And that was like, oh, you know, OK, can who's the good guy and who are the bad guys?
00:18:27.000I'm trying to figure it out, you know, and the French guy that we were with that was pro protesting said, oh, no, that's leftist.
00:18:34.940That's leftist. That's Antifa. And I'm like, well, how can you how can I just say that that's Antifa?
00:18:40.960I don't know. That's just someone saying, oh, no, that's the leftist doing the bad stuff.
00:18:45.560So I'm like, OK, I don't know if I can say that.
00:18:48.520But when it came to nighttime and we came back out and saw Paris burning, cars flipped over.
00:18:56.040The first thing we saw was looting, a shop looted.
00:18:59.040And there was a local store owner, a lady really upset.
00:19:02.700She's out there on the streets, upset and kicking around all the all the looted stuff on the ground.
00:19:08.720And and immediately I was like, this is not good.
00:19:11.740This is really bad, you know, and I was like, I don't know what to make of all this.
00:19:17.200But then we noticed all and this is on camera.
00:19:20.880You see the footage. There's the anarchy symbol painted.
00:19:25.940They said free bikes and there was the bike shops looted, like very expensive Triumph motorcycles, all the cars that were flipped over and burned.
00:19:41.620And which is something that that Antifa uses.
00:19:45.580They were saying a yellow vest or the new black block, which is an Antifa thing and the Arc the Triumph literally had Antifa graffitied on it, which was so sad to me because I love arts and culture and something so beautiful.
00:19:58.420I mean, it was my first time seeing it.
00:19:59.800I was like, wow, this monument is crazy.
00:20:01.600It, you know, represents Napoleon and his victories, Arc the Triumph and to have just graffiti on it.
00:20:12.160It was like, wow, every car that's overturned and burned has its marking on it.
00:20:17.360Every store that's looted, they put their marking on it.
00:20:20.660So that was like, aha, OK, the guy was right.
00:20:23.660There is leftists in here and they claimed it.
00:20:26.660You know, it doesn't come as a surprise to me, Martina, that the leftist element, especially Antifa, is causing a disproportionate number of amount of anarchy, I should say, given their numbers.
00:20:39.880But one last thing before we go, in case those who haven't been following this story are unaware of the whole origin of the yellow vest.
00:20:52.720How did that come to be representative of this outcry in the first place?
00:20:59.940Yeah, well, that's another interesting thing is that in France, they have certain laws and it's required if you're a driver, you drive a vehicle, along with having a license and getting your insurance and whatever, there's certain things that are required for you to have in your vehicle.
00:21:18.280Everyone has to have one in their car.
00:21:19.700And the other one is having a yellow vest.
00:21:23.660And a lot of people just think it's ridiculous.
00:21:25.540There's all these little things that you have to purchase to have in your car.
00:21:28.760And it was just something they took on, which I think is kind of funny.
00:21:31.480And they're like, OK, now let's make use of these yellow vests that we have to have in our car.
00:21:35.300And it's for if, you know, you break down and you have to get out of your car and you're on the side of the road, you have the yellow vest.
00:24:34.680We sent Jack Buckby and Martina Marcotta to Paris, and they were right in the middle of the protests.
00:24:42.780They, by accident, really, they just thought, well, the Arc de Triomphe is a good place to do a video because it's a great backdrop.
00:24:50.060Well, the protests broke out around them.
00:24:51.520We've sent people to a variety of countries, and one of the places that I visited this year a lot was London, England, because one of the things that I'm proud of that we did this year is we helped free Tommy Robinson from prison.
00:25:07.020And it was a strange thing because he was a former employee, like I fired him.
00:25:20.640And, I mean, he does great TV, but it's no fun to be his boss.
00:25:25.240So I fired him in the spring, and he had a few great months of just being like a wild horse without a harness on it.
00:25:31.380And then he was arrested and thrown in the back of a truck, and within five hours, he was sentenced to 13 months in prison, and he was quickly transferred to a dangerous prison on purpose.
00:25:48.300Then they deliberately transferred him to a prison that was run by Muslim prison gangs, and the governor of the prison, what we call a warden, said, well, for your own safety, mate, we've got to put you in solitary confinement,
00:25:59.320and we've got to take away your privileges because that's what happens when you're in solitary confinement.
00:26:03.760And he was in solitary for two and a half months, and you go a little bit mad in solitary.
00:27:10.520If there's any surplus, our terms of service for our website, you can see it at the rebel.media slash trust.
00:27:16.360Say, if there's any extra, we'll apply it to similar projects.
00:27:19.560Sometimes we don't make the goal, but we love to crowdfund, and our people obviously seem to like it since they do it.
00:27:27.820And with Tommy, no one, and so I reached out, and I spoke to the family, and I spoke to the lawyers, and I said, come on, don't let him rot in prison.
00:29:18.780But as I've got to tell you, looking ahead to 2019, and I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer here, but I think there's two compelling things.
00:29:26.600First of all, we know the Justin Trudeau media Bombardier-style bailout fund is going ahead to the tune of almost $600 million.
00:29:34.400So if you thought Trudeau got an easy ride for calendar year 2018, well, you ain't seen nothing yet in terms of what happens when it comes to journalists self-censoring themselves to not bite the hen that feeds.
00:29:46.920And also, in terms of social media, the big buzzword for people like us is deplatforming.
00:29:54.540We saw what happened to Alex Jones with Infowars.
00:29:57.020Is that, would you say, a sort of Damocles hanging over our heads, or maybe have we dodged that bullet?
00:30:04.760No, it's absolutely our number one risk, because I mentioned earlier 1.1 million people voluntarily sign up for our stuff on YouTube.
00:30:13.280Now, don't think that means $1.1 million.
00:30:25.220So YouTube gives us, whereas actually for a brief period from 2015 and 2016, we were actually making money on YouTube enough to pay most of our salaries, they cut us off in January, February 2017.
00:30:38.240And when I met with them here in Toronto, and I had video meetings with them in Texas and California, they said, yeah, yeah, we did.
00:30:45.900And they don't dispute it, and they don't deny it, and they don't apologize for it.
00:30:49.280They just have demonetized conservative commentary sites, and they don't care.
00:30:54.120And they really don't even want our business.
00:30:56.840I like being on YouTube because it makes us searchable and browsable and discoverable, but YouTube doesn't like us.
00:31:03.360Yeah, and you know, I think, especially in the United States, I see this as one of the biggest stories to emerge.
00:31:08.740It'll be who gets to control the town square in terms of freedom of expression, especially with this being, in the U.S., a First Amendment issue.
00:31:16.600And, you know, Ezra, I think you've said this story before, but, you know, ironically, the Brexit vote, and then, of course, which was kind of like something that happened across the pond, something over there,
00:31:29.900but certainly Donald Trump winning in 2016, that was kind of the turning point, wasn't it, for the social media Silicon Valley lefties saying, how did this happen?
00:31:39.660Is it because these right-wing people have a platform?
00:31:43.080Well, that's exactly why it did happen.
00:31:44.720That's how Trump managed to win with a fraction of the budget of Hillary Clinton and none of the establishment support he won on social media through Facebook and Twitter and email and things like that.
00:31:55.820That's why we were demonetized because, and that's why the timing, I said it was the end, basically January, February 2017.
00:32:03.140It took Silicon Valley a couple months to say, whoa, we did that. We have to make sure that never happens again.
00:32:09.040And shortly thereafter, they shut down 30,000 Facebook pages that were supportive of Marine Le Pen in France.
00:32:14.980They wanted to stop the third country from the domino effect.
00:32:18.560But it's not just America. We've just been talking about America.
00:32:21.620Justin Trudeau has had a personal meeting with Sheryl Sandberg, the senior officer, only number two to Zuckerberg at Facebook.
00:32:30.100And the Toronto Star reported this, of all places.
00:32:34.600Justin Trudeau said to Facebook, if you don't crack down on fake news, that's his word for news he doesn't like.
00:32:42.280And he specifically said in advance of the 2019 federal election, we'll do it for you.
00:32:47.840So he basically threatened Facebook that if they don't censor us, who else could he be talking about?
00:32:53.620I mean, Justin Trudeau disparages us by name in Parliament.
00:32:58.380I think that's a great badge of honor.
00:33:00.600But when he then goes further than just expressing his opinion and pressures Facebook to censor us, of course it's a threat.
00:33:07.460And I should say that we have a number of, we were joking around about Tommy Robinson earlier.
00:33:11.500There's other Rebel alumni out there, Gavin McInnes, Lauren Southern.
00:33:15.780Some people we fired, some people were hired away.
00:33:18.120You know, there's Faith Goldie, there's Laura Loomer.
00:33:22.120I'm just listing a lot of our, we've had some controversial personalities at the Rebel.
00:33:26.060A number of them have been deplatformed from Twitter, PayPal, Patreon, Facebook.
00:33:33.860A number of places, once they've left us, and part of me thinks, well, maybe because they got wilder once they left us.
00:33:42.020Or maybe because Facebook and all these other places are building, okay, first they went for Alex Jones.
00:34:17.400I'm not worried that we're going to make mistakes on our own that destroy us.
00:34:22.160I mean, we make mistakes every day, but we're almost four years old, we're alive.
00:34:25.380But I'm worried that Justin Trudeau is going to finally get through to Sheryl Sandberg or Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey of Twitter or, I forget the name of the new executive at Google, and just shut us down.
00:34:40.600Not through a debate, not through a government act, but through a private phone call saying, hey, I'm sick of the rebel.
00:34:50.500Well, you know, Ezra, we're going to have to wrap it there.
00:34:53.260So many other things I wanted to talk to you about, but we just ran out of time.
00:34:57.160So thanks again for giving the assessment.
00:34:59.880And I got to tell you, folks, the difference between now and then, I think, and speaking as a journalist, this is what I find really disturbing.
00:35:06.200Once upon a time, and not too long ago, I'm talking 15 years ago when Ezra was publisher of the Western Standard,
00:35:11.320you would have others in the media, you know, who didn't agree with us, who had a different philosophical bent.
00:35:17.700They would go to bat for any media outlet being censored, and now they cheer on the censorship.