Oops, we hired a raving bigot to teach anti-racism
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
186.8816
Summary
Laith Marouf's non-profit organization had collected more than $600,000 from the Trudeau government in past years, despite having made offensive remarks recently such as calling Jews such as a of a . Now, while his vitriol targets Jews the most, Marouf has targeted other groups such as Black, Indigenous, and French Canadians too. Looks like the man most in need of anti-racism training is the man the government has been funding to provide that training.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, I'm Anthony Fury. Thanks for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comment.
00:00:10.020
Please consider subscribing if you haven't already done so.
00:00:12.860
Today's episode is about the Laith-Marouf scandal. How it was possible that the federal
00:00:17.780
liberal government funded and praised an individual with a history of making virulent
00:00:22.640
racist remarks, and funded him no less to provide anti-racism training.
00:00:26.980
Marouf's non-profit organization had collected more than $600,000 from the Trudeau government
00:00:32.600
in past years, despite having made online remarks recently such as calling Jews bags of human feces,
00:00:40.080
were the only, I quote, of a bullet to the head. Now while his vitriol targets Jews the most,
00:00:45.260
he's made offensive remarks aimed at other groups such as black persons, indigenous persons,
00:00:49.600
French Canadians, and he has targeted specific individuals too, like former liberal MP and
00:00:54.260
cabinet minister, Erwin Kotler. Looks like the man most in need of anti-racism training is the man
00:01:00.300
the government has been funding to provide that training. I want to talk about this incident in
00:01:05.420
depth, but I also want to discuss what it means more broadly for the world of anti-racism training
00:01:10.480
and how government doles out such grants. Is this indicative of a bigger problem?
00:01:16.960
Jonathan Kay joins me now, formerly of National Post. He's an author of a number of books,
00:01:21.340
editor at Quillette and host of their podcast, and he's one of the people who first drew attention
00:01:26.160
to this disturbing and wild tale. John Kay joins us now. Hey, John, great to have you on the show.
00:01:35.840
You know, this story, some of these stories, it's like they can be torqued a little or they need a
00:01:42.500
little torque or people have to sort of read the details on it, but this one is just so
00:01:46.540
transparent immediately that right away you're like, whoa, yeah, this stuff is not good.
00:01:53.400
Yeah. And what's, what's strange about that is it was sitting there in plain sight for months.
00:02:00.460
And there was a guy, his name is Mark Goldberg. He's a telecoms consultant. Like he's not a
00:02:06.120
household name, but he has a few thousand Twitter followers and he, he's the founder of, I think,
00:02:11.980
what's maybe the biggest telecoms conference in Canada, or at least it once was. Um, and
00:02:18.280
he was tweeting about this for months because he'd had run-ins with this guy, Lathan Roof
00:02:22.160
online. And he was just absolutely shocked because he, he knows where the bodies are buried
00:02:26.640
at the CRTC. And he knows that this guy was getting fat contracts from the CRTC, um, in the
00:02:33.380
mid 2010s. Uh, he was purported to be a consultant on, on the telecoms industry and grassroots community
00:02:41.480
media. And he was just tweeting into the wilderness about it. Uh, and he just had a thick, thick
00:02:47.220
dossier on, uh, Maroof. And I remember looking at his tweets. I said, this can't be right. I mean,
00:02:53.160
it's, it's too, it's too ridiculous that this has been sitting in plain sight for, like, turns out
00:03:00.480
years and no one's done anything about it. And, uh, and then I started tweeting about it and I, I helped
00:03:07.720
market the ball rolling on it. Um, but you're absolutely right. It's, it's the opposite of the
00:03:13.320
usual story, which is that, you know, you've got some politician or other, and it turns out like
00:03:18.440
five years ago, he tweeted like an off color joke or something, and then he deleted it and then it's
00:03:25.500
discovered. And just out of that little mole, mole hill, there's this gigantic mountain. Uh, but this
00:03:32.640
is the opposite where you've got this guy, um, and I would know an Anki Semite. And I think some
00:03:39.820
people have taken me to task because I haven't emphasized the fact he's also a complete bigot
00:03:44.820
in regard to Francophones. Like he's just gone on these rants about how Quebecers are all frogs. And,
00:03:50.740
um, I mean, his, some of his barbs are a little antiquated. I haven't heard
00:03:54.400
Francophones described as frogs for, for years, even by bigots.
00:03:58.040
He's a good old fashioned racist. Maybe that's why people are surprised by it.
00:04:02.060
I mean, yeah, I mean, look, he, the guy's in his forties. He's, he's almost as ancient as I am. And
00:04:06.980
in fact, I know him. I mean, the reason I picked up on the story and maybe I was able to get the ball
00:04:10.680
rolling on it is I, I know him from Concordia. I'm from Montreal originally. And he was at Concordia.
00:04:17.000
I think he started there around 2000, 2001. Um, and I was covering the Netanyahu riot story because
00:04:24.940
there was a whole riot when Benjamin Netanyahu came to speak there in 2002 and Maruf was one of
00:04:30.100
the guys with, uh, the megaphone and he was just complete out and out anti-Semite. Like it was
00:04:34.760
just, I mean, I've, I've spoken since the scandal broke, I've spoken to his, his Concordia classmates
00:04:40.880
from that time, some of whom are big time leftists, but are actually delighted to see him raked over
00:04:45.640
the coals like this because they couldn't stand the guy. Um, so I knew, I knew him from Montreal days.
00:04:50.980
Uh, and, and that's one of the reasons that I was able to help get the story amplified.
00:04:56.800
Yeah. I mean, it's funny to your point, you will hear these stories. Okay. Candidate resigns. And
00:05:00.620
it's because, you know, when he was a teenager on Facebook, he posted a gay slur and then they're
00:05:04.340
like, okay, is this a bit of overkill and so forth here? Like out in plain sight. And we're,
00:05:09.140
we're in this era where obviously things are hyper scrutinized. And, and I think when one is in
00:05:15.500
university or you do a job training program or what have you, they're always like, well, go back on
00:05:19.420
your Facebook and make sure that, you know, you're not holding a beer in a photo cause you're not
00:05:23.540
going to get your job, all that stuff. So we know that happens. And yet here's a guy where,
00:05:28.720
I don't know, maybe just plug the name into Twitter and this is going to show you something
00:05:33.480
like, yeah, that's the big question. The big question is how did this happen?
00:05:39.220
Well, so it was a couple of reasons. Um, the first is that, um, a lot of the language he used
00:05:46.400
in his, uh, in his grant applications and on social media. Uh, I mean, it's not quite a Jekyll and Hyde
00:05:52.940
story because if you look at like the stuff he was saying to the CRTC and the stuff he's promoting
00:05:58.000
with his so-called anti-racism training, uh, it's actually not that different from the just mind-blowing
00:06:06.540
bigotry he was promoting on Twitter and other social media platforms. He would just change some
00:06:12.100
words around. So like in his anti-racism training, he would talk about like the malignancy, um, you
00:06:17.760
know, of, of settlers and whiteness and all that stuff. And then in his Twitter, he'd just like
00:06:22.660
substitute, um, you know, Israel for, for settlers and whatnot. It's the same language. It's just,
00:06:27.620
he got in trouble on the social media stuff because he targeted it at, at Jews and Francophone and stuff.
00:06:33.720
And by the way, even when he was going after Jews, he was very careful to say like white Jews,
00:06:40.080
uh, or white supremacist Jews, or like, he'd always add in a qualifier that would like help
00:06:47.620
present it as a kind of woke kind of anti-Semitism. Uh, like, oh, look, I, I hate Jews, but I hate them
00:06:53.500
because they're imperialist. Warmonger is not because, um, I don't know, they're money lenders
00:06:58.900
or whatever. Uh, so that's one reason he was able to, to get by is because there was this kind of like
00:07:05.980
veneer of wokeness about his bigotry. And in fairness is, I mean, a lot of wokeness actually
00:07:12.180
has that veneer to it. Uh, also the liberals are in power, right? Um, had it been Stephen
00:07:18.520
Harper's government that was still in power from the old days, or, you know, I've tweeted that had
00:07:22.920
it, you know, Doug Ford's conservative government in Ontario, it'd be a different story because then
00:07:27.760
the media would run with the idea of like, look, evil conservative betrays its evilness by hiring
00:07:32.960
this super evil, um, anti-racism consultant who's really an anti-Semite. Uh, this shows the true
00:07:39.240
colors of whatever, fill in the blank, Stephen Harper, Jason Kinney, whoever it is. Whereas here
00:07:43.440
Trudeau's the victim. He's been duped by this guy. How did this guy do this to the liberal cabinet?
00:07:49.840
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I don't think, I mean, there's some people on Twitter who are saying,
00:07:53.320
oh, well, this shows that Trudeau and the people around him are anti-Semites. I don't believe that at
00:07:57.720
all. I don't think, uh, you know, I've, I've met Trudeau. I don't think he's an anti-Semite in the least. I,
00:08:02.460
I think, um, I think it was just, uh, they got duped by his, his woke, um, purportedly anti-racist
00:08:11.680
jargon, uh, which I mean, like even in the best of times, a lot of this sort of jargon that trades
00:08:17.480
under anti-racism is just impenetrable gibberish. And, and he was using it as a smokescreen for actual
00:08:23.040
bigotry. Uh, and I think they just got sort of, um, taken in by that. And also to be fair, uh, the,
00:08:31.140
the Canadian heritage department in, I think it was 2020, they got all this money to do this,
00:08:36.180
to give to community groups for anti-racism projects, like anti-racism, this was after
00:08:40.360
George Floyd. So anti-racism was like kind of the big shiny thing for them. And, um, and they just
00:08:45.800
started shoveling it out. I mean, they gave 85 grants out, right. Um, and had to push them out quick.
00:08:53.960
Yeah. And you've got, you know, Pablo Rodriguez, who, he now heads up heritage. He's, he's from
00:08:59.160
Montreal. Leith Marouf presents himself, I think, from being from Montreal. He actually lived for a
00:09:04.200
time in Point St. Charles, which is, I used to deliver pieces there. He's lived in, Marouf has
00:09:08.780
lived in Beirut for the last three years. So he got this anti-racism money, uh, while living in Lebanon.
00:09:16.080
Uh, he actually, he became a Canadian citizen in 2020. He was a Syrian citizen before that.
00:09:21.440
So when he was getting all the money from the CRTC, half a million dollars, they were giving it to a
00:09:24.840
Syrian citizen, um, and then out and out anti-Semite. But, uh, when he got the anti-racism
00:09:32.220
grant, it was around the time he became a Canadian citizen. Uh, and we know this because he put it on
00:09:37.280
Facebook and also ranted at the time about how horrible Canada was and it's an apartheid state and
00:09:41.320
look, here's my passport. Uh, and, um, yeah. And so he was one, I think, I don't know if it was 85
00:09:48.580
grant recipients for the anti-racism program. Like you've got probably at the heritage department,
00:09:54.060
you had a bunch of, I don't know, 20 somethings, uh, looking over, uh, I think they got something
00:10:00.160
like a thousand applications for the slush fund and, and all these applications, it's the same jargon,
00:10:05.440
it's the same stuff. And, you know, you've probably got Rodriguez who's from Montreal, Montreal writing.
00:10:09.780
Uh, and you know, they want to dole out the cash in the usual liberal geographically strategic way.
00:10:17.400
Um, this guy spoke the right language. He's BIPOC. Uh, he's, you know, his applications full of
00:10:23.960
anti-racist mumbo jumbo. Um, he comes with a CRTC pedigree cause he's gotten all this money from
00:10:29.420
the CRTC. Why not here, take some money, go do anti-racist things. And actually more than anti-racist
00:10:34.260
things, the guy was going on a six city anti-racism tour to teach broadcasters, which I guess, I mean,
00:10:41.820
we're podcasters, right? Like we're, I guess we would be the target items. He's going to teach
00:10:45.580
broadcasters about anti-racism. And he did, I think at least two of these town hall things.
00:10:51.760
I think he did one, I think it was at Halifax. He did it. I think maybe he did Montreal. It might've
00:10:56.880
been Vancouver, but he still had, he hadn't yet done Toronto, Ottawa. He hadn't quite yet done
00:11:04.040
Calgary and Ottawa was going to be the big one. It was going to be like this two day anti-racist
00:11:08.940
jamboree that, um, that he was going to lead. Um, and that's, that's been canceled. Um, do we have
00:11:15.560
any sense of, of how these went? The ones that already went down? Like if you have, has anybody
00:11:20.060
made a public statement? I've, I've, I saw it. So, um, the, there was a Facebook on the group's
00:11:28.620
Facebook page. They had a video. I forget which one I think was at Halifax, maybe. And to be,
00:11:36.180
to be fair, uh, cause Marouf, whichever one it was is Marouf was speaking. And I think he was like the
00:11:41.740
emcee. Um, and he, it's not like he went on some antisemitic rant, but the guy's not a complete idiot.
00:11:48.080
He, he, oh, and he, sorry. I know he did it in one in Vancouver because UBC has now had to
00:11:53.300
apologize for hosting it. So yeah, so he definitely did. I think he did Halifax. I think
00:11:57.580
he did Montreal and I think he did Vancouver. And I think the Vancouver one might also be online.
00:12:03.960
And from the footage I've seen, he got up and it wasn't like, um, like a Borat thing. Like
00:12:09.940
now we must attack the Jews. Like it was, um, a just typically tedious, uh, rant about, uh,
00:12:18.080
how everything is racist. And, um, to anybody who was in that room, it would have sounded like
00:12:23.520
any other, uh, like liberal arts lecture that they would probably receive at UBC to be fair.
00:12:29.660
So he, he, I don't want to pretend that, oh, look, he got all this money. And then he gave
00:12:34.220
antisemitic, uh, presentations, uh, in the three, uh, public events he did.
00:12:40.440
Well, is it one of those things that, you know, the person who most goes out and preaches,
00:12:44.180
you know, the ills of alcohol or whatever it's cause, you know, they, they are, were,
00:12:47.820
you know, an alcoholic or many comparable examples. And this guy's probably just like,
00:12:51.280
well, man, you know, if people are half as bad as I am, like we got a problem in society,
00:12:54.680
we got racists everywhere, you know, I know the problem. I mean, I got, I got to speak out
00:12:58.520
about this. I mean, look at me, I have some, look, so the phenomenon isn't always crazy. Like,
00:13:04.980
you know, when they bring former gang members into school to teach kids about gang life,
00:13:09.040
uh, like, I think, you know, that's, that's, this isn't an object of satire, but I think it's a
00:13:15.200
good thing. Like, because it's credible that these people aren't actually gang members anymore,
00:13:20.300
right? Like often they're middle-aged people and you know, they're, I'm sure there are stories
00:13:24.040
otherwise, but like, and same thing with Alcoholics Anonymous. When a guy gets up and says,
00:13:28.480
I've been sober for 17 years, the person speaks as an authority of an alcoholic and he, he comes to
00:13:33.160
terms with the fact he's an alcoholic. The anti-racist industry is a little bit different because when you
00:13:37.820
scratch the surface of a lot of these people, uh, like when they get into fights on Twitter,
00:13:42.920
um, like you often see, I don't want to generalize, look, sorry, anti-racism isn't, you know, it's,
00:13:50.020
it's a big thing. And I'm sure there are people who are extremely earnest and sincere about the
00:13:53.420
anti-racism, but there are some pretty hilarious examples. And Maruf is one of them, uh, of, you know,
00:14:00.820
you don't protest too much where, uh, they read from the songbook of anti-racism, but as soon as they
00:14:06.140
get upset about something, and in, in Maruf's case, it was Israel. He just, every time Israel
00:14:10.080
was mentioned, you could see on social media, it just absolutely loses mind. Like they kind of take
00:14:14.840
off the mask and it was just, oh, wow. Okay. You're not an anti-racist. You're just a big bigot
00:14:18.880
who's weaponizing the language of anti-racism to enable your own like sociopathic attitude toward
00:14:24.700
your, uh, your enemies. There's a pitch here. You, you got to pitch him. You got to be his manager
00:14:28.940
agent or something. Cause he can keep it going. He can even get more money. And now he's the reformed gang
00:14:34.100
member and he can tour high schools and everything. He can say, look at these tweets, look at awful
00:14:37.420
things I've said. And then he can talk about why it's wrong. I think he can do even better.
00:14:41.080
Well, he has a better gig coming because, uh, and I guess he's already doing it. Um, because I listened
00:14:46.280
to some of his podcasts and whatnot, and he, I don't know how lucrative it is, but he's been on,
00:14:52.220
on several podcasts in the last few years, including the Sputnik podcast for Russian propaganda. Um,
00:14:58.840
he now lives in Beirut. He's an absolute apologist for the Assad regime in Damascus. Uh, so like one
00:15:04.320
of his podcasts is about how, uh, the Kurds are rubbish. Um, and he is obviously very useful
00:15:11.900
to Russian propagandists on Sputnik. He's appeared, I think on, uh, Iranian propaganda shows. Um,
00:15:19.360
I think press TV and I, I'm not, I'm absolutely not worried about this guy. He's, he's going to make a
00:15:25.500
mint. Um, but he's going to do it in a more authentic way. Like he's not going to have to
00:15:30.580
pretend he's an anti-racist. He can, if he's paid by the Assad regime, like the Assad regime doesn't
00:15:35.620
have a lot of anti-racist, uh, guidelines when discussing Jews. And so I think, um, we're going
00:15:41.780
to really see the full Lathmore roof unleashed. Um, I should also say that his wife, uh, name's
00:15:48.820
Gretchen King, and I don't mind saying her name out loud because it's public. It's, she's the
00:15:52.660
other officer on this C-Mac company they set up. It's a two person show, right? There's
00:15:56.680
nobody else. It's just the two of them. Yeah. So C-Mac, so the liberals have made a big song
00:16:00.840
and dance about, oh, we didn't give it money directly to the roof. We gave it to this C-Mac
00:16:04.760
is their like holding community media action center, right? Right. And C-Mac, the officers
00:16:09.900
of it, uh, him and his wife and the phone number listed officially is, is Lath's cell phone
00:16:16.320
number. And the address listed was like their, I think it was their house. Like, I mean, it
00:16:20.660
was, it's like when I set up my own corporate entity, I have a company called John K Media
00:16:25.940
Inc. for tax purposes. Um, I think my wife is one of the directors maybe, but it's like
00:16:32.100
that level of, uh, piercing the veil from corporate law point of view. Um, but his wife,
00:16:38.240
and again, I, the reason I said her name is it's, it's in the public documents. I'm not
00:16:42.360
doxing her or anything like that. Uh, she with Canadian government money, uh, through, um,
00:16:49.240
the agency that funds academia, she is now in Lebanon, uh, pursuing a PhD about, uh, Palestinian
00:16:56.020
media. And that's paid for with your tax money in mind. Um, again, they've lived there in
00:17:01.160
Beirut three years. Uh, financing. We finance international. Oh yeah. So she got, she got
00:17:08.580
her funding. I found that's just something I tweeted about. Uh, so it's, it's the same agency.
00:17:14.940
God, what's it called? Shirk? It's, it's, it's, it's an acronym. Yeah. The science and humanities
00:17:19.520
research counselor. I thought that was only if you're doing it at a Canadian institution
00:17:23.080
though. Nope. She, well, I don't know the rules. Um, because I'm not, they're not giving
00:17:28.460
me any money for my groundbreaking research in, uh, in whatever it is I write about, but yeah,
00:17:35.160
no, she, I found documents. She has at least one grant, um, that she is applying toward her
00:17:41.720
studies and it's actually listed on the grant that she's at. She's at the American university
00:17:46.140
in Beirut. Uh, so both of them have been on the Canadian dole, uh, CRTC, uh, Pablo Rodriguez's
00:17:55.720
heritage, um, departments, anti-racism fund and, uh, academic subsidies. Uh, yeah. So they're
00:18:05.140
full, fully paid lifestyle in Beirut. Thanks to, uh, our tax money.
00:18:08.560
Wow. The plot thickens. We'll be back in just a moment with more with John K.
00:18:15.380
John, you were saying earlier about how his, his actual pitches and classes that he does
00:18:20.160
is anti-racism training that Latham Arouf is doing using phrases like the, the malignancy
00:18:25.140
of settlers. This is the sort of stuff he's talking about how, and I know you said it kind
00:18:29.780
of like his tweets, he just substitutes some words, you know, he says malignancy of Jews
00:18:34.280
versus malignancy of settlers based on, and I know you've done a lot of, uh, a lot of
00:18:39.100
research into the different workshops and classes that are, that are being done under
00:18:43.500
the rubric of anti-racism training or unconscious bias training, those other phrases. How consistent
00:18:49.240
is what he's doing with what's being done more broadly in the industry or being done by
00:18:54.960
others? Um, so again, I don't want to tar the entire diversity training industry or anti-racism
00:19:04.100
industry or whatnot with the same brush because there are diversity trainers out there who
00:19:08.780
are great and they come to the workplace and they talk about things. They tend to emphasize
00:19:13.720
inclusion, which is like, you know, how do you include people, you know, mothers who have
00:19:17.980
young kids at home or people who are neurodivergent and stuff like that. They're not, they're not
00:19:22.280
all obsessed with like white supremacy and stuff like that. Or the whole, just like, don't be
00:19:25.400
racist, be respectful of everyone. Like, I don't see anyone having an issue with sort of being
00:19:29.840
reiterated in the workplace and during a human resources session. It seems like there's been a
00:19:34.440
bit of mission creep though of late, even the unconscious bias training thing. I think people
00:19:38.860
probably, I think people who are not, are at an age where they're generally not being exposed to
00:19:43.660
these classes because they're, you know, they're too older, like baby boomers probably think they
00:19:47.060
support this stuff, but aren't even entirely sure what's going on with it.
00:19:50.100
Look, I, as a joke once on Twitter, I said, here's my, here's my diversity and inclusion
00:19:56.260
training program. Lesson one, don't be a dick. Lesson two, being racist means you're a dick.
00:20:02.760
And that's like, that's the end of the lesson. Like it's, no one objects to the idea that you
00:20:10.240
shouldn't like tell sexist jokes around the water cooler or stuff like that. Like we're not,
00:20:15.460
we don't live in 1970 anymore. And I think people get that. Um, but what you see is especially in the
00:20:23.220
more call it ideologically ambitious spheres of diversity consulting, uh, you see a lot of really,
00:20:32.900
it's, it's, it's, I'm not even sure it qualifies as offensive because it's, it's extremely, it's
00:20:42.660
almost religious. So, um, I tweeted out, someone sent me the, I think it was 132 pages. It was the
00:20:48.960
PowerPoint presentation for the diversity training sessions done by consultants. I think they're
00:20:55.560
called hummingbird consultants. This was out in BC. It was a BC government entity. I didn't share the
00:21:00.640
name of the entity because it's a small entity. I don't want to get anyone in trouble. Um, so I got
00:21:05.020
sent the 132 page PowerPoint presentation and, um, this was diversity training. It was two sessions
00:21:14.280
were given actually for, for all the staff at this, uh, important BC, uh, entity, the entity of the BC
00:21:20.380
government. Uh, and among the claims were like, like white people are highly individualistic,
00:21:25.220
whereas indigenous people care about each other and are like collectively minded and very
00:21:30.480
caring. Um, capitalism is evil. Uh, and again, the capitalism is evil thing is a really strange one
00:21:37.400
because like these diversity training companies get tens of thousands of dollars for, uh, for their
00:21:43.620
training. So like they themselves have an amazing capitalist gig going on. And when, when I get sent
00:21:49.660
these PowerPoints, because for some reason I'm the address people send this stuff to, because they
00:21:53.620
know I'll tweet it out. Um, there's always like the obligatory slide about how you have to be like
00:21:58.380
anti-capitalist and capitalism and racism are inextricably rooted. Um, and then you also,
00:22:06.020
there was a whole slide about like all the qualities that are attributed to whiteness, like meaning bad
00:22:15.020
qualities. And it's, it's always things like perfectionism, punctuality, uh, in this particular
00:22:20.980
one. It's just, it was a weird one. It said having an agenda. Um, and, and often like the qualities
00:22:27.440
they're discussing as being tied in with evil whiteness are like the qualities that you associate
00:22:34.220
with professional workplace culture. And it's, the effect of it is like incredibly racist, not,
00:22:41.160
I wouldn't even say racist against white people. It's racist against non-white people because
00:22:44.560
only white people are punctual, you know, it really is like that. Yeah, no, but it is like,
00:22:49.380
I mean, I, and you can, these people who send me this stuff, um, they're often like very frustrated
00:22:56.300
people. Cause I mean, I, like I do this stuff for a living. I just kind of expose this stuff, but
00:23:01.600
they are often like middle managers in some government department making 90,000 a year,
00:23:07.500
trying to pay their mortgage, um, like sort of punching the clock until, you know, they hit retirement
00:23:12.800
at age 60 and they can't say anything. And so they have to sit there in these anti-racism training
00:23:18.600
session and just like, listen to this mind blowing bullshit and no one can say anything.
00:23:24.740
Um, now someone finally did say something. So in this case, this BC, so when I published it,
00:23:29.960
when I published, I had a whole thread, maybe you guys can link to it in the splash page for this
00:23:34.980
episode. Um, one of the most amazing things is they had a slide where they said that
00:23:42.400
Canada's residential school system inspired the, the Holocaust. Um, and, and, and this is,
00:23:49.560
by the way, this is like kind of this, this meme that, that you often see in progressive Twitter,
00:23:53.760
where it's like, they, they sort of draw this very, um, attenuated and dubious line of causality
00:24:01.020
between the indigenous, um, the residential school system in Canada, which was of course legitimately
00:24:06.180
terrible. Uh, they, they, they, they try and argue that it somehow there's a direct line
00:24:11.020
between that and the slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II, which is like Hitler
00:24:14.180
heard about it. And he was like, Oh, tell me more. It's not good. Yeah. It's like, um,
00:24:18.600
you know, this, I don't want to misrepresent the logic of it, but it's, it's, they draw a line.
00:24:25.640
It's not just like Hitler, you know, came to Canada and was inspired by it. It's nothing
00:24:28.780
that ridiculous, but anyway, they try and argue this. And so they had this slide that argued
00:24:34.040
about like how horrible is the residential school system in Canada. It inspired the Holocaust.
00:24:38.160
Um, and they, they, they overlaid it for laughs for some reason with a picture of Mr. Bean.
00:24:44.720
You remember the Mr. Bean show from decades ago? Is this like kind of chicken on the head
00:24:50.120
thing? It was sort of like, um, yeah, uh, there's a new one. He's got a new show on Netflix right
00:24:56.800
now, but it's, it's not exactly sophisticated humor, right? Like nothing against Mr. Bean,
00:25:01.360
but it's like, it's a site gag, sort of lowbrow kind of, uh, comedy shtick show.
00:25:08.140
And the juxtaposition of that image with like a discussion of the Holocaust and this nonsense
00:25:13.060
claim that like residential schools caused the Holocaust kind of a little thing.
00:25:17.260
Well, I actually, I didn't see it as any more or less ridiculous than all of the other slides
00:25:22.120
that, cause I, I think I put up like 10 slides and I said, well, this isn't, this is nonsense.
00:25:25.480
I can't believe people are being taught this, but, uh, Jewish groups that are active in BC
00:25:32.120
saw it and actually took the issue up with the BC government. And it's amazing what gets
00:25:36.540
attention and what doesn't because like the nine other slides, it was like, you know, capitalism
00:25:41.700
is racist. Uh, white people are punctual and that's terrible. And all this other stuff, which
00:25:47.240
to my mind was like equally ridiculous and equally offensive. Like you're allowed to say those
00:25:52.740
things, but because, and again, I'm, I'm Jewish myself. So I, I am not trying to argue that
00:25:58.820
like there's some sort of nefarious, um, uh, influence being exerted here. But I, I was
00:26:05.620
shocked that of all the slides, like that was the one that, uh, you know, Jewish groups started
00:26:11.120
emailing me and saying like, we're going to take this up with the BC government and which
00:26:14.100
they apparently they did. Um, and so sometimes behind the scenes you, you, you do get action,
00:26:21.000
but I'm never, it's always unclear to me. Like I've been in this business for a long time.
00:26:24.980
It's always a mister to me, what kind of stuff will get attention. Um, and, and sometimes you
00:26:31.100
find something outrageous and no one cares. And other times, like we were discussing earlier,
00:26:34.860
you find some, like, you know, some guy makes when he was in high school, he made a gay joke
00:26:40.140
or something. Yeah. Um, and it's like, well, you'll never host the Oscars again. Uh, and it's,
00:26:46.220
and that's it. Like, and, um, John, you said a really interesting remark though, when you're
00:26:51.300
talking about the, the 60 something bureaucrat waiting at retirement, they can't say anything.
00:26:57.240
So they know it's BS. They know it's problematic, but they don't want to raise their hand. Did that
00:27:03.140
happen perhaps with the lathe Maroof thing where people are like, this is crazy. But then again,
00:27:08.060
so was that other thing. And so was the thing before it and nothing happened. And in fact, Jim
00:27:12.300
got in trouble for talking about it. So I'm just going to be quiet. And everybody was watching
00:27:16.280
this happen. And they're like, I don't know, maybe this is how this, this sector works now.
00:27:20.380
So we just got to let them do his thing. So it's interesting you say that because, um,
00:27:26.100
so Anthony house father, who is a liberal MP to his credit, he broke ranks with his party and told
00:27:35.820
the aforementioned Mark Goldberg is the telecoms guy who, who really broke this lathe Maroof story.
00:27:42.300
And he, he emailed Mark cause Mark inquired about it. And we now know that this liberal MP named
00:27:49.260
Anthony house house father told, uh, Ahmed Hussein and Ahmed Hussein is the liberal cabinet minister
00:27:55.980
who runs the housing and also the diversity and inclusion portfolios, basically the diversity
00:28:01.680
minister. Um, that, so Ahmed Hussein knew about this in July and then, uh, a whole month passed
00:28:10.820
and this guy, Laith Maroof stayed on the government payroll after the, the diversity minister knew
00:28:19.620
about it. Uh, and we know he knew about it because, uh, house father, liberal MP told Mark Goldberg in
00:28:26.720
July, I've, I've notified Hussein and his team and they will get back to me about what they're going to
00:28:31.560
do. What they did was nothing. And then, uh, I started tweeting about it and the story broke
00:28:37.640
and some independent outlets started reporting it. And then even the Canadian press felt obliged to
00:28:42.580
report it. And even when they reported it, they don't, they didn't report it until they waited
00:28:46.360
until they had a reaction quote from Ahmed Hussein, who by that time, uh, released a statement saying
00:28:52.900
how horrified he was, although he didn't mention Laith Maroof's name. So there was a whole month when the
00:28:57.360
liberals knew about it and did nothing. And again, I don't think it's cause they're anti-Semites. I
00:29:01.440
don't think Ahmed Hussein is an anti-Semite. I think it's cause they're sort of, it's grubby
00:29:06.840
risk averse politics where they're saying, how do we take the least damage on this? Um, cause if we
00:29:13.700
come out now, um, well, you know, we take a hit, but maybe there's certain like Arab or Muslim groups
00:29:21.140
who might be pissed off at us. Um, you know, maybe extremely like militant factions of those
00:29:27.020
communities. I don't mean to suggest like the whole community embraces Laith Maroof, just the,
00:29:31.000
just the opposite. I think they're probably disgusted with him. Um, and I, by the way,
00:29:35.180
I should say, I don't even know Maroof's religion. He, he, he's extremely anti-Israeli, but I don't
00:29:39.760
think I've never seen him to my knowledge, like go off on, on Islam. Like he probably know he could
00:29:45.580
be like Druze or Christian or, um, I have no idea. Um, and, and I think they hoped it would blow over.
00:29:53.360
And then when it didn't blow over, they were like, Oh God, what do we do? And then actually
00:29:57.240
this week they pulled a really interesting maneuver. So this guy, Housefather, he tweeted
00:30:02.100
something really interesting. So the liberals have now gone all in on denouncing Maroof. So
00:30:06.540
for like a month, it was like, we've never heard of Maroof, like no story here, but now they've
00:30:11.540
like switched and they're all in on anti-Maroofian hate. And they, he's, he's like a symbol of all
00:30:17.100
this. But, but if you look, Housefather actually tweeted, this is so chutzpidic. He tweeted
00:30:22.620
out, yes, I, I, you know, the liberal, as a liberal, I denounce Maroof with like every fiber
00:30:27.020
of my being. And I now call, I now call on all 338 MPs to denounce Maroof. So wait a sec.
00:30:35.940
You're a racist. If you don't, you random conservative MP who happens to be on vacation
00:30:41.280
It's insane. Think of the chutzpah here. The liberals did this. The liberals gave this
00:30:45.840
guy $600,000. The liberals did nothing when they were notified by it. It's all the liberals'
00:30:50.560
fault. But suddenly now that the liberals have decided that like they're taking ownership
00:30:55.440
of it, some guy in the Bloc Québécois has to like, you know, tweet from his house in
00:31:02.780
the Laurentians like, oh yes, I denounced this guy, Latham Maroof, who I'd never heard of
00:31:06.640
if it, if the liberals hadn't given him $600,000 for this, this nonsense. Like suddenly
00:31:11.320
it's, the onus is on people who never gave a cent to Maroof to denounce him because the liberals
00:31:19.060
have found Jesus and like, they're just all in on denouncing the guy.
00:31:25.620
Trudeau would say online harms bill needs to be introduced to regulate the internet. And
00:31:29.880
if you bring Pierre Polyev in as prime minister, I mean, they got rid of Latham Maroof, he could
00:31:36.000
It's the same thing as the blackface thing where, I mean, this is, I guess, ancient history
00:31:42.340
by now, but it's been a couple of years where Trudeau, they're still quite hilarious to look
00:31:47.680
at all these photos of Trudeau and blackface. And I forget which newspaper, I think it might
00:31:52.460
have been the star. And the headline was basically like a learning opportunity for all Canadians
00:31:58.080
to confront racism. And I'm paraphrasing, but I remember looking at it and my jaw just
00:32:03.100
dropped. It's not a learning opportunity for all Canadians. It's a learning opportunity
00:32:07.320
for one guy who dressed up as a black dude. And his name is Justin Trudeau. So there's
00:32:13.240
this like extremely clever maneuver. And I think it'll work because everyone's just going
00:32:18.180
to line up to, because they don't want to be like seen as agents, agents of Maroofianism
00:32:24.260
where you kind of like judo style, kind of absorb the kinetic energy of the charge against
00:32:34.020
you and kind of like flip it onto your opponent saying like, I am more anti-Maroofian than
00:32:40.200
thee. And then your opponent is like, oh, well, we'll see about that here. I'll just, you'll
00:32:45.040
see how fervently I support your new position. It's a really clever tactic. The liberals are
00:32:50.740
really good at it. They did it with the blackface thing to some extent. I mean, it was hard.
00:32:55.260
It's just the images were so ridiculous that it was difficult.
00:32:58.200
Well, let me read, I want to, along those lines, I want to get your take on this national
00:33:02.980
post story saying Ahmed Hussein's department is now going to conduct quote, an extensive
00:33:06.280
review of the funding that is being distributed through the anti-racism strategy to ensure
00:33:10.880
that no additional funds are redirected to organizations or individuals who promote hateful
00:33:15.200
content. So they're open to the idea that maybe there are other such instances and they
00:33:19.500
want to root them out. But then John, to your point about malignancy of settlers, a lot of
00:33:26.080
training involving, you know, I see this in the school boards, for instance, white fragility,
00:33:31.680
that kind of stuff that the punctualness you were going on about. The question is, are they
00:33:36.020
just looking for the overt nasty words or, I mean, here's the fundamental disagreement.
00:33:43.780
I don't think, as we said, you want to teach people about being respectful of everyone in
00:33:48.680
the workplace. Nobody's got an issue with that. And that's probably original what these grants
00:33:51.820
went for. Do we need to be doing widespread government enforced workshops about white
00:33:57.320
fragility? And yet it is Ahmed Hussein. What's going to happen when they see these reports?
00:34:05.320
So if you look at the list of the, I think it was 85 grant recipients that I think it was
00:34:12.200
2020 and maybe it was a hundred grant recipients under this anti-racism program. I think a lot
00:34:17.440
of reporters have been pouring over those lists, like looking for other groups like CMAQ. And to
00:34:22.720
be honest, like I looked at those lists and a lot of it was just like, you know, some indigenous
00:34:26.960
group out on a reserve wants to like, I don't know, improve local education. Like a lot of it
00:34:33.820
looked like really worthy stuff. It didn't, it wasn't like a whole bunch of lathom roofs. And a lot of
00:34:38.900
these government programs, what's interesting is that I think if you talk to people in government,
00:34:43.640
you'll find a lot of the groups that get funded through these programs are probably going to get
00:34:48.760
funded anyway in some, through some program or other, because they're actually doing good community
00:34:53.040
stuff. And I think when I looked at the list, a lot of it was really like grassroots indigenous groups.
00:35:00.440
But from a liberal point of view, you don't just want to shovel money out the door to a group.
00:35:05.600
You want to shovel money out the door to a group under the auspices of anti-racism,
00:35:10.100
because that makes you an anti-racist. And then you become an ally. And then you get to use the
00:35:17.140
allyship badge, and you get the key to the allyship washroom.
00:35:20.940
Oh, they would have been applicable for a grant just under like a community grant, say,
00:35:24.120
that didn't even have any sort of progressive agenda or feel good component to it.
00:35:28.400
A hundred percent. And again, like I just, and I know this because I've just researched some of
00:35:32.480
these other grants and Latham Roof, I'm willing to concede this, the liberals, it was an outlier.
00:35:36.620
Um, however, some of the largest groups, the largest grants were to groups that, to my mind,
00:35:43.660
like have just very sort of dubious, like social media focused stuff, like one of the one of the
00:35:51.080
groups, I think it's called the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. I don't think there's anyone like Latham
00:35:55.760
Roof who works there. But it's just like, if you look, if you go to their website, it's just a lot of
00:36:00.000
platitudes about everything is racist. And a lot of talking points that seem very similar to what the
00:36:05.200
Liberal Party says about conservatives and whatnot. That's the kind of stuff that needs to be cleaned
00:36:09.580
up. I have no problem with money going to legitimate grassroots, like indigenous groups,
00:36:15.080
but a lot of it just goes like, you know, Canadian Anti-Hate Network, it's run by a lot of white people
00:36:19.300
who are essentially weaponizing sort of fashionable slogans about anti-racism to pay themselves
00:36:25.140
salaries, you know, from taxpayer money. To me, that's a problem. And it's not just anti-racism.
00:36:31.600
Like a few days ago, Trudeau announced this $100 million, like, it's not LGBT, you're not allowed
00:36:38.620
to say that. It's 2SLGBTIQ+, I think, is how you say it. And, and in fact, part of the money is going
00:36:46.420
to tell people that they should say 2SLGBTIQ+, instead of LGBT.
00:36:53.820
This, it's very meta. And what I object to about that is like six months from now, there's going to
00:36:59.780
be a new term, because there's all these like three-spirited and four-spirited people who are
00:37:03.860
going to object to it. And then all of the posters and promotional campaign around the 2S campaign
00:37:09.520
is going to get torn up. And that to me is just an absolute waste of money. If you want to give
00:37:15.420
money to some like grassroots LGBT group that's like, you know, giving people advice about like
00:37:22.760
healthcare or something like that, go ahead. Like this, that's what government's for. I mean, I'm at
00:37:26.380
heart, I'm like kind of a big government bleeding heart type. I just don't give money to people who
00:37:31.560
are just, to propaganda. I mean, Latham Roof happens to be a particularly malignant kind of propaganda,
00:37:38.600
but any kind of propaganda, like I said, it's not the role of government to give money to groups like
00:37:42.680
that. So it's basically your take that we don't have a broader problem necessarily in how we're
00:37:51.660
doing anti-racism discussion, outreach, government funding. It really is a situation of a few bad
00:37:58.640
apples, but the system of the whole scrutiny thing is obviously to be welcomed. So I think there
00:38:05.560
definitely is a problem when it comes to the sort of very cultish way that anti-racism is taught,
00:38:11.940
especially in universities and stuff like that. I don't necessarily think that's Trudeau's fault.
00:38:16.780
I think this is an import of American race-related ideological fads that largely come through social
00:38:27.240
media. And there's, you know, if the Trudeau government were voted out of office tomorrow and
00:38:34.240
were replaced by a Polyevrian conservative regime and, and all of this anti-racism funding,
00:38:43.180
they got rid of it. I don't think that would change anything in universities. In fact, it would
00:38:46.480
be the opposite because in the United States, you saw a spike in this like critical race theory stuff,
00:38:52.180
intersectionality, anti-racism. You know, Ibram Kendi who gets $20,000 an hour to give lectures on
00:38:58.980
Zoom. Like all of that stuff spiked when Trump came into office because it was like, oh, there's
00:39:04.460
this whack job in who's the president. We need to educate people about how racist everything is.
00:39:11.040
I think you would get that in Canada, in the schools, universities, social media activist groups,
00:39:16.320
regardless of who's in office. And you might even get more of it if they're a conservative.
00:39:19.320
So I think with Trudeau and his liberals, I don't think they are the engine of this like hyper-wokeness.
00:39:27.840
I think they are profiteers of it. They recognize that it's, it's trendy. They recognize that they can
00:39:34.060
get on the bandwagon and get earned media and hashtag support if they like create an anti-racism fund.
00:39:41.380
And, and like to them, I think they're, like I say, they're, they're, they're profiteers of it. I don't
00:39:46.980
think they're the ideological engine of it. And it's the same thing as with this LGBT stuff. And
00:39:50.820
in fairness, like corporate Canada does the same thing. Like I went, you know, my local Scotia,
00:39:56.060
Scotia bank, like the entire window is covered with like this new ad campaign they have is even
00:40:03.760
when it's not pride season, we are welcoming to, you know, all letters of the alphabet and all numbers
00:40:08.580
on the number line. And, and they've invented like new symbols to represent just like the many
00:40:13.580
identities they welcome in our bank. And this is a bank that makes billions and billions of dollars.
00:40:17.880
And, you know, for them, this is a marketing opportunity. And five years from now, when
00:40:22.140
the cultural cycle has shifted, and this is no longer faddish, those posters will all come down,
00:40:26.480
it'll be something else. So I don't see the Trudeau government as being much different from like
00:40:31.560
what Scotiabank does. It's, you know, this is a, you know, a self-interested maneuver to take
00:40:38.620
advantage of ideological fads among upper middle class white people primarily. That's how I see it.
00:40:45.300
And that's what I find so interesting about the Scotiabank example, because I remember
00:40:48.660
20 years ago, friends, gay friends in downtown Toronto saying, well, I don't go to pride anymore.
00:40:53.760
Pride's too corporate. 20 years ago, the pride is too corporate thing. They were saying it. And now
00:40:58.920
it's like, I think this whole phenomenon happens, I guess, external to the gay community. I imagine
00:41:03.540
that the VP or whoever at Scotiabank responsible for this is probably a gay lesbian person,
00:41:07.660
or maybe not. I don't know, maybe there's like zero connection to it. And yeah, to your point,
00:41:12.240
it's just a gesture thing for the upper class. Well, look, the LGBT community, I mean, not to
00:41:18.700
generalize this, like there's a lot of letters in the alphabet. And it's like any other community,
00:41:22.780
it's, you know, you can't make generalizations. But generally speaking, the politically active
00:41:29.060
LGBT community in places like Toronto is, it's a very, it's a wealthy community. You know, when I first
00:41:35.920
moved to Toronto, I moved to Cabbage Town, which like, there's several different gay areas in
00:41:41.360
Toronto, but that Cabbage Town, at least then, and maybe now was like, I used to say, this is where
00:41:45.680
the gay tax lawyers live. You know, people with expensive dogs, and, you know, doggy baths with
00:41:53.020
Tuscan tiles, and beautiful homes. And it's a great place to live then. And I think it's a great place
00:41:58.680
to live now. But if you are a bank executive, you want these people coming to your bank. And
00:42:04.920
banks are basically all the same. Like, I mean, I bank at TD, and I don't, I'm sure if I switched to
00:42:10.700
Scotiabank, it'd be the same experience. So like, there's not that much variation in the banking
00:42:16.620
experience. If you can get an edge on your rival by having like more letters in the, you know,
00:42:24.200
LGBT acronym you put up in your store window, if that gets, you know, estate management funds coming
00:42:31.380
in from like wealthy people, great, do it. And again, just like, liberals, the NDP, they're sort
00:42:39.340
of in the same position as like, how much daylight is there between the liberals and NDP on most issues?
00:42:44.780
Not much. So a lot of it comes down to like, who's waving the bigger pride flag? And the liberals
00:42:51.200
are in power, so they have the power of the FISC. And, you know, this week, we heard that they're
00:42:56.380
waving $100 million pride flag, that might get them a few more ridings in downtown Toronto, or
00:43:00.960
Montreal, or Ottawa. And that's kind of how politics works.
00:43:04.520
So it's nice to hear that after you reviewed those 85 or so federal government grants connected
00:43:09.740
to this, that Leith Maroof was a bit of an outlier, but acknowledging that in other institutions,
00:43:15.760
university settings, is there a greater review required? I mean, like I alluded to, I'm not
00:43:23.600
crazy about the fact that, you know, my kids are in the Toronto school system, and I see this stuff
00:43:27.800
that goes around with the unions, and that the teachers are being sent. And there's a lot of this,
00:43:32.820
again, it's not the, let's all get along stuff. It's the very accusatory, fostering division,
00:43:40.320
unconscious bias and white fragility stuff that's going on there. And that seems much more problematic.
00:43:46.440
It's much more problematic. And it's not, so it's the Toronto District School Board. So I don't want
00:43:50.940
to make this, I know this is like a national podcast, I don't want to make this parochial.
00:43:55.260
It's indicative. And again, it just, what I'm about to say is going to sound parochial, because
00:44:00.040
it's the Waterloo Regional District School Board, it's Simcoe, it's Ottawa area, it's Peel,
00:44:08.760
it's Halton, and it's Toronto. And if you're not from the Toronto area, I've just kind of named
00:44:14.440
like a lot of big school boards in Southern Ontario, that in the last year or two, there's
00:44:20.800
been appalling scandals involving the kind of pedagogy that is being featured there. And if
00:44:28.540
you're listening to this, and you live in these writings, I should say that in October, school
00:44:32.260
board elections are taking place. And you should investigate the trustees who are running, because
00:44:37.320
one of the reasons a lot of this really cultish anti-racist nonsense, like I'm talking about,
00:44:44.460
you know, the stuff that you were referring to, you know, settler, white fragility, all
00:44:48.420
this stuff. One reason that's taken root is because to give credit to a lot of these progressive
00:44:54.780
activists, they've taken the time to run for these like low profile positions like school board
00:45:01.180
trustee. And a lot of these outfits are essentially run out of the NDP campaign office.
00:45:05.580
It's they're not NDP formally, but they're, they're very much they very much piggyback on
00:45:10.740
on existing NDP political machines on a local level. And to give them their credit, they took
00:45:16.800
interest in the stuff when people like me just weren't, you know, I, I'd never thought about
00:45:21.860
running for school board office is a lot of work and very little money. And now people are
00:45:26.760
paying attention because the content and these curricula has gotten so wacko. And by the way,
00:45:32.660
a lot of immigrants are paying attention because a lot of these people didn't move here from
00:45:37.020
like Nigeria or Philippines or Brazil. So there are kids can be taught a lot of stuff about
00:45:43.960
like how they're guilty of genocide and all this stuff. So you are starting to see people
00:45:49.400
pay attention. And that stuff to me, that is, is a more important fight to me than whatever
00:45:55.220
Trudeau is throwing money at. Because you and I, we have a choice about what party to vote for.
00:46:02.720
However, if you're a working class parent who can't afford private schools, you do not have a
00:46:08.320
choice about what school to send your kid to in most cases. And if that kid is coming home with his
00:46:13.560
head full of nonsense, that's a problem. And to me, that's a much bigger problem than the virtue
00:46:19.980
signaling that's being done by Justin Trudeau and the people around him. So we saw a couple
00:46:24.620
districts in the US have a backlash recently with school boards, largely, I think, fueled by
00:46:29.440
critical race theory being too invasive. And it was very interesting that a lot of people leading
00:46:33.420
the charge were not white people. It was non-white persons who had a lot of problems with this stuff
00:46:38.960
getting into the system. And then the other was a backlash against over-the-top COVID craziness
00:46:44.680
and restrictions for their kids. And I don't see a similar push right now in Canada. But do you feel
00:46:51.160
it's kind of going to bubble to the fore, maybe?
00:46:53.580
So I think it's going to go behind the scenes. And I actually have very mixed feelings about some of
00:46:59.100
those protests in the United States. So for instance, you said that some of these people protesting are
00:47:03.180
not white. One person I would highlight is Asra Nomani.
00:47:06.740
She's really good. And she led the charge in regard to Thomas Jefferson High School, which I think at
00:47:16.000
one point maybe still is the most selective public STEM high school in the United States. It's in
00:47:22.720
Virginia. And there was, I actually haven't kept track of it closely, but there was a plan to dilute
00:47:29.140
their entry requirements for basically in order to further affirmative action. But it was one crazy
00:47:35.160
aspect of that was this weird affirmative action plan they had would actually increase the number
00:47:39.520
of white students at the expense of Asian students, basically so that they could also get more Hispanic
00:47:44.840
and black students. It was totally crazy. And Asra is an example of somebody who's absolutely not a
00:47:50.340
white person, but is enraged by this stuff. But of course, she gets accused of being a white
00:47:54.760
supremacist because she's not sticking to the proper progressive ideological line. That said, I do have
00:48:02.860
some mixed feelings about some of the stuff because if you look at the videos, you've got these like
00:48:06.060
really angry people screaming at school board officials, showing up at school board meetings.
00:48:10.300
And then you've got state legislatures and state governors who are legislating saying, oh, you can't
00:48:15.900
teach this and you can't teach that. You can't teach critical race. I actually, I'm not crazy about that
00:48:20.280
solution too, because that to me is like another kind of ideological intervention.
00:48:27.260
I don't want to ban any books. And the problem isn't so much that's like this, this, this boogeyman
00:48:33.380
called critical race theory. You know, I, I've written about this. I studied critical race theory
00:48:39.260
at law school in the nineties. And at the time, critical race theory actually made a bunch of sense.
00:48:43.660
You know, I was talking about how the classic example is about how laws against crack cocaine were much
00:48:49.740
more severe than laws against powdered cocaine because crack cocaine was at the time, primarily
00:48:53.960
a black drug and powdered cocaine was Wall Street. Yeah. Wall Street, you know, stockbroker,
00:48:59.440
a suit and tie drug and critical race theory would say, even though the words black and white don't
00:49:05.460
appear in the sentencing guidelines for American drug laws, it's still racist. And that's a good point.
00:49:12.300
And that was kind of one of the things critical race theories theorists were talking about,
00:49:16.140
but they were talking about principles. It wasn't about exercising some original sin from the breast
00:49:24.640
of an individual human being who was either a sinner or absolved on the basis of the color of their skin.
00:49:33.340
So like this idea that like every white person is secretly a racist and, you know, you have to work
00:49:38.960
on your white supremacy till the day you die, which is like this very creepy Calvinist religious concept.
00:49:44.460
Like that stuff was not in critical race theory at the time. It was a more commonsensical creed. So
00:49:50.460
when, you know, a Republican governor gets up and says, you know, we have to stamp out any reference
00:49:55.720
to like to race or critical race theory or intersectionality, like that makes me uncomfortable.
00:50:00.120
And it also makes me uncomfortable when a bunch of conservatives show up at like the offices or even
00:50:05.100
the homes of educational officials to scream at them. I don't want that either. And to the extent that
00:50:11.440
that is not a huge feature of public life in Canada, I think I'm glad about that.
00:50:15.440
Well, conservatives in the U.S. are now as shameless as like the Antifa radicals in the U.S.
00:50:20.440
The U.S. there, like how Trump is as shameless as some of the crazy left politicians. We just don't
00:50:25.980
have that here. And I don't think the right would ever get into that same, I guess maybe some are
00:50:32.740
I'm old enough to remember, like when I went to law, so I went to law school in the United States
00:50:36.840
in the 90s. I'm old enough to remember the Reagan era and the aftermath of it. And when you talked
00:50:41.660
about censorship of arts and academia, it was a right-wing phenomenon. It was like, you're not being
00:50:47.160
patriotic. And we saw shades of this in 9-11. You know, remember?
00:50:56.840
And it will be a right-wing thing again, because culture is cyclical. And when the conservatives
00:51:02.100
start imposing their own cancel culture, which I guess to some extent they are in the United States,
00:51:07.200
here in Canada, five or 10 years from now, because the cultural pendulum will have swung the other
00:51:11.080
way, I'll be right there with the blue-haired pronoun people protesting that and saying that that's
00:51:16.780
wrong, because I'm against cancel culture and censorship on both sides. And I've lived long
00:51:21.800
enough to see it from both sides. And we'll continue to see it from both sides, because the
00:51:27.620
way the culture wars work is when one side is winning, they try and leverage that power to shut
00:51:33.140
down the other side. It's a timeless phenomenon. The progressives are doing it now. But when the
00:51:39.440
shoe's on the other foot, it'll be the conservatives who do it. And I'll be just as unpopular then,
00:51:44.580
because I'll switch allegiances to the other side. And all my Twitter followers now will all call me a
00:51:50.780
sellout. But I'm okay with that. It's kind of the way I roll.
00:51:55.420
Jonathan Kaye, great conversation. Thanks for stopping by.
00:51:59.080
Full Comment is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Proulx,
00:52:04.420
with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer.
00:52:08.920
You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
00:52:13.960
You can listen through the app or your Alexa-enabled devices. You can help us by giving us a rating or
00:52:18.340
a review, and by telling your friends about us. Thanks for listening.