Full Comment - Oops, we hired a raving bigot to teach anti-racism

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, 0.85

00:00:40.080 were the only, I quote, of a bullet to the head. Now while his vitriol targets Jews the most, 0.98

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.

00:01:31.360 How are you?

00:01:32.120 I am doing all right. How are you, sir?

00:01:34.320 I can't complain.

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 1.00

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, 0.94

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. 0.98

00:03:58.040 He's a good old fashioned racist. Maybe that's why people are surprised by it. 0.96

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, 0.55

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 0.99

00:06:53.500 because they're imperialist. Warmonger is not because, um, I don't know, they're money lenders 0.99

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 0.86

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.

00:08:51.240 So maybe scrutiny was minimized.

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. 1.00

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 0.90

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, 1.00

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 0.95

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 0.99

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 0.56

00:15:04.320 of his podcasts is about how, uh, the Kurds are rubbish. Um, and he is obviously very useful 1.00

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 0.68

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 0.96

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, 0.82

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, 0.99

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 1.00

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. 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.95

00:22:44.560 only white people are punctual, you know, it really is like that. Yeah, no, but it is like, 0.95

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. 0.97

00:23:24.740 Um, now someone finally did say something. So in this case, this BC, so when I published it, 0.95

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, 0.98

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 0.66

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. 0.99

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 0.83

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. 0.83

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 0.98

00:25:47.240 to my mind was like equally ridiculous and equally offensive. Like you're allowed to say those 0.95

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 0.51

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, 0.83

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 0.82

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 1.00

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 0.99

00:30:39.780 right now, so can't do it.

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.

00:31:23.060 This is a learning opportunity for us all.

00:31:25.000 A hundred percent.

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

00:31:34.560 bring him back. He could bring 20 more in.

00:31:36.000 It's the same thing as the blackface thing where, I mean, this is, I guess, ancient history 0.99

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. 0.97

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, 1.00

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 0.94

00:33:57.320 fragility? And yet it is Ahmed Hussein. What's going to happen when they see these reports?

00:34:02.980 I don't think they're going to root those out.

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 1.00

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.

00:36:53.280 It's so meta.

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 0.99

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, 0.99

00:41:07.660 or maybe not. I don't know, maybe there's like zero connection to it. And yeah, to your point, 0.80

00:41:12.240 it's just a gesture thing for the upper class. Well, look, the LGBT community, I mean, not to 1.00

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 1.00

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.

00:43:53.780 I think it's indicative of other regions.

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 0.94

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 1.00

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.

00:48:24.220 I don't want to ban any books.

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 0.53

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 0.91

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. 0.97

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 0.98

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

00:50:31.360 historically back decades ago.

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?

00:50:52.780 Well, cancel culture was a right-wing thing. 1.00

00:50:55.240 A hundred percent.

00:50:55.920 In the 80s and early 90s.

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.

00:51:58.360 Thank you.

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.

Full Comment - September 05, 2022

Oops, we hired a raving bigot to teach anti-racism

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript