Juno News - January 14, 2024
Canadian military full of white supremacy, patriarchy, official journal claims
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Summary
The Canadian Military Journal, the official publication of the Canadian Armed Forces, is dedicated to exposing white supremacy and white supremacy in the military. In this episode, we speak with three veterans who served in the Armed Forces about their experiences with white supremacy within the organization.
Transcript
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You may have seen yesterday at True North, my colleague Cosman Georgia published what
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I thought was a tremendously researched story. One of these hidden in plain sight reports.
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It was based on the Canadian Military Journal, which is the official publication. It's more
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academic in nature, but the official publication of the Canadian Armed Forces. And while it's not
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a product, it's not a communications product of the Department of National Defense,
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it is official and it is where the military gets a lot of its theoretical and practical material from
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clearly. Because what we saw in this issue is it was dedicated to unmasking and exposing patriarchy
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and whiteness and white supremacy. I believe we have the table of contents for you here.
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This is one issue, the summer issue, getting to the root of the problem. There is an article about
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interrogating whiteness and power in the Canadian Armed Forces. There's an article about whether
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supporting military families is reinforcing patriarchy. There is an article about gender
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identity and military culture. There are articles about women's experiences, feminism, and the
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military. But the bulk of this is saying that the military is upholding white supremacy and patriarchy.
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This idea that the military is clearly behind and you wonder why they're having so much difficulty
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with morale because they're telling all the men and all the white people that, well, you guys just
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don't really matter. You are you people don't want to be too gendered about this. I wanted to get some
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veteran perspective on this because, again, I've heard so many members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
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My father is a veteran and I know many people in my family and in your families and many of you
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listening have served in the Armed Forces as well. I wanted to welcome into the show Tom Marazzo,
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who you've heard from on a number of occasions, a former captain with the Armed Forces and also the
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author of the People's Emergency Act, as well as Andrew McGilvery, who's the president of Veterans for
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Freedom. Drew and Tom, it's great to talk to you both. Thanks for being with us here and thanks
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for your service. I mean, let me just ask first and foremost here, how does this publication and how
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the military has gone on this issue make you feel about your service, this body that you devoted a
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chunk of your lives to? I'll start with you, Drew.
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It's pretty alarming. I'm one of the guys who was going to put in 25, 30 years. I joined because I
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was a patriotic Canadian. I grew up in Scarborough, which is located in Toronto, a very multicultural
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neighborhood. Then they're pushing this stuff and they're forcing it on the troops. Then I look back
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in my 12-year career and I say, why did I do this? This isn't the institution. This isn't the country
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that I signed up to defend and ultimately was willing to risk my life for. It's completely
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disrespectful to the troops and the soldiers that are still in there. This has been a trajectory
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they've been going down for the past couple of months. It just is what it is, unfortunately.
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Well, I do find it completely offensive, to be perfectly honest. My time in the military,
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and I did 25 years total, I was a reservist and I was a regular force member. The vast majority
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of people that join the Canadian Armed Forces are rural members, some small towns, but the vast
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majority of people that join are Caucasian males and females of a Christian ethnicity or Christian
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descent. And, you know, they're very patriotic Canadians. And, you know, this idea of whiteness,
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like it's how do you justify the concept of white supremacy when your entire unit that you're in,
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let's say, as an example, your entire platoon or your company or even your regiment, when the vast
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majority of the people in there are Caucasians who are, you know, come from a Christian background.
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And I'm not suggesting that everybody's religious. I'm saying that their religious morals and ethics
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and their values derive from a Christian upbringing in a largely Christian society.
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So where does the white supremacy come in when you look around and everybody's white? Like,
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who are we supremacists against? Like, it's kind of offensive to sit there and say that there's this,
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you know, racism or deep dislike for somebody who doesn't look like you based on your skin color
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in the Canadian forces when the reality is that anybody who's done basic training knows your
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personality is stripped down to the bare essence of who you are as a Canadian and you're rebuilt as
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a soldier or a sailor or an airman. You're not rebuilt as a Christian or a Muslim or you're not from India
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or whatever. Like, these things are very blurred to paint this very nefarious picture that doesn't make
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any sense. Because from, you know, as far as I'm concerned and everything I was ever taught in the
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military, you're a soldier first. That's what matters. And can you be relied upon to defend the
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lives of your brothers and sisters in arms? Nobody's looking at your ethnicity. Nobody's looking at your
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religion. Nobody's looking at your whiteness. They're looking at, you know, in the case of the army,
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they're looking at a guy who or girl who's, you know, camouflaged. And are they competent and willing
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and able to do the business of war, the business of violence, not the business of social engineering?
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And this is what a lot of this crap that we're seeing is all about. It's not about warfare. It's
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not about defending Canada. It's trying to hypnotize certain portions of Canadians to vote liberal.
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And I hope we can get into that discussion as well. Yeah. And I, but I wanted to ask, because you
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raised, I think, an important point there. I mean, my understanding of this is not someone who's served,
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but someone who's had family members who have, is that uniformity was always a very core part of the
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military. And it was meant to basically be exactly what you've just described there. Your role has to be
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the uniform, not who you are as an individual when you're serving. And I think it was two years ago that
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they significantly dropped the standards on uniformity where you could have dyed hair and
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face tattoos. No offense to people with dyed hair and face tattoos, but well, I mean, a little bit,
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I'm okay offending a little bit of the face tattoo crowd. But the thing about that is that here we have
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the military. And I understand why, because if you have no recruitment and you have no people there,
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I understand the impulse to just start dropping all these barriers. But I think it has an inverse
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relationship because all of a sudden you change it so much that the people you want in there are
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saying, I don't know if I want to be a part of that anymore. But it seems like the military has
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gone along with this very woke academic idea that everyone needs to be this celebrated individual
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snowflake, which is a complete reversal. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Drew, but of what the military
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has always been about and what it needs to be to be a success at its goals.
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Yeah. So ultimately there's, there's a guy named Andy stump who does a podcast called cleared hot.
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And when he was asked about diversity in the seals and he felt that they were, you know,
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did they lose anything by the lack of diversity and his answer, which I remembered verbatim because
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it was the perfect answer. He said, well, I don't know. He goes, are we aiming for diversity or are
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we aiming to achieve a standard? And that standard is dictated to us by what we encounter on the
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battlefield. And the battlefield doesn't give a crap about diversity, which is ultimately the best
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answer I've ever heard. And it's, it's when you get into, into uniform, you, you get discriminated
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against generally in three ways. Okay. It's your element. So either army, Navy, or air force,
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your trade and your rank. And that's just to build a spree to core and there's banter and that sort of
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thing. No one cares about the color of your skin or what's between your legs. We care about what is
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between your ears. So all of this stuff that's happening with academia and what they're doing,
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it's being funded by the government. And what we're, what's worrisome is we're seeing a similarity
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between, uh, what's happening, what's happened in China with the CCP and what's happening here.
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And how I, uh, what I mean is that in China, uh, the, their military is beholden to the party.
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It's beholden to the CCP and not the state. And we're starting to see that here in Canada
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is that the Canadian forces is becoming beholden to the liberal party and their ideology and not
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the state. This idea that we're seeing, I, cause the, the, the, the whole, like we're a systemically
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racist institution that goes back a couple of years now, this article that, or the series
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of articles from the summer that a true North reported on yesterday. Was this really a creation
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of the last couple of years? Or did you start to see this, both of you near the end of your
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service? And I don't know what years you left, but had, had you started to see shades of this
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trend then, or has it really just been a blunt instrument as of late?
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Yeah. So I, I can, I'll speak to that just ahead of Tom, cause I know he got out a while
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ago. I, I just got out just over two, uh, just over two years ago. And we lose Drew, I
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hear him. I don't see him. I don't see him either. It might, it might come back. I mean,
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there's a snow storm in Ontario. All right. Well, I'll go to you first, Tom, while we're
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getting Drew sorted out. So in the early nineties, like I left the military in 2015, but even in
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the early to mid nineties, we had this, uh, training program. It was called sharp. It
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was an acronym for sexual harassment and all these things. And we had to undergo a
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lot of this training, but it was interesting because the, the training was put on by non,
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um, non veterans or non, uh, currently serving military. They were, you know, academic think
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tank people coming in and trying to reshape the culture of the military. Yet none of the
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people who were responsible for creating this training ever served in the military. So
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they don't understand the culture, you know, and what I found really interesting about, um,
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your colleague in the article that, that was, was put out, you know, you've got these academics
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who are academically tied to the defense academy in Kingston. Yet I see no evidence that they
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actually ever served in uniform. So how is it that they are trying to reshape currently the
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culture of the military? We're in, in the past, they've never even been part of it. And this
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is a problem when academics try to get involved in a culture that they don't fully appreciate
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because they haven't even so much as done basic training. Now I've done basic training once in
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the reserves. And then as an officer, I had to redo it. And yes, there are training evolutions you go
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through. Um, annually, there are some things, but it's never been as obvious and egregious as it is
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right now, where they've gone so far to attack things like, you know, even masculinity. I mean,
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I'm sorry, but we need, we need aggressive men and women in uniform who do the business of violence.
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Okay. And I find, you know, you, you raise the example of the, uh, you know, the tattoos and the
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dyed hair and the, even the nail polish and earring in my day, that was absolutely unheard of. Okay. You,
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you had to be focused on the business of war, not the, the, the business of social engineering,
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like we're seeing right now. And yes, this has slowly been creeping in over, over years,
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but since this current liberal government has gone in, they have completely terraformed the
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Canadian armed forces into something very, um, non, non-serious, non-serious. I mean,
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if Canada were to go to war today, who in the hell would be intimidated by the fact that the
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Canadians are now coming? And I want to leave this one last point. Um, you know, Rommel had said the
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perfect military, the, the most deadly military in the world would have been German officers,
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American equipment and Canadian soldiers. And I don't think that equation holds true
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any longer, unfortunately. Yeah. And, and to your point about masculinity, I, I'm not sure any
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Afghan, Afghan girls that had an education for the first time in their lives, uh, because of the
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Canadian military and other allied forces there. I don't think they were complaining about toxic
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masculinity when the soldiers came to town, uh, against the Taliban, just to give one recent
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example here. Uh, drew, you, you got cut off by technology there. We were talking about kind
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of when this started and I'm curious about your experience here. Yeah. So I got out just over,
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uh, two years ago and the anti-racism in DEI training was just starting to trickle in. Uh,
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you know, I was someone who was told that, uh, I had to go into the communist style struggle
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sessions where they said, Oh, y'all white men, bad, not even be putting on by better or sort of
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current military members. It was being put on by, you know, government, you know, they're bureaucrats
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and stuff who were coming down and doing this training in academia. And, and really in six years,
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we have seen three instances of right-wing extremism or white supremacy in the calf. It was,
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uh, Patrick Matthews, Boris, Mihalovic, and then the proud boy incident in 2017. That's three incidents
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from my last year at the recruiting center in Toronto, we saw three instances of attacks on
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our recruiting center. Two were by, um, uh, I guess when I say jihadi type attacks, and one was done
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by a left-wing, uh, Antifa woman. And the media wasn't down there reporting on those, but you can
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sure believe if it was some sort of white, white, uh, supremacist attack on our recruiting center,
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they would have been down there reporting it. So they've been pushing this bogus narrative for a
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while. And you can talk to any current serving member where Al's at an all time low because of
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these commie style struggle sessions is being forced on them. That's not what the job of the military is.
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If you ask an infantry, their job is to close with and destroy the enemy. They don't care who's beside
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them as long as they're well-trained and they can trust them with their lives. So this has been coming
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and it's going to continue to come. And there's no pushback from senior leadership, uh, within the
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military. I have an email chain saved that I had with the vice admiral where he was telling me to
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read anti-racist by Ibrahim X. Kendi. And I read it and I pushed back him and said, this goes completely
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against the ethos of the Canadian armed forces. So we're going to continue to see this and we get
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all sorts of tips and emails from serving members telling us the stuff that they have to go through.
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And that's why they're, uh, the attrition rate is three times the regular rate. And that's why
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guys like me who, uh, released earlier getting out because it's just, uh, it's just nonsense. And
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it's, uh, we're not like a, the Canadian forces in the passport office. Okay. We are completely
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different entity in society. And, uh, there's just so much creep, uh, that's stuff that's crept in from
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the likes of, you know, Barbara Perry and, um, the Ontario technical Institute. And they, they just
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gave a bunch of money to a man named Andy Knight, who was at university of Alberta professor, who's
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going to study white, white supremacy in the Canadian forces. So it's just a false and bogus
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Is your sense, Tom, that the military leadership have bought into this, or are they just basically
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taking their marching orders from cabinet and government or seeing the writing on the wall
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and, and that this is the way things are going?
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Yeah, absolutely. I do believe that the senior leadership of the Canadian forces has bought
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completely into this. And, you know, I tweeted about this yesterday where, you know, there was,
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um, the American veterans and currently serving members have created this declaration of accountability
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where, you know, um, there, there's a group of over 200, I believe 230, uh, currently serving in re, uh,
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retired American veterans who want accountability against the joint chiefs of staff for all of their
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actions, uh, during COVID. And, um, you know, my tweet was actually about the same thing is that the
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Canadian armed forces members, um, had the same, have the same duty. I mean, you learn this in basic
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training in the first week when you're covering military law, you as a subordinate, uh, rank when
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you're trained, have a duty to report a crime if you witness it being committed. And if so actually
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lay charges. And that doesn't matter if the person committing the crime is of a higher rank than you,
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you've got a duty to take action because, you know, it's a professional organization with its own,
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uh, body of laws. It's got its own criminal justice system. It has its own mechanisms to deal
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with these things. And the fact that it right now, the currently serving military members have never
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taken their superior officers to task tells you, it speaks volumes about the, the state of, um,
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buy-in from senior leaders who are protecting their careers, not the integrity of the institution of the
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Canadian armed forces, but they're protecting their careers. They're not risking their pensions or their
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livelihoods or their reputations on pushing back against this ideology. And I think that that in
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itself is a massive leader of failure or a failure of leadership on, on behalf of, let's say,
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Lieutenant colonels and above, or even majors who are the first rank of senior officer. Very few instances
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we've seen this. Um, I can think of one major that did a video in uniform where you push back against
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the actions of the senior leadership of the forces, but that's the only example I can come up with.
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And, you know, I believe some people should stay in and fight from the inside, try to make it better.
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But the reality is that the best people are going to get out of the way. They're going to leave the
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military in the garbage is going to percolate to the top and they're going to occupy those senior
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positions within the Canadian forces. And they will remain beholden to the liberal party of Canada,
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Canada, not to Canadians, not to the institution of the Canadian armed forces. That's where their
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loyalties are going to lie in their next promotion. And their next promotion is going to be contingent
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on how woke you are and how much you abide by this gender ideology and all these other things,
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right? I mean, we, we have quotas, 25% of all the occupations we want to fill by women.
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That's not based on capability. That's based on this bizarre quota of what your gender is and what
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your skin color is. It's not based on capability. And the, you know, up until recently, the fundamental
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idea was that your capabilities were what earned you the position within the Canadian armed forces.
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You know, you don't have the right to join the Canadian armed forces. You have the right to apply.
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You don't have to be accepted, but to be accepted, you have to meet a minimum standard. And Drew could
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probably talk about what's happening now with the CFAT score, which is the Canadian forces
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aptitude test. So, you know, I do think that there's some nefarious things happening so that
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senior officers can get promoted into more advanced positions than they currently hold.
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Well, yeah. And obviously if we are embracing diversity and DEI and anti-whiteness
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and anti-colonialism and all of this, which you clearly are, we see this in the documentation,
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it stands to reason that that's going to become at the core of hiring and promotion practices. And
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I mean, obviously, no true meritocracy really exists. There are always biases and nepotism and
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things that can seep their way in. But the idea that senior military strategists or people who are
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supposed to be strategists are going to be decided based on how many diversity checkboxes you can
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tick isn't really all that far off, is it, Drew? I mean, and you think, I mean, this is the whole
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point of that intersectionality idea that these academics who have never served, as Tom points out,
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are talking about here. It said, oh, well, yeah, this guy may have led, you know, 20 successful
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campaigns, but oh, this one's a transgendered indigenous person in a wheelchair. This is our
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our new admiral. No, exactly. And I'll just touch base on one thing that Tom said is the difference.
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So we know and we're, I guess, partnered with the American guys who put forth that military
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accountability document. The difference down there is they actually have senior officers who are signed
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on to this, guys with credibility and who are known within the community. With V4F, we're at over 3,000
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members. We have a handful of four ringers, so either captain navies or colonels, but we've never,
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we haven't had any sort of major general or admiral push back and step up. Now, General Mason has been
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doing some good work. He's been speaking out against sort of the wokeness effect in the CAF, which is great,
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but there needs to be more senior officers and senior NCOs who speak out about this stuff.
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And that's, sorry, what was your question again, Andrew? I guess I lost my train of thought.
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I can't remember. Your answer was good enough, but I was basically just asking about whether
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diversity, diversity hires are going to become the new norm with how things are going. And,
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you know, the general, the vice admiral, all these leaders are not going to be people that were
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these, you know, brilliant tacticians and strategists and operators, but are actually just going to be
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people that are chosen for these intersectional diversity categories.
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Yeah. So you're a hundred percent spot on. So when I was in recruiting, so I was a military
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career counselor, I would really sign off, the guys sign off on the files to get them
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sort of approved and onto the competition list, which has been watered down. But at that time,
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women who were applying to the Canadian Armed Forces didn't have to pass the aptitude test to be
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able to be approved and put on the thing. So they had lowered the standards there for women just to get
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them on the list and how they actually select applicants, but that's a whole nother story.
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It is now, this is something that we released on our social medias yesterday,
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is for just under 50% of the trades in the Canadian Armed Forces, they've waived the requirement to pass
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the Canadian Forces aptitude test. And that aptitude test tests you in three things. It tests you in
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math, it tests you in English, tests you on your spatial awareness. And based on your scores,
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it will dictate to us, the military career counselors, what occupations you're good for.
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That's not even happening anymore. So 47 trades no longer require that aptitude test. Now I talked to
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our source at CFRG, Canadian Forces Recruiting Group Headquarters, and he said that this is being done
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for two reasons. One, to help push through the 2600 permanent residents who've applied to the Canadian
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Armed Forces, and two, to help meet what we call EE employment equity quotas, which I believe is 25%
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women. These are the goals, 25% women, 15% visible minority, and I think it's four or five percent
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Indigenous. So they're lowering the standard of the troops in the military to help achieve the
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their DEI targets, which is, you know, it's unacceptable. You never lower the standard,
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especially when people's lives are on the line. I mean, that used to be when this came up with
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firefighters years ago, this used to be the most obvious pushback on this, which is, you know,
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someone like me doesn't drop 100 pounds if the firefighter is a woman. So this is, I think,
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the painful reality here. Well, I'm glad you gentlemen are speaking up about this. Thank you for your
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service and for your time today. Drew McGilvery from Veterans for Freedom and Tom Marazzo, also
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from Veterans for Freedom, but also the author of the book, The People's Emergency Act. Thank you very
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much, gentlemen. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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