Juno News - National Post whitewashes a Nazi slogan to defend Chrystia Freeland

00:00:00.000 The Legacy Media has finally acknowledged that Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland

00:00:03.980 held an extremist banner at a Ukrainian rally last weekend. But rather than seeking to hold

00:00:08.680 Chrystia Freeland accountable for holding the banner, they seek to hold True North

00:00:13.060 accountable for reporting on it. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.140 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. So as you recall earlier this week,

00:00:25.640 True North broke the story that Chrystia Freeland was at a Ukrainian rally. She was photographed

00:00:30.040 holding this red and black banner. The banner represents the Bandera movement, a far-right

00:00:34.780 extremist Nazi movement in Ukraine. It's named after Stefan Bandera, who wasn't just a Nazi

00:00:40.560 collaborator. He was a Nazi. He led this militant far-right group, a nationalist group. They

00:00:45.420 worked with the Nazis. He had his own hand in carrying out Adolf Hitler's Holocaust. He was 0.85

00:00:50.220 responsible for killing upwards of a hundred thousand Jews and Poles in Ukraine during the

00:00:56.680 Second World War, as despicable as you can possibly imagine. And yet here is our finance minister,

00:01:02.480 Deputy Prime Minister, not just holding the banner. She posted this photo. It was posted on her own

00:01:07.580 social media, on Twitter and Instagram on Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning, her or her staff deleted

00:01:13.340 that photo and found a more sanitized version of the same photo where she was not holding this

00:01:18.220 controversial flag. So True North reported on it. I suspect at the time I speculated that I didn't

00:01:23.740 think that the legacy media would pick it up, right? When a conservative goes to a trucker rally

00:01:28.040 and some provocateur shows up on a different side of the rally there for 10 minutes with a Nazi flag,

00:01:33.440 every single conservative and every single trucker at that rally is smeared in the media

00:01:37.400 as a Nazi. Justin Trudeau said in the House of Commons that the conservatives were standing with

00:01:42.020 those who wave swastikas, a complete fabrication, completely untrue, a smear and a lie,

00:01:47.520 but the media happily repeated it. And on the contrary, when we have a liberal politician

00:01:52.680 holding up a banner that to people who understand, to people who know what this means,

00:01:57.500 it can represent and signify an allegiance to a Nazi leader during the Second World War,

00:02:03.580 same era, who worked with Adolf Hitler, who murdered scores and scores of Jews in Eastern Europe.

00:02:09.060 It's unconscionable. I didn't think the media would pick it up. So I have some good news today

00:02:12.740 to report, which is that yes, the media has picked up the story. Unfortunately for everybody,

00:02:18.400 the way that the media spin this story, it is absolutely unbelievable. So I'm going to go through

00:02:22.720 this piece in the National Post pretty carefully and explain absolutely everything wrong with it.

00:02:28.020 So the National Post, Tristan Hopper, just to say it straight off the bat, many conservatives still

00:02:32.700 consider the National Post to be a reputable newspaper. They still believe that it is the

00:02:37.760 conservative alternative to say the Globe and Mail, CBC or the Toronto Star. Well, this episode

00:02:42.760 of the Candace Malcolm show, this article in the National Post tell us sadly that that is just no

00:02:47.720 longer the case. The National Post is no better than the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail.

00:02:53.260 They're shills for the liberals. And this piece demonstrates why. Okay, so here it is National

00:02:57.600 Post. Did Christia Freeland pose with extremist symbols or is it Russian disinformation? The headline

00:03:04.320 asks. And then the sub headline here sort of answers that question. It says, a classic KGB

00:03:09.000 disinformation smear is accusing Ukrainians and Ukrainian Canadians of being forward extremists

00:03:14.380 or fascists or Nazis, Christia Freeland's press secretary says. So they ask a question in the

00:03:19.380 headline and then there's Christia Freeland's press secretary in the sub headline answering the

00:03:24.300 question saying, no, it's not extremist. It's just Russian disinformation. And anyone who's sharing

00:03:29.520 this story must be sharing Russian disinformation. So like I said, I'm going to read through this piece

00:03:35.120 pretty closely. So here we go. Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Christia Freeland is being assailed

00:03:40.600 with online accusations that she posed with far right symbols at a pro-Ukraine rally in Toronto.

00:03:46.460 But the symbols may not be as far right as critics claim. And Freeland's office is saying the whole

00:03:51.500 thing reeks of Russian sponsored disinformation. So again, if you're reporting on this, if you're talking

00:03:56.880 about this, it must be Russian sponsored disinformation. Okay, let's keep reading.

00:04:03.280 On Sunday, Freeland joined several thousand demonstrators at a pro-Ukraine rally in downtown

00:04:06.760 Toronto. In a photograph her office subsequently posted on Twitter, Freeland can be seen holding up

00:04:12.120 a red and black scarf bearing the slogan Slava Ukraini or glory to Ukraine. Observers were quick

00:04:18.620 to note that red and black were the official colors of the Ukrainian insurgent army, a nationalist

00:04:23.060 partisan group active during the Second World War. Although the group fought against both

00:04:26.720 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, a faction led by Stefan Bandera would ally itself with German

00:04:32.160 forces and became an active participant in the Holocaust, directly killing thousands of Jews and

00:04:37.000 an estimated 100,000 Poles. It's why red and black flags remain a favored symbol of the Ukrainian

00:04:42.980 far right. The colors are a prominent feature of an annual torch-lit march through Kiev held by far

00:04:49.900 white nationalists to honor Bandera. A widely circulated photo by the Canadian right-wing site,

00:04:55.960 True North put it, Freeland posed with a pro-Nazi banner. So you can see here that Tristan Hopper uses

00:05:01.960 similar facts to what we had in our True North piece to verify and validate that Chrystia Freeland

00:05:06.880 was in fact holding a banner that most people would associate, most people in the Ukrainian community

00:05:10.920 would associate with Bandera, who was a Nazi, who participated in the Holocaust, and that those colors, 0.54

00:05:17.180 that banner, are used during an annual torch-lit march, a neo-Nazi march through Kiev held by far

00:05:23.300 right nationalists. So he verifies our report. He verifies our report. He smears us as being a

00:05:29.140 right-wing site in the context of a story talking about the far-right being Nazis. So he kind of puts

00:05:34.800 us one step away from Nazis. He's saying far-right is Nazis. This is a right-wing site, not far-right,

00:05:40.100 but right-wing, so right next to Nazis. The whole thing is a smear. And then he goes on to say

00:05:45.120 People's Party of Canada leader, Maxime Bernier, put out a tweet Tuesday accusing Canada of having

00:05:51.280 a Nazi as a prime minister. And he showed the same photo and he later tweeted our piece. Now, 0.62

00:05:56.380 I just want to point out the fact that I myself was critical of Maxime Bernier for using this

00:06:01.760 language. I put out this tweet. I said, we now have two federal leaders who smeared the other

00:06:05.620 side as Nazis. Our political discourse in Canada is reaching parity levels. And there's this funny 0.72

00:06:10.200 meme. Everyone I don't like is Hitler, an emotional child's guide to political discussion. 0.68

00:06:16.700 And I quote tweeted Maxime Bernier there because he claims that Chrystia Freeland is a Nazi. And to

00:06:21.740 clarify, I wrote another one. I said, my report yesterday illustrates that Freeland is callous

00:06:25.440 and reckless with her support of sketchy groups in Ukraine. She's playing into Russian propaganda, 0.78

00:06:29.160 and she's a blatant hypocrite. Not that she's a literal Nazi. We shouldn't stoop to their level 1.00

00:06:34.300 of rhetoric. Yes, Justin Trudeau and the liberals love to smear all of their opponents and everyone

00:06:38.560 they disagree with. As Nazis, I don't think their opponents should stoop to that level. I don't think

00:06:42.720 that people like Maxime Bernier or the head of the conservative parties should just turn around and

00:06:46.620 accuse them back of being Nazis. I don't think that's productive. I don't think that's helpful.

00:06:50.100 And yet the way that Kristen Hopper frames it by putting my piece out saying that I accused her of

00:06:54.640 being pro-Nazi and then Maxime Bernier accused her of being a Nazi kind of puts it as if we had the

00:06:59.820 same opinion, even though I distinctly condemned Maxime Bernier for making that accusation. But don't expect

00:07:05.060 that level of accuracy or nuance from this report from a lazy journalist over at the National Post.

00:07:11.060 Okay, so to keep going here, Tristan Hopper writes, soon after its posting, the original photo was

00:07:16.100 deleted and replaced with an image of Freeland without the scarf. So again, he acknowledges that

00:07:22.300 Freeland deleted the picture, which to a point I also made on Twitter, this is a tacit acknowledgement

00:07:27.020 that she shouldn't have been taking pictures with that red and black scarf. The red and black scarf

00:07:30.900 represents a far right movement. It represents an actual Nazi. And Chrystia Freeland is at fault for 0.67

00:07:36.780 posting that original picture and for being in the audience and holding it in the first place. And

00:07:41.520 just I want to interject. Some people say, oh, she didn't know what she was doing. She's naive. 0.91

00:07:45.740 Give me a break. Chrystia Freeland is one of the most knowledgeable people about Ukraine,

00:07:50.320 Ukrainian politics. She spent much of her life, much of her career in Ukraine. She's a Ukrainian

00:07:53.880 speaker, a Russian speaker. She's incredibly intelligent. She went to Harvard and Oxford and was a Rhodes 0.81

00:07:58.780 scholar. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's written multiple books on the subject.

00:08:03.220 Don't tell me that she's naive and she didn't know what she was doing. She knew exactly what she was

00:08:06.280 doing. Okay, let's get back to Tristan Hopper and the National Post and their pro-liberal spin.

00:08:11.440 It says, Freeland's office confirmed that they removed the original photo after it began to be

00:08:16.060 circulated by accounts critical of the scarf's presence. A photo was taken, tweeted, and later replaced

00:08:21.520 when it was clear some accounts were distorting the intent of the rally and the photo, read a statement by

00:08:27.020 Freeland's press secretary, Adrian Vupshaft. She added that the origins of the scarf were unknown.

00:08:32.720 Okay, so fair enough. Include a statement from the deputy prime minister and her spokesperson. The piece

00:08:38.680 then moves on to, quote, a director of the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies. So this individual,

00:08:44.780 Natalia Kachenko-Friesen, told the National Post that the red and black symbology for Ukraine long

00:08:50.420 predates its adoption by extremist groups. She noted that the red and black banners can be seen in

00:08:55.560 paintings dating back to the 17th century. Okay, now this part's truly, truly unbelievable. This is

00:09:01.140 one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen. This paragraph right here. So the same scholar,

00:09:05.340 the Ukrainian-Canadian scholar, her name's Kachenko-Friesen, she defends the concept of blood

00:09:11.700 and soil. So she says, the black represents Ukrainian soil, while the red symbolizes blood. So blood and soil.

00:09:18.420 Although Kachenko-Friesen, a scholar of Ukrainian folklore, said it's not traditionally understood as

00:09:23.400 blood in any violent context. Okay, so they're allowed to say blood and soil, because it's not blood

00:09:28.340 in a violent context. She says, blood is life and blossom, and not as blood loss in battle, she said.

00:09:34.080 Red and black remain common color scheme in traditional Ukrainian embroidery. So let's just stop and

00:09:40.160 acknowledge how absolutely incredible this is. Tristan Hopper, the National Post, defending the concept

00:09:46.040 of blood and soil. Blood and soil. You can't make this stuff up. Remember when those loser white 1.00

00:09:51.380 nationalists were marching with their dumb little tiki torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, back in 1.00

00:09:56.000 2017. Do you remember their creepy chants? Do you remember what they were saying? They were saying 1.00

00:09:59.440 blood and soil, blood and soil. And back in 2017, we were uniformly told by the legacy media that that

00:10:06.300 was a Nazi chant. Here's what that looked like.

00:10:18.820 Now at the time in 2017, this is how the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing group, this is how

00:10:24.360 they describe that chant, blood and soil. They write this, blood and soil, possibly the most disturbing of

00:10:29.560 all chants heard in Charlottesville. This is the English rendition of Nazi Germany's most fervent chant,

00:10:34.460 Blut and Boden, originally devised as a 19th century German national slogan,

00:10:39.500 popularized by Nazi ideology. The phrase is intended to invoke patriotic identification

00:10:44.120 with native national identity. And based on the foundation of virulent anti-Semitism and racism,

00:10:50.300 it later became a key component of Adolf Hitler's program seeking to expand territory occupied by the

00:10:55.680 Germans. That was a major factor in the Holocaust. The slogan has been adopted by the alt-right,

00:11:00.360 particularly its openly neo-Nazi element to emphasize its own nativist and liminalist agenda.

00:11:07.400 So blood and soil, we all agree, is a creepy Nazi slogan. Very, very bad in the context of people

00:11:14.100 using it in North America. And yet, however, here's the National Post twisting itself into a pretzel

00:11:19.780 to say it's okay when Chrystia Freeland is holding up the same banner, the same National Post, by the way,

00:11:25.100 the same newspaper, National Post, back in 2018, had an article condemning the use of this phrase,

00:11:31.360 blood and soil. Here is this article, how the violent Charlottesville rally unmasked key players

00:11:36.280 in Montreal's alt-right. On August 11th, the Montrealers joined a torch march through Charlottesville,

00:11:42.020 blending into the crowd that chanted blood and soil. So it was despicable for its use in North America

00:11:48.560 a few years ago. But when Chrystia Freeland participates in it in 2022, well, it's no big

00:11:54.660 deal because really the red doesn't represent blood. It represents flowers. Okay, National Post,

00:12:00.660 what a joke, willing to defend blood and soil to protect their gal, Chrystia Freeland. I've never

00:12:06.020 seen anything like this before. Okay, it continues. They find more experts to accuse groups like True

00:12:12.160 North of spreading KGB propaganda. So I'll continue to read. It says, Marcus Kolga is a McDonald's

00:12:18.540 Laurier fellow who runs Disinfo Watch, a website tracking foreign disinformation narratives. He was

00:12:24.120 also at the Sunday rally not far away from where the scarf was taken. Kolga told the National Post

00:12:28.920 that anyone touting the photograph as evidence of any Nazi sympathies among the Canadian federal

00:12:33.940 government are unwittingly participating in an active Russian information operation. One of the

00:12:40.480 narratives that they, the Russian Federation, use is to smear critics as being fascists or Nazis, he said,

00:12:45.460 adding that is something that Soviet sources were directing at Ukrainian Canadian community as far

00:12:49.420 back as the 1970s. So again, Chrystia Freeland would know all this, right? She would know that this flag

00:12:55.240 is used as propaganda by the Russians, that she shouldn't be holding it, that as far back as the

00:13:00.100 1970s, they use this line of thinking and they use this line of propaganda to smear Ukrainians as being

00:13:07.060 far-right Nazis. And yet it isn't Chrystia Freeland's fault for being at the rally, holding the flag,

00:13:13.220 taking a picture and posting it. No, no, no. Anybody using this as evidence is unwilling. Anyone

00:13:19.400 sharing this information, anybody posting this, anybody writing about it, groups like True North,

00:13:23.900 who Chrystian Hopper described as being right-wing, we are the ones that are participating in the

00:13:28.220 Russian information operation, not Chrystia Freeland. See how that all works? See how nice that always

00:13:33.020 works out for the Liberals. They're never at fault. The people who are trying to hold them

00:13:36.620 accountable are the one at fault. I'll continue to read, look, here's Chrystian Hopper finding a

00:13:41.240 fourth person who agrees with him, who defends Chrystia Freeland. So to continue reading,

00:13:46.220 disinformation is a real threat and Canadians need to be vigilant, said Eeyore Mikulchinskin,

00:13:51.020 and I apologize for probably mispronouncing that name, the CEO of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress,

00:13:55.400 he told the National Post when asked about the controversy regarding Freeland's holding a black

00:14:00.620 and red scarf. So there you have it. Four people quoted, Chrystia Freeland's spokesperson and three

00:14:06.420 other people who are all willing to defend Chrystia Freeland say it is not her fault,

00:14:10.260 but it is the fault of people who are talking about this and sharing the image and making the

00:14:14.640 connections and reporting on it, trying to hold her accountable. They're the ones who are sharing

00:14:18.600 in misinformation and propaganda. You really can't make this stuff up. So you get this.

00:14:23.560 Chrystia Freeland is not to blame. It isn't her fault that she posted the photograph. It's not her

00:14:27.780 fault that she was in the photograph, that she was holding the flag, that she took the photograph

00:14:31.540 and that she herself posted it. None of those are her fault. That's not her fault at all. The ones

00:14:36.100 who are at fault are groups like True North for covering it. We're the ones who are, quote,

00:14:40.580 unwittingly participating in an active Russian information operation, unquote, according to the 0.99

00:14:45.460 useful idiots over at the McDonald Laurier Institute. What a joke. So she's not the one that's playing 1.00

00:14:51.060 into Russian propaganda. True North is for reporting it. See how that works. Must be so nice to be a

00:14:56.820 liberal in Canada. Journalists are notoriously lazy and stupid. And I don't suspect that Tristan 1.00

00:15:01.620 Hopper actually bothered to read the article that he linked to my article that this was all based on.

00:15:06.500 If Tristan Hopper had bothered to read my piece, he would have known that I was well aware of the

00:15:10.740 Russian propaganda campaign surrounding this issue. That is why I was holding the minister accountable

00:15:16.500 for holding the flag, unlike the National Post, who's trying to hold me accountable for writing

00:15:20.900 about it. So I'm just going to go back for Tristan Hopper, for anyone who didn't bother reading my

00:15:24.420 piece. This was published on Monday night. This is what I said about it. I said this.

00:15:28.500 This all creates two major problems for Christie Freeland and the liberals. The first is a tremendous

00:15:32.900 double standard at play. Just weeks ago, Trudeau and his allies in legacy media relentlessly smeared

00:15:37.860 the trucker convoy as Nazis because of one still unidentified provocateur who crashed the protest

00:15:44.100 before quickly disappearing. Trudeau infamously called a conservative MP of Jewish heritage,

00:15:49.220 Melissa Lantzman, accused her of standing with people who wave swastikas. They smeared an

00:15:54.180 entire group by a single despicable flag spotted near the protest. Now, in the case of Christia

00:15:59.220 Freeland at the Ukrainian rally in Toronto, she wasn't simply spotted at the same rally as a Nazi,

00:16:04.260 she was literally holding the flag. Okay, this is the part where I get into the Russian information

00:16:09.460 again, reading from my piece, which was published on Monday night. The second major problem this

00:16:13.700 presents for Freeland and liberals is that they are opening themselves to smears and propaganda from

00:16:18.980 the Putin regime. When Putin announced his invasion into Ukraine, the justification he provided in

00:16:24.020 in part was to denazify the country. Putin's war efforts rely on propaganda presenting the Ukrainian

00:16:29.220 government and its allies in the West, and yes, that includes Christia Freeland in Canada,

00:16:33.540 as supporting an extremist far-right Nazi movement. When a prominent Western leader is photographed

00:16:40.180 with a banner that represents the neo-Nazi movement, she is naively playing into Putin's hands.

00:16:45.860 Christia Freeland can scrub her own social media to her heart's content, but her photo holding the red and 0.94

00:16:50.260 black banner is making the rounds on social media and is being used on other websites, including

00:16:54.820 this NPR affiliate. This is a significant misstep by Freeland. Let's see if anyone in the media notices

00:17:00.580 or reports on it. Now notice how I pin the blame on Christia Freeland herself. That's sort of how 0.72

00:17:05.540 journalism is supposed to work. You're supposed to hold powerful people to account. But once again,

00:17:10.420 we learn that the media in Canada has different standards in dealing with liberals. So here you have

00:17:14.980 Post Media, once considered the last bastion of conservative thought left in the legacy media

00:17:20.340 here in Canada. But here they are, selling their souls, spinning for the liberals, smearing independent

00:17:25.300 journalists, and misleading their audience for what? Well, you can only assume it has something to do with

00:17:29.940 that $600 million newspaper bailout check written by one Justin Trudeau. They crafted an entire article

00:17:36.260 based on Christia Freeland's spin. Rather than holding the most powerful woman in Canadian politics 1.00

00:17:41.540 accountable for the flag that she held, knowing full well what it was and what it meant, the once

00:17:47.060 trustworthy National Post is holding me and us here at True North accountable for the crime of reporting

00:17:53.060 on Christia Freeland. It is unbelievable. They even go to the absurd extent of defending a Nazi slogan,

00:18:00.180 blood and soil, just to defend Christia Freeland. It is unbelievable. The National Post and its writer,

00:18:05.860 Tristan Hopper, are no better than the CBC. They're no better than the Toronto Star. They're willing to

00:18:10.100 say anything to stay in the Liberals' good books, to defend their friends in the Liberal Party,

00:18:15.300 even if it means selling out any credibility they had left with their audience. I'm Candace

00:18:20.020 Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - March 03, 2022

National Post whitewashes a Nazi slogan to defend Chrystia Freeland

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