Juno News - Parental rights protesters and gender ideology activists square off

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.400 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north midway

00:01:31.160 through the week wednesday september 20th it is wonderful to have you aboard the program a big

00:01:38.020 day if you've been following true north's coverage all across this country you'll know

00:01:41.840 that the million march for children it's sometimes called the million person march

00:01:47.080 is underway and we have reporters out on the scene in toronto in ottawa in edmonton in calgary

00:01:55.380 we've had citizen journalists send us stuff from all over we've got someone in vancouver we've got

00:02:01.400 people that have i mean there were cities i didn't even know were having their own

00:02:05.000 like in pickering i had a woman who i actually met while we were reporting on the conservative

00:02:09.800 convention just sent me some details about the protests that are going on there and i don't know

00:02:14.940 they got to the million mark. Some of these have a few hundred to a few thousand people and there

00:02:20.100 are certainly large numbers of counter protesters but I think it is an interesting dilemma that we

00:02:26.580 see when on one hand we have a group of people mainly parental rights advocates that are coming

00:02:31.560 together and saying we want to have a say over what our children learn in schools and then you've

00:02:37.180 got unions that are responding with messages like this one in this photograph. Oh, this, no,

00:02:45.400 this is Nillie Kaplan-Mirth. So before we, this isn't the one, but this one's actually fantastic

00:02:50.620 because she is trying to lead some of the counter protesters there, but she can't because she had

00:02:56.180 COVID despite wearing like a mask everywhere she goes and, and like, you know, getting her 19th

00:03:03.860 booster or whatever. But I like the guidance she gives for how to protest. She says, mask up,

00:03:10.120 don't film allies, which is like a weird line. Come with friends, don't talk to cops and don't

00:03:16.000 debate fascists. So those are the five rules to Nilly Kaplan. No, sorry, I meant Sean. Sean's

00:03:22.700 asking the sign that Harrison took a picture of at the Toronto rally. That's the one I'm going

00:03:27.480 after here. There we go. You don't own your kids. Now this is a really chilling message. Now I said,

00:03:36.140 I think the confusion was I said union activists. I don't know if the person holding this sign is

00:03:40.240 one of the union protesters. Generally, I think union folks have been the ones leading the charge

00:03:45.700 in organizing these counter protests. But the argument when you see something like this, no,

00:03:51.680 no one owns their children. No one owns another human being. That's what being in a free society

00:03:56.400 is. But they're not taking issue with the fact that we are seeing parents claiming they own

00:04:04.500 their kids. They're taking issue with the fact that they, as teachers, don't. And that's the

00:04:09.920 real part of this that I think people need to realize. It's not that they're actually making

00:04:14.420 the enlightenment liberal argument that no one owns children. They're actually saying that

00:04:18.800 teachers know better than parents. And that's why this dilemma that we're seeing

00:04:24.900 and between the counter-protesters and the protesters

00:04:30.720 is something that we need to pay attention to

00:04:33.100 because I would say at its core,

00:04:34.820 and I'll talk about this in a few minutes,

00:04:36.580 this is how society should work.

00:04:38.240 People have an issue with the system.

00:04:39.840 They protest the system.

00:04:40.900 People have an issue with the protesters.

00:04:42.560 They want to protest the protesters.

00:04:44.200 That's fine.

00:04:44.720 But the counter-protest is kind of weird on its face

00:04:47.880 for that reason

00:04:48.760 and that they've already got what it is they want.

00:04:51.740 They have.

00:04:52.380 So the only reason they're out there counter-protesting

00:04:54.760 is because they feel they're losing and it's because they see the tide turning against them

00:04:59.140 and they see parents starting to unite together groups that have not historically seen eye to eye

00:05:04.460 on to things and they're doing this so as I mentioned we've got reporters on the scene at

00:05:09.600 many of these events across the country Harrison Faulkner is in Toronto and I think you prematurely

00:05:15.120 got a glimpse of Harrison earlier but we have him on now maturely I guess Harrison good to talk to

00:05:20.560 where whereabouts are you right now i am coming to you live from bloor street hold on let me just

00:05:25.220 make sure i've got my my camera here i'm coming to you live from bloor street where the protesters

00:05:30.680 have moved from queens park and we're now marching uh if you can see this is the front up here

00:05:36.400 and we've got a lot of true north fans around here so it's uh it's it's been great but but

00:05:43.480 yeah andrew this has been a large protest uh we're looking at probably 2 000 people who have

00:05:48.520 turned out today parents grandparents students uh and as i'm sure you've already mentioned a very

00:05:53.720 large contingent of muslims have have come here to protest gender ideology everything has remained

00:05:59.900 peaceful though uh despite the counter protesters making their presence felt encircling the protests

00:06:05.960 at one point but uh it looks as though the million march for children protests in toronto have moved

00:06:11.680 and are now making their way across bloor street so let's talk about that muslim aspect there

00:06:18.380 Because I know this was a protest that was really spearheaded and organized by Muslim activists at first.

00:06:24.680 And I'm not asking you to do the identity politics game and start like measuring every crowd by its diversity.

00:06:30.540 But how much is that factoring in?

00:06:32.460 Or is this really a pan-Canadian protest from what you're seeing?

00:06:36.400 No, it's a pan-Canadian protest.

00:06:38.380 There's obviously a large Muslim turnout here, but it covers the spectrum of Canadians.

00:06:44.040 I think you have a large Christian turnout, faith leaders of all religions have showed up, but of course, I think the part about it being organized by a group of Muslim parents is important because the counter-protesters have deemed this as some sort of fascist, racist gathering.

00:07:02.460 I asked people here if they'd seen anything like that on the ground.

00:07:06.760 And of course, it said no.

00:07:08.320 I think to be honest, Andrew, like most protests that we've covered about gender ideology,

00:07:13.440 the protesters are far more diverse than the counter protesters are, which I think is a

00:07:17.540 unique angle that not many people are talking about.

00:07:20.260 So let me ask about the counter protests.

00:07:22.940 I shared that picture you took earlier of the sign about parents not owning their kids.

00:07:28.000 And perhaps I was reading too much subtext into it, but I feel the concern there is that these folks are thinking that they do.

00:07:34.960 And, you know, remember that old Hillary Clinton line, it takes a village to raise a child.

00:07:38.540 There are people that think the rights of parents should be subordinated to the right of, you know, what they would view as the greater good here.

00:07:45.460 And what is it that the protesters are asking for?

00:07:48.220 I got a glimpse over your shoulder there of a sign that is basically leave our kids alone.

00:07:52.220 Like, what is it they want?

00:07:54.480 Well, the protesters just want to actually be able to, for example, know if their child is undergoing some sort of social transition at school.

00:08:03.120 That's a main thing.

00:08:04.340 I think the other thing is that they want to see normal curriculum being put in front of students.

00:08:09.780 Right now, we've seen the pictures, we've seen the reports, the things that teachers are showing children in schools is frankly absurd.

00:08:17.460 They just feel like their values are not being recognized.

00:08:21.480 Only values of the sort of the radical gender ideology crowd are being are being promoted.

00:08:30.520 And that's and that's that's basically it. Sorry, there's a lot of people around right now.

00:08:35.800 No, that's good. I mean, I know you're you're going to be taking photos with your fans later on.

00:08:40.100 So we're glad we haven't had too much photo bombing here.

00:08:43.700 You seem to have frozen right now.

00:08:45.700 So I don't know if this is the Internet gods telling us that the interview has run its course.

00:08:50.860 If we can get Harrison back, we will get him back on there.

00:08:54.180 I'm glad it froze on like a flattering face, though, at least.

00:08:57.280 So you're smiling there.

00:09:00.040 Thanks very much.

00:09:01.040 That is Harrison Faulkner coming to us from Toronto, where, again, I don't know the numbers.

00:09:06.460 He said probably about 2,000.

00:09:07.920 I always, always, always avoid crowd sizes because it becomes like the most thankless

00:09:14.460 and politicized and controversial part of any event coverage.

00:09:18.700 because like I remember with the convoy, you know, convoy organizers were saying, we don't know how

00:09:22.220 many people are here. And I asked one of the police officers, how many do you think there are?

00:09:26.340 And they said, well, you know, our numbers say 10,000. And then you get people jumping on you

00:09:30.080 saying, no, there are four people. And then no, there are 2 million people. So anyway, so Harrison

00:09:34.620 says 2000, I don't, he's going to get jumped on from both sides there. But I will say that that

00:09:41.200 was a pretty big crowd. You could hear the chance. We are going to go now to Ottawa, where we have

00:09:47.680 one of my other colleagues, Eli Kenton-Nantel. Now, Ottawa, I think, has been, I didn't know

00:09:52.420 this at first, it seems to be the largest one. Maybe some of the Alberta ones are doing pretty

00:09:58.400 well here. Eli, whereabouts are you now? Hi, Andrew. Okay, I was expecting you to have like

00:10:05.300 all the groupies as well. You're in a safe, secure location now. I am back home. I am safe

00:10:11.880 from the fundamentally racist, transphobic people

00:10:16.260 as the union wanted us to believe.

00:10:17.980 But yeah, I was at the protest all morning

00:10:20.620 and the crowds were huge.

00:10:22.760 And I expected there to be at least a thousand people there.

00:10:25.940 I think this is one of these silent majority issues.

00:10:28.380 And I did think it was going to kind of wake people up,

00:10:31.580 the size of the crowd,

00:10:33.280 but it was bigger than even I expected.

00:10:35.580 There were, when they started to march

00:10:38.080 because they gathered on the hill

00:10:39.320 and then they started marching

00:10:40.360 And I couldn't see the end on each side, how long it would.

00:10:44.040 They often had to stop marching because they needed people to catch up.

00:10:47.840 They were almost done their march and there were still people on the hill starting.

00:10:51.800 So there was definitely a lot of people, a lot of energy.

00:10:56.420 And the message, similar to what Harrison said, was leave the kids alone.

00:11:00.980 These were not hateful people.

00:11:03.180 And I would joke, as I joked at the start, and I was joking to people,

00:11:06.780 I was like, I'm here to find the bigots that they left warned about.

00:11:09.880 didn't find any of them in fact nobody that i talked to said they had an issue with gay or

00:11:14.440 trans people they simply want their kids to be taught what they believe is age-appropriate

00:11:19.960 education and they want rights and parental rights and parental consent and that was really

00:11:24.520 the strong message that we saw we have a clip that you took from the demonstration in ottawa we'll

00:11:31.160 play that now.

00:11:32.480 No more silence!

00:11:34.700 No more silence!

00:11:37.360 No more silence!

00:11:40.040 No more silence!

00:11:42.740 No more silence!

00:11:45.360 No more silence!

00:11:48.180 No more silence!

00:11:58.200 I will say first and foremost,

00:12:00.000 Anyone that was in that location during the Freedom Convoy protest will be grateful this one is in September and not January, February for a number of reasons.

00:12:09.340 But that was an interesting chant.

00:12:11.160 No more silence.

00:12:12.480 What were they really getting at in that moment?

00:12:15.620 Well, I think there's kind of two things and they're linked.

00:12:20.100 There's the actual physical silencing, which we see where parents go to school board meetings like we saw in Ottawa and they get shut down by woke trustees.

00:12:30.000 like Millie Kaplan-Mirth and others in other boards when they say things which the trustees

00:12:35.400 don't like. These parents are silenced. They're also silenced by school officials. And I think

00:12:39.840 there's a greater silence of society broad, where there's a lot of people, and there's a poll by

00:12:45.340 Angus Reid that had something like 78% of people that agree in parental rights over gender identity,

00:12:52.760 yet a lot of people are scared to talk about this because there is a mob, a small fringe minority,

00:12:58.800 a mob that equates any wish of parental rights to hatred and genocide and things like that.

00:13:08.240 And I think for that reason, a lot of people have been scared to speak out.

00:13:12.040 So to me, no more silent, man, these two things.

00:13:14.640 First of all, we will no longer be silenced by educrats.

00:13:17.140 And second of all, we will no longer be silenced by activists because we are not anti-trans.

00:13:21.500 We are not anti-gay.

00:13:22.660 We're not anti-LGBTQ.

00:13:24.180 what we are as pro-parent uh pro-children and we just want to be involved in our kids education

00:13:31.140 which i mean if you ask me andrew is is not a radical uh ask they're just asking for for basic

00:13:36.580 parental rights i was chatting a little bit about this earlier with harrison the the muslim factor

00:13:42.180 and and again i when i interviewed uh bahira abdul salaam and camille lsheikh on the show i i said

00:13:47.700 you know we could probably between the three of us at the time uh disagree on a lot of issues i mean

00:13:52.820 on some foreign policy issues, on some domestic policy issues, but on parental rights, it seems

00:13:59.440 like there is an ability to overlook those differences. And the evangelical Christian

00:14:03.940 and the Orthodox Jew and the Sikh and the Hindu and the Muslim and the atheist can all kind of

00:14:09.900 find common ground there. And I was just wondering if you could give a sense of what you saw on that,

00:14:15.440 because I think the Freedom Convoy, I mean, it's a different issue, but one of the reasons it was

00:14:19.680 so powerful is because you had these disparate groups like Quebecers and Albertans and Indigenous

00:14:24.640 people and non-Indigenous people coming together. Were you seeing that in real time this morning?

00:14:30.040 Oh, absolutely. And it was very much present. You had members of the Church of God,

00:14:35.660 Pastor Hildebrand's church, chatting with and marching with hijabis. There was some young

00:14:43.600 kind of, you know, white guys that were, you know, on the shoulders of young Muslim guys and they

00:14:49.580 were chanting, leave the kids alone. There was a lot of unity. There was a lot of unity. And this

00:14:54.360 is where it's great. This is what multiculturalism, I think, is all about. It's about coming together

00:14:59.240 and putting our differences aside and living in this diverse, pluralistic society that is Canada.

00:15:04.460 And we saw that on display. As you said, I'm sure a lot of these people could get in heated

00:15:09.180 arguments about religion it could get in heated arguments about foreign policy and whatnot but on

00:15:14.460 this issue it's we are all united basically is what they were telling me is they're all united

00:15:19.900 uh including united with some lgbs and even t's that are not in favor of this i will say what was

00:15:25.580 lgbs and even t's you sound like you're doing some like weird acrostic poem there but yeah

00:15:30.860 and also i will say what was striking is is on the other side you had the trans activists and

00:15:36.700 they were telling muslim immigrants to go home because they were opposing gender ideology and

00:15:42.860 from yeah it's amazing how the progressive diverse folks immediately become what they

00:15:47.580 say they're opposed to i mean they're the ones accusing everyone else of being fundamentally

00:15:50.940 and you're members of the ndp with them i mean i think this is this is the first time we have

00:15:55.020 members of the ndp standing alongside protesters that are mostly white telling muslim immigrants

00:16:01.340 to go home well i wanted to play this clip actually you mentioned uh the church of god

00:16:06.140 This is Pastor Henry Hildebrandt going, well, I wouldn't say toe-to-toe,

00:16:10.380 but certainly going a little bit verbally against Jagmeet Singh this morning.

00:16:15.920 Where's the government?

00:16:17.900 Where's the government?

00:16:18.900 The voice?

00:16:20.100 Do you stand with us?

00:16:21.820 Come on.

00:16:24.300 What's the problem?

00:16:26.380 What's the problem?

00:16:27.700 Unbelievable.

00:16:28.720 We're doing.

00:16:29.520 Unbelievable.

00:16:30.700 We're doing.

00:16:32.320 We're counting on you.

00:16:33.380 Come on, Jenny, there is our government, We're in this family, I'm going to let him

00:16:45.080 hear you- unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, no nation, no nation, no nation.

00:16:59.220 Transphobia's got to go.

00:17:00.720 Hey, hey, ho, ho, transphobia's got to go.

00:17:21.240 The guy, it looked like, that was getting in front of Pastor Hildebrandt

00:17:25.780 was, I'm pretty confident, NDP Member of Parliament, Matthew Green.

00:17:30.000 That was one of the things that we saw going on there.

00:17:33.640 And I would also point out, it's very easy at a glance to tell which side is the counter protesters,

00:17:38.920 because like 90% of them are wearing masks.

00:17:40.920 So if you're ever like trying to follow along at home and wonder whose side each side is on,

00:17:45.860 the ones wearing the masks are the union protesters.

00:17:48.380 But Jagmeet Singh, a guy who sits in the halls of government,

00:17:51.120 a guy who basically cheerlead for the Emergencies Act, is out there protesting, as is his right.

00:17:58.260 But the NDP, you're right, Elie, are really joining up with a group that I think is going to be found to be on the wrong side of history here.

00:18:06.020 Oh, for sure. I mean, I tweeted out the transfers of the culture, so to speak, when both sides kind of clashed in front of Parliament.

00:18:14.360 And what filled me is a bit of sadness because we can't talk to each other anymore.

00:18:19.360 And a big reason why is because you have one side that has become so radical is they don't just see the other side as, oh, these are people who disagree.

00:18:28.220 You know, I think we should have progressive sex set for this, this, this and that.

00:18:32.140 They believe that people on the other side are fundamentally racist fascists who want transgender people dead.

00:18:39.400 And Andrew, this is radical to say that your opponent's a fascist that wants you dead, when in reality, all they want is they want a bit more parental autonomy and they want a sexual education curriculum that respects Canada's pluralism.

00:18:52.160 I mean, that's extreme. And it's sad that the NDP is endorsing that. You're right. I do think it's the wrong side of history.

00:18:58.420 I think today is the beginning of the end of the cancel culture mob on this issue.

00:19:02.940 From now on, I think Canadians are going to feel a lot more confident

00:19:05.640 being able to take reasonable, loving stances on these issues

00:19:10.160 without fearing to be shut down.

00:19:12.360 I mean, there were more, from my personal observation at least,

00:19:15.480 there were far more protesters than counter-protesters.

00:19:18.760 Ali Cantin-Nantel, great work in Ottawa.

00:19:21.020 Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:19:22.800 My pleasure, Andrew.

00:19:24.000 And as mentioned, True North will have continued coverage throughout the day

00:19:27.920 and in the days to come on this.

00:19:30.100 One story, I've got to actually write the story.

00:19:32.120 I gave the union in question, ETFO,

00:19:34.880 the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario,

00:19:37.160 time to comment on this and they did not respond.

00:19:40.680 I got a hold of a missive they sent out

00:19:43.220 to some of their members about this

00:19:45.320 and they've actually, believe it or not,

00:19:47.380 threatened discipline to any teacher

00:19:50.560 that supports this protest.

00:19:52.700 They're encouraging counter-protests

00:19:54.220 but anyone who supports this, they say,

00:19:55.820 oh, that might run afoul of your equity obligations. So the level of fear mongering you see and the

00:20:02.140 level of coercion you see, I could, I shouldn't say I could not count because I could count. I

00:20:06.840 just haven't bothered to count. The number of emails I've gotten in the last three days from

00:20:11.740 public sector unionized employees in Ontario specifically that are telling me how much they

00:20:19.200 object to what their unions, CUPE and ETFO are saying and doing on this. And that's notable

00:20:25.000 because I have always had like one or two dissident teachers and I love them that will

00:20:30.400 tell me, Oh, uh, you know, my school board's doing this, or I got this email or, Oh, won't

00:20:34.140 you believe this?

00:20:35.100 And I, but the volume, I have never had the volume that I've had this week.

00:20:39.560 And obviously people say, don't use my name.

00:20:41.880 I'd be fired if anyone knew I spoke to you or even knew who you were, but that's notable

00:20:46.320 here.

00:20:46.640 So there is a bit of a dissent on this stuff within the unions.

00:20:50.760 And I mean, obviously they can come out in full force because they're unionized.

00:20:54.420 So they're all just taking sick days today, I presume, and they're going to come out and do this and counter protest.

00:21:00.020 But it's actually quite shocking. And I want you to know when I talk about the unions more broadly, I'm not doing it to talk about everyone in there because I know it's not homogenous.

00:21:09.940 And if you're one of these unionized employees that doesn't like what these unions are doing in your name, I see you and I hear you.

00:21:16.540 And I'm grateful you're there because I think it's important that people in the classroom, especially, are not all singing from the same songbook on this.

00:21:26.520 There's one clip and this one I played.

00:21:28.520 I showed that picture earlier that really rubbed me the wrong way from Harrison about, you know, you don't own your kids.

00:21:34.340 But again, I want to just show you a clip that I think illustrates and illuminates that thinking a little bit more.

00:21:41.700 Where's kids?

00:21:42.860 Our kids.

00:21:43.860 Where's kids?

00:21:44.900 Our kids.

00:21:45.760 you can smell the marxist through your screens and i apologize for that i mean you want to just

00:22:00.560 take like basically an airdrop of axe body spray onto that moment right now again they're the

00:22:06.520 marxists they're uh they've got like a marxist domain name uh they are a little bit low energy

00:22:12.220 back in my day, the communists used to be a little bit more fiery, but nevertheless,

00:22:16.120 their argument, their approach to this is that they are our kids and our schools. So they do

00:22:22.660 not believe that your kids are your kids. They believe your kids are their kids. It's like that

00:22:27.580 song, this land is our land. It's this kid is my kid. This kid is our kid. They believe they have

00:22:33.220 a say in how you parent your child. And while they're the ones who decides to use the Marxist

00:22:40.380 banner. Their worldview is one that's shared by a bunch of other people that may not identify

00:22:45.900 as communists. And you can unplug your nose, the clip has stopped now, but perhaps that's,

00:22:51.760 actually it might have been the stench of the Marxists that killed Harrison's phone earlier

00:22:56.020 when he was trying to join us live from Toronto. So nevertheless, I apologize if you had to be

00:23:01.220 within four city blocks of those folks, but nevertheless, they have a right to be there.

00:23:06.120 And let me just take a moment on this to talk about the importance of free speech.

00:23:13.020 Now, this has always been for me the absolute hill to die on for me, because my belief is

00:23:18.220 that without freedom of speech, we do not have any other freedoms.

00:23:21.620 We can't argue for the things about which we care if we don't have freedom of speech.

00:23:26.100 So when I see protesters, however many there are coming out and speaking up for parental

00:23:30.900 rights, and I see counter protesters, even if I disagree with them, I look at that

00:23:35.780 exchange, and I say this is a profound win for society, that these two groups can meet in the

00:23:41.860 middle and, despite the tensions, express their position on what is a very real and very important

00:23:47.940 issue in society. Now, the difference is that the parental rights folks are not trying to shut

00:23:53.540 anyone down. The counter-protesters are. The counter-protesters actually do not believe that

00:23:58.420 the protesters have a right to be there. They believe that it should all be denounced and

00:24:02.020 dismissed as hate. As an illustration of this, let me share a statement from British Columbia's

00:24:08.140 Human Rights Commissioner. She has issued what she calls a response to the hate-fueled marches

00:24:13.960 planned for today. She says she's very disturbed by news of the hate-fueled marches. She says,

00:24:20.160 the human rights of trans and LGBTQ2SAI plus people are not up for debate. Denying the

00:24:29.080 existence of trans and gender diverse people, including calls to a race, trans, and LGBTQ2S

00:24:35.360 AI plus people from our province's curricula is hate, and hate should have no place in our

00:24:40.460 community or in our schools. She goes on to talk about hate, hate, hate. Everything is hate. It's

00:24:47.220 hateful. She says it's time to take action against the campaigns of misinformation and organized hate,

00:24:53.220 And it goes on to say that we must stand together against hate.

00:24:58.140 There's no space for hate.

00:24:59.940 Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

00:25:01.120 Now, I did not see a great deal of hate going towards the counter-demonstrators.

00:25:06.280 I saw a lot of hate coming away from them.

00:25:08.680 But even so, hate is an emotion which people have a right to feel in a free society.

00:25:13.460 It may be undesirable.

00:25:14.520 It may be something we want to counter.

00:25:16.420 But the Human Rights Commissioner of British Columbia would do well to look at what is

00:25:20.460 the most fundamentally important human right in existence. The human right to freedom of speech

00:25:28.120 is the foundation of a free and democratic society. And for a so-called human rights

00:25:34.120 commissioner to spend time denouncing freedom of expression rather than focusing on the importance

00:25:40.460 of preserving and protecting it is absolutely disgraceful. She has a right to weigh in on

00:25:46.960 whatever issues she wants to weigh in on. She's a very well-paid civil servant. I am not immune

00:25:51.840 from the understanding that human rights commissions are not places that generally respect

00:25:56.380 and uphold free speech, but without freedom of expression, you can't do any of these things that

00:26:01.940 you care about and advocate for any of the issues you want to advocate on. Now, all of this,

00:26:07.600 all of this is part and parcel of why these exchanges are so very important and why

00:26:12.360 this is a display that we should be welcoming, even if we disagree with someone on the other

00:26:17.620 side. And I have a lot of respect for anyone that is counter protesting who believes that both sides

00:26:23.740 have a right to play in this. But when this human rights commissioner says there is no place for

00:26:29.480 debate, or she says it's not up for debate, well, you don't actually get the right to decide what

00:26:35.020 is or is not up for debate. In a free society, we are able to discuss these issues. Now, I tweeted

00:26:40.740 about this earlier and someone said, oh, you're saying that trans rights are up for debate? I

00:26:46.160 would say that they are in the context of what follows. You cannot unilaterally assert broad

00:26:53.000 trans rights, whatever those are, without weighing those against, let's say, women's rights, the

00:26:59.220 rights for women to have a space that is single sex, the right for women to be able to participate

00:27:05.520 in women's only sports. So this is a very easy way of seeing that women's rights and trans rights,

00:27:11.340 unless defined narrowly, will be in conflict with one another. Now, how do we solve that? We solve

00:27:17.620 it by debating it. So to say that this is not up for debate means that your way is the right way

00:27:23.540 and no one else can have a different opinion. And that is the danger of what's being argued here.

00:27:29.300 And I should just say, to segue into an interview I had planned irrespective of this,

00:27:34.400 this is not something that is just existing on the streets of Toronto and Ottawa and Calgary

00:27:39.800 and Vancouver and London and Pickering today. This is an issue that goes at its core to a

00:27:44.800 long-standing academic problem. And by that, I mean a problem in academia. Now we've seen over

00:27:51.860 many years, Alan Bloom wrote about this 35 years ago in his seminal book, The Closing of the

00:27:56.660 American Mind, that universities have become more hotbeds of indoctrination and ideological

00:28:03.060 intolerance than the halls of inquiry that they once were. We've seen this get worse and worse

00:28:10.380 and worse over time, however. And now one of the big problems is that good people who envision a

00:28:16.000 future in academia want to self-select out of this because they do not see a place for their

00:28:21.320 worldview. And that was at the crux of Brock Eldon's story. Now, Brock Eldon teaches at the

00:28:27.440 rmit university in vietnam though he is canadian and he's written in c2c journal about this ground

00:28:35.040 zero in the culture war it's a three-part non-fiction novella chronicling what was at

00:28:40.640 one point a bit of optimism he held about academia to at the end a bit of cynicism

00:28:45.680 and perhaps a more jaded outlook brock eldon joins me now from hanoi i know it's very late

00:28:50.880 where you are brock so thanks so much for coming on yeah thank you for having me andrew

00:28:55.120 let's start first off with the way you're telling this story because i think we've seen

00:29:01.340 and there's merit to them and i've written a few of them just the garden variety columns about you

00:29:06.380 know this happened on this university this happened on the others you've told it as a story

00:29:10.760 um yeah the the motivation for that was i guess just as i was uh completing the degree

00:29:21.200 back in Canada at Queens following two years overseas getting some more context about when

00:29:29.860 we talk about wokeism you know talking about Marxism living in South Korea you know within

00:29:40.620 200 kilometers of the North Korean border then moving on to Beijing Vietnam

00:29:46.960 Um, um, I suppose I've told it as a story just because it, it felt like such, uh, it, it felt like, as I say, at one point in the essay, being in a Kafka, it was Kafkaesque, um, from the outset, from the very first class with that context.

00:30:06.460 and with that background it was it was like coming back to a completely different place

00:30:13.420 and the idea came quite late in the degree but i think the feeling of this being a surreal

00:30:23.980 kind of alternative world um to the one that i had known uh growing up in canada that came early on

00:30:33.180 and i also i wanted to show as you said there's a lot of columns about this but i wanted to

00:30:42.220 show the reader what this actually feels like from the student perspective and i think that was

00:30:48.060 the main objective i've written other kinds of non-fiction but a narrative

00:30:54.780 from the student point of view about this based on my experience i mentioned in my crude summation

00:31:00.780 that you went in wide-eyed and enthusiastic and you came out with all of these challenges and

00:31:05.560 problems that you've raised here. Was there for you a flash in the pan, a pivotal moment where

00:31:12.460 you realized this is not what I thought it was or hoped it would be? Or would you say it was

00:31:17.580 much more of a slow burn? It was a more gradual process. I would say it was immediate. With the

00:31:25.820 onset of classes, it was from, I arrived about a month early, socialized with people in the

00:31:35.900 program, and there were some minor red flags. There were arguments that came up that I disagreed

00:31:44.960 with but it wasn't until we got to class and um we were asked to introduce ourselves with a

00:31:57.760 a sharing stick um some kind of appropriated indigenous object by a white professor we were

00:32:06.400 were asked to pass around this sharing stick and identify ourselves by our preferred pronouns

00:32:14.700 and then talk about our background with feminism and the idea the language of safe spaces

00:32:25.740 came up a lot and the policy the classroom policies of trigger warnings all of that within

00:32:33.140 about a 20 minute window was quite, it was like, this is reminding me of a lot of teaching

00:32:42.420 in middle schools in China.

00:32:44.800 And just on that note, you were punished for not using trigger warnings, right?

00:32:50.380 Yes, early, because it's not in any classroom documents, but it's, it's, it's enforced,

00:32:59.660 least when i was there it wasn't in classroom documents but it was enforced and i didn't

00:33:06.380 the first time around i simply didn't understand that this was expected demanded of students that

00:33:15.360 you begin any presentation presenting potentially triggering subject matter with a trigger warning

00:33:25.180 I wasn't aware, but I was punished twice for not using trigger warnings, and the difficulty

00:33:35.020 for me was determining what's problematic and what's not.

00:33:44.140 The first time, it was in this Indigenous gender studies class where the sharing stick

00:33:53.060 was used um i wasn't especially i could sense that there were going to be problems there

00:33:59.940 but i did not expect there to be problems presenting a paper on othello um i was

00:34:08.860 reprimanded for that in an email and i to this day i still can't figure out which passage i read

00:34:17.460 that was offending. Um, and, uh, for that I was docked 3%.

00:34:24.760 Just the one aspect of this that I find kind of interesting is that I do believe there are good

00:34:34.100 places and good pockets and good professors in, in university. And I actually had not a terrible

00:34:41.060 time with this. I mean, certainly there was a bit of a cultural clash on campus when I went to

00:34:45.720 university. And I'd even returned for something more recently and was still managed to sidestep

00:34:50.480 any of the landmines. You were picking courses, it sounds like, where you could have seen this

00:34:54.820 from a mile away, like, you know, indigenous gender studies. That just seems to me like the

00:34:59.420 epitome of wokeism. Shakespeare and cross-dressing, another one that jumps out here. So I say this

00:35:05.800 respectfully, but what were you expecting with that course selection? That's a question that's

00:35:11.640 come up a fair bit. I think that's fair. The issue was that those are the only two courses

00:35:22.660 that I had any reservation about from the outset. But the issue was that all of the

00:35:30.200 other courses were so objectively questionable just in their obvious political bias. The other

00:35:43.540 courses I took were very traditionally titled, Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries, 18th Century

00:35:51.880 manuscripts there weren't a lot of i i did not sign up for black lives matter or indigenous

00:36:01.460 incarceration uh or the refugee crisis or victorian bodies i i tried to avoid all that but

00:36:11.000 there there are certain requirements and i figured at least with the shakespeare course we must be

00:36:18.060 talking about something other than cross-dressing in a Shakespeare course.

00:36:22.400 That's hard to stretch for 12 weeks, you'd think, but apparently not.

00:36:26.080 It could go on for a long, long time, and it did. The Indigenous Gender Studies course was

00:36:34.740 just a requirement because we needed a credit in post-colonial literature.

00:36:41.260 Which is in and of itself a requirement that fundamentally skews the academic environment,

00:36:46.320 because post-colonialism is a very fraught and politicized approach, and it's a discipline that

00:36:51.980 we see. I mean, I thought it was a political science and history discipline, but now it's

00:36:56.040 even a literature requirement I'm learning. Absolutely. And since I've left, the courses

00:37:05.140 have gotten much worse, all the way back to when I was there, the medieval course was

00:37:13.100 old english in translation um last year it was queer medievalism so all of the historical

00:37:23.520 um all of the canon has now been politicized and it's right in the course titles and right

00:37:31.140 in the course descriptions and it's all public when you look at the environment that you were

00:37:38.380 in, how many of the students did you believe that you were in school with were true believers

00:37:43.840 in this versus skeptics or people that were just sort of along for the ride?

00:37:49.620 And, you know, maybe they have a higher tolerance for it, but they're not really immersed in

00:37:53.760 that worldview themselves.

00:37:56.800 I would say about, about certainly two thirds were highly invested.

00:38:07.320 Wow.

00:38:08.380 About 20% were just indifferent.

00:38:14.820 They were there, just accepting whatever came to them.

00:38:23.340 And what was disappointing about that was I kind of expected a swing,

00:38:29.240 But because your grades were rewarded based on your, it was kind of this oppression Olympics thing going on.

00:38:44.700 So whoever wrote about oppression the most, addressed the most categories of oppression, was rewarded with the highest grade.

00:38:56.380 so you actually saw those those students actually became more more radicalized like if you were to

00:39:05.460 listen i wouldn't say i don't know if they believed it but they knew what they had to do

00:39:10.440 so they were willing to go to further extremes and then the remaining 10 percent

00:39:15.660 um a lot of whom were international students um were just uh a chinese international student

00:39:24.880 very early on uh without my having interacted with her just said outright outright um this is

00:39:33.680 the cultural revolution wow and uh but that was just completely shot down because it's

00:39:42.560 we're not taught about the cultural revolution in canada

00:39:46.880 i i think that's an important segue to the time that you had spent abroad and you had actually

00:39:52.400 had a world of experience that you saw you had been to China before you did your your MA and

00:39:59.100 was a lot of this just so quintessentially North American in your view like so quintessentially

00:40:05.880 North American when you were seeing just this this cultural attitude because I've heard stories

00:40:10.240 from people that have like tried to explain pronoun politics to people from India and it's

00:40:15.780 just like they're speaking in in completely different tongues because it just is so completely

00:40:20.800 absent from the motivating forces in countries that, for whatever their issues, are doing

00:40:27.600 pretty well economically, like India and China?

00:40:31.500 Well, according to my students at RMIT, RMIT is an Australian university with campuses

00:40:40.080 in Vietnam.

00:40:40.940 So we're getting, it's a technical university, it's not too much, but we are getting a lot

00:40:47.240 these cultural sensitivity workshops that we have to present and um when you brought up this idea of

00:40:56.440 so quintessentially north american um the story that came to mind the that came to mind right

00:41:03.880 away was i presented i've had to present a workshop like that twice and two separate students

00:41:12.840 three years apart have said this is who also uh had studied in north america had said this is

00:41:22.680 what happens to countries that have no problems the students uh that's not to say canada and

00:41:31.800 america don't have any problems but comparatively um students in in vietnam

00:41:40.600 um throughout Southeast Asia they're not particularly concerned about being identified

00:41:48.000 properly according to their pronouns so they they see this as an issue that is well it's it's it's

00:41:56.820 not an issue it's um it's people trying to make an issue because they have nothing else to

00:42:03.460 motivate them to do anything um conditions are um set up for them it's it's not and

00:42:15.980 from what i would add to that is just what i think it is is it's quintessentially north

00:42:22.080 american because although my students are correct that the the developed conditions

00:42:26.840 are established there's a point where it seems like development sort of uh becomes static and

00:42:37.560 i think that's part of it as well there's not there's not a lot that has changed in

00:42:47.480 on my return trips to canada it's it's the same place but very very different politics

00:42:54.440 um i i hope that answers your question it does and i i guess from there i would then go to the

00:43:02.200 question of why you put up with it because you know for if you're in a law school or a med school

00:43:09.720 there's a very clear reason that you need your degree whereas you know you could read as many

00:43:15.000 books as you want and write as much as you want without having an ma and i know obviously you're

00:43:19.480 now teaching so i suspect this may be a significant part of your answer but if you had such a lofty

00:43:25.720 and ambitious reason for being there which was wanting to learn and wanting to grow

00:43:31.240 was there a point in which you felt that this was actually holding you back from doing that

00:43:35.640 and that you would have been able to self-teach these things outside of the classroom and say

00:43:39.880 screw the ma yeah absolutely absolutely um there was there was a time and i've i've written about

00:43:48.840 this um in a few columns that will be coming out um there was a if you're going to be a literary

00:43:58.360 writer becoming a a professor is one of the few ways that you can afford to do it

00:44:05.800 if you become a tenured professor you're you're engaged in with the greatest writers of all time

00:44:14.840 constantly whilst so shaping discourse about the field while simultaneously contributing to it

00:44:23.480 and changing to it i i had um and there's there's plenty of figures that come to mind that um you

00:44:31.400 know heroes of mine like um whodden ts elliott david foster wallace that seemed to me like the

00:44:40.440 dream route where i could just be immersed in my love of literature all the time and

00:44:49.480 financially secure enough to be able to pursue a career in creative writing um

00:44:56.600 i didn't quit the ma because i knew that it would land me a university job in asia

00:45:03.800 And I knew about halfway, I'm not sticking around for this, just seeing what this does to people, and especially on campuses with young people that have grown up with social media.

00:45:20.640 I think what distinguishes this culture war, and I've experienced some of this since the release of the first installment, now all three parts are out.

00:45:33.800 um is what distinguishes this from other culture wars of other generations is that

00:45:41.340 it's mediated by this digital space where your privacy can be completely invaded

00:45:49.620 um the amount of passive aggressive um facebook posting or twitter posting where they're not

00:45:59.820 naming anybody but there's a white supremacist in the class and it's it's like well who who is it

00:46:09.740 what and why why are we creating this kind of panic um it it was an environment that

00:46:17.800 I did not want to stick around in and it was heartbreaking because I'd wanted to

00:46:23.700 pursue the route that I'd described to you um ending up with tenure at a university from

00:46:29.420 the time i i started as a as an undergraduate um really really finding my myself and my my voice

00:46:42.720 through literature and getting the grades that were you know mid-90s high enough that i was

00:46:54.340 assured that I would have a very successful academic career. And then I came back and it

00:47:02.640 was just completely different. I put up with it because I looked at university jobs in Asia.

00:47:11.080 The MA was a requirement. That was motivation to finish. But if I hadn't have had that time

00:47:19.540 overseas i don't know if what would have motivated me and i know of a lot of especially young men

00:47:26.640 who have dropped out of programs including programs like physics um because of this

00:47:32.940 inability to express themselves and the detrimental effect it does have on their

00:47:41.500 output well and then it compounds the problem because all of a sudden the people that would

00:47:47.020 counterbalance this or self-selecting out and it eventually becomes an asylum with only inmates

00:47:53.540 to see expression there well it is a fascinating and very evocative series you can read it over at

00:48:00.020 c2c journal where our friends have all three installments up now ground zero in the culture

00:48:05.740 war parts one two and three the author brock eldon joining us from hanoi uh brock good to

00:48:11.500 talk to you thanks so much for coming on today yeah thanks for having me andrew and with that

00:48:16.280 it will wrap up our time today we will be back tomorrow to close out the show this is canada's

00:48:22.020 most irreverent talk show here on true north and don't forget tickets available for true north

00:48:26.700 nation in calgary october 21st that is over at truenorthevents.ca thank you god bless and good

00:48:34.560 day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true

00:48:39.400 North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - September 20, 2023

Parental rights protesters and gender ideology activists square off

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