Poilievre continues to trigger the media
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Summary
As we try to stand firm in the blizzard of lies, expose the fakery, the misinformation, the disinformation, and just plain pure unbridled wacko, we are standing here at True North doing exactly that.
Transcript
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hello and welcome to another edition of fake news friday it is friday august 12 2022 and as we try
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to stand firm in the blizzard of lies expose the fakery the misinformation the disinformation and
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just the plain pure unbridled wacko we are standing here at true north doing exactly that
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and after that bold introduction there is no man befitting it as much as my trusty co-host for this
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episode harrison faulkner harrison it is good to have you on how was your week pretty good that was
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a pretty nice introduction i gotta say and i was just thinking about this andrew it's it's been a
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quiet week it's been nice and simple we haven't had the prime minister around and i'm starting to
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get that feeling like he's coming back soon and everything's about to kick up again so
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it's uh it was it's been a nice quiet week i have to say yeah i mean the point that i made i think it
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was on this show last week which some people didn't like on twitter or at least didn't see the nuance of
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is that i would be happier in the grand scheme of things if he just stayed in costa rica but
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we know that all things have to be undone what goes up must come down what goes to the caribbean
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must come back so next week will be a bit of a different week i have no doubt uh let's talk
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first and foremost though about the conservative leadership race and specifically polyev derangement
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syndrome now you may remember uh this is going back to the archives here bush derangement syndrome
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which was the original ds and it was called i believe it was charles krauthammer of memory serves
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it was just the complete spastic hysterical nature of a lot of the critiques of george bush and we've seen
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this derangement syndrome come back every time there's a conservative leader now it doesn't matter
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who it is people just go absolutely crazy doug ford before he was the lockdown leader when he was a
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conservative the media had ford derangement syndrome certainly there was harper derangement syndrome
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and now there is undoubtedly polyev derangement syndrome let's look here first off at how the globe
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and male decided to cover the fallout of stephen harper's endorsement of pierre polyev let's first
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take a look at the endorsement friends fellow conservatives greetings i haven't talked to you
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like this in a while and much has transpired our party once again has a leadership race underway
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in this particular race there's been a lot of speculation about whom i support or do not support
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and why so it may be useful for my fellow party members to hear my views straight from me it's a
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strong field but one candidate has garnered disproportionate attention pierre polyevre was
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a strong minister in my government in the past several years he's been our party's most vocal and
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effective critic of the trudeau liberals he's been talking about the issues especially the economic
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issues that matter slow growth debt inflation lack of job and housing opportunities and the need to
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fix the institutions that are failing canadian families so stephen harper who has kept his powder
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dry the last couple leadership races did come out and say that he is standing behind pierre polyevre
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and a nanos research poll written about in the globe and mail says stephen harper's endorsement
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shows no boost for pierre polyevre new poll suggests and this story came out on august 8th and they did a
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telephone survey of just over a thousand people they consider it accurate plus or minus 3.1 percentage
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points 19 times out of 20 all the standard polling lingo but basically they say that most people
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would find no effect one way or another of stephen harper's endorsement on pierre polyevre and if
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you read the fine print you realize this was not a poll of conservative party of canada members this was
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a poll of the general population people who may or may not be members at all most likely they aren't
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and it was basically saying does i'll read the question exactly has stephen harper's recent endorsement
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of pierre polyevre as a candidate for the conservative party leadership giving you a more
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positive impression a more negative impression or has it had no impact on your impression of pierre
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polyevre if you're not voting in the leadership race your answer to that would presumably i don't know
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why do i care what what is that about me but the media is trying to make it seem like oh stephen harper's
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tainted polyevre's tainted and really it's just a fundamental misunderstanding or willful ignorance of
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how leadership races are won i hope canadians can see through all of this andrew because you know
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what we all know is if you can't pull the general public to begin with then when then when you try to
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pull the general public about a conservative leadership race it's going to mean basically
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nothing first of all and i think if you were to specifically pull conservative members obviously
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the stephen harper endorsement of pierre polyevre is a huge is a huge boost to polyevre's campaign no
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matter what campaign you're on or you're in or you or no matter what uh person you support uh getting
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the endorsement of the previous conservative prime minister is huge for anyone so the idea of course
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that it's going to not impact his chances in in a general is not is not true i don't think and of
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course they do this thing where they talk about how you know it was he experienced the biggest boost
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in alberta and ontario and quebec you know uh both said that they were the highest respondents to say
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they disapproved of the endorsement obviously uh that's meant to be the case but canadians can see
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through that at least i hope because obviously the globe and mail is not intending to pull actual
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conservatives or to in fact get get an accurate poll of canadians we we know that polling companies
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have consistently failed to pull whether it be conservative whether it be working class canadians
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whether people whether it just be people who live in the middle of the country they can't seem to
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gauge where that support is coming from but i i did some digging myself andrew to see what other
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polls might indicate whether or not canadians would would support a stephen harper endorsement i came
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across a research co-poll published in july which actually found that 29 percent of canadians in this
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poll which is basically 30 percent 29 percent of canadians responding to the research co-poll about the
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worst canadian prime minister in recent history 29 said justin trudeau that's the highest any previous
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prime minister has received so the majority of canadians believe justin trudeau is the worst
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prime minister we've had in recent history and on the other side stephen harper beats justin trudeau
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for the best recent prime minister so if i were pierre paulio if i were a leadership candidate i'd
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certainly know who i'd want to be endorsed by and uh if i had the choice it wouldn't be justin trudeau
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yeah i actually hadn't seen that i mean a research co is not a huge polling firm but it's not a
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conservative firm by any stretch it's as i understand not tainted by partisanship in general
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but it is interesting how poorly trudeau comes off in that and the whole point here and and look the
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media is i i believe within its right to start polling on eventualities and ask canadians you know
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what would you think of the conservatives if paulia were the leader what would you think if
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jean chagrin were the leader what would you think if so and so were the leader i think that's all fine
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but it's when they start talking about the internal workings of the leadership race without
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acknowledging in any substantial way how leadership races work that i get annoyed and and in fairness
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let me look at this one here from the i believe this was a no this was a leger poll uh in association
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with the association for canadian studies and the headline here kind of gives you the angle poly have
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preferred among conservatives but charay favored among canadians so the media is trying to say that
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yeah pierre polyev is unelectable and conservatives they don't like jean chagrin but canadians do and
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they're basically saying that conservatives are going to have uh the right leader that none of them vote
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and the wrong leader is going to the one that's going to win is effectively the message here
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and i find this to be a bit tiring because they it neglects to understand that this is the trump
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effect that polling does not reflect a certain constituency and there are people who are not
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as likely to talk to pollsters that are not represented that are very key demographic in voting
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and beyond that they also fail to understand the importance of campaigning i'm convinced right now
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that jean chagrin is not even really campaigning to conservative members he's doing the mainstream
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media thing he's campaigning to the country as a whole so it's understandable that the country as a
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whole may have a favorable impression of him again maybe pierre polyev will be able to do that or won't
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we don't know we don't have a crystal ball but it's a pretty tired analogy that they're giving here
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which is oh well uh you know he's the one the party likes but not the country and vice versa
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well exactly and in a leadership race i would want to have the support of the party not necessarily
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the country you want to play to win uh you want to win the leadership race and we'll see what
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happens with uh with whatever whatever leader the conservative members decide we'll see if they
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switch their positions or if they make any decisions to kind of change their change their
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approach to attract canadians but again if you don't frame the poll in the correct way at the
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beginning it's disingenuous by saying to canadians that you know canadians don't support pierre
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polyev and they don't support this endorsement it's not accurate and it's not doing a good enough
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job for canadians i will just provide some context quickly to that uh that research co-poll
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it turns out that stephen harper and justin trudeau were bested by pierre trudeau for best
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recent prime minister which i don't know may may kind of throw some shade on the research co-poll
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depending on who you talk to but again i thought that might be interesting and another thing i found
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in my research before the show was that a narsity article narsity is definitely not known to be a
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a pro conservative that's for sure narsity back in 2019 wrote about how justin trudeau's approval
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rating was lower than donald trump's so again it's just one of those things where these are not the
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kind of headlines you'll see reported in legacy media news that's why we're doing it on this show
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obviously but again it's important to put some context behind this when the media wants to tell you
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that stephen harper is this boogeyman most canadians are afraid of pierre polyev or they're afraid of stephen
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harper look for what canadians actually say about justin trudeau it doesn't show the best picture
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of him either so it's important context there that i want to highlight for the audience listening
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yeah i think that is a very fair game i think the media is going to lose its mind if pierre polyev
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wins and it's going to be interesting to watch we'll have no shortage of material so all i can say on
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that is to stay tuned let's turn from the internal party workings of the conservatives to the global
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workings of the shadowy cabal of overlords that run the countries in the world and all of that
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now i don't know it's not quite that bad but we are going to talk about the world economic forum here
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which had an op-ed in the globe and mail debunking as they believe the own nothing and be happy
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conspiracy theory and there are a few moving parts to this but i'll say basically that by now i'm
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assuming you've heard of own nothing and be happy as though it's some common refrain of the world
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economic forum now this line did really come from the wef it was a blog post that was published on
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the wef's website quite a while ago by a member of parliament i think she was from denmark
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and it was basically putting forward this futuristic scenario in 2030 so just eight years
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from now in which people don't own anything they don't have a car they don't have a house they don't
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have appliances what is the living room one day is used as an office for someone else the next day and
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public transportation is there and everything's a public good and uh the whole point here and i want
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to go right down to the text of this in the world before this fantasy 2030 world we had all these
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terrible things happening lifestyle diseases climate change the refugee crisis environmental degradation
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completely congested cities water pollution air pollution social unrest and unemployment we lost
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way too many people before we realized we could do things differently and doing things differently in
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this fantasy world is owning nothing and evidently being happy so it wasn't like a central campaign
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platform item for the wef but it was a think piece that the wef put out that ultimately aligns with the
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world economic forum's broader vision of rethinking property rights of basically making it so that we all
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live with less because that's the way to save the climate so let's talk about how this is being
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represented by the wef now in a globe and mail op-ed take it away so andrew there was an opinion
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article that was published in the globe and mail by adrian monk who's the managing managing director
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excuse me of the world economic forum and he takes direct aim at this statement this you'll own nothing
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and be happy as previously talked about and the title of the piece is how own nothing and be happy
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sparked a misinformation campaign that targeted the world economic forum misinformation and disinformation
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wherever you've seen that before uh andrew so again this this author he begins by calling out where
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he believes the origin of the yolo nothing and be happy idea came from and of course he does mention
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that it was published by the world economic forum it is a wef slogan that they did kind of coin
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but then from that point on from about the the second or third paragraph he completely abandons
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that and then basically goes into saying that the the the comment defending the world economic forum the
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comment is russian disinformation the comment came and became popular through 4chan which he describes
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as an unmoderated uh messaging board used by operators of a russian propaganda campaign
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and then he writes in the article the intent was apparently to spread disinformation in a bid to
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stir far-right outrage about coven 19 and perpetuate domestic extremism the means was often via bots
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that would push far-right conspiracy theories to communities on board such as 4chan so what you're
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seeing here i think is a cleanup operation from the world economic forum to go after the big slogans that
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have dominated their brand for the past couple years and i think pretty much ruined the brand of the world
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economic forum in the public eye they're trying to send out their best and brightest to combat what
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people are starting to learn about this group and basically label any criticism any direct quotation
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of the world economic forum as this statement is as russian misinformation as far-right they even you
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know they even use the word anti-semitic uh to describe using the terms of using the term you'll
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own nothing and be happy so it's a big cleanup operation they're trying to sweep it all under the rug andrew
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and they're using the globe and mail for it i mean they couldn't have picked a better outlet to run
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a store like this if you ask me yeah it's a weird one because i mean he if you look at it in depth
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it's anything but trivial he says and there's valuable insights we can take away from how
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misinformation is created and why it's essential not to perpetuate its spread and i'm not saying that
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people who believe in conspiratorial things about the world economic forum or other aspects of this
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have not taken this and you know used it and whatever they believe but the whole point is
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let's strip away all that and look at the facts themselves this was a think piece that was put out
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by the world economic forum their argument or defense might be well we publish things by any
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number of people but this is a vision that really talks about the eradication of property rights as being
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a prerequisite for happiness and as being the antidote to all of these terrible things they say like climate
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change and droughts and famines and all of that so whether or not and this is coming from an elected
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representative not a canadian a danish mp but i guess the point is at what point does that become
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russian at what point does that become disinformation and and i think this is a legitimate question if you
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quote it is that allowed if you have the discussion we're having now is that allowed at what point
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is it a conspiracy and no longer something that people can bring and i mean say what you will about
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4chan there are a lot of issues with that platform just because something is on 4chan does not mean
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it does not exist and and i always encourage people with anything even if you hear it on my
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show or your show go to the source check out the source document the raw material and in this case
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you don't need to get it filtered through 4chan you can go to the wef website there it is right
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there on the screen it is still posted it's still available and you can decide for yourself and i i've
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tried to give as accurate and fair a recap of that piece as i can read it for yourself not on 4chan
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on the wef website yeah so i think in order to answer your question it becomes russian propaganda
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becomes uh you know right-wing disinformation as soon as it becomes critical that is the point i think
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at which all of all of the talk about it becomes this awful sort of russian campaign to you know influence
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ideas i mean that's to me really where this all comes from and to not lose sight of the polyev
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derangement syndrome taking place in this article they actually dropped pierre polyev's name and i
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want to i want to read the read the quote because it's pretty it actually is pretty insightful to see
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where the wef is coming from on this so the uh paragraph starts off by mentioning russell brand's
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video that talked about the wef video and saying the article writes actor and comedian russell brand
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talked about it in a video that received more than 1.8 million views on facebook pierre polyev currently
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running for the leadership of the conservative party of canada use it to discredit prime minister
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justin trudeau's government giving rise to a national movement and just before that he labeled the the
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the saying as people who use that saying as dog whistling so you immediately see the connection
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between andrew between them saying using this slogan to discredit the world economic forum and to
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discredit politicians who are themselves connected to the world economic forum that's dog whistling
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that's far right and that is dangerous territory i mean it's pretty transparent andrew i think when
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it comes to the cleanup act that's taking place right now this isn't the first time we've seen it and
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just to clarify one more thing in the article that the wef actually pulled that article you have to
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go to the web archive to find it of course it's on the internet so it lives forever but in this article
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in the globe and mail the author mentions the fact that they ended up pulling the story be to protect
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the author of the original you'll own nothing and be happy uh basically because of all the all the
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death threats all the comments they were receiving so again it's important to note that the cleanup act
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is in full is in full flight right now they're really trying to clean up what's been going on in
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the messaging of the wef but that article itself has been pulled from the website you have to get it
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by going to the web archives yeah no and i appreciate you clarifying that i meant people
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should like read their version of it not things that have been quoted in clip but yeah that's an
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incredibly valid point so even the big ideas piece now has had to be taken down and does that make it
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misinformation on their part i don't know uh let's uh end with a little bit of a fun one we always try to
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end on a lighter note we don't have any cricket eating stories today so we had to look elsewhere but
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uh you noticed in your travels an advertisement from one of canada's legacy media outlets that
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apparently is getting chuckles all over the country yes so the toronto star i guess they are
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not getting enough funding from the government they need to advertise to increase their readership
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maybe because it's crumbling but on facebook they're putting out ads which i i just think deserve
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total mockery andrew it's just hilarious what they're putting out here so the toronto star
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ran an ad campaign on facebook with a blank background that just reads well the caption says
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truth we need for the world we want so they're really kind of talking themselves up there uh and
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then the the poster itself is a white background that just says journalism from a trusted news source
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now i just want to remind people watching this this so-called trusted news source back in what was it
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august 26 2021 they ran a toronto they ran a front page which is perhaps one of the most egregious
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acts of i don't even know if you could call it journalism perhaps journalism malpractice it's
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absolutely horrendous what they ran on their front page a series of quotes or tweets whatever it was
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which they ended up having to apologize for which are just absolutely horrendous statements about
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unvaccinated canadians so this was what the toronto star the so-called trusted news source
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ran in august of 20 run in august of 2021 as their front page highlighted quotes include i have no
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empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated let them die andrew so when i saw this i immediately
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thought of that ridiculous cnn ad campaign where they show a white background with a red apple and
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they just have some narrator saying this is an apple this is an apple no matter what people say
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people may say this is a banana or an orange but it's really an apple and then of course they ended
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by saying facts first cnn so i guess uh they're trying to change the narrative about themselves
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but i wonder if canadians agree that the toronto star is a trusted news source it's reminding me of
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the old like renee magritte paintings to see napa and pipe this is the this is an apple so it's not
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like this is seen a pot it's a c8 and an apple this is i think fascinating and we we see i mean obviously
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media outlets are commercial entities they have to succeed they have to survive they've got to
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advertise but there is a big problem right now of these outlets really painting themselves as the
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final authority and the final arbiters of truth i mean whether it's cnn saying that it decides what
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an apple is or the toronto star pushing itself as being a trusted news source despite a number of
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issues that people may have a lot of problems with about their coverage and you you'd look at the
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comments and i mean no matter how many times it's still amusing people using uh laughing memes people
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using the laugh react when you look at the uh responses to it like just pay attention to that
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number and the toronto star either a is way off on its targeting its ad targeting or it is in fact a
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laughing stock to a lot of the people it's trying to endear itself to and i this actually i find to be
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quite troubling in in this country the lack of trust in institutions but i also feel that a lot of the
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reason that's troubling is because institutions have behaved in such a chronically untrustworthy
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way you won't see toronto star adapting their practices anytime soon as i don't think you'll expect
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to see that from other legacy media outlets who know as a matter of fact that their trust is dropping
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it's not a secret to these journalists i mean they're not the dumbest people in the world uh they
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are aware of the fact that canadians are losing faith in what they put and what they write and
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this ad campaign yes probably in part to try and increase their reach but i don't really think
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that's what it is i think it's actually supposed to be a message it's supposed to be as you said
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it's a bit of a flex right yeah them portraying themselves as the single source of truth you've
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seen that line you know them portraying themselves them and and and perhaps other outlets like the
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toronto star they are the ones that are trusted the independents perhaps you know the true norths
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the rebels the western standards they aren't the ones that are trusted you have to go to a legacy
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media oh and i think that is is an important point to bring up and and you highlight the point that
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institutional trust is dropping at a significant rate and you know maybe perhaps if that's the case
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it might call on a change of practices again i don't think you're going to see any of that
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from these legacy media journalists look the big takeaway of all of this is support true north
00:24:02.840
support other independent media as well but we're true north so we'll put in the plug for ourselves
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if you like this show and the other content we have whether it's the andrew lawton show
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emmanuel or all of the other programs we have going i feel bad that i've really missed like one person's
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but in general all of the shows you should check it all out what was that rupa's podcast yes the rupa
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donate.tnc.news and this is andrew lawton joined by harrison faulkner we will catch you next week with