Juno News - The left thinks patriotism is “hateful”

00:00:00.000 I'm Jasmine Moulton and this is Reality Check.

00:00:10.000 Leftist reaction to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's passing this week

00:00:14.000 was totally predictable because that's how they react to every Canadian symbol

00:00:18.160 and that's to say with contempt.

00:00:20.300 Specifically, they say that our head of state and other national symbols

00:00:23.520 from Sir John A statues to symbols like the national flag

00:00:27.720 represent a colonial past of racism and genocide.

00:00:31.880 Their basic conclusion is that we should be ashamed of our country,

00:00:34.640 not proud of the country that Canada is today,

00:00:37.080 and also that we should tear it all down and replace it with a system

00:00:40.100 that has more equity, their favorite word.

00:00:42.860 But the Queen's death is just the latest story that's given politicians

00:00:45.800 and the legacy media an excuse to paint Canada as this shameful nation.

00:00:50.600 Take, for example, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report,

00:00:54.880 which was released in 2019, where Trudeau affirmed Canada committed genocide.

00:01:00.320 Fast forward to 2021, a story emerged of 215 unmarked graves of children

00:01:06.280 from residential schools near Kamloops in British Columbia.

00:01:10.240 And earlier this year in 2022, the trucker convoy, which was in Ottawa,

00:01:15.740 stories emerged that a swastika flag was being waved around Parliament Hill.

00:01:20.240 Now, unchecked, any of these claims would rightfully be horrendous.

00:01:24.540 And what followed was a national shaming campaign

00:01:27.080 launched by the legacy media and politicians in Canada.

00:01:29.960 Take a listen.

00:01:30.760 Some Canadians are rethinking what the maple leaf means.

00:01:34.480 I guess I'm disappointed that whenever I see a Canada flag now,

00:01:38.020 I have to second guess whether those people are patriotic to the country

00:01:43.600 or if they are processing things that we've long held to be true.

00:01:49.620 It is something that is a rallying call, but it has connotations that are both negative and positive.

00:01:56.140 There is a pride in some way.

00:01:57.760 That's why they refer to themselves as patriots.

00:02:00.320 But what they're patriots of is something that does not necessarily exist.

00:02:04.540 I think from the last few months and the year we had and the previous year as well,

00:02:08.980 it has definitely changed to a more negative light

00:02:12.000 because of all the Indigenous graves that we have uncovered 0.99

00:02:16.000 and as well because of the freedom convoy.

00:02:19.180 The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa

00:02:26.720 or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing

00:02:32.440 do not represent the views of Canadians.

00:02:38.280 Conservative party members can stand with people who wave swastikas.

00:02:42.600 They can stand with people who wave the confederate flag.

00:02:45.880 Anytime we think about unmarked mass graves,

00:02:49.400 we think about a distant country where a genocide has happened.

00:02:53.200 This is not a distant country.

00:02:54.800 This is here in Canada.

00:02:57.140 I plan to keep those flags at half-mast

00:02:59.600 until it is clear that Indigenous peoples are happy to raise them again.

00:03:05.260 Canada's first Prime Minister pulled from his lofty perch above Place du Canada.

00:03:12.420 As the statue hits the ground, MacDonald's head pops off.

00:03:15.180 No pride in genocide!

00:03:17.340 No pride in genocide!

00:03:23.640 As you heard from those clips,

00:03:25.520 Canadians are being told by our politicians and their friends in the legacy media

00:03:29.060 that our national symbols represent hate

00:03:31.600 and that we should be ashamed of our country.

00:03:33.860 And given the prevalence of this message across the country,

00:03:36.700 it's no wonder that we saw Canada Day celebrations being cancelled,

00:03:40.480 the Peace Towers flag being lowered to half-mast for over five months,

00:03:44.900 certain media outlets reporting that now the Canadian flag needs a trigger warning,

00:03:50.020 and statues of our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald,

00:03:53.080 being toppled while police stood by.

00:03:54.900 So here's our reality check for this week.

00:03:57.200 Canada's one of the greatest countries in the world,

00:03:59.120 and it should be celebrated.

00:04:00.580 But before we get into explaining why the leftist argument is wrong here,

00:04:04.020 first we really need to go over some definitions,

00:04:06.100 because these words get tossed around all the time,

00:04:08.660 and I'm not even convinced that leftists know what they mean.

00:04:10.920 One word you'll always hear leftists bring up in relation to national pride is fascism.

00:04:16.240 Again, I'd say it's worth asking for a definition,

00:04:18.520 what do they mean by this word?

00:04:20.220 Because chances are they have no idea what the word means.

00:04:22.500 So here's the definition.

00:04:23.640 Fascism is a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above 0.98

00:04:29.940 the individual, and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial

00:04:35.120 leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

00:04:40.860 Nationalism often gets mistaken for fascism, so it's worth defining nationalism as well.

00:04:46.820 Nationalism refers to support for interest in one's nation over the interest of other nations.

00:04:52.280 So in other words, this is just kind of like that airplane instruction to put your own mask on

00:04:57.260 before you help others.

00:04:58.580 Take care of your own country's interests first, above interests of perhaps the World Economic 0.95

00:05:04.380 Forum or the United Nations.

00:05:06.060 Lastly, the word patriotism is one that often gets stigmatized by leftists,

00:05:10.360 and therefore is worthy of a quick definition right now.

00:05:13.140 Patriotism can be defined as one's love of country or a statement that your nation has

00:05:18.540 values that are eternal, true, and noble.

00:05:21.360 So why did I go through these definitions?

00:05:23.340 Because often if you define yourself as a nationalist or call yourself a patriot,

00:05:28.160 leftists will often conflate those terms and call you a fascist.

00:05:32.320 And this is not accurate remotely.

00:05:34.220 Valuing the interests of your own country above other countries does not make you a fascist.

00:05:37.980 Loving your country and loving the values that it stands for does not make you a fascist.

00:05:43.060 There's nothing inherently bad about nationalism or patriotism, whereas yes, fascism is evil.

00:05:49.940 All right, so now that we've got these basic definitions on the table,

00:05:52.800 let's move on to a fact check.

00:05:54.740 Because if it were true that Canada had committed all of these horrendous acts, 0.80

00:05:59.320 and if it was still a racist, genocidal, colonial country,

00:06:03.420 you could probably understand and empathize with the left's sense of shame over Canada.

00:06:09.140 But the left's got their facts wrong about how a lot of these things have historically played out,

00:06:13.280 so it's worth looking into what they've got wrong.

00:06:16.160 We really don't have time to go through how every leftist is wrong about every single

00:06:21.720 symbol in Canada representing hatred.

00:06:24.320 So let's start with the biggies.

00:06:26.260 The monarchy.

00:06:27.520 Leftists say that the Queen's death was triggering to them

00:06:30.280 because she represented a system of colonialism which inflicted abuse on Canada's aboriginal people. 0.95

00:06:37.260 What's important to note here is that Canada itself is a constitutional monarchy,

00:06:41.980 meaning we separate the roles of head of government and head of state.

00:06:45.520 The monarch is the head of state, which is largely a symbolic role,

00:06:49.900 and the prime minister in Canada is the head of government.

00:06:52.840 This differs, for example, from the United States,

00:06:55.420 which is a republic with a presidential system,

00:06:58.040 meaning their president down in the U.S.

00:07:00.280 is both head of state and head of government.

00:07:02.940 Now, how is any of this relevant?

00:07:04.400 Because the Queen only played a symbolic role. 0.92

00:07:07.620 She had no political power.

00:07:09.620 Now, leftists might still argue that she presided over this legislative system, 1.00

00:07:14.400 but basically the only role that she would play in it is providing royal assent,

00:07:18.540 which amounts to essentially rubber stamping the legislation

00:07:21.140 that comes out of the House and Senate.

00:07:23.680 Granting royal assent is essentially just a formality.

00:07:27.500 If leftists suggest that she did not need to grant royal assent to any sort of the legislation

00:07:32.600 coming out of the Canadian Parliament,

00:07:34.260 this would be highly irregular and really unacceptable in a democracy today.

00:07:39.260 The last time that the royals refused royal assent was in 1708.

00:07:44.160 Canada's head of state does not and should not exercise legislative power.

00:07:48.440 So it's simply just not the case that the Queen was actively pursuing

00:07:52.400 a colonial legislative agenda here in Canada.

00:07:55.720 Continuing on with our quick fact check,

00:07:57.900 let's move on to this unmarked grave story that emerged from Kamloops, British Columbia.

00:08:02.660 True North has done some excellent and very extensive reporting on this story already,

00:08:07.400 so it really is worth checking it out.

00:08:09.820 Specifically, Candace Malcolm did an interview with Professor Tom Flanagan entitled,

00:08:14.780 The Media Is Not Telling the Truth About the Unmarked Graves.

00:08:18.540 Take a listen.

00:08:19.680 I'm just wondering, you know, if you can comment on why you think that the media was so sort of quick

00:08:26.980 to jump on the story, why there wasn't any verifying of facts, why they didn't ask for

00:08:31.420 more evidence and sort of, you know, why this story took on a life of its own.

00:08:35.680 Yeah, well, there are several background factors here that help to explain how this

00:08:40.540 story could gather so much momentum so quickly.

00:08:44.500 First of all, it played to an existing narrative.

00:08:46.980 The narrative had already been established over, well, let's say about 30 years previously,

00:08:57.260 ever since Phil Fontaine made his famous interview with Barbara Frum in 1990.

00:09:02.220 The story has been built that the residential schools were evil places where students were

00:09:10.180 deprived of their language and culture and, you know, in fact, even tortured and killed.

00:09:18.580 So there had been lots of oral testimony to this in this direction over a period of many years.

00:09:28.800 So the media were primed to report what they thought or what they heard to be physical

00:09:36.180 evidence of this pre-existing narrative.

00:09:39.480 So when something plays into an existing media narrative, it's bound to get uncritical coverage.

00:09:47.180 And that's exactly what it did get.

00:09:48.760 So as that podcast episode goes over, essentially the story started out talking about mass graves,

00:09:54.460 which rightfully sounds horrific, and it eventually evolves into hundreds of unmarked graves.

00:10:01.260 But really one of the key details of the story, which has been, if not excluded, or just

00:10:06.220 significantly minimized by the legacy media, is that to this day, no human remains have actually

00:10:13.280 been unearthed.

00:10:14.540 So we're essentially just talking about soil disturbances, which are thought to be graves.

00:10:18.940 No human remains have actually been unearthed to verify this story.

00:10:22.960 I bring this story up because politicians and the legacy media were all too quick to jump

00:10:27.980 on it before the facts had even been verified.

00:10:30.740 And not surprisingly, they were happy to contribute to this narrative of national shame that swept

00:10:35.860 over the country and had quite a big impact.

00:10:38.360 Moving right along with our fact check, let's get to third, last but not least, talking about

00:10:42.920 the trucker convoy, specifically with regards to the Canadian flag, which leftists now say requires

00:10:49.040 a trigger warning because after they saw the truckers waving it on Parliament Hill alongside

00:10:53.740 other flags, such as the swastika, they said now they associate our national symbol of the flag

00:11:00.480 with hate.

00:11:01.540 Obviously, a swastika is a symbol of pure evil, of hatred, and has no place in Canada.

00:11:07.240 The missing piece of the puzzle, though, is who is actually waving that flag?

00:11:11.020 Because the person has never been identified, despite quite a hefty reward offered by our

00:11:17.280 very own Candace Malcolm from True North of $6,500 for his identification.

00:11:23.860 So with no indication of who this person was, there really is no proof that he was part of

00:11:29.020 this group of truckers on Parliament Hill.

00:11:31.140 In fact, it could have just been a smear job from somebody who opposed the trucker convoy wanting

00:11:37.100 to undermine the entire movement on the Hill.

00:11:39.160 So as I've said, Nazi flags and symbols are evil, and we should absolutely condemn them,

00:11:45.800 and they have no place in this country.

00:11:47.400 They are symbols of a fascist regime. 0.83

00:11:50.080 Hitler was a fascist.

00:11:51.880 And anyone who claims that the trucker convoy was fascist or had fascist intentions, clearly,

00:11:56.980 as I've stated before, has no idea what the definition of fascism is, so it's worth revisiting.

00:12:02.020 Fascism subjugates the individual to country, which doesn't sound anything like the trucker

00:12:07.360 convoy, which was saying individual rights and choice on vaccine, for example, should

00:12:12.540 override national dictates.

00:12:15.180 Fascism favors centralized authority behind a dictatorial leader, whereas obviously people

00:12:21.100 that were supporting the freedom convoy were saying that, no, we don't want to succumb to

00:12:26.720 the will of a leader telling us what to do.

00:12:29.700 We want to have individual choice when it comes to things like our personal health decisions

00:12:34.180 and vaccine mandates.

00:12:36.200 So really, truckers waving the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill during the trucker convoy

00:12:40.180 was about individual personal freedom, which is the opposite of fascism.

00:12:45.100 So here's a reality check.

00:12:46.620 We can all agree that racism, colonialism, and genocide are all inherent evils.

00:12:52.560 They're not good.

00:12:53.320 They have no place in Canada and should rightly be condemned.

00:12:56.240 But what we disagree on is the left's charges to Canada concerning these issues.

00:13:01.160 Their claims aren't all accurate, and a lot of them lack consensus.

00:13:04.820 While it's true that Canada does have an imperfect past and historical moments worthy of condemnation,

00:13:10.960 that doesn't or shouldn't preclude Canadians from celebrating a country which today is one

00:13:15.580 of the greatest countries undeniably in the world.

00:13:18.460 Evils such as colonialism and racism are not unique to Canada or the British Empire or the

00:13:25.560 West at large.

00:13:26.640 And we should absolutely condemn historical wrongs.

00:13:29.300 At the same time, it's worthwhile noting what sets Canada apart.

00:13:33.260 Canadians' love for country stems from Canada's honoring of values such as defending human rights,

00:13:38.920 democracy, and individual freedoms.

00:13:41.280 This is what our national symbols represent, not hate.

00:13:44.360 So when leftists claim that our national symbols like our flag, our first prime minister, our head

00:13:49.680 of state, when they say that these symbols represent hate, in reality, these symbols just

00:13:54.740 represent values that the left doesn't like, such as equality over equity, individual freedom

00:14:00.620 over collectivism, unity and continuity over deconstructionism.

00:14:05.380 So we should be very weary of leftists who are eager to tear down our institutions that

00:14:10.100 have created, historically speaking, one of the best societies to live in of all time.

00:14:15.100 That's our show for this week.

00:14:16.260 Thanks so much for listening.

00:14:17.380 If you liked what you heard and you appreciate the content that True North generates for you

00:14:21.320 week after week, please consider donating.

00:14:23.940 You can donate to True North at donate.tnc.news.

00:14:27.940 Don't forget to tune into Reality Check next week.

00:14:30.500 I'm Jasmine Moulton.

00:14:35.380 Thank you.

00:14:35.980 Thank you.

00:14:42.820 Thank you.

Juno News - September 14, 2022

The left thinks patriotism is “hateful”

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