Juno News - Why did the legacy media smear the Freedom Convoy？ (Ft. Jonathan Kay)

00:00:00.000 The legacy media is so eager to smear the trucker convoy they seem to have abandoned all basic

00:00:05.620 tenets of journalism like being fair and neutral covering both sides of the story and making sure

00:00:10.520 to fact check and verify reports before sharing them. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice

00:00:15.020 Malcolm Show. Hi everyone thank you so much for tuning in so as we've been covering on the podcast

00:00:23.820 as you know very very well since the inception of the trucker convoy and the freedom convoy the

00:00:29.700 freedom protests and rallies in Ottawa the the sort of establishment the Ottawa establishment

00:00:34.140 politicians journalists police officers that the people in charge of Ottawa have done their best

00:00:39.380 to try to demonize and discredit the truckers before they even got there so in the week leading up to

00:00:44.500 the protest Trudeau predicted that there would be violence at these rallies the legacy media quoted

00:00:49.020 experts who told us that these truckers were extremists that they were racist and even that

00:00:54.040 they were terrorists well what we got instead was a large incredibly peaceful patriotic showing it was

00:01:00.220 optimistic it was joyful it looked more like a winter carnival and perhaps it looked like a Canada Day

00:01:05.620 family block party instead well regardless of the images that we saw pouring out from the ground in

00:01:10.660 Ottawa the thousands of Canadian flags being waved on Parliament Hill the Trudeau Liberals working in

00:01:16.140 lockstep with the legacy media decided to fixate on two or three flags two or three individuals who are

00:01:21.780 flying evil flags these flags were not embraced by any means by the crowd on the ground quite the

00:01:27.460 opposite there was footage that went viral of a man waving a confederate flag and he was sort of

00:01:32.460 confronted and heckled and told to leave by the truckers that went viral but the legacy media ignored

00:01:37.760 that instead they pretended that the two or three evil flags represented the whole group and that the

00:01:43.760 whole group of protesters were the same as the two people that were waving those evil flags they

00:01:49.080 equated the entire group as evil right-wing Nazis that sounds extreme it sounds hyperbolic but I'm

00:01:54.260 not exaggerating that is what they did they upped the rhetoric they began to call the protests an

00:01:58.700 occupation a siege an insurrection one city councilor on the CBC even called it treason well one of the

00:02:06.880 things that that sort of leaves us thinking is why were the media so unwilling to cover these protests

00:02:13.260 in good faith why didn't they try to get to know the truckers to tell their story usually when we see

00:02:18.500 protests and blockades the media are positively covering them covering them favorably why was it

00:02:23.900 so different this time well to make sense of this remarkable gap between the positive nature of the

00:02:29.220 protests versus the incredibly negative coverage of it I am pleased today to be joined by journalist

00:02:34.260 and author Jonathan Kaye Jonathan Kaye is the editor over at Quillette he's an op-ed writer for the

00:02:39.920 National Post and he is a co-host of the Quillette podcast he's an author and a ghostwriter and his work

00:02:45.420 has appeared all over he had a great recent piece over in the Washington Post you absolutely must

00:02:51.140 follow Jonathan Kaye on Twitter his handle is at John Kaye he constantly and humorously pokes fun

00:02:56.900 of the woke left and since the start of the convoy he's an excellent job at thoroughly documenting

00:03:02.280 and dispelling some of the multiple attempts to unfairly smear the truckers so Jonathan thank you

00:03:09.100 so much for joining us today oh uh thanks for having me on your show yeah so the first thing I

00:03:15.240 mean you follow this stuff closely you've been in I think in and around the legacy media for most of

00:03:19.820 your career and I just want to know why why didn't the media cover the truckers in good faith why did

00:03:25.680 it seem like a smear attack from day one I mean I have sort of an odd position on this because like

00:03:31.480 when the trucker convoy started I think I was probably like 80 or 90 percent opposed to it um you

00:03:40.700 know maybe unlike some of your other guests or your your listeners like I'm I'm super into vaccines I

00:03:47.920 think mandates are fine like I I am I'm a fairly progressive or to use that word in most of my views

00:03:56.180 on the actual substance of it and the only time I became I started to become sympathetic to the

00:04:01.440 trucker convoy was when I just started to see the hysteria of those opposing it it's it's just this

00:04:08.040 classic case of one side overplaying their hand in reaction to what they they want to show is the

00:04:15.740 radicalism of the other side and by the way there were some whack jobs on on the convoy side and I

00:04:20.900 entertained all the stereotypes because I live in Toronto you know I it's like oh these trucks are

00:04:25.740 going to come by and it's going to be awful and maybe there's going to be extremists and stuff like

00:04:30.100 that um but then yeah when I started to see the footage I was like okay I don't necessarily agree

00:04:34.840 with these people but it's not like this is you know stormtroopers uh marching to Poland in 1939 or

00:04:40.660 anything like that which if you had if you read the social media feeds of some liberal MPs

00:04:45.260 they just completely uh lost their mind about it um and I mean what surprised me was like it wasn't just

00:04:54.880 white people either there was there was I think there was an indigenous drumming circle in support

00:04:59.660 of the protest uh on the Quebec side you saw a lot of seat truckers because the trucking industry there

00:05:06.040 is uh is very diverse uh so if the political class and the journalistic class in Ottawa had simply

00:05:16.180 maintained their composure and said look this is going to be an annoyance for a couple of days

00:05:20.840 there's going to be a lot of traffic there's going to be a lot of gridlock but you know we live in

00:05:24.980 democracy let these people say their piece and maybe even if like had politicians gone to talk to them

00:05:29.360 and I I think Trudeau he's actually a fairly charismatic politician if he'd actually gone out

00:05:34.440 to talk to these truckers and say I don't agree with you but you know tell me your piece I'm willing

00:05:39.040 to listen which is by the way how Trudeau dealt with separatists uh when he first became a politician

00:05:43.920 he he respectfully listened to them even though they were trying to break up Canada

00:05:47.460 uh then I think things probably would have been dissipated early and I think Trudeau and

00:05:55.360 progressives in Ottawa I think like they would have ended up better off now if you look at some

00:06:01.360 of the opinions people who oppose the trucker convoy at first are starting to come around to it

00:06:06.260 just because they're so put off by the hysterical overreaction to it and I guess I would put myself

00:06:11.300 in that camp uh you know I'm one of the smug and sufferable progressives maybe that some of your

00:06:16.240 your listeners don't like but there's only so much smugness and progressivism I can put up with

00:06:22.500 before I say look you know this is not it's not an insurrection it's not treason it's a bunch of

00:06:30.360 people saying stuff you don't like and I get that people in Ottawa don't like I mean I I live in a

00:06:35.380 neighborhood in Toronto that if a guy double parks his Q8 outside someone's house like sometimes they

00:06:39.900 call the police like you know I don't like traffic I I wouldn't want people honking their horns outside my

00:06:45.620 house I get that and you've had people in Ottawa who for you know two weeks have had to put up with

00:06:50.260 it I I totally sympathize with their position um but it's essentially a garden variety trade-off at

00:06:57.500 this point between civil liberties and the right to protest and the right of a city to say okay

00:07:01.820 enough is enough get your trucks out of our city like this kind of trade-off democracy is working

00:07:06.780 out all the time it's not helpful to cast it in the rhetoric of insurrection or war or terrorism

00:07:13.260 uh and by overplaying their hand the critics of the convoy I think have given a gift to the people

00:07:18.960 who are organizing it even if you think they're radicals well and I think to independent media as

00:07:23.820 well because I mean I've seen true north's audience really grow in the last few weeks because people

00:07:29.360 feel that they really can't get the truth from the legacy media people in the convoys what I find

00:07:33.760 really interesting talking to like you said there's a lot of young sort of new Canadians that are part

00:07:38.700 of the convoy that that for whatever reason in their community they feel they're opposed to vaccines

00:07:42.820 they really hate the mandates and they feel really almost surprised and hurt by the fact that they're

00:07:48.220 being smeared because they're usually on the progressive side of these things like I follow a

00:07:52.720 bunch of these guys on Instagram and they they were sort of part of the whole reconciliation defund the

00:07:58.920 police crowd last summer two summers ago and now they're on this side and they're being smeared by the

00:08:04.680 premise I want to talk a little bit about Justin Trudeau because I've just remembered that you worked with

00:08:08.820 him and you know him and it does seem like he has changed I mean he used to host these town halls where

00:08:14.100 he would take questions from anybody including by the way some of those town halls you look at the footage

00:08:18.360 there's people with swastikas like they have a flag and there's and by the way just to be fair the people who went to

00:08:24.600 those town halls with Trudeau with swastikas in the flag they weren't Nazis they were people who were 0.88

00:08:30.660 stupidly using Nazi symbology to smear their opponents as being Nazis which is the same as the 1.00

00:08:39.980 idiots that you saw at like there's two or three of them but of course the media shows footage of them 1.00

00:08:44.920 endlessly there were two or three idiots who showed up at the trucker convoy who had flags but if you look 1.00

00:08:50.680 at the flags they are trying to use Nazi imagery to attack Trudeau personally I think it's insane to 1.00

00:08:58.000 compare Trudeau to a Nazi or as a fascist like whatever you think of him but the media intentionally

00:09:04.980 ignore the fact these are not testimonials of Nazi belief these aren't people saying I'm a trucker and 1.00

00:09:11.560 I'm a Nazi they're people saying our opponents are channeling Nazi ideas which is stupid and hateful 0.99

00:09:18.360 but it doesn't mean they're Nazis and also there were like two or three of these nutbags like and so 0.99

00:09:23.700 as you said you know their their presence was exaggerated but even to the extent that they

00:09:28.460 were depicted even the depictions of them was itself a kind of lie because it was falsely

00:09:33.420 uh implied that they were actually there to signal Nazi belief and and to be fair the same is true of 0.96

00:09:39.820 these nutbags who showed up at Trudeau events with swastikas on their flags although actually that said

00:09:45.460 there is one uh image of Trudeau actually signing a neo-Nazi flag where the guy concealed it this is 0.71

00:09:52.240 if you go on YouTube you can see it's it's crazy the guy concealed the neo-Nazi flag Trudeau signed a

00:09:57.080 corner of it and then after he was showing ha ha look Trudeau signed a Nazi flag uh to my knowledge

00:10:02.200 that's like one of the few cases where you actually had some uh wackadoodle who who really did seem to

00:10:08.800 believe in Nazi ideology and and got close to a mainstream politician well well he must be one of maybe 10

00:10:14.800 in the entire country because it's not like that that ideology is is present and aware despite what

00:10:19.780 I think the media want you to think it's it's funny because I saw that you shared that on Twitter

00:10:23.100 Jonathan and it's like if a guy with a Nazi flag shows up at a Trudeau event the headline is um you

00:10:29.760 know this highlights security concerns of how close they can get to uh Canadian politicians uh when a

00:10:35.080 Nazi guy shows up at a you know quasi-conservative rally it means that everybody at that rally is is a 0.61

00:10:40.720 Nazi which is is quite the difference but I I want to ask you because yesterday we saw Joel uh light

00:10:45.280 bound who is a liberal MP really uh articulate guy come out and basically just criticized Trudeau for

00:10:51.820 the the change in tone and and seems like strategy that that they used to have this very positive

00:10:57.000 uniting message where they never treat Canadians um you know that the Canadians are always 0.97

00:11:02.320 have access to the charter and this sort of really positive vision of Canada and in the last like

00:11:09.500 six months or so we've seen a really negative barrage of sort of hateful rhetoric towards the

00:11:14.640 people who they disagree with when it comes to vaccines and and and the mandates and the entire

00:11:20.360 lockdown COVID lockdown it's it seems to me like Trudeau is in some trouble I mean he he hid from the

00:11:26.840 protesters he went into hiding he came out with a really really over-the-top loaded speech um accusing

00:11:32.960 the protesters of all these insane things that we're talking about um and then he has a member of his

00:11:38.020 his own caucus come out and just say you know we we should be doing better than this as liberals

00:11:42.280 you you you mentioned that you think that he's he's changed quite a bit since he first came into

00:11:47.340 public office do you think he's in trouble or do you think that he'll just sort of um this is just

00:11:51.800 wash off him like uh like like usual look Trudeau has been dismissed so many times I don't know if

00:11:58.480 people watching this do you remember in times of yore there was something called elbow gate

00:12:02.700 where Trudeau like you know it was some kind of minor fracas in the commons and Trudeau stormed

00:12:09.160 around and just by sheer accident like his elbow hit the chest of some female NDP MP and uh you know

00:12:17.020 at the time Thomas Mulcair I think was was the NDP leader at the time and it was like the whole thing

00:12:20.940 was dramatized and you had columnists saying you know this is the end of the you know uh Trudeau's

00:12:26.100 uh honeymoon period and uh you know forevermore he will be defined by elbow gate and all this and

00:12:31.640 then like a week later people forgot about elbow gate like you know Trudeau has been written off many

00:12:36.040 times falsely and I don't I certainly don't know that this is the end of uh the liberal romance with

00:12:43.340 him what I can say is that um it's been very educational for me not just in regard to Trudeau but

00:12:50.920 in regard to how politics changes people because when I met Trudeau and I helped him with his book

00:12:55.460 I was struck he wasn't he's a nice guy and like I think his desire to unite the country and I I can

00:13:02.580 just see people turning off this podcast as I say this like I just I think he just lost a thousand

00:13:06.720 subscribers but I'll say he was a nice guy I think he was a genuine patriot uh the book it was published

00:13:13.880 in 2014 called Common Ground I thought it was um a lot of it was just a sort of love letter to Canada

00:13:21.180 Canada and then what really changed in 2017 with Canada 150 where progressives decided

00:13:27.660 that Canada's brand is no longer or a wonderful beacon of hope and tolerance in contradistinction

00:13:33.880 to the United States which is evil we're actually a genocide state that's you know built on a mountain

00:13:40.020 of indigenous skulls and all our political work is going to go into smearing our own country 1.00

00:13:45.440 and um and Trudeau went hard into that and it was around that time that it changed and to be fair

00:13:52.880 if you look at the pattern of Canadian prime ministers by the time they're in their second

00:13:56.340 or third term they have become so co-opted by the people around them to make everything they do

00:14:02.820 a tribalized attack on their opponents because the people around them don't care about whatever it was

00:14:08.800 that got them into politics 10 years ago they care about winning the next election so this trucker

00:14:13.540 convoy sweeps into Ottawa and you got a bunch of 28 year olds around them saying oh this is awesome

00:14:18.060 let's smear the conservatives as Nazis um and and you know by the way Harper became a kind of like

00:14:24.880 very divisive tribalized guy in his you know as his tenure as prime minister wore on it this happens

00:14:30.680 this happened to Kretchen uh Martin Paul Martin wasn't around long enough for it to happen to him

00:14:35.300 but I guess he came into office like that uh and it is a cautionary tale for politics because I will say

00:14:40.940 this the Trudeau who I met seven eight years ago was uniquely positioned to march into a group of

00:14:53.300 truckers and say hey I don't agree with you but like let's talk he would have done a photo op in a truck

00:14:59.020 he would have listened to them um the guy was very charming and maybe maybe he still maintains that

00:15:05.600 capacity for charm but he would not have stayed in some undisclosed location sneering about all these 0.99

00:15:12.600 supposed hate mongers who'd come to the city he would have gotten off his ass and actually met these 0.97

00:15:17.520 people even though he disagrees with them that was the Trudeau of 2014 15 16 maybe even 2017 2018 0.99

00:15:25.560 and to watch him become this kind of sullen hermit trying to score points with hyperbolic attacks on

00:15:36.120 conservatives it isn't just about Trudeau it's about how politics changes people conservatives or liberals

00:15:41.520 alike and if anybody is thinking about getting into politics uh it's a it's a depressing spectacle

00:15:47.700 because I think politics changes people and and this is like a case study in how that happens

00:15:53.360 interesting well I don't share your views I always thought that Trudeau was very arrogant

00:15:57.860 uh very Quebec centrist that he didn't have a lot of respect for western Canada and he wasn't

00:16:02.580 necessarily a very thoughtful person he hadn't really thought through the core issues of of the

00:16:07.500 country but I I think that you're right that he would have probably gone and spoken to the truckers

00:16:12.640 perhaps the French ones perhaps the Quebec ones I can't really imagine him even five ten years ago

00:16:17.300 going out to western Canada and speaking speaking to people in Alberta he and I grew up like within one or

00:16:22.800 two kilometers of each other I myself am very even though I'm an anglophone you know and like Trudeau

00:16:27.700 I don't speak fluent French I'm I have the same parochial fascination and love of Quebec as he does

00:16:33.480 so like Trudeau was very much of my tribe um and we're all creatures of our background you know if I

00:16:39.700 grew up in western Canada I would have maybe similar views about Quebec like I don't know um but I do know

00:16:46.660 he was a person of good faith I know that um you know unless I'm an incredible incredibly misjudging

00:16:53.940 his character and it's true you know he wasn't was never I think he's very smart he was never an

00:16:58.800 intellectual it is absolutely true that some of his you know the things he said uh were kind of trite

00:17:06.560 and you know he wasn't a deep thinker about Canada especially maybe western Canada um but he was a person

00:17:15.560 of good faith and I think a politician of good faith and I don't think anybody who's watching what

00:17:21.400 he and the liberal party have done over the last two weeks can can say that anything they've done

00:17:25.820 has been of good faith it's been about fear-mongering and trying to smear a flawed and diverse protest 0.98

00:17:33.220 movement as just a bunch of fascist hate mongers and it's been disgusting to watch

00:17:36.860 I completely agree with that part I the thing that strikes me about Trudeau is I always thought 0.90

00:17:41.500 this is something I thought about him from the first time I interacted with him politically in 2011

00:17:45.420 that he that he hated conservatives more than he loved Canada now maybe you think that he

00:17:50.880 you know his book is a love letter to Canada that's true now it wasn't true of Trudeau when I met him

00:17:54.740 it's 100% not true true when I when I met him 100% and I know sometimes history is written backwards

00:18:00.480 and you you impute the flaws of a person that they have now to to to the point of of political

00:18:07.000 conception I know your listeners aren't going to agree with me Trudeau was a decent guy who gave

00:18:11.740 conservatives a fair shake I mean yes it was often you know he had to spout the language of liberal

00:18:17.020 propaganda he was part of the party um but I don't you know look he he broke bread with separatists

00:18:23.880 um separate separatists who literally were trying to break up the country in the fashion that the

00:18:30.440 so-called insurrectionists of the trucker convoy are falsely accused of like he um he gets points for

00:18:37.680 that for me you know Papineau his riding a lot of separatists in that riding he'd go door to door

00:18:42.600 and talk to these people imagine him doing imagine him going truck to truck and talking to people

00:18:47.240 which by the way if he did it he'd score so many points like it would be such a wonderful spectacle

00:18:52.880 I'd love for him to he can still do that he can still do that but of course he won't

00:18:56.680 I you know I agree I think that if we had a prime minister who was willing to engage with

00:19:01.320 the truckers and willing to take their concerns seriously I think that this this whole standstill

00:19:05.760 wouldn't be as it is because people would feel at least that their voices were heard and part of

00:19:10.060 the frustration that I see from so many of the protesters is just the sort of way that they've

00:19:14.180 been written off and the way they've uh dismissed it I wanted to ask you one other question though

00:19:18.520 John while I have you um on the podcast I know that you are a someone who thinks a lot about free

00:19:24.200 speech um and the the sort of history of free speech you know alongside this smear that we've seen

00:19:30.060 on the truckers and the demonization of them uh on the other side of the border down the U.S.

00:19:34.780 we've seen sort of a similar smear campaign um unleashed against Joe Rogan incredibly popular

00:19:41.160 podcaster and I wanted to I wanted to have your take on this because I know you you've commented

00:19:46.880 on it quite a bit but it it just seems like we're in such a wild place in our society where

00:19:52.540 someone who is so incredibly popular but also who seems like a genuinely good person who asks honest

00:20:00.780 questions he's intellectually curious he has a huge audience because he so many people relate to him

00:20:06.820 and yet the way that he's covered in the media the way that the media and and some of the people in

00:20:11.460 the media trying to smear him it's like it's unrecognizable from anyone who watches the the podcast

00:20:16.640 so I I I know you have a lot of thoughts on this I want to I want to switch gears and ask you about

00:20:21.300 Joe Rogan. So it's a very analogous phenomenon whereby Joe Rogan is not someone I agree with

00:20:27.780 especially on vaccine stuff uh I I'm very pro vaccine I'm not one of these people who on social

00:20:33.760 media you know like my name is John K triple vax boosted you know I'm wearing five masks like

00:20:39.420 but I am in terms of public health very conventionally minded I support vaccines I don't support forcing

00:20:45.480 people to get vaccinated but one of the reasons I came on the show is to tell people like on social

00:20:50.060 media if you follow me you know I'm not a kool-aid drinker I'm not a slavish follow of orthodoxy

00:20:54.640 but I'm somebody who has looked at the science and vaccines save lives they can save the lives of

00:20:59.840 people listening to this if they're not vaccinated the government should not force you to get

00:21:02.920 vaccinated but I'm telling you that it's a good choice and I'll end my speech there because no 1.00

00:21:07.960 one wants to be hectored about this well well but but but in terms of vaccines I mean Canadians have

00:21:12.620 by and large I think over 80 percent of Canadians are now vaccinated and and and if you go into the

00:21:17.240 sort of the age groups that are most at risk like people over the age of 70 over the age of 80

00:21:22.060 it's like 99 which I assume that the only people who are not getting vaccinated in that age group

00:21:26.580 is because they're too old and frail and and and that there is concern well well anyway less than

00:21:31.700 one percent are not vaccinated so almost almost everyone who needs to be vaccinated is vaccinated

00:21:35.520 at this point your statistics are correct but I'm just saying I tweeted this the other day

00:21:38.560 an ER doctor at my health club we had a half hour conversation about this he's had two patients

00:21:44.160 two Omicron patients who have died under his watch one was a 90 year old who was from a family of

00:21:49.720 anti-vaxxers one was a 79 year old who said he quote didn't have time to get vaccinated so

00:21:55.060 anyway end of speech about vaccines in terms of Joe Rogan it's similar to the convoy in the sense

00:22:00.840 that I don't I don't listen to Joe Rogan's podcast I only listen I don't the only podcasts I listen to

00:22:05.600 are like nerdball historical podcast people always assume oh you must listen to Sam Harris you must

00:22:10.020 listen to Jordan Peterson you must listen to Rogan it's like no I don't listen to any of those things

00:22:13.080 um and the only reason I'm on Rogan's side at all in terms of this insane campaign to get him thrown

00:22:21.000 off Spotify is because of these these people who insist that someone they disagree with shouldn't

00:22:26.820 be on a platform that has a diversity viewpoint Bill Cosby has some kind of podcast like or whatever

00:22:31.860 on Spotify like they didn't come after him but Joe Rogan comes and like it's insane you had Olivia

00:22:39.100 Chao prominent Toronto leftist yesterday she tweeted I am not making this up she tweeted how disgusted she

00:22:46.280 was that Spotify has uh Joe Rogan on it and she says that's why I use Apple music it's like Apple

00:22:54.580 really those you know slave labor commanders in in China uh like people are using this issue as a

00:23:03.420 sort of virtue signaling thing if you just ignore Joe Rogan and say you know what I don't agree with

00:23:08.640 him I'm vaccinated like you know I don't encourage my friends to listen to but whatever then people

00:23:17.400 like me would have no basis to defend Joe Rogan because on the substance of the views I disagree

00:23:22.200 with Rogan the only thing that makes me want to defend him is people trying to get him canceled and

00:23:26.260 it's the same with the trucker convoy in substance I disagree with their views about the mandate but then

00:23:30.960 when you come after them and call them Nazis and try and take away their money and say you know like

00:23:36.060 let's bankrupt these people let's let's publish pictures of their trucks and their their corporate

00:23:40.800 identify identifying data so we can make sure they can't feed their children I'm like you just push

00:23:47.020 someone over to the other side because as soon as you do that I don't care what their views on mandates

00:23:51.780 are I'm on their side if your goal is to ruin their lives because they have views you to disagree with

00:23:57.780 and that's what the left is just completely overplaying their hand not just on vaccines

00:24:02.220 not just on Rogan on gender on race I mean this is this is why I think next couple of election cycles

00:24:10.920 you're going to see a lot of populists get elected and then you're going to have pundits in Canada say

00:24:15.700 oh this just proves how racist Canada is no it doesn't prove how racist Canada is it proves that you

00:24:20.020 overplayed your hand when you had the chance and now you're paying the price for it

00:24:24.660 just I know I'm keeping you for a longer than I said I would but I just had another question

00:24:29.580 you're someone who like you said you're of the same ilk as Justin Trudeau you come from

00:24:34.040 the progressive side of things you surround yourself seems like with with progressive minded people

00:24:38.440 what's happening on your side on that side of the aisle why why are they overplaying their hand

00:24:43.820 why are they so zealous why are they so angry and hateful and insistent upon not just refuting the ideas

00:24:50.800 of those they disagree with but but erasing them and cancelling them and pushing them off the public

00:24:55.080 square like where is this coming from why is it happening so I think there's a lot of people who

00:25:00.320 will go kind of deep into theories about critical race theory and post-modernism and

00:25:04.320 cultural Marxism whatever that means from my vantage point it's it's a simpler phenomenon a lot of it is

00:25:13.280 laziness you have a lot of progressives many of them well-intentioned people many of them

00:25:19.180 my friends uh co-workers former co-workers who spend a lot of their life in ideological silos

00:25:26.320 and their Facebook groups uh their book clubs it's people who agree with them they have the same

00:25:33.280 hashtags they have the same views they have lost the ability to defend those views because their

00:25:38.420 intellectual ecosystems don't permit any dissent to be raised so when they see any sign of dissent

00:25:46.020 mandates that's geographically proximate like somebody driving a truck through their city with

00:25:51.020 a Canadian flag on it that says no to mandates they no longer have the intellectual tools or reflexes

00:25:57.360 to actually have any kind of debate or discussion about the substance of the issue the only thing they

00:26:03.080 know how to do is say aha that's one of the Nazi insurrectionists I have been warned about on my

00:26:11.200 Reddit group or whatnot and so it's just this sort of like um it's like an immune system that gets

00:26:16.640 activated with antibodies and the only language they have is is the language of they're anti-semitic

00:26:25.800 they must be Nazis they're insurrectionists or they look for what they imagine to be analogous 0.65

00:26:31.380 historical episodes such as the January 6th uh riot at the capital in the United States even though

00:26:37.700 we're in Canada it's a completely different movement completely different country the whole

00:26:41.960 January 6th thing that's what they know about it's uh I think it's called the availability bias uh

00:26:47.540 when they look at psychology that's what's in their mind so that's what they they label it as

00:26:53.000 and I I'm much less convinced about like esoteric theoretical analyses uh based on how people have

00:27:03.080 been convinced a lot of it to me is just laziness people who don't have the capacity or will to defend

00:27:08.200 their views except by recourse to lazy hysterical slogans about Nazis and then of course when they see 0.98

00:27:15.480 uh some solitary idiot with any kind of Nazi sign they seize on it they're I mean it's it's like some 0.99

00:27:23.800 kind of intellectual orgasm they have which is like aha this proves everything I've been ranting about 0.99

00:27:29.160 for the last week because some some fruit loop is holding a sign there's a guy he was in Toronto he

00:27:35.480 was holding this like handmade sign for his website he had some website called goyim tv I'm sure I'm sure

00:27:42.040 you've seen this photo he's holding a thing about how all he calls them uh pharma judicals all these 0.98

00:27:48.280 jews like me have um are behind the vaccine thing and he's clearly an anti-semite and he was using the

00:27:55.560 protest to to promote his crazy website called goyim tv the only reason anyone's ever heard about this

00:28:02.040 goyim tv website is because the progressive media has focused on this guy relentlessly as somehow being

00:28:07.720 a spokesman for the movement and he's not it's been documented they actually took this guy's sign

00:28:13.560 away ripped it up and sort of like threw this guy out of the protest because they were so disgusted by

00:28:17.720 his anti-semitism I actually I'm into free speech and I'm Jewish I don't think you should take his sign

00:28:23.880 and rip it up I think everybody deserves free speech even anti-semitic hate mongers and outliers

00:28:29.480 like him but the fact that they actually took away his sign and tore it up means that this guy's an

00:28:35.480 outlier but nevertheless you go on progressive social media this guy's become a celebrity so

00:28:40.840 the people making these anti-semites a celebrity are not people in the trucker convoy they're the

00:28:46.520 progressives who profess to be fighting anti-semitism and so whether they make a celebrity out of this 0.93

00:28:51.720 I visited this guy's website just to see what kind of like crazy crap he's going on it but 0.95

00:28:57.160 in a million years I never even would have known about this this crazy website were it not for 0.98

00:29:01.000 progressives making the insane claim that this nut somehow represents the convoy so we live in really

00:29:08.200 weird times I think that's why the protester the organizers would have to like I agree that

00:29:13.880 they shouldn't rip up his sign but they should say you have to leave because if you stay here

00:29:17.560 they're going to pretend that you're part of the movement or somehow stigmatize them or somehow just

00:29:22.120 like have people standing around saying we have nothing to do with this guy like not give the media

00:29:29.320 any pretext to like close crop a photo of him somehow uh you know being associated with the protest yeah

00:29:37.000 there has to be a mechanism mechanism to stigmatize him but you know people were saying oh should we let

00:29:42.680 communists parade the hammer and sickle rallies yes we should or palestinians who go around we just 0.98

00:29:48.520 saw this in toronto a week ago palestinians going around demanding the eradication of the state of 0.93

00:29:53.000 israel so somehow the media didn't make a big deal about that one even though like the whole protest was

00:29:57.880 based around an anti-semitic premise um i see lots of swastikas at those rallies no but those are those

00:30:04.520 are social justice swastikas so they're permitted uh but like i i i there are there are plenty of groups

00:30:11.400 conservative groups who want to ban those people from marching which is hypocritical they should

00:30:15.720 have the right to march um people should have the right to express crazy views it's part of probably

00:30:22.920 living in a in a pluralistic society um what we should be able to count on in normal times is a media

00:30:31.720 and a political class who don't ascribe the craziest most stigmatized viewpoints expressed at a protest

00:30:39.400 to the protest movement as a whole and this is by the way something the leftists had to confront

00:30:43.080 with we had an author at quillette more and more my authors at quillette are socialists who are

00:30:47.400 disgusted by the way the left has been hijacked by uh snobbish identity identity-based movements

00:30:54.120 who was saying this guy used to march in the peace parade i think it was called in vancouver and he said

00:30:59.400 whenever they had a peace parade in vancouver it was in the 80s for you know nuclear disarmament

00:31:03.720 there's some whack job would come in with like i love north korea or um you know i love communism or

00:31:09.800 stalin was right you'd have trotskyists and maoists and just like every every fruitcake in the neighborhood 1.00

00:31:15.960 would come out with this homemade sign about how amazing communism is and right-wing media would seize

00:31:21.240 on that and say aha these are a bunch of trotskyists who are just trying to like turn canada into

00:31:26.360 uh into a communist dictatorship which was of course it was it was conservatives playing the same trick

00:31:33.800 that progressives are now playing both sides do this well i don't i don't i like i hear that a lot

00:31:39.000 that people say oh well conservatives used to be the one that were for censorship and they were the

00:31:42.680 ones that were trying to smear everyone well it's like i know but i did it's it's like it's like i

00:31:46.760 didn't right so it's like it's like you're you're saying okay well what you guys are doing what

00:31:50.680 what the left is doing now is is comparable to what the right was doing in the 80s it's like

00:31:55.320 well if i think if i was live in or if i was active in the 80s and i was a political commentator

00:32:01.320 i would say that that was wrong too because i think this is the 90s so in the 90s i went to

00:32:07.160 law school in the united states during the 90s and uh a big movement among conservatives this is in the

00:32:13.240 united states was to pass an amendment and you've actually trump even talked about this uh at one point

00:32:20.600 an amendment to prevent the burning of the american flag on the pretext that well it's not that's not

00:32:26.440 really a form of speech it's kind of a desecration of a national symbol this was a big deal they were 0.97

00:32:31.480 trying to cancel flag burners now i think burning a flag is is stupid um but you should be able to burn 0.92

00:32:37.240 a flag but you had conservatives who were trying to insist that that wasn't real speech it was violence 0.92

00:32:44.920 which directly mimics what progressives say now when they say well you know when you express support

00:32:49.880 for jk rowling that's not speech that's a form of trauma like they learned that from conservatives uh

00:32:56.040 so you know i i disagree i don't know i don't know that they learned that i think it's probably just

00:33:01.160 it like you said a lazy instinct that something it is like yeah look at last summer last summer we saw

00:33:06.280 countless canadian statues get pulled down right we saw um not just people who were involved with

00:33:13.400 residential schools but you know queen victoria queen elizabeth um i think there's a statue of

00:33:18.360 captain james cook in vancouver that got thrown into the ocean for some reason um you know we saw

00:33:23.800 desecration of national symbols by the left and we were told that it wasn't violence it was

00:33:28.920 understandable and justifiable and all part of the reconciliation process i i i didn't hear a lot of

00:33:33.880 conservatives saying that um you know that that that that should be considered treason or that that

00:33:38.920 should be um i i mean people said hey we should uphold the rule of law and vandalism shouldn't be

00:33:43.880 okay yeah it's not part of speech the most to me the most disgusting example was in montreal they

00:33:49.240 they pulled down uh johnny mcdonald statue this was i think um i forget it was black lives matter or

00:33:55.880 an indigenous um rights protest but the two kind of merged um and the video was online and then as soon

00:34:02.920 as it came down it was just a complete criminal act uh and then a protester went over and pretended to

00:34:08.360 hump john mcdonald's head like the whole thing was just i'm not like i don't fetishize canadian

00:34:13.720 history as like some sort of sacred text but i was watching it i was like whatever side these people

00:34:17.880 are on i'm on the other side of it and um and federal politicians actually stared at their shoes

00:34:24.280 i'm talking about like trudeau and liberals to their credit i think there were like quebecois

00:34:29.160 politicians who actually they were the they were the voice of reason standing up for john mcdonald

00:34:34.520 that that anglophone assimilationist who normally they might you know be skeptical of because uh if

00:34:41.560 they've nationalist quebecois sympathies uh in fact actually this is we were talking before about the

00:34:46.520 liberal mp who's become the voice of reason and has pushed back against trudeau uh no surprise he's

00:34:52.280 from quebec and as i said on twitter earlier many of the disaffected civil servants and liberal

00:34:58.920 politicians who feed me scoops and you know will dm me with um sometimes they're just looking to

00:35:05.480 kvetch because they can't do it among their liberal friends they do it to me because they know i have

00:35:09.960 an appetite for that um they're from quebec quebecers have are are much less cowed by this sort of

00:35:20.200 anglophone progressive left-wing social panic that has become dominant since 2017 and by the way i should

00:35:26.520 say a lot of them are immigrants because you've got people saying look i didn't come from iran

00:35:32.120 or uh eastern europe to canada the land of freedom so i could see a repeat of this kind of top-down

00:35:42.360 autocratic demand for ideological purity uh i want no part of that and and i my in my view the people

00:35:50.840 who are going to save the canadian left from their social panic are going to be quebecers and immigrants 1.00

00:35:56.200 because here in toronto in particular uh old stock as stephen harper once called them old stock

00:36:03.640 anglo upper middle class wasps have lost any ability to embrace common sense or to reject the 1.00

00:36:11.480 sanctimonious pieties of american imported progressive ideological they just they're they don't have the

00:36:20.360 capacity to do it they feel they have no moral capital whatsoever to exercise independent thought

00:36:25.480 they slavishly follow whatever hashtag comes down the pipe 15 minutes ago and we're going to have to

00:36:30.760 look to quebecers uh and immigrants uh you know this is my eastern canadian bias i don't live in 0.98

00:36:36.600 western canada so yeah maybe my perspective would be different um but they are i hope going to rescue

00:36:43.080 the canadian left with some assistance from old school socialists who realize that the real

00:36:50.200 divide in our society is class-based it is not skin color based uh and and i more and more i have

00:36:57.480 time for old school socialists who have a class-based analysis of our society because you've got people

00:37:01.880 like me i'm living large right like you know um but the reason i'm living large is it's because of

00:37:07.880 class it's you know it's not because i have white privilege or i'm cis or uh you know white privilege

00:37:13.320 does pay play part of it racism is a real thing but god i would love it if the left got back to

00:37:18.680 traditional marxism right you know i i i i i i i agree that you know what i think what we're seeing

00:37:25.240 with the trucker convoy is like a class uprising like uh people who have had to live with the

00:37:30.360 covet people who have had no choice other than to go out there and face it and live with it they're

00:37:35.240 used to it and they're sort of pushing back against all the middle-class canadians who are very

00:37:41.080 comfortable with the new normal of working from home living from home having minimal social

00:37:46.680 interaction it's a lot easier uh for them and then maybe they have more apprehension and they're

00:37:50.920 more nervous about going back into a hundred percent and it is but it's totally class-based

00:37:55.560 in my neighborhood my neighborhood is full of consultants lawyers journalists like me um who

00:38:02.680 are like oh yes i don't care how long it takes how many zoom meetings i have to take um you know we're

00:38:08.760 going to fight this thing and have quarantine for the next five years it's like yeah of course you feel

00:38:13.640 that way you know you can charge 400 bucks an hour to someone for a zoom meeting i think you'd sing a

00:38:18.040 different tune if you know you owned a restaurant or you know you're into event management or you had

00:38:24.280 a bar or you know you were a trucker or something like that like if you had a job that required you

00:38:29.800 not to like nod your head on zoom meetings all day and get paid for it like it's a totally class-based

00:38:36.520 divide but but in order for them to justify their class privilege they have to pretend it's about

00:38:42.760 race or because otherwise they can't import the the culture war into a domain that they feel they

00:38:51.720 have a moral advantage on because they know that if you look at a class-based analysis they're the

00:38:56.840 douchebags but they have to pretend it's the people who are delivering food and trucks and stuff who

00:39:02.520 somehow like lack their magical insight into social justice and and this is the thing that's turning

00:39:08.760 people like me i think away from progressive politics because in every other respect if you

00:39:13.800 look at my lifestyle i should be a doctrinaire progressive but i just can't i can't drink their

00:39:18.280 kool-aid it's just it's i can't do it anymore well it's it's really refreshing uh to hear your

00:39:24.280 perspective i know uh you you know often the people i have on the show are more on the conservative side so i

00:39:29.640 really appreciate you uh coming on and sharing your views even though they're different it's crazy

00:39:33.480 that anyone calls me a conservative like only in a country that's gone as crazy as canada politically

00:39:38.840 could could anyone even consider but i look at like my trolls on on twitter it's like oh you

00:39:42.920 hardcore conservatives you're all the same really hardcore conservatives why because like you know

00:39:48.760 i read harry potter to my kids and i don't think jk rowling's like you know hitler adjacent that's

00:39:53.640 what makes me a conservative now you've lost your minds right like no they're certainly certainly doing

00:39:59.800 a lot of they're certainly helping conservatives like me in in in pushing pushing more canadians

00:40:06.280 um over to the sort of common sense side but i i really appreciate your time jonathan it's been

00:40:10.840 great uh talking to you i appreciate all your insight and i hope that you'll come back and join

00:40:14.920 us on the show in the future thank you all right thank you so much for tuning in i'm

00:40:18.840 kendis malcolm and this is the kendis malcolm show

00:40:28.040 you

00:40:30.040 you

00:40:32.040 you

00:40:34.040 you

00:40:36.040 you

00:40:38.040 you

00:40:40.040 you

Juno News - February 10, 2022

Why did the legacy media smear the Freedom Convoy？ (Ft. Jonathan Kay)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript