EZRA LEVANT ｜ CBC 'comedians' spend 15 minutes reviewing a conservative comedian they didn't even watch
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Summary
The CBC dispatched some government-funded comedians to critique a conservative comedian named Ben Bankus. Trouble is, they refused to watch Ben's show before critiquing it. But they still went at it for 15 minutes. I'll take you through the whole thing.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. The CBC dispatched some government comedians to critique a conservative
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comedian named Ben Bankus. Trouble is, they refused to watch Ben Bankus' show before critiquing it.
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But they still went at it for 15 minutes. I'll take you through the 15 minutes. It was quite
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something. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the
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video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight
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independent because we don't take any money from the government.
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Tonight, CBC comedians spend 15 minutes reviewing a conservative comedian
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whose show they didn't even watch. It's February 19th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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You know, I've known Ben Bankus, the Toronto-based comedian, for a long time. I remember during the
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lockdowns, he tried to do outdoor comedy to get people laughing, and he would set up with a PA
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system in a park to get around the rules against closed buildings. He was a bit of a dissenter back
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then, and he showed some entrepreneurial spirit. And Ben, over the course of time, has gone over to
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big things. He's sold out tours, not just in Canada, but actually mainly in the United States.
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He's a hit. He's a popular success, and I can only presume by the size of the crowds and the number of
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gigs he has, but he's a commercial success, too. That's how it is in comedy. Most people just simply
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don't hit that level of success, so you've got to tip your hat to Ben, and it's no surprise that he's
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really made it big in the States. Most Canadian comedians, when they make it big, they go to the
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States. That's half the people at Saturday Night Live in New York City, including the boss of that
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place. Well, naturally, the government-funded comedians at the CBC State Broadcaster hate
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success stories like Ben. They can't or won't even try to make it out on their own. The idea of a
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government comedian is an oxymoron. It's a contradiction in terms. How can you be punk rock? How can you speak
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truth to power if you're cashing a check every week from Mark Carney and you work for his state
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broadcaster? It's just a contradiction, and so I think there's a sort of a sullen jealousy. The
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losers at CBC comedy, when they see someone like Ben make a success, especially given that Ben is
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conservative. Ben is controversial, no doubt about it, but he's been on a tear, and sure, maybe it's worth
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talking about if you prefer talking about jokes rather than hearing the jokes. And that's, I think,
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my criticism of the show I'm about to go through with you. What I'm about to show you is a CBC panel
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of three people, two of whom purport to be comedians, talking about Ben Bankus, but never actually
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showing his jokes or telling you what the jokes are. But nonetheless, they spend 15 minutes
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condemning those jokes. There's the host of the show, and he has two comedians, one of whom
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refused to see the show, but accepted the gig to come on the CBC to talk about it for 15 minutes.
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How on earth do you even do that? Well, I'll show you. I want to play for you the entire 15-minute
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conversation. This really is the blind leading the blind. How can you have a host of a show,
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interview a guest of a show about a comedy routine neither of them has watched? Well,
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it's the CBC, and all they need to know is they don't like conservatives, and they certainly don't
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like Jews like Ben Bankus. Two of the three people in this conversation are Muslim, and they complain a
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lot about Islamophobia. Ben Bankus does the opposite. He mocks Islamist terrorists. I think that's the real
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reason he's hated. But without further ado, let me take you through 15 minutes of CBC talking
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about comedy they never even saw. Here, let's play the tape. You already know that comedians are
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supposed to push the envelope. That's the thing that we go to comedy for. That's what we want our
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comedians to do, to make us think about the world differently. Now let me stop you right there,
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because I think we may have a difference of opinion on what comedy is about. I don't go to
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see comedy that often, but when I do, I go to laugh, not to be challenged on how I think. I don't regard
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most comedians as deep public intellectuals. Some of them, like Tim Dillon, do riff on current
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events. But I think that's when people start to applaud them, as opposed to laugh. I prefer
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my comedians to make me laugh, don't you? He's originally from Toronto, and he's kind of become
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known for material that's a little bit racist and sexist and transphobic. And he began to sell
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out a lot of dates after he made this joke on stage about Renee Goode. Renee Goode, of course,
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the woman who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. And the thing about the idea that
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the outrage is the thing that's bringing people to the door, that's something that's interesting to
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me. Like, what is the draw to see someone like a Ben Bankus? Well, Ali Hassan is here and Anne
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McMaster is here. Anne McMaster actually went to see one of his shows in Toronto in order to report back
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on what that audience was like and what Ben Bankus' work is like. I got so much out of this conversation.
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I hope that you do too. Hello, both of you. Good morning. Good morning. Nice to have you here.
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Thank you so much. I got to tell you, we asked both of you to go see the show and you were like,
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sure. And then, Ali, you were like, no, I'm not doing it. I'm going to start with you briefly.
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Who is Ben Bankus? And then why did you say, no, I'm not going to this yet? I'm not going to go see it.
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All right. That's your right to be a little bit pouty. It's a little bit thin skin for someone who calls
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himself a comedian. But how do you take a gig? I don't know. Maybe they paid him 500 bucks to come
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on this podcast. It wouldn't surprise me. Now that Lapu Lapu thing is just for those who don't know,
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there was a terrible crime. Someone drove a vehicle into a group of people in British Columbia,
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and it was actually a horrific mass killing. And both the victims and the perpetrators
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were Asian. And it was deemed not to be a terrorist incident. There was a mental health
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element truly involved. And so Ben Bankus apparently said he should have done another
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Lapu Lapu, another lap. I don't know. I didn't see the joke. I only heard people partially retell it.
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But yeah, a lot of comedy is black comedy and part of comedy is laughing at dark things. I mean,
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gallows humor, funereal humor. That's the best they got here. I'll just give it away here. Spoiler
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alert. They don't actually come up with anything else. They don't actually quote Ben or any of his
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jokes. It's really weird. Listen to this story, though. Let me just tell you in a story. Last summer,
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we have a party in my backyard with my son's baseball team. One of the mothers shows up, says,
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I heard you're a comedian. We went to see a comedian recently. Do you know Ben Bankus? And
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I do know Ben. I've worked with Ben over the years. But I keep quiet, withhold judgment. I go,
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yeah, I know Ben. And she says, we actually had to leave. Now I'm interested. Tell me what happened.
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Why did you leave? And she says, well, the best way I can describe it was it was just like a mob
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mentality. So I said, tell me the moment when you left. She said, well, he told this joke. She says,
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do you know about the Lapu-Lapu festival in Vancouver? And you know what had happened there?
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Somebody had sort of mowed down. Yeah, several people. Yeah, exactly. And so
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he tells a joke about, yeah, so this happened at the Lapu-Lapu festival. And now I'm paraphrasing
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because I wasn't there, but he makes a joke about, uh, he should have taken a few more Lapu-Lapus
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around the block. Oof. Crowd cheers. In their row, this baseball mom in her row, somebody yells,
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kill them all. Yeah. I just don't believe that happened. I don't believe that a soccer
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mom came to his barbecue. That was oddly specific. It sounded a little like Jussie Smollett saying,
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oh, I was walking in Chicago at 3 AM. And some guys came out with a noose and said,
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you're in MAGA country. Yeah, no, I don't believe that that barbecue story with the soccer mom
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happened. And I don't believe she said, the crowd said, kill them all. And I don't believe
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it happened at all. I simply don't believe it. But that's how you fight against conservatives.
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If you're with the CBC, you make up something and attack that straw man. They don't invite, uh,
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you to watch Ben Bankus's comments. They just make up an incident, but not even about Ben Bankus
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himself, but someone who was in the crowd in a double hearsay. Just awful.
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That's why I didn't go see Ben Bankus. In summary, that still bothers me to, you know,
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Filipino community is in mourning. Uh, good, decent Canadians across this country are in mourning.
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And that's the type of joke you make. So that's just, that's not my, that's not my cup of tea to,
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uh, to make a gross understatement. All right. So, so it was a bad joke. Maybe. I don't know.
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What, why is he even on this panel? I don't understand that part. Shouldn't you know something
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about or see a show before criticizing it? That would be like doing a movie review,
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but saying, I refuse to review, refuse to see the movie, but I'm going to condemn it. It's really
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weird. So here's the thing that you and I have in common is like this, when we hear like the first
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time that I heard about Ben Bankus was this sort of Rene Good story. And we'll get to that bit in just
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a moment bit, quote unquote. Um, but I, that was my first time going, I don't think I want anything to
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deal with it. I'm not sure the kind of audience that this person would draw. And thank you for
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going to the show on our, all of our behalf, because we did want to talk to someone who was
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actually like physically there. Talk to me about your experience at the show. What was his, what
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was his performance as a comedian? Like what was a crowd like? Tell me.
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So the host refused to go too. I get it. If some loser comedian didn't go, he's making a stand.
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I, I, why he's invited as a panelist, I don't know, but you're the host of this panel
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and you refuse to go too? What is wrong with you CBC people?
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I mean, first of all, uh, maybe next time you could send me to something sort of more fun,
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You are owed that. You are owed that, at least.
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It was interesting. And I admit, there was a bit of like car crash curiosity for me to go see this show.
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Um, what I observed right off the top was, you know, he's a, he's a person of size,
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but he's got a really small stage presence. He takes up very little space on the stage,
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kind of hangs out towards the back, very little eye contact, like always looking over to the side.
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And then he's got this big pop that he just dives into. It's almost like his security blanket.
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Um, the other, like, I won't comment on what he said, but I can speak to the structure of what he said.
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It's hard to be like, tell us some of the jokes.
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I don't want you to do any of that. I already, like, I'm not interested.
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You won't comment on what he said? I don't understand.
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What was interesting to me was that there was no self-deprecation in his jokes.
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Like a lot of comics will warn themselves up to the crowd by making shots of themselves.
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And he didn't do any of that. Um, all of the jokes were what we call punching down.
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Women, immigrants, indigenous, um, the Bad Bunny show.
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So Ben Bankus punches down. And of course, great comedians on the left always punch up.
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And mostly what they talk about is Donald Trump. It, trouble is, it's just,
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it's clapping comedy, not laughing comedy. But I don't know if you heard that there.
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They mentioned Bad Bunny. Um, I don't think anyone in the world knew who Bad Bunny was,
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other than, uh, people who like Spanish language rap, until about a week ago when he was the
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halftime performer at the Super Bowl. Here's a quick clip of Bad Bunny, just in case you don't know.
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So Bad Bunny is an incredibly successful rapper. He surely got paid a million dollars plus to be in the Super Bowl.
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How is it punching down for Ben Bankus to make fun of a millionaire privileged rapper?
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I don't know. You gotta have new talking points if you're on the left, or maybe talk about what Ben Bankus actually said.
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It was, it was pretty wild to see this thing, this technique that he has where he will drop the most racist,
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misogynistic line and then wait. And once the audience laughs, he's like, see? Then he, then he jumps in.
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So there's, it was very interesting to watch how he worked the crowd.
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Mm-hmm. That sounds like maybe barely working the crowd and hoping for a response from the crowd.
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But I suppose that's sometimes what that job is. I mean, gotta tell you.
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Ali, like he's got sold out show in Kitchener next week, has been moved from, uh, next month,
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sorry, has been moved from a studio run performance arts center to a private venue because a lot of residents had protested.
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Now I found this disturbing. The fact that it was in a government facility that canceled Ben Bankus,
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then he moved to private facility. It shouldn't be that way. If you're in a government facility,
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you should be protected by the charter of rights, which applies to all government that they can't pick
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and choose based on your political opinion. They can't cancel you because they think you're unfunny.
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If you're in a private facility and your contract allows them to kick you out, I suppose that's fine.
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Private property. How is it acceptable that the government says who can and can't use a public
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building based on if their jokes are funny or not? I think that's actually really dangerous.
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The panel here didn't see any danger. They'll never be kicked out of anywhere. That's for sure.
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When CBC reached out a comment for him, I just want to read you this quote. This is a quote,
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this is a statement that we got, the CBC got from him. Um, Ben Bankus is proving that following your
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dreams and speaking your own truth resonates with millions of people, even if that truth is seen as
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harsh or abrasive. As a comedian, what do you make of that? You know, I think Ben, people of his ilk,
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and there are, there are many other comedians like him, they believe they're speaking truth to power and
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they believe at some level that they are some type of, you know, George Carlin, uh, Bill Hicks type
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of, uh, you know, reincarnation. And this has been said by many people, many times, dude, George Carlin
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would hate you. George Carlin would absolutely despise you and everything. Those were men who
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actually spoke truth to power. Power felt ashamed hearing the jokes that, uh, that, that George Carlin
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made about them. He exposed people in power and talked about how they were corrupt and how they were,
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going back on what Ann's saying, this is all punching down. This is easy, easy pickings.
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It's low hanging fruit. I don't consider it good comedy. There's no actual joke writing going into
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the bulk of it. And, um, yeah, I mean, I look, Ben's roots are, uh, racist from the beginning.
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So he just went on a minute long attack there calling him racist, but he didn't actually watch the show.
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How do you do that? What he discovered during the pandemic was this impersonation
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of Theresa Tam that he did really, really struck a nerve with a lot of people who were like, I'm
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feeling, you know, I don't want to get vaccinated. I don't want to not go be able to go to my job.
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I don't want to have to do this. And so he struck a nerve and he's really sort of capitalized.
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To come after a public health official that was seen by people every day on the TV,
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on TV because she was explaining what's happening with COVID. Well, that's one avenue that you can go.
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Again, punching down public health officers like Theresa Tam, that's not punching down.
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Public health officers were not only extremely well paid to Theresa Tam, by my memory, made over $400,000
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a year, just a staggering amount of money. But put aside the money, the amount of power they had just
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with a flick of their wrist to lock down entire school boards, to lock down all sorts of businesses
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in some places like Quebec, to bring in curfews. You literally couldn't leave your house between 10
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p.m. and 5 a.m. To think that these are powerless people. They were the most powerful authoritarian
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people in our society. And Ben Bankus can't make fun of them. And the people who like Ben can't laugh
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with them. That's really incredible. They had power. And didn't they say at the beginning
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that that's what comedy is about, speaking truth to power?
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Let me... Let me... Can I push you on this a little bit? Mm-hmm.
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The counter-argument that I could sort of hear people making, and it's not an argument that I'm
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making, is this idea that a comedian's job is to say the thing that's unsayable. That's the sort of
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avenue that some of his ilk would maybe represent.
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Of course. Hate speech is a crime, by the way. And under the Liberal government, it'll be a
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crime subject to life imprisonment. This panel here has decided that Ben Bankus engages in hate
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speech and racist garbage without even watching the show.
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I've been doing this for 20 years. I follow all kinds of comedy. Comedy that people would be like,
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oh, I can't believe you like that comedian. Yeah, I do.
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But I'm not sure where this doesn't descend into hate speech. There is a comedian who can be like,
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imagine if I said something like this, and it's couched in that, and there's the... I'm kidding,
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I'm kidding. I'm obviously kidding. There's none of that. There's none of that. It is direct,
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head-on racism and pulling out the worst of the audience, and the audience expecting,
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quote, unquote... Well, they're not expecting the worst, they're expecting the best of him.
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Mm-hmm. And in that statement that Ben gave, he said,
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attempts to cancel his shows only amplify his voice. You certainly saw that after his shows in
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Minnesota were canceled, after that Rene Good joke, that he made that joke. And then after that,
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all of these other shows and other locations start to sort of sell out. Are attempts to cancel him
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Yes. In a word. Absolutely. What I saw during the show is the man thrives on divisiveness.
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He loves to rile up the audience. He loves that people adore him or hate him. That's his currency.
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Everything I saw was about getting either the right or the left all worked up.
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And in my opinion, I agree with you, Ali, it's not great comedy. I mean, doing stereotypes...
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I'm sorry, my dad was doing that in the 70s. Like, this is not...
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This is not cutting edge. Um, but I will say this. He is good at what he's doing.
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Because he is quite manipulative. He knows exactly what he's doing.
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And I think if you're at a Ben Bankus show and you're laughing or you're seething,
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He's getting a lot of attention through manipulating you.
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You know, this guy, Amin, says he's a 20-year comedian and he knows the business.
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I've never heard of this guy before. I've never seen him.
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I think the only gigs he gets are government gigs. I think he's sort of a DEI comedian.
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And again, that's the worst. DEI comedians are the ones who say things that say,
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Oh, you're so right. Go Kamala. She's wonderful. Whereas real comedians make you laugh.
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Um, here's an example of this DEI comedian saying that
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all Canadians or a vast number of Canadians are racist.
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He's happy to take the money from Canadian taxpayers for his CBC gigs and then call them racist.
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I think, you know, in Canada, we want to believe that we're somehow morally superior to the US.
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But it's just, I mean, I've traveled around the country.
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I'm telling you, it's just, you can cover your ears if you like, but we're just equally racist.
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We really are. We just know how to hide. It's like a line from Scarface.
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They just know how to hide. This gal actually went to the show, but she hasn't given a single
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example of a joke. She's done a lot of mind reading though, of what's in Ben Bankus's mind
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and what's in the crowd's mind. Why not just tell us what some of the jokes were? If they were so
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outrageous, why not say them? If there was a swear word, you can omit it. What kind of garbage is this
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CBC show? I want to recognize that like, we've avoided playing a clip until now. And as much as like,
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I don't want to give Ben Bankus a larger platform, but I think it's like maybe useful to understand
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what he sounds like and the work that he does. So I'm going to play a brief clip. So here's Ben
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Bankus in Pocopsea, New York, three days after Renee Good was killed in Minneapolis.
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So he asked for that moment of silence. That's how the audience responds.
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They didn't let him say the punchline there. A moment for Renee Good. Okay, that sounded like it
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was going to be a funny joke and they just didn't show it. In fact, all they showed was the crowd's
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reaction. I don't know if you know who Renee Good is. She's this woman who tried to run over a
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policeman. Pro tip, don't try and run over a policeman. And Renee Good had been part of this
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anti-ice sort of mob, this Antifa mob that was tracking police, would go to police, would seek
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interactions with police, confrontations with police. And in her case, she panicked,
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she drove, she hit a cop and another cop shot her dead. Now I think that's terrible. But I also
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think that's what happens when you try and run over cops. And I think this trio of government
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comedians here wanted to turn her into some sort of saint. You might even say it's in bad taste to
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make a joke about her. Although all I heard was him saying, let's have a moment of silence for her.
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You can take that seriously or as a joke, but it's not particularly vicious or particularly dark.
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But they're appalled by this because he's attacked one of their saints and they don't like that,
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don't you know? Ali, what occurs to you when you listen to that?
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His audience knows that he would never ask for a genuine moment of silence. He knows that they
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know that he knows, right? It's that they're all in the thing together. That's the manipulation that
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I think Ant's talking about. He knows how to get a reaction from them. He would never ask for a moment of
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his sons. He's relishing in stuff like that. So yeah, it's going exactly to plan.
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No, I think he's just mocking the fact that they've turned her into a secular saint
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and they worship her and he refuses to go along with that. And they can't stand it. They're sort
00:23:21.740
of Puritans that way. I guess the larger story is the soul that shows, right? The idea of seeing
00:23:26.540
those kinds of moments and then people going like, I want to go see that in person. And what was the crowd
00:23:32.140
like at that Toronto show that you went to? Well, I mean, let's just say-
00:23:35.980
Sharp inhale of breath. Don't they see why people are going to see Ben Bankus? I mean,
00:23:41.420
there's reasons. Some people might find them funny just straight up. But when you have people banning
00:23:46.780
Ben Bankus and when you have losers reviewing his comedy for 15 minutes like this without even seeing
00:23:52.540
it, don't you realize that there's a free spirit in people, at least the kind of people who go to
00:23:57.340
comedy clubs who are typically liberty loving, typically ready to have some offensive things
00:24:03.180
said in their general vicinity. Because some dour, unfunny losers in a Toronto studio say,
00:24:10.780
don't go, don't you realize that is precisely why people are going to show that they don't have to
00:24:16.700
bend the knee to the government? I fit right in.
00:24:18.860
Ben. A lot of my people. It was convenient, I think, for me to see everyone in Toronto I would
00:24:25.900
never date in one place. That was like, thank you, Ben. I appreciate that.
00:24:29.660
They're all here. They're all here. How handy. There was a really interesting moment during the
00:24:35.500
show when Ben told the audience he wished they were more riled up. And I found that to be one of the
00:24:42.780
more, like, honest moments of the show. The more telling thing, yeah. Yeah, like, I mean, he's so
00:24:47.660
performative. And if we're in that moment when he said, come on, like, you know, your guys are too
00:24:51.980
quiet. It's like, wow. Again, that's what he needs is he needs that heckler. Right. He needs that
00:24:58.060
person to feed off of the thing. To feed off, yeah. Because he genuinely thinks he's the smartest person in
00:25:02.940
the room. It sounds like she's never been to a comedy club. I mean, every comedian likes to get the crowd
00:25:10.140
going, likes to get the crowd revved up. I, uh, I just think this is really weird attempts at
00:25:15.820
psychoanalysis. I just wish they would have talked about the show a little more. Keep watching.
00:25:20.300
There was a really interesting moment when, um, someone heckled. I guess, is it a heckle when
00:25:24.620
someone gives you a compliment? What is that? I don't know. Cheered, I guess.
00:25:27.900
A cheer? A cheer? And they said, Ben for Prime Minister. And that was one of the rare times his eyes
00:25:33.500
went to the audience. And he said, yeah, I just might have to do that to make everything right.
00:25:37.340
He ran for mayor of Toronto a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bit of hubris there.
00:25:41.820
Yeah. Just a bit. They think he's serious about running for prime minister or mayor.
00:25:46.220
Have you seen Ben Bankis running for mayor? It's, it's a joke. You might not think it's a funny joke.
00:25:54.700
You might think it's in bad taste as many of Ben Bankis' jokes might be. But you have to realize
00:26:01.420
it's a joke. Take a look. My name is Ben Bankis and I'm running for mayor of Toronto.
00:26:06.860
Because I am the first and only candidate that is not only transgender, transracial,
00:26:14.140
gender fluid. But I also believe that I am Olivia Chow. I believe that I am her. I identify as Olivia Chow,
00:26:23.260
as well as Ben Bankis. So I'm racially and personality fluid. On top of that, I'm also
00:26:29.580
species fluid. So I'm a trans species monkey hybrid. I do believe I was a Chinese half human,
00:26:37.580
half monkey hybrid made in the laboratory in Wuhan, China as a part of the lab loop.
00:26:43.820
They think he's serious. Keep watching. Ali, I know you can't get into it too much,
00:26:51.340
but you are working on a project about comedians with views like Ben Bankis. Why? Why? Why is that
00:26:58.380
something that you were like, you know what? I think we got to spend a bit of time talking
00:27:01.420
about this a little bit more in depth. Yeah. It's a show that's, that's in development
00:27:04.860
and you know, we'll hear news in the next, in the coming weeks, but that character, and I'm,
00:27:09.740
I'm less interested in dunking on Ben Bankis as a human being and more interested in this
00:27:13.500
idea of a comedian having a darker material, it resonating with audiences and then the audience
00:27:25.980
As you start to veer out of that place, your audience is like, no, no, no, no, no,
00:27:29.180
go back and do that stuff, that Asian accent. Let's do that. Let's go back there.
00:27:33.020
I'm interested in that because comedy is instant gratification. It's feedback. And what happens
00:27:37.580
when that feedback is coming from people who like create a world for you that you hadn't
00:27:42.940
anticipated really being part of. I think that phenomenon is very interesting and it's, it's
00:27:48.060
quite prevalent and it's not just in comedy, it's in culture. So I thought that was really worth
00:27:52.380
exploring and very interesting for the show. Oh, here it comes. He's working on a project.
00:27:57.340
Do you doubt that it's a government project funded maybe by some anti-Islamophobia fund?
00:28:03.340
So boring and so unfunny. How about just tell us some jokes? If you're Jewish, if you're Muslim,
00:28:09.980
if you're Christian, can you just make me laugh, please? There's something sort of like about the,
00:28:14.700
you know, the algorithm online, but also just like in person, people sort of saying,
00:28:20.060
whatever you did there, do more of that. You're like, do I want to do more of that? And then before
00:28:23.980
you know it, it's kind of like maybe run away a little bit from you. And in a way I'm, I'm kind
00:28:29.100
of cognizant of the fact that we are doing exactly what Ben Bankist wants, which is having this
00:28:32.940
conversation. And then despite that, I think it's an important conversation to have. I think it's kind of
00:28:37.900
important for us to kind of sit around and go like, oh, we should explore what this says about us.
00:28:41.740
Why do you think it's important for us to sort of like sit here and sort of talk about this Ben
00:28:45.260
Bankist phenomenon and act and the fact that he had in fact is selling on shows?
00:28:49.580
Oh brother, we're having an important conversation. You know, I looked at the number of people
00:28:54.460
who viewed this on YouTube, you know, this is the mighty CBC. Just over 1,500 people have seen this
00:29:02.540
entire episode on YouTube. Nobody thinks it's an important conversation. And if they want an
00:29:09.100
important conversation, they'll probably talk to important people, not comedians. You go to
00:29:13.420
comedians for a laugh other than these losers. Yeah, I think that's a really great question.
00:29:18.300
I mean, I, I went because it, it was important for me to get out of my echo chamber, but I, I was
00:29:26.380
alarmed, I think, by what I saw. And it was for me, I think a reminder like,
00:29:32.380
love is stronger than hate. Right. We have a responsibility to show up, you know, and to
00:29:37.260
seek out the people who are humanists, who are curious, who are empathetic. Um, it was a, it was a
00:29:43.980
reminder to me of how important that is now. Um, and I look, Ben, he might call me a snowflake and,
00:29:51.340
and, and that's fine. I'm Canadian. I know the power of snowflakes. Yeah, that's real.
00:29:56.140
That's really real. Love is stronger than hate people. Um, okay. Maybe, uh, why are you saying
00:30:04.220
that? Are you implying that you are full of love and he's full of hate? That's, that's all you got.
00:30:08.540
That's you, you're on this panel and you don't, you can't muster any arguments other than you're
00:30:14.780
a morally better person. You haven't given us any examples. You haven't told us exactly what he's done
00:30:20.460
wrong other than the one case of not bending the knee to your new saint from Minnesota.
00:30:25.500
Very weak. Last word to you, pal. Why, why is it important for us to keep having this conversation,
00:30:29.420
even though Ben is like, let's, he probably kind of wants this. Honestly, I don't think Ben Benkis
00:30:33.980
is thinking about you at all. Today, uh, yesterday, I guess, as we record this, uh, a representative,
00:30:40.700
Republican Randy Fine in a sitting, uh, uh, you know, Senator in Florida said, uh, if the choice is
00:30:48.060
between dogs and Muslims, it's an easy choice, right? Paraphrasing his tweet. Um, that's the
00:30:54.220
reality I live in, right? That's what my kids have to grow in where we've normalized that type of talk.
00:30:58.540
I won't speak for you, Alameen, but that's, that's where, where we're at. That's what I see. And that's
00:31:02.460
what's normalized. Nobody's coming at him. He's still got a job. Um, so I feel like it's my responsibility
00:31:10.140
to work towards what I want to see, which is a world with less hate, not more.
00:31:14.380
You know, I don't think I would say that phrase myself, but he was talking about
00:31:19.020
a Muslim led proposed ban on dogs because some Muslim people find dogs unclean or they don't
00:31:26.140
want to deal with dogs. And so what the congressman was saying is if I have to choose,
00:31:31.020
I'll choose dogs. He's not saying that he's equating Muslims with dogs. Again,
00:31:35.580
I wouldn't use that phrase. I wouldn't say it, but if you're trying to make a point,
00:31:39.660
it's stronger if you don't have to twist it, don't you think?
00:31:42.140
I think, you know, the people of Kitchener who protested and forced him out of that venue,
00:31:46.060
I think that's a good part of the story. I think it should, it should be difficult for him to say
00:31:49.500
what he's saying and, and for it to get out there. And yeah, if we can counter it with,
00:31:55.500
as Anne said, more and more love than hate. And I know as cheesy as that sounds,
00:31:59.020
I think that's important. I think that's what helps us get through life.
00:32:02.460
Mm-hmm. I love you both. I appreciate your time.
00:32:05.260
You know, they sure say that Ben hates a lot and I don't know, maybe he does. It's human emotion.
00:32:10.620
But the only hate I've seen for the last 15 minutes is from their show. Now I looked at the
00:32:15.500
handful of comments on the site and they really are so very few, but every single comment except
00:32:21.340
for one, just as mocking these CBC losers saying that Ben, talking about freedom or that Ben is
00:32:28.700
funny. I don't know. I just think this is the weakest hit job, weakest assassination,
00:32:34.860
character assassination that I've ever seen. But that's the state of the CBC. But hey,
00:32:39.820
everyone got paid, even the unfunny comedians. Stay with us more ahead.
00:32:53.340
Around the world, Christianity is in retreat, being prosecuted by Islamic terrorists in places
00:32:59.420
like Nigeria or being cracked down on by state atheists, such as in China. So I'm delighted to
00:33:07.020
say that my favorite Canadian charity, the Democracy Fund has opened up a new project,
00:33:12.620
a Religious Freedom Fellowship that is emphasizing pro-Christian activity, by which I mean fighting
00:33:19.900
against anti-Christian discrimination, and also fighting against anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish
00:33:27.660
discrimination. And I'm delighted now to introduce you to an old friend who has a new role as the
00:33:33.340
director of the Democracy Fund's Religious Freedom Fellowship. It's Amanda Ackman, and she joins us
00:33:39.180
now from Ottawa. Amanda, great to see you again, and congratulations on your new position. I have
00:33:44.780
been thinking about anti-Christian discrimination for a long time. Some people refuse to say it even
00:33:50.460
exists. They don't believe it. They think Christians are too powerful to be persecuted. But I think
00:33:57.260
everything from affirmative action and the reverse discrimination within it to the fact that Christians
00:34:03.180
are subtly mocked in all media, I think there is a dearth of people even calling out anti-Christian
00:34:11.420
discrimination. That's my view. What do you think? You mentioned some of the religious persecution
00:34:16.540
around the world in places like Nigeria and China. And this matters because we, in the more free and
00:34:24.060
prosperous parts of the country, part of the world, have a responsibility to set the standard for
00:34:30.700
freedom, for pluralism. And so while the kinds of persecution might look different, the crisis is the
00:34:37.740
same. Are people free to live, work, and worship wherever they are? And so I think we actually honor
00:34:44.540
those who are suffering as victims of more egregious forms of religious persecution by raising the bar and by
00:34:51.420
saying we will not abide the anti-Christian bigotry that you pointed out exists in Canada. And that can
00:34:59.340
take the form of violations of conscience protections for faith-based institutions or the desecration of
00:35:07.260
religious sites of worship or of cemeteries or of religious statues. We always see incremental chipping
00:35:15.100
away at respect and reverence for religious traditions that bodes badly for the freedom and
00:35:22.700
peace of the societies that endure this. So we have to be vigilant. We can't take for granted. The
00:35:29.420
society that we have is a gift that has been bequeathed to us by the religious traditions that are most
00:35:35.100
under threat now today. Yeah. I think that sometimes Christians are purged from the public square. I think of
00:35:41.500
when Trinity Western University sought to have a law school. This is a university in the lower
00:35:47.260
mainland, one of the law schools. There's plenty of law schools in Canada. They were banned, not because
00:35:52.620
the law school was accused in any way of being illegitimate or not being good enough, but because
00:35:59.100
the university itself had a policy against premarital sex because it was a Christian school. On that basis
00:36:06.380
alone, various law societies in Canada said we refuse to accredit lawyers because they will be coming
00:36:13.100
from a bigoted tradition. And we see that in other professions too. People cannot have their religious
00:36:19.340
conscience, can't act on it, or they'll be purged from the profession. And even in politics, very famously,
00:36:25.900
Justin Trudeau purged any professing Catholics. Anyone who was pro-life was simply not allowed in the
00:36:33.260
liberal government. And so I think sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's foreign, but when you deny
00:36:39.580
a law school from being accredited because it's Christian, it's pretty clear we've got some serious
00:36:44.380
discrimination going on. And that was over a decade ago. That was about 15 years ago now.
00:36:49.740
Yeah, absolutely. We belong, Christians belong in the public square. Jews belong in the public square.
00:36:56.460
We need to have a pluralistic public square in order to have a free society. As soon as there starts
00:37:03.500
being an ideological values test, as we saw, for example, with the Canada summer jobs requirement
00:37:09.660
that people check a box, a testing that they believe in essentially abortion in order to apply for
00:37:17.980
government grants and hire summer students. This is completely undermining the public square and the
00:37:26.300
free society that we all have a responsibility to uphold and to fight for.
00:37:30.380
Yeah. And I can tell you made medical assistance in dying, as it's sometimes called another way of
00:37:36.540
saying euthanasia. I just know that it's, it is or will be weaponized against Christian traditions of
00:37:45.420
caring for palliative care, people who are in pain, people who are in hospital. The Christian tradition
00:37:51.260
would be to save the life. The new pagan made tradition would be to euthanize them. I really
00:37:58.220
think that's a threat. We're talking a lot about anti-Christian discrimination, but anti-Jewish
00:38:03.420
discrimination is, of course, off the, off the charts. In the last two years, especially in my own
00:38:08.700
city of Toronto, a Jewish girl's school has been three times shot with gunfire. There's a synagogue
00:38:14.940
on Bayview Avenue in Toronto, 10 times it's been vandalized. So it's shocking. And then there's the,
00:38:20.780
the hate marches through the residential communities, screaming obscenities at just ordinary Jewish moms,
00:38:27.900
dads and kids. It's so, so gross. So tell me what you're planning to do about it as the new director of
00:38:34.780
the religious freedom fellowship at the democracy fund. We know that a lot of the existing strategies
00:38:40.860
are not working to address and to tackle this first. It's not being taken seriously enough.
00:38:45.340
Second, there have been a lot of things tried and not working over the past decades. And so I think
00:38:51.100
it's time for some fresh ideas for some young ideas. And so that's why we've created the religious
00:38:57.740
freedom fellowship program to recruit a cohort of Canadians ages 18 to 35, who are going to present
00:39:05.580
their own project proposals. Maybe they'll be writing, maybe they'll be organizing events in
00:39:09.980
their community. Maybe they'll be protecting places of worship in creative ways. Really,
00:39:15.420
those are just a few ideas. Really, the ideas are going to come from the cohort. So we're looking for
00:39:20.700
people who have an interest in challenging and confronting this anti-Christian bigotry and
00:39:28.220
anti-Semitism in Canada. Whatever their angle, whatever their approach, we're looking for fresh
00:39:32.940
ideas. And during the year, participants in this cohort will get training, they'll get mentorship.
00:39:38.860
It is a remote-based program so they can stay in their cities and continue doing their ordinary
00:39:44.300
work and studies while connecting with a group of eager young people like them who are going to
00:39:51.100
promote religious freedom in Canada and then take up these action projects. So it's basically to say,
00:39:58.220
let's crowdsource, let's identify the ideas that we don't know about yet so that we can hopefully
00:40:03.580
have a more promising future in this regard. So basically, young people across Canada are invited to apply
00:40:10.300
to become religious freedom fellows. And then once there's a group of them or a cohort,
00:40:15.020
they'll have regular updates, they'll be part of a WhatsApp group, they'll get a modest stipend,
00:40:22.300
and they'll sort of be this team that's active. Give me some examples of what these, I'm calling
00:40:30.300
them kids, when you're 54, everyone's a kid. But give me an example of something these young people
00:40:35.900
might do on any given day. Right. Students and young professionals across Canada will be maybe
00:40:43.180
responding to an incident that happens in their community. So often we see incidents that are met
00:40:49.340
with silence. And so where do we oppose those incidents? It's got to be in the public square,
00:40:56.700
through op-eds, through articles, through shows of solidarity. And then after the attack in Australia,
00:41:03.340
Jews killed in Australia on the beach. And now Canadians are feeling that that threat,
00:41:10.620
we don't wait until something like this happens here. We say, what are we going to do to create
00:41:15.900
the conditions so that it won't happen here? And so I'm looking for those creative ideas to preempt
00:41:23.420
any sort of incident that would actually threaten lives here. We don't want to be the next country
00:41:32.860
in this story of extremely devastating, violent attacks. So it may seem modest, it may seem very
00:41:42.940
small, but we know that small acts of resistance against this kind of threat can be a turning point
00:41:51.020
in the, and can shift the culture. And so looking for those ideas, looking for people who are
00:41:57.820
disquieted by the rise of anti-Semitism on social media, who are ready to push back and to meet this
00:42:08.140
challenge with whatever they have on their conscience as an honorable form of resistance.
00:42:16.220
Hey, if someone's watching right now and wants to learn more about this,
00:42:19.340
what's the best way they can do that? You can go to religiousfreedomfellowship.ca,
00:42:23.900
check out the description of the program and apply there.
00:42:27.260
Great. By the way, I know you do some other things as well.
00:42:29.340
Why don't you give us a quick update on some of the other projects you're working on, Amanda?
00:42:33.660
Sure. So I'm also working to prevent euthanasia and encourage hope across Canada.
00:42:38.700
And as you mentioned earlier, this is also an area under which faith-based institutions
00:42:44.700
are under threat because, for example, hospices and hospitals that don't want to offer
00:42:53.020
death to people directly on site, they want to offer care, are being met with this ideological test
00:43:00.380
in order to continue operating within Canadian healthcare. This is unacceptable. People always
00:43:05.820
deserve better than death. There is always more that we can do in terms of love. And the request for
00:43:11.980
euthanasia is not usually the expression of a desire to die so much as it is an expression of some
00:43:17.580
disappointment. And so we need to meet that disappointment with something better, something
00:43:22.540
more attractive, again, something more hopeful than this despairing, dejected capitulation to
00:43:31.420
what is really a cry for help. So I promote life and I promote religious freedom and I promote the
00:43:38.220
ingenuity that helps us to meet the malaise that we sense in this country of Canada so that we can
00:43:44.860
have a brighter and more flourishing country that we can all be deeply proud of.
00:43:49.100
Well, we got to get that Religious Freedom Fellowship going. One more time, what's the website?
00:43:53.260
If someone's out there thinking, I want to learn a little bit more about this,
00:43:59.820
All right, Amanda, great to see you. Congratulations on the new position.
00:44:04.140
And hopefully we'll get that thing all staffed up.
00:44:10.700
of the Religious Freedom Fellowship. Stay with us. Your letters to me next.
00:44:22.940
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me about Mark Carney's proposed anti-Trump coalition.
00:44:30.460
You notice that globalists like Carney stopped using the more honest great reset phrase that
00:44:34.780
Justin let out of the bag. Yeah, the great reset, of course, that's the name of a book by Klaus Schwab
00:44:39.180
of the World Economic Forum. They also had build back better was one of their phrases. But Mark Carney's
00:44:45.100
sort of gone old school with his new world order, right?
00:44:49.740
Mongo says, Carney is the greatest spokesman for Alberta independence. He will be the last prime
00:44:54.300
minister of a united Canada. You know, that's something that Preston Manning wrote last year in the
00:44:58.700
Globe and Mail. I was startled that Preston said it. I was surprised that the Globe and Mail ran it.
00:45:03.500
And I thought, holy smokes, that's a dramatic thing to say. But my gosh, it's almost coming true.
00:45:09.420
Kyle Hampton says, I don't think most Canadians understand how bad they are viewed in America now,
00:45:14.300
especially at the government level. From a government to government relationship,
00:45:17.260
there isn't too many more anti-American governments anywhere in the world. And Americans understand that
00:45:21.740
now. Kyle, I'm going to politely disagree with you. I really don't think Americans are focused on
00:45:27.340
this issue. There may be some pockets of Americans that are and perhaps a small segment
00:45:32.220
of the political class that is. But I mean, just right now, you've got some Americans, for example,
00:45:38.780
Hispanics and many people in Florida in general are focused on Cuba. You've got the military ramping up
00:45:45.900
for a possible and likely attack on Iran. You've got the Russia-Ukraine war that continues to grind on.
00:45:53.740
You've got trade with China and trade. There's just so many things that are more interesting, more
00:46:02.380
important, more relevant to the ordinary American. I mean, forget about foreign policy, the price of
00:46:08.940
groceries, price of inflation, the price of gas, which has fallen under Trump, the increasing in
00:46:15.900
factories, the increasing steel production, the unemployment numbers, the per capita GDP. There's
00:46:23.420
so many things that I think a normal person in America would think about other than Mark Carney is
00:46:30.780
whipping up anti-American nations into a coalition. Like, I just think one of the mistakes we make in
00:46:37.180
Canada is thinking that everyone thinks about us as much as we think about then, especially in America.
00:46:44.380
Donald Trump, I mean, I can only imagine how busy he is. I think they're going to attack Iran
00:46:49.500
in the most massive war since the first Gulf War. There's never been a larger
00:46:55.660
naval and air force presence since the first Gulf War. This is so huge. And I think it's going to
00:47:03.420
happen. I don't think Trump is thinking, well, what does Mark Carney have to say about me this week?
00:47:07.980
I just don't think he is. That's our show for the day. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here
00:47:14.780
at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.