Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Disinformation gaslighting and narrative control clouds the search for truth

00:00:00.320 Hello, my friends. A strange tale today about disinformation and what the heck is going on with all these industrial accidents.

00:00:10.460 Did you hear about the fire at the Manhattan Project Lab in Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory?

00:00:17.900 Did you hear about the fire? Is that an accident? Is that sabotage?

00:00:22.160 I got some questions and I'm going to try and put it in the context of government disinformation and misinformation.

00:00:27.900 That's today's show.

00:00:30.200 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:32.960 Eight dollars a month. You get the video version of this program, plus the satisfaction of knowing that you're helping to keep us strong because we don't take any money from the government.

00:00:43.660 All right. Here's today's show.

00:00:46.340 Tonight, there really is an information war.

00:00:49.340 There really is a battle on for the control of your mind.

00:00:53.440 It's February 23rd, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:56.240 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:02.600 Hey, look at this tweet that I saw on Twitter from GetCyberSafe. 0.53

00:01:17.560 That's a Canadian government agency.

00:01:20.140 And here's what they say.

00:01:20.780 They say, if you are unsure if something you see online is true, check to see if other sources are reporting the same story.

00:01:30.080 If not, it may be disinformation.

00:01:34.360 Really?

00:01:34.480 So, if everyone is not saying it, it may be disinformation.

00:01:40.180 That's not a test for disinformation.

00:01:41.740 That's a test for whether or not you're compliant.

00:01:45.620 You're part of groupthink.

00:01:46.900 If there's message control, whether everyone is saying it doesn't have a bearing on whether or not it's true.

00:01:56.020 That's a bizarre thing to say, and it's a bizarre thing for the government of Canada to be paying to promote a definition of what you should or shouldn't believe and to be some sort of arbiter of what is true and what is not.

00:02:08.580 I want to show you another liberal emanation.

00:02:13.580 This is from a Canadian liberal MP named Jennifer O'Connell.

00:02:18.380 She's got vocal fry, which is very unbecoming in an MP. 1.00

00:02:23.200 And she says, speaking of disinformation and misinformation, she says the uncontroverted fact that China interfered in the last election.

00:02:34.400 No one is denying it, and the uncontrovertible fact that China is now placing listening devices in the Arctic.

00:02:41.520 She says that if you even talk about these facts, you're a conspiracy theorist like a January 6 Trump extremist.

00:02:52.020 Here, take a look at this crackpot.

00:02:55.300 And this is the same Trump-type tactics to question election results moving forward.

00:03:02.780 But what I'm curious about was where were the conservatives after 2019?

00:03:08.460 Where were they in 2020, 2021?

00:03:11.420 And now only now they're raising it in 2023?

00:03:15.960 So speaking of misinformation and disinformation, it is a fact, according to CSIS, that China interfered in the last election.

00:03:24.460 I really don't think anyone is denying that. 0.82

00:03:26.740 And yet this liberal MP says, don't believe your lying eyes. 0.98

00:03:30.940 In fact, if you believe this fact is true, you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who is participating in disinformation. 0.95

00:03:39.160 Like I say, for the government to get in the business of telling us what is or isn't true is terrifying and dangerous.

00:03:45.780 But let me show you, of course, the new...

00:03:48.980 I feel like this is relevant.

00:03:50.740 Pete Buttigieg, if I'm saying his name right, is the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, a portfolio that you might think is very important given the trend enrollment and explosion and other crises that unfolded in the town of East Palestine, Ohio.

00:04:08.780 And he didn't visit there until today.

00:04:11.140 Weeks after the explosion, we sent a team, as you know, over a week ago.

00:04:16.120 So an enterprising young journalist in Washington, D.C. happened to bump into Buttigieg and his husband as they were walking home from some dinner or bar, I presume, and put in a very polite way questions to him about why he hasn't been to East Palestine, Ohio.

00:04:35.160 And what he gets, very basic accountability questions.

00:04:39.280 There was nothing even close to a threat.

00:04:41.700 She was not blocking him.

00:04:43.360 You can tell she was in stature, a small person physically.

00:04:47.620 She was not rude in any...

00:04:49.200 I'm just saying all these obvious things.

00:04:51.940 And take a look at the disdain and dismissiveness with which she dealt with her.

00:04:56.980 And then the final moment is the most shocking.

00:05:00.100 Take a look.

00:05:00.980 Secretary, what do you have to say?

00:05:02.640 Hi, how are you?

00:05:03.500 Jenny's here at the Daily Caller News Foundation.

00:05:05.920 What do you have to say to the folks in Ohio, East Palestine, who are suffering right now?

00:05:12.080 Well, I'd refer you to about a dozen interviews I've given today.

00:05:15.040 And if you'd like to arrange a conversation, be sure to reach out to our press office.

00:05:20.560 But I can have that conversation with you just walking down the street here.

00:05:22.800 You don't have a message for them?

00:05:24.100 I do, and I shared it with the press many times today.

00:05:26.180 I'd refer you to those comments.

00:05:27.720 Would you mind sharing it with us?

00:05:28.900 No, I'm going to refer you to the comments that I made to the press because right now I'm taking some personal time and I'm walking down the street.

00:05:34.760 Are you going down there?

00:05:35.920 What's that?

00:05:36.480 Are you going down there at all?

00:05:37.900 Um, yep, I am.

00:05:40.380 When are you going?

00:05:41.120 Uh, I'll share that, uh, when I'm ready.

00:05:44.300 Okay, thank you.

00:05:45.460 Can I get a, can I get a photo of you?

00:05:47.140 Yeah.

00:05:47.540 So, hey, this is my personal time.

00:05:50.500 How dare you?

00:05:51.820 How dare you ask me a question?

00:05:54.160 I mean, you'll just have to wait.

00:05:55.880 You'll just have to look at what I said elsewhere.

00:05:57.780 I owe you nothing.

00:05:59.120 And you know what?

00:05:59.900 I, um, I'm a little bit busy right now.

00:06:02.300 You know, I'm having a personal moment.

00:06:04.080 So you can wait and the people in East Palestine, Ohio, they've waited two weeks.

00:06:09.600 They can wait a little bit longer.

00:06:11.860 How imperious.

00:06:13.480 But that last moment was the creepy moment where he said, I'm going to take a picture of you.

00:06:20.180 Why would he do that?

00:06:22.040 To remember the moment fondly.

00:06:24.300 And sometimes people ask for selfies with politicians just the same way people used to get autographs of celebrities in the era before smartphones.

00:06:34.180 Anyone under 40 wouldn't know this.

00:06:37.000 But before smartphones, before everyone had a camera in their hand all the time, there was a tradition when you met a celebrity.

00:06:44.100 And if you had the courage to go up to them, what would you do?

00:06:47.480 You might say hello.

00:06:48.380 But the thing you did in the 70s and 80s and 90s was you asked for their autograph, especially if you were a super fan and had, say, a photo of them.

00:06:58.500 They would sign it.

00:06:59.160 They would sign anything, a diary, a piece of paper, the back of an envelope.

00:07:02.880 That was a thing.

00:07:04.080 That was a meme before the era of selfies.

00:07:07.440 So it might be normal for someone to want a selfie with Pete Buttigieg.

00:07:11.680 I would find that very odd.

00:07:13.080 But he asked for a photo of this young reporter, not because he was enamored with her, not because he was excited or impressed with her, but it's obvious why.

00:07:22.920 He wanted to do a workup on her.

00:07:25.380 Who was she? 1.00

00:07:26.200 He wanted to do a facial recognition scan of her and find out everything about her.

00:07:31.340 Now, he didn't need to do that because she posted the video first.

00:07:34.320 But what a creepy, creepy man who would not answer her most basic questions, who said, how dare you interrupt my private time.

00:07:43.660 This is the same cabinet minister who, as soon as he became elected, took months of paternity leave for his adopted surrogate baby.

00:07:53.400 I mean, he certainly is.

00:07:54.820 I don't know who's taking more vacation time, him or Joe Biden.

00:07:57.860 Absolutely creepy.

00:07:58.960 It's been weeks since the derailment and explosion in East Palestine.

00:08:04.180 When we sent our team down there, we were already a week late.

00:08:07.680 No one really cared about that town until Donald Trump went to visit.

00:08:13.380 At the same time that Joe Biden went to Kiev, Ukraine, Donald Trump went to East Palestine, Ohio.

00:08:19.540 Here's a shot of that.

00:08:20.920 He was handing out bottled water and, of course, buying McDonald's for all the first responders.

00:08:26.700 Take a look.

00:08:28.960 Are you good? Can you do more?

00:08:33.660 What's your specialty today?

00:08:36.100 How are you today? Nice to meet you.

00:08:38.520 Hello, everybody. That's a nice, beautiful looking group of people.

00:08:42.500 So I know this menu better than you do.

00:08:44.840 I know.

00:08:45.580 I probably know it better than anybody in here.

00:08:49.120 We're going to take care of the fire department.

00:08:51.040 Okay.

00:08:51.760 We're going to take care of the police department.

00:08:53.260 That's Trump at his best out of fancy places, out of Washington, out of his campaign offices, mingling with severely normal people.

00:09:03.540 That that's the best Trump.

00:09:05.220 That's good Trump.

00:09:06.160 Well, Pete Buttigieg obviously felt sparked into action by that embarrassment.

00:09:12.080 And so he finally found the time to put aside everything less important and go to East Palestine, where our friend Savannah Hernandez, a young reporter we've worked with before, including at Davos, Switzerland.

00:09:24.820 She was there with her team, and she thought she would scrum Pete Buttigieg, who didn't have the excuse now of being in the middle of private time for a little bit of me time. 0.61

00:09:36.220 He was there on the scene.

00:09:37.700 And part of his job, of course, is to talk to America.

00:09:39.820 And you typically do that through the media.

00:09:42.080 That's what the word media means.

00:09:43.500 It means middleman in between.

00:09:45.240 But he quickly and bravely ran away from the young lady.

00:09:49.400 And, of course, the weirdness doesn't stop with Pete Buttigieg.

00:09:52.200 He left Savannah in the hands of his press secretary, who bizarrely said, I will talk to you, but only if you turn off your cameras.

00:10:02.120 Look at this weirdness.

00:10:03.400 Mayor Pete, why did it take you an entire two and a half weeks to actually get here to respond to East Palestine?

00:10:08.740 Will you apologize to the residents of this city for the slow response, to the government's slow response?

00:10:16.120 Do you have any apology?

00:10:17.180 I'm this press person.

00:10:17.820 I can help you.

00:10:18.580 Sure, sure, sure.

00:10:19.860 So can we ask why it took him almost three weeks to get here?

00:10:24.880 I'm sorry.

00:10:25.500 I don't want to do this on camera.

00:10:26.980 What was his personal time off while there was a tragedy happening here?

00:10:31.060 And can we also ask, too, why he waited until President Donald Trump came here to actually make an appearance?

00:10:37.120 This is a very important question that people across America would like to know.

00:10:40.460 I'm happy to have a conversation with you.

00:10:41.620 I do not want to be on camera.

00:10:43.120 Well, please put your cameras away.

00:10:45.580 I'm sorry.

00:10:45.980 We're on a public area, so we are allowed as press.

00:10:50.520 You guys, I would like you guys to turn your cameras off.

00:10:53.040 You're on my camera.

00:10:54.120 Well, I'm on a camera.

00:10:55.440 I would like your cameras to be off, and then I'm happy to talk to you guys.

00:10:57.980 Well, if you are the press secretary of the secretary of the Department of Transportation, don't you think you should be able to ask questions from the American public that you serve?

00:11:05.440 Absolutely.

00:11:05.640 I would like to do it without the camera on.

00:11:07.300 Can I ask why?

00:11:08.040 I think that is a little bit aggressive.

00:11:09.780 Why is it aggressive?

00:11:13.460 On behalf of the American people, I'm just asking why he has not been here until Donald Trump came.

00:11:19.940 She's asking.

00:11:20.440 She's asking.

00:11:20.880 Three several times for them to turn the cameras off, and they will not do it.

00:11:24.760 Well, maybe she's not.

00:11:25.660 She's been able to walk away.

00:11:26.900 Would you like to go inside?

00:11:27.840 I do not.

00:11:28.340 I will walk this way.

00:11:29.440 Can I ask what the secretary is going to do with the picture of Jenny Kerr?

00:11:31.980 He took her the other day when she was asking a question in Washington, D.C.

00:11:34.840 I'm happy to answer your questions.

00:11:36.280 I would like you guys to not have your cameras on.

00:11:38.160 I had my camera off a minute ago.

00:11:39.420 If I turn it up, you all have your cameras on.

00:11:41.440 I can see them, you guys.

00:11:42.660 I'm happy to have this conversation.

00:11:44.260 All right, y'all, so we are with the press secretary for Pete Buttigieg, and right now we are being told that we are not supposed to be filming.

00:11:51.180 Again, we are here on behalf of the American public because we would like to have the conversation, and we would like to ask the question as to why, again, it took almost three weeks for Pete Buttigieg to be here on the ground.

00:12:05.120 He waited until Donald Trump came here to actually be here and speak to residents.

00:12:09.240 The people here have been quite tight knit about when we can ask questions, and again, we're here on behalf of the American public, and we wish we could be able to ask these questions, but for some reason, you know, we're not allowed.

00:12:21.760 That's crazy.

00:12:22.780 I like the cop there who said to Pete Buttigieg's press secretary, if you're uncomfortable, just walk away, as in I'm not going to arrest these journalists for asking you basic questions.

00:12:34.060 So what's going on here?

00:12:35.940 I think these things are related in some ways.

00:12:40.020 The tweet by the government of Canada saying, if only one person says something, it's probably disinformation.

00:12:48.340 Now, that person is actually the most interesting person.

00:12:52.040 I'm not saying they're necessarily right, but don't you think?

00:12:55.620 You should always just check what the other side is, especially on a controversy.

00:12:59.040 Imagine trying to teach citizens that facts and truth are determined by a vote, by the number of people who say something.

00:13:08.960 What an outrageous thing to say. 0.98

00:13:11.220 And then, of course, that liberal MP saying, no, no, no, if you ask questions, you're the crazy one. 0.81

00:13:18.660 And then when two different reporters, young women, both, I might add, ask Pete Buttigieg questions, he's dismissive to both of them.

00:13:25.040 And what's going on there?

00:13:27.100 What's going on with government gaslighting and disinformation and running away from the press?

00:13:31.840 What's going on in Ohio, really?

00:13:34.560 Our team was there for a few days, but we weren't able to get to the bottom of it.

00:13:38.620 I don't think anyone's able to get to the bottom of it yet, and the government's not talking.

00:13:41.820 But I can't help but notice another strange story of a kind of, I don't know, industrial accident in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

00:13:53.760 Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

00:13:54.740 Does that name ring a bell at all?

00:13:57.460 Take a look at this video from the local ABC station there.

00:14:00.840 So this is the mainstream media.

00:14:02.620 Officials say there was an emergency at the Y-12 National Security Complex this morning around 9 a.m.,

00:14:08.540 and we're told it was a fire involving uranium.

00:14:10.660 Right now, there's no off-site impact, and officials also say no injuries were reported,

00:14:15.840 and we also just learned that all employees have been accounted for.

00:14:19.860 We want to go out live to WATE 6 On Your Side reporter Molly O'Brien.

00:14:23.760 She's out in Oak Ridge right now.

00:14:25.240 Molly, what can you tell us?

00:14:30.460 Yeah, Alexi, like you said, good news.

00:14:32.760 There is no threat to the public.

00:14:34.320 But what I can tell you is crews responded to a fire involving uranium in Building 92-12,

00:14:41.300 which is actually on the west side of the complex.

00:14:44.080 When they, crews were eventually, or excuse me, workers were eventually evacuated.

00:14:49.120 There were a couple hundred workers, and they put a shelter in place.

00:14:52.700 Now, what I can tell you is all employees have been accounted for.

00:14:57.040 No injuries were reported at this time.

00:14:59.040 And like I said, that fire involved uranium.

00:15:01.900 The protocols to put out in fire involving uranium is different at this time,

00:15:07.640 or is different right now.

00:15:09.760 We asked officials what that looks like.

00:15:11.800 Here's what they have to say.

00:15:12.640 That building does uranium processing for all of our uranium-based missions

00:15:18.560 as the Uranium Center of Excellence for the NNSA.

00:15:22.500 We process materials in support of nuclear Navy mission

00:15:27.880 as part of non-proliferation and as part of our classical NNSA mission.

00:15:32.740 So there's a lot of different forms of material there.

00:15:34.960 Now, good news so far.

00:15:41.020 Those air monitors show no chemicals have been released,

00:15:45.440 meaning there's no radioactivity.

00:15:47.360 Of course, officials will keep following up and monitoring this.

00:15:50.580 As of what caused the fire, that investigation is still ongoing.

00:15:54.300 We, of course, will keep you updated.

00:15:56.600 Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge.

00:15:58.140 Have you ever heard of that before?

00:16:00.580 You know, it's a fairly new city.

00:16:02.620 It was created by the U.S. military.

00:16:06.860 Oak Ridge is the home of the Manhattan Project.

00:16:11.080 You know what that is, right?

00:16:13.180 That was the crash course to build a nuclear bomb to win the Second World War. 0.91

00:16:19.460 It was an artificial town built by the military.

00:16:23.200 Here's a picture of it.

00:16:24.560 In 1943, they were building a reactor.

00:16:28.080 You know, Oak Ridge and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, you know, when you think nuclear

00:16:35.640 weapons, you might think California, you might think Los Alamos, you might think Lawrence

00:16:42.280 Livermore.

00:16:42.860 But Tennessee was where it actually happened.

00:16:47.100 So much so that did you know that there's only two U.S. states that are memorialized by

00:16:54.060 having an element on the periodic table named after them.

00:16:57.880 You know, there's Americium, there's Europium, there's Francium, Polonium, Germanium.

00:17:03.520 But there's only two U.S. states, Californium and Tennessein, element number 117, named in

00:17:12.720 large part because of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

00:17:16.600 Whatever you think of the nuclear bomb, and I put it to you, it ended the war against Japan

00:17:21.060 early and ended up saving probably a million lives.

00:17:24.940 Tennessee is a very important place in the world of nuclear research.

00:17:30.920 And you saw that story on ABC.

00:17:33.880 There is an industrial fire at the successor to the Manhattan Project.

00:17:41.200 Did you hear about that on the CBC yet?

00:17:44.680 I think that's news.

00:17:48.160 You know, when we sent our team down to Ohio, I said to them, look, just follow the facts

00:17:52.960 wherever they lead.

00:17:53.680 But just realize there are so many trains across the United States and there's so much

00:17:59.860 freight and so much heavy equipment and industrial goods to travel by train, which we would prefer.

00:18:05.520 We don't want that stuff going on our roads through our cities.

00:18:08.400 There are four derailments a day in the United States.

00:18:11.980 So this could just be some random accident that happened to be, you know, in a spectacular

00:18:18.300 setting near a town as opposed to in the middle of nowhere.

00:18:22.100 So I said to our team, follow the facts wherever they lead, but don't jump to conclusions.

00:18:27.700 This could just be a random derailment.

00:18:31.320 It's a little bit harder to say that when the fire is at the Manhattan Project.

00:18:38.860 And I have one question for you.

00:18:42.200 And it is pure speculation.

00:18:44.640 It's not disinformation because I think you're still allowed to ask questions.

00:18:49.600 You know, I look at the war in Ukraine and I look at how the United States and the United

00:18:54.860 Kingdom and other countries, including Canada, are getting involved in that war with Ukraine

00:18:59.420 as the proxy.

00:19:00.340 Ukraine is the battleground, but it's really Russia on one side with China, now its ally, 0.90

00:19:07.380 versus Ukraine, which is massively funded by the United States, the UK and even Canada and

00:19:13.660 weaponry from the West.

00:19:14.760 It is a battleground between both sides.

00:19:17.560 But the theater of war is in Ukraine.

00:19:20.820 And I pity the people of Ukraine who are paying the price for that with blood and their destroyed

00:19:27.020 country.

00:19:27.420 And I saw some of that when I was in Davos at the Ukraine pavilion at the World Economic

00:19:31.500 Forum.

00:19:31.860 And although I'm hostile to the World Economic Forum and although I knew I was being managed

00:19:36.580 and handled when I was in there, I could not help but be affected by the images of civilian 1.00

00:19:40.900 casualties in Ukraine.

00:19:41.920 It's very touching and it makes me angry when armchair generals in the West are happy to

00:19:48.620 fight to the last Ukrainian.

00:19:50.840 But Ukraine is the theater of war, isn't it?

00:19:54.680 But it is not only the theater of war.

00:19:58.500 Remember a few months ago when the mighty Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia

00:20:05.520 and Europe was bombed underwater in a special operation?

00:20:12.220 That wasn't in Ukraine.

00:20:13.440 That was a thousand kilometers away.

00:20:17.040 And you remember this incredible footage of a bomb exploding right under the Kerch Bridge,

00:20:25.020 which is a mighty bridge built by Vladimir Putin to cement Crimea into Russia proper when

00:20:31.620 they annexed it.

00:20:32.400 It's an enormously important strategic bridge.

00:20:35.420 And the Nord Stream 2 is enormously important.

00:20:38.920 Both of those were outside the theater of war.

00:20:43.200 Both of those were clearly done by Western agents, whether it was America or Ukraine is not known.

00:20:50.860 By the way, here's Joe Biden threatening to end the Nord Stream if Russia entered Ukraine.

00:20:58.040 Take a look.

00:20:58.580 Let me answer the first question first.

00:21:00.980 If Germany, if Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again,

00:21:11.980 then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.

00:21:17.600 We will bring an end to it.

00:21:19.040 But how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control?

00:21:31.960 We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it.

00:21:35.180 I don't know about you, but that's as close to a confession as it comes.

00:21:40.740 Look, I'm not engaging in disinformation, but I'm asking a question, a question about strategic fires, explosions, derailments.

00:21:50.220 Are they statistically normal?

00:21:52.180 The other day, I don't know if you remember, in January, literally every single flight in the United States was canceled.

00:22:04.960 Do you remember that?

00:22:06.140 Here's the headline in the Globe and Mail.

00:22:07.700 Air travel across U.S. thrown into chaos after computer outage.

00:22:12.180 Canadian airports hit with delays.

00:22:13.680 When I say every airline was canceled, I mean every.

00:22:18.760 Like, this was not just one airline or another.

00:22:21.360 This was a computer error, oh, just a glitch, that affected every commercial flight in the United States.

00:22:29.480 And here's my point.

00:22:31.600 In an era of propaganda and state disinformation, in an era when you can't get a straight answer from your transport secretary, Pete Buttigieg,

00:22:41.140 when you can't get a straight answer about Chinese interference in the Canadian election because you'll be called a conspiracy theorist.

00:22:50.260 Is it a possibility that these industrial accidents, fires, derailments, explosions, computer glitches in the United States?

00:23:00.360 Is it possible?

00:23:02.720 I don't know if you remember the Rogers outage in Canada a few months ago when every single Rogers phone just went down for hours.

00:23:11.680 Is that a glitch, a little whoopsie?

00:23:16.960 Or is it just possible that as the West is taking the war to Russia, not in the theater of Ukraine anymore, but in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and in the Kerch Bridge and threatening long range weapons,

00:23:31.740 as Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK has done, is it possible that Russia, which is led by Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who learned his ways during the Cold War,

00:23:45.060 is it just possible that these industrial accidents are not accidents, but rather sabotage, a tit for tat, an answer to the explosion of the Kerch Bridge or the detonation of the Nord Stream 2?

00:24:04.420 I have no facts to support this.

00:24:06.280 I'm asking questions.

00:24:07.140 I think, though, that unlike the United States, who seems to leak and boast to the New York Times of all their battles against Russia,

00:24:16.740 I think if Russia were to engage in sabotage in the West, it would probably not chat about it or boast about it in the New York Times,

00:24:24.480 probably to avoid some retaliation and also because they're not looking for coverage in the New York Times.

00:24:31.820 I wonder if Vladimir Putin, the Cold War KGB agent, would ever engage in sabotage in the West in retaliation for our sabotage of him.

00:24:46.680 It reminds me, I don't know if you ever watched that movie, that TV show called The Americans.

00:24:54.140 It's very entertaining.

00:24:55.120 It was about a young man and woman from Russia who were taught perfect English, taught their American culture and history,

00:25:03.400 and then were sent to live in the Washington suburbs as sleeper cells to have a family and join the PTA and have real jobs in the city,

00:25:14.820 but secretly be Russian spies ready to be activated, but looking outwardly like an American mom and dad.

00:25:22.500 But it was a great series and it took you back to the 1980s.

00:25:26.440 It was called The Americans.

00:25:28.560 Now, I know that was a work of fiction, but I also know it's a fact that there were spies in the West and they didn't all go away when the Cold War ended.

00:25:39.400 I think that Vladimir Putin has the means, the method and the opportunity,

00:25:45.940 the motivation, the method and the opportunity to commit sabotage against the West.

00:25:52.100 He's a brutal man.

00:25:54.200 And I think he's up against people in the West who are just woke.

00:25:59.500 I showed you the young women of the Munich Security Conference.

00:26:05.280 Remember, I showed you all those Instagram photos of feminist foreign policy. 0.99

00:26:12.860 They're showing it, the guys, how it's done.

00:26:15.680 And here's Sanna Marin, the prime minister of Finland, just partying, partying and not being embarrassed by it.

00:26:25.500 When she's asked, is this appropriate for a prime minister to do?

00:26:28.700 She says, yeah, I want to live my life.

00:26:30.720 I'm still a young woman.

00:26:31.760 But do you think that these Western prime ministers and foreign ministers and defense ministers truly understand who they're fighting with?

00:26:45.380 In the case of the brutal Vladimir Putin, I don't know if these are attacks on the West or just random industrial accidents, but I don't think that party girl Sanna Marin or that paternity leave Pete Buttigieg know or care. 0.55

00:27:04.480 Or if they did, I don't think they'd know what to do other than, I don't know if it was Marin, just get drunk and party.

00:27:14.000 And if it was Mayor Pete, just, I don't know, accuse the train derailment or the nuclear fire of being racist.

00:27:22.480 Yeah, I don't think we know what we're getting into.

00:27:29.840 Stay with us more ahead.

00:27:43.320 Welcome back.

00:27:44.160 Well, as I've told you on a number of occasions, if you measure Justin Trudeau's interest in something by the number of bills he has introduced or proposed to introduce to parliament, then the number one thing in his heart, more than Ukraine, more than carbon taxes, more than anything, certainly more than our economy or cost of living, is his desire to regulate the internet.

00:28:08.120 Bill C-11, Bill C-18, the bill formerly known as Bill C-36, and the yet introduced bill called the Online Harms Act, that's four pieces of legislation Justin Trudeau has proposed or is planning to introduce to regulate what you see and hear and say online.

00:28:28.160 And he's obsessed with controlling it.

00:28:31.520 Some of you might have seen my email and my video over the Christmas break about how Bill C-11 allows Trudeau to adjust the algorithm in private companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, to force them to boost news sources that he likes and to de-boost those that he doesn't.

00:28:53.120 He calls it discoverability. That is, he will determine what shows up when you type in news story or Justin Trudeau. Type that into the internet right now and you're subject to Google's algorithm and they might have some political views themselves.

00:29:09.720 They'll boost this or that. But under C-11, they will be able to dictate what political stripe those companies show.

00:29:16.260 Well, that's C-11. C-18 has some unintended consequences or maybe they're intended consequences as well.

00:29:24.980 The idea there is to take money from these tech giants and spread it around Justin Trudeau's friends in the media.

00:29:33.120 Joining us more now to talk more about it is our friend Spencer Fernando from SpencerFernando.com.

00:29:39.320 Spencer, great to see you again.

00:29:40.480 It's hard to keep track of all these bills, C-11, C-18, but what you're focused on in your story today, and we'll put it on our screen here,

00:29:49.120 is some Canadians already facing restricted access to online news due to Liberal Bill C-18.

00:29:56.580 The Liberal government was warned this could happen.

00:29:58.480 They ignored the warnings and pushed ahead with an ideological centralizing agenda.

00:30:04.500 Why don't you tell our viewers what's happening?

00:30:05.920 Yeah, well, so basically C-18 will make companies like Google, possibly Twitter, Facebook, pay for links.

00:30:14.840 And, you know, as you think about that, you're thinking, well, that kind of sounds like a stupid idea because if I post something on Twitter or, you know, it gets, you know, spread on Google, I'm benefiting.

00:30:24.520 It's my content and people are seeing, you know, I don't control Google, I don't control Twitter.

00:30:28.620 And that's a platform I wouldn't have access to unless they provided it, right?

00:30:32.220 So the idea that they should be paying people to be able to post their links on there obviously makes no sense.

00:30:39.420 And so, you know, it's interesting.

00:30:40.720 It's something you see a lot from governments, especially centralizing governments where they could never create a business.

00:30:46.980 They could never be innovative enough to, you know, create Google or Twitter or anything like that.

00:30:50.860 But they somehow still feel entitled to control it and to decide, you know, where, you know, what the company should do, you know, what it's allowed to, you know, how it's allowed to function, how it has to be run.

00:31:01.620 And so what Google is kind of saying is, look, you know, you're saying that we either have to pay for links or, you know, we're not allowed to provide our service.

00:31:09.240 So we're not going to provide our service.

00:31:10.840 You know, you can't make us provide a service to people in Canada.

00:31:13.260 It's an independent company.

00:31:14.580 They can choose to do that or not.

00:31:15.780 So they're testing out, I think it's about 4% of the population is having restricted access to Canadian news on Google.

00:31:23.220 You know, I've seen some journalists saying that they went on to Google, they searched up certain news stories and just nothing came up.

00:31:28.980 And so they had to go search elsewhere.

00:31:30.280 And that's because Google's testing out what they will probably roll out at a much bigger scale if the Liberals go ahead with C-18 as there's every indication they're going to.

00:31:39.860 Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're in the same position that we are.

00:31:42.760 I mean, we live on the Internet.

00:31:43.960 We don't have any other way of expression.

00:31:46.580 The Internet is everything these days.

00:31:48.640 But how do you get people to look at your stuff?

00:31:52.160 Well, you hope to catch a wave.

00:31:54.320 You hope to go viral.

00:31:55.800 You hope that some big page links to your stuff on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, whatever.

00:32:03.500 And it's a happy day when that happens because people follow the link to your website and they maybe click on an ad or maybe buy something or at least get to know you, maybe subscribe.

00:32:17.220 It is a happy day for a publisher when someone links to you in fact publishers typically pay for that in an ad.

00:32:25.900 The idea that Google or other big companies would pay Rebel News, would pay SpencerFernando.com, would pay the CBC for the privilege of sending traffic to them is so opposite of the strategic concept of the Internet.

00:32:43.640 The concept of the Internet is that you can link to anyone.

00:32:46.660 You can follow the links.

00:32:47.600 You never know where you're going to wind up.

00:32:49.520 And you don't have to pay to click on a link.

00:32:53.400 This is Trudeau trying to charge Google for a link.

00:32:56.980 Let me quote from your story.

00:32:58.040 You have a really good point here.

00:32:59.260 You quote Professor Michael Geist, who is a liberal, by the way.

00:33:02.860 Like he's not a right winger, but here's what he says about what's so crazy about charging Google to have a link to your site.

00:33:10.760 Let me just read this.

00:33:12.620 You were quoting Michael Geist.

00:33:14.960 This is the problem with C-18 in a nutshell.

00:33:18.280 Pablo Rodriguez spokesman says they want compensation for use, but that's not what the bill says.

00:33:24.720 It mandates payments for facilitating access to news, including just links.

00:33:30.940 That's not compensable use.

00:33:33.780 And I understand what that means.

00:33:35.160 If someone were to take a Rebel News video and play it for their people and not give us any money, I'd say, hey, we did all the work.

00:33:42.720 You're stealing our work and giving it away for free.

00:33:44.800 I would want some compensation.

00:33:46.120 But if all Google did was say, give a link that people can come to my site, that's not something that they have to pay me for.

00:33:55.780 It's something I have to pay them for.

00:33:57.140 I just think that this is a really weird law, and although I hate Google for a number of reasons, I'm on their side here.

00:34:05.880 Yeah, and it's not just this.

00:34:07.740 It's the trend of what the liberals are doing, upping CBC's budget, the $650 million media bailout, just all their legislation, C-11, obviously.

00:34:16.020 It's that they don't like the fact that they're losing control over the narrative on many different issues, and they don't like the fact that they're not able to get it back easily.

00:34:25.200 Because, I mean, look, if you're the liberals and you feel that the establishment media, traditional outlets are turning against you, there's a lot of things you can do.

00:34:32.860 There's government regulations you can apply to them.

00:34:34.900 There's money, as the liberals have already done, that you can give to them to make them more dependent.

00:34:38.860 It's far tougher to control every individual Canadian who can share their viewpoint on the Internet.

00:34:42.800 So what do you do about that if you're a government that is upset that you're losing centralized control over certain issues?

00:34:50.460 And one of the ways you do that, of course, is to either push services to compensate people, which what it really means is they want to direct even more money to establish a media outlet.

00:34:58.980 That's the whole idea.

00:35:00.240 And then if the liberals, I don't think they'll be too upset if Google actually stops showing as much Canadian news online, because that'll mean that they can just direct more people to try to follow establishing media outlets.

00:35:10.780 They'd be glad to see a constrained number of places where Canadians can freely get news.

00:35:16.780 And so it's just the trend with them, right?

00:35:18.860 And so I think you see some liberal MPs who on certain other issues have been concerned about unintended, supposedly, consequences of what Trudeau is doing.

00:35:27.740 And we'll see if people speak out about this one, because it's just a drip, drip, drip, right?

00:35:31.160 You never just wake up and say, oh, well, we lost all our freedoms.

00:35:34.380 Oh, we can't speak freely on the Internet.

00:35:35.820 The Internet's super restrictive in Canada.

00:35:37.340 It happens bit by bit by bit by bit, and people don't notice one change to the other.

00:35:42.200 And so I think the liberals hope that they're just going to get away with it by people, you know, just not noticing each individual change.

00:35:47.540 And that's why it's important to fight against it now, because at some point it will be too late.

00:35:51.860 I see it as all of those things, but I see it as another piece, too.

00:35:55.440 Right now, about a third of the money in most Canadian media outlets comes from Trudeau himself, through his bailouts, through his, through a number of, it varies from company to company.

00:36:07.980 But this allows Trudeau to access huge pots of money from Facebook, Google, YouTube, and add that to what he's going to gift to these same media companies.

00:36:20.740 But again, only qualified Canadian journalism organizations.

00:36:26.000 That's a term of art under the CRA, QCJO.

00:36:29.320 It's a kind of news license.

00:36:30.820 So I think what Trudeau wants to do is everything you just described there, limiting, restricting, regulating.

00:36:36.580 But he looks at big tech, and he just sees dollar signs.

00:36:39.720 He says, hey, I'm going to come up with this excuse.

00:36:42.740 They link to you.

00:36:44.120 They have to pay you.

00:36:45.060 I'm going to scoop up 100 million bucks a year or whatever from Google and YouTube and Facebook, and then I'm going to disperse it along with my money.

00:36:56.760 And soon, big government and big tech will literally be a majority of the money that Canadian media get.

00:37:03.820 It'll only go to Trudeau qualified media companies, so none of that money will ever come to Rebel News.

00:37:09.680 And he gets to promote and pump up his friends in the media, and of course, it sounds like Google's against it.

00:37:19.100 I think Facebook actually agrees with all this, because if you're taking money from Facebook, are you going to be criticizing Facebook?

00:37:25.280 Probably not.

00:37:26.240 I think this is the merger between big media and big government, sort of like in the 90s when those tobacco companies did their master settlement agreement.

00:37:35.180 They said to all the states, if you stop suing us, we'll pay you a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 30 years or whatever.

00:37:44.220 So they basically merged.

00:37:46.620 The government stopped suing tobacco, and tobacco said, we'll give you an unlimited stream of funds.

00:37:51.520 I think that's what's going on here.

00:37:53.540 Trudeau just says, oh, there's a lot of money there.

00:37:56.080 Let me get it and spend it on my friends.

00:37:58.480 What do you think?

00:37:59.080 Do you think the money is really the root of things?

00:38:02.920 Yeah, that's a big part of it. 0.93

00:38:03.900 I think it's also – the liberals are often very foolish about human nature when it comes to protecting Canada or building up the military.

00:38:10.700 But one way they do understand it is that if someone – if you pay somebody's bills, that person works for you, right? 0.62

00:38:16.220 So what they're doing is they're getting more and more of the media to be completely dependent on government money.

00:38:21.360 And they also – the media also knows, of course, that the conservatives are much less likely to give them that money, whereas the liberals are likely to give even more the longer they stay in power.

00:38:29.440 So you create an incentive for people within the media ecosystem to want the liberals to stay in power.

00:38:34.400 And that, of course, it's a feedback loop, right?

00:38:36.300 The more money the liberals give to the media, the more the media wants them to stay in power, which makes it easier for the liberals to stay in power, and they give them more money.

00:38:43.040 And so that's a real obstacle in many ways for the conservatives because, of course, if they gave in to all of this, then their own base would be upset with them and rightfully so.

00:38:52.100 So they're going to have to really face down not just a media that already has – just often due to the types of people on average who get into the media in the first place, they're going to face not just that ideological opposition but also the real financial self-interest of much of the press who are going to say,

00:39:07.040 look, if we want to keep getting all this government money, well, we better make sure Poliev loses and Trudeau wins.

00:39:12.920 So it's going to be very interesting.

00:39:14.560 And it's funny to see all these Canadians who are so concerned supposedly about the conservatives being right-wing and super right-wing, and you see them saying fascist all over the place.

00:39:25.020 But the merger of corporate media and the government, that's generally considered pretty fascist, or Trudeau maybe sees it more as communist.

00:39:33.160 That's more the direction he leans in, but either way, we built Western societies on the foundation of freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

00:39:41.580 The press is supposed to be antagonistic towards the government.

00:39:44.520 The government is extremely powerful, even in a relatively free country.

00:39:47.620 And so without people who can hold it accountable and speak out against it, people are in real danger of having their rights taken away.

00:39:53.140 So to see the press in Canada increasingly co-opted by the government is something that not just people on the right should be concerned about,

00:40:00.260 but people across the whole political spectrum, because no party is going to stay in power forever.

00:40:04.320 And if you build a huge apparatus that lets the government control the media to a great extent,

00:40:08.840 that's going to be used against people who you agree with and people who you disagree with.

00:40:13.100 And at some point, it's going to hit you.

00:40:15.360 Yeah.

00:40:15.600 Well, right now, they certainly feel like they control all the levers and really feels like a closed shop for their side.

00:40:22.900 Spencer Fernando, great to see you again.

00:40:24.360 Thanks very much for your time.

00:40:25.780 Folks, you can see Spencer's content at SpencerFernando.com, Opinion and Insight.

00:40:32.400 You can visit him there.

00:40:33.520 Thank you for your time.

00:40:34.760 Stay with us.

00:40:35.740 More ahead.

00:40:45.680 Hey, welcome back.

00:40:46.760 You're all letters to me.

00:40:47.820 Ig Steve says, yes, there is a very small group spreading information and causing hardship and deaths.

00:40:53.660 They're called the Trudeau government.

00:40:55.780 Well, look, I think that everyone has their side of the story.

00:41:02.340 You know, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

00:41:05.380 One man's revolutionary is another man's mutineer. 0.63

00:41:09.840 I mean, look at the different sides of the U.S. American Revolution.

00:41:14.700 Yeah, I was listening to an obscure song.

00:41:20.660 You know, forgive my terrible musical taste.

00:41:22.920 I love those sea shanties, even though I grew up very far away from the sea.

00:41:27.440 And there's this amazing song called John Paul Jones is a Pirate.

00:41:32.440 No loyalty does he possess.

00:41:35.560 That's the time.

00:41:36.300 That's the song.

00:41:37.840 John Paul Jones is a hero in the United States.

00:41:40.540 He's the father of their Navy.

00:41:42.460 He's there's statues of them.

00:41:44.500 And this British song, John Paul Jones is a pirate.

00:41:48.580 No loyalty does he possess. 0.92

00:41:50.180 Like he's a traitor, a disloyal pirate, which is true.

00:41:54.320 Well, they're both true, depending on whose side you're on. 0.65

00:41:57.880 I'm obviously desperately glad that the United States broke free and became the country that it is today.

00:42:03.000 But as a Canadian, I also understand that was a mutiny against the British Empire, of which Canada was then a part.

00:42:08.740 So which side was the disinformation side there?

00:42:13.860 Well, I think it's up to everyone to decide for themselves.

00:42:17.000 There's certain things that I think are true, no matter who disputes them.

00:42:21.100 But I don't think the arbiter of truth can ever be the government.

00:42:26.320 In fact, the whole point of a democracy is that there are two points of view.

00:42:30.840 That's why we have an institution called the official opposition.

00:42:34.340 And every once in a while, there ought to be an opportunity to throw an entire group of people out.

00:42:38.480 And that's why we have an election with a campaign. 0.81

00:42:41.500 In fact, if you look at the root of the word campaign, it comes from a military analogy.

00:42:46.320 We're fighting these desperate battles, but instead of using guns, we're using ballots, not bullets.

00:42:52.840 My show today was in large part about the government saying what you can and can't know, can and can't talk about, and can and can't ask about.

00:43:02.980 Ron Ross says, reveals that the deep state is part of the lies.

00:43:06.320 I think your letter there is in reaction to Bruce Party's interview with us.

00:43:11.380 But frankly, Ron, that letter could be in reaction to half the stories we talk about.

00:43:16.600 Isn't that the truth?

00:43:17.380 I'm very curious about that fire at the Manhattan Project, aren't you?

00:43:21.720 Is that an accident?

00:43:22.760 Could be.

00:43:23.800 Obviously, it could be.

00:43:24.860 But I'm guessing that the Russians, ever since Vladimir Putin was just a young KGB agent in St. Petersburg, I'm guessing that the Russians have had their eyes on that Oak Ridge National Laboratory for decades.

00:43:40.580 On my interview with Franco Teresano, Delta Mail says, less viewers, more staffers.

00:43:48.060 You're talking about the CBC.

00:43:50.100 You're exactly right.

00:43:52.260 They've never been bigger at the CBC.

00:43:54.380 Their budget has never been higher.

00:43:56.560 And yet their viewership as a percentage of Canadians has never been lower.

00:44:00.020 And their partisanship for Trudeau has never been more intense. 0.61

00:44:04.120 They're the worst.

00:44:05.060 Well, that's our show for today.

00:44:08.740 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:44:13.520 And keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - February 24, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Disinformation gaslighting and narrative control clouds the search for truth

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