EZRA LEVANT ｜ Russians allegedly set up $10 million conservative YouTube channel
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Summary
Two Russians are accused of setting up a $10 million YouTube channel featuring conservative talent. It's September 6th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show. You're fighting for freedom! You're censoring yourself. Shame on you, you censorious bug!
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. I don't know if you saw that curious story out of the United States.
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Their Department of Justice has indicted two Russians for trying to set up a YouTube network
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in the United States with about 10 million bucks, hiring some fairly well-known conservative and
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libertarian YouTubers. And it's very interesting to see who knew where the money was from and who
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didn't and what their messaging changed or didn't change. I'll take you through it today.
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I know some of the folks casually, I'm not close with them, but I'll tell you their different
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reactions to it. Very interesting story. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber
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to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
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click subscribe. And, you know, I do the show every weekday, so you get the video version.
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But more important, you'll support Rebel News because we don't take any money from
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the Canadian government or the Russian government or any government.
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So we need your help. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, two Russians are accused of setting up a $10 million YouTube channel featuring conservative
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talent. It's September 6th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.
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Oh, hi, everybody. I'm in our Toronto studio, of course. I'm very excited. I'm getting on
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a flight at midnight tonight, and I really want to tell you where I'm going, but I don't
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want to announce it until I land and through customs on the other side, because there's
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a chance if the people where I'm going know that I'm going as a journalist that I'll be
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put on the next plane back home. But tomorrow, if I manage to get off the plane and through
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customs, boy, do we have a big story we're going to be covering in a very faraway place.
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Believe me, I wish I could tell you more, but I just want to keep it to myself until I am
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through the customs police on the other side. And then I'm going to be doing videos and tweets
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all day long. And I hope you tune in for that. If you follow me on Twitter, it's just simply
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my full name, Ezra Levant. So that's Saturday, September 7th. I will be in the field in an
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undisclosed location that I will disclose tomorrow morning. We've already filmed a little intro to what
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we're doing, but we're not going to release that until the minute I am across the border.
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Hmm. How's that for a puzzler? Don't worry, I won't keep you in suspense for long. But speaking
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of international intrigues, I saw the most interesting thing a couple days ago. The U.S. Department of
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Justice and the FBI, which are a little bit compromised, I think most people would agree when it comes to
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political matters, they indicted, I think is the phrase they use in the States, two Russian nationals.
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Two members, two citizens of Russia, who are alleged to have worked with the Russian propaganda
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TV station called RT, or it used to be called Russia Today, to set up a company in the United States
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that hid all traces of the Russian control and Russian money, to set up this company in Tennessee,
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run by a fairly well-known conservative YouTube talent, recruiting other conservative YouTube
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talent. And according to the shocking document released by the Department of Justice, they
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recruited other talent, paying them up to $100,000 a video. I have to tell you, that's the most
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astonishing thing of it. The fact that Russia is interested in influencing the U.S. or any
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country's debate is not that surprising, although it's always interesting. But the fact that they
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were paying up to $100,000 a video is the most astonishing thing I've ever heard. You know, $400,000
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a month, some of these folks were making for four videos. Now, the company is called Tenet,
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T-E-N-E-T, Media. And they announced yesterday that they're shutting down because of this Department
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of Justice investigation. Tenet Media was run by a young woman originally from Montreal named
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Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam, who's since relocated to Tennessee. And I remember when Tenet
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Media was born, they hired some very interesting people that I would call sort of the dissident
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right. Tim Poole, who actually started off on a, you know, the Occupy Wall Street type side of
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things. I think he's one of the smartest guys in the business, by the way, very clever, very thoughtful.
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I had the pleasure of being on a show once. Benny Johnson, who you might know from the States,
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he's sort of a Trump supporter who sometimes goes out into the field. Dave Rubin, who used to be a
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comedian, used to be a man in the left. Then he went on tour with Jordan Peterson, thoughtful
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YouTuber. Lauren Southern, one of our long ago alumni who we parted ways with, I don't know,
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about seven or eight years ago now. So these were some recognizable names, a couple names I didn't
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know. And I was just blown away when I heard how much money they were being paid. And I checked my
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notes and I wrote to one of my friends. I said, who's behind this? Like in what possible universe
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can you build a company paying people $100,000 a video? Now there are some YouTubers who are so huge
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that yes, they will make $100,000 per video in ads. I don't know if you've heard of the YouTuber
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MrBeast, or I suppose some pop music. If you're getting a hundred million views, sure, you'll make
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$100,000 or even more. But this $100,000 per video were for videos that were getting
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50 or $100,000 views, excuse me, which maybe would be worth $1,000 or $2,000 in the YouTube market. So
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I thought something was very strange. I didn't quite understand it, but I didn't put a lot of thought to
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it. But boy, does it look different now that I see this Department of Justice memo. I mean, here,
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let me quote from it, a key member identified as commentator number one was to be paid $400,000
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per month, plus $100,000 signing bonus, while commentator two's contract was for $100,000 per
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video. Just astonishing. So you'll see in the Department of Justice document, they don't
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actually name anyone other than the two Russian nationals who are facing charges. So Lauren Chen and
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her husband and these contributors, as far as we know, have not been charged with anything. Although I find
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it hard to imagine that Lauren Chen wouldn't be charged. Some of the people I've mentioned,
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such as Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin have put out statements on Twitter saying they had no
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idea that the money was from Russia. They were told when they asked that it was from an investor named
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Edward Gregorian. And frankly, if someone offered you $100,000 a video, maybe you wouldn't ask too many
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questions, especially according to Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and Dave Rubin and their statements online,
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especially if there was no editorial control. I mean, I suppose if someone ever said to me,
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Ezra, you're making videos every day, give us one of them and we'll put it on our YouTube channel
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and pay you $100,000 a pop. You keep doing your thing. You keep choosing your content.
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We won't have any say in it. I mean, that just sounds so fantastical and unrealistic. I hesitate
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even to think about it because that's just such a fantasy scenario. It would be like being asked,
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what happens if you win the lottery? I suppose if I could be totally certain that I was in complete
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control of what I said, why wouldn't I take $100,000 a video? And if I said, well, who's behind it?
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And I was told some mysterious European was behind it. My spider senses might be tingling,
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but on the other hand, there would be a pile of money. I don't know. So I do accept that Tim Pool,
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Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin had no idea where the money came from, but I'll notice that Lauren
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Southern and Lauren Chen are being completely silenced since the Department of Justice made
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their announcement. It tells me that perhaps they weren't caught off guard. So I watched Tenet with
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some eagerness because I saw, wow, they're assembling sort of this league of superheroes
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from conservative or dissident YouTube. And I thought it was interesting. And I was sort of waiting for
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the action. And the first real thing that I viewed as a Tenet media production
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was this bizarre moment when an anti-Semitic alt-right, I don't know, bomb thrower, jokester,
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comedian, I don't even know how he would be described. He's very racist, very anti-Semitic.
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His name is Nick Fuentes. He had some sort of a counter rally against a conservative rally,
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and Tenet media covered it like it was a serious, credible, political event. I was astonished by
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this, that something which had the formidable names I mentioned before would be giving so much
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attention to a fringe, bizarre, clownish, anti-Semitic character. I didn't get it. I mean, normally,
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if someone is that extreme, a racist, they don't have access to significant investors. They're sort of
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on their own citizen dissident. I thought something was funny. And I didn't pay a lot more attention
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to Tenet after that. But in the wake of the DOJ Department of Justice announcement a couple days
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ago, I've gone back and I've seen some of the things that Lauren Chen, the boss of Tenet,
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were saying. And they definitely took a turn when Tenet media started towards anti-Semitism,
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which is weird, and towards being anti-Trump from the right. And what I mean by that is,
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you know, Lauren Chen and others in that circle, it would not be credible if they were to attack Trump
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from the left, because the names I mentioned are pretty much all pro-Trump. But Lauren Chen,
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in particular, was saying things like, well, Trump is not pro-life enough. I'm out. To sort of cause
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some dissonance and dissonance on the right. And now that these charges, these accusations of Russian
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money, it starts to make some sense. It runs counter to the traditional narrative that Putin wants Trump
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to win. Putin is supporting Russia. If you look at what the money was paid for based on Lauren Chen's
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own posts, it was to attack Trump to make him seem iffy, which suggests they want, you know, the more
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malleable Kamala Harris to win. I didn't really know Lauren Chen that well. I saw her out of the corner of
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my eye over the years, and I invited her to work with Rebel News at the time. But she was working with
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RT even back then. And of course, we couldn't have someone who was an RT personality also doing
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videos for us. And there was a strange phenomenon where she started attacking people who were pro-Israel.
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And generally, if you're pro-Israel, you're pro-America. I really don't know one without the
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other. Accusing people of taking shekels, that's Israeli money, or Jewish money. If you were pro-Israel,
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it's because you were taking shekels from a foreign paymaster. That's sort of an anti-Semitic
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slur, sort of a light anti-Semitic slur. But now that you see that Lauren Chen herself was the funnel
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for almost $10 million, it's even more ironic. The commentator Will Chamberlain saw this and made a
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point which I think is right. He says that there is no such thing as authentic anti-Semitism or
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anti-Zionism amongst American conservatives, or for that matter, I think Western European
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conservatives. And I think he's dead right. And I say this as someone, I'm 52, and I think I've been
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political since I was in my teens. And I literally have been to 9 out of 10 provinces. I've been all over
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the West where rednecks are supposed to be. In my entire life, I promise you, hand to God,
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I have never seen anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, anti-Israel extremism on the right. I just haven't
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seen it. I've seen a lot of it on the progressive left, the coalition between Islamists and woke,
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critical race theory, Marxist cultural activists who say that Israel is the oppressor. So I think that
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when you see people like Lauren Chen and others, perhaps like Andrew Tate online, taking a hard
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line, anti-Semitic stand, now that we know that Lauren Chen was taking Russian money, I think it's
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worth asking, is that what caused that? Now, look, I don't think that there's anything on the face of
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it that's illegal about taking money from a secret investor to have a certain political point of view.
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I think it's perhaps unethical to not disclose that you're actually a propagandist or a salesman
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when you're pretending to be a business person. But I think what the criminal matter may be
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is that if they were working for a foreign government, doing errands for a foreign government
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in the United States, and not registering as a foreign agent, that could be what gets them in
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trouble. Unfortunately, we don't have that law in Canada, which is why Canada is overrun with foreign
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agents. Like I say, the Department of Justice accused Lauren Chen and her husband of funneling
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about $10 million into this little company over the last year. And holy cow, did some of those guys get
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paid? But $10 million, even real US dollars, let's call that $13 million Canadian, it is a sliver of a
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fraction of what state broadcasters get away with in Canada. I mean, I see that CBC is feasting on this
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story, because Lauren Chen, like I say, is originally from Montreal, and Lauren Southern, one of the talent,
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was from Vancouver. And fair enough, those two, I think, were amongst the ringleaders. But it's a
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little bit much for the CBC, which is a state broadcaster, to criticize Russia today, another
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state broadcaster, as if the CBC is morally superior. I mean, I suppose they're more open about
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that they're a state broadcaster, whereas Lauren Chen's little Russian team was secretive about it. So
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I suppose in that sense, the CBC is more ethical. But it's a bit of chutzpah for Canada's state
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broadcaster to be really mad at Russia's state broadcaster. I mean, you guys are all state
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broadcasters. None of you are real journalists. You're government journalists, which is something
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very different. I saw the usual suspects like Andrew Coyne retweeting that story with Glee, but
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Andrew Coyne is on the dole also. The CBC is owned by the government. But journalists in the private
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sector, like Andrew Coyne, are rented by the government. They get their annual subsidy, and in
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some ways, they're worse, because they have to show Trudeau every year that they deserve the money.
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The average Canadian newsroom gets about $30,000 per reporter from Justin Trudeau.
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And sure, you and I know that, but when was the last time that was disclosed on TV? You have
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reporters, and I'm not just talking about the CBC. I'm talking about every print reporter in this
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country. They're doing a story about Justin Trudeau, which, without disclosing, they're getting paid by
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Justin Trudeau. That's pretty much exactly what Lauren Chen and her little Russian slush fund did.
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I mean, yeah, Vladimir Putin is a darker character than Justin Trudeau, but they're both governments.
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Now, we should also beware that the Department of Justice is a highly political organization and has been
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for some years. They've rung the alarm about Russia, Russia, Russia before, claiming that Donald Trump was
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in collusion. As you may remember, more than five years ago, there was an extremely expensive, exhaustive
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inquiry by Robert Mueller into the question of whether or not Donald Trump had engaged in collusion.
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And by the way, it was a Democrat-run inquiry that was completely exhaustive, and they found there was
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nothing to it. The Department of Justice and the FBI have lied before. They lied claiming that the
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Hunter Biden laptop was a fake story. So they lie with positive—they create stories that they lie with,
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but they also lie to kill stories like Hunter Biden's laptop. This story about Lauren Chen rings true. I
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mean, I tell you, when I spoke to two of the people involved and I said, where is all the money coming
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from? They were—I mean, the one fellow I spoke with said he, you know, European investors, but it—I mean,
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just an astonishing amount of dough. There's no way that that made business sense. It was obviously a
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political operation. I see here that it was very quick for Canada's Homeland Security Minister to put
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out a press release saying how serious he's taking this whole matter, and if any Canadians are engaging
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in illegal activity, they'll face the full extent of the law. Like I say, I don't know what that illegal
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activity would be because Canada doesn't have a foreign agent registry. The Liberals have been holding
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that up. So whereas—so I just don't know what law would be broken in Canada if someone took Russian
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money to be a Russian propagandist. But like I say, the amount of money involved here is a trifle.
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We've learned through parliamentary hearings and from ordinary Chinese Canadians that there's an
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astonishing amount of Chinese money sloshing around Canada, including in Chinese language
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Canadian media. When I say Chinese money, I mean money from the People's Liberation or the People's
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Republic of China. So it's quite something when you look at all the foreign actors doing, especially
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ethnic politics in Canada, whether it's Iran bankrolling the Hamas protests or some of the Sikh
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Khalistan protests or the Chinese movements to get critical MPs out of parliament. There's much more
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than $10 million a foot. And it's strange to me that the only matter about which this government puts
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out a press release is the one involving conservatives who were swept up by this operation. So yeah, there's
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a ton of government money in our journalism. In fact, I think government money is one of the largest
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sources of journalistic revenues. I'm not sure it's any better if it's oligarchs like Jeffrey Bezos of
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Amazon.com. He owns the Washington Post. He uses it as a political play thing. Carlos Slim, the richest man in
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Mexico, owns the New York Times. You can buy a yacht, you can buy a private jet, and those things are lovely
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luxuries. But if you want to feel important and have a seat at the table and influence things, you buy
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newspapers. Canada's richest man, do you know his name? It's David Thompson. He's tens of billions of
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dollars. He owns the Globe and Mail. Do you think he's really interested in the news business? He might be.
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I mean, that's where his family money came from in the first place several generations ago. But no, I think
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it's more he likes to control the narrative in the country. So you have big money control the narratives,
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either oligarchs or governments. But even that pales in comparison to the largest foreign source
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of money sloshing around our country and in the United States too. That's the tiny oil-rich country
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of Qatar, who made a decision about 20 years ago that if they were going to buy any Americans, sure,
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you could buy journalists. But if you buy the universities, if you buy MIT and Harvard and
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Ivy League universities by pouring money into think tanks into the universities, you can control a much
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larger narrative. And if you're wondering why places like Columbia, Harvard, MIT, and University of
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Pennsylvania had the anti-Semitic pro-Hamas takeovers that they did, I think the Qatari money
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is part of the answer. Let me close by telling you what you already know. Rebel News doesn't take
00:21:36.240
any money from any government, by the way. I would like to think that if someone approached me and said,
00:21:42.160
I'll pay you $100,000 per video you're doing anyways, that I would ask a few questions. I'm sure my
00:21:48.200
missus would say, take the dough. We, you know, we need a retirement plan. But I would hope that
00:21:53.760
alarm bells would go off for me. And I would say, this doesn't make sense. It is not a genuine
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financial payment. It's for something else. I don't know. But lucky enough, I've never been faced
00:22:04.760
with that bizarre temptation. Rebel News lives off the avails of our viewers. The average gift to our
00:22:10.960
company is $58. And that's a much more honest way to make a living rather than taking the money from
00:22:16.620
the Russian government or the Canadian government. Stay with us for more.
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Ezra Levant here. I'm in Ottawa with our billboard truck. We're taking it around town with our messages
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against Trudeau's undemocratic appointments to the Senate. But how could I come to Ottawa
00:22:39.820
without popping by the leading criminal lawyer in Ontario, Lawrence Greenspawn, who, as you know,
00:22:46.700
has been the lead lawyer with his team defending Tamara Leach in this very long mischief trial? I
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thought I'd pop by, visit him in his natural habitat, which I suppose I've seen him at the
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courthouse a dozen times, and just get a bit of an update in the final stretch. Lawrence, great to see
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you. Thanks for meeting with us. Sure. Sure thing. Yeah, this is actually the building that
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William Lane Mackenzie King lived in for a period of some 10 years burnt to the ground. So when they
00:23:16.900
rebuilt it, they kept the heritage style. And this was the building where we do our thing. We've been
00:23:26.980
here for, I don't know, five, six years now. And it's a good location. In terms of the Freedom Convoy,
00:23:34.520
we're, we're down to the last hurrah for the Crown. On September 13th, they've got another half day of
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reply, in addition to the already six days of oral submissions, and the 140 pages of written submissions by
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the Crown, and the 100 pages by us, and the 100 pages by Chris Barber's counsel. So it's going to end on
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September 13th. And then the matter, whole thing will be put over to, to her honor. And she's got
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a mountain, a mountain of evidence to go through and come up with her decision. You know, I, I don't
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know this judge at all. You obviously appear in the Ottawa courts regularly. What struck me about her was
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how attentive she was, even like, this is the longest running mischief trial in Canadian history,
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possibly in the whole Commonwealth. Yet she's very engaged and attentive. In fact, she's, I saw her
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constantly giving feedback, challenging, questioning. To have that kind of attention span, you need it for
00:24:37.980
a lengthy trial like this. Absolutely. And, and that's been, that's been her way, not only on this trial,
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but on everything. You know, we're, we're very fortunate with the bench that we have in the
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Ontario Court of Justice in Ottawa in the criminal division. And this judge has, has been, you know,
00:25:00.140
on this for, I think we're up to 46 days of trial now. And she doesn't sit unless she's listening and,
00:25:08.720
and taking it all in and making notes. And, and she's been very, very involved in it. And I expect
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she's going to need a large amount of time in order to get through it all and come up with her decision.
00:25:20.240
I mean, I sense that she wants to write a judgment. This is my sense as an amateur observer that is
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appeal proof as in, I mean, listen, I suppose every judge wants to write a, wants to get it right.
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But it felt to me, she was giving every benefit of the doubt procedurally to the crown. And I thought,
00:25:42.220
why is she doing that? Why is she allowing crown witnesses to go on for a full day who admit they
00:25:47.240
never saw, spoke to, or interacted with Tamara Leach or Chris Barber? And I thought the only way this
00:25:51.700
makes sense is if the judge is leaning over backwards. So the crown can't say, you didn't
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let us bring our witnesses. That's my only amateur theory. I don't know if you even want to comment
00:26:01.240
on that. Well, I mean, she's, she's run a, uh, an incredibly long trial. As you point out,
00:26:08.760
uh, the crown has had every opportunity to call all the witnesses that they called. As you know,
00:26:14.800
we didn't call any evidence. So we, we feel we've made our case out through cross-examination of the
00:26:20.580
crown's witnesses. And, uh, you know, that's, uh, it's a tough call to make not to call any evidence,
00:26:27.160
but there's, you know, it's pretty clear, uh, from the, the witnesses that have testified,
00:26:34.100
it's pretty clear what happened here. I think everybody knows what happened here,
00:26:37.700
how long it lasted. And what's also clear is that, uh, none of the, uh, freedom convoy
00:26:44.720
demonstrators were charged with anything, even as much as a parking ticket, uh, until, you know,
00:26:51.800
a few days after, uh, uh, uh, uh, Justin Trudeau declared the, uh, the emergency measures act. So
00:26:57.900
it's, uh, you know, the judge has got it all. It's taken an incredibly long time,
00:27:03.720
but, uh, certainly I don't think the crown would, would ever be, uh, able to say that they weren't
00:27:09.560
given every opportunity to make their case. I want to ask you about something I saw when I was
00:27:14.420
here about a week ago or so. Um, I didn't quite understand it because I haven't been here every
00:27:19.780
single day. So, uh, your team, I think it was Mr. Granger was his name, showed five social media
00:27:26.940
clips in which Tamara Leach was a parent. And I didn't understand them because she was just there
00:27:32.860
and she was bantering. Like there was a lot of loitering and milling around and sort of the,
00:27:37.860
the call and reply was hold the line, hold the line. Like it was just sort of a, a phrase.
00:27:42.940
She wants to know what my response would be if I get arrested.
00:27:49.140
And I watched these five clips and Tamara Leach was only speaking for a few seconds in them
00:27:54.300
and nothing was happening. Like people were just milling around. There were some cops in
00:27:58.320
the background and I thought, why are they showing this? I didn't understand it until he said,
00:28:03.020
your honor, that's the only evidence whatsoever of what Tamara Leach actually did in her entire
00:28:09.040
time in Ottawa, that those five nothings, those vignettes, those cameos. And I, and then I thought,
00:28:16.120
aha, I was thinking, what's the point of these videos? Well, that's the thing. There is no point.
00:28:21.280
Well, I mean, that was the sum total of what they had of Tamara actually on the streets of Ottawa. And,
00:28:28.240
and I think that, you know, the crown is well aware from the beginning that they've got nothing
00:28:35.280
on Tamara as far as, you know, her actual involvement on the streets. And which is why,
00:28:42.900
as I said, the next day that they have to resort to talking about metaphorical shoulder to shoulder and,
00:28:51.440
and metaphorical megaphones, because there were no actual megaphones and there was no actual shoulder
00:28:58.660
shoulder to shoulder in the sense that we, we commonly know it. So, I mean, the case really
00:29:04.420
against Tamara is not for whatever little she did on the street. It's whether her messaging was such
00:29:12.660
as to encourage others to, to act unlawfully. And from what I can see, her messaging was exactly the
00:29:20.620
opposite all the way through. It was always peaceful, lawful, demonstrate, come to Ottawa,
00:29:25.700
stay in Ottawa, peaceful, lawful, demonstrate. So, you know, that's, that's really the basis of the
00:29:32.480
defense. And, you know, we'll see how the judge deals with it. It, there was even one moment where
00:29:37.260
the judge herself remarked that the phrase, hold the line could mean many things, including when the
00:29:42.100
police say it, she noted. I thought that was very interesting. There was, there was clearly some
00:29:45.940
evidence on the, I think it was the 18th or the 19th of February, where in front of the
00:29:52.400
Chatelier, where the police were yelling, hold the line and the demonstrators were yelling, hold the
00:29:59.220
Yeah. It's, uh, you know, the fact is that, uh, up till the time that, uh, uh, that Tamara was
00:30:06.000
arrested on the 17th of February, there was no line to hold.
00:30:10.800
It wasn't a line. It was, uh, it was just walking. It felt like a festival.
00:30:14.020
Yeah. It's, it was, uh, you know, it was street party. Very, very, very well. Uh, you know, there,
00:30:20.440
there wasn't any, any violence. There was a lot of camaraderie as between the police and the
00:30:25.300
demonstrators. Um, you know, that's, it's, it's, it's what it was. And, uh, you know, that nevertheless,
00:30:34.260
the, the crown has put all of that evidence before the court and the court's going to have
00:30:38.920
Got one last question. And thanks for letting me interrupt your day to give us an update.
00:30:42.560
I just thought we're in Ottawa. We got to say, hi, you've taken some very serious court cases
00:30:48.080
before you're a criminal lawyer, which means you've dealt with even terrorism cases, complex,
00:30:54.820
serious cases where a person's Liberty is at stake. They could go away for many years.
00:31:00.540
Have you ever run a trial, even for a murderer, even for a gang member, even for a terrorist
00:31:05.960
that has taken 46 or 37 days? What's the longest trial you've ever had in your life?
00:31:14.420
I'm trying, I'm thinking of course, of the, uh, various murder trials that I've done. And I,
00:31:18.660
I can't recall any of them taking up 46 days of trial. I just, I just, I don't think it's,
00:31:27.220
Astonishing. Lawrence Greenspon, thank you so much for your work. I really enjoy watching you and
00:31:31.260
your team in court. And I look forward as I'm sure you do to what I hope will be a happy
00:31:36.840
All right. There you have it. Lawrence Greenspon folks, by the way, if you want to chip in to help
00:31:42.040
cover the legal costs for Tamera Leach in what is the longest trial for mischief in Commonwealth
00:31:48.460
history, go to help Tamera.com. And by the way, you'll actually get a charitable tax receipt
00:31:54.580
for that gift from the democracy fund. That's help Tamera.com.
00:32:09.480
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Calvin Arndt says, Hey Ezra, I'll go with you to England
00:32:14.260
for the Atherstone event, except we're not watching it. We have to participate in it and I'll buy you a
00:32:19.420
pine at the local watering hole afterwards too. You're talking about that crazy game,
00:32:23.620
the Atherstone ball game. And I don't know why I spent so much time on that other than
00:32:28.300
it's got to be the strangest thing I've ever seen. And it actually does sort of feel medieval. And
00:32:32.900
when I first saw those videos, I thought this can't be real, but then I saw sort of the marshals with
00:32:38.220
their high vis vests and that this was obviously, you know, done with the consent of the town. I don't
00:32:43.580
know. That just seems like something that if you saw it, you would remember it for the rest of your
00:32:47.680
life. Joe Boudreau says, Ezra, your final topic with David Atherton was Islamophobia. I thought
00:32:53.800
Mark Stein once expressed it the best. Genuine Islam, right from the Quran, actually promotes
00:32:59.140
hatred and the killing of infidels. So do their hadiths. That's scary. So Stein is right to say we
00:33:04.460
should fear Islam, but now it's a crime to fear something real. Well, a phobia, I mean, if you look
00:33:11.240
at the Greek root of the word, it's sort of a fear or a loathing or a terror of something, which is
00:33:18.800
largely an emotion, isn't it? And I don't know how you can criminalize an emotion. Either you feel it
00:33:24.940
or you don't. It's sort of like hate or love. You can't pass a law to direct someone to love you.
00:33:31.280
I mean, in every genie movie, you know, like Aladdin, you know, one of the rules, you can't
00:33:39.360
make people fall in love. It's the thing about love and hate. You just cannot legislate it. And
00:33:43.700
even genies won't give it to you as a wish. So I don't think you can just tell someone you're not
00:33:49.900
allowed to fear this doctrine of Islam, or even more than the doctrine, the way that it plays out
00:33:56.960
with jihads or other social manifestations. I think the world is afraid of Islam. And I think
00:34:07.560
a lot of Muslims are too. I think that Islam needs a reformation in the way that Christianity
00:34:13.560
changed, evolved, sometimes revolutionarily over the years. You know, I think it's different to be
00:34:22.220
afraid or to criticize a philosophy and ideology, a set of ideas called Islam, versus how you treat
00:34:28.860
an ordinary Muslim person. I don't believe in discriminating against a person because they're
00:34:34.280
Muslim. I think we should treat people based on the content of their character, as Martin Luther King
00:34:40.040
would say. But I just don't think that you are, I don't think it's coherent to say you're not allowed
00:34:46.040
to feel fear or negative emotions about a religion. And you'll even notice that when the question was
00:34:52.500
put to the labor cabinet minister, she had no idea how to define it. And that's part of the beauty of
00:34:58.100
it from the other side is it's so malleable, it's so vague, you can basically swallow off any criticism
00:35:03.600
and say, that's Islamophobia. Well, that's our show for today. Boy, I wish I could tell you now where I'm
00:35:09.860
going to be tomorrow. I can't, though, until I'm safely in that country. But tune in tomorrow. I'll be in
00:35:15.000
the field all day long, tweeting up a storm with lots of videos. Until then, on behalf of us here
00:35:22.480
at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night. And keep fighting for freedom.