Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ The BBC hires a 27-year-old TikTok star to tell you what’s true and what’s not true. What could go wrong？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today, I'm going to show you a strange project by the BBC state broadcaster

00:00:07.040 over in London. They have this new anti-disinformation squad, 60 people strong,

00:00:14.040 called BBC Verify. I'll take you through it. I think you'll get a kick out of it.

00:00:20.580 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. It's the

00:00:23.240 video version of this podcast. I want you to do that because I'm going to have this video,

00:00:26.640 two videos I play, from this BBC Verify tribe, and I want you to see them.

00:00:33.220 To get access, go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month,

00:00:38.920 which gives you this podcast in video form. Every weekday I do a show, and my friend Sheila Gunn-Reed

00:00:43.380 does one every week. And by the way, the eight bucks a month, it might not seem like a lot to

00:00:47.560 you, but it's a lot for us when it all adds up. That's how we pay our bills. So that's

00:00:51.240 rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:56.640 Tonight, the BBC hires a 27-year-old TikTok star to tell you what's true and what's not true.

00:01:16.260 What could possibly go wrong? It's May 24th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:20.600 You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:35.200 Hey, look at this tweet from the United Kingdom's BBC State Broadcasters, from a show called BBC

00:01:42.060 Breakfast. BBC News has unveiled BBC Verify to address the growing threat of disinceration,

00:01:50.600 disinformation, and build trust with audiences through transparency. The BBC's disinformation

00:01:56.300 correspondent, Marianna Spring, had more details on BBC Breakfast. Okay.

00:02:02.720 Verify comes from the Latin word veritas, which means truth.

00:02:06.620 Isn't all journalism about uncovering the truth, trying to verify it? Sometimes it's easy,

00:02:14.680 like a sports score. Sometimes, you know, it's subject to debate. But isn't all journalism

00:02:21.120 about verifying things? How exactly is this different? Here, take a look at this video that

00:02:28.240 accompanies this tweet. Welcome to BBC Verify. Like you said, we are a team of investigative

00:02:34.120 journalists here at the BBC. We are also a new brand, and we are a physical location above the

00:02:39.880 newsroom in London. And the point of the team, as you said, is to verify video, to fact check,

00:02:45.200 to counter disinformation, and to analyse really complex stories so we can get to the truth of

00:02:50.160 what's going on. Why does this matter? Well, mistruths can cause really serious harm to society

00:02:55.600 and to the people in them. And so we want to show you our workings and really help you understand

00:02:59.700 how we get to the bottom of what's happening. And I'm going to give you a bit of a flavour of the

00:03:03.660 kind of work that the team are doing. So we're able to look at maps to geolocate specific situations,

00:03:10.240 stuff that's going on. And this is just a map of central London, where we are now.

00:03:13.920 And this is New Broadcasting House, where I'm speaking to you from. And it's not so important,

00:03:19.740 perhaps, for the centre of London, but it is when we're analysing war zones or what's happening

00:03:23.360 in hard-to-reach places. And there's a story on the BBC website today. It's looking at Russian

00:03:28.020 fortifications on the front lines in Ukraine. And you can read more about it there. And there are

00:03:33.500 other ways that we also are able to interrogate what's going on, including on social media.

00:03:38.260 I have some undercover accounts that I've set up for the BBC's AmeriCast podcast. And we use these

00:03:43.660 kinds of undercover accounts. And these are the characters that the accounts belong to,

00:03:48.700 to be able to really understand polarisation online and how what's happening on our social

00:03:54.140 media feeds and what we're being recommended and pushed to us can affect all of us. And they

00:03:58.540 don't offer us a totally exhaustive insight into what's going on, but they can help us understand

00:04:03.260 just how social media works. And then there's also investigating other mistreats and the real

00:04:09.020 world harm they can cause. At the moment, I'm investigating the UK's conspiracy theory movement.

00:04:14.060 I'm trying to understand more about how it's evolved and intensified since the pandemic here

00:04:18.960 in the UK. I'm looking at the alternative media that finds itself at the heart of this movement

00:04:23.700 and a conspiracy theory newspaper that's a part of that as well. I'm looking at the way that

00:04:28.120 alternative media is funded. I'm looking at its impact on local communities. I'm looking at its

00:04:32.940 connections with far-right figures and also its foreign links. That's for a podcast series that will

00:04:38.360 be coming out in June. It's called Marianna in Conspiracyland and it will be available on BBC

00:04:43.460 Sounds, Radio 4, asking that question, could January the 6th or a German coup attempt like we

00:04:48.360 saw there ever happen here in the UK? So there's a real range of journalism BBC Verify will be doing

00:04:54.060 and you'll be able to see it online, on iPlayer, across BBC News, on your televisions and radio. So do look

00:05:00.200 out for it. Oh boy, there's a lot in there. Why is this team above the newsroom? Why isn't it part of

00:05:06.940 the newsroom? Why isn't it just the rest of the newsroom? Now I've met some BBC journalists. I like

00:05:12.460 some, I dislike most, but imagine the hubris of this young lady saying she is somehow above the

00:05:19.800 other journalists with her massive experience. So she will provide truth-telling abilities that say

00:05:25.680 some 40-year veteran and some expert cannot. By using Google Maps, she says, wow, looking at maps.

00:05:36.180 By the way, do you trust this young lady to tell you about war zones by her ability to look at

00:05:41.580 Google Maps? She's 27 and I looked her up. She has a degree in speaking French and Russian,

00:05:48.540 which are interesting, but what exactly makes her an expert about anything other than, I suppose,

00:05:54.380 the French and Russian languages? Why is she more senior than other BBC journalists who have

00:06:01.280 actually, say, done war reporting? Wouldn't a war reporter for the BBC tell you better what the

00:06:07.480 truth is than some social media TikTok star? She says that myths, truths can cause harm, you see,

00:06:16.000 and you can rely on her to identify that harm. The weird thing is that she immediately says she

00:06:23.680 is deploying mistruths through fake Twitter accounts, fake social media accounts. And weirdly,

00:06:31.100 all these undercover fake accounts are in America. This is the British BBC, but they're setting up fake

00:06:38.580 accounts in the United States to be able to understand what's going on. So they're using deceptive

00:06:47.300 tactics to fight deception. They're using inauthentic fakes to fight fake news, and they say this is to

00:06:54.740 improve trustworthiness. By the way, it's against the terms of service of every social media company

00:07:01.080 to set up fake accounts. That's just against the rules. They're breaking the rules. I don't know if we

00:07:06.600 care about the rules of Facebook or Twitter, but this is exactly what the left and the BBC and the CBC and

00:07:14.500 BBC say is foreign meddling in America. In fact, it's not just foreign meddling. It's a foreign

00:07:19.600 government. The BBC is the state broadcaster. Now, did you hear what young Marianna had to say?

00:07:26.460 That she will investigate the conspiracy theory movement. All right, well, what's she talking

00:07:33.980 about? Is she talking about the conspiracy theory that Russia somehow colluded with Donald Trump?

00:07:39.800 That was proven to be a conspiracy theory, but the BBC reported is the truth. How about the global

00:07:46.280 warming theory that somehow people are causing the earth to bake and we only have 10 years left?

00:07:52.840 And that theory was proposed 20 years ago. What about the various COVID hoaxes? And I'm not talking

00:07:58.580 about skeptics. I'm talking about the government hoaxes, that the vaccine was safe and effective when

00:08:04.480 we found out it wasn't very effective at all. You had to keep taking it, which isn't really a vaccine,

00:08:08.580 is it? Or about the official hoaxes about the source of the vaccine? Are any of these conspiracy

00:08:14.380 theories going to be assessed or only the ones that the government doesn't like? She said she's

00:08:20.040 going to look at funding for alternative media, but not the funding for the BBC, which extracts

00:08:27.040 billions of dollars from British taxpayers. What does it matter how her competitors are funded? Is that

00:08:33.460 really to get to the truth or is that really to actually attack her competitors? And did you hear

00:08:41.000 who she said she'd be looking at? The far right. Okay. But what about the far left? What about the green

00:08:49.640 left? What about extinction rebellion? Is she going to look at Greta Thunberg? Who's funding her? Or how 0.98

00:08:54.900 about Antifa? Or I don't know, Islamic terrorism? Why are none of those things of interest to her?

00:09:00.540 Only examining the right. Did you hear her mention January 6th? Do you even know what that is?

00:09:07.500 Canadians sort of know. That's a great meandering, as it's called, where that one guy who dressed up

00:09:12.720 like a Viking moose meandered through Congress. And yeah, they broke some windows and they trespassed, 1.00

00:09:18.260 and I don't support them. But it wasn't really a riot. It was a meandering that was led by cops,

00:09:24.060 and it was certainly agitated by FBI agents provocateurs. Remember this clip of an FBI

00:09:30.160 agent, or at least an accused FBI agent, exhorting the crowd?

00:09:34.240 We need to go into the Capitol. Into the Capitol. What? No! No! No! Peacefully!

00:09:44.340 Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed!

00:09:48.460 Tomorrow? I don't even like to say it because I'll be arrested. Well, let's not say it.

00:09:52.860 We need, we need to go, I'll say it. All right. We need to go in. Shut the fuck up, 0.96

00:09:58.200 Boomer. To the Capitol. Based Fed posting? All right. We need to go into the Capitol. 1.00

00:10:04.080 I didn't see that coming. Okay.

00:10:06.600 The President is dead speaking. We are going to the Capitol where our problems are. It's that direction.

00:10:14.620 We spread the word. All right. No Dave, but one more thing. Yeah, so can we go up there?

00:10:21.820 No? When we go in, leave this year. Yeah. You don't need to get shot.

00:10:26.400 Are you gonna arrest us all?

00:10:27.620 U.S.! U.S.! U.S.! U.S.! U.S.!!

00:10:29.620 Is that the conspiracy theory they mean? The FBI agent provocateur? Because

00:10:46.340 I would watch that. But if this is just the BBC state broadcaster rehashing the US Democrat line

00:10:53.160 on about January 6th, how is that even interesting to Brits? Does one in a hundred Brits care about

00:11:00.200 Marianna's views about January 6th? Who is she? Well, she studied French and Russian and she

00:11:06.300 bounced around different newspapers. She's the ripe old age of 27 and she does both this information

00:11:12.020 and TikTok. She sort of reminds me of Canada's Rachel Gilmore, you know, the one who said,

00:11:19.800 should we even sit with our family at Christmas dinner? Remember that one?

00:11:24.500 Are you going to invite your unvaccinated relatives to sit at the dinner table with you this Thanksgiving? 0.99

00:11:29.680 Experts are saying you might not want to risk it. Here's why. According to one expert from

00:11:35.040 McMaster University, vaccines are super effective, but they're most effective when you're surrounded

00:11:41.580 by other vaccinated people. If you invite someone who isn't vaccinated, there's a risk of having

00:11:47.060 a breakthrough case. Now, breakthrough cases are pretty rare. There's only ever been about 8,000

00:11:52.160 in Ontario, but kids can't get vaccinated yet. So part of keeping those kids as safe as possible

00:11:57.540 is telling that one uncle who chooses not to get vaccinated that he might have to sit this one out.

00:12:01.920 And like Canada's Rachel Gilmore, she has the same sense of victimology. She says that you're not

00:12:07.940 allowed to criticize her. Let me read this tweet from her. After that first tweet went out, she was widely

00:12:13.860 ridiculed. And she said this, I've been traveling for my next Radio 4 podcast and brilliant to see

00:12:20.500 positive response about BBC Verify. I've also been bombarded with abuse, misogyny, defamatory claims,

00:12:28.760 misunderstanding my investigations into harm caused by mistruths and trolling. Here's a taste from past

00:12:35.660 year. But I went to the tweet and there was nothing there. I don't know if she knows how to use social

00:12:42.700 media. Well, I don't get it. She says, check out this post for a flavor, but a lot worse via message.

00:12:48.620 No one should have to experience this level of abuse. I am not in charge of every bit of the BBC

00:12:52.840 you don't like. I investigate the real world harm of what happens on social media, disinformation,

00:12:58.000 hate, algorithms. But what's she even referring to? And you see what happens so quickly here.

00:13:04.680 If you clap back at her, if you mock her, or if you merely misunderstand her,

00:13:10.460 she'll say that that's exactly what she's here to fight. People who misunderstand her and people who

00:13:16.160 don't like her, people who are mean to her. That's nothing to do with the word verify, is it?

00:13:21.900 It's about marginalizing and canceling people she doesn't like. She's showing what she really means

00:13:27.540 by truth and untruth. She's just mad about opinions and expression of opinions, including rudeness. 1.00

00:13:32.920 None of that has anything to do with veritas. Look, truth can be rude, or it can be cruel.

00:13:39.900 That's the thing about the truth. She's about silencing alternative voices by denormalizing 1.00

00:13:45.800 and defaming them. She told you she's going to investigate independent journalism. How about

00:13:51.760 investigate the BBC? Here's her boss, the boss of the BBC, a lot like Canada's CBC boss,

00:14:00.300 explaining the how, the launch of BBC Verify by Deborah Ternis, CEO of BBC News. I'm going to

00:14:08.140 take you through this, and I'm going to give you my thoughts as we go through. And you're probably

00:14:11.660 saying, Ezra, why are you focused so much on the BBC? Well, it's interesting, but I think the BBC

00:14:15.760 is often a model, a template for the CBC. It's sort of like the bigger brother of state broadcasters,

00:14:21.700 and they do a lot of things together, including this whole trust initiative.

00:14:24.920 It starts actually interesting. In the early hours of Wednesday, the 3rd of May, video footage

00:14:32.520 emerged showing what appeared to be two drones crashing into a dome of the Kremlin complex in

00:14:38.120 Moscow. But was the video real or fake? Did this attack actually happen? And how could we tell?

00:14:45.060 The exponential growth of manipulated and distorted video means that seeing is no longer believing.

00:14:51.400 Okay, but then she doesn't actually answer that interesting question. Then she talks about

00:14:57.020 herself a bit. Consumers tell us they can no longer trust that the video in the news feeds is real,

00:15:02.980 which is why we at the BBC must urgently begin to show and share the work we do behind the scenes

00:15:07.000 to check and verify information and video content before it appears on our platforms. Okay, right.

00:15:13.000 But Marianna said that her project is about criticizing independent journalists, going after

00:15:18.860 conspiracy theorists, going after the right wing. She didn't say anything about examining the BBC's

00:15:26.000 own work. Now that I would pay to watch. I'll keep reading. And as AI, artificial intelligence,

00:15:32.700 weaponizes and turbocharges the impact and consequences of disinformation, this work has never been more

00:15:38.280 important. Take it from her. It's very important. All day, every day, the BBC's news teams are using ever

00:15:45.360 more sophisticated tools, techniques and technology to check and verify videos like the Kremlin drone footage,

00:15:51.000 as well as images and information. They do this to ensure our journalism meets the rigorous editorial

00:15:56.180 standards the BBC's proud to uphold. Okay, but I say again, nothing Marianna said was about criticizing the BBC.

00:16:03.000 It was all about criticizing her critics, wasn't it?

00:16:06.320 By the way, I'm glad that the BBC says they're going to fact check the Kremlin. The Kremlin is run

00:16:13.480 by an authoritarian regime. The president of Russia is really a lifelong dictator. The elections there are

00:16:20.060 neither fair nor free. And let's not forget that Vladimir Putin used to be a KGB agent. Absolutely

00:16:26.460 fact check the Kremlin. But I hate to be a stickler. Shouldn't we fact check NATO too? I mean,

00:16:35.840 I'm a proud Canadian in Canada as part of NATO, but shouldn't we fact check our own side of the

00:16:43.060 battle? Shouldn't we check and verify what our generals and propagandists say too? BBC doesn't

00:16:51.640 even think of that. I'll keep reading. But until now, that work has largely gone on in the background,

00:16:57.380 unseen by audiences. These same audiences are constantly bombarded with myths and disinformation

00:17:02.940 and with fake images, including those generated by AI. And they are telling us that amid this noise

00:17:07.900 and sensationalism, they need to see our workings so we can maintain the trust people have put in the

00:17:12.220 BBC for the last hundred years. People want to know not just what we know and don't know, but how we

00:17:17.460 know it. And this is how our new brand, BBC Verify, has come into being. Okay, but she still hasn't done

00:17:24.980 any introspection. The BBC is very good at criticizing everyone else. But will they put

00:17:32.960 that same lens, that same magnifying class on their own work? I haven't seen it yet. But you know,

00:17:41.560 it's actually worse. Young Mariana is just their mascot. They've hired apparently 60 of these Ministry

00:17:48.760 of Truth bureaucrats. Let me read a little more. We've brought together forensic journalists.

00:17:54.820 What's that? I know what a forensic accountant is. What's a forensic journalist? Is that a thing?

00:18:01.880 An expert talent from across the BBC, including our analysis editor, Ross Atkins,

00:18:07.220 and disinformation correspondent, Mariana Spring, and their teams. I didn't know Mariana had a team. 1.00

00:18:12.720 In all, BBC Verify comprises about 60 journalists who will form a highly specialized operation with a

00:18:18.500 range of forensic investigative skills and open source intelligence, OSINT capabilities at their

00:18:24.480 fingertips. I still wonder what that open source intelligence and forensic tools means. I think it

00:18:31.320 just means Google and Google Maps. That's what open source intelligence is. It's just, so they're

00:18:38.140 going to Google things. Isn't that what, isn't that what all journalists do or are supposed to do?

00:18:44.240 I'll keep reading. They'll be fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation,

00:18:49.980 analyzing data, and crucially, this is the important part, folks, explaining complex stories

00:18:54.660 in the pursuit of truth. Yeah, it's the explaining part that I'm worried about, isn't it? Let me keep

00:19:00.400 reading. This is a different way of doing our journalism. Why? Have you not been fact-checking

00:19:04.300 until now? We've built a physical space in the London newsroom with a studio that BBC Verify

00:19:10.120 correspondents and experts will report from, transparently sharing their evidence gathering

00:19:14.540 with our audiences. They will contribute to news online, radio and TV, including the news channel

00:19:19.540 and our live and breaking streaming operation, both in the UK and internationally. That's those fake

00:19:24.760 American accounts. And trust them, they're not trying to interfere with the election.

00:19:29.640 But like I say, that is not actually doing journalism differently. That's just some attempt

00:19:33.100 at creating some new club, some new cast that we should really, really believe this time. Because

00:19:39.320 Canadians and Brits and Americans don't believe the current mainstream media, so they're creating this

00:19:45.440 new special forces of journalists. BBC Verify will be home to very specific expertise and technology.

00:19:56.040 They keep saying that. I just don't know if it's true because they haven't given any evidence of it.

00:20:03.420 What is a forensic journalist? Is it a thing? When they say experts, do they just mean the same

00:20:10.300 experts we've been listening to about the pandemic? Because they weren't really,

00:20:14.520 these experts really didn't know anything, did they? But I want the principle of transparently

00:20:19.480 explaining the how behind our journalism to be shared by every journalist in the BBC. And thank you

00:20:24.920 to those who are experimenting with new ways to do that. If you know how it's made, you can trust

00:20:29.460 what it says. That's what our audiences have told us. Trust is earned and transparency will help us

00:20:34.720 earn it. And as for that drone, there are a few answers on Ross Atkinson's explainer video,

00:20:41.160 which has had more than a million views on our website. And we'll give people a taste of what

00:20:45.680 Verify will be doing day in, day out. Oh, okay. So I went on YouTube and I googled that guy's name

00:20:52.700 in drone video. And here it is. I'll just play it for you. It's just two minutes long.

00:20:58.780 Watch the video. This is what she's very proud of. Take a look.

00:21:02.440 Russia claims that Ukraine tried to kill Vladimir Putin in the early hours of Wednesday.

00:21:07.460 This is the first video we have. It's in Moscow. We see an object flying from the left and explode.

00:21:13.620 Now, let's play it again and pause here. We know this is Moscow because this is Red Square.

00:21:18.740 Here's a recent picture of the same place, with the Kremlin wall in the background and stands for

00:21:23.920 next week's victory parade. You can see those stands in the video too, meaning it's also recent.

00:21:29.880 And if we play the video on and pause again, there's the object flying towards the dome of

00:21:34.860 the Senate palace. Moments before it explodes, we can see people on the dome. We don't know who they

00:21:40.660 are or what they're doing. Now, Russia says it was attacked by two unmanned aerial vehicles.

00:21:46.100 In other words, drones. We can't confirm that. And if that's one video, here are three more.

00:21:53.240 This is a map of Russia with Moscow in the west. And all of these videos show this part of the city.

00:21:59.880 Here's the second. The BBC's verification team has confirmed it was posted at 3.16 Moscow time

00:22:05.220 on Wednesday morning. We see the same dome, with smoke rising from it. The words are the name

00:22:11.460 of a local Telegram channel that posted the video. This next video shows the Senate palace dome,

00:22:17.060 with fire clearly visible. And then this shows an object flying in from the right. Again,

00:22:22.280 we see an explosion. Russia says all of this was a planned terrorist act and an assassination

00:22:28.080 attempt on the president. But it's provided no evidence to back that up. Ukraine says it's

00:22:33.300 all staged by Russia. As for Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin says he wasn't there at the time

00:22:38.780 of the incident. And these pictures from Reuters on Wednesday show the dome looking undamaged.

00:22:44.980 And while we try and work out what exactly it is these videos show, both sides say the other

00:22:50.140 carried it out.

00:22:50.800 Yeah, I don't. Maybe that's not the video she means, but it sure seems like it. He doesn't

00:22:57.060 actually, doesn't actually explain anything. Does he? What exactly is all this then? What's

00:23:07.400 the same as the CBC and Trudeau? They just don't want you to believe anyone else. They don't want

00:23:13.960 you to listen to anyone else. They don't want you to especially listen to independent journalists.

00:23:17.620 Hmm. Or as Jacinda Ardern, the disgraced former prime minister of New Zealand recently put it,

00:23:24.460 only believe what the government says. The government will tell you everything you need to

00:23:31.780 know. We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily. You can trust us as a source

00:23:38.480 of that information. You can also trust the director general of health and the ministry of health.

00:23:44.280 For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumor you may hear,

00:23:50.780 covid19.govt.nz. Otherwise, dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.

00:23:59.820 We will provide information frequently. We will share everything we can, everything else you see,

00:24:06.780 a grain of salt. And so I really ask people to focus. Yeah, no thanks, mate. I'll find the truth

00:24:14.200 myself. Stay with us for more. Well, hello again from our temporary studio in the boardroom of our

00:24:33.040 world headquarters here at Rebel News. Behind me, of course, is one of the plaques or a couple of the

00:24:38.800 plaques we have commemorating donors to Rebel News over the years. I think I've shown you before,

00:24:44.180 the hallways of our office have symbolic bricks, bricks for donors who have donated

00:24:50.600 for different campaigns. We have cornerstones and headstones. And, you know, it's just basically

00:25:00.040 the entire office is dedicated to our Rebel News supporters because unlike 99% of Canadian media,

00:25:08.380 we don't take any money from the government. So we rely on our viewers. Anyways, I mentioned that

00:25:11.600 because that is what you see behind me. We are refurbishing and rebuilding our studio. And I'll tell

00:25:17.960 you about that in another video. But our work continues and I do the show every day, whether it's

00:25:23.740 from here or the other studio. And I see news from our friends at True North that two men have been

00:25:30.880 charged with a shocking arson that burned a 120-year-old Alberta church to the ground over a year ago.

00:25:44.940 And I found this news in True North and I had it sent to me by email as well.

00:25:49.580 I put it to you that if this were not a Christian church, but rather if it was a Jewish synagogue or

00:25:57.260 a Muslim mosque or a Sikh temple or any other religious faith, if it were a gay pride community

00:26:05.980 center of some sort, if it were any other identity group, this would be not just national news but

00:26:11.900 international news. Justin Trudeau would be doing his very serious thespian face and having a

00:26:19.560 moment of silence. And the CBC would be talking about extremist hate and violence and who

00:26:25.480 radicalized people. But no, it's just a Catholic church. And Justin Trudeau's right-hand man,

00:26:31.500 Gerald Butts, said it was understandable anyways. Joining me now to talk about this news and what

00:26:37.300 Rebel News is doing to fight this Christophobia is my friend and colleague, Kian Simone,

00:26:45.240 the chief documentary filmmaker for Rebel News, who joins us now from Calgary. Kian, great to see

00:26:51.160 you again. Thanks for having me on the bus. Oh, it's my pleasure. I want to talk in a little bit

00:26:56.200 about the documentary that you are working on. And it's been an enormous project and we're coming

00:27:01.880 close to unspooling it, as they would say in Hollywood. But first, give me a little bit of info

00:27:08.600 about these charges for a church that was just torched. And this is an old church. I mean, 120

00:27:15.320 years old might not sound old if you're thinking about Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris or St. Paul's

00:27:21.240 in London. But there really aren't any, I mean, this is a really a pioneer-era church that was torched.

00:27:29.400 Tell me what you know about it. Well, like you said earlier when you said that it would be not just

00:27:34.600 national news, but international news if it was a Jewish synagogue or what have you. It's the same

00:27:40.040 sentiment. If it was anything short of a Catholic church, it wouldn't just be news. It would be 0.93

00:27:43.720 domestic terrorism designated by the government. And I think that's just the exact, I don't know,

00:27:51.640 symbol of exactly what we're doing with this government, what this government is doing to

00:27:55.480 the Catholics. And it wasn't just Gerald Butzer said it was understandable. It was Justin Trudeau himself

00:28:01.000 as well. He said, given the history of the Catholic church, it's totally understandable,

00:28:06.440 the pain and, and why someone would come to do to that. And he didn't really denounce it by saying

00:28:11.480 that at all. Everyone's got to get vaccinated if we're going to get through this as a, as a community,

00:28:16.680 as a country. Canada, Canada needs to recognize

00:28:21.640 that the shame of our past is echoed today in continuing injustices, intolerance and unfairness

00:28:32.600 towards indigenous peoples. You talked about Canada's last wrongs, the past things they haven't

00:28:38.440 done right. When will you speak out about the 20 vandalized churches? They're burning churches

00:28:43.880 and vandalizing them. And you're not calling it a hate crime. Sir, will you acknowledge

00:28:49.240 persecute religious persecution of Abrahamic faiths in Canada? You know, I think recently in Calgary,

00:29:02.920 there's a Christian pastor named Derek Reimer, who for merely peacefully protesting outside drag queen

00:29:10.520 story hours for children at libraries. He's been jailed. So jailed for that. And they're looking at

00:29:18.520 hate crime charges against him. I don't know if they've been filed yet. This is clearly a hate crime.

00:29:25.160 And no, it's, I can guarantee you that they'll get bail. And I can guarantee you that if they

00:29:31.240 are in any way charged, um, they're, they're appearing in court in High Prairie on May 29th.

00:29:39.000 Um, I'm not sure if they're out on bail. I don't see that detail, uh, in the report. Yeah.

00:29:47.640 Yeah. I mean, let's say the names of the accused. There's no reason why we shouldn't say them.

00:29:51.720 56 year old Kenneth Ferguson and 50 year old Gerald Capote are believed to be from High River. I'm very

00:29:57.320 curious. Why would, I mean, 50 years old, I mean, I'm 51 years old, so it's, it's not old. It's just

00:30:02.280 the beginning of life. But, um, like that's a, that's not some, um, rash youth who got drunk with

00:30:10.440 some buddies and went out for, you know, uh, a crazy night. If you're in your fifties,

00:30:16.840 you've considered things, you're no longer, uh, ruled by your passions, hopefully. And to do something

00:30:23.320 so deliberate and diabolical points towards a premeditated political act of, I'll say it,

00:30:32.680 of active political terrorism. Again, I don't have all the facts. I'm just going off this news story

00:30:36.440 from True North, but it is very strange that there are two people in their fifties.

00:30:41.480 Who are they? What did they do? Why did they do it? Do they have any affiliation with the other? Because

00:30:46.680 there were dozens of churches that were either torched. Most of them were just, just vandalized,

00:30:53.800 but not burnt to the ground. Like it's a string of them, like literally dozens and no one, no one

00:31:01.080 in authority, no one in the established media seems to care. What I'm seeing with this one is that it was

00:31:05.880 in a place called Gruard. I'm definitely pronouncing that wrong, but it's a hamlet, um, of only 160 people

00:31:12.120 who live there. And the, uh, I guess it was that, um, that hamlet was in charge of the St. Bernard

00:31:20.120 Mission residential school. So it seemed like there was, there was history at that place and that,

00:31:24.920 that might've led them to, um, burn that particular one down. But I just think it is insane that that is

00:31:31.240 a place that only 160 people live. I just thought that was a fascinating point.

00:31:37.560 Yeah. Well, it sounds like it may be that. And, and I wonder who put them up to it because of course,

00:31:44.120 in that same article, you know, and I've seen this all over the place, a lot of indigenous people,

00:31:48.040 even those who criticized, um, the Catholic church's role in residential schools, they still 0.95

00:31:53.880 love their church. The church is a community center on many reserves. It's a, it's a place for

00:31:59.560 a lot of social services. So I'm very curious to know, and I wonder if the police or the prosecution,

00:32:05.080 um, we'll just paper this over again, if this was an attack on a Muslim mosque or Jewish synagogue,

00:32:12.840 we would already by now have the entire social media feed, every manifesto, everything the person

00:32:20.280 said or did, and we would have proof that it was a right wing terrorist attack. And yet we know very

00:32:26.200 little about this. I'm curious to know about it. Well, listen, Kian, thank you very much for talking

00:32:30.200 about that. The reason I wanted to talk to you, not just because you're in Alberta and you care about

00:32:33.720 the story is because as I mentioned earlier, you're our documentary boss at rebel news,

00:32:38.440 and you have been working on our crowdfunded gold plated, like this is the best effort we've

00:32:46.600 ever put into a documentary. We've really gone the extra mile. We got new equipment for it. We

00:32:51.640 traveled around for it. Why don't you tell us about the Christian documentary for folks who want to

00:32:56.920 know more? They can go to save the Christians.com, which is a special website we set up. That's just

00:33:03.480 the name of the website, save the Christians.com. Kian, why don't you tell me about the name of the

00:33:09.080 documentary that people can find there, the status of it, some of the work you've been doing with it,

00:33:14.920 who's the narrator, the host of the doc, and what's your rough sense of timing of when that documentary

00:33:21.400 Oh, that's a lot to cover, boss. So the name is Church Under Fire, Canada's War on Christianity.

00:33:28.440 I'm actually doing it with Sheila. We traveled Canada last month, probably about three weeks

00:33:33.880 on and off of going to all the pastors around Canada who either had hefty fines or were jailed

00:33:39.880 for opening their church during COVID-19. The documentary itself, it kind of opens up of the last,

00:33:45.560 I'd say, nine or ten years of Justin Trudeau's. It's more focused on Justin Trudeau's War on

00:33:52.040 Christianity. So we kind of do a little layover of that. And then we go into, I believe it's seven

00:33:58.040 pastors who agreed to come on and tell their story of, you know, what's their congregation like?

00:34:04.600 What's their church like? What made them make that decision? And I won't spoil too much, but it was

00:34:11.800 tough to edit because all their answers were the same. And these pastors aren't pastors who talk to

00:34:16.120 each other. It was all the same. And so telling a story for an hour and a half, when everybody's

00:34:23.400 saying the same thing, it was a big challenge, but it was so fascinating because we asked the same

00:34:28.280 pastors the same questions because whether it's Henry Hildebrandt in Ontario or Arthur Pavelowski out

00:34:35.640 here in Calgary, everybody's so different. They're completely different people, completely

00:34:41.480 different pastors and completely different congregations. So why did they make that

00:34:45.400 decision? And it was such a fascinating thing. I forgot your last two questions there. Where's

00:34:51.560 the status of it? Yeah. How's it coming along? Yeah. So we just got picture locked, which is a fancy

00:34:57.080 nerd word for all the edits are done. So I have the whole story laid out and right now I'm color grading

00:35:03.160 it. So it's basically just adding, when we shoot it in raw, it kind of comes out looking dull.

00:35:09.160 And then I would add in some skin color and stuff like that.

00:35:16.360 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. Once you have located your seat, we ask that you please step...

00:35:38.520 Great. Thank you.

00:35:45.560 And we couldn't stand by and watch. We had to do something. It was our obligation and our call from

00:36:01.640 God to do something as shepherds. So we did. We got arrested with my brother David in the middle of

00:36:12.840 the highway, inciting people to come to church, participating in illegal gathering, officiating in

00:36:18.280 illegal gathering. And off we went to prison. Three days and two nights we spent on concrete.

00:36:34.920 And we've waited and waited and waited and waited for months and months. And they just keep pushing

00:36:59.560 it away. There's an agenda. I said, there's an agenda. And I said, we won't fall for it.

00:37:04.040 I actually have a pretty cool story about that. If you care to hear, it's...

00:37:08.280 I think people are curious how movies are made and I myself, I'm sort of new to it. So yeah, tell us,

00:37:14.120 tell us what color grading is. Tell us a cool story.

00:37:16.200 The cool story of color grading is actually my least favorite part about filmmaking. It was,

00:37:21.880 at least. It's hard. It takes a lot of time and effort to make sure that you have the shadows and

00:37:29.080 the blacks and the whites, everything correct. So it was two days ago when I first started color 0.88

00:37:33.880 grading where I was just kind of getting it all put into play, kind of see what kind of vibe I wanted.

00:37:39.320 And I had this beautiful cinematic color. It looked like straight out of a Marvel movie or something.

00:37:46.360 And my finger slipped. And I put on this weird, hazy glow by accident. And I just sat there and

00:37:53.400 looked at it. It had to have been five minutes where it looked like it was a dream. It looked like it was

00:37:59.160 like a bad dream. And then I kind of just started applying that to everything. And my thought process now

00:38:06.280 is that if this comes out, so this is going to be probably coming out this summer in theaters,

00:38:13.720 and we'll do some events and we can get into that later. But if we start putting it to film

00:38:18.120 festivals, that means we'll have a public release later on this year or early next year. And by then,

00:38:23.720 COVID will be out of our minds. It will only be a bad dream.

00:38:28.200 Interesting. Very interesting.

00:38:31.400 And it doesn't look over the top. It doesn't look like you're really in a dream,

00:38:35.080 but there's a certain glow to, let's say, Sheila's face when she's walking.

00:38:38.760 And you can see a shimmer. And that looks like a dream.

00:38:42.360 Wow. Well, I'm very excited. I know you've put a lot of effort into it. And Sheila Gunn-Reed is the

00:38:47.960 narrator of the documentary. It's a perfect fit. Of course, she's been on that issue really since

00:38:53.480 the beginning. And this whole effort, you mentioned you traveled the country with Sheila talking to

00:38:59.080 different pastors. This really is a crowdfunded effort because there's no other way you would

00:39:03.480 produce a film like this. The CBC would never produce a film like this. They would produce a

00:39:07.800 film championing the police who shut down the churches. They wouldn't take the side of the 1.00

00:39:12.680 churches. And, you know, other people may try and do this, but we needed the dough to do it right.

00:39:17.800 And we explained some of those costs. And folks can learn more about that. And by the way,

00:39:21.400 I think we still have our crowdfunding page open at savethechristians.com. And if you go there,

00:39:26.040 you'll see there's some neat things. If you chip in a certain amount, you can get a credit in the

00:39:30.440 film. And if you chip in a certain amount, you can, like there's fun goodies there to make you

00:39:35.240 part of the team. And I think it's a really good way to do a documentary because we wouldn't have the

00:39:39.240 budget otherwise to do it. So listen, listen, great to catch up with you. I'm excited. That dream

00:39:44.600 feeling sounds very interesting. You piqued my curiosity. And it is true. We are planning to

00:39:53.240 release this. Like the whole idea was to do a theater quality, you know, Netflix quality movie

00:40:01.240 and try and get this thing seen by a wider distribution than merely what we put on YouTube

00:40:07.880 and Rumble every day. And I'm proud of what we put on YouTube, Rumble, Twitter, Odyssey,

00:40:12.360 the other channels we're on. But the idea of doing something that's really Hollywood level

00:40:17.320 is a stretch for us. And we'll see if we can do it. And you're the right man to achieve that force.

00:40:21.000 Kean, great to catch up with you. Thanks for the heads up about these charges in High Prairie.

00:40:25.560 We'll have to check that out. And I can hardly wait to see the movie. Thanks for having me on,

00:40:29.640 Ezra. All right. My pleasure. There you have it. Kean Simone, our head of documentaries. And

00:40:35.240 if you want to learn more, go to savethechristians.com. There's still time

00:40:38.120 to get those perks if you want them. All right. Stay with us. Your letters to me next.

00:40:42.360 Hey, welcome back. By the way, I've got a video coming out soon about why

00:40:57.000 what we're cooking up in the studio instead of the boardroom. Thanks for your patience on that. I'm

00:41:00.600 actually pretty excited. It's the first time we refreshed our studio since coming to our world

00:41:05.640 headquarters in January 1st, 2017. So we've been here for about six and a half years. And as I

00:41:13.960 mentioned the other day, computer and video equipment is sort of like dog years. You know,

00:41:21.240 one year for a person is like seven years for a dog. I think it's sort of similar for computer

00:41:26.120 equipment. So we've had our studio for six and a half years. It's time to freshen things up. So I'll tell

00:41:32.280 you about that later and I'll show you some video later. But let's come to your letters. Free West

00:41:35.880 Guy says the commies are guarding the hen house, just like when the RCMP investigates itself.

00:41:41.880 You know, it's weird because, of course, the Chinese Communist Party and they have the hammer and 0.98

00:41:46.120 sickle in their flag. They are communist in terms of being authoritarian and violating civil liberties,

00:41:52.680 but they're very capitalist in their communist way. They call it capitalism with Chinese characteristics,

00:41:59.960 I think is the phrase they use. And they learn that they can bribe just about anyone. And the bribe

00:42:06.360 doesn't have to be explicit. It can be, you know, doing business. It can be giving access to their market. I

00:42:13.160 mean, there's a lot of ways that a country can be corrupted and cash is a big one. I mean,

00:42:21.880 Justin Trudeau is sort of grubby. He'll take $140,000 gift from the CCP. It's that explicit. But

00:42:29.640 I mean, if you know anything about David Johnson, his whole family is intertwined

00:42:34.520 with the Chinese establishment, including sending his children to university in China.

00:42:39.000 I mean, listen, I believe in giving your kids the best, but David Johnson could have sent his kids to

00:42:44.360 any university in the world, really. I mean, he was the president of the university himself.

00:42:47.960 There's no way he couldn't get his kids into Harvard or Yale or MIT or Oxford to deliberately

00:42:54.840 choose to send his children to China. It was not about getting them a classical education. It was

00:43:00.840 about integrating them into the Chinese establishment. That is not some, and obviously everything

00:43:08.360 would have been directed, approved, and managed by the Chinese Communist Party. David Johnston is even

00:43:15.240 more compromised than Trudeau. It's so sad.

00:43:20.680 H1R 086 says it is not racist to oppose communism because communism breeds racism.

00:43:26.520 Listen, my only point was Gordon Chang is such a good man with a good heart. He believes in freedom.

00:43:31.160 His wife, Lydia, too. And when he says he walks through Chinatown in San Francisco and sees the

00:43:36.280 Chinese Communist flag and he says it's disloyal, it's stunning to hear that. And it's a little

00:43:41.880 nerve-wracking to hear that. And I suppose it's one of the privileges of being a Chinese person 1.00

00:43:46.680 ethnically is you can criticize in a way that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing. It's like black 1.00

00:43:51.320 people can say tougher things about black culture. Jewish people can say tougher things about 0.96

00:43:56.120 Jewish culture. You can be a critic of your own tribe in a way that others might be, you know,

00:44:02.840 afraid to do. And I'm not a politically correct person, but it's quite something to hear Gordon

00:44:07.880 Chang say what he says. And he believes that he loves freedom very much. And it gives me tremendous

00:44:12.520 hope because I know, I don't care what race or ethnicity you are, yearning to be free, I believe

00:44:17.560 that's the human condition. And you know, they used to say the Confucian ethic, the stoic nature of

00:44:25.480 Chinese people means they are not suited to democracy. This was something that was said

00:44:30.360 50 years ago. But if you look at Taiwan, you can see how wrong that is. Taiwan is incredibly vibrant

00:44:38.200 and free and rambunctious. It is a rambunctious political culture. And South Korea, obviously

00:44:44.280 ethnically different. But again, proof that freedom is for everyone. And, and I hate it when people sort

00:44:51.400 of have an assumption. And Hong Kong, Hong Kong loves to be free. I don't know, I feel like it's

00:44:56.840 dark times. There was this moment when Hong Kong was rising up a bit against Beijing that I was quite

00:45:01.880 hopeful, but that's being crushed. And the West didn't say or do anything. Got a little bit of hate

00:45:08.040 mail coming in. It's always refreshing. Reeve DeSantis says, our narrative is the gaslighting

00:45:13.880 that rebel news and the sinner Christians constantly create with no peer-reviewed source 1.00

00:45:19.000 in sight. Look, I don't know exactly what you're referring to there, but I'm glad you're watching

00:45:25.400 something you disagree with. I'm glad you have a diversity of sources of information and opinions,

00:45:32.280 and you can check yourself against other views. You know, it's funny, you can, there's certain little

00:45:38.040 tools on Twitter that you can get the Twitter accounts that you follow ranked on a spectrum,

00:45:44.680 right wing or left wing. It's sort of how diverse is your Twitter media diet. And I'm very pleased

00:45:51.160 that I follow as many accounts on the left as I do on the right. Not because I obey them or believe

00:45:57.560 them. I just want to hear what the other side is saying. And by the way, every once in a while,

00:46:03.000 there's a good point on the left. Not enough to convert me necessarily, but I'm glad that

00:46:10.280 you're watching Rebel News because we do represent a swath of society. I think we are more open to

00:46:18.280 different views here than say the BBC or the CBC are, don't you think? That's our show for today.

00:46:24.520 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters in our boardroom,

00:46:28.120 good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:46:35.400 you

Rebel News Podcast - May 24, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ The BBC hires a 27-year-old TikTok star to tell you what’s true and what’s not true. What could go wrong？

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