Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau’s immigration minister invites tens of thousands of migrants from Gaza — but don’t worry, Hamas will make sure they’re not dangerous

00:00:00.000 You know, I've been thinking about my very brief interview with Ontario's Solicitor General.

00:00:04.200 I have a few thoughts on his answers.

00:00:06.140 He said some really wacky things.

00:00:08.180 I want to take you through it line by line.

00:00:09.900 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:13.860 That's the video version of this podcast.

00:00:16.820 I want to show you a few things that you can't just hear.

00:00:19.840 So please go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe.

00:00:23.480 Thanks for your support.

00:00:30.000 Tonight, Trudeau's immigration minister invites tens of thousands of new migrants from Gaza.

00:00:46.740 But don't worry, Hamas will make sure they're not dangerous.

00:00:50.160 It's May 29th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:52.460 You're fighting for freedom!

00:00:55.640 Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:00.000 I've been thinking more about my short interview with Ontario's Solicitor General, Michael Kersner.

00:01:15.300 The Solicitor General and the Attorney General could be considered cousins.

00:01:19.520 One is law and one is order.

00:01:21.640 The Attorney General is the lawyer, really.

00:01:24.680 The prosecutor.

00:01:25.440 In Canada's legal system, most crimes are prosecuted by provincial prosecutors.

00:01:32.800 So that's the law side.

00:01:34.940 The other side is the Solicitor General, the guy I interviewed on Monday.

00:01:40.160 He's in charge of the police and the prisons.

00:01:43.740 In Ontario, the Solicitor General is the minister responsible for the provincial police force called the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police.

00:01:52.020 It's a pretty large police force, actually, with nearly 6,000 uniformed officers.

00:01:59.440 It's actually a huge police force.

00:02:01.860 The Solicitor General is also the minister for other police forces in the province, including the Toronto Police Service.

00:02:08.900 So he's the guy.

00:02:09.800 There probably is no single person in Ontario, perhaps no other person in all of Canada, given how big Ontario is, more responsible for the policing in this country, with the possible exception of the commissioner of the RCMP.

00:02:25.720 But in terms of the absolute chaos in city streets, Toronto has been hit the worst.

00:02:33.640 I'd say Montreal is a close second.

00:02:35.940 In Canada, the University of Toronto is the largest university by far, and they have had an encampment there, a Hamas encampment there, for more than a week.

00:02:47.320 There are massive street marches in Toronto by Hamas all the time, including one that disrupted a meeting between Justin Trudeau and the Italian prime minister.

00:02:58.120 Can you believe that?

00:02:59.200 Toronto is the city where Jewish-owned stores, like the Indigo bookstore and Jewish-themed restaurants, have been attacked and vandalized by these Hamas hate marches.

00:03:11.080 It's where Jewish kids have been beat up on the way to school.

00:03:15.480 It's where, just this past weekend, gunmen pumped five rounds into a Jewish girls' school.

00:03:22.140 All of that is a matter of law and order.

00:03:25.440 The law being the prosecutors, the order being the police.

00:03:31.160 Neither are working in Ontario.

00:03:34.320 I want to show you my quick interview with Kersner again, because I've been thinking about it a bit.

00:03:39.360 You know, I didn't expect to see him there, so I hadn't prepared a lot in my mind for what to ask him.

00:03:45.880 That's sometimes how it goes.

00:03:47.180 You go with what pops into your head in the moment.

00:03:49.620 I don't think he was ready either.

00:03:51.260 I don't think he's ever been asked any critical questions ever, actually.

00:03:56.840 That's just not how the media party is these days.

00:03:59.460 When I went to the Toronto Police press conference at that girls' school on the weekend,

00:04:04.900 there was a whole phalanx of cameras.

00:04:07.260 Like, holy moly, the mainstream media were there in force.

00:04:10.820 But there was only one or two questions from one reporter at CTV,

00:04:16.180 and they were sort of note-taking questions, like nothing probing, nothing challenging,

00:04:20.800 just, oh, could you clarify this, or could you give me a detail on that?

00:04:23.600 There were a bunch of cameras there from various news organizations,

00:04:28.120 but literally none of them had anything to say or ask.

00:04:31.160 They were stenographers with video cameras.

00:04:34.300 And when I asked a probing question, and by the way, I deferred to the CTV guy,

00:04:39.720 just because he's more, you know, on the beat.

00:04:41.800 I wasn't going to get into it.

00:04:42.780 I mean, okay, he asked this one clarifying question, and then there was silence.

00:04:45.940 So, okay, I'll ask a question.

00:04:47.860 And when I asked a question about anti-Semitism and how it's a rising tide in Toronto,

00:04:52.540 the cop canceled the press conference, got on his phone with a fake phone call,

00:04:57.540 ran away, and locked himself in his car and did up the window.

00:05:00.320 And a lady cop told me I shouldn't be so pushy.

00:05:03.240 Pushy?

00:05:04.560 That's what they call any question.

00:05:06.020 It's not just, how do you spell that, sir?

00:05:08.320 So I think Solicitor General Kersner was not expecting any questions,

00:05:14.160 so both of us were surprised by what happened.

00:05:16.500 Here's a reminder of how it went.

00:05:17.920 This guy is Ontario's Solicitor General, the man in charge of policing.

00:05:22.840 He's in charge of the order side of law and order.

00:05:26.320 How come there were no charges under Section 176.2 of the Criminal Code

00:05:30.520 besetting a house of worship when all those protesters were outside the Bayat Synagogue in Thornhill?

00:05:37.220 Well, that's a question that you're going to have to ask the York Regional Police or the Attorney General.

00:05:41.580 I'm here because I'm not going to see my community intimidated.

00:05:45.640 I speak out all the time in support of our Jewish community.

00:05:49.840 I'm not afraid to wear my kippah.

00:05:51.780 I'm not afraid to go to synagogue every Sabbath, every Shabbat.

00:05:56.240 And I'm going to do everything that I can to stand up for our inherent right to live safely in our own homes and communities.

00:06:03.280 And I'm not going to stop.

00:06:04.460 Everything's short of prosecuting them, though, right?

00:06:06.460 I mean, the U of T remains encamped with an illegal encampment.

00:06:10.980 You're very good on Twitter, but have you actually done any prosecutions?

00:06:14.240 Well, again, this is something that you have to speak to the Attorney General.

00:06:18.060 He's your colleague.

00:06:18.840 You're in the government.

00:06:19.440 Why should I?

00:06:20.320 You're on the inside.

00:06:21.520 No, what I can tell you is I'm working every day to ensure that our legislation, that our regulations are adhered to.

00:06:29.620 I'm standing up with my community.

00:06:31.680 I've been 34 weeks, almost every single week, to the rally of Bathurst and Shepherd in support of remembering the hostages who have been held against their will in captivity in Gaza.

00:06:43.820 And it's not acceptable.

00:06:45.240 And that's exactly why.

00:06:47.340 It obviously is acceptable, since you're not prosecuting it.

00:06:50.460 You have condoned it.

00:06:51.640 You've created a new normal where people can engage in low-level, permanent, anti-Semitic crimes, assault, threats, mischief, because you guys don't prosecute.

00:07:02.440 But there you are on Twitter, though, so congrats for that.

00:07:04.780 It's important that the Jewish community sees a person from their own community in the Ontario legislature standing up against hate every single day, who has the support of a premier who has called it out.

00:07:18.100 Where are the other levels of government today who exercise the same voice that Premier Ford does, that we will not accept anti-Semitism?

00:07:28.400 We have accepted it.

00:07:29.780 We have not.

00:07:30.420 Where's the prosecution?

00:07:31.200 Again, this is something you could ask Minister Verrani.

00:07:35.320 You can ask the Prime Minister.

00:07:37.320 The province.

00:07:38.040 The province prosecutes.

00:07:39.520 The province prosecutes.

00:07:41.260 Better save your boss.

00:07:42.700 Yeah, that's what he had to say.

00:07:44.600 His press flack helped him get out of that.

00:07:47.820 Look, it's on him.

00:07:50.000 The policing in Ontario is on him.

00:07:53.240 He tried to pawn me off onto his colleague, the Attorney General, who wasn't there,

00:07:58.160 because the Attorney General is the man in charge of prosecutions.

00:08:01.200 It's true.

00:08:02.680 Can you even name the Ontario Attorney General without looking it up?

00:08:05.860 I bet you can't.

00:08:06.900 I bet not one in a hundred Ontarians could.

00:08:09.560 I had to Google it.

00:08:10.500 His name is Doug Downey.

00:08:13.300 He's been absolutely invisible these past eight months.

00:08:16.880 He's had nothing to say about our streets being turned over to these Hamas thugs. 0.99

00:08:20.840 But as you saw, Kersner kept saying, well, why don't I ask the Attorney General?

00:08:25.060 That's a pretty lame answer to my questions.

00:08:27.100 But the real answer is because the Attorney General doesn't arrest people or charge people.

00:08:32.540 That's the police's job.

00:08:35.100 And then the police, well, they're Kersner's department.

00:08:38.440 You can't prosecute someone who's not charged.

00:08:42.660 You'll notice that he ended our little chat by asking me to ask Arif Varani, Trudeau's Attorney General, these questions.

00:08:50.000 Again, believe me, I am no fan of Trudeau or Varani.

00:08:52.700 But what on earth does a federal Attorney General have to do with policing in Ontario or prosecutions in Ontario?

00:08:58.260 The answer is nothing.

00:08:59.060 I think the lamest part was his attempt to play the Jewish card on me.

00:09:05.160 He proudly wears his Jewish yarmulke on his head. 0.92

00:09:08.140 He goes to synagogue.

00:09:10.120 All right.

00:09:10.580 Well, thanks for that irrelevant personal update.

00:09:13.000 Save it for your diary.

00:09:14.840 I mean, good for him, I guess.

00:09:16.680 But what does his personal religious practice have to do with his duties as the Solicitor General?

00:09:22.240 I'm not coming to a press conference to grill him on his personal religious beliefs.

00:09:25.880 I actually couldn't care less.

00:09:27.020 Am I supposed to be somehow mollified, satisfied with the carnage on our streets and university campuses simply because this guy said he's a really good Jew?

00:09:37.460 How about being a really good Solicitor General?

00:09:40.500 And that part about him going to the weekly protest in that, he mentioned Bathurst and Shepherd.

00:09:45.680 That's a Toronto neighborhood.

00:09:47.720 That's a really Jewish part of town.

00:09:49.620 It's actually where I did my Streeter interviews about Yara Sachs the other day, if you remember that.

00:09:53.820 And every weekend for about an hour, I don't know, about 20 Jews gather in that shopping mall outdoors, and they wave Israeli flags and people honk their support as they drive by.

00:10:06.320 And that's great.

00:10:08.420 But what does that have to do with his dereliction of duty as a Solicitor General?

00:10:13.360 And who exactly is he protesting at his rallies?

00:10:17.620 I mean, typically rallies like that, even positive rallies, are some sort of call to action, like calling on the police to act.

00:10:26.280 Imagine the Solicitor General, the Ontario minister in charge of police, is at a rally demanding that police do something.

00:10:36.320 Yeah, that's your job, buddy.

00:10:39.020 There's millions of people in Ontario, only one is the Solicitor General.

00:10:43.540 Who on earth are you protesting?

00:10:46.220 How about don't go to the protest?

00:10:47.880 How about go into the office and do some work about policing?

00:10:51.460 I think I've never seen worse answers in my life.

00:10:54.440 I'm not looking for special favors.

00:10:57.460 I'm not looking for an answer tailored to me because I'm Jewish.

00:11:01.780 I don't know of any Gentiles, other than a few woke university students, who are happy with what they see on our streets and universities. 1.00

00:11:09.640 This is not special pleading.

00:11:11.640 I'm not calling for hate speech laws.

00:11:14.620 I think we have too many of those already.

00:11:16.600 I think that's an excuse.

00:11:17.600 It's a distraction from the fact that we have all the real laws we need right now to deal with the problem, and we lack the political will, as demonstrated by Kirzner.

00:11:27.920 Just enforce the law.

00:11:30.320 At the University of Toronto, it's trespass and mischief, maybe assault.

00:11:35.860 Other city bylaws could be used, too.

00:11:38.260 They're camping.

00:11:40.060 You can't camp in the city.

00:11:41.720 They're having open bonfires on campus, for example.

00:11:45.160 You don't need any fancy laws.

00:11:47.820 Most of the perpetrators, by the way, aren't even students.

00:11:50.980 There are lots of property crimes going on.

00:11:53.200 Plenty of death threats, by the way.

00:11:55.680 There are other parts of the criminal code, too.

00:11:57.580 The very first thing I asked Kirzner about, I don't know if you caught it.

00:12:00.660 I mentioned section 176.2 of the criminal code.

00:12:03.740 It's very short.

00:12:04.720 Let me read it to you.

00:12:05.340 It's one sentence.

00:12:05.980 Everyone who willfully disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral, social, or benevolent purpose is guilty of an offense punishable on summary conviction.

00:12:17.960 One sentence.

00:12:18.920 That means if you're going to bust up some church service, that's against the law.

00:12:22.920 And here's what I'm talking about.

00:12:24.120 Here's what I asked them that.

00:12:25.100 I don't know if you remember, but a few weeks ago, the Hamas hate march.

00:12:28.060 It was in a residential area in Toronto, outside a big Jewish synagogue.

00:12:32.700 They brought loudspeakers, for heaven's sakes.

00:12:35.760 It went on for half a day.

00:12:37.240 This riot and genocide is going on in the main subordination of all Jews.

00:12:46.920 And all of this is criminal.

00:13:01.500 It went on for half a day.

00:13:31.500 And I'm saying Kirzner's police because he's the cabinet minister in charge of them.

00:13:36.340 I think a lot of the problems in Canada on this issue come from Justin Trudeau.

00:13:40.640 He has normalized anti-Semitism by standing with Hamas against Israel.

00:13:45.600 He has parroted Hamas propaganda, including various accusations against Israel that have very quickly been proven to be false.

00:13:54.500 Trudeau is doing this because he can do math, at least simple math.

00:13:57.960 There are about 400,000 Jews in Canada.

00:14:01.500 But there's about 2 million Muslims.

00:14:04.240 And unfortunately, a significant number of them have been admitted to Canada without any screening for radicalism.

00:14:10.960 And they have brought with them anti-Semitism.

00:14:13.880 And some of them brought with them violence to Canada.

00:14:16.840 And Trudeau wants their votes.

00:14:18.540 So Trudeau has demonized Israel and he's demonized Jews.

00:14:23.580 And he actually hasn't said a word against these Hamas hate marches.

00:14:26.460 Actually, a couple of times he's been asked, he praises them as being free speech.

00:14:31.740 He has let in millions of people from countries where anti-Semitism is natural. 1.00

00:14:38.060 But provincial premiers are no better than him.

00:14:42.240 City mayors are no better.

00:14:43.720 Police chiefs are no better.

00:14:45.220 And of every single person in Canada other than Trudeau himself, I actually think Michael Kersner is the most responsible for what's going on in our city streets.

00:14:57.240 It's happening in Vancouver and Montreal and Ottawa, too.

00:15:01.160 But Toronto is the biggest and the worst.

00:15:03.600 And it is literally Michael Kersner's job to enforce the law, to arrest lawbreakers, and then to hand the prisoners over to the prosecutors in the courts.

00:15:14.220 The prosecutors in the courts can't do their job if criminals aren't arrested.

00:15:19.100 You know, we hear about the George Soros district attorneys in the United States in places like San Francisco and Portland.

00:15:26.620 Those are far left-wing prosecutors who are funded by Soros.

00:15:30.780 They're elected down there, the DA.

00:15:32.700 And Soros has bankrolled DAs who drop charges against criminals, who don't ask for bail, who tell police not to bother to enforce laws like shoplifting.

00:15:41.300 We've all heard about that.

00:15:43.240 That's a far left-wing activist gaming the system down in America. 0.99

00:15:47.360 But really, how is Michael Kersner any different?

00:15:51.520 He's like a Soros operative.

00:15:53.300 He just doesn't enforce the law.

00:15:55.840 He just doesn't.

00:15:57.180 He just doesn't arrest criminals.

00:16:00.340 And I'm not calling for him to use fancy hate speech laws.

00:16:03.580 I'm talking just about law laws.

00:16:06.120 He won't do it.

00:16:08.200 Oh, and expect it to get a lot worse very quickly.

00:16:12.100 Did you see this insane news on Monday?

00:16:14.640 Trudeau announced he is quintupling the number of people he is importing from Gaza along with their families.

00:16:23.680 Trudeau's immigration minister says if you don't like it, if you're afraid of it, well, he doesn't want your vote, you Jew.

00:16:29.940 But also here in Canada, with Islamophobia running rampant, anti-Semitism running rampant.

00:16:37.880 And I think we need to estimate, because perhaps we've underestimated the damage that this has caused us as a country and the divisive politics that comes out of it.

00:16:47.460 I don't need votes from this.

00:16:50.500 I just need people to stay alive.

00:16:52.280 And I don't want the vote of someone that thinks that legitimate criticism of the Netanyahu government that I share equates to picking on Jews in this country and targeting them.

00:17:05.820 If those people have that type of thinking, I don't want their vote.

00:17:08.680 Oh, and they don't talk about Hamas being hostages, releasing the hostages anymore.

00:17:14.280 I mean, for at least the first six months, Trudeau would say, Israel's really bad.

00:17:18.240 Oh, yeah.

00:17:18.760 And Hamas, can you please release the hostages of women and children?

00:17:21.940 They've stopped doing that.

00:17:23.560 They no longer even ask Hamas to release the hostages anymore.

00:17:26.940 They say, actually, Israel is the criminal hostage taker.

00:17:31.360 Look at this insane line by Mark Miller, the immigration minister.

00:17:35.180 But we are all failing Gazans at this point.

00:17:38.080 And I think that is something that we need to realize that they are under their it's probably the largest hostage taking right now in the world.

00:17:49.400 And it is something that Canada can play a small role in it.

00:17:53.700 We can't be everything to everyone.

00:17:55.040 But if Canada can play a role in this, in getting people out and safe, we're willing to play it.

00:18:00.860 But right now, we haven't had the success that we wanted to.

00:18:04.200 And that means that people are in and around Rafa are very exposed to death, starvation, to bombardment.

00:18:11.180 Yeah.

00:18:11.840 Hey, I wonder if 80% of people in Gaza support Hamas.

00:18:17.560 What do you think it's going to look like when we bring them to Canadian streets?

00:18:22.840 Who knows?

00:18:24.500 Just don't bother Michael Kersner with any such questions, though.

00:18:29.100 Stay with us for more.

00:18:30.220 Hey, welcome back.

00:18:42.900 You know, I've attended a number of these encampments supporting Hamas. 0.63

00:18:46.780 And I think it's accurate to say many of them outright support Hamas.

00:18:51.100 Others would say, no, they're merely pro-Palestinian.

00:18:53.220 I think it's fair to say that all of them are anti-Israel.

00:18:57.180 There's gradations, and different people have their different reasons for being there.

00:19:01.440 But one of the things that has struck me, and I saw this when I was at Columbia during their encampment,

00:19:08.580 is I was surprised how many young women are in these battlements. 1.00

00:19:13.360 And one particular observation was young Asian women. 0.62

00:19:17.800 And, you know, I've been to enough of these encampments now in different cities where it seems to be a trend.

00:19:25.060 And I can understand if someone is of Middle Eastern heritage, there's a tribal instinct, you stand with your clan.

00:19:31.980 And I can understand if people come from a radical background.

00:19:36.700 But in my mind, young women, especially young Asian women, to stereotype, are, you know, peaceful, compliant, rule-following, scholarly, merit-oriented people who go to school to learn,

00:19:54.340 go to school to better themselves, often they're children of first-generation immigrants who work hard and save up to send their kids to get a medical degree.

00:20:03.560 Why are so many young women a part of these radical protests? 1.00

00:20:09.720 Well, someone who's been thinking about this question a lot is our guest today.

00:20:12.760 Her name is Heather McDonald.

00:20:14.340 She is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

00:20:18.160 She's a contributing editor at City Journal, and she is author of When Race Trumps Merit.

00:20:27.520 And I wonder if that answer, that question will answer some of these questions.

00:20:32.900 Heather McDonald joins me now via Skype.

00:20:34.540 Heather, help me understand.

00:20:36.800 Maybe it's just me and my stereotypes and prejudices, but I did not expect to see so many young women, especially young Asian women,

00:20:45.920 manning the battlements for Hamas.

00:20:48.160 Well, there's two issues here, Ezra.

00:20:51.040 There's the Asian part, and then there's the female part. 1.00

00:20:54.120 I think they both have somewhat different explanations.

00:20:57.600 It is astounding that Asians are at all attracted to left-wing causes because the left-wing hates Asians.

00:21:04.980 The left-wing says they are, you know, this terrible wannabe model minority, 1.00

00:21:11.800 and all of the democratic left-wing policies like racial preferences are working in the exact opposite of Asian interests.

00:21:21.460 Asians are successful academically, but they are being kept out of universities disproportionately to their qualifications

00:21:30.140 in order to make room for far less qualified so-called underrepresented minorities, which is code for Blacks and Hispanics.

00:21:37.900 But nevertheless, you have a very large percentage of Asian population in this country identifying with Democrats and with the left because that is the path towards elite status. 0.63

00:21:52.140 The elites dominate our most highly high-status professions, whether it's in tech or medicine or the media.

00:22:01.200 And so if you want to credentialize your children for admission to Harvard and whatnot, you're better off identifying as a Democrat.

00:22:10.680 So that explains that.

00:22:12.880 But the other part of the Venn diagram here is the female component, and that is partly the fact that females simply dominate more and more in universities, 0.94

00:22:23.300 which explains why universities have become hostile to free speech and academic inquiry without any inhibitions from claims of safetyism.

00:22:34.320 And, you know, this idea makes me feel unsafe, the more that the females dominate a university, the less it is dedicated to its core function of the uninhibited pursuit of knowledge. 1.00

00:22:49.840 Females gave us trigger warnings. 1.00

00:22:51.680 They gave us safe spaces. 0.52

00:22:53.800 They gave us the therapy dogs.

00:22:55.760 And females in general, on average, and there's obviously exceptions, are less prone to weigh costs and benefits, to follow rational policies. 1.00

00:23:09.220 And I would argue that the great mass hysteria that we've seen on behalf of Hamas, and I'm going to be much more blunt about this than you are, Ezra, 0.50

00:23:19.760 I think this is a movement founded in utter ignorance.

00:23:24.740 It is a mass cult. 0.96

00:23:27.520 It is a social contagion.

00:23:29.200 These students know nothing about the Middle East.

00:23:33.220 It is based on ignorance and following the most irrational instincts, because look at these intersectional coalitions.

00:23:44.340 I was at Columbia, too, Ezra.

00:23:45.980 You probably saw this.

00:23:46.840 One of the signs was fags for Palestine, i.e., a variant on the various queers for Palestine combinations we've seen at these protests. 0.81

00:23:59.940 That in itself discredits this entire movement, because as we know, as has been said endlessly on conservative media, you try holding a gay pride march in Gaza or in Somalia or in Nairobi, you're going to get thrown off of buildings. 0.98

00:24:20.500 You have Muslim countries that have death penalties for homosexuals. 1.00

00:24:26.600 This is a movement founded in irrationality. 0.99

00:24:29.780 Females dominate the growing irrational strain on our campuses. 1.00

00:24:35.180 They dominate the various left-wing majors, the ethnic studies, the women's studies, the gender studies, the anti-white studies.

00:24:43.840 So really, this whole thing is a match made in heaven.

00:24:46.780 Wow.

00:24:47.440 You said so many things there.

00:24:48.740 One of the things you said is, you know, safety is, you know, it's a feminine idea.

00:24:55.760 That's why I find it odd when you have women, young women, siding with the violent revolutionary.

00:25:05.040 I mean, you would think that would be terrifying.

00:25:06.380 And also, I mean, maybe, again, I'm engaging in stereotypes here, but I just find it so hard to believe that a young woman would throw away 100 grand of her parents' cash and tuition to throw her lot in with these would-be Che Guevara's.

00:25:23.260 Is it, you know, a theory that my friend Gavin McInnes, who's a bit of a wild man, says is that maybe these young Asian women are rebelling against their tiger moms and saying, you know,

00:25:32.800 I just find it a strange demographic.

00:25:37.380 I get some of the Queers for Palestine stuff because that's tear down the Western patriarchy.

00:25:44.900 And if Hamas will tear them down from the outside, we'll tear them down from the inside. 0.96

00:25:49.240 The issue is never the issue.

00:25:50.840 The revolution is the issue.

00:25:52.660 So I actually totally understand Queers for Palestine. 0.91

00:25:57.240 All they know is that Hamas hates America and so do they. 0.95

00:26:00.480 And that's why I don't get it when a polite, normal, healthy, happy, you know, Korean-Canadian kid says, I'm with Hamas.

00:26:11.100 Since when are you in the tear down America business?

00:26:13.980 That's what I don't quite get.

00:26:15.960 Well, I think that and I think you're absolutely right that this is ultimately and I think a lot of the sort of Jewish advocates in Congress don't get this.

00:26:25.380 It's a mistake to characterize this hysteria as predominantly traditional anti-Semitism.

00:26:31.540 It's not.

00:26:32.460 It has very little to do with traditional anti-Semitism with the exception of the Muslims on campus. 0.93

00:26:38.500 And let's be honest, Blacks also have a long history of fairly traditional anti-Semitism, of hatred for the Jewish landlords, hatred for the Jewish shopkeepers. 0.71

00:26:47.980 We saw recently in the last couple of months a black student organization sent out on social media an extremely traditional caricature of Jewish power. 0.98

00:27:02.180 But by and large, this is not motivated by the genteel wasp anti-Semitism of, well, Jews are just not clubbable. 0.85

00:27:09.420 It's motivated by hatred of the West itself, of which Israel is now seen as the embodiment. 0.88

00:27:16.260 This grows out of the current academic context.

00:27:22.400 It's what's being taught across the board.

00:27:25.520 It's very hard to find a humanities course today that does not take an extremely cynical, critical approach towards the greatest monuments of Western civilization,

00:27:35.780 an approach I have to add that is completely fallacious.

00:27:39.360 The West has nothing to apologize for.

00:27:41.620 It is the beacon of tolerance and rights the world over.

00:27:46.200 It has done nothing that is at all worse than what every other culture has done as far as genocide, expropriation, trying to wipe out your enemies. 0.96

00:27:59.340 So that's absolutely right.

00:28:01.520 You're absolutely right to say that the queers simply say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. 1.00

00:28:06.440 Of course, it's not it's not a reciprocal sensation. 0.58

00:28:10.840 You know, it's the queer. 1.00

00:28:12.900 The Palestines are not saying, well, the enemy of my enemy, which is the queers, are my friends. 0.89

00:28:18.420 This is not a transitive operation.

00:28:20.160 But to get back to the Asians, that what you see is sort of the docile would be medical students. 1.00

00:28:28.340 It again, it is just the lure on campus.

00:28:31.480 It is the lure of the oppositional and it is the lure in our culture to be affiliated with causes that are seen as anti-establishment.

00:28:42.580 And it's an ironic impulse because the establishment today is the left.

00:28:47.500 We just heard this from President Biden in his appalling commencement speech at Morehouse College, where he was. 0.97

00:28:54.900 Reiterating the usual lies that he ran with to get into the White House and he's kept going since being in the White House, which is that this is a white supremacist country, that whites are mowing down blacks, that you have to be 100 times better to be if you're black to get a qualified position. 0.97

00:29:13.540 That's just the opposite. 0.98

00:29:15.140 Blacks get racial preference all the time.

00:29:16.740 But that is the face of the Democratic Party. 0.99

00:29:19.980 You know, Biden goes around saying we have this permanent stain in the white soul of racism and hatred. 0.97

00:29:25.780 That's all lies. 0.77

00:29:26.720 But that is the Democratic Party.

00:29:28.360 And a lot of these students are simply conforming themselves to the status quo.

00:29:34.340 You know, you're so right.

00:29:35.080 When I was in New York to go to Columbia, I saw on my Twitter feed that the Fashion Institute of Technology had an encampment.

00:29:44.560 So we rushed over there.

00:29:45.980 We got there within minutes of it happening.

00:29:48.180 So people were still trickling in.

00:29:50.000 And I asked some students.

00:29:52.180 They were holding flags.

00:29:53.180 They were not the Palestinian flag.

00:29:54.620 I said, what flag are those?

00:29:56.520 And it was they didn't know what flag it was.

00:29:59.560 It was not the right flag.

00:30:01.280 I asked people, like, after a while, once they get organized, they don't talk to journalists.

00:30:06.860 They have their spokesmen.

00:30:08.760 But for everyone who would talk to me beforehand, they didn't know anything about anything.

00:30:12.260 And it really is cult-like.

00:30:13.820 They just have these chants, free, free, free Palestine.

00:30:17.180 They have a few rhyming couplets.

00:30:19.260 And the endless repetition, I'm talking about hundreds of times.

00:30:24.160 They just repeat that message track.

00:30:26.340 It's a mantra.

00:30:27.360 It's hypnotic.

00:30:28.700 It is so cult-like.

00:30:30.140 It's like Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Krishna Hare.

00:30:34.160 It is the same.

00:30:37.120 Low information, kids.

00:30:38.820 It's fun.

00:30:39.840 It's rebellious.

00:30:41.020 You can be rock and roll.

00:30:42.620 All the cool kids are doing it.

00:30:44.480 In some cases, there's food.

00:30:46.980 There's drugs.

00:30:48.120 There's sex. 0.71

00:30:48.760 There's whatever is going on.

00:30:50.400 You will be affirmed.

00:30:52.020 You didn't have any friends yesterday.

00:30:54.020 Come.

00:30:54.300 We'll be your instant friend group.

00:30:55.680 And you've never been on TV before.

00:30:57.820 You'll be on TV.

00:30:58.940 You'll be the center of the action.

00:31:00.260 You can tell your friends you were there.

00:31:02.400 This is like the exciting days of 1968 or Occupy Wall Street.

00:31:08.000 And I think when you said the word cult, you were spot on.

00:31:13.100 And there are some cult leaders who are dangerous operators.

00:31:15.660 But I think these lovely young kids are getting caught up in exactly that, a social contagion.

00:31:23.500 That is what this is.

00:31:25.440 Well, you know, I don't know if you felt this tension, Ezra, which is that these students should have no attention paid to them whatsoever.

00:31:35.200 Ideally, now they're breaking the law when they're doing encampments.

00:31:39.260 They're trespassing.

00:31:40.200 So you've got to enforce the law.

00:31:41.560 But ideally, we would all just pay them no attention whatsoever because that's what we crave.

00:31:46.660 The idea that they have any bargaining chips to play in dealing with universities, it's absurd.

00:31:54.620 This is, it's created from nothing.

00:31:56.540 It's like alchemy.

00:31:57.900 They only have the power that the university confers upon them, a power which they then turn around and use to leverage against the university.

00:32:05.500 But they deserve no attention.

00:32:08.060 These people know nothing.

00:32:09.660 Why are any of us paying attention?

00:32:11.980 And yet, there you and I are.

00:32:13.660 I went up to the Columbia camp on, it was April 29th.

00:32:17.320 It was the day that the president had delivered a final second ultimatum saying, clear by 2 p.m. or we're going to rest.

00:32:24.080 It took her much longer than that.

00:32:25.980 That night, they went and broke windows and doors at Hamilton Hall, calling in the mails, of course, because they need mails to be the muscle.

00:32:33.300 But generally, it is a female-led cult movement.

00:32:36.980 And I hated myself, in a sense, for going and being part of that huge media scrum to look at these people because it is a mutually codependent relationship.

00:32:50.140 The best thing is to turn off the cameras. 0.99

00:32:52.380 On the other hand, one can't resist covering them to get just their sheer idiocy. 0.99

00:32:58.740 And I, too, was struck. 0.96

00:33:01.440 Like, you know, these students were walking for hours at a time around a very large greensward underneath the magnificent neoclassical Butler Library at Columbia, which has the names of some of the great Greek orators, philosophers, literate dramatists, 0.97

00:33:19.180 sophocles, sophocles, virgil, cicero, homer, demosthenes, and underneath them are these robots chanting these idiotic chants for hours at a time. 0.81

00:33:32.600 It is the absolute opposite of what students should be doing, which is, one, to absorb wisdom and beauty. 0.99

00:33:41.240 And here they are engaged in the most mindless activity.

00:33:45.660 I would think it would be embarrassing and simply boring to be hours around and they're getting sprayed with little water bottles by the females and given sunscreen and masks, the N95s, if they don't already have them. 1.00

00:33:58.900 But, you know, my question to you, Ezra, I kind of think, and I haven't pursued this, but do right-wing demonstrators do these mindless, repetitive call and response chants, or is this really a function of the left?

00:34:12.720 Because I'm trying to think, you know, we don't have that many right-wing demonstrators, but Tea Party or MAGA people, but MAGA, well, I guess we had the January 6th riot, but that wasn't really chanting.

00:34:25.620 But I think that maybe that modus operandi is really a left-wing thing.

00:34:33.260 You know, I've been to, I agree with there's not a lot of right-wing protests in Canada.

00:34:37.720 I can only think of two.

00:34:39.680 One was the great trucker convoy and the associated anti-lockdown protests.

00:34:45.120 We really focused on that a lot at Rebel News, and I found whenever I would attend those events, if you ask someone, why are you here?

00:34:52.140 They would talk to you for 45 minutes.

00:34:55.000 I mean, they had extreme detail, and they wouldn't say, oh, I don't know, talk to our leader over there.

00:35:01.320 In fact, it was a rather leaderless movement.

00:35:04.000 And there's also some anti-carbon tax grassroots protests and some anti-transgenderism in school protests.

00:35:11.600 And at those events, everyone knows exactly why they're there, and they'll tell you.

00:35:17.600 Whereas I get the feeling, I mean, there's Greta Thunberg.

00:35:20.720 First, she's talking about climate.

00:35:22.620 Now she's an expert on the Middle East.

00:35:26.140 It's just following, you know, what's the cause du jour?

00:35:30.560 That's on the left.

00:35:32.260 You know, I learned this when I covered the Occupy Toronto movement, which was an echo of Occupy Wall Street.

00:35:37.600 I would see the exact same individuals at any protest in Toronto.

00:35:42.760 They're funded.

00:35:43.800 They're organized.

00:35:44.580 They just pick up the placard and go.

00:35:47.580 So I think I don't know of any of that on the right.

00:35:50.940 I think people on the right don't tend to protest.

00:35:53.980 I just think it's crazy.

00:35:56.300 And you're so right at Columbia that it's in this gorgeous, beautiful learning oasis with this classic architecture.

00:36:05.480 And then these kids at the bottom, it feels like they're the peasant who picked up a pearl and threw it back into the sea, not knowing its worth.

00:36:13.480 That's all I could think of when I saw these kids throwing away the $100,000 a year education they had.

00:36:19.520 I did see a couple of normal kids who stopped to talk when they were so mad at their peers.

00:36:24.740 I know you've got to go, Heather, but I just want to throw one thing to you.

00:36:29.080 I want to add one thing.

00:36:30.600 I mean, the other problem here is that you do have the older adults egging this on.

00:36:35.620 And we have this whole tradition now of romanticizing college protests.

00:36:39.680 I remember the 90s, 1990s, you'd get op-eds saying, where's all the student protests gone?

00:36:45.900 We had the wonderful years of the Vietnam protests, and then we had the anti-partheid encampments and whatnot.

00:36:51.340 No, I'm sorry.

00:36:52.620 And there was an editorial board member of the New York Times, Shmeman, who wrote this nauseating encomium to the student protesters and how they're leading us towards a more righteous world.

00:37:08.320 And they show that we can change things.

00:37:10.920 No, students do not know anything.

00:37:12.780 They are right maybe once every 24 hours.

00:37:16.440 The students at Tiananmen Square were right. 0.99

00:37:18.160 But other than that, students have tended to be completely wrong.

00:37:21.300 They simply don't know enough about the world to be listened to.

00:37:24.860 And yet there is this whole ethic among older adults that, oh, this is what students should be doing.

00:37:32.140 If you're not protesting, you're not really fulfilling your obligation as a university student.

00:37:37.360 And that also is what's egging on these students. 0.99

00:37:40.020 And that's just simply a complete misapprehension of students and ignoring the fact that they are utter dolts and ignoramuses. 0.95

00:37:50.640 Xi Van Fleet, who is a Chinese-American woman who grew up in communist China and experienced the Red Guard and Mao's great purges and the four olds, old habits, old ideas. 0.96

00:38:05.200 I forget all four of them.

00:38:06.120 And the young people were weaponized.

00:38:11.220 And same in every regime.

00:38:12.900 Hitler had the Hitler Youth. 0.79

00:38:14.180 In Soviet Union, they had the young pioneers.

00:38:17.280 And the reason is young people are full of passion.

00:38:19.680 They want to change the world.

00:38:21.100 But they know nothing.

00:38:22.240 They don't know history.

00:38:23.260 They don't know any lessons from the past.

00:38:26.240 And if you can break them away from their parents and have them affix their emotions to a revolution, they're the most brutal and terrifying of all.

00:38:36.480 They certainly were in the cancel culture extremes of the cultural revolution in China.

00:38:41.480 And I think that's what's scary to me is to see how these mild-mannered, typically wealthy kids and luxury campuses can say blood-curdling things so easily, can affiliate with terrorist groups.

00:38:58.480 Well, we've seen that throughout time, that young people are the vanguard because they can be weaponized. 0.97

00:39:04.460 And, I mean, not to be rude about it, they're the dumbest people because they haven't learned, they haven't experienced, they haven't learned the lessons of the past. 0.99

00:39:11.780 They don't know the past. 0.99

00:39:12.960 They just know that they're the most important thing in the world.

00:39:15.500 And this feels right.

00:39:17.020 Last word to you, Heather.

00:39:18.800 Well, you know, that's an interesting question whether this is something that we've seen throughout time.

00:39:23.780 I would say that the empowerment of young people is something relatively recent.

00:39:32.500 It's partly a function, at least in the West, of prosperity.

00:39:38.860 Capitalism became so successful in the 20th century that for the first time in human history, adolescents had spending power, power that was served upon them by their parents.

00:39:50.360 They didn't earn the money that they were spending.

00:39:52.280 But there was enough wealth sloshing around in the culture that parents could confer credit cards or whatever on their children who then, you know, corporations spotted a new market.

00:40:05.980 Fantastic.

00:40:06.860 You know, a whole new bunch of consumers that we can sell to.

00:40:09.300 So you have the evolution of youth culture with music and television and pop stars, which became a trillion-dollar industry.

00:40:19.520 And that conferred on youth power.

00:40:23.240 Because if you have spending power in this culture, you are powerful.

00:40:26.160 But the idea that 100 years before that, that anybody would have paid attention to students, I think is very unlikely.

00:40:36.160 The great German sociologist Max Weber wrote an essay on the mission of science in universities.

00:40:44.080 And he said that a college professor should never adopt an explicit political position in his classroom because the power imbalance between the professor and students was so absolute.

00:40:58.180 That is, that is, the professor had absolute power and students had zero power vis-a-vis the professor, that they would have no capacity to disagree or engage him and they would be basically under his thumb.

00:41:14.820 So he presumed that students in a university setting were basically, you know, worthless.

00:41:22.580 They were there to absorb the professor.

00:41:24.000 It was only over the course of the 20th century when you had also the rise of consumer culture on college campuses where the students are the consumers and they're going around, you know, sticking their noses up in the air.

00:41:38.320 If they don't have their extra virgin olive oil tasting bars I've seen at Yale University, this isn't the college dining room.

00:41:46.380 They have extra virgin tasting oils, extra virgin olive oil tasting bars.

00:41:51.920 It is that resplendent in superfluous wealth that students now feel like they have, they're entitled to set the moral and intellectual tone of a campus.

00:42:05.400 That's a very new development and it's obviously an extremely unfortunate one.

00:42:09.860 Yeah, I will note that in every protest I've visited, Columbia, U of T, UBC, I haven't been to a campus in the UK, professors are involved. 0.79

00:42:26.940 And I think, so it's not just the foolish youth, it's not just the cult-like youth.

00:42:33.700 I think in some cases it's professors trying to relive their own youth, it's professors who were always about the activism, the long march through the institutions. 0.90

00:42:46.260 I see at University of Toronto that the professors are saying, hey cops, you're going to have to come through us first.

00:42:51.820 And I don't know, I find it fascinating because as you point out, the administrations of all these universities are at least partially and somewhat significantly sympathetic and in agreement with the protesters.

00:43:06.260 Like we all saw the testimony of the Harvard, MIT and Penn presidents in front of Congress.

00:43:13.520 It was shocking to most people, including the Congress, how captured those institutions are.

00:43:21.260 Last word to you, Heather, you've been very generous with your time.

00:43:24.480 How is this all going to end or will it end?

00:43:29.960 It's going to end poorly because these students are going every year out into the real world, which is simply remade in the image of academia.

00:43:39.400 And they're bringing their left-wing convictions, they're bringing their hatred of free speech.

00:43:45.080 We have the Biden administration, Canada's really bad in shutting down free speech.

00:43:49.080 The Biden administration claiming to protect democracy by shutting down dissenting views because it's unsafe.

00:43:56.420 I mean, this is an appalling thing.

00:43:58.080 We are eating away at the very foundations of liberal democracy.

00:44:03.320 And, you know, I don't think anybody is really trying to correct these students.

00:44:08.420 The faculty are guilty not only when they're out there actually protecting the students and smashing windows with them or chanting with them.

00:44:16.660 They're guilty simply in what they teach.

00:44:19.080 They have betrayed their mission of teaching students why they should be down on their knees in gratitude and awe before the greatest monuments of Western civilization. 0.97

00:44:29.540 So I think unless, for one thing, nobody should give another goddamn dime to their college alma maters, none of them deserve it. 0.93

00:44:39.260 There's maybe three in the United States who do. 0.97

00:44:42.180 And so we have to absolutely defund the universities, but we also have to take on the anti-Western hatred and start defending the West against these phony charges of white supremacy and colonial settlerism.

00:44:58.180 Well, you said a lot there.

00:45:00.180 Well, you said a lot there.

00:45:01.200 It's great to meet you.

00:45:02.720 I came across you from your essay called Hysterics for Hamas.

00:45:08.460 Why have young women been so prominent in the recent campus chaos? 1.00

00:45:13.180 Published by City Journal of the Manhattan Institute.

00:45:16.660 And, of course, Heather McDonald is also author of When Race Trumps Merit.

00:45:21.600 Thank you.

00:45:21.980 Next, your letters to me.

00:45:35.380 James Purchase says,

00:45:37.860 If this organization was listed on a stock exchange, then the info would, by law, be publicly available in the annual accounts.

00:45:45.680 There's no justification for a state-run company to be less transparent.

00:45:49.860 The public and the shareholders are making a very poor investment.

00:45:55.740 I think you're exactly right.

00:45:57.600 I think it's even worse than that.

00:46:00.040 I think the CEO of the CBC is being compensated as if she were the CEO of CTV or Global or some private sector outlet.

00:46:11.480 But why?

00:46:12.940 She's failing every year. 0.89

00:46:14.320 Things are going in the wrong direction every year.

00:46:16.180 But she's being treated as if she's some great corporate leader as opposed to a government bureaucrat. 0.99

00:46:23.240 Brad Mitchell says,

00:46:24.240 Pierre has a plan for the CBC.

00:46:26.380 They best update their resumes.

00:46:30.420 Pierre Polyev has indeed repeated his call to sell, privatize, whatever, the CBC.

00:46:37.420 He said it so many times.

00:46:39.180 I think he has to do it, which is sort of incredible.

00:46:45.460 Callan Vandendryche, if I'm saying that right, says, 1.00

00:46:48.020 What the hell even are these stupid degrees? 1.00

00:46:51.220 I knew what three of them meant. 1.00

00:46:52.600 You're talking about that NYU Gallatin School.

00:46:56.520 That just popped up on my feed.

00:46:58.320 You know, the algorithm thought, I am destined to see this.

00:47:01.420 I did not understand what it meant.

00:47:02.840 And a point I didn't really emphasize yesterday is these entitled kids, because they are the children of privilege, who are going to $100,000 a year school.

00:47:13.680 I mean, I can't even think.

00:47:14.620 That's after-tax money.

00:47:15.820 They're probably graduating and saying, okay, where's my elite place in the world?

00:47:23.020 But what are you going to do with those goofy, made-up BS degrees?

00:47:27.300 Who's going to pay you six figures for, I don't even know how to describe some of that.

00:47:33.540 I mean, I guess you could get a job being a professor for more BS, but there's only room for so many professors.

00:47:39.580 I don't know, maybe they're just children of such wealth that they don't ever have to work.

00:47:45.220 But it's astonishing that people would pay for that.

00:47:47.920 I just don't get it.

00:47:50.000 Well, that's our show for today.

00:47:51.900 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:47:56.860 And keep fighting for freedom.

00:48:09.580 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - May 29, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau’s immigration minister invites tens of thousands of migrants from Gaza — but don’t worry, Hamas will make sure they’re not dangerous

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript