EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trump assembles mass deportation force in Los Angeles—when will Canada follow suit？
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Summary
A nation is more than just an address. It s a place connected to people, and people born on it, who carry with them a country s memory and traditions. You replace that nation if you replace the people in it.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends, a very interesting showdown in Los Angeles today, a sanctuary city with a
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communist mayor. And I say that as a description, not an insult. So she's on one hand, on the other
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is Donald Trump and his ICE immigration police. It's quite a show. I'll have lots of video for
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you. And it takes place in MacArthur Park, I meant to say. I want you to see it, not just
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hear me describe it. I got some video and photos I want you to see. Please go to Rebel News Plus
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and subscribe to the Rebel News Plus, which is an $8 a month service. So you get the video version
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of this podcast and the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong, by the way, because eight bucks
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may not sound like a lot to you, but it sure adds up. So go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
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I really want you to see the videos from MacArthur Park.
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Tonight, Trump digs into mass deportations in Los Angeles. Will we ever see that in Toronto,
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Montreal, or Vancouver? It's July 7th, and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.
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You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you sensorism bug.
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The big, beautiful bill that Donald Trump passed last week was about several things, but I
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think undoubtedly it was mainly about mass deportations, massive increases to the budget
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for both border police as well as ICE agents. That stands for Immigration Customs Enforcement
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Police, who operate within the US, not just at the borders. That budget is now larger than
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many independent countries' defense budgets, which is expressed as a complaint by people
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who were against it, but it is expressed as a boast by people who were for it, who would
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say that it matches the gravity of the moment, namely that America has been invaded. And it takes
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an army of immigration police to expel the invaders. In fact, let's be candid, they'll be very lucky to
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deport a million migrants a year over the course of Trump's term. And there are at least a dozen, 13
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million migrants who came in under Joe Biden's watch alone. This is an existential threat to America,
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Trump and his team would say. I think that's correct. The root word of nation is the Latin,
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to be born, like natal or nascent. A country isn't just a clump of land. It's a place connected to
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people and people born on it who carry with them a country's memory and traditions. You replace that
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nation if you replace the people in it. Pretty obvious point. I'll give you Exhibit A as an example. That
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mighty building, the Hagia Sophia, one of the grandest in the world, the largest cathedral in the world for
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a thousand years. Construction beginning in the year 360, not 1360, 360, the greatest church in what was
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the greatest city in the world, the richest city in the world, obviously the most Christian city in the
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world, Constantinople, named after Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to convert to
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Christianity. I mean, Constantinople was for a time the capital of Rome, the empire, the city of Rome wasn't.
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Then it fell to the Muslim Turks who slaughtered and subdued the Christians and turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque,
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the most beautiful mosque, but a mosque indeed. During Turkey's liberalization about a hundred years ago, it was turned into a
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museum, but Turkey's authoritarian ruler Erdogan has once again turned it into a mosque just to show he can.
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So yeah, a nation is more than an address, isn't it? More than just some clods of soil. It's people,
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the Christian people of Constantinople were massacred and swamped by the Muslim people of the Ottoman Turks
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who made it their capital and obviously changed his name to Istanbul. Did you know that Egypt used to be a
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Christian country? So did Syria. So did Lebanon. You might have heard about a place called Nazareth.
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It's now a Muslim town. Telling this story reminds me of my visit to the neighborhood of Rosengard in Malmo,
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Sweden, when I visited there 10 years ago. You know, a generation or so ago, Rosengard was nearly 100%
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Swedish. Today. It's pretty much 100% Muslim migrants. I spent the day there. I had bodyguards
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because they don't much like white journalists from Canada asking questions. I didn't see any
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ethnically Swedish people all day other than a couple of security personnel until the end of the
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day when I spotted one native Swedish woman, the daughter of a hundred generations of Vikings.
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There was one left. I rushed up to her like she was an endangered species or something,
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like I had spotted, I don't know, a rare bird or a panda bear. I want to show you my interview with
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her, the last Swedish woman in Rosengard. And I put it to her, if Rosengard, if Sweden itself is no longer
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full of Swedes, is it still Sweden? Can I play that interview for you again? I did it 10 years ago, but
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maybe you don't remember it. You'll be shocked at how young I looked there more than 10 years ago.
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I had hair and it wasn't gray. 10 years of fighting the good fight. I think it's aged me
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probably 20 years, but I think I'm working out more now. Anyways, let me make my point to you
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about a people replacing itself. This is my trip to Malmo, the neighborhood of Rosengard.
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Are you from Malmo? Originally no. Where are you from originally? Mid-Sweden.
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One of the things we're talking about is migration to Europe, and Malmo seems to have a lot of
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migrants, especially Muslim migrants. What do you think of that?
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I think maybe they should deal with it better, but still we need them.
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For what? What does Sweden need them for? Because Swedish people just don't make any babies.
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So they will take care of us when we're old, if not immigrants.
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And how will they take care of you? You know, work at, you know, hospitals,
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uh, or, uh, you know, old people homes, you know, stuff like that. You know,
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Swedish people don't want to clean after other people. So, so if they don't do it, somebody
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have to do it. How about, uh, the combination of Muslim culture and Swedish culture? They seem
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pretty different on things like women's rights and gay rights and, and things like that.
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Hopefully we can turn them around. And how's that going so far?
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Uh, I have some colleagues and it, it's doing fine. No problem at all.
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Um, I, uh, I was talking to some Somali men who tell me that they have a lot of kids,
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but they're on social assistance, so they're not working. What, it, it almost, I mean, I don't know,
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and I'm asking you, it seems like some of the migrants are taking social services. They're not
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going to provide social services to Swedes. Do you think, do you think that economics is really
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going to work out? Like it, it's costing a lot of money to take care of the migrants, isn't it?
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It does, but it's not easy for them to, to find a, uh, a job either.
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Now, why do you think they're coming to Sweden? That's very far away. Do you think it's because Sweden
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is so generous with welfare? Are you trying to get me to answer your way, or?
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You say whatever you want. Tell me if I'm wrong. Am I wrong?
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Uh, I mean, of course you read in the magazines all about, you know, uh, the taking our money
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and works and all that, but it's not easy to, uh, to, to get to work here. And I think that most of
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them, if they want to have, they want to have a job, but I mean, if you don't know the language
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and all that, it's not that easy. Well, yeah. And especially if you're counting on them to,
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to take care of you when you're older, right? But they will, they will. Because I don't think
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we will be enough Swedish people to do it. Can you tell me the best way it's changing Sweden
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and the worst way it's changing Sweden? Uh, the best, best way is, uh, I think it's always good to have,
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uh, a mixed culture. Uh, you know, how otherwise would we have pizza and pasta in the first place
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in Sweden? Uh, the worst way is probably that the politicians doesn't do it well. They should
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have been, you know, provided them better. Now, when I'm from Canada and we think of Sweden,
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we think of a beautiful progressive country and we think of women's rights. But I understand that
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the, the number of rapes in Sweden is extremely high. Is that true?
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Uh, not what I heard. It's not more than before. You know, you're in the summer, you can have drunk,
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uh, Swedish men as well to do stupid things. And how about crime in general? Is that a problem?
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I don't know. Maybe I'm lucky, but I'm fine. I want to ask you a question.
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Uh, are you afraid of being called racist if you criticize
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migrants? Are you afraid of that? Uh, no, because I'm probably not that aggressive when I, uh,
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criticize, uh, but, uh, of course it can happen, but I always tell what I want to say. And, uh,
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so, so far, no problems. Um, have you followed the news out of Germany on New Year's Eve in Cologne?
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It's not nice, but still, I think it's still the politicians, uh, they don't do it well. I mean,
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the police does what they're told. And, uh, so I think still, politicians, uh, I mean,
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if they inform people better, I don't think we would have that problems.
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So, so you think that, um, that rape and sexual assault, it's just we Swedish,
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Uh, yeah, because I mean, if you give them good values in school and, uh, whatever,
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I think it would have been better. And, and still it's easy to blow up, uh, because of,
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because it happens with immigrants, but it happens in, you know, in other cultures as well.
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How do you feel when you see a woman wearing a niqab? Like just the, just a little slit for the
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eyes. I mean, you're a modern Swedish woman. How do you feel when you see another woman wearing that?
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As long as it's by free choice, I have no problem with it.
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Does it bother you? Would you, do you have any children yourself? Would you want your daughter
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I have no children, but, uh, lots of friends have children and let's say if I would have a friend,
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uh, with a daughter and she wants to convert and she truly believes it, I will be fine with it.
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But if somebody forced her, I wouldn't be fine.
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Do you feel like we're losing ground on gay rights and women's rights?
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Uh, hopefully not. I have a lot of gay friends and, uh, uh, they have the same problems that they had
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I, I think, I think the world is better now in the West, but, but I, I've talked to a number of
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Somali men here who, and, and Macedonian Muslim, they don't like gays at all.
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No, uh, but they don't do an extreme about it. I mean, look at Russia. I think it's worse there,
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because there is the regime is against it. Uh, here it's people. Uh, so I think it's a big difference.
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is there a limit to the number of Muslim migrants Sweden can take?
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I don't think it will happen. Not a million per year.
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What happens if there were more Muslim migrants than there are Swedes? Is that okay?
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As long as, uh, you know, they follow the law and, uh, try to do the best and work hard, why not?
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So you have no problem with Swedes being a minority in Sweden?
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Nope. Actually not. As long as me, it's a good country and, uh, you find work and the nature is
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still beautiful and the weather is like it is, and...
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And you don't have any kids anyways, right? That's someone else's problem.
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No, no, it's not anybody else's problem. As long as people are nice to each other,
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I mean, if there were 10 million Somalis here and then they brought in Somali-style law,
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it wouldn't be Sweden anymore if they brought in Sharia law.
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No, I still don't think it will happen. I'm quite sure.
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I sort of wish I got to know Sweden while I was still Swedish.
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It's not diversity when every country in the world is swamped and globalized.
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I would love a Swedish Sweden and an Irish Ireland and an Italian Italy.
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Um, those things are disappearing in the name of diversity.
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Um, what was interesting to me is that even she was making excuses for her own
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replacement. I think that was the saddest part of it. Just the inheritor of the Vikings,
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Back to America, the country that has decided not to go quietly into that good night.
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They say they're going to have a mass deportation. Trump uses the word re-migration a lot now.
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It's quite something. And he's putting together an army to do it here.
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Take a look at that army today in the heart of Los Angeles in a large park called MacArthur Park.
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It looks lovely. The park online, um, at least back when LA was a safe, prosperous,
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entrepreneurial city, the city of the future, before it's great to climb.
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I mean, look at this. That's a photo from about a hundred years ago.
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And here's a postcard from around the same time. I mean, LA looks like something very different
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in the past. So anyways, the reality of MacArthur Park today is, well, let me read to you from an LA
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time story. And this was, here's the headline attacks on transgender women exposed MS 13 gangs
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grip on MacArthur park. That is quite a headline. Let me read you the first paragraph. It's almost
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unbelievable. So this is from 2021. So in Biden's term, when Trump's revival was regarded as an
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impossibility, this, what was the status quo in LA? This is what was normal. Remember LA is a sanctuary
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city night settled on a woman sitting alone on a bench in MacArthur park. Three people moved towards
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her. One locked an arm around the woman's throat as the others pulled out knives and began to stab her.
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The attack in October marked the second time in weeks that a transgender woman had been stabbed
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nearly to death in the Los Angeles park by members of MS 13, a street gang that considers the park,
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the heart of its territory. The vicious assaults drew condemnation from advocacy groups and a heavy
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police presence to the park as a straightforward narrative emerged. MS 13 had been motivated by a
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hateful, bigoted desire to rid its turf of transgender people. Left unmentioned, however,
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were the tangled underworld economics that brought the women and the gang into contact in the first
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place. Now, of course, you just have to understand the LA times when they're saying women there,
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they mean a man who is expressing himself as a woman. But if I'm trying to understand that,
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gang members, foreign gang members had human trafficked transgender prostitutes into the park
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for prostitution to make money. But MS 13, they are a brutal gang and they also hate them because
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they're trans. I mean, it is a mess. And that was just that was just how LA is. Here's a video of it
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during the daytime. It reminds me of other places. I've been to the Tenderloin district in San Francisco.
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A lot of people on drugs, a lot of crime. It's just a failed state. It's not the California that the
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world fell in love with 50 years ago. I know this whole thing poses a moral dilemma for the left,
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don't they? Because they love trans people. They love sex workers. They love migration. They love
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MS 13. So it's tough for them to criticize any of those group. But Trump, not so much. So take a look
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They look like military, but I don't think they're actual military. I don't I don't think
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they're National Guard. I think they're police just dressed up in their most terrifying garb.
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And those are riot horses, of course. And you can hear a helicopter in the background. Here's
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another shot where you can see they are marked as police. You can see some of the inhabitants
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of the park gathering. Here's another shot which appears to be sped up of the police. This is from
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Karen Bass, the communist mayor of LA. Now, my theory is that the police are decked out
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that way to intimidate not actually the people they're going to try and arrest in the park, but
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would be rioters who might think they would rush down to the park to fight the police.
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So they did a few weeks ago. I don't know if you saw those riots in LA.
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So I think this police enforcement is looking like they could repulse even a huge riot. And I think
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that's what it's about. I think it's about deterrence. It's just my theory. The folks who showed up
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after protests were typically wearing COVID masks and looking pretty anemic. They didn't really look
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like they would be much of a battle, to be honest. Now, I didn't actually see any photos or videos of
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any arrests. I'm guessing that most people who would have been deported would have fled the scene
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unless they were very drugged out or something or just clueless. Again, I think this might be for
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optics reasons. I think the police actually had their own cameraman with them filming it.
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Here's some still photos of the cops taken by a reporter, Bill Melugin.
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Very interesting. So you can see they're marked as cops. Now, the mayor rushed down to the park
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for the cameras too. Very different from her response a few months ago when a wealthy neighborhood
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in L.A. burned in a fire. Huge fire. More than a thousand homes burned. She chose to go to Ghana,
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Africa instead. But today she was right there moments later as the boss of a sanctuary city.
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And she demanded to speak to the head of the cops. So a cop lent her his cell phone and let her call
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Here's the tail end of that cell phone conversation.
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I am going to say. Mayor Bass, I need to get my phone and we're departing.
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Mayor Bass, any comment? Yes, my comment is they need to leave and they need to leave right now.
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They need to leave because this is unacceptable.
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Mayor Bass, who did you speak with on the phone just now?
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So Mayor Bass says she thinks the police need to leave right away.
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Weirdly anti-fireman too, which was a bit of a problem during the fires.
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But at least she wasn't doing her best to get herself arrested,
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like a Democrat senator from California did the other day,
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storming into a press conference by Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Minister.
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I have questions for the secretary, because the fact of the matter is a half a dozen violent
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criminals that you're rotating on your, on your, on your, hands off.
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On the ground, on the ground, hands upon your back, hands upon your back.
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Leave your left, leave your left, leave your left my hands, go ahead.
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All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, cool.
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I think the Democrats want to be arrested, maybe even shot.
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They don't want to be killed, but I think they want a little bit of action.
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They want the drama, they want the crisis, they want the chaos.
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Here's Zoran Mamdani, likely the next mayor of New York City, doing the same thing,
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They all know this is the most important battle they can have.
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Before, under Joe Biden, the phrase demographics is destiny meant that the other side, the Democrats,
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The longer things went on, the more the migrants would just change the country.
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In Constantinople, it was an invasion with cannons.
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In California, it was an invasion too, just not really with weapons.
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I don't think the migrants wanted to be called an invasion because that might attract too much
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But Trump stopped the influx and now he's working on the reflux, isn't he?
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And everyone knows that's a disaster for the Democrats.
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It's clear the left, you know, I'm going to pause for a second.
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I mean, the only migrants I have seen in the last 20 years that the Democrats do not like,
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where I don't know if you saw, but a few weeks ago, the US invited in, I think, 58 refugees
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from South Africa who were the white Dutch farmers called the Boers who are being targeted
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because they're white by the South African government.
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So like 50 or 60 Boers were farmers came to America to farm and that's what they do.
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Well, because obviously they would be rightward leaning farmers and migrants.
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The only time I've ever seen Democrats against migrants because they know that the rest of them
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Anyways, it's clear that the left wants their moment.
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They want a George Floyd moment, maybe a police going too far or appearing to go too far.
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As communists say, they really want the government to hurt a child or something.
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I think that the old California is waking up again and remembering what it could be like
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without the failed state overlords and their mass immigration troubles.
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I see online some people are tweeting images of what they say are traffic apps in Los Angeles
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showing no traffic jams for the first time in memory.
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Now, some people are ascribing that to mass deportations.
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I think you'd need, I don't know, hundreds of thousands gone before you would notice,
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I mean, Trump's administration claims that a million people have self-deported
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If you can believe it, and tens of thousands more being targeted,
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starting with the worst of the worst, who have been in some ways sent to the terrorist prison
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And now comes Florida's alligator Alcatraz prison too.
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I say again, I think the cameras accompanying the cops were from ICE itself.
00:25:28.220
If there's going to be any war in Trump's term, that's his.
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It's going to be a war, hopefully with no bullet shot, to take back America from the invader.
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That's a fight he wants, and he knows he can win.
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And it will have the support of most Americans.
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I think it'll work, or it's certainly got a chance to work in the
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Build Better Beautiful Bold Bill or whatever it's called.
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I think that gives Trump the tools he didn't have in his first term.
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And if it works in America, and I think it will,
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maybe the UK will be inspired to vote for Reform UK, whose motto is
00:26:14.700
And maybe UK will be encouraged to call for mass deportations too,
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despite Nigel Farage's wobbliness on that question.
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And maybe our own cautious Canadian conservative party might wake up and realize
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that we are further down the road of mass immigration than either the UK or US,
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And we have a much worse on our streets, by the way,
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And maybe the answer for Pierre Polyev is not to try to woo migrants,
00:26:47.820
I don't know, fighting the carbon tax just doesn't seem to do it.
00:27:09.580
And of course, we're quite interested in things going on in the United Kingdom.
00:27:12.460
But over the last year, I personally have been riveted by what's going on in the country of Ireland,
00:27:21.900
But it has become the focus of really two enormous forces.
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On the one hand, globalist mass immigration that is in fast forward.
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I've never seen it that fast anywhere in the world.
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But on the other hand, a tightly knit community, the indigenous people of that Ireland coming out in protest against it.
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And I know there's things we can learn about it here in Canada.
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I want to throw you one quick fact before I introduce our next guest.
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I recently attended a rally in Dublin, the city, the greater Dublin area, about a million or so people.
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Even if that number is pumped up a bit, that's an enormous turnout.
00:28:03.740
And proportionately for Ireland, that would be like, oh, I don't know,
00:28:08.220
that would be like 300,000 people marching in Canada.
00:28:12.460
And by the way, no official political parties support.
00:28:21.420
It's like Canadian truckers, except for they're not there with their trucks.
00:28:26.940
And what stuns me every time, and Rebel News has gone to half a dozen of these,
00:28:32.860
There are some citizen journalists, but the regime media either ignores these marches
00:28:38.060
or under reports them, an exception, of course, is my favorite news source in Ireland,
00:28:50.780
And one of the reporters we love to bump into when we're over there is our guest today.
00:28:55.020
Her name is Fatima Gunning, and she's a reporter with Gript.
00:29:06.860
I'm trying to learn as much about Irish history as I can.
00:29:10.220
And before we do, I want to talk with you about
00:29:13.500
the battle over online censorship in Ireland, because that's really coming to a head.
00:29:18.540
But before we do, give me one word on your thoughts on this rolling protest.
00:29:26.060
It's in different towns and cities almost every other week or so.
00:29:38.220
I mean, as you said, there's no real, you know, big party push behind it.
00:29:45.420
As you mentioned there, you know, the numbers are disputed.
00:29:48.220
But in the last few weeks, there was that very, very large protest, which look at least
00:29:53.340
at least 15,000 people, I would say, took to the streets.
00:29:56.700
And although the national broadcaster called it five, I think,
00:30:00.380
you know, and that that was all put together essentially by a yes, not single handedly,
00:30:06.460
but the kind of the power behind that was councillor Maliki Steenson, who is an independent councillor.
00:30:12.460
So again, a lot of the the the power behind this movement is coming from more grassroots
00:30:23.900
I think that two years ago, anybody who wanted to participate in a protest like that would have been
00:30:29.580
perhaps shamed out of doing so by being called racist, far right, Nazi, whatever, you know,
00:30:35.820
kind of slur the the the the the people who consider themselves to have the moral superiority
00:30:43.500
when it comes to issues of interest in Ireland would have called people names like that.
00:30:48.220
But I think that that has waned to the point where more and more people are feeling comfortable
00:30:52.700
with actually saying, I don't agree with open borders.
00:30:55.580
I don't agree with Irish people becoming a minority in some towns and villages.
00:31:00.380
And I just I don't agree with the level of, you know, largely male migrants who are unbedded.
00:31:07.020
They're criminally unbedded when they come here coming into our country, which is already screaming
00:31:11.980
for lack of housing, lack of health care resources, you name it.
00:31:17.500
Yeah, you know, I believe in diversity in that.
00:31:20.140
I would love to visit an Italy that is Italian and a France that is French.
00:31:24.380
And the idea that Ireland would be de-Irishified is sort of sad.
00:31:31.180
And I I know you can find an Irish pub in any city in America.
00:31:35.180
There's 30 million descendants of Irish in America.
00:31:42.940
But this mass helter skelter, unvetted immigration, it doesn't make economic sense.
00:31:51.820
Last question on the migrants before we get to the free speech.
00:31:55.260
Is it having any penetration into the official parties?
00:32:00.780
Because you mentioned Maliki Steenson, who's a city councillor, which is really no disrespect,
00:32:08.300
but it's the bottom rung on the political ladder.
00:32:11.100
He's not a member of the parliament or the Senate.
00:32:17.820
But are any of the established parties, either in the government or the opposition,
00:32:22.940
are they starting to say, wow, there's a big parade mustering?
00:32:27.500
Like that's the politician's move is to see a parade and then run to the front and take credit.
00:32:34.860
Like surely some of these establishment parties are realizing there is some energy with the anti-migration side.
00:32:43.340
I don't think there's anybody running to the front.
00:32:46.300
You know, I don't think there's anybody trying to get ahead of the movement from the official parties.
00:32:50.620
I know that Aintu, which has two TDs, two members of parliament at the moment, are, you know,
00:32:58.140
more critical of migration than the other ones like Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael.
00:33:05.900
But, you know, just to focus on the larger, more established parties, for example,
00:33:10.700
we had recently our Taoiseach, Michal Martin, admitting really what everyone else has known
00:33:18.220
for the last three years, that the majority of these people coming in claiming asylum are,
00:33:22.860
in fact, economic migrants who are just skipping the queue.
00:33:25.900
And those sentiments were also echoed by the new-ish Minister for Justice, Jim O'Callaghan,
00:33:32.060
who, you know, I think credit where credit is due has been a lot more common sense
00:33:37.500
in his approach towards this issue since taking office than his predecessor, Helen McEntee,
00:33:42.380
who was basically, I don't know, just a cheerleader for all of this, really.
00:33:49.980
Well, we'll keep an eye on it, and I really enjoy my visits there.
00:33:53.420
I do make the case to my Canadian viewers that it is newsworthy for Canadians too.
00:33:59.340
But it's a delight to see so many Irish people who now tell me they follow our reports,
00:34:07.580
And there's a handful of private citizen journalists who live stream it.
00:34:12.380
But I have to say it's a huge news story that the state broadcaster, RTE, and some of the more
00:34:18.380
establishment newspapers, I really feel like they're deliberately downplaying it because they
00:34:23.580
don't want that effect you were talking about earlier with people getting more confident.
00:34:28.460
It's socially acceptable to have those opinions.
00:34:33.900
I think the official media point of view is don't, it's a kind of censorship in a way that
00:34:44.940
But you just alluded to a hate speech proposal, and I think it is tied to immigration in that one
00:34:51.180
of the things so many censorship regimes are designed to do is to stop criticism of global migration
00:34:57.900
in the name of racism and extremism and disinformation.
00:35:12.540
Give us the update on the battle for free speech in Ireland.
00:35:16.060
Because like I say, you've got the regime, which is frankly fairly censorious in its attitude.
00:35:22.140
And now you've got the European Union saying, hey, Ireland, you got to get tougher with censorship.
00:35:28.620
But on the other hand, America, who's always had a fondness for Ireland, I think,
00:35:36.060
So it's quite a showdown. And Ireland is like the hot potato in the middle.
00:35:43.020
Yeah, I mean, I think that the then Interim Minister for Justice, Simon Harris,
00:35:48.460
who is now the Tanisha, the Deputy Prime Minister, really let the cat out of the bag on why this hate
00:35:54.940
speech bill is so important to the establishment when he tried to add migration status as a protected
00:36:03.100
Now, that didn't go through, but it tells you a lot about the priorities there, I think.
00:36:08.380
So, yeah, we had a pretty fierce fight over this hate speech bill.
00:36:13.260
2022 was when the new bill was drafted and the then Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee,
00:36:20.300
who I just mentioned, was very gung ho on this, like, you know, willing to pass it at any means,
00:36:24.940
it seemed. But because of the pushback and there was, you know, some, you know,
00:36:30.220
there were smaller numbers, but very fierce, the political pushback from from the chambers of power.
00:36:35.980
But the speech element eventually was dropped and they came back with a new one from 2024,
00:36:42.860
which basically was essentially the same thing, only that the speech element had been taken out of it,
00:36:47.500
which, you know, seems a bit silly since Ireland has had incitement to hatred law since 1989,
00:36:53.260
which everyone seems to want to forget. And those laws deal with incitement to violence against
00:36:59.420
specific groups, also with the publication of materials that could lead people to be incited
00:37:05.820
towards violence and also broadcasts. So, you know, I think that that existing law, which is older than a
00:37:11.820
lot of people that may be watching this, is fine. I think, you know, it's a bit weird that Annie
00:37:17.260
moved to update that was made if it wasn't just to censor speech. But yes, the EU Council is not happy
00:37:27.500
with us because they say we have not implemented a framework which dates back to 2008, I believe,
00:37:34.620
with the focus, as you mentioned there, on, you know, prohibition of tracks that would make people
00:37:40.460
perhaps have certain undesired thoughts about, uh, certain races, certain religions, certain
00:37:46.940
ideologies, gender ideology, anything like that. Like the EU just does not, does not want to see
00:37:52.220
that kind of discourse taking place. And, you know, it just so happens that those issues are the big
00:37:57.900
issues at play in Ireland today. So people want to talk about them and I think people have a right to
00:38:03.260
talk about them. Yeah. When I've traveled around Ireland, um, the downtowns, the, the government
00:38:09.100
buildings, there, there's a real big LGBTQ show of force, at least in terms of flags and signs and
00:38:16.460
things like that. So I can imagine that that and mass migration are what people are talking about.
00:38:21.980
How could they not? And, you know, you mentioned the laws that have been in place for, you know,
00:38:27.900
more than 30 years, but incitement to violence is a very different thing than incitement to a feeling.
00:38:34.460
A feeling is not violent. If you're, if you're upset, if you're hateful, if you're a dissident,
00:38:39.980
that's not hurting someone else. I believe in laws against inciting violence. You know, I, I guess
00:38:46.220
that's almost a cousin of the law against uttering a death threat. That's a very different thing than
00:38:51.100
telling people not to have hard feelings. Hard feelings come from a sense of grievance that there's
00:38:56.300
an injustice in the world. And in Ireland, there is some injustice. I mean, I, the housing prices are so
00:39:02.460
high in part because they brought in a million newcomers in the last 10 or so years. I don't
00:39:07.820
know. I think it's very interesting. How's it all going to end? Is Ireland going to pull back from
00:39:13.100
some of its excesses or, or do you think the current political class is going to go down with the ship?
00:39:19.740
Like I, like, is something going to break is what I'm saying. Well, there, there is a suggestion,
00:39:25.340
you know, from sources within the Department of Justice that they're actually going to push back against
00:39:30.300
this and tell the, the, the EU basically, look, we've, we've done what you've asked us in so far
00:39:35.500
as we're willing to go with it. Now, how serious that is, and if, if it will actually happen, and if
00:39:40.700
they'll actually stick to it, because again, Ireland does face being sent to, for, for basically
00:39:47.580
like punishment, you know, if you don't, if you don't implement the framework, the frameworks that the EU
00:39:53.740
lays down in their diktats, they do refer you to disciplinary action. And I believe that we're already
00:39:59.500
paying fines for some stuff. So perhaps the government might not care about spending more
00:40:04.460
of the taxpayers' money on fines for this too. But I, I do think that we're in a better position
00:40:10.780
now to push back against it under the auspices of Jim O'Callaghan, Minister for Justice, than we ever
00:40:16.620
were with his predecessor, Helen McEntee, who, as I said a few minutes ago, was a chair leader for all
00:40:21.100
this kind of stuff. Last question for you. I remember a few weeks ago, Secretary of State for the United
00:40:27.260
States, Marco Rubio, issued a tweet that I think was astonishing. And it said that the United States
00:40:33.740
would put a kind of sanction on any officials, even with friendly countries, who engage in censorship.
00:40:42.860
And it wouldn't be an economic sanction, but it would deny them the right to travel to America,
00:40:47.820
which, which is embarrassing, at least, and disruptive. And it's a stigma,
00:40:53.100
the idea that the United States would sanction a bureaucrat or a politician in a friendly country
00:40:58.620
for censorship is, is actually an incredible thing. I don't know if it's been done to anyone yet.
00:41:05.180
Is that in the background? Is the United States and their more recent commitment to free speech and
00:41:12.140
backing Twitter and backing Facebook against censorship? Was that on the minds of any Irish
00:41:19.100
political people? Do you think like you think the prime minister or the foreign minister thought,
00:41:24.380
well, if I go along with this, I might get banned from America? Was that a factor?
00:41:30.620
I mean, they do love their, their wee trip to the White House to hand over the bowl of shamrock
00:41:36.300
every year, which, you know, sometimes it reminds me of that episode of South Park, where they suddenly
00:41:41.420
get rid of all the Peruvian pan pipe bands. And then these like feral guinea pigs burst through the ether.
00:41:48.060
And then now everybody knows why the pound pipe bands were so important. That reminds me of the
00:41:52.380
whole like the shamrock thing. But, you know, I think it has something to do with the fact that
00:41:57.180
there are so many huge American multinationals based in Dublin, because, you know, if they want to
00:42:03.580
exit here because we're essentially a bastion of censorship, that's going to ruin our economy.
00:42:09.180
So I think that that's, that's, it's a big, a big pull factor there for them to maybe get a little bit
00:42:16.620
real about this this time and stop with the virtue signaling. Because, you know, when it comes to many
00:42:22.620
issues, like particularly like the war in the Middle East, Ireland, Irish politicians, I should say,
00:42:28.460
more specifically, are essentially just virtue signaling day and night. When we have Irish people
00:42:33.660
dying on hospital trolleys because our hospitals are a mess. We have Irish people who have jobs
00:42:38.140
sleeping in cars and on friends' sofas for months and years on end because our housing system is a mess.
00:42:44.060
And, you know, people like Sinn Féin are staging walkouts because of something that's happening
00:42:49.100
thousands of miles away, which like Ireland has absolutely nothing, nothing got to do with and
00:42:53.580
nothing to contribute to in any meaningful way.
00:42:56.060
Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting, the politics of Israel and Gaza. We won't get into the details of
00:43:02.380
it, but I mean, it really is. I think it's a distraction from proper affairs. I mean, Ireland
00:43:10.300
has some crises going on, but if you can get everyone to look at the problem thousands of miles away
00:43:16.300
instead, I suppose that's better politics. A topic for another day. Fatima, great to see you. Before you go,
00:43:22.780
tell our viewers in Canada and America, how do we follow GRIPT? What's the best way to follow you?
00:43:29.340
What's the best way to support your independent journalism?
00:43:33.900
If you want to follow GRIPT, we are on all major social media platforms, especially X.
00:43:40.220
I myself am on X. It's Fatima underscore Gunning, I believe. I haven't thought about my own handle in a
00:43:46.460
while. And if anybody wants to, like most of our content is free, but because we don't receive
00:43:52.460
any state funding, we are completely reliant on donations from people who value our work.
00:43:59.820
Well, some of it is paywalled. You know, we do some pretty investigative work, pretty heavy
00:44:05.980
investigative work, which goes into all of the strange dealings behind the multi-million euro
00:44:13.820
industry of asylum accommodation, which I think will be interesting to a lot of people. So if you want to
00:44:19.020
access all of our work, you can sign up to subscribe at GRIPT.ie or if you want to just follow us in
00:44:25.980
general, we're on all the major platforms. That's great. Well, I love it. It is my number one source
00:44:32.140
of news about Ireland and hopefully I'll have a chance to bump into you in my next visit there. Fatima
00:44:38.060
Gunning of GRIPT.ie. Great to see you again. Thank you so much. Cheers. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:44:57.900
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me on Evan Blackman getting a court order to get the records from
00:45:05.020
TD Bank and the police. Wally Bartfay says, critical to note that Carney was the one who
00:45:11.180
recommended freezing bank accounts of Canadians illegally. I know he's supported. I don't know
00:45:16.060
if he came up with the idea. It wouldn't surprise me if he did, him being a banker and all. I remember
00:45:20.540
he wrote an op ad in the Globe and Mail saying the government wasn't going hard enough on the
00:45:25.420
protesters. He really is an authoritarian. Millie Mees says, the RCMP being involved in this just adds
00:45:31.820
another stain on their record. I think you're right. And I'm still hearing stories about police
00:45:36.540
misconduct during the lockdowns. The Democracy Fund is still fighting cases from three years ago,
00:45:43.100
if you can believe it. Ken Chorney says, when will Freeland and the bank execs be charged?
00:45:50.220
Well, I don't know if they'll be charged. To be charged is a very high standard. Like, I mean,
00:45:55.820
bad ideas, you know, causing damages. Yes, yes. Did they do something that reaches a criminal level?
00:46:02.700
I don't know. And we don't want to criminalize bad political choices because we don't want
00:46:10.060
all public political disputes to be settled in courts. That would replace the voter with the elite
00:46:17.180
cabal of judges. I think that what Chrystia Freeland and the banks did was wrong.
00:46:22.060
We know it was unconstitutional and illegal, but being illegal is a little bit different than being
00:46:27.900
a crime. I think the happy ending here would be for the bank and the government to have to pay
00:46:34.940
compensation and punitive damages to the hundreds of people they targeted. So, you know, when you sue
00:46:42.940
something for something they did wrong to you, which is called a tort in law, you get your damages back.
00:46:47.900
Let's say they smashed your window and it cost you 800 bucks. You'll get the 800 bucks back.
00:46:53.820
You might get your legal costs back, but the court has the power to give you punitive damages or
00:46:59.980
exemplary damages to punish the other side, to make an example of the other side. Wouldn't it be
00:47:05.420
something if the banks had to pay a million bucks each to everyone whose bank account they shut down
00:47:11.340
illegally? Wouldn't it be something if the cops had to do so too? See, that's the kind of justice I think we need.
00:47:18.540
Well, that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World
00:47:22.700
Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.