Rebel News Podcast - It's sad that GM's factory in Oshawa is closing — but why did their union work to block Alberta pipelines？

00:00:00.000 Tonight, I feel bad about the GM factory in Ontario closing, but why did their union go to court to block Alberta oil sands pipelines?

00:00:08.260 It's November 27, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:00:16.560 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:20.360 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:24.060 You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.

00:00:27.040 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:37.740 We've all heard the news about General Motors and their plan to shut down its Oshawa, Ontario factory next year, laying off up to 2,800 people.

00:00:47.360 That's a tough blow. Although it's simply the latest, there used to be 40,000 people building cars in Oshawa.

00:00:53.440 But as the president of Magna, the auto parts company, put it this spring, it just doesn't make sense to build cars in Canada.

00:01:02.260 Canada's the highest cost location in North America to build cars.

00:01:05.760 Add in Justin Trudeau's looming carbon tax and Donald Trump's tax cuts.

00:01:11.540 It just doesn't make sense.

00:01:13.300 But don't bother Justin Trudeau with any of that boring, real-world stuff.

00:01:17.280 He's got much more exciting things to do.

00:01:19.200 He's about to fly to Argentina, people.

00:01:22.160 There's going to be some great photo ops down there.

00:01:24.880 He's already tweeting about it, guys.

00:01:27.600 This week, I'll travel to Argentina for the 2018 G20 Summit to work with leaders from around the world to keep building stronger economies that work for everyone.

00:01:37.180 Fight climate change, promote gender equality, and discuss the future of work.

00:01:42.840 Got it. So our boy is still prattling on about global warming and gender equality while GM is shutting down factories.

00:01:51.360 Haven't they heard of Trudeau's inspirational speech about the future of work?

00:01:54.940 I mean, come on, get with it, guys.

00:01:56.660 Back in real life, 12 months into the future, 2,800 families in Oshawa will be looking for work.

00:02:02.880 That's the future of work.

00:02:04.480 It's tough. I'm obviously sympathetic to these 2,800 families, and I'm obviously skeptical of GM like Bombardier.

00:02:12.300 They were happy to take massive cash bailouts from Canadian taxpayers and then shut down factories here to move to cheaper jurisdictions.

00:02:19.880 I do blame Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne for making Canada so uncompetitive in the first place.

00:02:27.540 But at the end of the day, GM took the cash.

00:02:30.260 I suppose maybe you can't blame someone for taking billions of dollars of free money and running if it's technically legal.

00:02:39.340 But you have to admit it's gross, like Bombardier is gross.

00:02:43.880 Now, Donald Trump wasn't happy because although 2,800 Canadians are being laid off, about 3,300 Americans will be laid off too,

00:02:53.180 including in Ohio, a battleground state where they make a compact car called the Chevy Cruze.

00:02:59.860 I should point out that GM is shutting down that tiny car, and they're completely shutting down the Chevy Volt, GM's electric car.

00:03:08.140 No one wants to buy them.

00:03:10.620 People like SUVs and trucks.

00:03:13.380 Now, there's a lot of BS when it comes to tiny cars, fuel-efficient cars, electric cars.

00:03:17.640 Everybody knows they're supposed to like them, supposed to say they like them, but no one does.

00:03:22.600 Here's Barack Obama six years ago.

00:03:24.360 At GM's Hamtramck plant in Detroit, where I got to get inside a brand-new Chevy Volt, fresh off the line,

00:03:33.760 even though Secret Service wouldn't let me drive it.

00:03:35.660 But I like sitting in it.

00:03:44.060 It was nice.

00:03:46.560 I'll bet it drives real good.

00:03:49.900 And five years from now, when I'm not president anymore, I'll buy one and drive it myself.

00:03:55.340 Yeah, no, he didn't buy one.

00:03:59.440 No one did, other than a few public sector showboats, like Barack Obama himself was there.

00:04:05.780 They're almost always spending government money on them.

00:04:08.480 That's being shut down.

00:04:10.980 Donald Trump has never been a big booster of green schemes.

00:04:13.300 He's always mocked the global warming lobbyists, calling it a scam on Twitter.

00:04:17.640 He just wants factories.

00:04:18.900 And here's what he said yesterday about that Chevy Cruze factory closing.

00:04:23.240 Well, we don't like it.

00:04:25.000 I believe they'll be opening up something else.

00:04:27.700 And I was very tough.

00:04:29.400 I spoke with her when I heard they were closing.

00:04:32.320 And I said, you know, this country's done a lot for General Motors.

00:04:35.180 You better get back in there soon.

00:04:36.600 That's Ohio.

00:04:37.720 And you better get back in there soon.

00:04:39.500 So we have a lot of pressure on them.

00:04:42.000 You have senators.

00:04:42.840 You have a lot of other people.

00:04:43.940 A lot of pressure.

00:04:45.220 They say the Chevy Cruze is not selling well.

00:04:48.620 I say, well, then get somebody to get a car that is selling well and put it back in.

00:04:53.660 So I think you're going to see something else happen there.

00:04:56.020 But I'm not happy about it.

00:04:57.880 Their car is not selling well.

00:05:00.000 So they'll put something else.

00:05:01.360 I have no doubt that in a not too distant future, they'll put something else.

00:05:05.620 They better put something else in.

00:05:08.180 Now, who knows what that will translate into in real life.

00:05:11.140 But if I were the CEO of General Motors, I'd be more concerned about that comment by Donald

00:05:16.260 Trump than this comment by Jerry Diaz, the president of the auto workers union here in

00:05:21.940 Canada called Unifor.

00:05:23.640 He was talking to workers.

00:05:24.820 And according to this report, he said he will, quote, use every tool possible to show

00:05:29.480 GM it will not betray Canadians again.

00:05:33.580 What does that mean?

00:05:34.740 I don't quite know.

00:05:35.780 Well, I don't know what he can do.

00:05:37.860 I mean, the fact is GM's factories have about a million cars a year in excess capacity.

00:05:44.940 They're going to shut down the least profitable factories. 0.99

00:05:48.200 And as we showed you yesterday, that means the Canadian ones.

00:05:52.720 Here's a former CEO of Chrysler saying he wouldn't be surprised if other car makers shut

00:05:58.840 down their most costly plants in Canada, too, including in Brampton.

00:06:04.160 It sounds like you're saying that how we got here was through a lack of leadership and a

00:06:09.140 lack of vision, either on the part of the unions or on the part of the government.

00:06:12.600 I think it's both.

00:06:15.560 And the government does not and never wanted to support the industry.

00:06:20.920 You know, Brampton's next.

00:06:22.820 You know, what's the government going to do there?

00:06:25.120 I don't know what they're doing at Chrysler because I have been away for nine years now.

00:06:30.360 But the bottom line is, what are they going to do for these people?

00:06:34.280 Instead of worrying about what Mexico's pay rates are, why doesn't Canada focus on and

00:06:41.060 the union focus on their current members?

00:06:43.460 Because this is going to spread.

00:06:46.540 Now, I don't quite understand his advice.

00:06:49.820 And of course, Chrysler took a huge bailout 10 years ago, too.

00:06:53.840 But I think his prediction is probably right.

00:06:55.400 Frankly, I think what's going to happen is there's going to be some negotiation now.

00:06:59.760 GM and Chrysler will see what concessions they can get over the next year.

00:07:04.280 To maybe get their expensive plants to become affordable?

00:07:08.540 That's either concessions from the unions or concessions from the governments involved.

00:07:14.320 I wouldn't doubt that Justin Trudeau would throw a few billion dollars to keep him going.

00:07:18.820 And again, can you blame a for-profit company like GM or Chrysler from taking free money?

00:07:24.100 It's like a hockey team getting a free stadium. 0.97

00:07:26.960 It's immoral, sure, but you'd be dumb not to take the free cash. 0.91

00:07:31.580 It's hard to get to the heart of things here, don't you think?

00:07:35.040 It's hard even to get the accurate reports because the Trudeau slush fund media,

00:07:39.700 the ones who are about to pocket their own bailout of $595 million in free money,

00:07:45.260 they're so biased.

00:07:46.800 I mean, look at these two stories.

00:07:48.580 In the same newspaper, the Toronto Star, on the same day.

00:07:52.100 Do you see that?

00:07:52.700 They're both November 26.

00:07:53.740 Trudeau has been in office for three years.

00:07:58.020 Doug Ford, just a few months.

00:07:59.900 So look at the one where they're talking about Trudeau.

00:08:02.060 That's on the left.

00:08:03.580 So Ottawa is looking at all options as GM closes Oshawa plant.

00:08:08.700 So it's framed with Trudeau as the helpful save here.

00:08:12.920 But look at the one on the right.

00:08:15.080 GM shows Doug Ford's Ontario isn't so open for business.

00:08:19.040 Yeah, Doug Ford is clearly driving out the factory.

00:08:22.720 He's been premier for a few months.

00:08:24.200 Look, they're already fleeing.

00:08:25.040 Look, you can't trust the media, can you?

00:08:28.260 But I want to add one more layer to things today.

00:08:30.900 We got the, you know, the...

00:08:31.800 I would agree with Jerry Diaz that the big three automakers are amoral.

00:08:40.160 And I agree that politicians are to blame for tax policy and other high costs.

00:08:46.420 But let's talk about something that no one has really delved into yet.

00:08:50.360 And that is Jerry Diaz and Unifor the union itself.

00:08:54.940 I'm going to separate it, the union and their bosses from the 2,800 families who are soon out of work.

00:08:59.660 I want to talk about the union leadership itself.

00:09:03.240 Because Jerry Diaz is angry.

00:09:05.400 He's making weird and vague threats about GM.

00:09:08.260 He's making demands.

00:09:10.040 Obviously, he'll take handouts of Trudeau, I'll give them.

00:09:13.340 And maybe that's his job to do that.

00:09:15.360 It's just a fact that Canadian factories are more expensive than American or Mexican factories.

00:09:19.720 And Trump and Trudeau are both making that gap bigger.

00:09:22.340 And Jerry Diaz had a seat at the table in the NAFTA renegotiations and I don't think he helped much.

00:09:26.840 But could you imagine if that factory in Oshawa and that Chrysler factory we heard about in Brampton

00:09:34.820 had been the target of a 10-year propaganda campaign to shut them down with foreign money?

00:09:42.860 10 years of demonizing these factories, of pointing out their carbon footprint, how much pollution they cause.

00:09:48.780 10 years of publicizing every error or accident or misstep, anything going wrong at the factory,

00:09:53.860 every time there was a car accident on the street.

00:09:56.660 And if it was a GM brand of vehicle made in Oshawa, I know it sounds crazy,

00:10:01.180 but imagine if someone were paid by a foreign lobby group to do nothing but track car accidents in Canada.

00:10:09.900 And whenever a car from that Oshawa factory had an accident, and I know this sounds crazy,

00:10:14.940 imagine if there were a press release attacking that GM factory in Oshawa.

00:10:19.480 Never GM factories in other countries, never, let's say Toyota, let's say it was a Toyota-financed propaganda effort

00:10:26.820 that just hated that factory, just Oshawa.

00:10:30.820 Imagine if there were protests outside the Oshawa plant, paid protesters.

00:10:35.780 Imagine if there were lawsuits against that factory, alleging pollution, or, I don't know,

00:10:41.440 even suing that anyone who would still build a fossil fuel car in 2018 was killing our planet, whatever.

00:10:45.720 I know that's unthinkable, I know that's too crazy, but of course that is exactly what has been done to Alberta's oil industry for a decade or more.

00:10:54.640 Defamation, smearing, protests, lawsuits, lies, hugely funded, well-organized.

00:10:59.480 Imagine the rage and the sorrow and the feeling of betrayal of those 2,800 families in Oshawa

00:11:05.080 if it were in part because of a well-financed 10-year smear campaign.

00:11:09.860 We'll now multiply that rage by 40 because there are at least 100,000 oil and gas families still unemployed in Alberta.

00:11:20.120 The Trans Mountain Pipeline alone would have employed triple the number of families laid off in Oshawa.

00:11:26.840 The Energy East Pipeline, as you know, the construction alone was a $15.7 billion jobs project.

00:11:34.340 No bailout needed.

00:11:35.400 Where was the sympathy then?

00:11:39.020 Where was the national wailing?

00:11:40.960 There was none.

00:11:42.460 There was jubilation and celebration from the far left, the eco-left, and quiet smirks from the liberals.

00:11:49.180 Here's Gerald Butts condemning the fossil fuel economy for pipelines.

00:11:54.420 Now he's Trudeau's right-hand man.

00:11:56.360 Imagine if such a man were to have said this exact same thing,

00:12:00.520 but instead about pipelines, about car factories.

00:12:06.380 Truth be told, we don't think there ought to be a carbon-based energy industry by the middle of this century.

00:12:12.020 That's our policy in Canada, and it's our policy all over the world.

00:12:15.540 You can choose to fight this fight on locking us into a high-carbon economy for five decades.

00:12:20.920 And I think that's a very reasonable perspective to take.

00:12:26.620 In fact, it's one we do take.

00:12:29.200 So we don't think that, we think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly

00:12:33.240 without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.

00:12:38.300 So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.

00:12:45.120 Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.

00:12:49.720 It's an alternative economy.

00:12:52.040 So why is that okay when it's against oil and gas and pipeline families, but not auto families?

00:12:59.520 But Unifor itself is the worst.

00:13:02.260 Jerry Diaz's union itself is a job killer.

00:13:04.820 Here's a press release two years ago by Unifor itself.

00:13:08.540 Let me read it to you.

00:13:10.780 Unifor is disappointed with the National Energy Board's short-sighted decision to support the Trans Mountain Expansion Project,

00:13:16.900 one that poses risks for the economy, Canadian jobs, and food security.

00:13:21.440 Oh, food security, eh?

00:13:23.100 The Kinder Morgan Expansion Project is all risk and no gain for the public or our environment,

00:13:28.560 said Joie Warnock, Unifor's Western director.

00:13:32.320 Despite applying conditions for approval, in the absence of any realistic and forceful regulations,

00:13:36.980 the NEB failed to consider the very serious risks a project of this magnitude has for residents and our economy.

00:13:43.980 Oh, so even though it was approved as safe by experts, by neutral exports, by Trudeau's experts,

00:13:52.440 Unifor campaigned against it.

00:13:53.940 They helped destroy it.

00:13:55.120 And here's Unifor now actually going to court to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline.

00:14:01.400 Let me show you another press release they put out a couple years back.

00:14:05.660 The process was rigged from the start and they ignored important testimony from Canadians,

00:14:09.720 said Joie Warnock, Unifor's Western director.

00:14:12.040 If Stephen Harper refuses to protect our coast, we have no choice but to fight them in court.

00:14:17.460 Unifor went to court to stop a jobs project in Western Canada.

00:14:21.360 Here's Unifor on the Keystone XL pipeline. Ready?

00:14:25.260 Canadians don't benefit from pipelines that ship unrefined oil to other countries.

00:14:29.260 Plain and simple, said Unifor National President Jerry Diaz told the Union's BC Regional Council in Vancouver.

00:14:37.700 Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, and the new Kinder Morgan pipeline all have one thing in common.

00:14:42.160 They steal Canada's natural resort wealth and leave us with nothing to show for it.

00:14:47.000 Unifor is calling on the federal government to enforce greenhouse gas emission targets

00:14:52.280 by limiting the future expansion of bitumen production.

00:14:56.600 Really, eh?

00:14:58.780 When was the last time there was a carbon emissions analysis of an auto factory?

00:15:05.600 When was the last time you had union bosses from Alberta flying out to Ontario

00:15:11.440 to campaign against car factories or even sue them?

00:15:15.440 When was the last time you had extremists in cabinet call for a gender analysis of a car factory 1.00

00:15:21.800 like that clown Catherine McKenna does for pipelines? 1.00

00:15:25.680 It's a sign of how broken Canada is that not just union bosses, 0.89

00:15:30.100 but the media and the courts and political leaders and civil society, including charities,

00:15:35.440 take it for granted that it's okay to attack oil and gas jobs

00:15:40.260 and to campaign and sue and protest oil and gas jobs into submission,

00:15:44.120 but God forbid a car company wants to move away from Trudeau's uncompetitive tax regime.

00:15:50.420 Well, it's a national crisis, and Trudeau had better come in with a bailout.

00:15:54.120 Yeah, I'm sympathetic.

00:15:56.020 I truly am sympathetic to those 2,800 families.

00:15:59.540 I really am.

00:16:00.060 But I'm 40 times more sympathetic to the 100,000 oil and gas families

00:16:08.780 who were attacked by Trudeau and Butts and McKenna and Morneau.

00:16:13.940 Oh, yeah, and Jerry Diaz and his dues-paying Unifor union members.

00:16:20.400 Yeah, I'll get around to laying a wreath for those dead jobs in Oshawa

00:16:24.380 once I'm done going through the other 100,000 dead jobs.

00:16:28.260 As the Unifor itself helped cause, without a peep of protest, I should add,

00:16:34.540 from those 2,800 union members whose dues were weaponized against the oil and gas industry.

00:16:42.260 Stay with us for more.

00:16:58.260 Welcome back.

00:17:00.520 Well, one of the quirky things about the Nazi regime in Germany some 70, 80 years ago

00:17:07.020 was that although they were quite murderous, they were against smoking.

00:17:12.460 Hitler in particular, in fact, so much so that for years after the Second World War,

00:17:18.880 Germans associated bans on smoking with Nazism.

00:17:23.160 And so they were one of the last countries in Europe to bring in social justice laws against smoking.

00:17:29.600 Hitler himself was a vegetarian extremist, an animal rights activist, anti-vivisectionist.

00:17:37.440 He held himself to morally exquisite levels on that

00:17:43.620 while he masterminded the murder of tens of millions.

00:17:47.140 Well, I'm interested in a new book that follows on this subject.

00:17:53.220 It's a book written by a rebel viewer from Grand Prairie.

00:17:58.520 It's called The Green Swastika, Environmentalism in the Third Reich. 0.92

00:18:06.180 And it's written by William Kay, who joins us now via Skype.

00:18:11.820 William, it's a pleasure to see you again.

00:18:13.680 We've spoken before about environmentalism.

00:18:16.320 You're the editor of the website Environmentalism is Fascism.

00:18:19.940 So you've been on this beat for a while.

00:18:22.340 I think it would surprise...

00:18:22.980 Over 20 years.

00:18:23.860 Yeah, I know.

00:18:25.620 And you're a meticulous researcher.

00:18:27.740 I think it would surprise a lot of people that the Nazis were environmentalists.

00:18:34.800 I mean, people think of the Nazis as destroyers.

00:18:37.620 Why did they love environmentalism so much?

00:18:39.840 Well, first point, it certainly would not surprise academics.

00:18:45.520 I have condensed over 24 books on my website, published by Princeton, published by Oxford,

00:18:52.600 Cambridge, that really detail this.

00:18:54.980 There's a few books even by the German government that were put out a few years ago to sort of

00:18:59.980 manage this damaging information.

00:19:01.780 But of course, they managed to give even more incriminating information by doing it.

00:19:06.640 So whereas the public at large might not be aware of it, this is not really that debatable

00:19:12.440 within the academic and within the historical community that much.

00:19:16.160 Environmentalists dread this information getting out, and they've gone to great lengths to sort

00:19:20.180 of manage it and suppress it.

00:19:21.620 But this is not really even that controversial.

00:19:24.240 The question was, why the Nazis were green? 0.55

00:19:28.160 Yeah.

00:19:30.360 Well, the key to understanding environmentalism, the key to understanding fascism is to understanding

00:19:36.520 the dynamics of land use politics.

00:19:40.360 And the core of the European fascist movement were the aristocrats.

00:19:45.540 And what they dreaded more than anything else was a free market in land, like capitalism in

00:19:51.280 land, where land would be just any other commodity circulating.

00:19:54.740 These were people that wanted to cartelize land.

00:19:58.120 They were corporatists in general and in land in particular.

00:20:02.440 And so they were the force behind land conservationism.

00:20:06.820 And they were definitely the nucleus of the fascist movement.

00:20:10.400 We should really view fascism of that era as aristocratic restoration.

00:20:17.060 They were trying to regain the powers that they had lost after World War I and return to

00:20:22.100 a far less than democratic system, where these sort of old land barons dominated the political 1.00

00:20:28.420 process.

00:20:29.600 So the connection is really there.

00:20:31.740 It's a violent opposition to free market in land.

00:20:37.340 And it's also an effort by the old land barons to regain political control.

00:20:43.480 That's a surprising answer.

00:20:44.740 I was certain you were going to say two other things.

00:20:47.360 I should say I haven't had the chance to read your book yet.

00:20:49.620 This is just an introduction to it for me.

00:20:51.860 But the more we talk, I'm getting more interested by the minute.

00:20:54.860 I would have thought you would have said, well, Hitler had a hostility towards Christianity,

00:21:02.400 towards the Pope, towards Judaism. 0.59

00:21:04.260 But he had sort of a paganism, an echo from a pre-Christian era.

00:21:11.580 I thought you were going to say that perhaps he would rediscover that paganism through the

00:21:15.840 environment.

00:21:16.720 And I thought at core, well, Hitler was about control and authoritarianism. 0.82

00:21:22.100 And if you control the environment, you control the means of production.

00:21:24.920 You control everything.

00:21:26.260 That would have been my theory.

00:21:27.660 But you're saying it was, I suppose you're saying something similar when you're saying it

00:21:30.580 was about control of land.

00:21:31.580 It was, there's a dynamic tension between the land barons and the entrepreneurs.

00:21:39.280 That was the driving force behind the American Revolution, behind the French Revolution.

00:21:43.760 But picking up on what you're saying about the religion of nature, officially, the Third

00:21:50.460 Reich remained ostensibly a Christian country.

00:21:56.080 They got what referred to as positive Christianity.

00:21:58.460 There were a lot of Lutheran ministers that supported them.

00:22:01.520 They had very difficult relations with the Catholic Church.

00:22:04.880 But nevertheless, they got a lot of support from that as well.

00:22:07.960 But the Nazi elite, the vanguard, you are correct. 0.94

00:22:11.200 These were people who were anti-Christian.

00:22:13.340 And they wanted to replace Christianity with a religion of nature.

00:22:17.240 But this was more of a cultural epiphenomenal thing.

00:22:20.360 I will say this in passing.

00:22:21.700 There is an encyclopedia called the Encyclopedia of the Religion of Nature.

00:22:28.240 And it came together by a bunch of academics who, for other reasons, realized that there

00:22:32.920 was a really strong connection between fascism, Nazism, and this nature worshiping.

00:22:38.420 I've read that encyclopedia.

00:22:39.800 And I found over 400 paragraphs and entire entries that deal with the topic of the overlap between

00:22:47.460 Nazism and environmentalism and Nazism and fascism and this religion of nature.

00:22:53.760 And that's one thing you'll find when you actually read a lot of the original fascist and original

00:22:59.700 Nazi writings.

00:23:00.940 It's just full of this mother nature, mother earth, nature in capital and stuff.

00:23:06.380 But that was the Nazi vanguard. 0.83

00:23:09.200 There were certain elements within the Nazi government who were really talking about,

00:23:13.320 you know, replacing Christianity in Germany with a full-blown sort of paganistic, pantheistic

00:23:19.520 religion.

00:23:20.380 But they were shot down.

00:23:21.940 They were proposing that during World War II.

00:23:24.820 And a lot of the other ministers, cabinet ministers, said, no, this is no time to be sort

00:23:28.480 of, you know, monkeying around with that.

00:23:30.680 But yeah, there was this strong element of that.

00:23:33.160 And if you read their literature of the sort of the Nazi vanguard, like Himmler and Rosenberg

00:23:38.280 and that, you'd think you're reading a Greenpeace track, you know.

00:23:42.100 We're talking with William Kay.

00:23:43.560 He's the author of The Green Swastika, Environmentalism in the Third Reich.

00:23:47.580 William, I'm still processing what you said about the aristocracy and land.

00:23:55.060 Because in my mind, environmentalism and Marxism are the closest cousins.

00:24:01.380 I don't know if it's a coincidence, but Earth Day, for example, just happens to be Lenin's

00:24:07.260 birthday, if I'm not mistaken.

00:24:09.480 And there's so many, you know, we've heard the phrase watermelon, green on the outside,

00:24:14.780 red on the inside.

00:24:15.860 It's the catch-all excuse for nationalizing things.

00:24:19.660 I thought that, you know, the Marxists would have been the environmentalists.

00:24:26.240 I suppose in his own way, I mean, Hitler was a national socialist. 0.66

00:24:32.040 Can you compare the Nazi environmentalism with Marxism or Leninism? 0.74

00:24:39.880 They really are not connected.

00:24:44.320 They're actually polar opposites.

00:24:46.240 In every fascist regime, the first thing they did was annihilate the far left.

00:24:50.820 It's difficult for people who have come through the Cold War.

00:24:54.800 They tend to view any effort towards some sort of highly statist authoritarian system

00:25:00.220 as a movement towards socialism.

00:25:03.100 Now, at the core of the Nazi party, you would find some of the wealthiest of the Germans. 0.68

00:25:07.900 And you'll see this again with the environmental movement.

00:25:10.720 If you look at the boards of directors of the main funding agencies and what have you,

00:25:15.340 these aren't the, you know, the working class rising up.

00:25:17.900 These are elite groups that would be militantly opposed to any sort of sweeping expropriation

00:25:22.960 of their assets.

00:25:24.400 You have to think in terms of threes.

00:25:26.280 People are trapped in a binary of a sort of right-left.

00:25:29.240 There is multiple political ideologies out there.

00:25:32.820 Corporatism, fascism.

00:25:34.220 It represents a section of very wealthy people, certainly not all of them, that want to see

00:25:41.740 a highly centralized, highly regulated form of government.

00:25:45.140 But they are actually militantly, violently opposed to the left.

00:25:48.780 You know, time and again, when you have a fascist regime come into power, first thing they do

00:25:54.120 is round up the left.

00:25:55.700 The first concentration camp in Germany, Dachau, was for the left.

00:25:59.620 They had, you know, 15,000, 20,000 people in prison within months, and those were all people

00:26:04.100 who were members of leftist organizations.

00:26:06.900 No, there's multiple political tendencies out there.

00:26:10.240 There's a very common mistake these days to confuse the radical left with the environmental

00:26:16.220 movement.

00:26:17.200 To make it even more confusing, a lot of fascist groups historically have masqueraded as leftist

00:26:23.340 organizations, and they have a certain amount of leftist verbiage in their titles and names

00:26:28.280 and what have you.

00:26:28.880 But these are quite distinct political traditions.

00:26:31.660 You know, you're making me think of some Soviet propaganda.

00:26:35.860 There was always the factory and get production up.

00:26:39.400 I mean, one thing I say to the modern left is at least the communists believed in the means

00:26:44.440 of production.

00:26:45.120 They believed in the factories.

00:26:46.200 They just wanted the factories owned by the state.

00:26:50.040 I suppose today's far left, they don't want the factories at all.

00:26:53.220 They want to shut down the coal-fired power plant.

00:26:55.480 They want to shut down the factories. 0.64

00:26:57.600 I suppose that's one difference.

00:26:59.820 But maybe, let me follow up on your theme.

00:27:02.320 I see so many of the funders of the extreme environmental movements, and they are the Rockefeller

00:27:10.320 Brothers Fund, you know, perhaps the wealthiest family in history.

00:27:14.500 And so many of these ultra-rich heirs, not the first generation entrepreneurs who, like the

00:27:22.760 Carnegie's and whatnot, but two, three, four generations down, yeah, they are extremists.

00:27:32.680 If you look at most of the environmentalist money coming into Canada, it's not moms and 0.75

00:27:37.640 dads chipping in 20 bucks, 50 bucks.

00:27:39.980 It's foreign foundations chipping in six, seven, even eight figures.

00:27:44.480 And that is one of the features that it shares with fascism.

00:27:51.440 There's this myth that fascism was this plebeian uprising.

00:27:55.000 It never was.

00:27:57.700 That information has been concealed.

00:27:59.960 There is a priceless book called The Reich and the Royals, and it was published by Oxford

00:28:04.580 in 2005, and it concludes with a list of all of the German princes who were members of the

00:28:12.480 Nazi party.

00:28:13.320 And that information was not revealed until 2005.

00:28:16.920 And the list of princes who were members of the Nazi party was 290.

00:28:22.260 And the author of that book was a detective with these groups that are still looking for

00:28:26.840 the looted art of Europe.

00:28:28.700 A third of all the artwork in France was stolen during World War II.

00:28:32.080 That happened in other countries as well.

00:28:34.560 They're still looking for this art.

00:28:36.080 And some of the detectives involved in investigating that ultimately got access to some of the databases

00:28:41.320 that some of the army intelligence people had.

00:28:44.260 And yeah, sure enough, the German aristocracy were almost to a person active members of fascist 0.72

00:28:51.720 organizations and the Nazi party itself.

00:28:54.540 And if you look at who was the center of the social nucleus of the German conservationist movement,

00:29:00.260 the nature protection movement, it's the same list of people.

00:29:04.180 Now, your book's 185 pages long, 400 footnotes.

00:29:06.980 Would you call it a scholarly work or is it more a work for interested lay people?

00:29:12.420 You've referred to a lot of studies and a lot of research.

00:29:15.200 What's your goal with this book?

00:29:18.200 Well, I believe in exposing and opposing environmentalism.

00:29:21.660 I'm someone who lives in Western Canada.

00:29:24.000 The biggest political problem we have in Canada, in North America, and in many other places

00:29:29.100 in the world is the suppression of economic activity by the environmental movement.

00:29:35.340 And one of the mechanisms by which they curry favor amongst the masses is a sort of masquerading

00:29:41.020 as somehow a voice of the people, what have you.

00:29:43.780 No, this is a very elite groups of people that have no interest in seeing the hinterland develop

00:29:49.520 whatsoever.

00:29:51.120 And, you know, we would be really experiencing a tremendous economic boom in prosperity in

00:29:56.420 North America, but for the activities of the international environmental movement.

00:30:01.980 These are people who seriously do not care about the general prosperity, the general well-being

00:30:07.940 of the broader masses.

00:30:10.120 Let me ask you one last question about that and to move away from your book, which is historical,

00:30:15.260 to talk about the world today, I think Donald Trump smashed a lot of the illusion of unanimity

00:30:23.780 on global warming, carbon taxes, the United Nations, globalism.

00:30:28.880 I think he's being undermined in terms of the bureaucracy of the United States, but he's at

00:30:35.220 least made it acceptable to challenge rhetorically what was going on.

00:30:40.200 And I think on the ground, he's, you know, he's roaring back with a fossil fuel-based economy.

00:30:49.260 Is the environmental movement around the world in retreat, whether it's China or the removal

00:30:58.900 of the massive solar and wind subsidies in Europe?

00:31:02.940 It seems to me that the only place that this carbon tax global warming mania still takes

00:31:08.640 hold is in the academy or the UN or, I suppose, Justin Trudeau's cabinet.

00:31:13.760 It seems to me like that the rest of the world doesn't actually live that creed.

00:31:17.640 Am I wrong?

00:31:19.380 Well, there's a number of points there.

00:31:21.220 A lot of the, you know, countries like India and China, they bought into it.

00:31:25.640 They paid lip service to it because they knew that they would not have to actually do anything.

00:31:29.720 The global warming campaign is centered around Europe.

00:31:34.320 It is centered around Germany and France and Sweden and Denmark and countries that do not 0.91

00:31:38.740 have any fossil fuels.

00:31:40.540 And they are determined to transition the entire world away from fossil fuels and to be on the

00:31:45.800 ground floor of the wind, solar, electric car industries for this new future world.

00:31:51.720 Um, I'll say this about Trump.

00:31:55.800 You know, I've never was so happy in my life regarding a political event as when he was

00:32:00.820 elected.

00:32:01.200 And I'm someone who came out of, you know, decades ago of being in the very far left.

00:32:06.740 No greater slander out there than to accuse Trump and the Brexiteers and the populist movement

00:32:13.660 as being, as being fascist.

00:32:15.780 And they are often tarred with that.

00:32:17.260 They're called right wing and what have you.

00:32:19.040 We were well on our way down the road towards a uniparty system, which is basically a one

00:32:25.160 party state with a media party, as you call it, which was basically turning into a ministry

00:32:30.400 of propaganda with a deep state.

00:32:32.920 These are all features of fascist regimes.

00:32:36.120 And we were way down the road towards that being really locked down.

00:32:40.480 The populist movement, the Trumpeteers, the Brexiteers, this is an anti-fascist movement.

00:32:46.500 And I think that is a message that has to get out there.

00:32:50.840 And a lot of them, because they were politically socialized during the Cold War, they tend to

00:32:55.860 formulate what they're doing as though they're fighting against the left.

00:32:59.040 The left is almost insignificant in this.

00:33:02.320 You know, the Rideau Club, the Laurier Club, what have you, these are not leftists at all.

00:33:06.100 These are corporatists.

00:33:07.120 These are elitists.

00:33:07.940 These are authoritarians who want to just sort of lock down this existing system and exclude

00:33:13.420 any sort of diversity of opinion.

00:33:16.780 Well, very interesting.

00:33:18.480 William Kay is the author of The Green Swastika, Environmentalism in the Third Reich.

00:33:22.960 I'm familiar with William's work and his meticulously documented website, Environmentalism

00:33:29.160 is Fascism, which is fascinating reading for those who are interested in the subject.

00:33:34.240 William, thanks for your time.

00:33:35.380 You've convinced me to download the book.

00:33:37.720 And I should have done that before our interview today.

00:33:39.560 I just didn't have time to read it, but I wanted to get you on.

00:33:42.240 It's like you gave me a primer to get going on the book, because I am interested in the

00:33:47.680 subject, and I'm interested in environmental extremism, and I am curious, as I think so

00:33:52.720 many are, about how things went so wrong in Europe 70, 80 years ago.

00:33:59.160 It'll be interesting to see the crossover.

00:34:00.700 Thanks for your time today.

00:34:02.780 My pleasure.

00:34:03.420 All right.

00:34:04.540 Well, we'll put a link to the Amazon page for The Green Swastika underneath this video

00:34:11.120 if you're interested in following up with the book as well.

00:34:14.440 Stay with us.

00:34:15.420 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:34:27.700 Hey, welcome back.

00:34:28.620 On my monologue and interview yesterday about General Motors closing its Oshawa plant,

00:34:32.120 Betty writes.

00:34:34.080 At least now Jerry Diaz has some real work to do, trying to salvage his union members'

00:34:38.080 jobs instead of focusing on being the political resistance to conservatives.

00:34:42.460 Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if he can wring more money out of Justin Trudeau.

00:34:46.800 Wouldn't surprise me.

00:34:47.800 I mean, it's a tit for tat.

00:34:49.600 He'll campaign for Trudeau.

00:34:50.920 He'll get his journalists in the journalism side of his union to campaign for Trudeau.

00:34:55.460 I mean, he just got a $595 million slush fund, so he's going to have to work extra hard for,

00:35:02.240 I don't know, an extra billion for that plant, but he'll work at it.

00:35:05.000 And I'm sure Trudeau will say yes, why wouldn't he?

00:35:07.560 It's only money.

00:35:09.740 Jerry writes,

00:35:10.340 I don't understand where you're coming from from that.

00:35:28.220 I just don't get it.

00:35:30.060 But I think that's, I think we just need more independent journalists of the left and the

00:35:38.180 right persuasion, I suppose, independent, neutral.

00:35:42.120 You can't be an independent journalist if you're cashing a check from Trudeau, though.

00:35:44.860 That's my point.

00:35:46.000 I mean, whatever you say about Fox, they're not on the Trump payroll.

00:35:49.140 They may seem like it because they support Trump, but they're not actually cashing a check

00:35:53.940 from Trump.

00:35:54.540 Every CBC journalist cashed a check from Trudeau, and now $595 million worth of private journalism

00:36:02.020 will cash a check from Trudeau, too.

00:36:05.460 Norbert writes,

00:36:06.760 Good reporting, Ezra.

00:36:07.960 In the 70s, I was both a member of the UAW and the CAW.

00:36:11.560 We had some great leadership with Bob White and then Buzz Hargrove.

00:36:14.740 I was greatly distraught when CAW came under the umbrella of Unifor.

00:36:17.980 The moniker Unifor does not inspire much confidence in the auto sector, neither does the current

00:36:25.980 president.

00:36:27.680 Well, look, I just don't know enough about internal union politics.

00:36:33.480 I know that there was a compilation of the communications and electrical workers and the

00:36:43.380 auto workers, and it was sort of a big amalgam.

00:36:46.940 So I don't know which tribe Jerry Diaz comes from.

00:36:52.360 There's a certain point where the size of your caucus, let's say, the size of your coalition,

00:36:58.860 means if you're fighting for one, you're fighting against the other.

00:37:01.580 I mean, that whole anti-oil sands crusade that Jerry Diaz has been on,

00:37:06.900 there are Unifor workers in Fort McMurray in the oil patch.

00:37:11.300 How can they countenance this?

00:37:13.720 How can they lie back and take it?

00:37:15.240 And frankly, how could auto workers support an anti-fossil fuel campaign?

00:37:22.340 Even if it was in the near term, aimed only at those Westerners in the oil patch,

00:37:29.580 surely the dues-paying Unifor members in Oshawa would know that if you build up hatred for oil

00:37:38.120 and gas, it'll eventually seep into machines that use oil and gas, like cars.

00:37:44.960 I don't know.

00:37:46.100 But of course, we'll have 2,800 people with a lot of time on their hands to think about that for a while.

00:37:50.740 That's our show for today.

00:37:52.460 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.

00:37:56.420 Keep fighting for free.

00:37:57.320 Keep fighting for free.

00:38:17.840 Keep fighting for free.

Rebel News Podcast - November 28, 2018

It's sad that GM's factory in Oshawa is closing — but why did their union work to block Alberta pipelines？

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