Rebel News Podcast - SPECIAL： Pamela Geller on Islam, Trump, social media and free speech

00:00:00.000 Tonight, we speak with a freedom fighter who's been in this battle for 17 years.

00:00:04.980 It's Christmas Eve, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:13.420 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:17.200 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:20.940 You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.

00:00:24.260 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it

00:00:27.920 is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:34.840 Welcome back.

00:00:35.700 Well, over the Christmas break, we are doing a series of interviews,

00:00:39.460 extended interviews, semi-biographical in nature, with some of our favorite newsmakers.

00:00:45.360 Some of them are pundits, some of them are political actors,

00:00:48.380 some of them are people who come on our show from time to time.

00:00:50.860 And our next guest is someone we haven't spoken to in a while,

00:00:53.880 but I was just reminiscing with her that back at the Sun News Network,

00:00:57.760 I think it was in 2014 or something, we called her our Freedom Fighter of the Year.

00:01:05.220 So let's check in with her to see the state of freedom in 2018.

00:01:10.760 I'm talking, of course, about our friend Pamela Geller,

00:01:13.620 who is an activist, a columnist, a fighter, a pundit,

00:01:18.680 and the editor of GellerReport.com.

00:01:21.500 She joins me now via Skype.

00:01:22.840 Pamela, great to see you again.

00:01:24.580 Thank you for having me, Ezra.

00:01:25.800 Well, it's a pleasure, and you are one of the bravest fighters out there.

00:01:31.800 I got to know you in part when you were fighting against the massive victory mosque 1.00

00:01:38.720 that was being planned for the actual site of the 9-11 attack.

00:01:44.800 And I have to tell you, I didn't think you could stop it.

00:01:47.800 I didn't think you could stop that mosque from being built.

00:01:50.640 They had the property.

00:01:51.500 They were getting the zoning.

00:01:52.820 They were politically correct.

00:01:54.060 But you managed to stop the victory mosque at the 9-11 World Trade Center. 0.98

00:01:59.080 I think it's a great example of what one person can do.

00:02:03.460 Because as you know, President Obama at the time had supported it very publicly at the Iftar dinner.

00:02:09.100 Mayor Bloomberg, the New York City mayor at the time, had his administration helping them,

00:02:15.780 filling out the paperwork for funding and so on and so forth.

00:02:18.820 But 40,000 people showed up on September 11th to protest the triumphal mosque.

00:02:26.480 And public opinion does matter.

00:02:29.220 It does make a difference.

00:02:30.320 And that mosque was not built.

00:02:32.560 And imagine what a symbol that would have been to the global jihad movement.

00:02:36.940 It certainly would have usurped the burning towers, which is on many of their patches,

00:02:43.580 as the symbol of Islamic supremacism and Islamic victory.

00:02:49.000 So these, you know, people think, what can I do?

00:02:52.640 Why should I go?

00:02:53.960 It matters.

00:02:55.640 It really matters.

00:02:56.640 And particularly now, with the election of President Trump, which has activated the leftists

00:03:05.220 in such a way that, on the one hand, I've seen a serious encroachment on our freedoms.

00:03:11.900 On the other hand, they've really taken off the mask.

00:03:16.200 They've really shown people what they are.

00:03:19.020 And I think the American people, and actually freedom-loving peoples all over the world,

00:03:23.080 Canada, and Europe, for the first time, are seeing how malevolent this dogma, this ideology

00:03:30.140 really is.

00:03:31.320 And so, you know, there's a yin and there's a yang in this.

00:03:34.880 It's certainly what we're seeing happen on social media.

00:03:38.240 And, you know, I filed suit against social media in 2016.

00:03:43.340 I filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice.

00:03:46.560 Why the Department of Justice?

00:03:47.700 Because under Section 230 of the FEC code, the Department of Justice grants, the U.S.

00:03:54.640 government grants immunity to social media giants from First Amendment lawsuits, which

00:04:00.460 is why no one has been successful.

00:04:02.760 I've seen these lawsuits subsequent to mine.

00:04:04.780 They sound very good on paper.

00:04:07.080 But they have immunity.

00:04:10.000 And we need that immunity lifted.

00:04:11.560 Because today, social media is the public square.

00:04:15.240 You're so right.

00:04:17.220 The Supreme Court itself has said so.

00:04:20.500 The Silicon Valley billionaires say so in a bragging way.

00:04:26.060 And I had forgotten that you had filed that.

00:04:28.540 So we've spoken with tech writers like Alan Bokhari of Breitbart, who I think is the world's

00:04:34.700 leading journalist about the abuses and censorship in Silicon Valley.

00:04:39.220 And that's Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

00:04:42.400 You're right, that is the key legal protection that lets these companies get away with it.

00:04:47.040 But let me back up a little bit, because you jumped ahead to something I was going to

00:04:50.240 get to.

00:04:51.360 Back in the 2010s, early 2010s, or even before that, you and I were on one side of the spectrum,

00:05:01.460 and then there was the other side of the debate, and there was debates back and forth.

00:05:04.660 And people maybe called each other names or whatnot.

00:05:06.980 But there was a debate, and both sides were allowed to have their say.

00:05:12.620 I think something changed, like a switch was flipped or something, and it moved from debating

00:05:20.160 these issues to you can't even talk about it.

00:05:24.640 And instead of trying to rebut you, people would de-platform you, you in particular, and

00:05:30.880 me too, here at The Rebel.

00:05:32.120 What caused the change?

00:05:34.460 When did the left stop debating and start silencing?

00:05:39.840 Well, the left's ideas cannot stand up to scrutiny and cannot stand up to challenge.

00:05:47.200 And so it is essential, if they are to win, and they do mean to win at any cost, that they

00:05:53.100 shut us down.

00:05:53.900 I remember during the Ground Zero mosque controversy, where I was on television really all the time,

00:06:02.420 where Media Matters, a Soros-funded, quote-unquote, think tank, when in fact Media Matters is nothing

00:06:08.440 more than a leftist smear machine, put out an edict.

00:06:15.560 And it was, the headline was, to all national media, stop having Pamela Geller on television.

00:06:21.660 And I was scheduled to be on Chris Matthews that night, and I was canceled.

00:06:27.180 And I was never, with the exception of Fox, ever on any other channels again, until, of

00:06:34.620 course, jihadists opened fire on me at an event I was holding in Garland, Texas, a free 1.00

00:06:42.480 speech event in support of the Hebdo, the Charlie Hebdo slain journalists and cartoonists.

00:06:49.480 So that, I mean, that was the first ISIS attack on American soil, and so they had to cover

00:06:55.300 it.

00:06:55.860 And of course, they had me on to attack me and tell me how wrong I was for standing for

00:07:00.360 the freedom of speech.

00:07:01.500 Yes, I'm all for freedom of speech, but there's no buts, okay?

00:07:06.880 And so that's why you see that.

00:07:10.980 And of course, it started with myself, and it started with you, and it started with Spencer,

00:07:16.140 Robert Spencer, and of course, those on the right, the trimmers, and the feats, and those

00:07:22.000 that only go so far, were like, well, you know, it's okay.

00:07:27.060 It's Geller.

00:07:27.640 It's okay.

00:07:28.340 But what they don't understand is that it starts with us.

00:07:31.460 It doesn't end with us.

00:07:33.000 It's like John Stossel on Twitter was shocked.

00:07:35.820 He was shocked that YouTube had demonetized his videos, and Prager, they're taking his videos

00:07:41.820 down, he's been demonetized.

00:07:44.440 This is how it begins.

00:07:45.960 The historical examples are numerous, Ezra.

00:07:49.200 Yeah.

00:07:49.880 Well, you know, I used to work for John O'Sullivan, the great newspaper editor, and he's a think

00:07:54.820 tanker in Hungary now.

00:07:56.560 And he always said, it's easier to fight in the first ditch than in the last ditch.

00:08:02.680 And I think about that a lot, because a lot of people say, well, you know, Ezra's a little

00:08:08.180 bit out there, and Pamela Geller, ooh, she's a little too blunt, and can you just be a 0.91

00:08:12.520 little bit more, you know, finessed?

00:08:15.220 And so because they don't fight in the first ditch, okay, well, now the front line is 100

00:08:20.360 feet closer to you, and now it's 100 feet closer.

00:08:23.600 And it really is, the trench warfare analogy fits.

00:08:26.920 And if you don't fight in that first ditch, well, the trench keeps moving towards you, and

00:08:30.300 pretty soon you're engulfed by it.

00:08:32.480 Exactly.

00:08:32.940 We are battle-hardoned, and what the newbies, the tremors, are experiencing now, we have

00:08:42.700 been through.

00:08:43.800 You know, we are the best fighters there are.

00:08:46.340 And sadly, there are only a handful of us now, because they have systematically dismantled

00:08:54.300 this movement.

00:08:55.620 Anyone who got involved in this fight, no matter how small, I'm talking about the smallest

00:09:00.180 bloggers, I'm talking about a Twitter account with a significant following, like an Amy

00:09:05.800 Meck, everyone.

00:09:08.740 And I saw this as far back as 2005.

00:09:12.760 2005, I had the blog, I guess, which was Atlas Shrugs at the time, it's the same site, it's

00:09:19.060 just evolved to GellerReport.com, where they took my site, Atlas Shrugs, this is the left,

00:09:27.520 they created a mirror site called Atlas Shrugs, and they photoshopped me in sexual positions 0.89

00:09:34.600 with senior Bush officials and Glenn Reynolds, it was absurd, it was obscene, it was sick. 0.56

00:09:40.860 And I was, at the time, really no one.

00:09:43.880 I mean, I had a small little following, but they nip it in the bud.

00:09:48.220 It is an enormous machine.

00:09:50.880 And of course, if you talk this way, you are a conspiracy theorist.

00:09:55.260 But the fact is, there's conspiracy theory, and there's conspiracy fact.

00:09:59.580 And one only has to look at what has been done to President Trump to see this method of

00:10:07.260 warfare in full bloom, in full operation.

00:10:10.860 It's funny you say that.

00:10:11.960 A couple weeks ago, the head of Google went to a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill and

00:10:19.540 was asked how much money the Russians spent on Google in the 2016 election campaign, and

00:10:27.280 he had an answer at his fingertips.

00:10:29.200 The answer, he said, was $4,700.

00:10:33.560 That's it.

00:10:34.180 So that's the mania of the media party over that.

00:10:40.160 But much more important is the meddling when YouTube, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple,

00:10:47.140 iTunes take someone like Alex Jones of InfoWars, and you can take him or leave him, you can

00:10:52.860 like him or dislike him.

00:10:54.140 But which meddled in politics more when you spend $4,700 on Google ads, which is nothing.

00:11:02.040 It's a molecule in the ocean, or banning entire voices.

00:11:07.160 Milo Yiannopoulos, again, you can like him or hate him, but he's banned now.

00:11:10.720 Gavin McInnes, like him or hate him.

00:11:12.440 He's banned now.

00:11:13.360 Laura Loomer, banned now.

00:11:15.140 Some of these people are personal friends.

00:11:16.900 Others, I just know of them.

00:11:18.120 I don't agree with every word they say, but they're banned.

00:11:20.700 Russia never banned an American from the media.

00:11:24.340 No.

00:11:24.740 I mean, look, that's one giant myth.

00:11:28.000 They thought for sure they were going to win.

00:11:29.760 They never thought for a second that Hillary was not going to be president of the United

00:11:34.440 States.

00:11:35.400 And so they, you know, it's all a distraction.

00:11:38.420 It's this huge deflection from what they did, from their treasonous activities during the

00:11:44.880 run-up to the election.

00:11:46.320 And what they wanted to do, of course, was to tie President Trump's hands so that he couldn't,

00:11:51.820 you know, he was so distracted he couldn't enact his policies.

00:11:54.700 But bravo to President Trump, because I can say this without compunction that he is the

00:12:01.400 greatest president of my lifetime.

00:12:03.760 We needed a fierce fighter.

00:12:07.320 I mean, I'm sorry, but Romney, McCain, these were weak sisters.

00:12:12.060 I think these were 20th century candidates.

00:12:14.980 And this is a 21st century war in the information battle space.

00:12:19.100 And honestly, all we have is our individual voices.

00:12:22.820 And all we have to reach our readers, our followers, our supporters, are our social media

00:12:29.060 channels.

00:12:29.760 Listen, the million and a half, and it's just Pamela Geller page, it's not SIA and AFTI

00:12:35.580 and the other organizations.

00:12:37.160 I have about six or seven on Facebook, for example.

00:12:40.980 But the million and a half, these people chose to follow me.

00:12:45.700 I didn't make them follow me.

00:12:47.300 Nobody automatically followed me.

00:12:49.040 There is no such mechanism for such things.

00:12:50.600 These people chose to follow me.

00:12:52.240 So it's interesting that Facebook is upending its very mission.

00:12:58.080 Its very mission by objective is sharing.

00:13:00.920 The whole point of Facebook is, hey, to a friend, look at me.

00:13:04.700 I'm at a party.

00:13:05.420 Look at me.

00:13:06.300 Look at this.

00:13:07.160 I don't agree with this.

00:13:08.140 Or look at this.

00:13:08.680 This is outrageous.

00:13:09.540 Or whatever.

00:13:10.620 It's to share.

00:13:11.340 And so once you stop allowing the sharing, I mean, they're literally shooting themselves,

00:13:18.560 not in the foot.

00:13:19.440 They're shooting themselves in the heart. 0.98

00:13:21.380 They will go down. 0.74

00:13:23.040 Well, let me interrupt you on that.

00:13:24.960 Because we're on YouTube, which is owned by Google.

00:13:29.320 And one day in January, February 2017, they just cut off our ad money.

00:13:36.900 They just cut us off.

00:13:38.260 Yeah.

00:13:38.380 We were doing great.

00:13:39.880 It was enough to almost pay our bills.

00:13:43.060 I understand.

00:13:43.840 And I spoke with three different Google executives.

00:13:46.320 I even went to their headquarters here in Toronto.

00:13:48.140 And they basically didn't deny anything.

00:13:51.600 Their explanations weren't persuasive.

00:13:55.020 They had three different people told me three different things.

00:13:57.220 But what I got from them is they could not care less.

00:14:00.980 Because they make their money from makeup videos and from cute kittens videos and from music videos.

00:14:09.640 And, you know, political commentary is a rounding error for them most of the time.

00:14:15.620 So when you say shoot themselves in the foot or the heart, you and I think so because we think free speech is the lifeblood of the social media.

00:14:23.220 But what about the alternative answer, Pamela, that you and I are outliers?

00:14:30.960 Anyone watching this video is unusual because most people are just playing a video game, watching a movie, you know, having a nonpolitical life.

00:14:41.400 Agreed. Agreed.

00:14:44.040 It definitely takes time.

00:14:46.260 There's no question about it.

00:14:47.940 But people are absolutely beginning to see this in the daily social fabric of their lives.

00:14:54.980 What I mean by that is people on Facebook who see a news story that surprises them and shares it.

00:15:03.540 They're not necessarily political, but somehow it came up vis-a-vis a friend or so on and so forth.

00:15:08.160 And they share it and suddenly they're in Facebook jail.

00:15:11.400 Or suddenly they're blocked.

00:15:13.560 It's happening to regular people.

00:15:16.440 And what they're also witnessing in the pop culture that you refer to is their peers being silenced.

00:15:25.120 Their peers.

00:15:25.860 But Kevin Hart was, you know, blackballed for tweets he made I don't know how many years ago and I don't know how many apologies ago,

00:15:35.680 which resigned from doing the Oscars.

00:15:38.380 But this is not exceptional.

00:15:39.880 This is now almost every day somebody else has been banned or somebody else has been taken out.

00:15:45.800 I mean, look, as you said, we can disagree.

00:15:48.520 But this is Nazi-esque.

00:15:50.880 The burning of books, the silencing of ideas, the voluntary press restrictions that we see in the media.

00:16:01.620 We know this is this is not static.

00:16:04.800 This situation is fluid.

00:16:06.900 And we have enough historical examples to know where this is going.

00:16:11.220 And so we have to fight all that much harder.

00:16:13.860 I know people get tired.

00:16:15.260 I understand that people are fatigued.

00:16:17.280 Listen, I've been doing this since 9-11.

00:16:18.840 And if you told me on 9-12, 2001, that those standing in defense of freedom and those who opposed jihad slaughter would be the ones who are marginalized or the word you use was outliers or pariahs.

00:16:36.560 I would have I would have had you baker acted.

00:16:39.540 But it goes to show you how powerful and inside the left, the hard left is and has been for some time.

00:16:46.920 Because let's be honest, in the case of Sharia and the Sharia restrictions on our society, without their partners on the left, they could never have gotten so far. 0.97

00:16:57.980 I do lay this all at the feet of the left.

00:17:01.140 And so this is our job, Ezra.

00:17:04.280 I mean, our job is to create awareness and to educate, educate, educate.

00:17:09.560 It is slow and it is painful.

00:17:11.200 And we were getting increasing numbers.

00:17:17.960 And there's no question we were reaching a tipping point, which is why you saw the gavel come down.

00:17:23.160 How do I know that we're reaching the tipping point?

00:17:25.080 Apart from my own numbers, which were hundreds of thousands of viewers and readers a day, it was the election of President Trump.

00:17:32.300 He had everything, everyone, everything going against him.

00:17:36.360 Everything, except the common man, except Joe Sickpack, except the blogs.

00:17:43.800 Everyone against him, but the people, as they say.

00:17:46.460 You know, you remind me that your story is very interesting, how you were a severely normal person until 9-11.

00:17:56.180 Remind our viewers that.

00:17:57.240 I mean, I could paraphrase it, but why don't you tell us?

00:17:59.420 I mean, I think a lot of our viewers know you and love you, but remind us how you became a warrior princess, because before 9-11, you were not.

00:18:08.980 No, I was really not political.

00:18:11.120 Before 9-11, I was your quintessential New York City career girl.

00:18:15.440 I loved my job.

00:18:16.940 I was the associate publisher of the New York Observer.

00:18:19.360 I loved my life.

00:18:20.300 I loved my art, my music, my fashion.

00:18:22.440 I loved my city.

00:18:24.040 I really loved my city and New York.

00:18:26.100 And I was apolitical.

00:18:28.260 I lived in a sort of, I guess, a post-historical mindset, where the good cop was on the beat.

00:18:33.960 You know, the good guy beat the evil, the Nazis. 0.90

00:18:39.400 And I was not political at all.

00:18:43.480 I assumed my freedom.

00:18:45.220 I didn't even question it.

00:18:46.620 I never thought it could even be remotely in jeopardy.

00:18:49.640 I mean, even as a kid, we used to have a thing where if you're fighting with someone and they'd say, you can't do that.

00:18:53.800 There was a line.

00:18:55.500 It's a free country, isn't it?

00:18:57.340 That was a line when we were a kid.

00:18:59.200 I mean, it was just part of our DNA, freedom.

00:19:02.360 And then 9-11 happened.

00:19:04.380 And I was shocked.

00:19:07.300 I mean, my whole premise of my thinking, my whole epistemology was wrong.

00:19:14.400 That freedom was not free.

00:19:16.560 And that you cannot assume your freedom.

00:19:18.660 And so I set about to understand what happened because I didn't understand what happened.

00:19:22.260 I didn't know who had attacked us or why.

00:19:24.900 And when I found out, I didn't understand this ideology.

00:19:29.120 I did not understand the jihadic doctrine.

00:19:31.060 And I began reading ferociously, you know, Bache Orr and Ibn Warwick and Robert Spencer.

00:19:38.520 And the media wasn't talking about this at all.

00:19:41.340 And this, to me, at the time was like the 800-pound elephant in the room.

00:19:44.280 And increasingly, I found myself online because that was the only place where it was being discussed in an open forum, good, bad, and indifferent.

00:19:54.780 And the thing about online voices is after a while, you get to know who's who, whose sources are credible, whose stories are credible, whose sources, who doesn't source, who says crazy things.

00:20:09.200 I mean, it doesn't take long, really, just basic common sense.

00:20:13.860 And so that's how it really started for me.

00:20:16.460 I would comment on these account to jihad sites, some that don't exist anymore.

00:20:21.860 But the comment sections were more lively than the posts themselves.

00:20:25.180 The comment sections were everything.

00:20:26.560 And one time, I think it was a university student at Cornell, sent me the template for a blog and said, you should start blogging.

00:20:33.600 And I'm like, what's a blog?

00:20:34.940 And he said, shut up and start writing. 0.89

00:20:38.300 I remember that. 0.97

00:20:39.580 And I did.

00:20:40.480 I started Atlas Shrugs.

00:20:41.620 And everything that people know about me, whether it was the ads or the ads that I did or the fight for Rivka Barry or the Ground Zero mosque or the lawsuits or the Muhammad art exhibit, everything came from the site.

00:20:55.400 It was all organic.

00:20:56.880 People say you're a provocateur.

00:20:58.320 I am not.

00:20:59.740 I mean, I would see signs in the New York City subway, these vicious anti-Semitic, these anti-Israel signs, posters on buses and in the subway.

00:21:09.340 And I thought, this is outrageous.

00:21:11.840 So I created my own ads.

00:21:14.500 And I never foresaw what would happen.

00:21:17.180 I didn't see that they were going to reject me because it was somehow saying, in any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man, support Israel, defeat jihad.

00:21:29.220 And, of course, I was cribbing from Ayn Rand on that civilized man statement that it would be rejected by New York City.

00:21:35.900 And I would sue.

00:21:37.400 And I would win.

00:21:38.600 And then that became news.

00:21:40.340 And the ads went up. 0.88

00:21:42.000 And the left and Islamic supremacists went nuts.

00:21:47.660 A popular Egyptian columnist, Mona El-Tahawi, was spray painting them, you know, in the New York City subway, got arrested.

00:21:58.320 The New York Post happened to be there.

00:21:59.860 I got shots of her being arrested.

00:22:01.120 She's screaming like a mad woman. 1.00

00:22:02.360 And I became something of a, you know, a switch, a switch for people.

00:22:10.120 And this continued.

00:22:12.260 Rifka Barry, again, that started with a story where I read that a girl was missing and a couple of her friends wrote me and said we're really worried about her.

00:22:20.580 And I remember writing to Robert Spencer at the time.

00:22:22.640 And I said, you think she's alive?

00:22:24.160 And he said, they never are.

00:22:27.300 And she was.

00:22:28.680 She turned up in Florida.

00:22:29.880 And then this thing becomes this huge story because CARE, the terrorist-type co-conspirators, unindicted co-conspirators, were trying, working with the family, to try to bring her back to this house where she had been threatened with her life.

00:22:45.620 She had converted out of Islam, kept it a secret for three years.

00:22:49.280 The mosque, the Noah mosque, her family's mosque, had spied on her and found out she had converted on Facebook, if I'm not mistaken, and her father threatened to kill her.

00:22:59.080 And so, yeah, that became a big fight for me was to keep this girl alive.

00:23:03.420 And, again, it's always the people.

00:23:05.760 I mean, I may be a catalyst, but when I said we have to send our Christmas cards, she got thousands and thousands of Christmas cards.

00:23:11.640 That wasn't me.

00:23:12.800 That was people.

00:23:13.520 And while I may have opposed the Ground Zero mosque, it was the 40,000 people that showed up. 0.93

00:23:20.040 It was the people that wrote to their congressmen where it became—listen, I don't know what would happen today, but I can tell you when CNN did a poll on the Ground Zero mosque, 70 percent opposed it.

00:23:31.100 It was deeply offensive.

00:23:32.880 I mean, on its face, it would be like building a Shinto shrine on Pearl Harbor.

00:23:38.540 It's simply not done.

00:23:40.360 Even the Pope withdrew the convent, if you remember.

00:23:44.080 There was a convent being built on the grounds of a concentration camp, and it caused a great deal of consternation and pain, and they withdrew it.

00:23:53.340 It's just a decent human thing to do.

00:23:55.400 But you see, this hypersensitivity that we daily, we are demanded to respect, this hypersensitivity, don't offend Muhammad, don't insult Islam, don't criticize Islam.

00:24:10.340 And if you do, you are wrong.

00:24:11.980 On the flip side, there is no reciprocity.

00:24:14.880 It's just interesting.

00:24:15.700 Of course, it's never pointed out, you see.

00:24:18.120 You know, you made me think of other Ground Zero mosques or Victory mosques.

00:24:24.340 Of course, the magnificent Hagia Sophia Church in Constantinople, once it was conquered by the Turk, it became the Hagia Sophia Mosque of Istanbul.

00:24:37.500 And even in Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount of the Jewish Temple, Islam built its own mosque. 0.97

00:24:46.880 So there is a historic sort of territorial marking of great victories over infidels. 1.00

00:24:53.220 I have no doubt whatsoever that a Muslim mosque at Ground Zero would have been that. 1.00

00:24:58.340 If not expressly, it would have de facto been a Victory Mosque.

00:25:01.160 Well, if I may add one thing to what you just said, I mean, there have been tens of thousands of Hindu temples that have been converted into mosques.

00:25:11.920 It is a conquest.

00:25:15.600 It is the symbol of conquest.

00:25:18.460 Never in the history of Islam, never, has there been a mosque of reconciliation and healing built on the site of a conquered land.

00:25:27.420 Never.

00:25:27.760 I mean, so it's, again, it's just absurd.

00:25:30.520 And, you know, the Hagia Sophia is the exemplar.

00:25:33.920 And so is the Dome.

00:25:34.720 And even more excruciating when it comes to the Temple Mount, which is the holiest Jewish site, is we are told by the Muslim world that we are not allowed, we, and I mean Jews, are not allowed to pray there.

00:25:47.600 Again, the uneven handedness, the stark supremacism that is accepted by the world is what I find even now, even now, 18 years later, astonishing.

00:25:59.420 Yeah.

00:25:59.820 Yeah.

00:26:00.400 You've raised so many things that I want to ask you about, but part of it makes me, I mean, you told me your story of how you transformed after 9-11.

00:26:09.160 I feel like I was sort of woke to these issues even back then.

00:26:14.380 And what I think flipped me into a free speech mode was when I was a publisher of the Western Standard magazine and in February of 2006, we published the Danish cartoons.

00:26:28.560 I remember.

00:26:30.020 And it wasn't on the cover.

00:26:32.240 It wasn't in a show-off-y way.

00:26:33.680 We were a fortnightly magazine.

00:26:35.080 I really, I genuinely thought that by the time our fortnightly mag came out, these would have been published everywhere else, at least in the tabloid Sun newspapers.

00:26:44.980 But it wasn't.

00:26:46.080 And I want to tell you this, I was charged with the Human Rights Commission in 2006.

00:26:53.220 By the time they got around interrogating me, it was 2008.

00:26:56.540 They moved very slowly.

00:26:57.400 But what I want to point out, Pamela, is back then, I had the support, some of it warm, some of it grudging, for even liberals.

00:27:10.200 In fact, I, even our state broadcaster up here, Trudeau CBC back then, obviously it wasn't Trudeau CBC.

00:27:17.860 But even the leftist journalists at the state broadcaster, I wrote a book on the subject, it became a bestseller, it was well-reviewed.

00:27:25.740 I even, you know, in my entire journey, I found only two journalists out of hundreds who criticized my decision to publish them.

00:27:36.380 And in fact, and I'm almost on my point here, there was a survey of working journalists done by Compass.

00:27:42.040 It's a Canadian pollster.

00:27:43.900 Yes, I know.

00:27:44.480 And Compass found that 70%, 7-0% of working journalists, like they phoned up journalists, said that not only did I have the right to publish them, but that their own media ought to have published them too.

00:28:00.040 So support for me was over 90%.

00:28:03.360 I tell you all that because that era is gone.

00:28:08.880 Oh my God.

00:28:09.720 So it's so gone.

00:28:10.820 Go ahead, sorry.

00:28:12.080 No, it's so gone.

00:28:13.260 Wait, I'll give you an even starker comparison.

00:28:17.220 1979, Salman Rushdie, the satanic verses.

00:28:21.180 You had Margaret Thatcher, who, by the way, was on politically opposing sides to Salman Rushdie.

00:28:28.220 He was a, you know, a flaming liberal, as it were.

00:28:31.780 You know, of course, we know what Thatcher was a strong conservative. 0.96

00:28:34.320 She, when she called him to tend down and she said, there's no politics here.

00:28:39.000 You know, we will give you complete protection or round the clock protection.

00:28:44.120 I mean, the whole world, you know, stood, stood with, with Rushdie.

00:28:48.720 And now you fast forward and I'm scheduled to speak in the UK to lay a wreath at the site of the beheading of Lee Rigby. 0.93

00:29:01.180 And, you know, Islamic supremacists, hope, not hate, ridiculous groups that are funded by the UK government say, we don't want to hear. 0.95

00:29:10.220 And I'm banned. 0.98

00:29:11.060 And I'm still banned.

00:29:12.480 And so is Robert Spencer.

00:29:14.100 I am banned.

00:29:14.940 Well, they're allowing in, the UK is allowing in the worst hate preachers, the inciters to genocide, inciters to Jew hatred, just, you know, welcoming.

00:29:26.940 They speak in parliament, in the UK parliament.

00:29:30.260 But myself and colleagues and subsequent colleagues like Lauren Southern, these people were banned from the UK as well.

00:29:38.880 What does that tell you?

00:29:39.800 Well, it tells me that the land of the Magna Carta is dead.

00:29:42.340 Yeah, well, we've spent a lot of time focusing on that country and the case of Tommy Robinson in the last six months.

00:29:50.200 Our viewers follow it closely.

00:29:52.900 You know, not only were journalists supportive of free speech in the case of the separation of mosque and state, as I called it,

00:30:02.780 but they were supportive, but even on a more basic level, they wanted to talk about it at all.

00:30:12.900 Now, I actually don't know how many would support it because they won't even utter a peep about it.

00:30:19.880 And if they do speak, I don't think they're actually speaking their own views.

00:30:23.340 I think they're looking over their shoulder worried if they dare to support an Ezra Levan, a Pamela Gellar, a Rebel Media, a Gellar reporter, Robert Spencer, a Tommy Robinson.

00:30:34.060 If they themselves even say, well, he's got a point there, then they will be marginalized and deplatformed.

00:30:43.020 So it's the mob has silenced people.

00:30:46.380 I don't know if the mob has changed people's minds, but it's certainly silenced them.

00:30:50.560 It's terrifying.

00:30:52.000 You know what it is?

00:30:53.920 This is what I thought after Garland, Texas, in my free speech event.

00:30:58.120 And I nearly named my book, my book Fatwa, this.

00:31:01.540 It's the assassin's veto.

00:31:03.600 And that's what it is.

00:31:04.640 The assassin's veto.

00:31:05.860 That's very powerful.

00:31:07.060 I want to ask you about cantankerous characters.

00:31:10.580 Because, I mean, I find you charming and beautiful and brilliant and eloquent, and I'm a huge fan, and I'm not just buttering you up.

00:31:18.100 Everyone, I think a lot of people feel that way.

00:31:20.900 It's lovely.

00:31:22.760 But, you know, you speak very bluntly, but you're always careful about your role.

00:31:28.300 So I think you are very presentable.

00:31:31.480 But some of the people who are fighters in this, they're flawed, as we all are.

00:31:36.160 I'm flawed.

00:31:37.500 Yeah.

00:31:37.760 Mark Stein, I think he's very charming also.

00:31:40.800 I do.

00:31:42.140 Milo Yiannopoulos, he's over the top.

00:31:44.440 He's a provocateur on purpose.

00:31:46.800 I agree with what you said earlier.

00:31:48.480 You are not a provocateur on purpose.

00:31:50.580 You provoke because the ideas are provoking.

00:31:52.820 It's not your goal to just provoke.

00:31:55.280 There's a substance.

00:31:55.840 And I will tell you, I don't think my ideas are provocative at all.

00:32:00.840 Just so that you know, I think they're elemental.

00:32:03.160 I think they're fundamental.

00:32:03.920 I live in a country who was founded on individual rights.

00:32:08.500 This is the founding principle.

00:32:09.680 Let me close the loop on this personality.

00:32:12.660 I'm just trying to give that little caveat.

00:32:15.000 Go ahead.

00:32:15.300 Sorry.

00:32:15.540 I appreciate it.

00:32:16.320 And what I'm trying to get at here is some of the people who fight for freedom have something

00:32:23.200 objectionable about them.

00:32:24.620 I mentioned Tommy Robinson.

00:32:25.860 He's a convicted criminal who's done time in prison.

00:32:28.600 It's just a fact.

00:32:29.380 There are other people.

00:32:32.360 Milo's over the top.

00:32:33.580 Lauren Southern.

00:32:34.440 I mean, she used to work for the rebel and we fired her. 1.00

00:32:37.420 Everyone has their flaw.

00:32:39.040 But here's the thing.

00:32:40.680 You take your free speech champions as you find them.

00:32:44.920 You can't engineer the perfect free speech martyr because then odds are they wouldn't be doing

00:32:50.700 something that would get them in trouble.

00:32:52.040 I think of Count Dankula, the Scottish internet personality who, in sort of a dumb joke, but

00:32:59.980 it was a joke, trained his dog to Sieg Heil. 0.71

00:33:05.100 Bad joke.

00:33:06.120 Maybe it was funny.

00:33:08.860 I don't know.

00:33:09.920 A lot of things you can say wrong about the guy.

00:33:13.100 But my point here is you have to take your free speech heroes even if they are flawed.

00:33:19.740 That's that first ditch, last ditch thing we were talking.

00:33:21.780 Alex Jones.

00:33:22.960 I actually am more sympathetic to his style and his omni-skepticism than others because

00:33:28.080 I don't focus on his conspiracy theories.

00:33:29.860 I just focus on the fact that he's a dissident.

00:33:31.520 But if every single person I've listed, including you and me, there's something that could provide

00:33:39.080 people with an escape hatch to supporting us.

00:33:41.680 Oh, she's too much. 0.96

00:33:43.020 He's over the top.

00:33:44.100 Did you hear that one time where he made a mistake?

00:33:46.920 Or remember 10 years ago when he swore?

00:33:49.620 I guess my point is how do we handle the fact that there's this pretend puritanism that

00:33:56.940 if there's anything objectionable about you or me or the other names we've mentioned,

00:34:01.520 the free speech and name only people back away?

00:34:07.340 So that was a very long question.

00:34:08.880 I didn't mean it to be, but I guess...

00:34:10.280 No, it's not a long question.

00:34:11.420 Go ahead.

00:34:12.200 It's actually a very good question.

00:34:14.540 I disagree with the premise.

00:34:16.320 I think the premise is false.

00:34:18.200 And what I mean by that is if I wasn't on the right and I wasn't standing in defense

00:34:27.320 of freedom and I was on the left, I submit to you that I would have my own show on CNN

00:34:34.060 or I might be on The View.

00:34:36.480 I would be a darling.

00:34:38.680 They would love my fashion.

00:34:40.140 They would love my wit.

00:34:41.380 They would love me.

00:34:42.320 What the left does is they take anyone, no matter how articulate or no matter how well

00:34:49.820 presented, and they will mock and ridicule and make you toxic in the public square.

00:34:56.600 That said, to some of the other people you mentioned, I mean, I wince.

00:35:02.020 I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

00:35:03.960 I hate many of the things that some of the people that you have mentioned have done.

00:35:08.560 I'm not going to mention their names because I'm not going to join that crowd of naysayers. 1.00

00:35:14.960 But I so believe in the freedom of speech that I'll take a bullet for them because I believe

00:35:21.520 in it.

00:35:22.380 Are they the best examples?

00:35:23.740 Certainly not.

00:35:24.540 But there are many good examples, but people that have been destroyed, that have been

00:35:29.040 systematically destroyed in the media where, let's say, let's say I decided today that,

00:35:35.700 you know what, I really don't want to do this anymore.

00:35:37.600 This is disgusting and thankless.

00:35:39.420 I'm at risk. 0.90

00:35:40.480 I'm living under a fatwa. 0.96

00:35:41.740 My family's at risk.

00:35:42.600 My family has been targeted.

00:35:44.240 I mean, it's just so incredibly evil what the left has done.

00:35:49.160 I couldn't get a job.

00:35:51.400 I mean, just Google my name.

00:35:53.260 They destroy people.

00:35:54.240 And what I think the problem is, is the right buys into it, buys into it, hook, line and

00:36:01.900 sinker.

00:36:02.520 Listen, the left, when something wrong goes down on the left, they circle the wagons. 0.88

00:36:08.900 OK, if it's if it's Mallory or Sarsour, vicious anti-Semites leading the feminist movement 0.97

00:36:15.000 and they're still there and they're still calling the shots and the left is still standing up for

00:36:20.320 Farrakhan.

00:36:21.100 So is CNN.

00:36:22.060 That's what they do, which is evil.

00:36:24.760 But on the other side of the coin, you have the right, which doesn't circle the wagons.

00:36:29.120 Know what they do?

00:36:29.680 They assemble a circular firing squad.

00:36:32.480 OK, and they run for the hills, which is why we have so few leaders and which is why

00:36:37.900 President Trump gave them all the finger, because that's what they so richly deserved.

00:36:42.500 So I don't think, you know, my ideas, I haven't become out there.

00:36:48.840 Mine is a constitutional premise.

00:36:51.800 The country has moved so far away from our founding principles that I find it very frightening

00:37:00.700 because the free society is contingent upon freedom of speech.

00:37:06.220 And without it, tyrants can rule unopposed.

00:37:09.120 And that's what you're seeing.

00:37:10.720 You are seeing a tyrannical left where our voices are shut down.

00:37:16.340 Look, there was a time I don't, I'm sure for you as well, but there was a time when I spoke

00:37:21.120 on college campuses, my colleagues as well.

00:37:25.120 And then you got the protests, the shout downs where you, when you went, you could not physically

00:37:31.640 speak.

00:37:32.380 And now we don't even get invited.

00:37:34.440 And the rare time where something happens like an Ayaan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali getting an award,

00:37:39.580 an honorary degree, it becomes a brouhaha and she gets uninvited.

00:37:44.360 And that becomes such a fabulous story for the left.

00:37:46.780 Whereas Linda Sarsour, who has said there's nothing creepier than Zionism, who is a proponent 0.99

00:37:52.340 of Sharia, who believes in Saudi-style Sharia, she has the tweets to prove it, says that Netanyahu 0.98

00:37:58.840 is a waste of skin, I mean, just a disgusting, vile human being, she's given the commencement 1.00

00:38:04.320 address at CUNY. 0.99

00:38:06.340 And I organized a protest.

00:38:08.620 It was attended by thousands of people.

00:38:10.860 And of course, we're painted as, to your point, the loons, the, you know, the racists, the bigots,

00:38:21.280 and so on and so forth.

00:38:22.620 So when you say if there was a person, if there was a person that you described, who

00:38:27.660 was presentable and articulate and lovely, and they would be mocked and destroyed and 0.98

00:38:32.820 turned into garbage in no time. 0.99

00:38:34.640 That's what would happen. 0.98

00:38:35.680 You know what?

00:38:36.280 You've completely convinced me.

00:38:37.900 And you mentioned Mitt Romney, you know, handsome, lived within the rules, paid more taxes than

00:38:46.440 he was owed, declined his father's inheritance.

00:38:51.380 I mean, just, like, could not be a more by-the-book guy, and they still managed to destroy him.

00:38:58.420 And that's, you're right, that's the story of Trump, is that don't apologize, because it

00:39:02.700 won't work.

00:39:03.760 And you're right.

00:39:04.400 I mean, I'm thinking of my old friend Gavin McInnes, they put together a highlight reel

00:39:09.200 of some of his worst things that he said, most of them out of context.

00:39:14.700 It looks awful in a highlight reel, and he was sacked from CRTV over it.

00:39:19.300 You could do that to Bill Maher of HBO.

00:39:22.060 I sort of like him on Free Speech, by the way.

00:39:24.060 But you could take any star of the left, put together a highlight reel, a quick, you know,

00:39:30.340 compilation of them swearing, using profanity, using racial epithets, anti-gay epithets.

00:39:36.680 You could put together a 60-second highlight reel, and no one would pick it up.

00:39:41.180 They'd sort of laugh at him.

00:39:42.180 They'd say, oh, he's just joking.

00:39:43.420 He's just, you're right.

00:39:44.600 You've convinced me that these so-called flaws on our people, some of them are real.

00:39:49.280 But even if they are, like a Milo is less outrageous on the right than an Al Sharpton or Van Jones

00:39:57.560 is on the left, and they have their own shows.

00:40:00.000 Absolutely.

00:40:00.900 I mean, look, CRTV has never even had me on.

00:40:03.600 I mean, I am too toxic for them.

00:40:05.420 And as I said, I've been doing this for whatever, 16, 17 years.

00:40:11.620 I stand by everything I ever said.

00:40:13.520 And everything I ever said and everything I ever predicted has indeed come to pass.

00:40:18.220 It's all my books.

00:40:19.160 My first book was the Obama book.

00:40:20.680 I warned.

00:40:21.280 That was in 2009.

00:40:22.380 I warned what his presidency would look like on Iran and on Israel, on climate change.

00:40:28.860 And I was right.

00:40:29.880 And in Stop the Islamization of America, I warned about the encroachment on our freedoms, 1.00

00:40:34.900 on freedom of speech, on the Islamization of school curriculums, on the Islamization of

00:40:39.500 the workplace, and so on and so forth.

00:40:41.320 And then, of course, in Fatwa, that's the story of me being hunted in response to a very

00:40:47.560 principled position on freedoms.

00:40:50.580 So I think that this apologize culture, it's a sign of weakness.

00:40:55.500 The point of saying apologize is say you were wrong.

00:40:59.320 Once you say you were wrong, we can undercut you. 0.99

00:41:02.000 We can cut you off at the knees. 0.96

00:41:03.400 So even though—and let me say this—even though President Trump, for example, after 0.64

00:41:09.660 the Garland, my free speech event, he criticized me.

00:41:14.540 He attacked me rather vigorously.

00:41:19.100 I'm a huge supporter of his.

00:41:22.140 I really believe at the time he was new to it.

00:41:25.520 It was May 2015.

00:41:26.780 It's a funny thing, the fight that we're in.

00:41:31.320 There are many layers.

00:41:32.380 People don't understand.

00:41:33.320 They'll say, yeah, but you see in the Koran over here, it says X, Y, and Z. 0.52

00:41:37.520 Yes, but they don't know that it's been abrogated, or they don't know that it's been canceled

00:41:40.800 out, or they don't know that it's preceded by kill them all, or so on and so on and so 0.69

00:41:44.800 forth. 0.96

00:41:45.280 It's a tough battle.

00:41:46.440 Listen, Islam would not have spread as far and as wide over 1,400 years as successfully 1.00

00:41:53.300 as it had, had it not been a clever little onion, you know what I mean?

00:41:58.060 Let's, you know, if we're going to call it for what it is.

00:42:00.780 So we don't have an easy battle.

00:42:03.600 Our battle is not an easy one.

00:42:05.400 And what they want people to do is walk away.

00:42:08.620 That's what they want.

00:42:09.940 They want—I mean, look, when I—I think maybe somebody else—if I had a flaw, I think

00:42:15.580 maybe somebody else would have walked away when that Atlas Jugs website went up.

00:42:23.300 I found it shocking at the time.

00:42:25.440 Like, who would subject themselves to this?

00:42:27.680 I had a lovely life, a really lovely life.

00:42:31.940 But it was because I had that lovely life.

00:42:34.760 It's because I want everyone to have that lovely life.

00:42:37.340 And that would be my only flaw, that I didn't say—I didn't walk away and say, oh, my God,

00:42:44.600 I'm not going to subject myself and then subsequently my family to this, you know.

00:42:49.560 But I just—I couldn't—I couldn't sleep.

00:42:52.040 I couldn't sleep nights.

00:42:52.860 I don't think I could look in the mirror because I knew.

00:42:55.820 Because what's the word they use?

00:42:57.600 I was woke, you know.

00:42:59.640 I woke.

00:43:00.480 Yeah.

00:43:00.680 And there was no turning back.

00:43:02.460 It's like I took a bite of the fruit of knowledge.

00:43:04.920 Yeah.

00:43:05.280 I know that feeling, too.

00:43:07.300 And I think about the rebel and what is our purpose.

00:43:10.680 We have various purposes.

00:43:12.420 You know, we're a livelihood for the people who work here.

00:43:15.400 We fill the gap from the other media.

00:43:17.880 There's many things we do.

00:43:20.000 But one of them is very—

00:43:21.220 Your role is essential.

00:43:22.280 Your role is essential.

00:43:23.100 I can't—you are—the rebel media is indispensable, unrivaled.

00:43:29.080 Thank you.

00:43:29.440 I was going to say that for me, it's a way to express myself.

00:43:36.120 Because if I did not have the rebel to express myself, I would go mad.

00:43:40.880 Shut me into the wind.

00:43:42.520 Yes.

00:43:42.980 So it's not a vanity project.

00:43:45.240 I mean, we have many voices.

00:43:46.380 We have many people.

00:43:47.160 I try in my own flawed way to push other people up on TV also to give them—

00:43:53.560 And we've given birth to many great alumni, by the way.

00:43:57.360 Yes, you have.

00:43:58.020 But I guess what you just said is you feel compelled to fight on.

00:44:03.980 That is my personal animation for this project.

00:44:07.880 I want the rebel to succeed as a business, as a job for its staff, as a launch pad for other talent.

00:44:13.900 But it is actually the way for me to shout at the world and try and stop it from running off the cliff.

00:44:20.500 I think that you and I have that small thing in common.

00:44:22.900 And maybe yours, too.

00:44:24.720 I agree.

00:44:25.700 And shouting into the abyss is not freedom of speech, you know.

00:44:29.200 We have to connect.

00:44:30.740 We have to build an army of Davids.

00:44:33.020 This is a long war, you know.

00:44:34.460 And this is another thing.

00:44:35.220 People look back at examples, historical examples.

00:44:38.600 Every war is different and the same in various ways.

00:44:42.680 And this is a long war.

00:44:44.920 And if you look back on the past 10 years, one can only imagine what the next 10 is going to look like.

00:44:49.680 And then 20.

00:44:51.040 The mind reels.

00:44:53.780 Well, my friend, it's been wonderful to catch up with us.

00:44:56.180 And I'm sure our viewers will find what you've said very instructive.

00:44:59.980 And you have turned me around on the question that I put you.

00:45:02.700 So I thank you for that.

00:45:03.480 And, folks, you can get all the Pamela Geller you like at GellerReports.com.

00:45:09.200 A very prolific writer who has been fighting this fight longer than most.

00:45:13.320 And she's got the scars to prove it.

00:45:15.980 But you still keep fighting.

00:45:17.200 And we admire you for that.

00:45:18.720 And we love you.

00:45:19.340 And we salute you.

00:45:20.180 And we hope you keep at it for a long time to come.

00:45:23.460 Bless you, Ezra.

00:45:24.200 Thank you so much for having me.

00:45:25.540 And thank you.

00:45:27.440 Well, that's our feature interview with Pamela Geller.

00:45:30.420 You can get all of her commentary at GellerReports.com.

00:45:34.580 Until next time, on behalf of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.

00:45:39.960 And keep fighting for freedom.

00:45:50.180 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - December 25, 2018

SPECIAL： Pamela Geller on Islam, Trump, social media and free speech

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