Rebel News Podcast - Texas judge sentences hair salon owner to prison for working. Will we see that in Canada？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. In Texas, a woman opened her hair salon because her staff needed the work. 1.00

00:00:07.240 They were starving, she said. Well, the judge didn't like that and called in the salon owner 0.78

00:00:11.600 and said, apologize to the politicians you're disagreeing with and call yourself selfish

00:00:19.420 or go to prison. Well, she wouldn't say it. And she was sent to prison. I'll give you the full

00:00:27.700 updates. I'll show you the video of how it went down in the court, and I'll tell you what the

00:00:31.920 governor, attorney general, and others have to say. That's ahead. Before I let you hear that,

00:00:37.620 can I invite you, please, to become a premium subscriber? Go to rebelnews.com. It's eight

00:00:41.560 bucks a month. You get the video version of the podcast. I hope you do because I want you to see

00:00:47.200 what this woman sounded and looked like, and the judge, too, in the court. Okay, here's the podcast.

00:00:57.700 Tonight, a Texas judge sentences a hair salon owner to a week in prison for working. Will we see

00:01:15.700 that in Canada, too? It's May 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail

00:01:22.940 when you're a biggest carbon consumer? I know. There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give

00:01:28.200 them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my

00:01:33.800 right to do so. Let me show you a video from a courthouse in Dallas, Texas. A woman named Shelly

00:01:44.580 Luther owns a salon in Dallas called Alamode. She was dying, but not from the virus, but from

00:01:50.540 the over-the-top political reaction to the virus that had shut down her business and was threatening

00:01:56.140 to throw her entire staff into deep poverty. That's what I mean by dying. So I know this is

00:02:02.300 shocking. She let her staff come in and cut some hair. It was voluntary all around. Her staff 0.65

00:02:07.800 desperately wanted to do it. Her customers obviously wanted to, but the police came and dragged

00:02:12.700 her to court where a hard left-wing judge named Eric Moyet sentenced her to prison.

00:02:18.180 But not for being open during the pandemic, but for not apologizing to the politicians who had

00:02:26.040 shut her down, for not apologizing for, quote, being selfish. This judge didn't just want to shut

00:02:33.380 her down, didn't just want to fine her $500 a day, destroying what's left of her business. He demanded 0.89

00:02:39.580 that she morally, psychologically, emotionally denounce herself and praise the politicians who had shut her

00:02:46.960 down. Politicians who themselves haven't lost a day of pay. I can guarantee that. This judge himself

00:02:52.280 surely makes six figures a year. I wonder how long he'd go without a paycheck, but since she wouldn't

00:02:57.960 call herself selfish, since she wouldn't apologize to the politicians, he threw her in prison.

00:03:05.180 You watch a clip from the court TV. It was actually done by video, this hearing, so you can see who's who on

00:03:12.160 the screen. Watch this first video. You can see the judge with his mask on. The lady in her home in the

00:03:18.440 top left is the court reporter working from home, I think. She seems to have a very lovely home. I don't

00:03:22.960 think she's been missing any paychecks. And Susan Luther, the salon owner, she's not in the witness

00:03:28.880 box in the top right because, I don't know, probably it's too close to His Holiness, the judge. He'd get germs

00:03:34.440 from her. So she's sitting down in the box on the bottom left. Anyways, listen to this.

00:03:38.160 That you now see the error of your ways and understand that the society cannot function

00:03:45.680 where one's own belief in a concept of liberty permits you to flaunt your disdain for the rulings

00:03:52.360 of duly elected officials. That you owe an apology to the elected officials whom you disrespected

00:04:01.100 but flagrantly ignoring and in one case defiling their orders, which you now know obviously

00:04:09.420 apply to you. That you understand that the proper way in an ordered society to engage concerns which

00:04:19.380 you may have had is to hire a lawyer and advocate for change, an exception or an amendment to laws

00:04:26.760 it you find offensive. That you publicly state that this is the way that citizens in this state

00:04:34.600 should behave. And that you represent to this court that you will today cease operation of your salon

00:04:43.400 and not reopen until after further orders of the government permit you to do so. This court will

00:04:51.480 consider the payment of a fine in lieu of the incarceration which you've demonstrated that

00:04:57.720 you have so clearly earned. Is there anything you would like to say? Now I understand the point. Either

00:05:03.400 we in Canada and our American friends and the Brits, either we're countries of laws or we're not.

00:05:09.320 We can't each pick and choose which laws we follow. There's something to that. But that's not really what

00:05:15.480 he said or did, was it? He said her freedom, the difference between her going home or going to prison,

00:05:22.360 was based on her denouncing herself as immoral and praising the political class as moral.

00:05:29.400 I'm sorry, that's not a law. That's not the rule of law. That's not law and order. That's not the rule.

00:05:32.840 He just made that up. Was the offense that she opened her store or that she wasn't obedient to her

00:05:39.240 superiors, of which the judge clearly regards himself as one. Oh, and I love that. Hey, you're

00:05:44.360 teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Your staff are begging you to get some work. Well, just hire

00:05:49.480 a lawyer and lobby the government for change or file a lawsuit, maybe in six months or a year or two.

00:05:56.200 You'll get a court hearing when the courts open up again finally, and we'll talk about all this then,

00:06:01.320 okay? Well, Shelley stood up to reply. You can see here in this next video, standing up in the box on

00:06:07.880 the bottom left. She's very respectful, very polite, calls the judge, sir, many times,

00:06:14.520 and says what was actually motivating her, not selfishness, but feeding the children of her staff.

00:06:19.080 They're starving. She says, take a listen. Judge, I would like to say that I have much

00:06:23.880 respect for this court and laws, and that I've never been in this position before, and it's not

00:06:34.120 some place that I want to be, but I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I'm selfish,

00:06:42.840 because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hairstylists that are going hungry

00:06:50.440 because they'd rather feed their kids. So, sir, if you think the law is more important than kids

00:06:56.680 getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.

00:07:02.120 So, literally, off to prison for a week, in prison, seven-day prison sentence plus $500 a day

00:07:10.600 in fines. I tell you, I wouldn't have been that polite to the judge. Then again, I'd probably have

00:07:15.880 been sentenced to a month in solitary confinement for making a joke about the judge. Sure, you don't

00:07:22.120 need a hair salon, Kojak. I might have said something dumb like that. I'm not as polite 0.99

00:07:27.480 as Shelley Luther. America's funny. Different branches of the government aren't afraid to 0.81

00:07:31.320 criticize each other, though, and unlike here in Canada, politicians aren't afraid to criticize

00:07:35.240 judges in particular, especially extremist judges like this one. Now, in Canada, we have extremist

00:07:39.880 judges, too, making extremist rulings all the time. Can you even remember once when a politician

00:07:44.520 called out a judge? Well, look at this by no one less than the Attorney General of Texas,

00:07:48.680 Ken Paxton. I find it outrageous to not have touched that during this national pandemic,

00:07:53.880 a judge in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19

00:08:00.840 would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family's table.

00:08:07.240 The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther. His order is a shameful abuse of judicial

00:08:12.440 discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas. He should release Ms. Luther 0.93

00:08:17.880 immediately. All right. Apparently, this same county released a thousand hardened criminals,

00:08:24.760 so at least they'll have room in prison for Shelley Luther. Ken Paxton, the Attorney General there,

00:08:29.960 he's a Republican, and so is the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. I think he's a pretty great governor,

00:08:35.320 but it was his law that was applied by the judge here, so what does that say about him? What does he

00:08:41.000 have to say about that? Well, scratch that. Who cares what any of these politicians say? Who cares what the

00:08:45.560 attorney general says? Boy, it sure was nice of Ken Paxton to put out a tweet, a virtue signaling tweet,

00:08:51.400 that showed how much he cared. Shelley Luther was still in prison, though. Well, I looked up the

00:08:55.960 Texas Constitution, Section 411b. In all criminal cases, except treason and impeachment, the governor

00:09:03.080 shall have power, either after conviction or successful completion of a term of deferred adjudication,

00:09:08.840 community supervision on the written signed recommendation and advice of the Board of

00:09:14.920 Pardons and Paroles, or a majority thereof. It's a rambling way of saying, if I read that right,

00:09:22.440 the governor can pardon Shelley Luther. He just needs to get a majority of the Board of Pardons and 0.98

00:09:27.640 Paroles to sign a recommendation. Great. Get on the phone with him. Have a five-minute conference call,

00:09:31.640 sign the piece of paper, get Shelley Luther out of prison. Now, just before I walked in to record this

00:09:37.320 video, I saw some breaking news. The governor had weighed in personally, not with a pardon,

00:09:42.200 but with a blanket removal of jail as a penalty for violating any of his health orders. Let me read

00:09:47.160 this from Greg Abbott. Throwing Texans in jail whose businesses shut down through no fault of their own

00:09:52.680 is wrong. I'm eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders.

00:09:59.560 Criminals shouldn't be released to prevent COVID-19, just to put business owners in their place.

00:10:04.600 All right. Now, that looks good, but it would, you know, take an expert in Texas law, which I am not,

00:10:10.920 to let me know if this would work, because I understand that Shelley Luther was sentenced for 0.97

00:10:15.320 contempt of court. You saw the judge because she wouldn't say what the judge told her to say.

00:10:21.880 She wouldn't call herself selfish. She wouldn't praise politicians. The whole thing's nuts. So will

00:10:27.720 the governor's retroactive rule have anything to do with this order for what I think was a contempt

00:10:34.120 court order? Now, just one more thing. I just walked in and I got another update this afternoon.

00:10:40.760 Apparently, the Texas Supreme Court literally ordered that Shelley should be released. And then there's

00:10:46.680 another court date in the future to talk about it again, I think. Now, look, there's a lot going on,

00:10:52.520 probably even more happening now that I'm recording in the studio. I love Texas.

00:10:57.480 How can you not? One of my first Rebel videos five years ago was going down to Dallas and having some

00:11:01.880 fun getting some proper cowboy gear and, of course, going on a barbecue odyssey across the state. I

00:11:06.680 can't even remember what I was actually supposed to be doing down there. Oh, yeah. Doing some videos

00:11:10.600 about fracking and how they do it in Texas. So that's, you know, what's not to love about Texas?

00:11:14.760 Cowboys, oil and gas, amazing barbecue, and a love for freedom. Sort of like Alberta,

00:11:20.200 if Alberta weren't under the thumb of Ottawa. So while a Texas judge throws Shelley Luther into 1.00

00:11:26.360 prison, and while Texas politicians dither and blather, ordinary Canadians tried, ordinary Americans,

00:11:32.760 sorry, tried to fix this. They put together a GoFundMe crowdfund campaign for her. And in less than a

00:11:39.560 day, it raised half a million dollars. That's amazing. That's a pretty good barometer of public

00:11:44.280 sentiment, isn't it? And wow, will that ever help Shelley and her staff. But that doesn't take a

00:11:50.120 away the wrongness of what the government did to her. I love Texas, but the fact that this tyranny

00:11:54.840 could happen even there, in what is arguably the freest state in the union, shows the depth of the

00:12:01.240 problem. It's not just Shelley Luther. She made a particularly passionate plea. The judge was

00:12:07.720 particularly cold. And fortuitously, it was captured on video. But there are surely thousands

00:12:14.360 of cases like this, perhaps not in prison, but there are thousands of cases of tickets and arrests,

00:12:21.640 even in Canada. I mean, we're representing Canadians who got outrageous fines for walking in the park,

00:12:26.920 or feeding the homeless, or even having dinner at home with their friends. But none of them

00:12:30.360 have been thrown in prison yet in Canada that I know of. So how can this be in Texas? Well, it shows

00:12:37.480 us that part of the human mind that allows authoritarianism to flourish, the bullying gene,

00:12:43.080 the tyrannical gene, if you will. It's in all of us. Don't think that there aren't plenty of people in

00:12:49.480 our society, in the US, in Canada, the United Kingdom, who wouldn't love to have China-style 0.62

00:12:56.360 authoritarianism here. There are people amongst us who would thrive in that culture, informants,

00:13:02.200 snitching, complaining, punishing, gloating. They don't have that part of their personality

00:13:07.240 under control. I think it's worse on the left by far. Here's Chicago's mayor the other day.

00:13:12.680 Now, I've directed Superintendent Brown to order all police districts to give special attention

00:13:18.840 to these parties. And this is how it's going to be. We will shut you down, we will cite you,

00:13:25.560 and if we need to, we will arrest you, and we will take you to jail. Period. There should be nothing

00:13:33.320 unambiguous about that. Don't make us treat you like a criminal. But if you act like a criminal,

00:13:40.600 and you violate the law, and you refuse to do what is necessary to save lives in the city,

00:13:46.360 in the middle of a pandemic, we will take you to jail. Period.

00:13:51.000 Yeah, pretty easy to see her doing just fine in a dictatorship. Thank you very little. Oh, 0.94

00:13:56.360 and she had a sneaky visit to the hairstylist too, you see, because she, get this, cares about her

00:14:01.240 hygiene. That's what she said. That's why she needed to visit the salon. I love that. It's a hygiene 1.00

00:14:05.640 issue. But you, you can't get a haircut. Just her. And I guarantee you, her hair salon won't be thrown 1.00

00:14:12.600 in jail. Here's another case from Texas this past week. Lots of Texans have guns. That's a good guard

00:14:19.800 against government tyranny when things finally get really bad. But even local cop shops, well,

00:14:25.480 they have tanks. Take a look at this video. Keep your hands up. You with the hand, green shirt.

00:14:32.120 Put your hands up. I can't see them. What was supposed to be a peaceful protest quickly took a wrong turn.

00:14:38.040 Get back. Me and I have a white shirt. Get back.

00:14:40.760 Here at Big Daddy Zane's, a local bar in West Odessa, owner Gabrielle Ellison opened up her doors, 1.00

00:14:47.320 despite Abbott's latest order. We can't take it no more. We're not going to make it.

00:14:53.080 At risk, she says she understands all too well, but it boils down to feeding her family.

00:14:59.080 I am aware of what's going on down the road. I'm shocked. And I had customers come through,

00:15:04.200 you know, they've got SWAT built up. They got SWAT built up. Why would you bring in SWAT on a peaceful

00:15:09.000 situation? But Ellison says the risk of staying closed outweighs the risk of any virus and potentially

00:15:15.560 getting in trouble with law enforcement. The possibility of getting my license taken,

00:15:20.520 heartbreaking, but they've already tooken my income. Oh my God. I know whose side I'm on.

00:15:27.000 By the way, this is a real picture, not a Photoshop of some of Ector County's finest.

00:15:31.640 Looks like they haven't missed a meal in this whole pandemic. They haven't missed a paycheck.

00:15:36.120 Look, I shouldn't poke fun at people for being fat, but their teeny tiny bulletproof jacket sort of

00:15:40.760 reminded me of when I go to the lake and the only life jacket left is a kid-sized

00:15:45.480 life jacket and I try and put it on. What's the point, fellas? It ain't going to help.

00:15:49.960 So yeah, which side are you on? Which side are you on here? Me?

00:15:55.320 I'm with people who want to work, who want to live. Stay with us for more.

00:16:08.200 Welcome back. I'm very excited to have our next guest today. He's so many things. He's a comedian.

00:16:19.960 He's a commentator. He's a public speaker. He's an author. He's Robin to Jordan Peterson's Batman

00:16:27.400 in Jordan Peterson's World Tour. He is Dave Rubin, and he joins us now via Skype for his new book,

00:16:34.160 Don't Burn This Book. It's called Dave Rubin. Great to have you on the program. What a pleasure.

00:16:40.560 Ezra, I'm glad to be with you. You know, it's funny you're making a DC Comics reference with

00:16:44.560 Batman and Robin right there, because I was about to say to you that you're sort of in what I consider

00:16:49.440 the Avengers of Canada, the free speech Avengers. It's sort of you and Jordan Peterson and Lindsey

00:16:55.280 Shepard and Gad Saad and Yasmin Mohammed and a couple other people. So we got a little Marvel DC thing.

00:17:01.440 We can work it out throughout the interview. Right on. Well, what I like best about you,

00:17:06.000 I mean, I think you've got a winning style. You make everyone comfortable when you debate

00:17:12.880 uncomfortable things, and that's a real personality trait. And I'll just say, I mean,

00:17:18.000 obviously I'm a fan. You can hear it in what I'm saying. What I like about you and what I wish there

00:17:22.400 was more of is liberals who would engage with conservatives rather than shun them, cancel them.

00:17:28.880 Frankly, I think you've become a little more conservative over time yourself. But I mean,

00:17:34.080 you come from a very liberal place. You worked for the Young Turks. That's a that's a left wing show.

00:17:39.280 You were an intern even with the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. How did you resist the temptation just

00:17:46.720 to blacklist, blackball, ignore and unfriend people you disagree with? How did you overcome the virus of

00:17:54.960 the left? Yeah. You know, it's interesting because we could go back even further than that. I mean, I

00:18:00.160 I come from a true liberal in the good sense of liberal family. I mean, I was born in Brooklyn,

00:18:06.560 New York before it was hipster Brooklyn, when it was still old school Brooklyn, which was, you know,

00:18:11.120 this mismatch of, you know, of Jews and and Greeks and Irish and Italians and blacks and Latinos and this

00:18:19.600 this real thing that was the sort of beauty of America, the stew of America. And then I grew up

00:18:25.840 in Long Island and I went to college in upstate New York. I lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side,

00:18:30.880 which is like the lefty liberal paradise of of the world. But, you know, as a Jew, I sort of grew up

00:18:38.560 with you debate stuff. That's just what you do every holiday. Ezra, I'm sure it's the same for you and your

00:18:44.560 family. Every holiday, it's like you get 30 people around the table. No topic is off limits. And then

00:18:50.480 what would happen in my family, everyone would be screaming the entire meal. And then the second

00:18:54.400 the second dessert was served. It was like, all right, that's it. Nobody's angry at anybody. So

00:18:58.400 what? You're for abortion. You're against abortion. You're for high taxes or for low taxes. It was just

00:19:03.120 like it was let go. And I think I didn't realize it, honestly, until writing the book that that piece of

00:19:09.840 me really was born there. It was born very young. I remember being 11 or 12 years old and trying to

00:19:16.160 get to the adults table because I thought something interesting was happening there. So I always felt

00:19:20.560 that that piece of about debate. And I would also say that this is where the word liberal

00:19:25.920 and lefty have just been conflated and confused because, you know, there were good liberals. I know

00:19:31.280 you know this, but, you know, there were good liberals like JFK Jr. Ask not what your country can do

00:19:35.440 for you. Ask what you can do for your country. There were good liberals in New York. We had Daniel

00:19:39.520 Patrick Moynihan, who was a proud defender of the Constitution. We had Mayor Ed Koch in New York

00:19:45.360 City, who was the mayor for a city of eight million people from every walk of life and treated everybody

00:19:51.040 the same. What unfortunately happened in the last five years is as progressive identity politics and

00:19:57.840 groupthink and collectivism grew, they saw the weakness of liberals. And it's very hard for me to admit

00:20:03.680 in a way, but liberalism in and of itself has a weakness that conservatism does not. Liberalism,

00:20:09.680 because of the innate desire to be open-minded, will let in basically any idea. And I think

00:20:16.080 progressives saw that. They saw that, oh, we can sneak identity politics in. We can sneak all of this

00:20:22.000 giant government stuff in, guise it as we're being nice to everybody. And in effect, they decimated the

00:20:28.160 liberals. And I think you're a bit of a Star Wars guy. And I always compare it to Order 66 in Revenge

00:20:34.480 of the Six, because basically the last remaining liberals have pretty much been annihilated in

00:20:40.480 America. You know, Bill Maher is trying, you know, I'm trying, but I have no problem when someone says

00:20:45.520 to me, hey, you know, you're more of a conservative. Now, if anything, I think in some respects that I'm a

00:20:50.960 modern conservative, meaning I believe in the base ideas of conservatism, meaning individual rights

00:20:57.280 and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But I don't have to agree with conservatives on

00:21:01.600 every single issue. As you know, in my book, I lay out a pro-choice position. And if that can be

00:21:06.960 accepted by those on the right, then I see that as wonderful, fertile ground for ideas. And

00:21:11.920 unfortunately, the left has just decided to purge all the free thinkers. Well, let me ask you about

00:21:17.120 what you said about Brooklyn, because you listed the mix of people there. And you mentioned race

00:21:23.760 and ethnicity and things like that. And I know what you mean. But it's become a more recent thing

00:21:30.000 to say as a Jewish man, as a black woman, as a transgender. And they started arguing, they, people,

00:21:39.200 I think, typically on the left, as a fill in the blank, my identity politics here, I believe. And I think

00:21:45.280 that does two things. First of all, it's a false authority. I mean, it's not an appeal to facts or

00:21:52.400 even an argument. It's, listen to me because I have a certain characteristic, not because my ideas are

00:21:57.840 good. And second of all, it immediately implies that to disagree with that, you're not disagreeing

00:22:04.320 with the idea, but their blackness, womanness, transness. And I think that's probably very different

00:22:11.840 than what you meant back in Brooklyn 40 years ago. Well, Ezra, I would even go a step further and say,

00:22:17.920 when people do that and use their identity first, well, first off, they're using it as a cruddle

00:22:22.800 because they're using it to try to gain some advantage over you. But I would argue that it's

00:22:26.240 even anti-human because none of us want to be judged on our immutable characteristics. It doesn't

00:22:31.120 matter to me that you're a cisgendered man. It's what comes out of your mouth, your ideas,

00:22:36.480 your actions that matter. When I, when I say it, and I know, I know you understand this when I say,

00:22:41.520 oh, there were, there were blacks and Latinos and Jews and Greeks and Italians and Irish.

00:22:45.840 My point was that that was, that's the beauty of the stew of America. Nobody back then

00:22:52.160 walked there, nobody in 1940s, 1950s, Brooklyn in the, in the craziest melting pot that you could

00:22:58.480 possibly imagine with all of these people whose many were first generation immigrants or second,

00:23:03.440 whose parents came here with nothing or grandparents, or they came with nothing.

00:23:07.040 Everybody was just thrown in to Brooklyn or the Lower East Side. I mean, this is the quintessential 0.99

00:23:11.440 American story. And nobody walked around saying I'm Italian. So give me this. I'm,

00:23:15.760 I'm Jewish. Give me this. I'm Irish. Give me this. My point was you threw all of these people in,

00:23:20.640 they had their little communities, they had their, their foods, their traditions, their holidays,

00:23:25.680 all these things. And guess what? They all started really learning to live together. And that

00:23:30.080 doesn't mean there weren't fights. There weren't, you know, some level of racism and bigotry and

00:23:35.440 some of that old world stuff, but what happened there. And I think there's a, you know, it's,

00:23:40.160 it's actually a very special thing because you can look at, you know, lists of famous authors and

00:23:45.360 philosophers and comedians and actors. And so many of them were Brooklyn born, uh, Larry King,

00:23:50.640 who of course is Brooklyn board. He has a bagel shop here in, in Beverly Hills. It's called Brooklyn

00:23:54.880 water bagel. And he has plaques of just all of the famous people, politicians, everything born in

00:24:01.520 Brooklyn. And there's a reason for it because it represented the beauty of America, not because

00:24:07.040 they were Irish first or Jewish first or Italian first, but because they, they took all of that 1.00

00:24:13.120 stuff that had, that had been, uh, the gestalt good word of their families and then blended it into

00:24:18.960 America. And that is what is so special about this place. Yeah. I think you're right. I mean,

00:24:22.800 they, people came together. I mean, as the motto says, out of many, one in pluribus unum,

00:24:28.960 I think that we're, we're dividing people. I mean, Trudeau up here never stops talking about

00:24:34.080 diversity. He wants to pigeonhole people and give them racial or gender identifiers, even when they

00:24:40.800 don't want it. But let me ask you this. I remember in college, I'm a few years older than you, but back

00:24:45.600 when I was in college, there was a spirit of debate. And if you were on the left or on the right, and there

00:24:50.560 was a debate on some issue, you were sort of expected to be at the debate. And if you declined,

00:24:57.680 it was a sign that you really weren't interested in public affairs. So the idea that, that one group

00:25:04.800 would boycott the debate if another was there, that just wasn't thinkable because that would be seen as,

00:25:10.240 A, you're chickening out or B, oh, then you're not really serious about this conversation since you're,

00:25:15.680 you just want to have a monologue. The idea of de-platforming that new word, it didn't even

00:25:20.160 exist back then. Tell me a little bit about de-platforming issues. And I know that you were

00:25:26.560 on Patreon, which is a kind of crowdfunding. We do it a little differently up here, but tell us a little

00:25:31.920 bit about de-platforming censorship and your Patreon story, if you don't mind.

00:25:36.800 Yeah, there's so much there. I mean, look again, this goes to sort of what I would describe as the

00:25:42.880 death of old school liberalism, which, which I am trying to reignite and give life to in my book,

00:25:49.840 because I believe that classical liberalism has good principles that in many ways were the founding

00:25:56.080 principles of the United States, you know, individual rights and light touch of government.

00:26:00.000 That's, that's a very founding principle here. But as the progressives came in, they said,

00:26:03.920 you're all bigots and racists and everything. And then that gave them in their mind, 0.82

00:26:07.440 a license to say, well, we don't have to debate any conservative, because if you're

00:26:11.520 a conservative at any level, meaning you're for low taxes, or you're not for the welfare state or 0.71

00:26:16.000 something else, that is evidence that you are a bigot and a racist. And why would I platform or appear 0.50

00:26:21.680 on a stage or anything else with a bigot and a racist? And, and for some reason, and again,

00:26:26.560 this goes to that sort of weakness of the open mind of a liberal, the good liberals just sort of

00:26:31.920 stood there and got executed and no longer exist. I just simply don't know where they are. Again,

00:26:36.960 with the exception of Bill Maher, and maybe, maybe a small smattering of handful of other people.

00:26:41.760 But as far as de-platforming, you know, this idea that if a college invites a speaker,

00:26:48.160 if an accredited group at a university invites a speaker, I believe that it is incumbent on the

00:26:54.160 university to let that speaker talk. Now, that doesn't mean you agree with the speaker.

00:26:58.560 It doesn't mean that they don't have odious views, but that must be allowed to happen. Now,

00:27:03.360 especially at a public university, a private university, look, they can do their own thing,

00:27:07.200 whether we like it or not, whether we feel it's a, uh, assault on free speech or not,

00:27:11.360 but a public university, of course. And, and just to show that I'm not just saying these things,

00:27:16.080 I believe it, but so Linda Sarsour, who I believe to be a truly bad actor and, and a, and a true

00:27:22.720 racist in, in the way that progressive racism has become a sort of the new pernicious acceptable

00:27:28.720 racism. She was invited to speak at the city university of New York about two years ago.

00:27:33.360 And I defended her right to speak there. If they, I, everything being equal, I would prefer

00:27:37.920 that. I guess no group invite her because her ideas are terrible, but you know what,

00:27:42.320 if somebody invited her, you got to defend her right to speak. So it's not just something I preach

00:27:46.720 about. It's something that I actually believe in as far as Patreon, you know, there was an interesting

00:27:50.960 moment about a year and a half ago where there was a, an internet guy that I, I'm guessing you've

00:27:55.360 probably spoke to him at a point, Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, who, uh, you know, he was one of

00:28:00.160 the first sort of lefty people on YouTube about six years ago, who was saying, Hey, lefties,

00:28:05.440 there's something wrong here. We're not liberal anymore. And he actually helped me kind of go on

00:28:10.240 my path because when I started saying the same things, a lot of people said, Hey, you got to talk to

00:28:13.920 this guy. He's, he's been doing it for months now. And basically he was on Patreon, which is the

00:28:20.480 crowdfunding site. And that's where he was supporting his YouTube page. And then it turned

00:28:25.840 out that not on his Patreon nor on his YouTube channel, but on another YouTube channel, he was

00:28:32.320 being interviewed. Uh, and he said the N word and he said it not to use it as a racial pejorative,

00:28:38.960 but to use it to mock the people who use those words to mock the alt-right in effect. Right.

00:28:43.680 And Patreon, Patreon decided to cancel his account. And I felt along with Jordan Peterson

00:28:49.600 and then Sam Harris, that that was a bridge too far because it wasn't just that, uh,

00:28:55.600 that they were going after language, which I would prefer they not go after anyway. It was that it

00:28:59.600 wasn't even his Patreon nor his own channel that he was funding on Patreon. It was a word he said

00:29:04.960 on something else altogether. And they said, we're not going to let you have a livelihood and we're going

00:29:09.280 to shut you down. And by the way, in, in, in effect, as far as I know, he's doing okay. Uh,

00:29:14.480 but that is what spurred me on to create locals.com because I believe in competition and we're building

00:29:20.800 digital homes for creators. Uh, we're, you know, because you don't own your stuff on YouTube,

00:29:25.840 you don't own your stuff on Twitter, and you're basically renting space from a landlord who could

00:29:30.720 cut you off at any moment. And all of us are kind of sitting ducks there. So I created that.

00:29:34.960 That's going to, you know, it's my best effort to solve some of these problems. You know,

00:29:38.720 and that's very interesting because we've had similar problems. We haven't yet been de-platformed,

00:29:43.440 but we've come close and we're always under attack. Here's my question for you. Even if you were to

00:29:48.560 create a new app or a new website, there's always a deeper level of internet infrastructure,

00:29:56.320 payment processors. There's only a few of them and behind that banks and, and then the deep structure

00:30:02.480 of the internet suddenly, I mean, three years ago, we got a, an email saying, we're going to

00:30:07.360 kick you off your, I think it was called a DNS server. Forgive me if I have the technicalities

00:30:12.000 wrong. Yeah. Basically they said in 24 hours, you're being kicked off your website. Uh, good luck.

00:30:17.840 And I mean, I had even heard of this company. I had no idea we were dealing with them. So

00:30:23.520 even if you have a top level fix, there's some risk to the basis of the internet. How do we fix that?

00:30:32.240 When it's a handful of companies who don't care about political squawking, who are so unbelievably

00:30:39.760 rich and now they just care about being woke. Like you can't fight with Zuckerberg or Google.

00:30:45.600 And I'm not even talking about them, but people, we don't even know who they are.

00:30:49.120 Right. That's, that's the crazy part. So it's a great question. It's the, it's the trillion dollar

00:30:53.440 question. I would say, because when it's fully solved, I actually think it's a trillion dollar

00:30:57.120 business. Um, what I've been telling people about locals is we've solved 95% of the problems

00:31:03.520 for 95% of the creators. So in other words, I can't solve Alex Jones's problem. Now I'm not saying

00:31:08.960 I want to be in business to solve Alex Jones's problem. That's not even a condemnation of Alex

00:31:13.040 Jones. I would prefer he be on all these platforms. And if you don't like him, don't watch,

00:31:16.400 that would be my personal preference. But in other words, when you ask about payment processors, so

00:31:22.240 through locals right now we're using Stripe and yes, if Alex Jones wants to join locals, well,

00:31:27.840 he can't go on Stripe. So there's no way for us to pay him or there's no way for him to get paid.

00:31:32.560 We actually let you use your own Stripe account. So that's what I mean by 95% of the problems for

00:31:37.120 95% of the creators. The direct answer to your question is this is all going to be decentralized

00:31:41.360 and it's going to be a lot of crypto blockchain stuff. We're working with some companies on some

00:31:45.520 of that on the payment side, but you know, the next evolution of all this also is that it's going

00:31:50.080 to be decentralized storage. Uh, because you know, you won't be able to trust just that your server,

00:31:55.280 if you're using Amazon servers or whatever server you're using, that they won't cut you off too.

00:31:59.680 That's your point. So we're going to actually have to get to the point where it's decentralized video

00:32:03.680 and audio too. There are a couple of companies that are doing some interesting stuff with that,

00:32:06.800 that we're talking to. Um, but you know, I think one of the problems is for the, for the people that

00:32:11.200 understand these issues, it's like everyone wants the solution tomorrow. And it's like, you know,

00:32:16.000 if it was possible tomorrow, it would have been done. Trust me. I'm friends with a lot of the,

00:32:21.120 the key people in the, in these spaces that understand this stuff. And there's, as you're

00:32:26.000 saying, there's so many complex issues that when you solve one issue, you actually create three

00:32:30.960 more problems. So we're working on it. And I think we have, we have the right team and I would

00:32:36.560 welcome any of your viewers to check out what we've done with locals.com rubin report.com is really

00:32:41.600 the first project of local. We have iOS app. We have a Android app. We've built out a great

00:32:46.800 community there. There's no trolls and there's no bots. We have our own video player, our own audio

00:32:51.360 player this week. I think we're adding it today. We're adding live chat. So we've done, you know,

00:32:55.840 there's no algorithmic manipulation of the newsfeed. We've done something really, really nice and sleek.

00:33:01.440 And my hope is if I can solve my problem, that we can spawn that off to solve other people's problems.

00:33:05.840 And I'd love to work with you guys, uh, at rebel on it. So we should talk separately about that.

00:33:10.560 Well, thank you very much. I know you've got to go, but I think I have 60 seconds left. You got

00:33:14.320 so many books. It's amazing. The book is called don't burn this book. The guest is Dave Rubin.

00:33:19.600 You can buy that book on this website at the link, the Amazon link below the page. Let me ask you one

00:33:24.800 last question. That was a great technical answer, but let me bring it back to the larger feeling of

00:33:29.600 your book. You know, we talked about being de-platformed in debates and political places, but

00:33:34.720 I see stories of men and women getting divorces because he's a Trump supporter and she's not.

00:33:41.680 I see people writing about such things in the New York Times. And that's a bigger problem than just

00:33:47.280 politics. Give me your thoughts on relationships, personal, long time friendships being ended this

00:33:54.400 way. Maybe it's always been that way, but it seems to me to be particularly acute. Give us your last

00:33:59.360 thoughts and then we'll set you free to continue your book tour, my friend. Well, first off, I wish

00:34:03.680 we had more time to do it. And for sure, you know, I've been saying to you forever, I wanted to get

00:34:07.360 you live in studio. So we'll do it via Skype since that's how we're all trapped at the moment. But

00:34:12.080 I am actually deeply concerned about what you're talking about right now, because the amount of

00:34:16.240 emails that I get literally from people saying my wife is divorcing me because I'm a Trump supporter,

00:34:22.800 or my friends have abandoned me. I tell some stories about the types of things that happened to me when I

00:34:27.840 just started saying, Hey, there's something wrong with the left. And literally people that were

00:34:31.920 invited to my wedding telling me I'm a racist and a bigot, and they don't even know why they're

00:34:35.600 saying it. I asked them why, have I said anything racist? And it doesn't even matter. They think

00:34:39.440 because they say it, that is evidence of its truth. So I'm deeply concerned about that because,

00:34:44.960 you know, as you know, we're in an election year here in the United States,

00:34:47.600 Corona has everybody kind of confused and up in the air as is. And one of the things that I try to

00:34:53.360 do in chapter 10 in the final chapter of the book is, is, you know, we shouldn't be permanently

00:34:58.800 political. Uh, I find if your whole worldview is just through a political lens, meaning the left is

00:35:04.960 this, the right is this, this happened today. And that happened today. And they voted on this.

00:35:09.600 It will lead you to endless misery because politics is about power and, and a game of power. 0.89

00:35:15.600 It's sort of like game of Thrones, game of Thrones, basically everyone dies at the end. And the couple

00:35:19.520 guys who are alive, they're not that happy because everyone they know is dead. And, and I sort of

00:35:23.840 think that that is what politics is. So you need to have a framework for life that is outside of

00:35:29.760 politics. I lay out what I think is a pretty decent one in this book. But if, if, if you want to really

00:35:35.120 dense read on that, we'll turn to the most famous man in Canada, turn to Jordan Peterson and read 12

00:35:40.320 rules for life. Outstanding. Well, I can hardly wait to tuck into the book. What a great read.

00:35:45.680 It's like the story of my life, uh, being deep platformed and, and wanting to debate and just

00:35:51.040 very interesting. Dave Rubin, we're big fans up here. Good luck with the book tour. Once again,

00:35:55.840 folks, you can buy, don't burn this book at the Amazon link below. And we'll email this video out

00:36:01.680 to our readers too. Good luck, Dave. Thanks, Ezra. All right. Bye-bye. There you have it, Dave Rubin.

00:36:07.360 What a good egg. Oh, I wish more liberals had his open-minded approach to debate. Stay with us. More ahead on the run.

00:36:15.680 Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about China calling Canada a giant baby. Bill writes,

00:36:29.440 it's obvious to everybody but Trudeau that she doesn't respect him and won't give him the secretary

00:36:34.320 general job. No, no, no, no. Um, I think that it's like, um, you know, when a horse has a kind of,

00:36:43.920 I don't know, what's that called? Like a harness on their head that has a stick with, you know, bait

00:36:48.880 ahead and the horse keeps following the bait. I don't even know what that's called. That's Trudeau.

00:36:54.320 Xi Jinping keeps saying, well, just give us a little more. Give us a little more. Here's the bait. We'll give

00:36:58.720 you a seat on the UN Security Council. And then if you're a very good boy, we'll have to be

00:37:02.400 secretary general. So I think he's being trained. He's being conditioned. So he's getting sticks and

00:37:08.400 carrots, not a lot of carrots to be frank, but he's being obedience trained by the Chinese. So, um, 0.83

00:37:15.520 I think the, they're abusing him psychologically, politically, culturally, economically to get him

00:37:21.920 conditioned to accepting that. And like a Pavlovian response to whatever they have to say. I don't

00:37:27.120 know, maybe that sounds a little too amateur psychological, but once you think of, once

00:37:31.520 you look at Trudeau's foreign policy through the lens of how do I get on the UN Security Council for

00:37:37.600 a country, how do I become the next secretary general to get out of this prime minister gig,

00:37:41.680 then a lot of things make sense. Bernie writes, ever since Trudeau became prime minister,

00:37:46.480 I decided my car was going to be special. The delivery guy, three doors up tonight, stopped at

00:37:51.600 the end of my driveway and asked if he could put something on my car. Then he tells me I made his day.

00:37:55.840 No, he made my day. I thought I would share my car with you. Well, you are certainly expressing

00:38:00.800 yourself. And, um, I think it'll be interesting to see what cops do. I think most beat cops would

00:38:07.120 like your car, but it wouldn't shock me if you found an authoritarian bully who punishes you for

00:38:12.640 your car. I'm sorry. That's just my prediction. On my interview with Lauren Gunter on Trudeau's

00:38:17.920 firearms ban, Gore writes, do you think I'm going to let this tyrannical trust fund unaccomplished boob disarm 0.87

00:38:23.200 me? The liberals over and over have made me a criminal overnight. I'm getting used to it.

00:38:27.280 Many say Molen Labbe. I mean it. I think that's the Greek way of saying, hands off my guns, or

00:38:34.560 it's more or less what that means. I don't think it means guns. It's like, don't tread on me. It's sort

00:38:38.480 of a gun rights credo. Um, I tell you, when you disarm a population, you can do a lot of things to them. 0.52

00:38:46.560 I think Canada has been psychologically disarmed. I'm disappointed by how meekly people have gone

00:38:52.240 into various authoritarian regimes, house arrest, banned from parks, can't go for a walk outside,

00:38:58.400 get $800 tickets for walking your dog. I'm disappointed how many people have accepted that.

00:39:04.960 And we're still a semi-armed society. What happens if there's no

00:39:09.440 panic button, no emergency plan, no firearm there? And the government goes all the way and say,

00:39:17.280 try and stop us. Just watch me. I don't think we're there yet, but you can see how things slip

00:39:23.200 away, especially if there's a crisis as a pretext for it. Trudeau, his worst instincts came out in the

00:39:29.280 crisis. He wanted to effectively abolish parliament. He has abolished question period and press conferences

00:39:37.040 de facto. Um, he's spending and passing laws without a vote. He wanted to bring in censorship

00:39:43.600 specifically about the virus. He's seizing guns unrelated to the virus. Every authoritarian

00:39:48.880 instinct is there. That's what he got away with in two months. Imagine what he would get away with

00:39:54.320 in two terms. Folks, that's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at

00:39:59.840 the Rebel World headquarters to you at home. Good night. Keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - May 08, 2020

Texas judge sentences hair salon owner to prison for working. Will we see that in Canada？

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