The Candice Malcolm Show - December 12, 2023


Hanukkah is the new Christmas (and they’re both cancelled!)

Hosted by
Candice Malcolm
Mentioned
Hanukkah Andrew Lawton Show Justin Trudeau Yom Kippur Jody Gondek Searchlight Pictures Laura Rosen-Cohen Andrew Stanton Kate McKinnon Rosh Hashanah Israel Chai Jesus Christ Daveed Diggs Ramadan Merry Oscar
This is a low point in the history of Parliament： political scientist Trudeau votes for HAMAS

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

186.43

Word count

3,596

Sentence count

193

Harmful content

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Candice Malan explains why Christmas is being demonized by the left, and why Hanukkah is getting the same treatment. She explains why Jews have been added to the leftist victim hierarchy, and how the left is trying to destroy the most important holiday of the year.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The woke, progressive, left-wing cultural forces have spent years, well, they've spent decades, really, trying to cancel Christmas.
00:00:07.720 Fascinatingly, the same forces that are trying to kill Christmas now have their sights set on another religious holiday, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
00:00:16.440 It's taken them 50-plus years to demonize and destroy our beloved Christmas, and only one year to do the same to Hanukkah. 0.76
00:00:23.420 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:30.000 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.
00:00:37.920 Don't forget to like this video, subscribe to the True North channel, leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the podcast,
00:00:42.800 and head on over to our website, www.tnc.news, to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss a story.
00:00:49.020 And if you do enjoy our work, please consider supporting our journalism, hit that donate button, and consider leaving us a modest donation.
00:00:56.340 Okay, so here we go. The left goes after Christmas, our most beloved holiday, the most wonderful time of the year.
00:01:02.460 They go after Christmas for one reason and one reason alone.
00:01:05.740 They hate Christianity. They hate everything it represents and everything that it has created. 0.99
00:01:10.760 Now, you and I might look around at our world of peace and prosperity, respect, tolerance, basic human rights, dignity for all,
00:01:17.900 the idea that we are all inherently equal and that we have free will.
00:01:22.960 We look at those things and we think, wow, that is wonderful. Those things are worth preserving.
00:01:27.100 The left looks at those traditions, the ones that you and I cherish, and they want to dismantle them.
00:01:32.040 They want to replace it with something entirely different, some utopian scheme, some system that has never been tried before,
00:01:38.020 or even worse, something that has been tried and has led to mass murder and universal misery.
00:01:44.340 That's what the left wants to do. They want to unravel everything about our society.
00:01:48.380 Now, remarkably, when it comes to Christmas, these forces have been successful.
00:01:52.480 They slowly erased the most important day in the Christian calendar, the day that simply acknowledges the birth of the most consequential person in all of human history. 0.67
00:02:03.460 So how did they do that?
00:02:04.460 Well, first, they stripped the holiday of any religious meaning whatsoever, making it just merely about commercialism and imaginary children's characters.
00:02:12.580 And then after that, they went even further, and they demonized the very idea of acknowledging Christmas.
00:02:19.300 We must say happy holidays. In Canada, in 2023, you will rarely hear a person wishing you Merry Christmas at the store, in your kid's school, anywhere you go.
00:02:29.040 You will hear happy holidays. You very rarely hear Merry Christmas. Why is that?
00:02:32.900 Well, we wouldn't want to offend people who don't like Christmas.
00:02:35.420 We wouldn't want to offend those Marxist atheists who get triggered by hearing the word Christmas.
00:02:41.320 So it isn't just about erasing religion from our society.
00:02:44.760 It's about erasing everything, erasing our history, erasing our traditions and the values that have been embedded in that history and in those traditions.
00:02:54.880 And we reached a new low in 2023 when the Canadian government told us that Christmas, I kid you not, Christmas is a white supremacist holiday.
00:03:03.420 Simply acknowledging Christmas is a form of discrimination and intolerance, this according to the brilliant Canadian Human Rights Commission.
00:03:13.760 Well, now, Christmas is not alone.
00:03:16.020 It's not just those who celebrate Christmas or who want to acknowledge Christmas that are being demonized. 0.54
00:03:21.020 Jews have been added to the basket of deplorables. 1.00
00:03:23.860 And now Hanukkah is getting canceled. 0.98
00:03:25.960 It's getting the Christmas treatment.
00:03:28.180 In just two short months, two short months since that October 7th terrorist attack.
00:03:32.940 Remember, that was when Arab terrorists, an Arab Islamist group called Hamas, invaded Israel and attacked Jewish civilians in their beds.
00:03:41.400 So for the crime of being the victim of a terrorist attack, Jews have suddenly fallen to the very, very, very bottom of the left's victim hierarchy.
00:03:49.980 Jews are now perhaps even lower on that hierarchy than straight white males in their sympathy from the left, believe it or not.
00:03:57.100 So just like that, Hanukkah has also been canceled by the woke mob. 0.70
00:04:01.820 Jews are settlers, we're told, and settlers are not civilians.
00:04:04.440 So they're all fair game for violence. 0.76
00:04:06.500 Apparently, what the left just likes to call resistance.
00:04:10.160 So this is what we've seen in cities across North America.
00:04:12.740 Hanukkah being canceled, being downplayed, being outright rejected in American cities like Washington, D.C., Williamsburg, Virginia, and Los Angeles for good measure.
00:04:21.920 They just canceled both.
00:04:22.840 They canceled both Christmas and Hanukkah, just to be fair.
00:04:26.720 Up here in Canada, we've seen the same thing.
00:04:28.460 In Moncton, New Brunswick City Council decided to end the 20-year tradition of lighting the Hanukkah menorah in front of City Hall,
00:04:35.000 only to then reverse that decision after some negative feedback.
00:04:39.300 I think that Jodi Gondock, the mayor of Calgary, takes the cake.
00:04:42.640 She sort of said it all when she refused to attend the Hanukkah memorial lighting ceremony.
00:04:49.540 She said that it was just too political.
00:04:52.120 So here's a flyer for that event.
00:04:53.760 It just says Calgary Community Menorah Lighting.
00:04:56.020 It says here, Am Yisrael Chai, which simply means the people of Israel live.
00:05:00.840 So again, just say that Jews have the right to live. 1.00
00:05:04.100 Apparently, that is political.
00:05:05.560 Here it says unity supporting Israel, Jewish pride.
00:05:08.480 So we had Jodi Gondock.
00:05:10.180 And she said, On the eve of a beloved Calgary tradition, the annual menorah lighting at City Hall,
00:05:15.260 I've learned that the event has been repositioned to be political.
00:05:19.480 This breaks my heart.
00:05:20.820 It is with great regret and sadness that I will not be attending.
00:05:23.680 My statement is posted.
00:05:25.040 And then she shared a picture of the poster.
00:05:28.700 For those who don't know much about Jewish holidays, and Calgary mayor Jodi Gondock has
00:05:32.700 simply outed herself as being a person who does not know very much about Jewish holidays.
00:05:37.280 Hanukkah is an inherently political celebration.
00:05:41.280 It is intrinsically tied with the state of Israel.
00:05:45.140 It is a festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and the rededication of the second 0.95
00:05:51.920 temple at the beginning of the Maccabee revolt.
00:05:54.180 So the story you probably know is about how there was enough oil to keep one candle lit.
00:05:58.900 And it was a miracle because it remained lit for nine days.
00:06:02.460 That was during a war.
00:06:03.460 That was when the Israelites were taking back Israel and Jerusalem. 0.96
00:06:07.460 So again, the celebration is inherently political.
00:06:11.180 It is about the state of Israel.
00:06:12.880 And so this ceremony is simply acknowledging that.
00:06:15.500 And by acknowledging that, apparently, that makes it too political for the Calgary mayor
00:06:20.120 to attend just for good measure.
00:06:21.720 Let's just recall a year ago when Calgary raised the Ukraine flag to show its support
00:06:27.900 for a sovereign nation under attack.
00:06:30.400 These are Jodi Gondock's own words.
00:06:33.160 Show support for sovereign nation under attack.
00:06:35.880 Under a horrifying and unprovoked attack.
00:06:38.520 Sound familiar?
00:06:39.840 Does it sound familiar?
00:06:40.520 We stand in support of the Ukrainian community in our city and the people who have close ties
00:06:45.640 to their homeland.
00:06:46.440 So it is okay to go to a political event.
00:06:48.800 It is okay to turn City Hall into a political symbol by raising the Ukraine flag when it comes 0.97
00:06:54.660 to supporting Ukraine.
00:06:56.280 But when the same thing happens when Israel is invaded, it is a sovereign and democratic
00:07:00.320 country.
00:07:00.800 When it is invaded, that's too political.
00:07:02.960 And we just can't quite get involved.
00:07:04.880 Those aren't the only examples.
00:07:06.460 A student over at the University of Alberta, my alma mater, wanted to put a menorah up to
00:07:12.180 celebrate Hanukkah.
00:07:13.540 And the school said no.
00:07:14.540 And then they also took down the Christmas tree for a good measure.
00:07:17.100 So what can I say?
00:07:18.140 Jews, welcome to the club. 0.99
00:07:19.400 You're getting canceled just like Christians have been canceled over the many years. 0.99
00:07:23.320 So to get more insight on this issue, I would like to bring in my friend and colleague,
00:07:28.300 Andrew Lawton, host of the Andrew Lawton Show here at True North, to get his opinion.
00:07:31.980 Hey, Andrew, thanks so much for joining us.
00:07:33.780 It's my pleasure.
00:07:34.440 Thanks very much.
00:07:35.960 So, Andrew, you have been covering the war on Christmas since, as long as I've known
00:07:39.500 you as a journalist, I think that you are someone who covers this every year and you
00:07:42.840 stay on top of the latest craziness like the Human Rights Commission this year saying
00:07:46.420 that celebrating Christmas is discriminatory and white supremacist or something like that.
00:07:50.720 So can you just tell us about the forces behind this movement and when you first started
00:07:55.520 observing it or when you think it started?
00:07:58.080 Yeah, it's a bit of a weird one.
00:07:59.800 And I never even like using the term war on Christmas because there's this weird parallel
00:08:05.680 reality in which you get a number of people, typically those on the left, that say there's
00:08:09.480 no such thing.
00:08:10.280 It's made up.
00:08:11.120 There's no war on Christmas.
00:08:12.640 And it's kind of like political correctness where it's a term that becomes the subject of
00:08:17.060 debate as to whether or not it even exists.
00:08:19.160 And the point that I always say to counter that is that there is a war on Christmas, but
00:08:24.280 it's not coming from Muslims.
00:08:26.300 It's not coming from Jews. 0.99
00:08:27.920 It's not coming from immigrants that are offended by this, you know, originally Christian holiday.
00:08:33.200 It's coming from white secular liberals that want to be offended on other people's behalf.
00:08:39.380 Now, that's historically been the case.
00:08:41.560 And I think that worldview has become very much institutionalized, not just in the Canadian
00:08:46.580 Human Rights Commission, which you alluded to, but also in the bland, risk-averse corporate
00:08:52.160 world, which thinks that we need to just strip away anything that might possibly at some point
00:08:57.280 maybe just offend one person.
00:08:59.360 And as a result, Christianity and Christmas, which are not mutually exclusive, I'd argue
00:09:05.600 that Christmas has become more of a cultural holiday to a lot of people than strictly a religious
00:09:10.600 holiday, which it is for me.
00:09:12.200 But as a result, Christmas tends to be in the crosshairs.
00:09:15.160 And, you know, you always see some wacky manifestations of that.
00:09:19.300 Well, it's so interesting, Andrew, because I think a lot of people who come to Canada
00:09:22.140 as immigrants, and I would count my in-laws, my husband's family in that group, you know,
00:09:27.380 they really admire the West.
00:09:29.080 They like Western civilization, and they understand how it is intrinsically tied to Christianity,
00:09:34.780 to the birth of Jesus Christ.
00:09:35.840 Like I said, Christmas is simply acknowledging the birth of probably the most influential,
00:09:40.660 consequential person in human history.
00:09:42.360 And so they actually like the Christmas markets and the Christmas festivals and the Christmas
00:09:46.680 trees, and they're more likely to say Merry Christmas than, you know, the white liberal
00:09:52.160 atheists that you described.
00:09:53.900 And so it's kind of a shame I made this comment to some people at True North that, you know,
00:09:58.560 if you were like in Dubai or if you were somewhere in the Arab world, and it was Ramadan,
00:10:04.440 could you imagine like someone not saying Happy Ramadan around you because they were worried
00:10:09.180 about offending you and saying Happy Holidays and said like it would just never happen.
00:10:12.320 It's something that's like uniquely happening in the Western world and probably a lot in Canada.
00:10:17.120 So I talked a lot about how Jews and people celebrating Hanukkah are now getting a very
00:10:22.020 similar treatment to us Christians and those who want to celebrate Christmas.
00:10:26.820 It's been interesting to watch.
00:10:28.460 So, you know, does this surprise you?
00:10:31.040 What do you make of Jews being lumped in now with sort of the deplorables and not being
00:10:36.160 able to celebrate their own holiday?
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00:11:07.840 It doesn't surprise me because it's been part of a very long-term process here where there's
00:11:14.660 this Caucasification of Jews and Judaism.
00:11:18.420 And what I mean by that is that Jews have always been a religious minority, they've always
00:11:24.560 been an ethnic minority, they've always faced tremendous persecution, and my friend Laura
00:11:29.560 Rosen-Cohen has this very, I mean, it's a sad, but it's a very apt line that everyone
00:11:34.360 meets at Jew hate junction.
00:11:35.800 It's the place that is the target of hate for the far left, for the far right, for various
00:11:41.380 religious fundamentalists, and anti-Semitism is always the most prevalent form of hate whenever
00:11:47.660 there are studies done on hate crimes, which I realize is a bit of a loaded term.
00:11:52.820 But Jews have also been rebranded by, in a lot of cases, anti-Semites, so that they cannot
00:11:59.800 be oppressed. 0.87
00:12:00.980 They can only be the oppressors.
00:12:02.760 Jews are not victims, they are privileged. 0.79
00:12:05.560 And it's why this anti-colonialism narrative has been injected into the horrendous atrocities
00:12:11.880 that Hamas was perpetrating against Jews and Israelis just a couple of months ago.
00:12:16.960 So you have now Jews that people refuse to see as minorities and refuse to see as being 0.99
00:12:23.820 targeted by anything.
00:12:25.500 So now their holiday, which is not, you know, nearly the most widespread holiday in Canada,
00:12:31.260 Hanukkah, is viewed as part of the dominant culture now, this hegemony like Christmas,
00:12:38.400 which is just bizarre and makes no sense whatsoever, unless you follow that context of how Jews have 1.00
00:12:44.620 been perceived by largely anti-Semites.
00:12:47.860 Well, it is kind of interesting, Andrew, because I have a lot of Jewish friends and I even have
00:12:53.320 Jewish members in my own family.
00:12:55.360 And for religious Jews, Hanukkah isn't really that big of a deal.
00:13:00.640 Like the main holiday in the Jewish calendar is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the new year,
00:13:05.960 and then Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year, the day of atonement.
00:13:08.580 And that happens in the fall, and that's sort of very important.
00:13:10.920 And then you have Passover, which is like the big feast, and again, like celebrating the existence
00:13:15.440 of Israel, but also just celebrating your community and your family.
00:13:19.800 And then Hanukkah has sort of been made, especially in North America and the U.S., to be a big
00:13:24.840 holiday because it coincides with Christmas.
00:13:26.880 And, you know, a lot of the Jewish kids growing up felt left out that they didn't get a Christmas
00:13:31.380 tree, and so their parents made Hanukkah like a bigger deal over the last, I don't know,
00:13:34.920 maybe century or so.
00:13:36.700 But if you go to Israel or if you're in a very strictly religious community, it's not
00:13:40.320 that big of a deal.
00:13:41.040 But the meaning behind Hanukkah is political.
00:13:45.160 It's about the fight for Jerusalem, Jews recapturing Jerusalem during the Second Temple 0.91
00:13:49.600 period, and about the Jewish people having their own place.
00:13:53.620 So it's kind of ironic that, you know, a holiday that wasn't necessarily the top profile Jewish
00:14:01.460 holiday has become that way because of North America.
00:14:03.580 And then now, you know, as we saw in Calgary, Mayor Jordi Gondek saying that it was too political
00:14:08.880 to go to Hanukkah because, you know, it said support Israel or something on the flyer.
00:14:14.800 But it's hard to remove the holiday of Hanukkah from Israel.
00:14:20.660 So, yeah, I just wanted to sort of get your thoughts again on, you know, why, like, let
00:14:28.500 me ask you this question.
00:14:29.840 It seems that Christians have sort of come to terms with the fact that our holiday isn't,
00:14:35.780 we can't celebrate Christmas out in the open anymore.
00:14:38.080 You know, we'll just say happy holidays and we don't want to offend people.
00:14:40.620 But it seems to me that Jews aren't going to take that. 1.00
00:14:43.560 They're fighting back.
00:14:44.520 They're saying, no, we're going to push back against the Jodi Gondeks that are canceling
00:14:48.020 Christmas.
00:14:48.920 We saw the city council in New Brunswick say that they're not going to celebrate Hanukkah.
00:14:53.660 And then there was so much pushback that they said, OK, OK, fine, we will.
00:14:56.620 It seems to me that Jews are fighting back a lot more than Christians are. 0.93
00:15:00.120 What do you make of this?
00:15:01.960 Well, I think there are two things.
00:15:03.300 I think as far as Christmas goes, and this is where I go back to why the war on Christmas
00:15:08.260 is a bit of a challenging term.
00:15:10.200 I'd argue we don't just hide Christmas, but we do this internally inconsistent and illogical
00:15:16.900 thing where we try to strip away what Christmas is and we'll keep the red and the green and
00:15:22.480 we'll keep the holly and we'll keep the presents, but we'll pretend that it's not Christmas we're
00:15:27.280 doing.
00:15:27.700 We just happen to be doing all of these things that kind of look and feel and sound and smell
00:15:32.300 like Christmas around the same time as Christmas.
00:15:35.140 What a coincidence that we're doing all this on December 25th.
00:15:38.400 I mean, Justin Trudeau, a couple of years ago, issued a Christmas statement in which
00:15:43.160 he did not mention Jesus or Christianity.
00:15:46.580 So to him, Christmas, I mean, he might as well have just been honoring the winter solstice
00:15:50.260 or something.
00:15:50.860 It was just this generic, I mean, some might say pagan, but it was just this generic, bland
00:15:55.500 honoring of Christmas as being some meaningful day.
00:15:58.280 And he was saying Christmas is for everyone.
00:15:59.940 Now, look, I believe as a Christian that people should be able to enjoy Christmas, whoever they
00:16:03.980 are.
00:16:04.240 But Jews don't say Hanukkah is for everyone and Muslims don't say Ramadan is for everyone.
00:16:09.480 And the people that honor Diwali don't say, really directly, that Diwali is for everyone.
00:16:16.440 That doesn't mean other people can't participate and exchange and learn about it.
00:16:20.940 But Jews are saying, no, Hanukkah is this to us.
00:16:24.660 And when you mentioned, I think quite accurately, that there is an inherent politics to the history
00:16:30.040 of Hanukkah, what I would do is go one step further and say it shows the inextricable link
00:16:35.440 between Jewish people and Israel, that you can't just separate these two things out and
00:16:40.580 say, well, I'm not anti-Jew, but I'm anti-Israel, or, well, yes, I'm OK, you know, being nice
00:16:45.940 to my Jewish neighbors, but I don't want them to mistake me for being pro-Israel, which is
00:16:50.740 basically what Jodi Gondek was doing.
00:16:53.200 Well, it's interesting what I've observed, Andrew, to your point, I think you're completely
00:16:56.920 right, that even secular atheist Jews are standing up for Jewish people at this time
00:17:04.160 and saying, no, like, it doesn't matter how religious you are or how orthodox you are,
00:17:08.640 or even, I mean, to your point, like, there is something intrinsic about Jewish identity
00:17:13.780 and the state of Israel.
00:17:14.740 But I've noticed sort of across the board, every Jew that I know, I was talking to a Jewish
00:17:19.740 friend, Andrew, from Montreal, who is very liberal, so much so that he's one of the top
00:17:24.440 donors and fundraisers for Justin Trudeau.
00:17:27.420 And he's one of the people who just absolutely live in, I've had enough, and he's like, look,
00:17:31.480 you know, me and my wife are very much on the left, and when you lose my wife and I, you
00:17:35.580 know, you know that you've lost this battle, because they are no line, they said, hey, welcome
00:17:39.120 to our side, you know, it's good to have you.
00:17:41.320 But I feel like this is a breaking point for so many Jewish people that they just, they see
00:17:45.900 the true colors of the sort of anti-colonial, decolonized, woke left, and they don't like
00:17:53.620 it, and they've had enough of it.
00:17:54.720 What do you think of that?
00:17:56.260 Yeah, I think you're right, and I think everyone has their red line, everyone has their hill
00:18:01.460 to die on, and for Jewish people, Israel has always been that, I shouldn't say always, 0.97
00:18:07.040 but for many Jewish people, Israel has always been that hill to die on, because for them it
00:18:12.300 is personal, I mean, you cannot find that many Jewish people that do not have at some
00:18:17.240 point in their family some horrendous loss, either directly to the Holocaust or to some
00:18:22.880 other atrocity that's taken place against the Jewish people with alarming regularity and
00:18:27.880 frequency.
00:18:28.640 So for Jews, this is very personal, and I'm seeing some incredibly far-left Jews that I 1.00
00:18:33.560 know, I mean, people that would even be further left than the friends that you just described,
00:18:37.480 that right now are in lockstep with the right by promoting Israel, but because to them it's
00:18:43.740 not a left-right issue, it's not a partisan issue, it's just the survival of them, their
00:18:48.440 family, their community, and their people, and that's the one thing that I think a lot
00:18:52.560 of people that aren't connected to this debate need to realize.
00:18:55.880 Very true, very insightful.
00:18:57.360 Well, Andrew, I really appreciate your thoughts and your comments, and I'll probably see you
00:19:01.480 again before Christmas, but just in case I don't, Merry Christmas to you and your family,
00:19:04.920 I hope you have a wonderful, blessed celebration. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:19:08.800 Thank you, and happy Hanukkah to those affected by that as well.
00:19:12.700 Certainly, certainly. All right, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm,
00:19:16.080 and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.