00:00:00.000In a society obsessed with diversity and inclusion, there is now a new category of people who are apparently open season for harassment, intimidation, hatred, and even incitement of violence.
00:00:11.540I'm talking about Russians. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:25.500Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:00:28.100Now, as you know, over the years, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used to talk a good game about protecting our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:00:35.740He would say he would protect it at all costs, even when it's unpopular.
00:00:39.680Well, that all went out the window, as you know, during COVID, when Trudeau would regularly suspend our charter rights due to public health emergencies or public safety emergencies or any other emergency that he could think up.
00:00:51.360He also began to regularly scapegoat and demonize the unvaccinated.
00:00:55.240They don't deserve charter rights. They're racist, he told us.
00:00:58.560Well, Trudeau used to also insist that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, even if that Canadian happened to be a foreign-born jihadist terrorist who joined a foreign military and picked up arms against Canada.
00:01:10.220It didn't matter, Trudeau said. He's still a Canadian, and he's still deserving of your respect.
00:01:15.560At the height of ISIS's reign of terror in the Middle East and Europe, Trudeau would regularly scold Canadians and accuse them of Islamophobia.
00:01:22.840During the height of COVID, when we learned that the communist Chinese government hid the extent of the virus, we also learned that the virus likely leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan.
00:01:33.600Well, Trudeau government once again accused Canadians, scolded Canadians, and told us that we were stoking anti-Chinese bigotry.
00:01:41.780Well, the latest conflict in Ukraine has seen something totally different from Justin Trudeau.
00:01:47.080We haven't heard any of that from our prime minister.
00:01:50.300Instead, we've heard him blame Russians, and he's made no attempt whatsoever to separate the Putin regime from the peaceful and good-hearted people of Russia.
00:03:52.780He's, by all accounts, a prodigy, and because of the simple fact that he's Russian.
00:04:00.040And, you know, what makes this extraordinary is that the pianist had actually come out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:04:10.500And so when a media organization reached out to the orchestra to get their views on this,
00:04:19.760the spokesperson said that it would be inappropriate for Malafive to perform at this time.
00:04:26.500And what I want to say is that this is just, you know, a spate of cancellations that we've seen recently since the conflict broke out.
00:04:36.720We've seen Russian artists, conductors.
00:04:40.920I have seen this has been especially bad in the cultural, in the arts sector more than anywhere else.
00:04:47.740I mean, you've seen countries sanction Russia.
00:04:50.500Russia, they've weaponized finance, they have, countries have suspended their operations in Russia, you've seen that.
00:04:58.980But for some reason, it seems to be especially bad in the arts and cultural, classical music world,
00:05:06.800whether it's museums or orchestras around the world, especially in Europe and the US and Canada.
00:05:14.280And so what's going on here is that it's basically open season on anyone who's seen as not sufficiently critical of Russia or the invasion.
00:05:28.580Or if you choose to stay neutral or you don't want to weigh in on this, you just don't want to be political.
00:05:34.220You just want to remain as apolitical as possible.
00:05:36.920And there are lots of people like that.
00:05:38.740There are people who don't want to see an escalation of the conflict.
00:05:41.820You know, they'd rather not take sides.
00:05:46.000And it's gotten so ridiculous that there's this one egregious example here in Ottawa of a restaurant called the Moscow Tea Room, I believe.
00:06:03.020He came to this country escaping the war in Lebanon.
00:06:06.800He came as a refugee and he's been receiving a spate of hate mails and death threats because they think he's Russian or that he has some kind of a Russian connection by way of this restaurant.
00:06:21.820So it's quite stunning what's been happening.
00:06:26.460But what I'm taken aback by is the fact that our political class has largely remained silent or looked the other way when these things have been reported.
00:06:38.520Now, they're usually very quick to condemn this kind of thing.
00:06:43.800And you gave several examples early on when it came to not calling this the Chinese virus because, you know, that would be seen as offensive to the Chinese people or people of Chinese origin.
00:07:02.620And there are many such examples, but it seems we're almost witnessing a moment in history right now, a moment right now where it's OK to actually hate on the Russians.
00:07:17.220It's OK to, you know, say anything you want against them.
00:07:21.140And certainly Facebook and Instagram coming out with this with this policy as exposed by Reuters that that it's that it should be it's no longer it wouldn't violate their terms of conditions to to incite violence against Russians or Russian soldiers.
00:07:43.300Now, what's interesting is that when the headline first came out, it said Russians in the headline and then they modified it to Russian soldiers.
00:07:51.340But the text of the story still says Russians and Russian soldiers.
00:07:55.520And they've they've they've kind of, you know, said since that, no, it's not, you know, we it's Russians, you know, we're still not going to allow hate speech against Russians.
00:08:06.900But, you know, the language is pretty vague and the cat is out of the bag at this point.
00:08:11.200And and and and, you know, what's more is that we've also normalized the Azov battalion, which is another extraordinary part of this.
00:08:19.540We've normalized neo-Nazis we like and now these these these these guys are menacing there by all accounts, you know, far right and anti-Semitic.
00:08:36.260And this has all been well documented.
00:08:38.980The Canadian military has, in fact, trained the Azov battalion.
00:08:42.840The Azov battalion is not some French group.
00:08:45.180They're part of the Ukrainian National Guard and a very significant part of the Ukrainian National Guard.
00:08:52.320But any, you know, if you if you were to point to the Azov battalion and in the problems they pose, you know, one receives a lot of pushback saying, well, you know, it's just a small fringe and they don't really represent, you know, anything much beyond the fact that they're just a small far right fringe group.
00:09:12.680But that's not correct. They're they're very prominent on the on Ukrainian streets.
00:09:19.040Any any any. And, you know, it was thanks to the mainstream media that we know of the Azov battalion.
00:09:26.380And they were reporting on the Azov battalion before the conflict broke out.
00:09:31.700You know, it was they were they were rightly reporting on them and and rightly exposing them for what they what they are.
00:09:38.700But what we're seeing right now is an attempt to basically whitewash them.
00:09:43.180You you you you know, and and that's quite troubling and scary because we've now reached a point where we were basically normalizing these things because because they're on our side, essentially.
00:09:59.540Well, it's really wild, the extent of it.
00:10:02.540I know this is sort of a rabbit hole to go down, but it was the legacy media at one point that was ringing the alarm bell about the rise of the far right in Eastern Europe.
00:10:13.460I didn't pay much attention to it, to be honest, at the time, because we hear the legacy media cry wolf so frequently about the far right in North America.
00:10:21.920And it's usually just a bunch of nothing.
00:10:24.300Right. They accuse Jewish journalist Ezra Levant of being a far right.
00:10:30.820And that's sort of laughable, given that, again, he he's Jewish and he's he's been a longtime free speech crusader.
00:10:38.300However, I have started to look down this documented by legacy media picked up a lot by left wing media outlets and left wing groups.
00:10:46.540There was a long piece in a weekly magazine called The Nation, which happens to be the U.S.'s longest running weekly newsletter.
00:10:54.940It was started in 1865 by a group of abolitionists who were opposed to slavery.
00:11:00.740Anyway, they're a progressive outlet and they they wrote about an individual called Andre Paraby.
00:11:05.520I had a piece about him in True North this morning.
00:11:08.760And basically, this guy was a neo-Nazi in the 1990s.
00:11:13.620He was created a far right political party, a racist, ultra nationalist party limited to white Ukrainians only.
00:11:22.020So we're talking about real far right Nazi like racism.
00:11:26.020He styled the party after Hitler's Nazi party.
00:11:29.000He even called it the Social Nationalist Party, a sort of take on the National Socialist Party, which creates which was a formation of the Nazi party in Nazi Germany.
00:11:38.660Anyways, this guy was a part of the mainstream Ukrainian government.
00:11:42.240And he was a speaker of the legislative house.
00:11:44.260He met frequently with Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland.
00:11:47.100Chrystia Freeland, you know, posted pictures of herself with this guy on her Facebook page, on the embassy website.
00:11:54.160All you have to do is just Google this guy to find pictures of him wearing Nazi style uniforms, you know, talking about racial nationalism,
00:12:02.720founding this party that remains the ultra right party in Ukraine.
00:12:08.200And it's all kind of hidden in plain sight, Rupa.
00:12:11.460And yet no one's really holding our politicians accountable.
00:12:17.020The fact that Chrystia Freeland was seen holding a Nazi banner and the media just sort of whitewashed it and said it was it was it wasn't really blood and soil.
00:12:25.880It meant something different and coming up with a bizarre explanation.
00:12:29.500So, you know, let's pivot and talk a little bit about Chrystia Freeland.
00:12:35.920You know, why is it that the media and the Canadian government is so dead set on whitewashing Ukraine,
00:12:42.280telling us that they are a, you know, pristine Western liberal democracy and that they are, you know, worthy of us perhaps getting involved in a catastrophic war on the other side of the world?
00:12:55.660You know, what do you think is behind all this?
00:13:01.700I do think that this the stakes are very high here for the West, right?
00:13:07.000They see and it is very high for Russia.
00:13:10.000The conflict, I think a lot of people don't really understand what this conflict really is about.
00:13:15.100They've bought the narrative that it is a good versus evil.
00:13:20.840You know, it's been set up as a good versus evil thing, us versus them.
00:13:25.660And that's mainly a narrative that has come out from the West.
00:13:30.620And a lot of people just have bought into it.
00:13:32.440But I bet, you know, if you stop the average person on the street and ask them, well, what do you think this conflict really is about?
00:13:38.740Why do you think Russia is doing what it's doing?
00:13:40.600Why is the West responding the way it's responding?
00:13:43.300I don't think anybody really understands what NATO is about or what NATO's relevance was after the Cold War ended.
00:13:50.240And spheres of influence, ask anybody, what does a sphere of influence mean to you?
00:13:57.040And would the U.S. be comfortable if there were nukes pointing at it from Mexico or Canada?
00:14:04.640And that's basically what Russia's been saying for about a decade or more.
00:14:12.020Since about 2005, I think, when Vladimir Putin at that famous Munich Security Conference made it very clear that, you know, Ukraine was Russia's sphere of influence.
00:14:22.660These are details that the average person just doesn't understand.
00:14:27.080So what we're seeing is a replay of very much in place shortly after 9-11.
00:14:40.300We didn't have social media at that time.
00:14:42.560But a lot of the media coverage was about good versus evil, us versus them, with us or against us, as George Bush famously said.
00:14:51.940And that's exactly what is going on right now.
00:14:55.220But what is extraordinary about this is that it's happening in the era of social media.
00:15:00.900And you would think that, you know, there are people who are questioning this narrative.
00:15:06.520But by and large, the mainstream media has bought into this us versus them.
00:15:11.800You know, you're seeing them towing the government line, looking at government press, pointing to government press releases to say, hey, you know, this is a fact check.
00:15:25.100Using a government press release and a fact check saying, well, that's why this story is wrong, because the government said so.
00:15:32.040Now, when was the last time you, you know, you accepted everything a government said with, you know, and, you know, didn't question it or challenge it enough?
00:15:43.360So for our politicians, I think, you know, they have a particular interest here to ensure that this narrative continues, that this narrative, there isn't pushback against this narrative.
00:15:56.020And I think that's what we're seeing with the likes of Chrystia Freeland or Justin Trudeau.
00:16:01.860So they're trying to normalize this, you know, good versus evil battle.
00:16:07.480And so anything that was bad about Ukraine, which, in fact, the legacy media, the mainstream media exposed all of these things.
00:16:15.900Zelensky was, he shows up in the Panama Papers, for example.
00:16:19.600Zelensky shut down the Kyiv Post because the Kyiv Post was going after Zelensky.
00:16:26.680And this happened just less than a year ago, last fall.
00:16:30.200Back in November, the Kyiv Post was shut down.
00:16:32.740And the editor of the Kyiv Post said, we've gone through all kinds of presidents, all kinds of ruling dispensations.
00:16:38.980But we've never had, we've never had to shut down.
00:16:45.300And because they were, they were questioning Zelensky's, the Kyiv Post was questioning Zelensky's liberal image that he had projected to the world.
00:16:58.360And so they were shut down as a result.
00:17:00.160And then that morphed into the Kyiv Independent.
00:17:02.520Now, what's interesting about the Kyiv Independent is that it receives money from Western governments, so much for their independence.
00:17:09.960Canada gave, I think, $200,000 back in December and was, again, reported in the mainstream media.
00:17:17.580It was reported by the Globe and Mail.
00:17:19.960We're not, so, you know, so when we, when we accept what is coming out of Kyiv Independent, and a lot of people are, they're just, they just retweet these new, these tweets.
00:17:32.520You know, without challenging it in the tiniest bit, you have to wonder what, you know, what that is about.
00:17:41.160If the Russians are capable of propaganda, the Ukrainians are also capable of propaganda, so are Western governments.
00:17:48.660And so we're seeing, you know, a normalization of these very unsavory aspects, whitewashing of Ukraine's past, whitewashing of this conflict.
00:18:02.360You know, no one's actually, actually thinking clearly through these issues.
00:18:07.480We're just, because I think it's easier for the brain to process this as binaries, moral binaries.
00:18:16.380Well, there isn't a journalist in the world that Dustin Trudeau won't buy out and won't pay, apparently, because he's willing to pay off the Canadian media.
00:18:23.580And apparently he's willing to fund Ukrainian media as well.
00:18:27.080It seems like we're making so many of the same mistakes, Rupa, that we did after 9-11 that led us to incredibly horrific bloodshed in the Middle East.
00:18:35.880And, you know, usually you would want to be skeptical and hold both sides accountable.
00:18:42.000We saw last week the Ukrainians pulling out a prisoner of war, allegedly, and, you know, having him answer questions from the media and sort of repeat these confessions, saying I was wrong and now I've seen the light.
00:18:58.140This is specifically banned in the Geneva Convention.
00:19:01.640You're not supposed to use prisoners of war for propaganda purposes.
00:19:06.320And yet we had the media in Canada and all over the world gleefully sharing this video of this soldier.
00:19:12.940I pointed out, as many did, that these were, this contravenes the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of War Prisoners.
00:19:21.680And, you know, David Akin, the seasoned journalist and a bureau chief for Global News, accused me of pearl clutching.
00:19:30.080So apparently the Geneva Convention, anyone who cares about the Geneva Convention, is simply pearl clutching.
00:19:36.940There's a broader issue here, though, Rupa, which is that we're not properly holding our politicians to account.
00:19:42.820The media just isn't doing the job that it's supposed to.
00:19:46.060One of the other pieces that you wrote is really interesting.
00:19:48.460I know this is a year old, but people keep sending it to me.
00:19:50.640And there's a lot of public interest around the World Economic Forum and Chrysia Freeland's role with it because, you know, she's the finance minister of Canada.
00:20:00.160So, first of all, she's supposed to be holding a domestic portfolio, which would which would mean that she should be in Canada focused on keeping Canada's budget balanced or keeping our finances in order.
00:20:10.880For some reason, she's in Europe sort of taking the lead as if she was still the foreign affairs minister, which she is not.
00:20:17.360But but also the fact that she sits on the board of this wonky organization that calls for all kinds of crazy leftist schemes.
00:20:24.760Now, I know that there's a lot of conspiracy theories around the World Economic Forum.
00:20:28.880You have a great line in the piece where you say there's no need to invent conspiracy theories.
00:20:32.080The attempt to the attempt by global elites to subvert local democracy is fully on and in plain view.
00:20:39.700Sometimes I wonder I've done a lot of research on Chrysia Freeland lately, learning about her past, learning about the involvement in Ukraine that she's had over the years.
00:21:05.740Her mother helped draft that country's constitution after it became independent from the USSR in the 90s.
00:21:11.560So she's deeply involved in Ukraine, as is her her whole family.
00:21:16.600That's where she immigrated from or her her ancestors immigrated from.
00:21:20.860Tell us a little bit about the World Economic Forum and Chrysia Freeland's role there, why that concerns you.
00:21:25.180And and let's talk a little bit about whether or not there's a conflict of interest and why there isn't more scrutiny of Chrysia Freeland, who's a deputy prime minister, the finance minister, the most important female politician, probably the most powerful woman in all of Canada.
00:21:38.860And yet the media can't be bothered to scrutinize her or try to hold her accountable in any way, shape or form.
00:21:45.780Well, so the World Economic Forum is this glitzy gathering of of the who's who of the, you know, the world of finance, politics, you name it.
00:22:00.060And and, you know, they've been meeting at this Swiss ski resort of of Davos since I think since 1971.
00:22:09.060And it's it was created by the German academic and entrepreneur, Klaus Schwab.
00:22:15.480And what what what what is interesting about Chrysia Freeland's connection to the World Economic Forum is that Chrysia Freeland used to be a big critic of the World Economic Forum.
00:22:27.400In fact, she wrote a book about the World Economic Forum or she wrote a book about the rise of the new global super rich and and the fall of everyone else.
00:22:37.780That's what that's what it was called, plutocrats. And and she said that that, you know, an invitation to Davos, quoting from her book, marks an aspiring plutocrat's arrival on the international scene.
00:22:53.180When she wrote this book and she wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, Chrysia Freeland joked that, you know, after her book was published, she was disinvited to all of the dinner parties at Davos.
00:23:05.300And from that, that was back in 2015, we now have Chrysia Freeland sitting on the advisory board of the World Economic Forum.
00:23:14.340She also used to sit on the board of the Aspen Kiev Institute in Ukraine.
00:23:21.540And and I believe she resigned from that post May 2021.
00:23:27.540But but she was she was certainly a part of their board till then.
00:23:31.920And and and what is what what I what I find interesting about this is that now think about think about this example, hypothetically, suppose you have the minister of health sitting on the board of a big pharma company or a lobby group or or or, you know, on behalf of the tobacco industry.
00:23:51.160I think at a bare minimum, that would be bad optics, right?
00:23:55.440I don't think I'd be alone in alone in saying that.
00:23:59.980But for some reason, we seem to think that NGOs are should be treated differently.
00:24:07.940You know, politicians can't sit on corporate boards while in office.
00:24:11.540But why should they be allowed to sit on the boards of NGOs and the World Economic Forum is not just some innocuous, non-governmental organization.
00:24:21.280It is built around a very specific and radical ideology now called the Great Reset.
00:24:29.760You know, they advocate for all kinds of things like massive reductions in fossil fuel use, prioritizing climate change, how climate change should be should become a core component of central banking.
00:24:44.260You know, in a position that our former governor here, Mark Carney, potential future prime minister, also believes in this very strongly.
00:24:56.480And I believe he's also on the board of the World Economic Forum.
00:25:00.800And these these policy positions, you know, have implications, you know, for a resource rich country like Canada.
00:25:10.240These are going to have major consequences.
00:25:12.200So what it's bad optics to be on the board of these private organizations.
00:25:21.560But she resigned, Freeland resigned from one, but she still remains on the other.
00:25:27.460And and given that she was a vociferous critic of the World Economic Forum, she went from that to being an insider herself.
00:25:36.120Right. Plutocrats was a was a critique of these of these people.
00:25:39.380And now she's rubbing shoulders with them and wants to be part of it.
00:25:41.780There's a really infamous image that the World Economic Forum put out.
00:25:46.300This become a meme on the Internet is so absurd.
00:25:48.500But it has a picture of a guy smiling and it says, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy, which, you know, it perfectly sums up, first of all, what these people are after.
00:25:58.960You know, they don't they want everyone to do ride sharing and want you to own a car.
00:26:03.840They want you to sort of give up everything and join this sort of new post nationalist ideology, but also how out of touch they are, because they thought that that would be, you know, good branding for them or something to put something like this out.
00:26:20.120Now, I know there are a lot of conspiracy theories around this.
00:26:23.020People think that these people orchestrated the pandemic and all that kind of stuff.
00:26:28.360I think it's pretty clear that that didn't happen.
00:26:31.360However, these people are still pushing a leftist agenda and the fact that they have, you know, that the individual that you named the founder, Klaus Schwab, he there's a there's a video of him.
00:26:42.000Actually, maybe we can play it where he talks about how he's infiltrated cabinets, including the Canadian cabinet.
00:26:47.800But what we are very proud of now is the young generation, like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, that we penetrate the cabinets.
00:27:02.980So yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau and I know that half of this cabinet or even more half of half of this cabinet are for our actually young global leaders of the world.
00:27:23.180So a couple of weeks ago, we had a conservative MP, Colin Carey, ask about this.
00:27:29.320And it was this question was ruled out on a port of order and an NDP MP accused him of disinformation and and pushing conspiracy theories.
00:27:39.140So why is it that, again, in our political class, in our media class, we're not even allowed to ask questions of the most powerful people in the world who are actively trying to push an agenda onto us.
00:27:49.780We can't ask questions about it because we're dismissed as disinformation and conspiracy theories.
00:27:53.600Everything is being dismissed as disinformation and conspiracy theory these days.
00:27:59.700And it is basically it puts an end to the conversation.
00:28:03.480Right. And it's a very, very insidious attempt at basically try to silence.
00:28:13.740You know, it has a chilling effect on free speech.
00:28:16.060And and then that's what's going on here.
00:29:43.400And I think I think and these are uncomfortable questions.
00:29:46.700Perhaps that's why they're I find that when people can't answer these questions and it makes them uncomfortable,
00:29:51.980it, you know, and they don't want to go down this rabbit hole there, there, you know, they just silence you and they try to silence you and they call call you and they accuse you of spreading disinformation.
00:30:06.820These are very important questions and we need to continue asking them.
00:30:10.820The fact of the matter, Candice, is that, you know, I happened to find this accidentally.
00:30:19.160I was actually going to be writing a bland piece about Davos and what they were going to be saying and, you know, in the context of COVID.
00:30:26.960And I was just just routinely just going through the advisory board.
00:30:30.160And I was shocked, you know, to see the finance minister of Canada on their list, on the advisory board.
00:30:37.840The media had, you know, she's been on the advisory board for, I think, since 2018.
00:30:42.560The media had all of that time to point this out or for the fact that she was on the Kiev Aspen Institute in Kiev.
00:30:53.920You know, they had ample time to point this out.
00:30:56.460But, you know, I believe nobody did until I wrote this piece.
00:31:00.400And I was actually quite taken aback by the reaction to it because a lot of people hadn't, they weren't aware of it, simply.
00:31:08.620And also the fact that she resigned from the Aspen Institute, that should have also been newsworthy.
00:31:13.660I think it should have been pointed out.
00:31:15.840Why was the finance minister, someone who has close personal ties to Ukraine, extremely close personal ties to Ukraine, you know, why was she on this board until recently?
00:31:27.260And these are questions that we're not raising because we are, I think, large sections of the media, the political class.
00:31:35.300I really don't want to go here for some reason because it might, maybe it's lazy.
00:31:44.760You know, I don't want to, I don't want to assume that everybody here, you know, is sinister.
00:31:49.400And, you know, and, you know, I don't want to think that the whole, that everything is a conspiracy theory.
00:31:54.220I think part of this is actually laziness.
00:31:56.620I think a lot of people just don't want to pursue these topics.
00:32:00.380You know, they're just happy with, you know, just recording just verbatim government press releases and, you know, and pointing to those as facts without actually questioning any of that.
00:32:15.540And I think part of it is also that some people have just bought into this narrative and they would, and so asking these questions would actually challenge that narrative.
00:32:24.820Well, and we also know that Chrystia Freeland's office particularly is very active in calling newsrooms and demanding corrections and changing stories because we saw that come out of iPolitics when one of their young reporters, Rachel Emanuel, who we had on the program yesterday, she talked about how she wrote a critical piece of Freeland.
00:32:43.520Freeland's office called, yelled at her editor to the point where the editor unilaterally went and changed the story completely without getting her approval.
00:32:50.560That's the kind of sway that Freeland and her team have in Ottawa, that they can just call a newsroom, yell at them, and the story will magically change into a pro-Christia Freeland piece.
00:33:02.060You know, when you have someone like Schwab openly saying that he has infiltrated the government, that's very strong language to use.
00:33:09.340And I think that journalists, it's probably a combination of the things you talked about, laziness, complicity, a little bit of political interference.
00:33:18.160But really the outcome is that we have a media in Canada that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
00:33:23.420It doesn't hold powerful people like Chrystia Freeland to account.
00:33:27.060Well, Rupa, we're so grateful that you have your voice in the National Post and that you are doing your bit to keep the legacy media honest.
00:33:34.860We appreciate hearing from you and thank you so much.